El Mouerid looks miserable in the storm of rain and wind, in which we leave it as the day is breaking. The Arab dress in windy weather teaches one what women undergo in petticoats upon a boisterous day; but still their pains are mitigated by the fact that generally men are near at hand to look at them, whereas we could not expect to find admiring ladies on the bleak limestone plain. Curious striations on the hills, as if the limestone “came to grass” in stripes, give an effect as of a building, to the rising foot-hills, into which we enter by the gorge of Bosargun, a rocky defile which gradually becomes a staircase like the road from Ronda to Gaucin, or that to heaven, almost untrodden of late years. We pass a clump of almond trees, by which a light chestnut [75] mare is feeding; she looks quite Japanese amongst the trees, buried up to the belly in aromatic shrubs; a little bird sits on her shoulder, no one is near her, though, no doubt, some sharp-eyed boy is hiding somewhere watching her, for in this district no animal is safe alone. From the top we get our first view of the Atlas in its entirety; snow, and more snow marking the highest peaks, the Glawi, Gurgourah, and the tall peaks behind Amsmiz. No mountain range I ever saw looks so steep and wall-like as the Atlas; but this wall-like configuration, though most effective for the whole range, yet robs the individual peaks of dignity.
To the east the stony plain of Morocco, cut into channels here and there by the diverted water of the Wad el N’fis (a river I was destined to follow to its very source), under the highest peaks of Ouichidan, upon the very confines of the Sus. Here, for the first time, we see, though far below us, the curious subterraneous aqueducts, looking like lines of tan pits, with which the plain of Morocco is intersected everywhere.
These aqueducts, called Mitfias, are a succession of deep pits, dug at varying distances from one another; the water runs from pit to pit in a mud channel, and the whole chain of pits often extends for miles. Men who undertake such herculean labour in order to irrigate their fields cannot well be called lazy, after the fashion of most travellers who speak, after a fortnight’s residence in Morocco, of the “lazy Moors.” The truth is that the country-people of Morocco are industrious enough, as almost every people who live by agriculture are bound to be. Only the Arabs of the desert, and the Gauchos of the southern plains, and people who live a pastoral life, can be called lazy, though they, too, at certain seasons of the year, work hard enough. The Arabs and Berbers of Morocco work hard, and would work harder had they not got the ever-present fear of their bad government before them. When one man quarrels with another, after exhausting all the usual curses on his opponent’s mother, sister, wife, and female generation generally, he usually concludes by saying: “May God, in his great mercy, send the Sultan to you”—for he knows that even Providence is not so merciless as our Liege Lord.
About three miles below us are two curious flat-topped hills, looking like castles. Mohammed el Hosein pronounces them to have been the site of two strong castles of the Christians. What Christians, then?—Roman, or Vandal, or Portuguese? Perhaps not Christian at all, but Carthaginian; for in Morocco, any old building, the builders of which are now forgotten, is set down to the all-constructing Christians, in the same manner as in Spain, the Moors built all the castles and the Roman bridges, and generally made everything which is a little older than the grandfather of the man with whom you speak. Not but at times the person questioned puts in practice, to your cost, the pawky Spanish saying: “Let him who asks be fed with lies.” What Christians could have been so foolish as to build two castles in a barren plain, far off from water, does not appear. At any rate, after a careful search, we can discover no trace of building, and put the castles down with the enchanted cities Fata Morgana, Flying Dutchman, and the like phenomena, which seem more real than the material cities, ships, and optical illusions, which, by their very realness, appear to lose their authenticity, and to become like life, a dream.
Passing the castles, we emerged again upon a desert tract, which took almost two hours to pass, and, at the furthest edge of it a zowia of a saint, Sidi Abd-el Mummen, with a mosque tower, flanked by palms, rising out of a sea of olives twisted and gnarled with age, and growing so thickly overhead that underneath them is like entering a southern church, out of the fierce glare of the sun.
History has not preserved the pious actions which caused Si Abd-el Mummen to be canonised. In fact, Mohammed, if he came to life again, would have a fine iconoclastic career throughout the world of the Believers; for though they have not quite erected idols, graven or otherwise, yet all their countries are stuck as full of saints’ tombs, zowias of descendants of saints, and adoration of the pious dead prevails as much as in the Greek or Latin churches. True, the custom has its uses, as it serves to indicate the distance on roads, and men as naturally enquire their way from Saint (Sidi) to Saint, as from church to church in Spain, or public-house to public-house in rural England. In other countries Saints, before becoming free of the fellowship, have to show their fitness for the post; but in Morocco no probation of any kind—that is, according to our ideas—seems to be necessary.
I knew an aged man, who used to sit before the Franciscan Convent, in the chief street of Tangier—a veritable saint, if saint exists. He sat there, dressed in a tall red fez, [78] given by some pious soldier, a long green caftan, clean white drawers, and a djellab of fine blue cloth. Long hair descended on both sides of his face in locks like bunches of chrysanthemums; his eyes were piercing, and yet wavering; for the poor Saint was nearer to Allah than the common herd by the want of some small tissue, fibre, or supply of blood to the vessels of the brain. Thus clothed and mentally accoutred for his trade, a basket by his side, and in his hand a long pole shod with iron, for he belonged to the sect called the Derkowi, he sat and told his beads, and took his alms, with an air of doing you a favour: for who gives to the poor does them no favour, but, on the contrary, insures his own eternal happiness, and but gives out again that which Allah entrusted to him for the behoof of man.
I happened one day, with European curiosity, to enquire what made the venerable man so venerated, and was told that, having suddenly gone mad, he killed his wife, threw off his clothes, and then marched naked through the land—justice not interfering—for the mad are wise; and then, the violence of his madness over, had quietly sat down and made himself a sort of “octroi” upon passers by, after the fashion of blind Bartimæus, who sat begging at the gate. The explanation pleased me, and in future when I passed I laid up treasure in that mothless territory, where no thieves annoy, by giving copper coins; and was rewarded even here on earth, for once I heard an Arab say: “This Kaffir, here” (speaking of me) “fears neither God nor devil, yet I have seen him give to the old Saint; it may be, God, the merciful, may save him yet, if but to show His might.”
And so it is that Saints’ tombs stud the land with oven-shaped buildings with a horse-shoe arch, a palm tree growing by, either a date or a chamcerops humilis, in which latter case pieces of rag are hung to every leaf-stalk, perhaps as an advertisement of the tree’s sanctity or from some other cause. The place serves as a re-union for pious folk, for women who pray for children, for gossipers, and generally holds a midway place betwixt a church and club. In order that the faithful wayfarers, even though idiots, shall not err, in mountain passes, as in the gorge of Bosargun, at four cross roads, passes of rivers, and sometimes in the midst of desert tracts the traveller finds a number of small cairns, in shape like bottles, which show—according to the way they point—where the next Saint’s tomb lies; for it is good that man should pray and think about himself, especially upon a journey—prayer acts upon the purse; alms save the soul; and Saints, though dead, need money to perpetuate their fame.
After nine hours of alternating wind and heat we reached Imintanout, the eastern entrance of the pass which, crossing a valley of the Atlas, leads to Sus. So to speak Tarudant is within hail, three (some say two) days and we are there, if . . . but the if was destined to be mortal, as it proved. The straggling village almost fills the gorge through which the road enters the hill. Above it towers the Atlas; a little stream (then dry) ran through the place, which had an air between a village in Savoy, and a Mexican mining town lost in the Sierra Madre. Brown houses built of mud, stretches of Tabieh [80a] walls, the tops of which crowned with dead prickly bushes, steely and bluish looking in the setting sun, the houses generally castellated, the gardens hedged in with aloes, wherein grow blackberries, palms and pomegranates, flowers, fig-trees, and olives. Water in little channels of cement, ran through the gardens, making of them an Arab paradise. Further up the gorge the Mellah (Jewry), in which we catch a glimpse for the first time of the Atlas Jews, servile and industrious, wonderfully European-looking as to type, superior to the Arabs and Berbers in business capacity, and thus at once their masters and their slaves.