Be all that as it may, the Berbers inhabited Morocco ages before the Arabs conquered the land, and gave them the religion of the sword. Tradition says they were once Christians, and certainly in their embroideries and decorations the cross is used. Yet, looking at the matter from an artistic point of view, discounting (for the nonce) morality, the cross, and honesty, it seems to me that noble is not a term to use in speaking of the Berber, and I submit it better fits a race such as the Arabs, who, in the persons of their horses and themselves, have done so much to refine the type of all those peoples, equine and biped, whom they have come across.
As night was falling, and a whistling wind springing up from the mountains, the messenger appeared bringing the news that the Sheikh refused to let anyone cross the pass, and that there had been a pretty hot exchange of shots that afternoon between the men of the Beni Sira, and a troop of cavalry crossing from Sus. This was a stopper over all, for it was evident we could not force our way through a road winding by precipices, held by a mountain tribe. Remembering the Arab proverb which runs, “Always ask counsel from your wife, but never act on what she says,” I held a long palaver with Haj Addee, Lutaif and my men, on what was best to do. Two courses were now open to me, either to wheel about and follow the shore road by Agadhir, or else to try the upper and more difficult pass to Sus, which starts above Amsmiz. This place was situated about two days’ journey further on, the pass, according to all reports, took three good days to cross, and having crossed it, we should still be a long day from Tarudant.
Lutaif had no opinion, and as the rest all counselled Agadhir, except Haj Swani, who gave it his opinion that he would go wherever I did, I “opted” for Amsmiz, arguing that to turn back would certainly dishearten my companions, and if the Howara had been fighting a week ago, they would be fighting still, and thinking that even if taking the upper road I failed, I should see more of the interior of the Atlas, than I was likely to do by any other route. After having cursed the Beni Sira thoroughly in all the languages we knew, drank gallons of green tea, sat for an hour or two listening to stories of the Djinoun, smoked cigarettes and Kiff, and generally tried to imagine we were not disappointed, we retired to bed, so as before first light to be upon the road. Our bedroom had no window, and gave on the al fresco drawing room I have referred to; all round the walls were little recesses in which to put things, made in the thickness of the wall, pouches and powder horns hung from goats’ horns forced underneath the thatch, three long “jezails,” all hooped with silver, one with a Spanish two-real piece, depending from the trigger-guard, stood in the corner, a lantern made of tin with coloured glass, gave a red light, upon the floor of mud a Rabat carpet in pattern like a kaleidoscope or Joseph’s coat, was spread; nothing of European manufacture was there except a large-sized (navy pattern) Smith and Wesson pistol, which, hanging by a red worsted cord upon the wall, seemed to project the shadow of the cross upon the room.
CHAPTER IV.
My journey all next day lay through low hills of reddish argillaceous earth, cut into gullies here and there by the winter rains, and clothed with sandaracs, Suddra (Zizyphus lotus) and a few mimosas. The hills sloped upwards to the wall-like Atlas, and on the left the desert-looking plain of Morocco, broken but by the flat-topped hill known as the Camel’s Neck (Hank el Gimel), and bounded by the mountains above Demnat, and the curve the Atlas range makes to the north-east so as to almost circle round Morocco city. We search our hearts, that is, I search my own and the others’ hearts and try to persuade myself that we have acted prudently in not attempting the Imintanout road. But when did prudence console anybody? Rashness at times may do so, but the prudent generally (I think) are more or less ashamed of the virtue they profess. The Moors, of course, were glad we had risked nothing, for though no cowards when the danger actually presents itself, indeed, in many cases (as at the battles with the Spaniards in 1861) showing more desperate courage than anyone except the Soudanese, still they are so imaginative, or what you please, that if men talk of danger they will take a five days’ journey to avoid the places where hypothetic peril lurks. Mohammed el Hosein, being in his character of ex-slave dealer, what the French call a “lapin,” talked of his adventures in the past, told how he had smuggled slaves into the coast towns almost before the Christian consul’s eyes, sung Shillah songs in a high, quavering falsetto, and boasted of his prowess in the saddle, occasionally bursting into a suppressed chuckle at the idea of taking a Christian into Tarudant.
Almost before we were aware of it, on going down a slope between some bushes, we found ourselves right in the middle of a crowded market. These country markets are a feature of Morocco, and, I think, of almost every Arab country. Often they are held miles away from any house, but generally on an upland open space with water near. When not in use they reminded me of the “rodeos,” on to which the Gauchos, in La Plata, used to drive their cattle to count, to mark, part out, or to perform any of the various duties of an “estanciero’s” [97] life. The markets usually are known by the day of the week on which they are held, as Sok el Arba, Sok el Thelatta, el Jamiz, and so forth; the Arabs using Arba, Tnain, Thelatta, “one, two, three” etc., to designate their days. This market, in particular, I knew to be the Sok es Sebt, but thought we had been some distance from it, and all my assurance was required to make my way amongst at least two thousand people with the dignity which befits a Moorish gentleman upon a journey. Arabs and Berbers, Jews and Haratin (men of the Draa province, of mixed race) were there, all talking at the fullest pitch of strident voices, all armed to the teeth. Ovens with carcases of sheep roasting entire inside them, cows, camels, lines of small brown tents made to be packed upon a mule and called “Kituns,” dust, dust, and more dust, produced the smell, as of wild beasts, which emanates from Eastern crowds. Moors from Morocco city in white fleecy haiks I carefully avoided, as being my equals in supposititious rank, and, therefore, likely to address me. Berbers in striped brown rags, and wrapped in the curious mantle, called an “achnif” in Shillah, made of black wool with fringes and an orange-coloured eye, about two feet in length, woven into the back, abounded; through them I shoved my horse, not even looking down when the poor fellows lifted my cloak and kissed the hem, and, passing through majestically, I heard some mutter, “That Sherif is very proud for one so thin,” fat being amongst Moors a sign of wealth, as it was evidently amongst the Jews, if we are to take the testimony of the Old Testament as worthy of belief.
To ride right through a market and pass on would have looked suspicious, as markets in Morocco form a sort of medium for exchange of news, in the same manner that in old times the churchyard was a kind of club; witness the story of the elder who was heard to say—“he would not give all the sermons in the world for five good minutes of the churchyard clash.” So, after having gone about a quarter of a mile, we got under some olive trees (zeitun, from whence the Spanish aceituna, an olive), and, sitting in the shade, sent Swani to the market to buy some “Schwah,” that is, some of the carcase of a sheep roasted whole “en barbecue.” Various poor brothers in Mohammed came to assure themselves of my complete good health; but Mohammed el Hosein informed them the Sherif was ill, and, giving them some copper coins, they testified to the existence of the one God, and hoped that He might in His mercy soon make me well. Being schooled as to the form to be observed, I looked up slowly, and, raising one hand, muttered as indistinctly as I could that God was great, and that we all were in His hands. This pleased Mohammed el Hosein so much that when we were alone he assured me I must have been born a Sherif, and could I but speak Arabic a little less barbarously that our journey would have been productive, as Sherifs make it a practice, whilst giving small copper to the poor, to cadge upon their own account from the better classes, of course for Allah and His Holy Prophet’s sake. Lutaif, who in his character of Syrian, talked almost incessantly to anyone we met, elicited that this particular market called “Sok es Sebt,” the “Sixth Day Market,” is one of four held in Morocco on a Saturday, thus showing that the Jews have got most of the trade into their hands, and do not care that markets should be held upon their holy day. We tore the “Schwah” between our fingers, in the “name of God”; it tasted much like leather cooked in suet; we passed the ablutionary water over our hands, moving them to and fro to dry, drank our green tea, and were preparing for a siesta when it was rumoured that an English Jew was soon expected to arrive. Having still less acquaintance with Yiddish than with Arabic, and being certain that the English Israelite would soon detect me, and fall on one shoulder exclaiming “S’help me, who would have thought of meeting a fellow-countryman out ’ere!” I saddled up and started as majestically as I felt I could upon my way. The start was most magnificent, Swani and Mohammed helping to arrange my clothes when I had clambered to my seat, and all went well with the exception that no one happening to hold Lutaif’s off stirrup, and the huge Moorish mule saddle, called a “Sirijah,” being so slackly girthed, that it is almost impossible to scale it all alone, he fell into the dust, and Ali coming up to help with a broad grin received a hearty “Jejerud Din!” (“Curse your religion!”), which caused a coolness during the remainder of the journey. Lutaif, though a good Christian and as pious as are most dwellers on the Lebanon, yet came from the country where, as Arabs say, “the people all curse God,” referring to the imprecation on their respective creeds, which is most faithfully taken and received between Maronite and Druse, Christian and Moslem, and all the members of the various jarring sects who dwell under the shadow of the cedars on those most theologic hills. Nestling into the gorges of the hills, and crowning eminences, were scattered villages of the true Atlas type, built all of mud, flat roofed, the houses rising one over the other like a succession of terraces or little castles, and being of so exactly the same shade as the denuded hills on which they stand as to be almost impossible to make out till you are right upon them. At times so like is village to hill, and hill to village, that I have taken an outstanding mound of earth to be a house, and many times have almost passed the village, not seeing it was there.
Riding along and dangling my feet out of the stirrups to make the agony of the short stirrup leather, hung behind the girths, endurable, it struck me what peaceful folks the Arabs really were. Here was a traveller almost totally unarmed, for the Barcelona and Marseilles “snap-haunces” we had borrowed at the Palm-Tree House were hardly to be called offensive weapons; without a passport, travelling in direct defiance of the Treaty of Madrid, in Arab clothes, asserting that he was an Arab or a Turk (as seemed convenient). So, unattended, for defensive purposes, I rode along quite safely, or relatively safely, except from all the risks that wait upon the travellers in any country of the world, such as arise from stumbling horses and the like, fools, and the act of God.
What was it that stopped a band of Arabs on the lookout for plunder? What stood between us and a party of the “Noble Shillah race”? Either or both could easily have plundered us and thrown our bodies into some silo and no one would have known. The truth is, in Morocco, when one reflects upon the inconveniences of the country, the lonely roads, the places apparently designed by Providence to make men brigands, and the fact that almost every Arab owns a horse and is armed at least with a stout knife, that the inhabitants are either cowardly to a degree, are law-abiding to a fault, or else deprived by nature of initiative to such extent as to be quite Arcadian in the foolish way in which they set about to rob. When I remembered Mexico not twenty years ago, before Porfirio Diaz turned the brigands, who used to swarm on every road, into paid servants of the Government, men on a journey from the Rio Grande to San Luis Potosi all made their wills and started weighted down with Winchesters, pistols and bowie-knives, besides a stout machete stuck through their saddle-girths. So Morocco seemed to me a perfect paradise.
In the republic of the Eagle and the Cactus, the tramways running to the bullfights at Tacubaya frequently were held up by armed horsemen and the passengers plundered of everything they had about them. Stage coaches often were attacked by “road agents” and everyone inside of them stripped naked, although the robbers, being caballeros, generally distributed some newspapers amongst them to cover up their nakedness. In the old monarchy, murder was pretty frequent, but it was chiefly the result of private vengeance, and though the tribes fought bloody battles now and then, a travelling stranger seldom was molested by them, except he got in the way.