About mid-day, upon a little eminence, we sight the tower of the Kutubieh, the glory of Morocco; but the city is, so to speak, hull down, and the white tower seems to hang suspended in the air without foundations; indeed, it looks so thin at the great distance from which we see it, as to be but a mere white line standing up in the plain and pointing heavenwards, that is, if towers built by false prophets do not point to hell. All day my horse, really the best I ever rode in all Morocco, had been uneasy, wanting to lie down; so disregarding the advice of Mohammed el Hosein to prick him with my knife and pray to God, somewhat prosaically I got off, and, unsaddling him, found his shoulder fearfully swollen, and understood how I came possessed of a horse the like of which few Christians, even for money, get hold of from a Moor. I saw at once he had a fistulous sore right through the withers; incurable without an operation and a long rest. Then I believed what Mohammed el Hosein had told me, that the horse was from the other side of the Atlas and had been used in ostrich-hunting, for a better and more fiery beast I never rode, and though thin, rough, and in the worst condition, had he been sound-backed, quite fit to carry me to Timbuctoo.
The Arabs have an idea upon a journey that a man should dismount as seldom as he can. They say dismounting and remounting tires the horse more than a league of road, they therefore sit the livelong day without dismounting from their seat. The Gauchos, on the contrary, say it helps a horse to get off now and then and lift the saddle for a moment, loosening the girth so that the air may get between the saddle and the back. This the Moors hold to be anathema, and Spaniards, Mexicans, and most horsemen of the south agree that the saddle should not be shifted till the horse is cool, on pain of getting a sore back. Who shall decide when horsemen disagree? However, the Gauchos all girth very tightly, and the Arabs scarcely draw the girth at all, their saddles repose on seven (the number is canonical) thick saddle cloths, and are kept in their place more by the breastplate than the girth. It may be therefore that, given the loose girth, short stirrup leathers, and their own flowing clothes, personal convenience has more to do with the custom of not getting off and on than regard for the welfare of their beast. The Arabs in Morocco, though fond of horses, treat them roughly and foolishly; at times they cram them with unnecessary food, at times neglect them; their feet they almost always let grow too long, their legs they spoil by too tight hobbling, and if upon a journey their horse tires they ride him till he drops.
Across the mountains and amongst the wilder desert tribes, this is not so, and travellers all agree that the wild Arab really loves his horse; but he has need of him to live, whereas inside Morocco horses are used either for war or luxury, or because the man who rides them cannot afford a mule. The pacing mule, throughout North Africa, is as much valued as he was in Europe in the Middle Ages, and commands a higher price than any horse; yet whilst allowing that he is dogged as a Nonconformist, on the road, sober and comfortable, to my eye, a man wrapped in a white burnouse, perched on a saddle almost as large as the great bed of Ware, looks fitter to be employed to guard a harem than to enjoy the company of the houris inside. Necessity (in days gone by) has often forced me to ride horses with a “flower” [108] on their backs or with a sore which rendered every step they made as miserable to me as it was hell to them; but as on these occasions I rode either before an Indian Malon, [109a] or for the dinner of a whole camp, so I at once determined that, notwithstanding any risk, I would purvey me a new horse at the next stopping place. As it turned out, the changing horses and the talk which ensued, as the owner of the horse and I tried to deceive each other about our beasts, was the occasion of my never reaching Tarudant. At least I think so, and if it was, some better traveller will do that which I failed in doing, write a much better book than any I could write, and if he be a practical and pushful man spare neither horses on the road, nor stint the public of one iota of his “facts,” for to the pushful is the kingdom of the earth. As to what sort of kingdom they have made of it, it is beyond the scope of this poor diary to enquire.
We crossed the Wad el Kehra, and early in the afternoon tied up our animals under a fig-tree, with a river running hard by, a stubble field in front, and Amsmiz itself crowning a hill upon our right. Amongst the “algarobas,” [109b] fig-trees and poplars, swallows flit, having come south, or perhaps migrated north from some more southern land.
At the entrance of the town stood the palace of the Kaid, an enormous structure made of mud and painted light rose-pink, but all in ruins, the crenellated walls a heap of rubbish, the machicolated towers blown up with gunpowder. The Kaid, it seems, oppressed the people of the town and district beyond the powers of even Arabs and Berbers to endure; so they rebelled, and to the number of twelve thousand besieged the place, took it by storm, and tore it all to pieces to search for money in the walls.
Most people in Morocco if they have money, hide it in the walls of their abode, but the Kaid of Amsmiz was wiser, and had sent all his to Mogador. He fought to the last, then cutting all his women’s throats, mounted his favourite horse and almost unattended “maugre all his enemies, through the thickest of them he rode,” leaving his stores well-dressed with arsenic, so that, like Samson in his fall, he killed more of his enemies than in his life. To-day he is said to live in Fez, greatly respected, a quiet old Arab with a fine white beard, whose greatest pleasure is to tell his rosary.
Curious how little the Oriental face is altered by the storms of life. I knew one, Haj Mohammed el —, —a scoundrel of the deepest dye—who in his youth had poisoned many people, had tortured others, assassinated several with his own hand, and yet was a kindly, courteous, venerable gentleman, whose hobby was to buy any eligible young girl he heard of, to stock his harem. One day I ventured to remark that he was getting rather well on in years to think of such commodities. He answered; “Yes, but then I buy them as you Christians buy pictures—to adorn my house; by Allah, my heirs will be the gainers by my mania.” Yet the man’s face was quiet and serene, his eyes bright as a sailor’s, his countenance as little marred by wrinkles as those one sees upon the Bishops’ benches in the House of Lords; and as he stroked his beard, and told his beads, he seemed to me a patriarch after the type of those depicted in the Old Testament. Perhaps it is the lack of railways, with their clatter, smoke, and levelling of all mankind to the most common multiple; but still it is the case—an Eastern scoundrel’s face is finer far than that a Nonconformist Cabinet Minister displays, all spoiled with lines, with puckers round the mouth, a face in which you see all natural passion stultified, and greed and piety—the two most potent factors in his life—writ large and manifest.
An orange grove, backed by a cane-brake, with the canes fluttering like flags, was near to us; cows, goats, and camels roamed about the outskirts of the town, as in Arcadia—that is, of course, the Arcadia of our dreams—or of Theocritus.
Jews went and came, saluting every one, and being answered: “May Allah let you finish out your miserable life”; but yet as pleased as if they had been blessed. Their daughters came, like Rebecca, to the well—all carrying jars—unveiled, and yet secure, for in this land few Moors cast eyes upon the daughter of a Jew.
Upon the ramparts, shadowy white-robed figures, with long guns, go to and fro, guarding the town from hypothetic enemies. Through an arch, between two palm-trees, the Kutabieh rises, distant and slender, and the white haze around its base shows where Marakesh lies. On every hedge are blackberries and travellers’ joy; whilst a large honeysuckle, in full flower, smells better than all Bucklersbury in simple time; a jay’s harsh cry sounds like the howl of a coyote, and Europe seems a million miles away. In the evening light, the footpaths, which cut every hill, shine out as they had all been painted by some clever artist, who had diluted violet with gold.