I slept but fitfully, knowing if I could leave Amsmiz without suspicion that I was sure to reach my journey’s end. The night wore on, the sapphire sky changing to steely-blue; as the muezzin called at the Feyer, [117] great drops of dew hung from the leaves; up from the river rose the metallic croaking of the frogs; Canopus was just setting; across the sky, the mirage of the dawn stole stealthily, the mules stood hanging down their heads upon the picket rope, a jackal howled somewhere far out upon the plain; Allah perhaps looked down, and not far off from me baited quite peacefully my (new) destrere on “herbes fine and good.”
CHAPTER V.
Pleasing to wake up under the fig trees with all our cloaks and blankets wet with dew, to find our guard, the Maalem, still sound asleep, and be accosted by a tracker who informed us that many of the cattle of the town had been driven off the night before, and who would hardly believe that all our animals were safe. Soon parties from the town, armed and muffled up in cloaks against the morning air, rode out from underneath the horseshoe gateway, and spread in all directions, trying to strike the trail of the “mad herdsmen,” as they were called along the Highland Border in the days before prosperity had rendered Scotland the home of commonplace.
Though sharp of eye, it did not strike me that the Arabs and Shillah were experienced trackers. They rode about too much, and must have crossed the trail of the lost cattle a hundred times, and I kept thinking that an “Arribeño” [119] from the River Plate would have done better work than the whole tribe. Still, as they scattered on the hills, their white clothes just appearing now and then behind the clumps of trees, as they quartered all the ground, they fell effectively into the middle distance, and no doubt if they never found their cattle, on the first fine night they would recoup themselves from some neighbouring village in the hills. Cattle and horse-stealing, with an occasional higher flight into the regions of abduction of young girls, seem to be staple industries in all pastoral countries, and nowhere but in western Texas are taken very seriously; but there the horse-thief hangs. Camped once outside a village called Bel-arosis, on the road from Tangier to Rabat, a raiding party attacked the place upon a rainy night, fought quite a lively action, the bullets coming through my tent, drove off some horses and several yoke of oxen, and in the morning the Kaid rode up on horseback, his followers behind him, in just the spirit that a gentleman at home starts out to hunt. He praised his God for his good luck, and said he reckoned (by Allah’s help) to retake all the “Creagh,” and drive above a thousand dollars’ worth of sheep, of cattle, and horses, from the weakest neighbours of the nearest hostile tribe he met.
In all the actions that take place consequent upon these cattle raids, but few are slain, for though both the Arabs and the Berbers all have guns, their style of fighting is a survival from the time they carried bows. They rarely charge, and never engage hand-to-hand, but gallop to and fro and fire their guns with both eyes shut, or, turning on their horses, fire over the tail; so few are killed, except the prisoners, who generally are butchered in cold blood, if they are not of such account as to be worth a ransom. A merry, pleasant life enough for able-bodied men, and not unhealthy, and one that makes them singularly bad subjects for missionary work. So stony is the ground in the vineyard of the tribes, that up to now I never heard of any missionary so bold or foolish as to attempt to dig. A day will come, no doubt, when their hearts will prove more malleable; but I fear before that time their bodies will have to be much wrought upon by rifles, revolvers, and the other civilising agents which commonly precede the introduction of our faith.
Leaving Amsmiz, the road to Sus leads over foothills all of red argillaceous earth and fissured deeply here and there by winter rains. Now and then strange effects of coloured earth, blue, yellow, green, and mauve, diversify the scene. The road leads through a straggling oak wood and emerges at a village, where, in the middle, the county council is assembled in a thatched mosque. Mosques serve for council chambers, meeting places, and in villages for travellers to sleep in, for throughout Morocco the sanctuary is never closed, and thus the people feel their God is always there, and not laid up in lavender for six days in the week.
The Maalem who had accompanied us as guide, and as a guarantee that we were creditable folk—for in the wilder districts of Morocco travellers take a man in every district to convoy them to the next—had reached his limit, and, laying down his gun, entered the mosque to get another man. What he said there I do not know; if he had doubts perhaps he uttered them, at any rate, after a most unseasonable wait, which kept us all on pins and needles, he emerged, bringing a most ill-favoured tribesman, who came up to me and, kissing my clothes, asked for my blessing. I gave it him as well as I was able, but fancied he was not satisfied, as he retired muttering in Shillah, of which I did not understand a word. The Maalem bade us good-bye, and asked for cartridges, which, of course, we gave, but how they benefited him is a moot point, for they were intended for a small-sized Winchester; he drew his charge and crammed the four or five cartridges we gave him into his old Tower gun, but as I did not pass by Amsmiz on my return, I have no information how he fared when he touched off the piece.
Little by little the road got worse until we entered a tremendous gorge, just like a staircase, which made the worst roads in the Sierra Morena look like Piccadilly by comparison. Only a mule, an Iceland pony, or a horse bred in the mountain districts of Morocco could have coped with such a road, and, as it was, the efforts of the poor brutes were pitiable to see. Under our feet, at a great depth below, the Wad el N’fiss boiled furiously amongst the stones, winding and rewinding like a watch spring, and forcing us to cross it many times, when its swift current proved so formidable that, although not more than three feet deep, we had to enter altogether in a group to keep our feet. As we were toiling up a steep incline, a shouting brought our hearts into our mouths, and, looking back, we saw two mountaineers rushing to intercept us, from a neighbouring hill. No time for any consultation, or to do more than cock our miserable guns and sit quite meekly waiting for the worst. On came the mountaineers, bounding from stone to stone till they appeared upon the road and blocked our way. Long guns, curved daggers, and almost naked save for their long woollen shirts, their side locks flying in the wind, they looked most formidable, and poured out at once a volume of guttural Shillah which sounded menacing. Mohammed-el-Hosein, who with Ali the muleteer spoke Shillah, interpreted to Swani, who, half in Arabic and half in Spanish (which he called Turkish) informed me what they said.
It seemed the desperadoes wanted us to stop until a little boy brought down some Indian corn and milk, for it appeared it was the custom of those hills never to let a well-dressed Moor pass without some little offering. Of course a poor man, or anyone to whom the maize and milk would have been of great service, passed by unnoticed, as in other lands. I graciously assented, and in due course a boy appeared carrying a wooden bowl, from which I drank and passed it to my followers after the usual grace. [123a] The tribesmen would accept no money, but asked me to say a word for them about their taxes, which were not paid, to their liege lord. As might be expected of me I said I would, and should have done so had I known who their lord was or where he lived, or had I chanced to meet the lord in a more seasonable place. Little by little we entered the zone of Arar trees (Callitris Quadrivalvis) about which Hooker says: “This tree has no congener, its nearest ally being a South African genus of Cupressus (Widdingtoniana).” [123b] Various writers, as Shaw [123c] and Daubeny, [123d] have attempted to identify this tree with the “Θυια,” of Theophrastus, and the Thyine Wood of the Apocalypse. Daubeny makes both Martial and Lucian refer to it under the name of Citrus, and Hooker is of opinion that the “Citrea mensa” of Petronius Arbiter was made of Arar-wood. An ingenious writer (Captain Cook, “Sketches in Spain”) is almost certain that the roof of the Mosque of Cordova is of Arar, because the Spaniards refer to it as being made of Alerce. Alerce happens to mean larch in Spanish, but when did a derivation hunter ever allow that the people of any country really understood the meaning of words in their own paltry language? It is perhaps well not to question too closely the dogmas of science, and what prudent man would aver that anything might not be found in the veracious pages of the Apocalypse?
The Arars spread all over the mountains in a dense low scrub, rarely attaining more than ten feet high, on account of the frequent fires which the inhabitants light in the spring to obtain pasture for their goats and sheep. In an angle of the road I passed four fine old trees, perhaps forty feet in height, immensely branchy, and with trunks measuring possibly two-and-a-half feet in diameter. In the glades between the cedars patches of Indian corn were ripening; some was dead ripe, but no one dared to gather it, for the Kaid of Kintafi, into whose territory we now had passed, had issued orders that he would give the signal for the harvest, and had not yet seen fit to give the word. Well do the Spaniards say that, “fear, not walls protect the vineyard,” [124] for not a house stood within several miles of some of the maize patches and still not a head of corn was touched.