In districts like the Atlas mules are more serviceable than any horse, and on the mountain roads will perform almost a third longer journey in a day. Where the horse beats them is on the plain, for no mule can live beside a horse at the horse’s pace, though on a rough road the mule’s pace is much the faster of the two. Sometimes five or six mules would break loose and follow one another in a string, jumping the thorny fences heavily, their ears flapping about ridiculously, and their thin tails stuck high up in the air. They never swam, and, on the whole, had I been limited to mules exclusively, I could not have passed my time so well. One horse especially interested me, a large creamy-white animal with an immense and curly mane; he always came alone, led by two negroes, and had an open wound upon his head and two upon his chest. I learned he was the Kaid’s special favourite, and that about a month ago, during an expedition to the Sus to aid the Sultan against a refractory tribe, the Kaid had received a bullet in the leg, and the horse had got his wounds at the same time. None of the horses that I saw would be of any value, except to an artist, in the European market; but for the country where they were bred they were most serviceable, hardy, and indefatigable, sober beyond belief, eating their corn but once a day, drinking but once, and up to any weight, and if not quite so fast as might be wished for, still a glory to the eye.
The horses gone, the entertainment of the day was over, and I got quite accustomed to expect them at a certain hour, and to be quite annoyed if they were late.
Thus did one day tell and certify another, leaving us quite cut off from all the world, as far removed from European influence as we had been in the centre of the Sahara; well treated, but uncertain of how long we should be kept in honourable captivity, growing more anxious every moment, and yet with something comic in the situation; nothing to do but make the best of it, eat, drink, and sleep, and stroll about, talk with the natives, sit in our tent, and read el Faredi, giving ourselves up with the best grace we could, to watching and to prayer.
CHAPTER VII.
The 24th still found us, so to speak, in Poste Restante at Kintafi, the Kaid invisible, tobacco running low, food not too regular, and our animals becoming thinner every day. Still the example of the prisoners, the Sheikhs from Sus, and a tent full of miserable tribesmen, all almost without food, and glad to eat our scraps, kept us for shame’s sake patient. So we talked much to everyone, especially with the negro who had been in London, and found he was a man of much and varied travel, some experience, no little observation, and ready to talk all day on all that he had seen. London had not impressed him, or else impressed him to such purpose that he was dumb about it; but of the Fetish worshippers below the Senegal he could tell much. In speaking of them, though a negro of the blackest dye, he treated them as savages, being a Mohammedan, and laughed at their religion, although the most foolish portions of it seemed to appeal to his imagination, in the same way that negroes in America (all Christians, of course), are seldom pleased with moderate Christianity, but usually are Ranters, Bush Baptists, or members of some saltatory sect, which gives them opportunity to enter more fully into communion with the spirit of the thing than if they sat and listened to a prayer, slept at a sermon, or dropped their money in the plate, merely conforming in a perfunctory way, as their less animistic lower-toned brethren in the Lord seem quite content to do.
Fetish, our friend explained, is good, and works great deeds; sometimes a man will die, and then the Fetish man appears and cuts off a cow’s tail, fastens it on the dead man’s forehead, who at once gets up and walks to where he wishes to be buried, and dies again. Why he does this the speaker did not know, or why, before he dies, the man does not explain in the usual way to his friends where he wants them to lay him after death. Nor did he know what good the fetish man receives by his operation, or if the tail should be taken from a dead or living cow; but he was certain that he had seen a miracle, and told us plainly that he never was so certain of anything before. Fetish to him seemed rather an incident than a religion, for he went on to say the heathen negroes have no God, just like the Christians; and then turned grey, which, I think, is the negro way to blush, and said, he did not point his observation at ourselves, for he had heard in London that we worshipped several Gods, and that the Christians he referred to were the people in the Canaries, who, he was positive, worshipped a goddess, for he had seen them do so in a Mosque. Again he said his head was full of news, but his purse still continued light, and so he drew it out and showed it to us, and it was empty certainly; but beautifully made, of a most curious pattern and workmanship, and cunningly contrived of pieces of thin leather which all fitted into one another and drew out, after the fashion of those painted boxes which used to come from India, which in one’s childhood when one opened them, one always found another underneath. It appears he has been often in the Canaries, and knows the islands, as Lanzarote which he denominates “Charuta,” Fuerteventura which becomes “Fortinvantora,” and Grand Canary, where he saw one Christian kill another with a knife.
In form he was almost perfect as a type of race; blacker than shale, with yellowish teeth like fangs, nostrils as wide as a small donkey’s, huge ears like a young elephant’s, and bloodshot eyes, thin, spindle legs, and all his body covered with old scars; for he had been in many wars, “shoots,” as he said “plum center”; rides well, and to crown all had feet about the size and shape of a cigar box, stuck at right angles to his legs, so when he walked he looked like a flamingo, or a heron in a swamp. Knowing by actual handling the exiguity of his purse, I approached the negro to try if he would carry letters for me to the outside world. But after having bargained for five dollars, a sudden panic took him, and he refused, and ever after during our stay avoided us, although I did not hear that he informed the Kaid or any of his men.
All the day long a constant string of people kept arriving at the castle gate. Little brown sturdy-legged Berber tribesmen, armed with long quarter-staffs, dressed in their dark “achnifs,” barefooted and bareheaded, save for a string of camel’s hair bound round the forehead; small-eyed, and strangely autochthonous in type, as if they and the stones upon the hills had sprung into existence long before history. Small caravans of donkeys carrying Indian corn, with fruit, with almonds, and with meat entered the gate full laden, and came out empty. Negresses walked down the hill tracks, bending beneath the weight of immense loads of brushwood, or of grass, or the green leaves of Indian corn or sorgum, [173] to feed the horses, and to heat the ovens of the Kaid.
I found that, though the Kaid oppressed and plundered all the district, his oppression was in a measure balanced by his charity, for he fed all the poor people of the valley, and dispensed his hospitality to all and sundry who passed his gates. So that, take it for all in all, his tyranny was only different in degree from that of the manufacturer in the manufacturing towns of England, who lives upon the toil of several thousand workmen, discharges no one useful function to the State, his works being run by paid officials, and he himself doing nothing but sign his letters, whilst he uses the money wrung from his workmen to engage in foreign speculations, to swindle the inhabitants of distant countries; and for all charity subscribes to missions to convert the Jews, or to send meddling praters to insult good Catholics in Spain.
The Kaid, Si Taib el Kintafi, lives like a veritable prince, is almost independent of the Sultan, and reminds me of a Mohammedan Emir in Spain after the Caliphate of Cordoba broke up. These Emirs were called by the Spaniards Reyezuelos de Taifas, [174a] that is, Kings of a Section, or Hedge Kings; they had their courts in Jaen, in Malaga, in Almeria, [174b] and in the South of Portugal. But in especial it recalled Jaen, being situated amongst the mountains, as that kingdom was with towering Atalayas (watch-towers) on every hill, and the Kaid’s palace in the centre of the land. Guards were on every road patrolling within sight of one another. About five hundred negro slaves were scattered in the various castles. The Kaid kept all his money in iron boxes underground, and all his wives were guarded by gentlemen of the third sex, [174c] so that the parallel between Kintafi and Jaen was almost perfect. For enemies he had the Sultan and every other Kaid of equal strength, but the impenetrable nature of his territory made him almost impregnable, and the armed soldiery, who lounged about in numbers round the castle and at every fort, made him secure as long as he could pay their services. The difference between a Spanish-Moorish mountain State and the Taifa of Kintafi was (though not apparent in externals, in policy, and in ideals of government), in other matters, very striking, for in the smallest Moorish Courts of Spain arts, sciences, literature, and general culture all flourished, and were encouraged by the kings.