Lutaif, and I, the Sherif from Sus, and the Persian, sat under a walnut grove for several hours, reading el Faredi, trying to learn the Berber tongue, talking of things and others, and I began at last to understand the lives passed by the Greek philosophers, who no doubt wandered up and down talking of things they did not understand, dozing beneath the trees, and weaving theories about First Causes, Atoms, Evolution, the Nature of the Gods, Schemes of Creation, and other mental exercises, at least as interesting as essays upon View of Frank Pledge (Visus de Francopledgii), Courts of Attachment, Swanimote, or any of the Judgments or the Entries of the Assizes of the Forest, either of Pickering or Lancaster.
Much did the Sherif enquire about the “Chimin di fer”—how it was made, how fast it went and why, and if men sat upon it (as he had heard) and worked it with their legs. I told him all I knew (and more), and about bicycles and women’s rights; gave a brief digest of our common law and current theology, tried to explain our parliamentary system, the Stock Exchange, our commerce, glory, whisky, and the like; told him of London’s streets at night, our churches, chapels, underground railways, tramways, telephones, electric light, and other trifles of our pomp and state which might be interesting. His observations were few but pertinent, and certainly, upon occasions, hard to answer out of hand. The bicycle, the Persian kindly corroborated; the telephone, Lutaif explained; a railway underground was no more wonderful than one upon the surface of the earth; our parliament seemed foolish to him, and he could not understand how one man could represent another, still less ten thousand men; the Stock Exchange he summed up briefly as a fraud, remarking, “How can they sell that which they have not got?” but he reserved his chiefest comment for more simple things. “Whose are those wives,” he said, “who walk your streets? I thought you Christians were monogamists. Do you not keep the law you follow then, or are there not sufficient husbands for the women, or are your women bad by nature; and how is it your Cadis tolerate such things?” I told him, courteous reader, just what you would have said in my position; confessed our faith in strict monogamy, but said the flesh was weak; that even amongst ourselves the Oulad-el-Haram were a large tribe; that all worked towards perfection, and no doubt, some day, things would improve. He quite courteously rejoined, “Yes, yes, I see, you Christians are like us; that is, your faith is stronger than your deeds; well, even with us there are some men who read the Koran, and yet forget to follow all it says.”
I dropped the conversation and urged the old Persian on to talk about himself; to tell of Persia, Turkey, the Sahara, and the Oasis of Tindoof, which he described by smoothing his hand upon the sand to show the flatness of it, and then said “Tindoof walou,” that is, in Tindoof, nothing; though he confessed it is the mouth of Timbuctoo. In the same way Canada is said to have got its name from the two Spanish words “Aca” and “Nada,” as signifying “there is nothing here.” “Baris,” [183] he said was beautiful, the houris as the houris in paradise, but more expensive; and he detailed with great astonishment that once on entering a “cabinet” (presumably inodore) he had to pay a franc on coming out. And still he dwelt upon our hardness towards our co-religionists, and said, “Amongst you, look how many starve; here they may kill us, or throw us into prison, mutilate us, put out our eyes (these things are all against the Koran, as your women on the streets are clean against the teachings of your Book), but who can say a poor Mohammedan was ever known to starve? Look at me here,” he said, “I came walking along the road carrying my broken fiddle, not cursing God, after the fashion of the Christians, for my bad luck, but praying at the Saint’s tomb, leading the prayer in wayside mosques, calling to prayers when asked, maintained by all, till I arrived at this place and was received by the great Kaid with favour, given food and clothes and twenty dollars, [184] and fell into the disgrace in which you see me by my own act.”
Though I knew of the Kaid’s face being averted from him, and that he was about once more to take his fiddle up and walk, I had, out of politeness, to pretend my ignorance, and then he spoke.
“Yes, I was well received, and nightly the Kaid would send for me, and I discoursed to him of Persia, Turkey, and other countries which I had seen, and also of El Hind and China which I have not visited, but trust to visit before I call myself a traveller, and all went well and others envied me. Till, on a night, puffed up with pride, I let my tongue escape. Unruly member! (Here he drew it out and held it, like a slippery fish, between his finger and his thumb.) With it I told the Kaid that he might be as a great Sultan, but that I was greater, for was not I a Sultan of the mind? and since that time I have not stood once in the presence, and shortly I shall leave this place without a friend unless it be that you and this same noble Syrian, who speaks for you, can be counted in the number of the men who wish me well.”
He ceased and I determined later on to take the hint, and fell awatching a small brown tree-creeper, not larger than a wren, which ran along the branches of a walnut-tree, and put its head upon one side and looked at us as it had been a fashionable philosopher, and no doubt just as wise. The grove of walnuts, sound of the running stream, at which a large grey squirrel sat and drank, noise of the wind amongst the leaves, the distant glimpses of the snow-capped hills, the long sustained notes of the negroes singing in the fields, set me athinking upon some not impossible Almighty Power, a harmony in things, a not altogether improbable design in nature, and, in fact, embarked me on the train of thought which the deep-thinking author of the libretto of “Giroflée et Girofla” has typified as thoughts about “de l’eau, de l’amour, des roses,” etc., when the irruption of a scabby-headed boy summoned me back to earth.
He (the scabby-headed one) had heard I was a doctor of some repute, and had cured divers folks, as, indeed, I think I had, or at least medicined them out of self-conceit, and came to ask my help for the affliction which had come upon his head. Taking rather a hasty look, I almost had prescribed washing and an ointment with some butter mixed with sulphur, when I bethought me what was expected of a doctor in the country where we lived. So, after thinking carefully for a little space, I said, “This requires thought, come to the tent in two hours’ time (three hours were better), and I hope by then to have thought out, Inshallah, a fit medicine for your case.” Duly interpreted into Berber this satisfied him, and he promised to comply. Our tertulia [185] then dispersed, and we went back to sleep inside the tent, or resting on our rugs, to watch the constant passing stream of white or brown-dressed, bare-footed figures that, in Morocco, is always to be seen passing upon every road.
Considering that, in the Romans’ time, Pliny, quoting from the lost journal of Suetonius Paulinus, informs us that the Atlas Mountains were full of elephants, and swarmed with wild beasts of every kind, who took refuge in the impenetrable forests with which those mountains then were clad, it is strange to find the Atlas of to-day so largely a treeless and a gameless land. True, that much later than the Roman times, the white wild cattle, now confined to Cadzow, Chillingham, and Lyme, roamed through the glades of Epping Forest, where to-day nothing more fearful than sandwich paper, or a broken bottle, makes afraid the explorer, and that wolves and wild boars were common till almost modern times with us. The destruction of the forests can be accounted for by the constant burning for pasturage, and with the forests much of the game would go, but why, besides large animals, there should be a dearth of birds, I do not know. With the exception of a hawk or two, pigeons and partridges, the lesser bustard, the little tree-creeper, before referred to, a species of grey wagtails, and a reddish-brown sparrow, I hardly saw a bird. The ibises that follow cattle, the wild ducks, water birds, the greater bustard, herons and large hawks, all so common in the plains, are here conspicuous by their absence. I saw no storks, [186] and I believe they rarely come so high into the mountains as Kintafi, though in the plains no Arab hut so small as not to have its nest, with its two storks chattering all day, quite as persistently, and as far as I can see, to quite as little purpose as do members of the Imperial Parliament.
As regards animals—hyenas, foxes, jackals, wild boars, moufflons, porcupines, grey squirrels, small hares, and rabbits in considerable numbers, are to be found, with a few wild cats, and now and then a panther; lions are unknown, except in the great cedar forests of the Beni M’Gild to the north of Fez. In many parts of the plain country of Morocco the animals above referred to (except the lion), but with the addition of the gazelle, are numerous, but in the Atlas Mountains, at least about Kintafi, they are scarce and hard to find. In the plains sand grouse and several kinds of plovers are frequent, but I never saw them in the hills. Certainly both in the mountains and the plains all men have guns, and some of them shoot well; but though they shoot partridges, ducks, and pigeons in the plains, and in the mountains hunt the moufflon, and the wild boar and porcupine, I never saw an Arab or a Berber fire at a small bird; so that they cannot have been all destroyed, as is the case in certain parts of Europe, by the efforts of the “Sontags Jaeger” and his twenty-five mark gun. Curious idea that known as “sport,” and perhaps liable, as much as anything, for the degradation of mankind. Witness the Roman show of gladiators, the Spanish bull fight, and the English pheasant butchery, where keepers wring the necks of dozens of tame birds to swell the bag which has to figure in the newspapers, so that the astonished public recollect Lord A. or Mr. B. is still alive.
One thing is certain in Morocco, and that is, that the domestic animals and man understand one another better than they do in any other country I have seen. It may be that it is because in the East the animals, now become so terribly mechanical in Europe, were first domesticated. It may be that the peaceful life gives time for men and animals to make each other out. It may be that the monstrous cart horses, greyhound-like thoroughbreds, ridiculously cropped and docked hunters, and capitalistic looking carriage horses, with the whole Noah’s Ark of beef producing, milk secreting, wool growing missing link between the animal creation and the machine world, which we see in the fat “streaky bacon” pigs, disgusting short horns, and improved sheep with backs like boxes, feel their degradation, and hate us for imposing it upon them and their race. No one can say it is because the intellect of biped and of quadruped is nearer in degree than it is in Europe, for between the Arab tribesmen and the English or Scottish countrymen, the balance certainly is not in favour of the northerner, if abstract power of mind apart from education is to be the test. What makes a flock of sheep follow an Arab, and have to be driven by a European, I do not know. Why, if an Arab buys a kid, in a few days it follows him about, I cannot tell, but there is nothing commoner than to see Arabs walking on the roads with curly black-woolled lambs and goats walking along beside them, as only dogs, of all the animals, will do with us.