My next complaint was that there were five of us all in one small tent, and that such crowding was neither comfortable nor seemly, either for a Christian “caballer” or for a Moorish gentleman, which rank my clothes and following entitled me to take. The promise of the present smoothed the way, and Sidi Mohammed said he would take upon himself to give permission to pitch another tent. This being done, and the men, the saddles, harness, and saddle-cloths transferred to a smaller tent, we had our own swept out and aired; a new drain cut to carry off the water, and stones arranged (which looked exactly like an Arab grave), to place our rugs upon, and keep them off the damp. For the first time for a week Lutaif and I were comfortable, washed in a tin basin, changed our clothes, and sitting in the sun at the open door of the tent drank tea and smoked, planning the while to get another man to take the letters which the faithless or heartless messenger had brought back the night before. Swani and Mohammed-el-Hosein went to the river and washed their clothes, and even Ali, who had nothing except what he wore, borrowed an old Djelab and, standing in the river, stamped upon his rags.
Our friend the Persian came and sat with us, condoling on our having been prevented starting, but saying I had taken the right way with Si-Mohammed, and that he was glad we had got another tent.
As we sat talking, a Jew pedlar arrived bringing two laden mules. The Persian said he might by chance have some tobacco, and being out of it I sent and asked the Jew to come and talk. He came, and thinking I was a Moor began to offer all his goods, henna, and looking-glasses, needles and cotton, scissors from Germany, knives made in Spain, and cotton cloths (well-sized) from Manchester. I let him talk, but when he saw that every now and then I missed some words and had to ask an explanation from Lutaif, who answered me in English, he began to stare, and at last said in stumbling Spanish, “Are you not a Moor?” “No,” I replied. He said, “What, then, you cannot be a Jew?” On hearing that I was a Christian, [195a] his amazement knew no bounds. “Christian,” he said, “and dressed like a Moor, camped in the middle of the Atlas, how ever came you here?” When I informed him I had passed as a Sherif, he roared with laughter, and said he would have given all his mules’ load to see the people come and kiss my clothes.
It seemed he lived in Agadhir-Ighir, [195b] and traded through the Atlas, as he informed me many of the poorer Jews do, selling their goods, and buying wool and goat-skins to take back. He had tobacco from Algeria of a villainous quality, strong, black and common, and done up in gaudy-coloured packets, adorned, one with a picture of a lady dancing “le chahut,” another of apocryphal-looking Arabs resting in an Oasis; the third displayed a little French soldier running his bayonet through a picture of Bismarck, and underneath the legend, in Italian, “Furia Francese,” and to make all sure the Regie mark. I bought all three, which sold him out, and all my men were gratified with about half-a-pound apiece. They said it was the best tobacco they had ever smoked, but I think that tobacco was to them as it was to a Scotch gamekeeper to whom I gave, when a boy fresh from school, a packet of Honey Dew which I had bought in London, and who said upon my asking him if it was good, “Ye ken, Sir, if she burns she is good tobacco, and if she willna burn, then she’s nae good.” The Persian too participated in the tobacco, being reduced to smoking Kief. [196] Under the influence of the Algerian tobacco, which, to make himself intelligible to me, he characterised as being “bon besaf,” he got back to his wanderings up and down the world.
Ifrikia, as he called Africa, he thought the most savage and abominable portion of the earth. Even the Kurds, whom he knew well, he thought were not so fierce as were the Arabs of the Wad-Nun. The poor man, an ardent believer in Mohammedanism, though not a bigot, and at times gaining his livelihood by discoursing on Mohammed and the Koran, whilst travelling in Wad-Nun upon the road to Timbuctoo, which as he said he did not reach, there being “too much powder on the road,” was frequently in peril of his life, being taken for an unbeliever, being himself a Sufi, and the Moors all members of the sect into which orthodox Mohammedans are grouped. The poor old Ajemi [197] it appeared on one occasion was surrounded by a band of Arabs who held their daggers to his throat, and put their guns up to his head until he, losing patience, knelt upon the sand, said “Bismillah, kill me in God’s name,” reciting the confession of his faith in a loud voice. However, Allah, he said, had spared him, for after taking all his money, and almost all his clothes, the Arabs had let him go, and cautioned him to walk with God and not return to the Wad-Nun again. This he was confident he would not do, preferring even Franguestan and its peculiar ways to the companionship of such evil-begotten men as those. I like to think of him, friendless and all alone, kneeling upon the sand, surrounded by a crowd of horsemen, ready, although not wishing, to be killed, and wonder if he thought about the irony of things, that he, an ardent votary of his religion, was to be put to death for heresy. At times when thinking upon other people’s travels (always so much more interesting than any of my own), it comes before me how that, in desert places, mountain passes and the like, so many men must have been killed, and met their fate heroically, the situation so to speak thrown away, with no one there to see, record, to write about it, as if the poor, forlorn and wasted heroes were no more worth a thought than the fat man of business who snorts his life out on a feather-bed between a medicine bottle and a mumbling priest. So the old Persian left us to make his preparations for an early start next day, hoping to reach a saint’s tomb of great sanctity on the hill path which leads from Kintafi to Tamasluocht, but is only to be passed on foot. He said he was tired of this wild part of Africa, and would make his way to Magador, thence to Tangier, return to Persia and push on to China, which he hoped to visit ere he died. Considering that he had little money, for I expect the twenty dollars of the Kaid were for the most part quite apocryphal, and that the journey, made as he would make it, would probably take years, he did not seem too excited, or as much so as a man who thinks his things have been put into the wrong luggage van at Charing Cross.
People who write about the progress of the world, the wealth of nations, of economic laws, and subjects of that kind, requiring rather stronger imaginative powers than reason, logic, or than common-sense, are apt to take it as a well-established fact that before railways were invented people, especially poor people, travelled but little, and generally never moved far from the places where they were born. This may have been so in the last two hundred years, although I doubt it, but certainly during the Middle Ages they must have travelled much. Leaving the pilgrimages out of account (and they, of course, brought every European nation into contact), I take it that many roved about, as they still do in Eastern lands. People, no doubt, had no facilities for travelling for mere amusement’s sake; but if we read any old book of travels, how often does the writer meet a countryman, a student, minstrel, soldier, or wandering artisan in countries far away.
So, when the Persian went, we strolled out for a walk, followed the river for a mile or two, and found it full of fish; but the whole time we sojourned at Kintafi we saw no one fishing either with rod or net. The people whom we met were all well armed; and when they met us, kissed our clothes, taking us for Arabs of rank upon a visit to the Kaid.
It always pleased me to see two Arabs or two Berbers meet, embrace each other, kiss each other’s shoulder, ask respectively, How is your house? (“Darde-alic”), for to enquire after the health of even a brother’s wife would be indecent; and then, the ceremony over, sit down to talk and strive with might and main to cheat each other, after the fashion in which Englishmen proceed in the same case.
Seated beneath a cliff, our feet just dangling in the stream to cool, smoking the vile Algerian tobacco, Lutaif began to tell me of his life in Syria, described his father’s house, a great, gaunt place with a long chamber in the middle, given up to winding silk; spoke of the undying enmity between the Turk, the Druse, the Maronite, and the Old Catholics, of which sect he was a member; leaving on my mind the feeling that the Lebanon for a residence must be as undesirable as was Scotland in the old wicked days, when they burnt witches, and the narrow-minded clergy made the land a hell. One thing particularly struck me when he said, upon a walk, if we had been in Syria, dressed as we were in clothes which marked us for Mohammedans, and had we met four or five Christians, they would have either insulted or attacked us; and, of course, the same held good for Christians who on a walk met Turks. Remembering this happy state of things, and having from his youth looked upon every Mohammedan as a sworn enemy, when he first came to Morocco, knowing the people were fanatical Mohammedans, he passed his life in dread. Once in Tangier, not thinking what he did, or of the peril that he naturally incurred, he took a country walk. He started from the town dressed as a European, carrying a silver-headed stick, and several oranges in a brown paper bag to eat upon the way. After a mile or two, he took an orange out of his bag and, sitting down, was just about to eat when to his horror, on the sandy road, what did he see but five or six well-armed young men come, as he said, dancing like devils up the road and brandishing their knives. He called upon his God and closed his eyes, being quite sure that his last hour was come. Then to his great surprise the men stopped dancing, sheathed their knives and after saluting him respectfully sat down, several yards away, without a word. At last one asked him humbly for an orange, and Lutaif took the whole bag and was about to entreat them to take all his oranges, his clothes, his money, everything, but to spare his life. To his amazement, the man took an orange from the bag, divided it into five portions, one of which he handed to each of the young men, and handed back the bag. The exiguous portions of the orange discussed, the spokesman asked him not to point the silver-headed stick their way, for it appeared they had got into their minds it was some kind of gun, which, if Lutaif discharged it, would destroy them all. He promised faithfully, and the wayfarers went upon their way, leaving Lutaif as frightened as themselves. No doubt when first he saw them they were exercising, skipping about like fawns, in the sheer joy of life, but as they came upon him suddenly, their sandalled feet making no noise upon the sandy road, for a Syrian the vision must have been horrible enough.
When he wrote home and told his friends what had occurred to him, and how a Christian was regarded (near Tangier) with respect and awe, the answer that he got was curious. Of course they thought he was telling lies, but his best friend admonished him it was bad taste to jest about Mohammedans; for, though no doubt they were bad neighbours, no one in Syria could call them cowards. In fact, the friend appeared to me to be like every Eastern Christian I have met, quick to run down the Turks, to fight with them, hating them bitterly at home; but yet if a stranger slighted them abroad, quick to resent the slight, say they were brave, and that they erred through wicked counsellors and not from lack of heart.