Our feelings thus relieved, we set ourselves to drive our half-starved beasts over the mountain roads. The miles seemed mortal, and the scenery, though wonderful enough, chiefly remarkable for the unending hills, the frequent elbows made by the N’fiss, now deeper and much fiercer than when we came, owing to the recent rains, which forced us to cross repeatedly and get wet every time; for the snow, which now lay thickly on the higher hills, though the sun was hot, still made the wind as cold as winter, and our clothes like paper on our backs. As we spurred along, calling, when a mule stumbled upon a narrow path above the river, upon Sidi bel Abbas, the saint of wayfarers, we racked our brains to discover how we had been found out. The sun, the winds, the want of food, the rain and dust of the road, had by this time rendered us almost as dark as Moors. So we were certain that we looked the character, for all the passers-by saluted us with “Peace” and never turned their heads to look at us, taking us evidently for travellers from the Sus. My own idea was that the man we had taken from Amsmiz had passed the word along the road. The others thought, some one thing, some another, and so we talked away, till at the last Mohammed-el-Hosein resolved the matter, saying that Allah had not wished us to succeed. Once more we crossed the rugged hill, where I had seen the miserable donkey fallen on the road surrounded by his wretched owners, or compeers. Again we stopped to rest the animals under the oleander bushes by the stream; but this time all dejected, hungry, and without refreshment, but a pipe of kief, which Ali brought triumphantly out of a dirty bag, and which we smoked by turns, sitting like Indians at a council, waiting for the word.
Just about sundown we came to Taquaydirt-el-Bur, to find it full; a sort of festival in process in the mosque; mules, horses, donkeys, and armed men pervading all the place; a whistling north wind blowing from the snow; nothing to eat, and to be kept at least an hour sitting upon our beasts, whilst the Sheikh read the letter we delivered from the Kaid. At last a filthy negro came and called us in; whilst riding through the dark and tortuous passage to the inner court, my horse fell twice, once on a donkey and again upon a mule: and the confusion, struggling, kicking, cursing, and plunging in the dark, made me despair of getting through without a broken bone. When we emerged the inner court was full; men slept beside the donkeys, upon their pack-saddles; and on the plaster benches running round the wall beside them were their guns, their daggers, and their quarter staffs; underneath their heads their money, valuables, corn for their horses, or anything they chanced to value most. Luckily none of them knew that we were Christians, but thought most likely we were guests the Sheikh considered worthy of his care; for no one looked at us, and we were glad to pack into a room above an oil-press, smelling abominably of oil, filthy, and with an opening in the roof through which we saw the stars. Upon the doors and shutters were some most curious concentric patterns cut deep in the wood. They were not Arab, yet not like any European work, nor yet were made by Jews; but they reminded me, as the Kasbah at Kintafi had done, of the strange temples of Palenque, the patterns on the Aztec Calendar, and the Sacrificial Stone built into a side wall of the great church at Mexico. Miserably we sat squatted before a pan of charcoal trying to dry our clothes, and after some hours’ waiting, a man appeared with a dish of eggs fried in high-smelling Argan oil, which we despatched at once, and tried to sleep; but between the cold and the assaults of every kind of insect, found it impossible, tired with the journey and hungry as we were. All through the night a sort of Tenebræ seemed to be going on in the neighbouring mosque; ghaitas were played, and every now and then a man broke out into a long high chant, the congregation answering him at stated intervals. Long before day I roused our people up, saddled, and picked our way through the courtyard where the travellers were still buried in sleep, then got upon the road just as the stars were paling, and a whistling wind blowing from off the snow, which chilled us to the bones. Mohammed-el-Hosein and Swani were afraid the Kaid might change his mind and send men after us to bring us back; so we pushed on as fast as we could go for about four hours, until the half-starved beasts began to tire, then walked a spell, and finally sat down to rest (this time without even a pipe of kief), and let the beasts try to pick up some grass.
Until that moment, so hurried had been our journey, I had not determined where to go; and after consultation, it being manifest we could not reach Morocco city by nightfall with our jaded beasts, and as I was not anxious to camp in the mountains another night without a chance of food, I determined to push on to Tamasluoght, the Sherif of which, Mulai-el-Haj, I knew and to whom I had sent a letter from Kintafi, asking him to agitate for our release. From where we were, the Zowia of Tamasluoght was distant at least eight hours’ march, and if we wanted to arrive with light the time was short enough. So we pushed on; stumbling along the mountain paths, dismounting now and then to lead our animals, all silent and occasionally a little cross. The road branched to the east, and separated from the Amsmiz path close to the place where we had seen a salt mine on our journey towards the Sus. Here for the first time we entered a real cedar forest; the trees not high, rarely exceeding thirty feet in height; but thick and growing closely so as in places to exclude the light. The trail led in and out between the trunks, and at times narrowed to about two feet in breadth, and went sheer down for seven or eight hundred feet. Unmindful of the proverb that “he who passes a bridge on horseback looks death in the face,” [252] we passed without dismounting till Lutaif’s saddle slipping almost precipitated him down the precipice. Dimly, and at an immense depth below, we saw the salt mine, looking like a glacier, and shining white as snow; the mode of working being to dig innumerable pits, from which the water ran into a sort of reservoir, where the salt lay heaped. Miserable donkeys crawled along the mountain paths, all grossly overladen; and men passed stripped half-naked, but perspiring even in the chilly air, bent, like Swiss porters carrying tourists’ boxes, under great loads of salt.
At last we began to leave the mountains, and emerged on to a broad and fertile plateau, much like Castille, and growing the same crops of wheat, chick peas and vetches, with the resemblance increased by the mud-built houses, looking so like the hills that now and then we came upon a village almost before we could be sure if the brown heaps were irregularities of the ground, or houses, so exactly did the colours blend. In one of the small hamlets we bought bread and fed our horses, and once again pushed on, till about four o’clock, after winding up an interminable staircase of rock, all of a sudden the plain of Morocco burst upon us; the great city in the distance, and the Kutubieh standing like a lighthouse of Islam, to guide the wanderer home. From thence the descent was rapid; and in another hour we found ourselves in a different climate, and again came to a country where it had not rained for months, but was burnt up and dry, with all the water-courses turned to brown holes, and a dull shimmering in the still air broken but by the grasshoppers’ shrill note. The next three hours were mortal, and about sundown our animals reeled through the olive groves, which for a mile or more surrounded the Zowia of Tamasluoght. We passed some water wheels, and drank at the first of them; passed underneath the curious apparatus like a switchback, supported on brick towers at intervals of a hundred feet, by means of which water is taken to the Sherif’s house; rode through some sandy lanes, with houses here and there; came to the gateway, and were met by Mulai-el-Haj in person, who said he had not thought we should have got out of Kintafi upon such easy terms.
No one could be more absolutely unlike our late lamented host than Mulai-el-Haj, an Arab of the Arabs, descended from the Prophet, but with little of the dignity that rank (in the East) usually confers on its possessor. A man of peace in fact, a semi-sacred character, and a sort of cross between the Pope and a feudal baron of old time; rich, influential, and occupying in the south the position held in the north by the Sherifs of Wazan. When at last our diplomats became aware that the French had secured a footing in Wazan, and by their railway to Ain Sefra a point of descent on Fez and on Morocco city, it occurred to them to secure Mulai-el-Haj, as a set-off to the all-prevailing influence of the French throughout the north. So they induced our Government to extend British protection to the Sherif of Tamasluoght; but the protection has been so grudgingly extended as to be hardly of avail.
Into the ethics of the European occupation of Morocco I do not propose to go; but if at any time that occupation should occur, it is certain that Europe would not see us in Tangier. The French have thoroughly secured the north, and as the Germans will no doubt bid for some towns upon the coast, it might perhaps be advisable to take the south, and so control the Sus, secure Morocco city, and thus keep a way open for the Saharan trade, and opening Agadhir, or some port on the Wad Nun, check French advance from St. Louis, Senegal, and Dakar, and their possessions in the south. I should prefer to see Morocco as it is, bad government and all, thinking but little as I do of the apotheosis of the bowler hat, and holding as an article of faith that national government is best for every land, from Ireland to the “vexed Bermoothes,” and from thence to Timbuctoo.
Let us rob on in Europe as we have always done since first the Vikings sailed their long ships to plunder and to steal. England has never lagged behind in all adventures of this kind, so if there is a general scramble for Morocco, let us have our share. Statesmen can surely find reasons to justify us, and if they fail, we can sail in under the Jolly Roger, after the fashion of our ancestors upon the Spanish main. When we arrived at Tamasluoght, nothing was farther from my mind than politics, the advance of empires, ethics of conquest, Hinterlands, and things of that sort, on which the opinion of the first fool in the street is just as valuable as that of the politician fool, who stumbles out his halting speech to his bemused electors, who elect him for his likeness to themselves in density of head.
Mulai-el-Haj ushered us into a sort of kiosque, built in the style of the Alhambra, with a small court in front, in which grew cypresses and oranges, and would hear no word of anything before he had seated us on a comfortable divan in the recess of a window in his guest-chamber, which opened on a little garden where a fountain played, the water splashing on a marble basin, and the scent of flowers rising up to the room. After the Arab fashion he never left us for a moment, [255] and whilst a repast was being got ready, set tea before us, and then coffee, and, to pass by the interval, fresh bread and butter in a cracked though lordly dish. All was perfectly appointed in Arab style, the china French, the basin in which we washed our hands of brass most beautifully worked, and a black (uncomely) slave girl with heavy silver anklets handed round the cups. In her confusion at the sight of Christians, instead of handing us a napkin she handed something which looked like the trimming of her drawers, and being rebuked in Shillah, retired in tears, and another equally ill-favoured damsel took her place. Her name I think was Johar, and the Sherif explained with gravity that negresses were as immodest as the hens, and that the slave had better have kept the trimming of her drawers to veil her face, though, as he said, what with the tattoo marks and negro features it contained little to tempt the eyes of a believing man. To this I gave a qualified assent, and through the medium of Lutaif guided the conversation on to more general grounds, on which a man, used from his youth, as Europeans are, to think all women angels in disguise, might comfortably join.
The Sherif having gone to the mosque for a brief interval, I walked into the courtyard to see my horse, and found him standing dejectedly and too worn out to eat; the mules exhausted, one of them lying down, with the men sitting beside them, too tired even to light a fire. Lutaif, who was not much accustomed to such trots, and who moreover had ridden a tired mule for most part of the day, had nearly fallen asleep during the tea and coffee and the long talk with the Sherif, now was a little rested, and strolled with me about the place.
The house was built in the usual Moorish style; with crenelated walls, flanking towers, and dome-shaped roofs. It had innumerable courts, a mosque, a women’s wing, a granary, store-houses, baths, and everything in the first style of modern Arab taste. All round the houses stood cypresses, many of great age and height; over the mosque two or three palm-trees waved, and oranges and olives extended for some acres upon every side. There was a garden in the Eastern taste, where water trickled in a thousand little rills; canes fluttered, rustling like feathers in the air; jasmine and honeysuckle climbed up the azofaifa trees, sweet limes and lemons with pomegranates were dotted here and there; some periwinkles, but larger and paler than those grown in Europe, grew in the grass; here and there stood geranium bushes, straggling and run to seed. Over it all brooded the air of decadence, mixed with content, which makes an Eastern garden that of all others where a slothful and religious man should find heart-ease, and reading in some book of things beyond the power of intellect, leave them without solution, and sit still giving thanks for gardens as a true Christian should.