Nothing could possibly have been more desert-like than the surroundings of this tribe. On every side stones, stones, and still more stones. For vegetation thorny Zizyphus, hard wiry grass, stunted euphorbiaceæ, with colocynths growing here and there between the stones; a palm-tree at the well, and a gnarled sandarac tree, looking as if it had never known a shower, with the leaves as hard as pine needles, stood like a sentinel defying thirst. The Zowia itself seemed even more Eastern than most buildings of its kind, the walls merely baked mud, the towers but hardly overtopping them, and all the animals of a superior class to those raised by the ordinary Moors. The tribe ranks high for fighting qualities, as riders, shots, and swordsmen, and though small, can hold its own against all comers. The women, taller and thinner than the women of the Moors, were dressed in blue, after the desert fashion, and in procession walked to the well, with each one carrying an amphora upon her head.
The Sheikh, a Saharan Sherif, by name Mulai Othmar, was the best specimen of a high-caste Arab I had ever seen. Tall and broad-shouldered, lean and tanned by the sun to a fine tinge of old mahogany, grave and reserved, but courteous. Arabia itself could have produced no finer type of man. He asked us to dismount, put corn before our beasts, and sent a dish of couscousou for ourselves, sat and conversed, drank tea, but would not smoke, saying to smoke was shameful, but all the same he was not able to forbear to ask if tobacco was as strong as kief. Strength being the first object to an Arab, he not unnaturally believed that as our powder far exceeded theirs, so did tobacco far exceed their kief in strength, and seemed a little disappointed when I told him kief was stronger far than any cigarette.
During the two hot hours of noon, whilst the south wind blew like a blast out of a furnace, we squatted underneath the Zowia wall, shifting about to dodge the sun, as it moved westwards, and the Sherif stayed talking with us, as befits a man of blood. Though simply dressed in clean white clothes, he looked a prince, and all our men saluted him with ten times more respect than they had used towards either Abu Beckr or the Sherif of Tamasluoght. Much he imparted of the Sahara, its lore, traditions, told of the “wind drinkers,” [282a] who, in the ostrich hunts, carry their masters a hundred miles a day. Much did he tell us of the Tuaregs, who, being Berbers, are at constant feud with all the Arab tribes. In the Sahara no money circulated, but a good mare was bought for forty camels or two hundred sheep; guns came from Dakar, or St. Louis Senegal, and were called either “Francis,” or else “Mocatta,” though he could give no explanation of the latter term. Beyond San Louis was situate the mysterious Ben Joul, [282b] to which place he said the Inglis came, a nation at eternal enmity with the Francis, fair in complexion, and addicted to strong drink, but pleasant to deal with, and in business having but one word.
Morocco seemed to him too green and overgrown with vegetation, so that a man grew dazzled when he looked at it. He thought no landscape half so fine as a long stretch of sand, flat and depressionless as is the sea, and with a stunted sandarac here and there, a few rare suddra bushes, and in the distance, an oasis, green as an emerald, with its wells, its melon fields, and clustering date palms, with their roots in water, [283] and feathery branches in the fire of the sun. No friend of French or English intervention was the Sherif Mulai Othmar; but a believer in the regeneration of the Moors, by a new intermixture of the desert blood which in times past has often been the salvation of the Arab race. From what he said the ancient Arab manners must have been preserved in all their purity in the Sahara, and, but for the introduction of villainous saltpetre, differ but little in essentials from a thousand years ago.
The low black tents of camels’ hair, the wandering life, the little Arab saddles, used to-day in Syria and in Arabia, and differing widely from the high-peaked saddle of Morocco, the finer breed of horses, and, above all, the pure speech of the Koreish not mixed with Spanish and with Berber words as is the Arabic of the Morocco Moors, all show the great tenacity with which the desert tribes have clung to usages and to traditions hallowed by custom and by time. Finding the Sherif spoke such good Arabic, Lutaif and I agreed to refer to his decision a question of literary interest which had engrossed us for the past few days. A controversy at the time was raging in Morocco amongst the men of letters, as to whether the word Mektub (“It is written”) might not be spelt “Mektab.”
Much had been written, as is usual in such cases, on either side, old friends had quarrelled, and each side looked upon the other as people of no culture and outside the pale of decent men. My preference was for “Mektub,” but Lutaif, who had the prejudice which knowledge of a language sometimes induces, was in favour of “Mektab.” The Sherif considered carefully, and gave his dictum that either could be said, although he added, those who say “Mektab” show want of education. So we were left in the position of the grammarian, whose last words were, “l’un et l’autre se disent.”
Thus, in a week, I had met three Arabs all representative of their several classes, and, as usual, liked the man best who had been least influenced by European ways. Mulai Othmar disdained the idea of European protection, saying it was fit for Jews and slaves, but not for men, and that, for his part, sooner than ask for protection from any European power, he would return into the desert and follow a nomadic life. I took my leave of him with a feeling of real regret, such as one feels occasionally for those one sees but for an instant, but whose features never leave one’s mind. If there are, in the Sahara, many such as he, there is regeneration yet for the Arab race, so that they resolutely refuse all dealings with Europeans; reject our bibles, guns, powder, and shoddy cottons, our political intrigues, and strive to live after the rules their Prophet left them in his holy book. If they forsake them, as in some measure the inhabitants of Morocco certainly have done, slavery, sure and certain, is their lot; and in the time to come our rule, or that of the French or Germans, will transform them into the semblance of the abject creatures who once were free as swallows, and who to-day lounge round the frontier towns in North America calling themselves Utes, Blackfeet, Apaches, or what not, ghosts of their former selves, sodden with whisky, blotched with the filthy ailments we have introduced, and living contradictions of the morality and the religion under which we live.
By noon next day we had almost dropped the Atlas out of sight; the enormous wall of rocks rising straight from the plain had vanished; the tall snow-peaks above the chain alone remained in sight, and they appeared to hang suspended in the air. The vegetation changed, and once again the ground grew sandy. The white [285] broom bursting into flower covered it here and there in patches, as with an air of snow new fallen and congealed upon the branches of the plants. Again we passed a range of foothills, rocky and steep, from the top of which, like a blue vapoury haze, we saw the sea; and as we led our jaded animals down the abrupt descent, a Berber shepherd standing on a knoll was playing on his pipe. He stopped occasionally and burst into a strange, wild song, quavering and fitful, the rhythm interrupted curiously, so as to be almost incomprehensible to ears accustomed to street organs, pianos, bands, sackbut, harp, psaltery, and all kinds of music which we have fashioned and take delight in according to our kind; but which I take it would be as void of meaning to a Berber as is our way of life. I checked my horse, and sitting sideways for an instant, tried to catch the rhythm; but failed, perhaps because my ears were dulled by all the noises of our world, and less attuned to nature than those of the brown figure standing on the rock. But though I could not catch that which I aimed at, I still had pleasure in his song, for, as he sang, the noise of trains and omnibuses faded away; the smoky towns grew fainter; the rush, the hurry, and the commonness of modern life sank out of sight; and in their place I saw again the valley of the N’fiss, the giant Kasbah with its four truncated towers, the Kaid, his wounded horse, the Persian, and the strange entrancing half-feudal, half-Arcadian life, which to have seen but for a fortnight consoled me for my failure, and will remain with me a constant vision (seen in the mind, of course, as ghosts are seen); but ever fresh and unforgettable.
Next day about eleven o’clock, driving our horses through the Argan scrub in front of us, tired, dusty, and on foot, we reached the Palm-Tree House.