This was the only trying experience of my stay in Gibraltar, and it is brought in here as a compliment to the force that guards the North Front. For of them, and the rest of the inhabitants and officers of the garrison, any one who visits there can only think well; and I hope when the Rock is attacked, as it never will be, that they will all cover themselves with glory. It never will be attacked, for the reason that the American people are the only people clever enough to invent a way of taking it, and they are far too clever to attempt an impossible thing.
II
TANGIER
A great many thousand years ago Hercules built the mountain of Abyla and its twin mountain which we call Gibraltar. It was supposed to mark the limits of the unknown world, and it would seem from casual inspection, as I suggested in the last chapter, that it serves the same purpose to this day. Men have crept into Africa and crept out again, like flies over a ceiling, and they have gained much renown at Africa's expense for having done so. They have built little towns along its coasts, and run little rocking, bumping railroads into its forests, and dragged launches over its cataracts, and partitioned it off among emperors and powers and trading companies, without having ventured into the countries they pretend to have subdued. But from Paul du Chaillu to W. A. Chanler, "the Last Explorer," as he has been called, just how much more do we know of Africa than did the Romans whose bridges still stand in Tangier?
The "Last Explorer" sounds well, and is distinctly a mot, but there will be other explorers to go, and perhaps to return. There are still a few things for us to learn. The Spaniards and the Pilgrim fathers touched the unknown world of America only four hundred years ago, and to-day any commercial traveller can tell you, with the aid of an A B C railroad guide, the name of every town in any part of it. But Turks and Romans and Spaniards, and, of late, English and Germans and French, have been pecking and nibbling at Africa like little mice around a cheese, and they are still nibbling at the rind, and know as little of the people they "protect," and of the countries they have annexed and colonized, as did Hannibal and Scipio. The American forests have been turned into railroad ties and telegraph poles, and the American Indian has been "exterminated" or taught to plough and to wear a high hat. The cowboy rides freely over the prairies; the Indian agent cheats the Indian—the Indian does not cheat him; the Germans own Milwaukee and Cincinnati; the Irish rule everywhere; even the much-abused Chinaman hangs out his red sign in every corner of the country. There is not a nation of the globe that has not its hold upon and does not make fortunes out of the continent of America; but the continent of Africa remains just as it was, holding back its secret, and still content to be the unknown world.
You need not travel far into Africa to learn this; you can find out how little we know of it at its very shore. This city of Tangier, lying but three hours off from Gibraltar's civilization, on the nearest coast of Africa, can teach you how little we or our civilized contemporaries understand of these barbarians and of their barbarous ways.
A few months since England sent her ambassador to treat with the Sultan of Morocco; it was an untaught blackamoor opposed to a diplomat and a gentleman, and a representative of the most civilized and powerful of empires; and we have Stephen Bonsal's picture of this ambassador and his suite riding back along the hot, sandy trail from Fez, baffled and ridiculed and beaten. So that when I was in Tangier, half-naked Moors, taking every white stranger for an Englishman, would point a finger at me and cry, "Your Sultana a fool; the Sultan only wise." Which shows what a superior people we are when we get away from home, and how well the English understand the people they like to protect.
Tangier lies like a mass of drifted snow on the green hills below, and over the point of rock on which stands its fortress, and from which waves the square red flag of Morocco. It is a fine place spoiled by civilization. And not a nice quality of civilization either. Back of it, in Tetuan or Fez, you can understand what Tangier once was and see the Moor at his best. There he lives in the exclusiveness which his religion teaches him is right—an exclusiveness to which the hauteur of an Englishman, and his fear that some one is going to speak to him on purpose, become a gracious manner and suggest undue familiarity. You see the Moor at his best in Tangier too, but he is never in his complete setting as he is in the inland cities, for when you walk abroad in Tangier you are constantly brought back to the new world by the presence and abodes of the foreign element; a French shop window touches a bazar, and a Moor in his finest robes is followed by a Spaniard in his black cape or an Englishman in a tweed suit, for the Englishman learns nothing and forgets nothing. He may live in Tangier for years, but he never learns to wear a burnoose, or forgets to put on the coat his tailor has sent him from home as the latest in fashion. The first thing which meets your eye on entering the harbor at Tangier is an immense blue-and-white enamel sign asking you to patronize the English store for groceries and provisions. It strikes you as much more barbarous than the Moors who come scrambling over the vessel's side.