On the road we meet few wayfarers, and those we encounter are full of suspicion. Now and again we pass some country kaid or khalifa out on business. As many as a dozen well-armed slaves and retainers may follow him, and, as a rule, he rides a well-fed Barb with a fine crimson saddle and many saddle cloths. Over his white djellaba is a blue selham that came probably from Manchester; his stirrups are silver or plated. He travels unarmed and seldom uses spurs—a packing needle serves as an effective substitute. When he has spurs they are simply spear-heads—sharp prongs without rowels. The presence of Unbelievers in the country of the True Faith is clearly displeasing to him, but he is nearly always diplomat enough to return my laboured greeting, though doubtless he curses me heartily enough under his breath. His road lies from village to village, his duty to watch the progress of the harvest for his overlord. Even the locusts are kinder than the country kaids. But so soon as the kaid has amassed sufficient wealth, the governor of his province, or one of the high wazeers in the Sultan's capital, will despoil him and sell his place to the highest bidder, and in the fulness of time the Sultan will send for that wazeer or governor, and treat him in similar fashion. "Mektub," it is written, and who shall avoid destiny?[11]
NEAR A WELL IN THE TOWN
When the way is long and the sun hot, pack and saddle animals come together, keeping a level pace of some five miles an hour, and Salam or the Maalem beguiles the tedium of the way with song or legend. The Maalem has a song that was taught him by one of his grandfather's slaves, in the far-off days when Mulai Mohammed reigned in Red Marrakesh. In this chant, with its weird monotonous refrain, the slaves sing of their journey from the lands of the South, the terrors of the way, the lack of food and water. It is a dismal affair enough, but the Maalem likes it, and Salam, riding under a huge Tetuan hat, carrying my shot gun, in case some fresh meat should come along, and keeping watchful eye on the mules, joins lustily in the refrain. Salam has few songs of his own, and does not care to sing them, lest his importance should suffer in the native eyes, but he possesses a stock of Arabian Nights' legends, and quotes them as though they were part of Al Koran.
Now and again, in some of the waste and stony places beyond Dukala's boundaries, we come across a well, literally a well in the desert, with husbandmen gathered about it and drawing water in their goat-skin buckets, that are tied to long palmetto ropes made by the men of the neighbouring villages. The water is poured into flat, puddled troughs, and the thirsty flocks and herds drink in turn, before they march away to hunt for such scanty herbage as the land affords. The scene round these wells is wonderfully reminiscent of earliest Bible times, particularly so where the wandering Bedouins bring their flocks to water from the inhospitable territory of the Wad Nun and deserts below the Sus.
I note with pleasure the surprising dignity of the herdsmen, who make far less comment upon the appearance of the stranger in these wild places than we should make upon the appearance of a Moor or Berber in a London street.
The most unmistakable tribute to the value of the water is paid by the skeletons of camels, mules, sheep and goats that mark the road to the well. They tell the tale of animals beaten by the Enemy in their last stride. It is not easy for a European to realise the suffering these strange lands must see when the summer drought is upon the face of the earth. Perhaps they are lessened among the human sufferers by the very real fatalism that accepts evil as it accepts good, without grief and without gladness, but always with philosophic calm; at least we should call it philosophic in a European; superstitious fatalism, of course, in a Moor.
