ON GUARD
By another douar, this time on the outskirts of the R'hamna country, we paused for a mid-day rest, and entered the village in search of milk and eggs. All the men save one were at work on the land, and he, the guardian of the village, an old fellow and feeble, stood on a sandy mound within the zariba. He carried a very antiquated flint-lock, that may have been own brother to Kaid M'Barak's trusted weapon. I am sure he could not have had the strength to fire, even had he enjoyed the knowledge and possessed the material to load it. It was his business to mount guard over the village treasure. The mound he stood upon was at once the mat'mora that hid the corn store, and the bank that sheltered the silver dollars for whose protection every man of the village would have risked his life cheerfully. The veteran took no notice of our arrival: had we been thieves he could have offered no resistance. He remained silent and stationary, unconscious that the years in which he might have fulfilled his trust had gone for ever. All along the way the boundaries of arable land were marked by little piles of stones and I looked anxiously for some sign of the curious festival that greets the coming of the new corn, a ceremony in which a figure is made for worship by day and sacrifice by night; we were just too late for it. For the origin of this sacrifice the inquirer must go back to the time of nature worship. It was an old practice, of course, in the heyday of Grecian civilisation, and might have been seen in England, I believe, little more than twenty years ago.
Claims for protection are made very frequently upon the road. There are few of the dramatic moments in which a man rushes up, seizes your stirrup and puts himself "beneath the hem of your garment," but there are numerous claims for protection of another sort. In Morocco all the Powers that signed the Treaty of Madrid are empowered to grant the privilege. France has protected subjects by the thousand. They pay no taxes, they are not to be punished by the native authorities until their Vice-Consul has been cited to appear in their defence, and, in short, they are put above the law of their own country and enabled to amass considerable wealth. The fact that the foreigner who protects them is often a knave and a thief is a draw-back, but the popularity of protection is immense, for the protector may possibly not combine cunning with his greed, while the native Basha or his khalifa quite invariably does. British subjects may not give protection,—happily the British ideals of justice and fair-play have forbidden the much-abused practice,—and the most the Englishman can do is to enter into a trading partnership with a Moor and secure for him a certificate of limited protection called "mukhalat," from the name of the person who holds it. Great Britain has never abused the Protection system, and there are fewer protected Moors in the service or partnership of Britons throughout all Morocco than France has in any single town of importance.
If I had held the power and the will to give protection, I might have been in Morocco to-day, master of a house and a household, drawing half the produce of many fields and half the price of flocks of sheep and herds of goats. Few mornings passed without bringing some persecuted farmer to the camp, generally in the heat of the day, when we rested on his land. He would be a tall, vigorous man, burnt brown by the sun, and he would point to his fields and flocks, "I have so many sheep and goats, so many oxen for the plough, so many mules and horses, so much grain unharvested, so much in store. Give me protection, that I may live without fear of my kaid, and half of all I own shall be yours." Then I had to explain through Salam that I had no power to help him, that my Government would do no more than protect me. It was hard for the applicants to learn that they must go unaided. The harvest was newly gathered, it had survived rain and blight and locusts, and now they had to wait the arrival of their kaid or his khalifa, who would seize all they could not conceal,—hawk, locust, and blight in one.
At the village called after its patron saint, Sidi B'noor, a little deputation of tribesmen brought grievances for an airing. We sat in the scanty shade of the zowia wall. M'Barak, wise man, remained by the side of a little pool born of the winter rains; he had tethered his horse and was sleeping patiently in the shadow cast by this long-suffering animal. The headman, who had seen my sporting guns, introduced himself by sending a polite message to beg that none of the birds that fluttered or brooded by the shrine might be shot, for that they were all sacred. Needless perhaps to say that the idea of shooting at noonday in Southern Morocco was far enough from my thoughts, and I sent back an assurance that brought half a dozen of the village notables round us as soon as lunch was over. Strangely enough, they wanted protection—but it was sought on account of the Sultan's protected subjects. "The men who have protection between this place and Djedida," declared their spokesman, sorrowfully, "have no fear of Allah or His Prophet. They brawl in our markets and rob us of our goods. They insult our houses,[14] they are without shame, and because of their protection our lives have become very bitter."
"Have you been to your Basha?" I asked the headman.
"I went bearing a gift in my hand, O Highly Favoured," replied the headman, "and he answered me, 'Foolish farmer, shall I bring the Sultan to visit me by interfering with these rebels against Allah who have taken the protection from Nazarenes?' And then he cursed me and drove me forth from his presence. But if you will give protection to us also we will face these misbegotten ones, and there shall be none to come between us."
A VILLAGE AT DUKALA