In The Tail Of The Peacock Part 2

A seaport which has neither roads nor railways to connect it with the surrounding country, is isolated a week's journey from the nearest capital town, and whose links with the outer world all tend seawards through steamers to foreign countries, can never const.i.tute a study of the land to which it belongs only by right of position.

But Morocco itself had brought us to the north of Africa. Tangier could only be a base for future operations, and consequently a fortnight of Tangier sufficed, finding us bent upon moving on, before the heavy rains broke, and the swollen rivers made travelling impossible. Travelling in Morocco is never at the best of times luxurious. "Say explore, rather than travel," somebody writes, speaking of Morocco; and many were the injunctions and warnings which the post brought us from friends at home--above all, to expect no ransoms, in the event of capture by lawless tribes.

It is true that a _Wanderjahr_ in Morocco has not the luxuries of travel in India; and Englishmen who would break new ground must wear Moorish dress, talk Arabic, and prepare to face considerable risks, with the off-chance of writing in some such strain as Davidson: "To-day I have parted with all my hair except one long tuft over my right ear. I never expect to become white again. My beard is very long. My legs covered with bites of vermin. My cheek-bones prominent, and my teeth sharp from having very little to do."

Not that R. and myself had such adventures in view; but we believed that even as humble followers in the tracks of others we should find no lack of interest in a country so little known, among a people of "The Arabian Nights," under conditions which tempt the Unexpected to stalk out from behind every corner.

CHAPTER II

CAMP OUTFIT--A NIGHT AT A CARAVANSERAI--TETUAN--THE BRITISH VICE-CONSUL--MOORISH SHOPS--WE VISIT A MOORISH HOUSE AND FAMILY.

CHAPTER II

_Tetuan_--the tiger-cat! so curiously beautiful. Recollections of it hang in the gallery of one's memory, not so much as pictures, but as Correggio-like ma.s.ses of vivid colouring and intangible spirals of perfume.

THE place we had set our hearts upon visiting, to begin with, was the northern capital, Fez--only to find, on going into particulars, that insurmountable barriers blocked the way. Even if we escaped the December rains on the ride there, they would break sooner or later, making sleeping out under canvas impossible: the flooded rivers might mean a long delay--probably a week or more--on the banks; bridges in Morocco are harder to find than diamonds on the seash.o.r.e, and when a river is in flood there remains only to sit down in front of it until the waters abate.

The "road" to Fez, after the tropical rains, soon becomes a slough of clay and water, ploughed up by mules and donkeys, and so slippery that nothing can keep its legs. We decided, therefore, to leave Fez till the spring, when the rains would be over, and to visit for the present a city called Tetuan, only two days' journey from Tangier, camping out as long as we felt inclined, and returning to the Villa Valentina in a week, or when the weather should drive us back. But the G.o.ds thought otherwise.

Tetuan was, by report, in the most beautiful part of Morocco: its situation reminded travellers of Jerusalem; it was among the Anjera and Riff Mountains; and though, of course, travel was impossible within the forbidden land of the Riff, it was likely we should gather some interesting crumbs of information, and come across a few of the famous tribesmen, while we were staying on the borders. Above all, it was a Moorish city, and counted an aristocratic one at that: no European element spoilt its originality. On the face of it Tetuan had attractions.

Accordingly we made preparations to be off.

The first thing to be done was to get hold of a man who could cook, act as guide, interpreter, and muleteer: plenty of them presented themselves, and we closed with a certain Mohammed, who had been with Colonel H----.

Every third Moor is named Mohammed, or some corruption of it--eldest sons invariably.

Next we ransacked Tangier for commissariat and camp outfit. Out of a dirty little Spanish shop two men's saddles of antiquated English make, with rolls, were unearthed, and hired in preference to some prehistoric side-saddles, with moth-eaten doe-skin seats and horned third pommels.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photo by A. Cavilla, Tangier._]

TETUAN.

[_To face p. 30._]

Then we obtained a permit from the English Consul, for the sum of seven-and-sixpence, authorizing us to apply to the governor of the Kasbah for one of the Moorish soldiers quartered in Tangier, who should act as our escort to Tetuan. The Sultan of Morocco undertakes to protect British subjects travelling in his dominions as far as possible, provided they supply themselves with an adequate escort and avoid roads through unsafe territory. The various tribes from among themselves sometimes provide an armed guard to see travellers safely across their own country, handing them on at the borders to the next tribe, who sends its mounted escort to meet them. The headman arranges for the safety of Europeans, and his tribe answers for their lives. But this plan involves prearrangement, publicity, and fuss. Now from Tangier to Tetuan the road by daylight is perfectly safe--though it happens that, at the time of writing, the body of a peasant, presumably out after sunset, has been found robbed and murdered close to it. Therefore one soldier was all we should want; and at last this bodyguard was supplied, a ragged Moor, with a lean mule and a French rifle--all for five s.h.i.+llings per day.

We next visited a general "stores," lined with the familiar Cadbury, Keiller, and Huntley & Palmer tins: there we invested in corned beef, tinned soup, potted meats, cheese, salt, macaroni, marmalade, tea, coffee, sugar, candles, soap, matches, etc. Things not to be forgotten were nails, hammer, rope, methylated spirit and etna. A revolver for its moral effect is necessary, and may be invaluable in a tight corner. We provided ourselves with two tents, one for the servants and a larger one for ourselves; a set of camp furniture, including kitchen pots and pans; and an enamel breakfast and dining service, which, if time had mattered little, would have been well exchanged for an aluminium set out from England, as lighter and more convenient.

Mohammed hired four mules and another man--Ali--himself taking charge of the cooking department, providing meat, bread, vegetables, fruit, etc.: then with our _bundobust_ complete, and a letter of introduction from Sir Arthur Nicolson to the British Vice-Consul at Tetuan, we started on November 28.

It was one of the hottest mornings we had had, not a fleck of cloud in the sky, and what air there was due east: the sea lay flat as a blue pool, and five or six white sails might have been swans on its gla.s.sy surface. Mohammed appeared early in the sandy road underneath our windows. To avoid waking people in the hotel, we handed our diminutive kit out through the window to him--only a couple of waterproof rolls, which held rugs and bare necessities; then locking up the bulk of our worldly goods behind us, slipped out of the Villa Valentina, mounted our mules, and were off across the white sand-dunes bordering the sea.

Tetuan lies forty-four miles to the south-east of Tangier: people with much time and little energy have made a three days' march of it. A range of hills rather more than half-way makes a natural division, and on the top of this watershed a _fondak_ (caravanserai) stands for the use of travellers during the night: here it is usual to camp.

We were an odd little procession as we left Tangier. Our mounted soldier, Cadour, led the way, in a brown weather-worn jellab, which he pulled right up over his head like a Franciscan friar: his legs were bare, his feet thrust into a pair of old yellow shoes. He carried his gun across his saddle in front of him, inside one arm: it was in a frayed brown canvas case, which had holes in each end, out of which both stock and barrel respectively protruded. With his other hand he jogged incessantly at the mule's mouth. Take him all in all, a soldier's was the last trade he outwardly impersonated. Behind him rode R. and myself, shaking down by degrees into our saddles, glad not to have before us eight or ten hours'

jog across rough country on provincial side-saddles, which, apart from the strained position, are inconvenient for slipping off and on again.

Behind us followed the two baggage-mules with our tents, etc.: loaded as they were, Mohammed and Ali had climbed upon the tops of their great packs. A mule carries as much as he can get along under in Morocco: the man climbs up afterwards, and does not count.

Two hundredweight, with a Moor on top, is a fair load for a long journey, marching seven hours every day. Enough barley should be carried for each night's fodder: the ordinary mule and pony live on barley and broken straw, beans when in season, and gra.s.s in the spring to fatten them.

Sevenpence a day will feed a mule, and hire comes to three s.h.i.+llings a day. Good mules are not bought easily, and are worth, on account of their toughness, more than ponies, fetching 12 any day. Ours were but second-rate hirelings, and we made up our minds to buy later on, when starting on a long expedition. A mule should be chosen chiefly for its pacing powers, doing four and a half miles an hour on an average for seven hours a day, without turning a hair or tiring the rider, whose comfort depends on an easy pace. The longer the overlap of the hind-shoe print over the fore-shoe print, the better the pace. Moorish horses are wiry little beasts, but you seldom see a handsome one: either they are ewe-necked or they fall away in the hindquarters; their feet are allowed to grow too long, and their legs are ruined through tight hobbling. Nor is there much inducement to a Moor to breed a handsome foal, liable to be stolen from him, if seen by a governor or agent of the Sultan's.

Naturally he breeds the inferior animal he has a chance of keeping, and puts a valuable mare to a common stallion, branding and otherwise disfiguring a colt which by bad luck turns out good-looking.

The slender desert-horse, the _habb-er-reeh_ (gust of wind, as they call him), with the small aristocratic head, a nose which will go into a tea-cup, perfect shoulders, and diminutive sloping hindquarters, is seldom met with and hardly ever used, except quite in the south of the country, where he is given camel's milk to drink.

People as a rule start off on their day's march with the dawn, after a light breakfast of coffee, beaten-up eggs, and dry biscuits; halt about ten o'clock, supposing they are near water; and, if necessary, do two or three hours more, comfortably, before sunset. But we had made a late start, and the sun was far up as we jogged along one after the other, leaving behind the sands, the orange gardens, and the gimcrack Spanish houses, at every step the open country widening in front of us.

We followed a narrow path, one of the countless footpaths which zigzag in and out, and wind away to every point of the compa.s.s, like ants' tracks from an ant-hill. Donkeys, mules, countrywomen, eternally pa.s.s and re-pa.s.s along the polished ways, with the everlasting burdens of charcoal, f.a.ggots, vegetables, and flour: life in some form moving along them there always is.

Towards the edge of the horizon, clumps of dwarf palm and coa.r.s.e gra.s.s slanted in the breeze: here and there grey rocks stuck up on the hillside like fossilized bones, and met the blue sky. A stream was meandering, hidden under deep banks, on our right. We wound along the wide valley, doing our best to keep the mules going at a respectable pace, and finding that there was quite an art in accomplis.h.i.+ng it on a hireling. Cadour cut in behind, and supplemented our sticks and heels with Arabic words of much effect, his own mule's mouth suffering badly from his jogging, remorseless hand.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OURSELVES AND BAGGAGE.

[_To face p. 34._]

A raven, "a blot in heaven, flying high," sailed over our heads up in the blue, and then, leisurely dropping, sat on a rock and croaked at us. Morocco is a country of circling kites and keen-eyed hawks, whose easy, buoyant flight and vibrating "hover" in the hot air are things of undying fascination. Now and again a puff of east wind--life-giving--would stir the whole countryside and pa.s.s on, leaving us glowing under a sun which warmed every cranny, and made the section of air just above the flat fields rock with heat. Two countrywomen toiled towards us under their bundles--a couple of figures swathed in yellowy white; they gazed at us as people gaze who have few interests in their lives, then smiled and spoke, gesticulated, and laughed again: a herd of goats was outlined on the hill above; the goat-herd called to another far-off brown-clad figure, and the echoes filtered down to us: a rabbit dashed up out of a palm-bush and scuttled away: and then there was silence profound, and we paced on eastwards, talking and singing a song sometimes, while the sun climbed right-handed.

There is no life like it--that life of the open air and its absolute freedom. Monotonous it would certainly be to many people: small and uneventful matters, and a palette set in greys and browns, charm but a few, for whom solitary rides and waste places are "things in common," and chance meetings and little incidents by the way suffice.

Two or three miles outside Tangier stretch rich undulating lands between low hills: a few divisionless fields bear witness to both primitive and erratic farming, and give that regretful air to the landscape which land not "done well by" always imparts.

The writer has lately read a somewhat pessimistic letter upon the state of Morocco. Morocco is a decadent empire, it is true: primarily, because the two races to whom the country belongs live, and have always lived from time immemorial, under a tribal system; and secondarily, because those same races, Arab and Berber, hate one another with a racial hatred. These two reasons by themselves augur badly for the land they live upon, implying a state of armed neutrality, no cohesion, and no settled peace.

Under a tribal system the tribe is the unit, not the individual--"one for all, and all for one": it follows that transgression and retribution are both upon a wholesale scale, and alike disastrous towards the consolidation of a united nation.

The government in a country cursed by the tribal system must in the very nature of things be despotic: lawless tribes need the tyrant's hand of iron. To the fact of his being a despot the Sultan owes his security, coupled with one other reason. Arabs and Berbers alike are fanatics: religion is the air they breathe, the salt of life. The Sultan is descended direct from the One Great Prophet; consequently the Sultan is acknowledged as lord. His policy is an Oriental one: tribe is played off against tribe, one European power against the other European power; the empire is isolated; innovations are prohibited, lest European civilization should oust Moorish eccentricities. So much for the Oriental policy of "the balance of jealousies."

Despotism breeds despotism. While every Moor below the Sultan ranks as equal, the fact remains that Government officials are all in their own sphere little despots, governing districts many days' journey from Court, with every chance of robbing and oppressing those under them, until the day of reckoning comes, when the Court, hearing how fat their fine bird has grown, summons him to the capital, and the process of plucking and imprisoning their wealthy servant follows.

Life exists upon life, from the _sheikhs_ (farmers), who live upon what they can squeeze out of the peasants, to the _bashas_ (governors), who exist on t.i.thes, taxes, and extortion wrung from the sheikhs and townspeople, up to higher officials, who receive no salaries, and line their pockets by a process of bleeding the bashas and others . . . . . .

thus _ad lib_. Even the gaolers--also unpaid--earn their living by extorting money from the prisoners. The whole system of government reacts upon itself; for the venality of the officials drives the tribes to redress their wrongs at intervals by raids and open rebellion, to punish whom there follows slaughter upon slaughter, and the country is laid waste.

Hence the princ.i.p.al reasons--wheels within wheels--which account for the Morocco of 1902: its prehistoric customs, its uncultivated acres.

No reformer, no missionary, will alter the condition of Morocco. The Moors themselves have made it what it is; but since for an Ethiopian to change his skin is no light matter, there is small probability of the Moors themselves unmaking it.

A gloomy prospect, yet one which, taking the case of the people and looking upon it from a "happiness" point of view, must not be altogether judged from a European standpoint. The likes and dislikes of Moors are not the likes and dislikes of Europeans, and most of them view their good times and bad times with equal calm, as merely the will of Allah. Besides which, anything in the shape of law and order and daily routine rasps their raw nature. Just as a Moor prefers to eat to repletion when there is food, and to go without when there is not, so he would choose a desultory and irresponsible life, alternating between perfect freedom and excessive tyranny, to any regular humdrum form of government which Europe could offer him.

The country people we met, if hard-worked, had at the same time cheerful enough faces: their enjoyment of life probably equals that of the English labourer.

On the whole, it is possible that, when the day comes--as it must come--that an effete and inadequate people goes to the wall, and civilized blood occupies their room, it may bring good, but that good will be tinged with regret--certainly in the eyes of those selfish mortals to whom one country, neither wire-fenced nor scored by railways, nor swept nor garnished, but coloured to-day by the smoke of many thousand years, still offers palmy days. Thus giving thanks to Allah for things as they are, after the manner of the country, we jogged along, looking out for a halting-ground: it was between twelve and one o'clock, and time to stretch our legs.