In The Tail Of The Peacock Part 24

and "never" is expressed thus, "when the charcoal takes root and the salt buds."

Uncontrolled ascendency of imagination marks the Arab, and endows his nature with a fascination all its own: an outdoor life is his heritage, and the things of Nature are a part of himself. "Spring" he calls "gra.s.s"; "summer" is "gleaning"; "autumn" is "fruit"; "winter" is "rainy."

If only he could keep pure his race, Morocco had never stood among the nations where she stands now. The steady infusion of African blood is becoming her ruin: the sensual negro type, spreading rapidly, is eating its way into the heart of the people. When it is remembered that thousands upon thousands of slaves are imported into Morocco from the interior of Africa every year, that they become eventually "free," their children inheriting equal rights with other children, it is no longer a matter of wonder that the Moorish race shows signs of deterioration, that its people are effete. It is after meeting with men such as Hadj Cadour and many others, who hark back to the old type of chief and horseman and the desert life, touched with the old vein of poetry and chivalry, that one regrets the things which are. But we had spent an afternoon which was one worth recollecting; and when we had parted from that little circle under the shady olive, and were jogging back to our tents, it was to remember that there are still good things in Morocco.

The tents we found ready for us in a delightful spot enclosed by a wall: a tank lay in the centre of the garden, around it a few paths, and a great deal of mint. But a terrible ordeal awaited us--green tea and a great spread, provided by the brother of Hadj Cadour, who had also arranged carpets as seats around the tank. Again next morning, just after we had finished breakfast, this hospitable individual sent into our tent two steaming hot chickens fried brown in argan oil, with half a dozen round cakes of fine flour; and when, immediately afterwards, we rode to his house to say farewell and tender our thanks, he proffered green tea once more.

Heavy drops of rain awoke us in the middle of the night; but just as an ominous patter was coming through the old canvas and sounding on the bed-clothes, the shower stopped. Again later it came on, with thunder.

Omar changed the smart clothes which he had put on in view of a triumphal entry into Marrakesh; we packed and got off as quickly as we could, expecting more rain; many good-byes were said; Hadj Cadour sent a servant with us to the gates; and we rode out of Tamsloect.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE OPEN GATE.

[_To face p. 324._]

Outside, towards the east, its gardens were numerous: great black poplars and palms grew freely. For an hour we rode alongside a district which belonged entirely to Mulai el Hadj, the great man of Tamsloect, and a holy Shar[=i]f to boot. This man is rich, and because he is a holy Shar[=i]f he can never be dispossessed of his wealth. His white house and cypress-trees stand out prominently in the village we had just left; throughout his gardens he has built a succession of water-towers, which irrigate his land; he is British-protected, and as important a man in the south as the French-protected Wazeer of Wazan is in the north.

All this time we were riding steadily towards Marrakesh, interest increasing with every step as we neared the city, to visit which we had left Mogador about ten days before.

That last day's march was not an interesting one: the great Atlas, upon which we had now turned our backs, were no longer to be seen, on account of clouds which the last night's storm had brought upon them; the plain over which we rode possessed a deadly monotony, for we were not entering Marrakesh upon its best side, where gardens upon gardens of palm-trees stretch beyond the city gates for miles and miles, but our road from Tamsloect was prosaic and dull. Certainly we crossed some of the wonderful underground ca.n.a.ls, which carry water five and ten miles, from springs in the country, into the city--about whose origin nothing whatever is known, tradition remaining silent as to any builder. These great works are merely water-ways tunnelled through the solid earth, not at any great distance from the surface: along their courses the streams are conducted for great distances. There are openings at intervals which ventilate the tunnels: these are kept clean and easily examined by means of the same. The whole arrangement is very rough, very primitive, but perfectly answers the purpose for which it was made.

The crops which we left behind us at every mile looked well, and it was to be hoped would soon make good the failure of the preceding crop: that failure had accounted for the skinny children and lean women whom we had met, and was the reason of the country people's continuous digging for ayerna root, and was.h.i.+ng the same by the roadside and in so many villages.

Meanwhile, Marrakesh and its adobe walls, of a sad yellow-pink tone, grew nearer and nearer, till at last the long line of crumbling tapia was but a short distance off, and the Bab-el-Roub, a ma.s.sive gateway, plainly to be seen. Just outside the walls, Mr. Miller, one of the missionaries, met us: he had one piece of news, which carried with it regret wherever it was heard across the length and breadth of the British Empire--the death of Cecil Rhodes. Under the Bab-el-Roub we rode into the city of crumbling walls and silent sandy roadways: somewhat of a deserted city, the great southern capital appeared to be at first; but then we were nowhere near its heart, and the half of it is gardens and quiet houses, while a small part only, is wholly full of vitality: the whole is crumbling to pieces, and strange of all strangest cities ever seen.

We rode straight to Kaid Maclean's house, lent us by Lady Maclean--the best house in Morocco City, over-looking one of the many market-places, and that open s.p.a.ce in which story-tellers and snake-charmers, surrounded by a dense circle of admirers, cater to an attentive throng. The house was empty, and we "camped" in several of the rooms, lunching in a long gallery which looked straight out on to the Atlas Mountains: the mules went into a capacious stable; the servants made themselves comfortable in the kitchens. It is hard to find house-room in Marrakesh: of course a hotel is unheard of, nor is camping-ground to be met with easily. There are no foreign consuls in this far-off city, and no English element beyond the two or three missionaries who live there. Travellers have generally to depend upon the loan of some house for the time being, from a holy Shar[=i]f or Moor of some standing; but the house may be anywhere, and comfortable or otherwise. Since the Sultan was at Fez, his army and his commander-in-chief, Kaid Maclean, were at Fez too: hence the reason of the Macleans' house standing empty, within which we were so fortunate as to find ourselves.

Marrakesh cannot be described: it must be seen. It is more suggestive, more intangible, more elusive--that is to say, its Eastern medley of a population is so, and its crumbling tapia-walled houses are so--than any other Moorish city. More ghosts should stalk the half-deserted yellow roadways of Marrakesh, more mysteries be shrouded within the windowless walls, than a man of Western civilization could conceive.

It is a vast city--other writers have chronicled the number of square miles which it accounts for--and yet, in spite of its size, the sum-total of souls it contains is not overwhelming. There are gardens everywhere, stretch after stretch of palm-trees, acre after acre of fruit-trees, and wedged among them all, lie the flat roofs, swarm the endless throng which spells humanity; and the oddest, most varied humanity--Arabs and negroes, men from the Sus, from the Sahara, from Draa, Berber hillmen, tribesmen from the Atlas, a tumultuous mult.i.tude, a hive of bees of whom no census has ever been made. We were among them all, the first time we rode through the city. No one walks in Marrakesh: as a matter of fact I did later on, often enough, sometimes alone, getting somewhat jostled in the narrow ways--beyond that in no way inconvenienced. But every one who can, is on a mule or a long-tailed countrybred, pus.h.i.+ng along at a foot's pace, crying out now and then, and avoiding this pair of black toes, that coffee-coloured bare heel.

Beyond the wall, covered with nails, whereon heads are fastened after rebellions have been quenched and the time of punishment and warning has come, we rode into the land of little shops. Here, in another instance, Marrakesh is unique: the narrow streets were in great part entirely roofed in overhead either by vines or by bamboos; the brilliant sunlight streamed through the s.p.a.ces between the vines and canes, and chequered the seething white throng which eternally pa.s.sed underneath it. From an open street we plunged into the cool shade of one of these arcades. And how it moved! Nothing ever stood still in the Marrakesh soks. Life "travels" for ever and for ever there. Between the shops, themselves teeming with bustle and incident, moved up and down, the throng of white, draped, dignified figures, calling, heaving, struggling, jostling sometimes, chattering always, blotched with s.h.i.+fting yellow sunlight and black shadow cast by the lattice roof overhead. It was a transformation scene; it was a weird dream--weird to the point of seeming unreal, unlike men and the haunts of men, though all the time rampant with _humans_.

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

THE KUTOBEA, MARRAKESH.

[_To face p. 328._]

When the Sultan went to Fez, a party of soldiers and goldsmiths and craftsmen of all sorts went with him from the city of Marrakesh, in number over forty thousand souls. But the exodus made no appreciable difference in the soks. Not only the numbers, but the types of the stream of faces between which we rode were all striking, and each one so far removed from anything at all European. Humanity can indeed be separated from humanity by gulfs impa.s.sable, or gulfs which may alone be bridged over by a violation of nature, on the part of the man upon the east bank or upon the west bank.

The palm-trees wave above Marrakesh, turtle-backed mosques and tall towers rise among the gardens and gleam in the sun, but above and beyond every other feature of the far-away fantastic southern capital one watch-tower rises over everything and rears itself into the sky--the Kutobea, built, according to tradition, by Fabir for the Sultan El Mansur. It stands in a vast empty s.p.a.ce close to the Great Mosque: few people pa.s.s that way--their footfalls are almost unheard in the soft sand; and the lonely tower cuts the clear quiet sky. The Kutobea is built of dark red stone. There is a pattern, alternately raised and sunk, on the faces of the minaret, the sunk part cut deep, the raised part carved and standing out. A broad band of wonderful black and green iridescent tiles, snakes round the top like some opulent spotted serpent. Part of it has dropped away: the gilded bra.s.s b.a.l.l.s, the cupola, are here and there tarnished; but the sun sets, and his indulgent rays swamp every defect, burnish and polish and gild corner-stone and fretted marble and emerald-green tile alike, until the "to-day" of the Kutobea is as triumphant as its "yesterday" of many hundred years. The design of the tower itself--the minaret--is said to have come from Constantinople, as did the Giralda at Seville, which it so resembles.

Of the mosque, beside the Kutobea, nothing was to be seen except its walls, and through an open door avenues of pillars. The huge building has an Arabic name meaning "The Mosque of the Books"; for what reason--who can tell?--tradition is silent.

Marrakesh itself is supposed to have been built upon the site of an immensely old structure, the ancient Martok. As it is now, Yusuf-ibn-Tachfin founded it in 1072, a city which covers almost as much ground as Paris--a purely African city. Fez, Tetuan, Tangier, have Spanish blood in them: Marrakesh is African to the core. Arabs here are in a minority: the spare Saharowi type, the shaved lip and cheeks and pointed chin-tuft of the Berber race, men from the mysterious sandy steppes below Cape Bojador, Soudanese blacks, men from Wadnoon--one and all congregate in this city. Even the music and songs are, naturally enough, all African, with the strange interval, the rhythm which halts and races where no European music ever halted or raced; and the tom-tom, the gimbri, the ear-piercing Moorish flute, all fall upon the English ear as things intensely strange and strongly fascinating.

Marrakesh boasts no aristocracy: it is a city of the people. It has few Shar[=i]fs: it is a land of "traders," speculating, toiling, intriguing; between its yellow adobe walls, and its whitewashed dazzling walls, amidst its dense metallic semi-tropical vegetation, up and down its sandy silent ways, they live and die. Its fountains are beautiful: _Shrab-u-Schuf_ (Drink and admire) is inscribed on one of them. But it is not by its architecture that Marrakesh stands and falls; rather by a personality all its own--by its many ruined walls, by its deserted streets, by the hot pulse of life throbbing imperiously through its arteries crowded to suffocation with humanity, by its flaring African sunlight, by the figures which can never be other than picturesque, by a thousand impressions which can never die. And by reason of all this Marrakesh is great.

Once upon a time it was impossible for an Englishman to see the Slave Market. Owing partly to the radical hatred of Europeans, partly to the suspicious and seclusive nature of the Moor, the presence of foreigners in the sacred Slave Market was tabooed. Not that the Nazarene was "taken up" or turned back if he showed his face inside the courtyard: on the contrary, he was allowed to walk in, and apparently no eye was aware of his presence. And yet in a few moments he would find himself alone. The Slave Market had vanished, had melted away: a line of disappearing backs was all which was to be seen. Supposing a Moor had connived at this attempt on the part of a Nazarene to see slaves being sold, that Moor disappeared, by order of the Sultan, and there was a funeral later on in the day.

However, while we were in Marrakesh, less rigorous orders were in vogue.

Having come prepared to see the market disguised in native dress if necessary, we found that we were able to go there without much difficulty, and only escorted by one of the missionaries and a servant.

Though slaves are bought and sold through the length and breadth of Morocco, it is not possible in any other city than Marrakesh for the European to see or know much about it. In the coast towns the sales are conducted privately. In Fez it is probable that they might be attended by others than Moors; but at the time of writing I take it that no wise European, if such should be there at all in these unquiet times, would venture to put himself into a position likely to attract all the bullets and knives in Fez in his direction.

Just at sunset--6.30, I think--the Slave Market in Marrakesh opens, and we went in. To some ears it would no doubt have sounded the strangest anomaly, that prayer to the Most High G.o.d, with which the sale was prefaced; but a Mussulman hallows every action, right or wrong, with a pet.i.tion; besides which slavery is lawful and good in his eyes, is approved of and permitted by Mohammed in the written book of the Kor[=a]n; is, in short, a part of the scheme of Nature which it were a serious mistake not to use and enjoy. So the line of auctioneers formed up, held out their hands, prayed, invoked a blessing over the proceedings, mumbling in sonorous tones for a few moments. Then silence.

It was over: the sale began. There is nothing more easy than to be theatrical and emotional in describing scenes of this sort--one has read of them scores of times: words such as "degrading" and "harrowing" rise up in the mind's eye, coupled with violent epithets and stinging clauses.

And yet, finding oneself in the centre of another just such a scene, one realized how impossible the thing was, to understand, or to feel, beforehand, and how curiously it played upon the emotions. Walking into the market with a sobriety, with a cold, critical interest such as a Nero may have felt towards his victims, one divined early in the proceedings that the scene tended unduly to intensify emotion. Truly no men think alike: a vast chasm yawns between the natures of the slave-trader and the European: that chasm is a universal education. To realize all which separates a native of Africa from a Frenchman or an Englishman, and the difficulties which lie in the way of promoting an understanding between the two, visit such a place as the Slave Market in Marrakesh.

Groups of slaves, more or less gorgeously dressed, some in rags where nothing better could be afforded, were sitting far back in little covered-in recesses which lined the square. All round the square stood, or sat upon their heels, intending purchasers, for the most part middle-aged elderly men, sleek and fat, in turbans and soft linen, white beyond reproach. Each auctioneer, the prayer over, advanced to the groups of slaves, and led out one or perhaps two or three, and paraded them round and round the square under the eyes of the buyers. At last a bid was made: the auctioneer walked on, pus.h.i.+ng the slaves in front of him, and calling out the amount of the bid. A higher bid was made: he shouted out that bid, and still walked on. Then a purchaser signed to him that he wished to look at the slaves. The auctioneer at once marshalled the women or woman slave (there were many more women than men) up to the Moor who wished to examine her. She squatted in front of him, while he looked at her teeth, felt her arms, neck, and legs, and in a low voice asked her a string of private questions. After a time the woman was allowed to get up, the auctioneer called out the latest bid for her, and walked her on.

Probably some one else would examine her "points," and another and another; and her price would go up till the auctioneer should have got what he wanted, and the woman would be handed over to her new master.

Some of the slaves walked round with a profoundly indifferent air--none of them looked in wild spirits; but, on the other hand, it was "Kismet"

rather than misery which was written on their faces. It is a rare thing for any slave to object violently or to make any scene: as a rule they knelt down obediently enough in front of the fat Mohammedans, who thrust their fingers into their mouths, took them by the chin, and treated them with great familiarity. But, oddly enough, on one of the nights we attended the market a scene did occur. A middle-aged woman, absolutely refused to walk round--we were told probably because she had been parted from her child, and could not bear to be sold. The poor creature wept wildly, and hid her face in the red cloth round her head. She was, however, in the end forced along like a recalcitrant mule, her cloth torn off, herself made to kneel down at the bidding of a group of traders, and undergo the usual examination. Some of the young girls looked shame-faced, shuffling along behind or in front of the auctioneers with bent heads. The sad middle-aged woman fetched in the end seven pounds ten s.h.i.+llings. A little child was going for three pounds ten. A girl of thirteen--that is, at her very best--was selling for fifteen pounds: she was of course unusually attractive.

The slave trade of Africa receives an apparent stamp of legality from the fact that religious warfare and the taking of prisoners in war and making them slaves are looked upon as Divine inst.i.tutions. There is no obligation on the Mussulman to release slaves, and as long as wars and raids last, the ma.s.s of slaves in Mohammedan countries tends rather to increase than otherwise, their progeny ever adding to the original number. There is no restriction as to the number of slaves or concubines which a Moor may have: it entirely depends upon his purse. His women are his luxury, and an expensive one. A concubine may be sold at any moment, and the position is thus precarious and varied: it has one saving clause, which I have already explained--the woman who bears a son to her master is free, and at his death his property will be divided between the sons of concubines equally with the sons of his wife and wives. Mussulman raids still continue against the negroes of Central Africa, against tribes in Persia, in Afghanistan, and other parts of the world; indeed, as long as Mohammedanism lasts, there is very little chance of the abolition of slavery.

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

THE WAD-EL-AZELL.

[_To face p. 334._]

One afternoon we went over the garden belonging to the late basha of Marrakesh--Ben Dowd--almost the only garden I have ever seen in Morocco which had in it flowers; and these were roses from Spain, valuable and beautiful, the pride of the basha. There was a charming summer-house half built, and a conservatory nearly finished, in different parts of the garden. In the midst of his prosperity, only eight months before, Ben Dowd had been arrested and put into prison. It was the old tale of jealousy. The Grand Wazeer was afraid of the basha, and in order to secure himself from harm succeeded in having Ben Dowd deposed and put entirely out of harm's way. Though an explanation is always forthcoming for violent proceedings such as the above, it would be unwise to a.s.sume in Morocco that the explanation had a grain of truth in it. Wheels within wheels; intrigue after intrigue; lie, topped by lie, make up the sum of Moorish diplomacy, and render the coil of politics in that country an absolutely fascinating study, not because it is so surrept.i.tious, but because it is clever as well as cunning, and all the time involves bigger interests than ever appear on the tapis--interests which concern France, Austria, England, Germany, and other Powers, all of whom struggle for a finger in the seething pie.

To return to Ben Dowd. He was "detained" in a house--not ignominiously committed to the common gaol, an unusual respite--allowed twelve s.h.i.+llings a day, and his wife's company. He was in Fez with these restrictions at the time we were looking over his gardens; and half of his wives were left behind at his own house, costing him a pound a day, we were told, in the face of which his allowance seemed inadequate.

When the Government seized him, no money was found in his house; but three hundred thousand dollars' worth of goods in the shape of carpets, mirrors, gilt bedsteads, etc., were confiscated. His post, however, is still vacant: he is a good man, and possibly the Government will repent of its hasty step, and in due time restore such a valuable servant to favour. On the other hand, Ben Dowd may be ruined for life.

The bashas and kaids of Morocco were all gnas.h.i.+ng their teeth, while we were at Marrakesh, over the new system of taxation, which the Sultan and a certain progressive member of his Government, are endeavouring to introduce into the country. The main idea in these new regulations is, that governors will be paid specified salaries by the Government--that they will collect taxes as usual, but send the amount of money collected intact to Court, not, as has been the custom hitherto, docking off the half, it may be, and pocketing it as their own pay. Again, each province has been lately inspected by a certain number of trustworthy men, who have fixed its rate of taxation. The countryman is to pay so much upon his possessions--for example, ninepence for a cow, three s.h.i.+llings for a horse, twopence-halfpenny for an olive-tree, three s.h.i.+llings for a camel, no more and no less--instead of having the utmost squeezed out of him, which has been the practice of the governors up till now.

The scheme sounds excellent. A letter has been read aloud in every city and country market-place, apprising the people of the new law, and they are delighted in proportion, but scarcely believe that the Government will be strong enough to enforce it. Indeed, it is hardly probable that the new taxation system can succeed unless two important steps are first taken--the tribes must be disarmed, and a new set of governors be appointed to take the place of the old. As long as the tribesmen are armed, there can never be law and order, any more than there can be settled peace upon the Indian frontier under the same conditions. At one moment the tribes will side with the Government, at another they will take the part of a governor, at another they will attack a neighbouring tribe. It is all very well to tax such men justly and to treat them like civilized beings, instead of trampling them underfoot, preventing their becoming rich, and holding them to be ignorant devils; but they are not civilized, unfortunately--they have not sufficient education to know when they are well off and to profit by it. Every man of them has a gun, and bloodshed and plunder are life itself to him. Treat him well, he bides his time, grows rich with the rest of his tribe; together they descend upon their neighbours, avenge an old wrong, loot to their hearts'

content, perhaps attack the Sultan himself. But disarm one and all such men, and in the far future a peaceable agricultural folk may reign in their stead. It would be a work of time, but it has been effected before in the annals of history.

The second condition, which would go far towards the working of the new system of taxation, is the appointment of new governors. The salary which the governors are to receive, is a comparatively small one, compared with the vast sums which they have been in the habit of acc.u.mulating, by means of extortion and by defrauding the Government. It is hardly fair to expect a man to cut down his expenses, give up half his wives, sell his slaves, and fall in the estimation of those under him. The thing must a.s.suredly lead to dispute, born of peculation, and fighting must be the inevitable result. But if, on the other hand, new men are appointed, who from the first suit their expenditure to their means, a more peaceful working basis will be established.

The old Oriental policy of the "balance of jealousies" will doubtless play its useful part: that is to say, each governor will watch his next-door neighbour like a cat watching a mouse; and if he detect any underhand dealings, or evasions, or infringements of the new law, he will report at once to the Sultan, and thereby gain _kudos_, perhaps a substantial reward, for himself. In this way the Government may receive support at the hands of the men whom it is keeping in order.

CHAPTER XII

THE THURSDAY MARKET--WE MIGHT HAVE GONE TO GLAOUIA--LEAVE MARRAKESH AND SET OUT ON OUR LAST MARCH FOR THE COAST--FLOWERS IN MOROCCO--ON THE WRONG TRAIL--ARAB TENTS--GOOD-BYE TO EL MOGHREB.

CHAPTER XII