In The Tail Of The Peacock Part 3

The river and some oleander-bushes, with green lawns between them, offered all we wanted. Cadour took off his brown jellab, and spread it for us to sit upon. There we lunched and waited for an hour. Some oxen were ploughing close to us, driven in a desultory way by a figure clad in a pair of once white drawers, and a once white tunic with a leather belt.

All which this husbandman wanted being corn enough to supply himself, and no surplus to fall into the sheikh's hands, the field was naturally small. A well-to-do farmer might rise to growing a little maize or c.u.mmin or millet or fenugreek for exportation, perhaps some broad-beans, chick-peas, or canary-seed; but the duties are heavy. Wheat and barley have been forbidden export: the infidel shall not eat bread of the true believer's corn.

Our Arabic at that time was _nil_; there was no chance of a word with the ploughman unless through Mohammed. Such a mere scratch of a furrow as he made, into which the grain would be casually thrown, with never a harrow or subst.i.tution for one! Allah provides, and there is no reason to interfere with his arrangements: "B'ism Allah." Thus will the fields be reaped, the corn ground, the bread made, the loaf eaten, with the same old invocation muttered beforehand: "B'ism Allah" (In the name of G.o.d).

The two little oxen drew the patriarchal plough, hewn out of a log of wood, and shod with an iron point, entirely by means of their heads, to which it was fastened with dried gra.s.s-fibres across their foreheads and round their horns, making a sort of large straw bonnet on top of all which they held high in the air or sideways, with expressions of extreme disgust. In the middle of the field, yoked by the bonnet to a second plough and a fellow-ox, the companion had inconsiderately lain down, to the great inconvenience of its foolish partner, which remained standing, with its head forced into the most unpleasant angle downwards, and the stoical expression of a true Mussulman underneath its bonnet.

On the opposite side of the stream some sheep, suggestive of the lean, tough mutton we fed upon, were searching round for anything in the shape of pasture: flocks of small cows and calves were on the same quest between the palmetto-bushes: somewhere a boy in charge was no doubt asleep.

By this time Mohammed was impatient to be off: the bits were put back into the mules' mouths, we got into our saddles again, and pushed on. In wet weather the track must be a bad one to follow: innumerable streamlets, which have eaten out deep gullies in the clay, have to be crossed, making the going hard upon heavily laden beasts, and after heavy rains impossible. We slipped about a little. Mohammed and his man had their hands full with the two baggage-mules, which they had long ago given up trying to ride. The slopes became more bleak: far away in the distance Cadour pointed out our destination, a white speck on the top of a range of hills, to be seen for a moment and lost sight of the next, as we dipped down on to lower ground. Another hour brought it very little nearer: fresh irregularities between opened up continually, meaning _detours_ to the right or left. A few plover wailed over some marsh: in such places partridge, hares, golden grouse, and quail ought to be found; but since every male possesses a gun of sorts, from the peasant hoeing beans upwards, and is not troubled with game laws or ideas upon preserving, they become rarer.

We pa.s.sed clump after clump of white narcissus in full bloom, and marigolds in yellow patches; but as we neared the hills the country grew wilder, and short scrub, palmetto, and cistus took the place of coa.r.s.e gra.s.s.

At last we were at the foot of the pa.s.s, and the end of our march was all uphill, steep in places, the scrub turning into respectable bushes, with almost a "jungly" aspect. The baggage-mules were pushed and urged ahead.

At last, about five o'clock, the sun setting, we reached our camping-ground, up in the teeth of a rising wind.

Standing by itself, the caravanserai--called a _fondak_ in Morocco--was a white-walled enclosure, with a great open s.p.a.ce in the middle and colonnades all round the insides of the four walls, where men and mules huddled and slept unconcernedly. There is also one room to be had; but filthy, of course, such quarters always are, and dear at any price (the rate for accommodation is not large). One look into the walled enclosure, crowded with transport animals and their drivers, was enough, and we turned to see to the pitching of the tents outside.

The panorama of hills in the west had a red, lurid light, such as Julius Ollsson loves to paint: across the stormy glow trailed a few white wisps of smoke where the peasants were burning wood on the hillside for charcoal. Making a _detour_ of the fondak while there was light to see, we chose the west side for our camp, apparently the most sheltered; but the place is a temple of the four winds and gusty upon a breathless day.

It was quite dark before the men had things ready, hampered as they were by the gale which was getting up and the want of light. We tried to keep warm, and watched the first star come out from a knoll; at last took refuge in our wind-shaken tent, unpacked, and sat ourselves down with outstretched legs, wrapped in a medley of garments, round the little camp-table, lit by the flicker of two candle-lanterns, the flaps of the tents snugly fastened together from within, awaiting Mohammed's first culinary effort.

By-and-by from out of the chaotic kitchen-tent, pitched in the dark, filled with confused commissariat, and further blocked by Cadour, Ali, and their small effects, Mohammed emerged, and handed in through an opening in our tent chicken and eggs cooked in Moorish fat. After a long interval tea followed, and fruit. We sat listening to the wind, writing up a diary and talking till bed seemed the best and only warm place. The gale woke me after an hour or two: the tent, torn by raging gusts, threatened to give at every moment. I got up and took a look outside. A wild, gustful night indeed, of glimmering stars and a great white half-moon--cold too: the mountains stood out sharp; there was little cloud; round our tent a guard of men from the fondak--always supplied, for the safety of travellers--were sleeping on the ground, heads and all wrapped up in their jellabs,--the moon shone on the queer bundles, and on our five mules, picketed opposite the tent door, backs to the wind, munching their barley. Neither of us got much sleep; roused periodically by the hammering in afresh of our strained tent-pegs, by the men's voices, which would relapse into silence for half an hour, and then break out again; above all, by the flapping and rattling of the canvas. For a moment there was a lull, and we heard the mules feeding and the thousand sounds of the night; then a wild blast almost carried the tent away, and the monotonous undertone of voices would begin once more.

We were up early, spent little time over dressing in a stiff breeze, and turned out to look at the weather. Banks of cloud lay piled up in the wind, but rain never comes with the _sharki_ (east wind). The sun was up--no chance of seeing it for the present.

Mohammed boiled eggs and tea, and in another twenty minutes we were ready to quit our exposed camping-ground.

From the fondak to Tetuan the distance is only fifteen miles, half a day's journey. The day before we had done twenty-eight miles, and ought to have started at dawn, avoiding the pitching of our tents in the dark.

To-day we were off betimes.

It was cold, and I walked the first hour or two, Cadour and R. riding behind with my mule, coming slowly down the steep, rocky ridge into the valley in which Tetuan lies. It was a bad bit of riding, a continuous descent, and the baggage-mules fell far behind: the rocky ravine was uncultivated and treeless, scrub and rocks only on the bare mountains.

Sometimes a crest would have a saw edge against the sky, suggesting fir woods; but as a matter of fact every tree worth having which is not planted by a saint's tomb, and therefore holy, has long ago been made into fire-wood, no coal finding its way into the interior of Morocco, and mining being a thing unknown.

At last the slopes gave on to more level ground and strips of cultivation: we had our first view of Tetuan, at that distance little more than a streak of white lying in the shelter of the hills.

It was better going; and R. having jogged on some way ahead, I waited for Cadour, climbed into my saddle, and caught her up. Here and there, perched on each side of us, far above in the mountains, wherever an oasis of green lay between sheltering cliffs, a village had sprung up, an irregular cl.u.s.ter of brown-and-white huts, thatched with cane, weathered to shades of brown, the whole pile hedged with grey aloes and cactus, on the steep mountain-side--also brown--where, unless looked for, they could easily have been pa.s.sed over altogether.

These were the only signs of man; for Tetuan shared the speciality of the fondak the night before, in vanis.h.i.+ng behind intervening hills and never growing any nearer. But the mules this time were fresher, or we had learnt the art of keeping them up to the mark; they broke into a canter, and scampered across the rich-looking flats bordering the river Wad Martil. The Wad Martil is the proud possessor of one of the seven bridges which the Empire of Morocco can show--a somewhat quaint construction, but a _bona-fide_ stone bridge: no carriage could have crossed it; the middle cobble-stones were so steep and rough that they amounted to rocks. But Morocco knows not carriages, and at least it was a bridge.

Once across, Tetuan was not more than a few miles off.

Seen from any height, it is one of the whitest cities in the world, and the whitewashed walls lend themselves to flat shadow as blue as the sky above. Tetuan has been described as "a cl.u.s.ter of flat-backed white mice, shut up in a fortress in case they should escape": it has also been likened to Jerusalem, with "the hills round about." For my own part, it was like nothing I had seen, nor was prepared then and there to cla.s.sify--this heap of chalk, this white city. Not a particle of smoke floated over it: purity and sunlight alone were suggested by the outside of the platter. The Moor has a weakness for whitewashed houses, for long white garments, for veiled women: there shall be no outer windows in his house, nor in his own private life. Ugliness there may be, enough and to spare, inside these white cities--it oozes out sometimes; but as far as possible let a haik and a blank wall enshroud it all in mystery.

None can fix the age of Tetuan: once upon a time the city was on the seash.o.r.e--now seven miles of flats lie between, and crawling mules and donkeys link the two, working backwards and forwards, week in, week out, jogging down with empty packs to the cargo-steamers, and labouring back across deep-flooded country half the year, under solid burdens, to the city. From the flat roof-tops the weekly visit of a merchant-vessel is duly looked for, and a long black steamer lies at anchor for the day in the narrow ribbon of blue sea seen to the east, near the white Customs House, which stands back from the beach.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CLOUDS OVER TETUAN.

[_To face p. 44._]

Southwards Tetuan faces the Riff country, range after range of mountains, inhabited by that indomitable tribe, whose "highlands" are closed to Europeans. The river Wad Martil, between Tetuan and _the Riff_, winds across the seven miles of flats to the sea, and is fordable in two or three places except in heavy rains; and days "in the mountains"--safe within sight of the city--promised us many an expedition, and opened up another world of heights foreshadowed and gulfs forbidden, where the hours were all too short.

Behind Tetuan to the north, the mountainous Anjera country, wild, bare hills abut upon the very city wall.

The name _Tetuan_ means in Arabic "The eyes of the springs," and all over the city water gushes out of the limestone rock--the hardest water, I submit, that ever mortal tried to drink. Such a supply is worth a kingdom to an Eastern city. Every tank, fountain, and _hummum_ (Turkish bath) has its never-failing supply, gratis, from the heart of the hills. The little streets are watered by it, and the sewage carried off on the lower side of the city in a strong current, which--still useful--works primitive corn-mills under the wall on the south side, where a sack receives the flour from a couple of flat revolving stones. A miller was robbed the other night asleep by his sack: the door burst open, and he expected a bullet, but was let off with a clout on the head and the confiscation of his sack.

Having ground the corn, sewage and all is conducted over the land, and enriches the fertile apricot- and peach-orchards, corn-fields and vineyards. The great orange-gardens lie beyond in the rich river-deposit.

There is no want of fruit round Tetuan: May sees pomegranates, apricots, peaches, figs, p.r.i.c.kly pears, in due course; September brings the grape season; acres upon acres of gardens are covered with green muscats ripening on the dry ground, and protected from the sun by branches strewn over the plants.

West of the city, upon which side we rode in, there are fewer orchards and more fields. Since crossing the Wad Martil a string of travellers had caught us up and pa.s.sed us: a soldier as escort led the way; a rich Jew ambled on a fat brown mule hard behind; a muleteer and three starved mules laden with Isaac's worldly goods brought up the rear.

The muleteer, a happy fellow in a brown jellab, sang all the way, as he rode sideways on his beast. He begged a match from Cadour, produced a ragged cigarette from inside his turban, and lit it skilfully in the wind: he probably lived chiefly on cigarettes, kif, and green tea, eating when there was bread; he was lean and sun-dried as a shred of tobacco, would sleep in s.n.a.t.c.hes and often, his jellab-hood over his face to keep off the sun or the dew.

We got very near a pair of snowy _ibis_, or cow-birds, as they are called, attending on two grazing cows. White as geese, parading about on black stilt-like legs, which raise them a foot or more off the ground, they have yellow bills and a slightly puffed throat, in flight extending their long legs behind them. Cow-birds wage war on the parasites of mules, donkeys, oxen, and sheep, hopping about the fields and dropping down on to their backs: they are never shot.

Morocco is by no means short of bird life. Only that morning, as we rode along, we saw several pairs of whinchats, any number of crested larks, some plover, pied and grey wagtails, starlings, and a sand-martin.

Starlings in Morocco fly literally in clouds like smoke, blackening the sky wherever they are surging and wheeling. A single shot into the middle of a flock has brought down from sixty to seventy of them.

We jogged up the last yard of rocky path, and found ourselves in front of Tetuan in rather less than four hours after leaving the fondak, to the satisfaction of Cadour: it was an improvement on the day before. This ornament of the cavalry had now come out in a clean white turban, in view of entering the city: he puzzled us at this point by leading the way off the road to a white wall in the middle of the field, behind which travellers occasionally camp, devout people pray, and sheep are slaughtered at the time of the Great Feast. Here he produced our luncheon. But we, in the innocence of our hearts, would "lunch at a cafe"

in Tetuan, after calling at the British Consulate and leaving our letters of introduction: this, with signs and a Spanish word or two, was brought home to Cadour, and we turned back, skirted the white city wall, reached a gate built in an angle, and rode in under the archway, pa.s.sing a few figures in jellabs reclining and talking beside a great stone water-trough, which was running with fresh water.

Following one of the worst-paved streets upon Allah's earth, whose slippery rocks and pools of brown manure-water offered no tempting footpath, the first Union Jack we had seen for many a long day appeared above a wall and spoke _Britain_: towards it we made our way. A soldier in a long dark blue cloak and high-peaked red fez was sitting at the Consul's office door: he took our letters of introduction, and, without our being able to explain ourselves in Arabic, insisted on ushering us straight into the presence of the Consul--Mr. W. S. Bewicke.

We found him surrounded with papers and cigarette-ends: he would most hospitably take no denial in the matter of lunch, but made us come into the house at once. His long, narrow dining-room was flanked by a small kitchen; above, the same shaped, long, narrow sitting-room was flanked by a small bedroom; a flight of narrow, steep stairs divided all four rooms, and completed the Consulate: this simple plan is usual in a Moorish house of the sort, and admirably adapted for the Eastern habits of the people.

The Consul considered it inadequate. A sunny, walled garden lay in front; big orange- and banana-trees, both covered with fruit, shaded precious seedlings; a large tank, filled with gold-fish, took up much s.p.a.ce under the windows; and in the background a high cane fence penned in turkeys, geese, ducks, and chickens, scratching and squabbling under orange-trees.

There are no gra.s.sy lawns in these gardens: they are devoted to fruit, shrubs, and flowers, bisected into equal divisions by tiled or gra.s.s paths.

People in Morocco, as all the world over, collect curiosities _nolens volens_. Mr. Bewicke's dining-room was no exception. Guns from the Riff, eight feet long; bra.s.s powder-horns, knives, daggers, pistols, engraved and inlaid with silver, ivory, and coral; a long bra.s.s horn, once blown from the top of the mosque, sacred and difficult to get; copper vessels, pots, pans, jugs, bowls; blue china from Fez; quaint Jewish candelabra and lamps; brown and white native pottery,--all found a place.

A young Riffian named Mohr acted as butler, a coffee-and-cream-coloured boy, with a girlish face and a head with a close weekly shave, all except one long love-lock, which, combed out, fell over one ear in a glossy brown curl. It is worn by all Riffs as good Mussulmans, and serves a double purpose, that of scalp-lock when the head is decapitated by enemies and borne by the lock instead of by the mouth, and that of handle, by which Azrael, the Angel of Death, carries the body to heaven on the last day. Mohr wore a Riff turban of brown string, several yards long, wound round and round his head, a white tunic and belt: his legs were bare; and leaving his yellow slippers behind him on the threshold, he moved noiselessly round the table with gracious manners, and, when he spoke, made nonchalant gestures with his hands.

Had we come a few days earlier, we should have fallen in with a thousand men from the Beni Has'san tribe, who had come down to pay their respects to the new _basha_ (governor) of Tetuan, and to offer him presents.

They had fired off a good deal of blank powder, and a stray bullet or two into the Consul's garden door; had rushed about the _feddan_ (market-place), discharging their guns; and had thrown stones at some one. On their way to Tetuan the thousand odd had pillaged right and left, stealing fruit and robbing houses. Finding some women was.h.i.+ng, they stole the clothes, and report said two women as well. At last twenty of them were caught and put into prison, after which the nine hundred and eighty marched back to their own country.

Lunch over, we walked with Mr. Bewicke into the city. While Tangier might be called an anaemic copy of a Moorish town, Tetuan has the strength of a _bona-fide_ life-study, and all that is curiously beautiful, strangely obscure, is unsparingly suggested. The longer a European lives there, the more the paradoxes in Moorish life force themselves upon him, and the more tangible grow certain intuitions which his surroundings convey.

It is not only such contradictions as lie on the surface--the squalor of some filthy fondak, the emaciated raw-skinned donkeys, the bent-backed women, rubbing shoulders with the white-scented robes, the sleek mules, the luxurious tiled houses--these a blind man could see: the under-currents which will puzzle an Englishman more the longer he lives there are known to those only who have dwelt much in Morocco, and they belong by every right to a life which is drawn to the letter in "The Arabian Nights."

The ramifications of the narrow streets in Tetuan would take a quarter of a lifetime to master, and then an unexplored alley might be found, though it is easy to walk across the entire length or breadth of the city in ten minutes. Down a dozen intricacies we dived with Mr. Bewicke, through a labyrinth, half dark in places, where houses built overhead shut out the sun. Looking along the narrow streets, the buildings jostle one another, and the flat blank walls slope backwards out of the upright, at every turn a haphazard colour-scheme in white and mauve and chocolate, in blue and ochre and cream.

Here a long dark tunnel opens into sunlight and shops on each side, with great vines trailed on trellis-work--like a pergola--overhead, and sunlight in blotches on the cobbled paving below: there, just beyond, the _Slipper Quarter_, and we find ourselves in the thick of the tap-tap of the mallets on the hard-hammered leather--dozens of busy little shops on each side, lined with yellow matting, and hung from top to floor with rows of lemon-yellow slippers for the men, rose-red slippers for women, embroidered slippers for the wealthy, crimson slippers for slaves, slippers with heel-pieces and slippers without. In each shop a man and boys at work: the white turbans and dark faces bending over the leather, the coloured jellabs which they wear, the busy hard-white-wood mallets in the deft brown hands, even the waxed thread, the red jelly which glues the soles together, the gimlets, the sharp scissors, have a pa.s.sing fascination for the wandering Moor himself, who sits down lazily in front and talks to the workers. Still more for ourselves. Leather bags are being sewn next door and ornamented with work in coloured leather and silks. Within hearing of the "tap-tap" lies the skin-yard, and the skins are sc.r.a.ped and tanned and dyed and turned into slippers all in the same square acre or two, whence they depart many of them for Egypt and supply the Cairo bazaars.

A few steps farther, and there is a steady clanking of hammers on anvils, beating out hot iron--the _Blacksmiths' Quarter_. Not the old turbaned blacksmiths nor boys with shaved heads, in tunics grimed with age, and leather ap.r.o.ns sewn with red leather, nor the primitive bellows and quaint iron points, all being beaten out for the ploughs, are the features of the Blacksmiths' Quarter; but the sheep. Every forge has its sheep, every shop its pen like a rabbit-hutch, made out of the side of a box, where the sheep lives when it is not lying just at the threshold of the shop in the sun, beside a half-finished meal of bran in a box. Sheep after sheep, tame and fat, take up half the room in the street: there are sometimes a few hens, often a tortoisesh.e.l.l cat curled up on a sack, but to every shop there is always a sheep fattening, as no other animal in Morocco fattens, against the _Aid-el-Kebeer_ (the Great Feast), when every family kills and eats its own mutton.

The little shops in Tetuan group themselves together more or less. There is another quarter where sieves are made, a corner where baskets and the countrywomen's huge straw hats are plaited, another where carpenters congregate, and an open square where rugs, carpets, and curios cram the shops, and so on.

We left the warm heat from the glowing cinders and the cascade of sparks, and walked on into the _feddan_ (market-place), which was teeming with women from the hills and villages round, come in to sell provisions.

The _Jews' Quarter_ lies on one side of the feddan, shut in by a gate at night and locked--a squalid, noisy, over-populated spot, where the worst-kept donkeys and most filth are to be met with. Tetuan is a clean city: on every animal killed the "butchers" have to pay a tax; the tax goes towards the sweeping of the streets once a week, and towards their paving--that is, if the basha is conscientious: the last basha ate and drank the tax.