Romantic Spain Volume II Part 3

The hotel where we put up was owned by Bruzeaud, formerly a messman of a British regiment. It was approached by a filthy lane, and commanded a prospect of a square not much larger than a billiard-table. In the middle of this square was the limp body of a deceased mongoose. At the opposite side of it was a Mahometan school, where the children were instructed in the Koran, and their treble voices as they recited the inspired verses in unison kept up drone for hours. The build and surroundings of the hostelry left much opening for improvement, but we had no valid ground for complaint. The beds were clean, Bruzeaud was a good cook, the waiter was attentive and smiled perpetually, which made up for his stupidity; we had a single agreeable fellow-guest in a Frenchman, who spoke Arabic, and had lived in the city of Morocco as a pretended follower of the Prophet; and, besides, there was that dry undoctored champagne, which it is permissible to drink at all meals in Africa.

There was another hotel in Tangier, a more pretentious establishment, owned by one Martin--surname unknown. Martin was a character. He was an unmitigated coloured gentleman, blubber-lipped and black as the ace of spades, with saffron-red streaks at the corners of his optics. He was a native of one of the West India Islands, I believe, but I will not be positive. Mahomet Lamarty pressed me to tell him in what English county Englishmen were born black, and when I said in none, he gravely e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed that in that case Martin was a liar, and habitually ate dirt.

To avert possible complications into which I might have been drawn, I had to hasten to explain that Martin might possibly have been born in a part of England known as the Black Country. He had served in the steward's department on the s.h.i.+p of war where the Duke of Edinburgh, then Prince Alfred and a middy, was picking up seamans.h.i.+p. Hence his Jove-like hauteur. He had rubbed-skirts with Royalty, and to his fetter-shadowed soul some of the divinity which hedges kings and their relatives had adhered to him. I never met a darkey who could put on such fearful and wonderful airs. Where he did not order he condescended. He showed me an Irish constabulary revolver which he had received from "his old friend, Lord Francis Conyngham--'pon honour, he was delighted to meet him. It was good for sore eyes--who'd a-thought of his turning up there!" Splendidly inflated Martin was when he spoke of "his servants."

This thing was entertaining until he grew presumptuous. If you are polite to some people they are familiar, and want to take an ell for every inch you have conceded. And then you have to tell them to keep their place. But Martin, with the instincts of his race, saw in time when it was coming to that. What a misery it must be for a coloured gentleman of ambition that the tell-tale _odor stirpis_ cannot be eliminated! Martin spent extraordinary amounts of money on the purchase of essences, but to no effect; he could not escape from himself; the scent of the n.i.g.g.e.r, _che puzzo!_ would hang round him still. He was a great coward with all his magniloquence, and when cholera attacked Tangier, left it in craven terror, and sequestered himself in a country house a few miles off.

The two captains and I "did" Tangier conscientiously, with the zest of Bismarck over a yellow-covered novel, and the thoroughness of a Cook's tourist on his first invasion of Paris. We crawled into a stifling crib of a dark coffee-house, and sucked thick brown sediment out of liliputian cups; we smoked hemp from small-bowled pipes until we fell off into a state of visionary stupor known as "kiff;" we paid our respects to the Kadi, exchanged our boots for slippers, and settled down cross-legged on mats as if we were the three tailors of Tooley Street; we almost consented to have ourselves bled by a Moorish barber--Mahomet Lamarty's particular, who lanced him in the nape of the neck every spring--for the Moorish barber still practises the art of Sangrado, and also extracts teeth. But in my note-taking I was sorely handicapped by my ignorance of the language. Arabic is spoken in the stretch extending from Tetuan to Mogador by the coast, and for some distance in the interior; Chleuh is the dialect of the inhabitants of the Atlas range, and Guinea of the negroes. Spanish is slightly understood in Tangier and its vicinity, and is well understood by the Jews. The houses are generally built of chalk and flint (_tabia_) on the ground-floor, and of bricks on the upper story. Moorish bricks are good, but rough and crooked in make. The houses inhabited by Jews are obliged to be coated with a yellow wash, those of natives are white, those of Christians may be of any colour. The Jews are made to feel that they are a despised stock, and yet with Jewish subtlety and perseverance they have managed to get and keep the trade of the place in their hands. That fact may be plainly gathered from the absence of business movement in the bazaars and public resorts of Tangier on the Jewish Sabbath. Your Hebrew does not poignantly feel or bitterly resent being reviled and spat upon, provided he hears the broad gold pieces rattling in the courier-bag slung over his shoulder. He nurses his vengeance, but he has the common sense to perceive that the readiest and fullest manner of exacting it is by cozening his neighbour. At this semi-European edge of Africa he enjoys comparative license, although he is forced to appear in skull-cap and a long narrow robe of a dark colour something like a priest's soutane. But the son of Israel when he has a taste for finery (and which of them has not?) compensates for the gloom of his outer garment by wearing an embroidered vest, a girdle of some bright hue, and white drawers.

The daughters of Israel--but my conscience charges me with want of gallantry towards them in a previous chapter, and now I can honestly relieve it and win back their favour. They are the only beautiful women who mollify the horizon of Tangier: the Mahometan ladies are not visible, those of Spanish descent are coa.r.s.e, and of English are washed-out; while their lips are against the negresses. I have a batch of photographs of females in an alb.u.m--aye, of believers in the Prophet amongst them, for it is a folly to imagine you cannot obtain that which is forbidden. Hercules, I fancy, must have overcome with a golden sword the dragon that watched the gardens of the Hesperides--which, by the way, were in the neighbourhood of Tangier, if Apollodorus is to be credited. On looking over that alb.u.m, the majority of the faces are distinctly those of Aaronites, and most favourable specimens of the family, too There are melting black orbs curtained with pensive lashes, luxuriant black hair, regular features, and straight, delicately chiselled noses. These Jewesses generally wear handkerchiefs disposed in curving folds over their heads, and are as fond of loudly-tinted raiment and the gauds of trinketry as their sisters who parade the sands at Ramsgate during the season. There is a photograph before me, as I write, of a Jewish matron, fat, dull, double-chinned, and sleepy-eyed, who must have been a belle before she fell into flesh. She wears ma.s.sy filigree ear-rings, two strings of precious stones as necklaces, ponderous bracelets, edgings of pearls on her bodice, and rings on all her fingers. Her shoulders are covered with costly lace, and the front of her skirt is like an altar-cloth heavy with embroidery. I dare say, if one might peep under it, she has gold bangles on her ankles. It would surprise me if she had an idea in her head beyond the decoration of her person. As we turn the leaf, there is a full-blooded negress with a striped napkin twisted gracefully turban-wise round her hair, and coils of beads, large and small, sinuously dangling on her breast, like the chains over the Debtor's Door at Newgate. A very fine animal indeed, this negress, with power in her strong s.h.i.+ny features; a nose of courage, thin in the nostrils, and cheek-bones high, but not so high as those of a Red Indian. If she were white, she might pa.s.s for a Caucasian, but for that gibbous under-lip. She lacks the wide mouth and the hinted intelligent archness of the Two-Headed Nightingale, and has not the moody expression and semi-sensuous, semi-ferocious development of the muscular widows of Cetewayo; but for a negress she is handsome and well-built, and would fetch a very good price in the market. The slave-trade still flourishes in Morocco. On the next page we meet two types of young Moorish females: one a peasant, taken surrept.i.tiously as she stood in a horse-shoe archway; the other a lady of the harem, taken--no matter by what artifice. The peasant, swathed from tip to heel in white like a ghost in a penny booth, and shading her face with a cart-wheel of a palm-leaf hat looped from brim to crown, and with one extremity of its great margins curled, is a prematurely worn, weather-stained, common-looking wench, with a small nose and screwed-up mouth. She is a free woman, but I would not exchange the dusky bondswoman for five of her cla.s.s. Centuries of bad food, much baby-nursing, and field-labour sink their imprint into a race. The harem lady, whose likeness was filched as she leaned an elbow against a low table, is in a state of repose. She squats tailor-fas.h.i.+on, her fingers are twined one in another in her lap, her eyes are closed, and her expression is one of drowsy, listless voluptuousness. She is fair, and her dress (for she is not arrayed for the reception of visitors) is simple--a peignoir, and a sash, and a fold of silk binding her long rich tresses. A soft die-away face, with no sentiment more strongly defined than the abandonment to pleasure and its consequent weariness. By no means an attractive piece of flesh and blood, and yet a good sample of the cla.s.s that go to upholster a seraglio.

I have never had the slightest anxiety to penetrate the secrets of the Moslem household, and I consider the man who would wish to poke his nose into its seclusion no better than Peeping Tom of Coventry--an insolent, lecherous cad. I would not traverse the street to-morrow to inspect the champion wives of the Sultan of Turkey and Shah of Persia amalgamated; and I deserve no credit for it, for I know that they are puppets, and that more engaging women are to be seen any afternoon shopping in Regent Street or pirouetting in the ballets of half-a-dozen theatres.

Your lady of the harem is an insipid, pasty-complexioned doll, nine times out of ten, and would be vastly improved in looks and temperament if she were subjected to a course of shower-baths, and compelled to take horse-exercise regularly and earn her bread before she ate it.

How do I know this? it may be asked. Who dares to deny it? is my answer.

But here is a digression from our theme of the condition of the Jews at Tangier, and all on account of a few poor photographs! In one sentence, that condition is shameful. It is a reproach to the so-called civilized Powers that they do not interfere to influence the Emir-al-Mumenin to behave with more of the spirit of justice towards his Jewish subjects.

In Fez and other cities they have to dwell in a quarter to themselves--"El Melah" (the dirty spot) it is called in Morocco city; and when they leave the Melah they have to go bare-footed. They are not permitted to ride on mules, nor yet to walk on the same side of the street as Arabs.

The late Sir Moses Montefiore, a very exemplary old man in some respects, visited Morocco in his eightieth year to intercede on behalf of his co-religionists, and promises of better treatment were made; but promises are not always kept.

CHAPTER VI.

A Pattern Despotism--Some Moorish Peculiarities--A h.e.l.l upon Earth--Fighting for Bread--An Air-Bath--Surprises of Tangier--On Slavery--The Writer's Idea of a Moorish Squire--The Ladder of Knowledge--Gulping Forbidden Liquor--Division of Time--Singular Customs--The Shereef of Wazan--The Christian who Captivated the Moor--The Interview--Moslem Patronage of Spain--A Slap for England--A Vision of Beauty--An English Desdemona: Her Plaint--One for the Newspaper Men--The Ladies' Battle--Farewell--The English Lady's Maid--Albert is Indisposed--The Writer Sums up on Morocco.

THE Government in Morocco would satisfy the most ardent admirer of force. It is an unbridled despotism. The Sultan is head of the Church as of the State, and master of the lives and property of his subjects. He dispenses with ministers, and deliberates only with favourites. When favourites displease him, he can order their heads to be taken off.

Favourites are careful not to displease him. The land is a _terra incognita_ to Europeans, and is rich in beans, maize, and wool, which are exported, and in wheat and barley, which are not always permitted to be exported. Altogether the form of administration is very primitive and simple. It is a rare privilege for a European to be admitted into the Imperial presence, and indeed the only occasions, one might say, when Europeans have the privilege are those furnished by the visits of foreign Missions to submit credentials and presents. It is advisable for a private traveller not to go to the chief city unless attached to one of these official caravans; but by those who have money a journey to Fez may be compa.s.sed with an escort. This escort consists of the Sultan's very irregular soldiers, who are armed with very long and very rusty matchlocks, of a pattern common nowadays in museums and curiosity shops.

Ostensibly the escort is intended to protect the traveller from the regularly organized bands of robbers which infest the interior; but the experience of the traveller is that when the robbers swoop down he has to protect the escort. Christians are looked upon as dogs by all the self-satisfied natives, and treated so by some of them when they can be saucy with impunity. It was my lot to be called a dog by a small fanatic, who hissed at me with the asperity and industry of a disturbed gander, and pelted me with stones. But two can play at that game, and that boy will think twice before he lapidates a full-grown Christian again. But he will hate him for evermore, and when he has reached man's estate will teach his son to repeat the doggerel: "The Christian to the hook, the Jew to the spit, and the Moslem to see the sight."

The Sultan collects his revenue (estimated at half a million pounds sterling a year, great part of which is derived from the Government monopoly of the sale of opium) by the aid of his army; but as he never nears the greater portion of his dominions, there must be some nice pickings off that revenue by minor satraps before it reaches his sacred hands. There is quite a phalanx of under-strappers of State in this despotism. For instance, at Tangier there is a Bacha or Governor, a Caliph or Vice-Governor, a Nadheer or Administrator of the Mosques, a Mohta.s.seb or Administrator of the Markets, and a Moul-el-Dhoor or Chief of the Night Police. There is a leaven of the guild system, too, as in more advanced countries. Each trade has its Amin, each quarter its Mokaderrin. There is a Kadi, or Minister of Wors.h.i.+p and Justice, to whom we paid our respects. Justice is quick in its action, and stern in the penalties it inflicts. The legs and hands are cut off pilferers, heads are cut off sometimes and preserved in salt and camphor, and the bastinado is an ordinary punishment for lesser crimes. But the Moors must be thick in the soles, nor is it astonis.h.i.+ng, as the practice is to chastise children by beating them on the feet. Mahomet Lamarty volunteered to procure a criminal who would submit to the bastinado for a peseta. In the market-place I compa.s.sionated an unfortunate thief minus his right hand and left leg. We took a walk to the prison, which is on the summit of the hill, Captain No. 1 thoughtfully providing himself with a basket of bread. What a h.e.l.l upon earth was that sordid, stifling, noisome, gloomy keep, with its crowds of starving sore-covered inmates. In filth it was a pig-sty, in smell a monkey-house, in ventilation another Black-hole of Calcutta. Turn to the next page, reader mine, if you are squeamish. Heaven be my witness, I have no desire to minister to morbid tastes; but I have an object in describing this dreadful _oubliette_, for it still exists--exists within thirty-two miles of British territory, and it is a scandal that some effort is not made to mitigate its horrors. Through the bars of a padlocked door, from which spurt blasts of mephitic heat, we can descry amid the steam of foul exhalations, as soon as our eyes become accustomed to the dimness, a mob of seething, sweating, sweltering captives, like in aspect as a whole to so many gaunt wild beasts. Some are gibbering like fiends, others jabbering like idiots. They are there young and old; a few--the maniacs those--are chained; all are crawled over by vermin, most are crusted with excretions. The sight made me feel faint at the time, the very recollection of it to this day makes my flesh creep. We were fascinated by this peep at the Inferno. The moment these caged wretches caught a glimpse of us they rushed to the door, and on bended knees, or with hands uplifted, or with pinched cheeks pressed against the bars, raised a clamour of entreaty. We drew back as the rancid plague-current smote our faces, and questioned Mahomet by our looks as to what all this meant.

"They want food," he explained.

These prisoners are allowed two loaves a day out of the revenues of the Mosques; but two loaves, even if scrupulously given, which I doubt, are but irritating pittance. They may make cus.h.i.+ons or baskets, but their remuneration is uncertain and slender. Those who are lucky get sustenance from relatives in the town, but the majority are half-starving, and are dependent for a full meal on the bounty of chance visitors. We poked a loaf through the bars. It was ravenously snapped at, torn into little bits, and devoured amid the howls of those who were disappointed. Then a loaf was cast over the door. What a savage scramble! The bread was caught, tossed in the air, jumped at, and finally the emaciated rivals fell upon one another as in a football scrimmage, and there was a moving huddle of limbs and a diabolical chorus of shrieks and yells. That could not be done again; it was too painful in result Mahomet undertook to distribute the remainder of our stock through an inlet in the wall, and we drew away sick in head and heart from that den of repulsive degradation, greed, brutality, cruelty, selfishness, and all infuriate and debased pa.s.sion--that d.a.m.nable magazine of disease physical and moral. It is undeniable that there were many there whose faces were pa.s.sport to the Court of Lucifer--murderers, and dire malefactors; but better to have decapitated them than to have committed them to the slow torture of this citadel of woe. There were inmates who had been immured for years--inmates for debt whose hair had whitened in the fetid imprisonment, whose laugh had in it a harsh hollow-sounding jangle, and whose brows had fixed themselves into the puckers of a sullen, hopeless, apathetic submission to fate. Their lack of intelligence was a blessing. Had they been more sensitive they would have been goaded into raging lunacy.

Let us to the outer freshness and make bold endeavour to fling off this weight of nightmare which oppresses us. Pa.s.sing by the ruinous gate yonder with its wild-looking sentry, we reach the open s.p.a.ce where crouching hill-men are reposing on the stunted gra.s.s, and ungainly camels, kneeling in a circle, are chewing the cud in patience, or venting that uncanny half-whine, half-bellow, which is their only attempt at conversation. Let us take a long look at the country beyond with its gardens teeming with fruit and musical with bird-voices; walk up to the crown of that slant and survey the valleys, the plateaux, the brushwood, the flower-patches, spreading away to the hills that swell afar until the peaks of the Atlas, cool with everlasting snow, close the view. One is tempted to linger there lovingly, though darkness is falling. There is a gift of blandness and briskness in the very breathing of the air. When you have had your fill of the beauties on the land side, turn to the sea, meet the evening breeze that comes floating up with a flavour of iodine upon it, range round the sweeping vista, from giant Calpe away over the Strait flecked with sails on to Trafalgar, smiling peacefully as if it had never been a bay of blood, and finish by the vision of the great globe of fire descending into the Atlantic billows.

Our stay in Tangier was most gratifying because of its variety and unending surprises. Existence there was out of the beaten track, and kept curiosity on the constant alert. It was a treat to pretend to be Legree, and to negotiate for a strong likely growing n.i.g.g.e.r-boy. I discovered I could have bought one for ten pounds sterling, a perfect bargain, warranted free from vice or blemish; but as I was not prepared to stop in Africa just then, I did not close with the offer. It may be a shocking admission to make, but if I were to settle down in Morocco, I confess, I should most certainly keep slaves. There is a deal of sentimental drivel spouted about the condition of slaves. Those I have seen seemed very happy. In Morocco they are well treated; and if desirous to change masters the law empowers them to make a demand to that effect. It is true that a slave's oath is not deemed valid, but Cuffy bears the slight with praiseworthy equanimity. I am sure if Cuffy were in my service he would never ask to leave it, and I would teach him to appraise his word as much as any other man's oath (except his master's), by my patented plan for negro-training, based on Mr. Rarey's theories. As the land about Tangier was rated at prairie value--an acre could be had for a dollar--I might have been induced to invest in a holding of a couple of hundred thousands of acres, but that my s.h.i.+p had not yet come within hail of the port. What a healthy, free, aristocratic life, combining feudal dignity with educated zest, a wise man could lead there--if he had an establishment of, say, three hundred slaves, a private band, a bevy of dancing girls, Bruzeaud for _chef_, an extensive library, sixteen saddle-horses, and relays of jolly fellows from Gibraltar to help him chase the wild boar and tame bores, eat couscoussu, and drink green-tea well sweetened. He should Moorify himself, but he need not change his religion, and if he went about it rightly, I am sure, like the village pastor, he could make himself to all the country dear. Take the educational question, for example. If he were diplomatic he would pay the school-fees of the urchins of Tangier.

These are not extravagant--a few heads of barley daily, equivalent to the sod of turf formerly carried by the pupils to the hedge academies in dear Ireland, and a halfpenny on Friday. He should affect an interest in the Koran, and make it a point of applauding the Koran-learned boy when he is promenaded on horseback and named a bachelor. He might--indeed he should--follow the career of his _protege_ at the Mhersa, where he studies the principles of arithmetic, the rudiments of history, the elements of geometry, and the theology of Sidi-Khalil, until he emerges in a few years a Thaleb, or lettered man. Perhaps the Thaleb may go farther, and become an Adoul or notary, a Fekky or doctor, nay--who knows?--an Alem or sage. Ah! how pleasant that Moorish squire might be by his own ruddy fire of rushes, palm branches, and sun-dried leaves; and what a profit he might make by judicious speculation in jackal-skins, oil, pottery, carpets, and leather stained with the pomegranate bark! He would have his mills turned by water or by horses; he would eat his bread with its liberal admixture of bran; he would rear his storks and rams. The professors who charm snakes and munch live-coals would all be hangers-on of his house; and he would have periodical concerts by those five musicians who played such desert lullabies for us--conspicuously one patriarch whose double-ba.s.s was made from an orange-tree--and would not forget to supplement their honorarium of five dollars with jorums of white wine. Sly special pleaders! They argue with the German play-wright: "_Mahomet verbot den Wein, doch vom Champagner sprach er nicht._"

From the Frenchman at the hotel, whose knowledge of Morocco was "extensive and peculiar," I acquired much of my information on the manners and customs of the people. Watches are only worn and looked at for amus.e.m.e.nt. Instead of by hours, time is thus noted: El Adhen, an hour before sunrise; Fetour (repast) el Ha.s.soua, or sunrise; Dah el Aly, ten in the morning; El Only, a quarter past twelve; El Dhoor, half-past one; El a.s.ser, from a quarter past three to a quarter to four; El Moghreb, sunset; El Acha, half-an-hour after sunset; and El Hameir, gun-shot. Meals are taken at Dah el Aly, El a.s.ser, and El Moghreb. The houses are built with elevated lateral chambers, but there is a narrow staircase leading to the Doeria, a reception-room, where visitors can be welcomed without pa.s.sing the ground-floor. The walls are plastered, and covered with arabesques or verses of the Koran incrusted in colours. The wells inside the houses are only used for cleansing linen; water for drinking purposes is sought outside.

Among many singular customs--singular to us--I noted that a popular remedy for illness is to play music and to recite prayers to scare away the devil. An enlightened Moor might think the practices of the Peculiar People quite as strange, and question the infallibility of cure-all pills at thirteen-pence-halfpenny the box. The dead in Morocco are hurried to their graves at a hand-gallop. That, I submit, is no more unreasonable than many English funeral usages, such as incurring debt for the pomp of mourning. At Moorish weddings the bride is carried in procession in a palanquin to her husband's house amid a _fantasia_ of gunpowder--the reckless rejoicing discharges of ancient muskets in the streets. Well, white favours, gala coaches, and _feux de joie_ at marriages of the great are not entirely unknown among us. n.o.body sees the Moorish wife for a year, not even her mother-in-law, which I consider a not wholly unkind dispensation. The Moorish wife paints her toe-nails, which, after all, is a harmless vanity, and less obtrusive than that of the ladies who impart artificial redness to their lips.

And, lastly, the Moorish wife waits on her husband. Personally, I fail to discover anything blamable in that act, though I must concede that it is eccentric, very eccentric. These allusions to the Moorish wife in general lead up naturally to one in particular in whom I took a professional interest, for she was as remarkable in her way as Lady Ellenborough or Lady Hester Stanhope, or that strong-minded Irishwoman who married the Moslem, Prince Izid Aly, and whose son reigned after his father's death.

The Shereef has been mentioned. He is the great man of the district, with an authority only second to that of the Sultan himself. Claiming to be a lineal descendant of Mahomet, he is ent.i.tled to wear the green turban. His name at full length is long, but not so long as that of most Spanish Infantes--Abd-es-Selam ben Hach el Arbi. He is a saint and a miracle-worker. He has been seen simultaneously at Morocco, Wazan, and Tangier, according to the belief of his co-religionists, wherein he beats the record of Sir Boyle Roche's bird, which was only in two places at once. Like Jacob, he has wrestled with angels. He is head of the Muley-Taib society, a powerful secret organization, which has its ramifications throughout the Islamitic world. He draws fees from the mosques, and has gifts bestowed upon him in profusion by his admirers, who feel honoured when he accepts them. Exalted and wide-spreading is his repute where the Moslem holds sway, and una.s.sailable is his orthodoxy, yet he has had the temerity to take to himself a Christian wife. This lady had been a governess in an American family at Tangier.

There the Shereef made her acquaintance, wooed and won her. They were married at the residence of the British Minister Plenipotentiary; the officers of a British man-of-war were present at the ceremony, and slippers and a shower of rice, as at home, followed the bride on leaving the building. The Shereef and, if possible, the Shereefa were personages to be seen, and Mahomet Lamarty was the very man to help us to the favour. His Highness lived four miles away, and we formed a cavalcade one afternoon and set off for his garden, the ladies accompanying us. We pa.s.sed through cultivated fields of barley and _dra_ (a kind of millet), crossed the river Wadliahoodi, and ascended a road which faced abruptly towards the hills. An agreeable road it was, and not lonesome; we had the carol of birds and the piping of bull-frogs to lighten the way, and leafy branches made reverence overhead. There were abundance of fruit and such beautiful shrubs that I rail at myself for not being botanist enough to be able to enlarge upon them. There were orange-groves, yellow broom, dog-rose, and apples, pears, peaches, apricots, plums, pomegranates, figs, and vines. It was such an oasis as a very young Etonian in the warmth of a midsummer vacation might have likened to Heaven. The range of hills of El Jebel rose left and right, and at parts presented a steep cliff to the ocean. This ridge is about twelve miles in width, and its fertile slopes amply merit to be lauded as the best fruit-producers in the empire, "as bounteous as Paradise itself."

Mahomet Lamarty, who was our guide, entered the Shereef's grounds to prepare for our introduction; and now the ladies, who had insisted on coming with us, rebelled, and said point-blank they would not salute the Shereefa as "Your Highness." They were impatient to see her, but they declined to give countenance to a Christian who had demeaned herself by wedding a heathen.

"The visit was of your own seeking, ladies," I said; "if you are not willing to treat Her Highness with deference, better stay outside."

They were not equal to that sacrifice after riding four miles.

"Who'll start the conversation?" said Captain No. 1. "You start it" (to me) "like a good fellow, and I'll take up the running."

Captain No. 2 said he would hang about for us outside.

Mahomet beckoned to us and we ventured into the garden. Coming down a pathway we saw an austere, swarthy, obese man of the middle height. He was white-gloved, and wore a red fez, a sort of Zouave upper garment of blue, with burnous, baggy trousers, white stockings, and Turkish slippers. It was the Shereef. I had agreed to open the interview, but when it came to the trial my Arabic (I had been only studying it for two hours) abandoned me. Mahomet did the needful. I thanked His Highness for his kindness in admitting us to his demesne, and he smiled a modest, solemn smile, and looked greeting from his small eyes. When he discovered that I had been travelling in Spain, he asked me--always through Mahomet--what they were doing there. On having my reply--that they were tasting the miseries of civil war--translated to him, he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and slowly e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed:

"Unhappy Spain! Silly, unfortunate people! That is the way with them always. They are at perpetual strife one with another."

And then Mahomet interposed with a parenthesis of his own depreciatory of the Spaniards, whom he loathed and despised. He had fought against them in the war of 1839-1860, and the Shereef had also headed his countrymen, and had shown great courage and coolness in action. His presence had infused a high spirit of enthusiasm into the undisciplined troops.

"Bismillah!" grunted Mahomet. "The Spaniard is beneath contempt. He was almost licked in one battle. He was four months here, and how far did he get into the interior?"

Mahomet conveniently forgot the defeat of Guad-el-ras, the occupation of Tetuan, and the indemnity of four hundred millions of reals which was exacted as the price of peace; but he was literally correct, the victorious O'Donnell did not flaunt his flag beyond a very exiguous strip of the territory of Sidi-Muley-Mahomet.

We were walking as we talked, and by this time had reached the brow of a wooded rise which commanded an uninterrupted prospect of the ocean. The flowery cistus flourished on the eminence, and cork-trees, chestnuts, and willows s.h.i.+elded us from the fierceness of the sun. Behind and around were a succession of richly-planted gardens. We halted, and the Shereef, scanning the horizon in the direction of the Rock, suddenly put a question to me which almost took my breath away:

"Do they buy commissions over the way still?"

"No; that system has been abolished."

"It is well," he remarked, with a scarcely suppressed sneer. "It was incredible that a great nation and a fighting nation should make a traffic of the command of men, as if a clump of spears were a kintal of maize," and as he relapsed into silence a soldierly fire gleamed in his irides, his frame seemed to straighten and swell, and the nature of the prophet retired before that of the warrior.

From where we stood we could ferret out a house with a veranda in front, built on a terrace and begirt with trees. That was the residence of His Highness; but we turned our eyes in another direction, lest we should be suspected of rude curiosity by this courteous African. I was trying to divine the tally of years our host had numbered. No Arab knows his own age, and here it may be useful to tell the reader wherein the distinction lies between the Moor and the Arab. Virtually they are the same; but the name of Moor is given to those who dwell in cities, of Arab to those who roam the plains. Mahomet came to my aid. His Highness had whiskers when Tangier was bombarded by Prince de Joinville. That was in August, 1844, a good nine-and-twenty years before, so that Abd-es-Salam must have long doubled the cape of forty, which would leave him considerably the senior of his Frankish wife.

We turned at a noise--the creak of a rustic wooden gate on its hinges; a figure approached. And then it was given to me to gaze upon Her Highness the Shereefa of Wazan. She was not called Zuleika, but Emily--her maiden name had been Keene, and she came not from the rose-bordered bowers of Bendemeer's stream, nightingale-haunted, but from the prosaic levels of South London, where her father was governor of a gaol. Truly she was a vision of gratefulness in that paynim tract--a rich brunette, with large black eyes, long black ringletted tresses, and a well-filled shape with goodly bust. Her attire was neat and graceful and not Oriental. She was clad in a riding-habit of ruby brocaded velvet, with jacket to match, had a cloud of lace round her throat, and an Alpine hat with c.o.c.k's feather poised on her well-set head. She might serve as the model for a Spanish Ann Chute. Bracelets on her plump wrists and rings on her taper fingers caught the suns.h.i.+ne as she occasionally twirled her cutting-whip. Her voice was bell-like and melodious, with the faintest accent of decision, and her manner, after an opening flush of embarra.s.sment, was cordial and debonair. The embarra.s.sment was because of her inability to extend to us the hospitality she desired. She explained that she had to receive us in the garden as the house was undergoing repairs. After the customary commonplaces, she freely entered into conversation, and took opportunity at once to deny that she was a renegade; she wore European costume, as we saw, and attended the rites of the English Church, for it was one of the stipulations of the marriage contract that she should have perfect liberty to follow her own faith.

"I wish every English girl were as happily married as I," she said, "and had as loving a husband."

It was gratifying, therefore, to note that she found herself as women wish to be who love their lords. She had been married on the 27th of January, and as the Shereef had entered into his present residence but recently, they were still at sixes and sevens. It was his habit to spend the winter in the country and the summer in town. She had been but two years in Morocco, and had not yet mastered Arabic.

"His Highness understands English?" She shook her head, and quickly interpreting a lifting of my eyelids, she smilingly added, "Spanish was the medium of our courts.h.i.+p." And then, as we promenaded the garden path, she became communicative, and dwelt with pardonable expansion on the virtues of her lord and master, who followed behind side by side with the portly Yorks.h.i.+reman. His charity, she said, was unbounded.

Slaves were frequently sent to him as presents, but he kept none. He was modest on his own merits, and yet he was the most enlightened of Moors.

He had visited Ma.r.s.eilles, a war-s.h.i.+p having been put at his disposal by the French Government, and was most anxious to take a tour to Paris and Vienna, and above all to England. It was his desire that railways should be constructed in Morocco, and he was glad when he was told that there was some likelihood of a telegraph cable being laid to Tangier.

"Then," interrupted I, "with your Highness's influence on the tribes around, exercised through your husband, there should be a fair prospect of pus.h.i.+ng civilization here."

"Ah, yes!" she exclaimed, with a glow on her cheeks, "that is one of my dearest hopes, that is my great ambition. I believe that my marriage, which has been cruelly commented upon in England, may effect good both for these poor misunderstood Moors and my own country people."

"Is the Shereef on friendly terms with the Sultan?"

"No, I am sorry to say there is a feud between them at the moment. The Sultan objects to my husband for using an English saddle."