MOROCCO -) IS r BOvNSAL MOROCCO AS IT IS MOROCCO AS IT IS "Mitb an Bccount of SIR CHARLES EUAN SMITH'S RECENT MISSION TO FEZ BY STEPHEN BONSAL, Jr. ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 1893 CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE Decline of the Shereefian Empire . . . i CHAPTER II. The Western Question 14 CHAPTER III. The Sultan Mulai Hassan 36 CHAPTER IV. The Shereefian Court .... 55 CHAPTER V. The British Mission to Fez tz CHAPTER VI. The British Mission to Yzz— {Continued). . . 95 CHAPTER VII. The British Mission to 7EZ—{Conlinued) . . .110 CHAPTER VIII. A White Slave in Morocco ^33 CHAPTER IX. A Row WITH Bushta-el-Bagdadi . . . .142 VI CONTENTS. CHAPTER X. PACK The Shereefs of Wazzan 162 CHAPTER XI. The Saints and Students of the Kairouin Uni- VERSiTV 175 CHAPTER XII From V^z to Fleet Street 204 CHAPTER XIII. From Fez to Fleef ?)TK1LET— (Continued) . .222 CHAPTER XIV. From Fez to Fleet Street— (Ct^;/ //////<.•agt I. MOROCCO AS IT IS. CHAPTER I. DECLINE OF THE SHEREEFIAN EMPIRE. Geographical description — The Aboriginal Maurii — Barbary a Roman Province — The conquest by the Moslem Sulhama — The inhabitants and population at the present day — Tangier as an English Crown-Colony — The Caliphate of Cordova — Death of King Roderic — Christian captives released by an English Embassy — The King of the Algarves — Mulai Ismael — Mulai Hassan — The Pirates of the Herculean Straits — French and Spanish Wars — The efforts of England to avert a catastrophe in Morocco. Western Barbary, the Empire of Morocco, or, as it called by its inhabitants, Al Moghreb-al-Aksa, '' the extreme West," lies between 27 deg. and 36 deg, north lat. and between i deg. and 1 1 deg. west long. It is about half again as large as Spain and Portugal taken together. The surface of the country- is diversified by high mountain ranges. The Atlas traverses the country in three distinct sierras or ridges. The valleys and plains between the mountain ranges are of great extent and of extraordinary fer- tility. The country is well watered by large rivers, and MOROCCO AS IT IS. though the irrigation works, constructed by the Romans, have fallen entirely into disuse. Where agriculture is practised it is with the most primitive implements and in the crudest fashion imaginable. Yet such is the richness of the soil, the crops are often enormous. It is only the fanaticism and the folly of its present rulers that prevents Morocco from becoming once again as it was for five or six centuries the granary of Europe. The coast line along the Mediterranean from the mouth of the Muluya to Cape Spartel is bold and rocky. From Ras-ashacar, as the natives call Cape Spartel, down the Atlantic coast to Laraiche the rock-bound coast continues, several high promontories rising out of the sea to a height of nearly 2500 feet. From Laraiche south the coast is sandy, with many shifting shoals, and navigation is very dangerous. Mauritania, as it was called by the ancients, came into our history in the year V,.Z. 45, as a Roman pro- vince, with Sallust, the historian, as its pro-consul. A hundred years later Barbary was divided by the Emperor Claudius into two provinces, separated by the river now known as the Muluya. The western province was known as Mauritania Tingitana, which corresponds roughly with the Morocco of to-day. The other province lying cast of the Muluj'a was called Mauritania Caesariensis, which covers about the .same territory as Algeria and Tunis of to-day. The western province was inhabited by the Mauri, a fierce and warlike race of men, who were never thoroughly subdued by the Romans. The Mazirghis or Berbers of the present day arc their descendants, and still retain their haughty and ind "pendcnt spirit. The DECLINE OF THE SHEREEFIAN EMPIRE. 3 Vandals entered Africa from Spain, and conquered the whole country as far eastwards as Carthage, until defeated by Belisarius, who recovered the whole of Northern Africa for the Roman Empire, A.D. 534. The Saracens made a dash through the country in 672, but it was only towards the middle of the eighth century that Mahommedan rule was anything like firmly established in the country. In fact it was only towards the middle of the eleventh century that Abdallah-ben-Yasim founded the Empire of the Almorvarides, which signifies men consecrated to the service of God. There have since been many civil and dynastic wars, but a descendant or a reputed descendant of the Prophet has from that day always held the sceptre. At the present day Morocco is very thinly settled, the population not exceeding, if reaching, eight millions, of whom only three millions are Moors, five hundred thousand Arabs of pure descent, two million Berbers , a million and a half Shelluhs, three hundred thousand Jews, and about half a million negroes, slaves brought from the Soudan, or descendants of slaves. There are only about five thousand Europeans in the coun- try, almost all of whom are Spaniards living in the coast towns. The prevailing rehgion is Mahomme- danism, and nowhere are its tenets and observances more rigidly enforced. The chief articles of belief of Mahommedans are that there is but one God, by whose divine providence and absolute predes- tination the destinies of mankind have from eternity been decreed. Abraham is the chief ex- ample of the true believer, and to him as well as to B 2 4 MOROCCO AS IT IS. Adam, Noah, Moses, and Christ, the will of God and His divine laws were often and fully declared. But Mahomet, of course, is the last and far most illustrious prophet. With him the divine missions have ceased, and the Koran must be revered as the only genuine revelation by which former religions are to be corro- borated and verified. England had at one time a great material interest in Morocco. Tangier and the undefined Hinterland, though that delightfully diplomatic expression was not in common use then, came to England as part of the dowry of Catherine, Infanta of Portugal, who married Charles H. It was an unlucky wedding present, and brought with it more trouble than in the eyes of our seventeenth-century forefathers Morocco was con- sidered to be worth. Strangely enough the Island of Bombay formed another part of the dowry of the Infanta, and had the same pluck, tenacity, and enter- prise shown by the luiglish on the Indian Ocean been exhibited on the Mediterranean, it is not very difficult to say what would be the political complexion of North Africa to-day. The swampy, insignificant Island of Bombay grew to be the Indian Empire of to-day, but Tangier, after a chequered career of twenty years under the British ensign, was dismantled and deserted, and, together with the surrounding countr\', fell back into the hands of the Moors. Possibly the good King of Portugual presented it to his son in-law because he himself could hold it no longer against the impetuous and unremitting attacks of the Moors. Certainly the fleet under Lord Sandwich, that was despatched to take possession of Tangier, arrived only in time to save DECLINE OF THE SHEREEFIAN EMPIRE. 5 the Portuguese garrison from being totally annihilated by a besieging force. The government of the day had great expectations of the commercial and colonial advantages that would accrue from the new appanage to the crown, and it is impossible to say at this late date why they were not realized. The unremitting hostility of the Moors, and their sturdy opposition to all overtures of peace, probably had something to do with the manner in which the enterprise was relin- quished. Large sums of money were voted by Parlia- ment for strengthening the fortifications of the town ; a magnificent mole, the ruins of which are still visible above the water, was constructed, extending nearly 2000 feet out into the sea. A secure harbour was formed capable of containing the largest ships, and preparations were even made for "floating " companies to exploit the new colonies. Had England been in possession of Gibraltar at the time, it is more than probable that Tangier would never have been relinquished. Certainly a century later Nelson said that the step was a grievous error, and that Gibraltar could never be considered im- pregnable until Tangier was in the hands of the Enghsh. The interest at first taken in England in the new possession waned very rapidly. The holding of Tangier proved an enormous expense. Hardly a day passed but what there was an encounter between the garrison of the place and the Moors. The gar- rison lived in a state of perpetual warfare, and were constantly harassed by their wily enemies. The Earl of Teviott, the governor of the garrison, lost his life, together with a score of officers and a large MOROCCO AS IT IS. number of men, in June, 1664. The event is quaintly described by Pepys as follows : — " It seems my Lord Teviott's design was to go a mile and a half out of the town to cut down a wood in which the enemy did use to lie in ambush. He had sent several spyes ; but all brought word that the way was clear, and so mii^ht be for anybody's discovery of an enemy before you are upon them. There they were all snapt, he and all his officers, and about 200 men, as they say ; there being now left in the garrison but four captains. This happened the third of May last, being not before that day twelve- month of his entering into his government there ; but at his going out in the morning he said to some of his officers, 'Gentlemen, let Ui look to ourselves, for it was this day three years that so many brave Englishmen were knocked on the head by the Moors, when Fines made his sally out.' " It is not my intention here to enter into the his- tory of the Moors in Spain, or the rise and fall of the Caliphate of Cordova. During the reign of King Wamba, however, the Saracens made many piratical descents upon the coast of Spain. This was towards the end of the seventh century. It is curious to relate that it was at the invitation of a Christian tiiirsting for revenge that the Moslems first entered Andalusia, from which it took so many years and such expenditure of blood and treasure to expel them. It was in the year 710, shortly after the Moslems were firmly established in Tangier, that a Gothic nobleman named Count Julian, Governor of Andalusia, wlio.sc daughter had suffered a great DECLINE OF THE SHEREEFIAN EMPIRE. J wrong at the hands of King Roderic, entered into a conspiracy with the Mahommedans to admit their troops into the southern part of Spain. At his invitation Prince Tarik landed at Calpe Rock, now called after him Gibraltar, and in the same year, after having received strong reinforcements, Tarik fought a great battle near Jarez, in which King Roderic was killed and the Gothic Empire in Spain overthrown. Owing to the expense and the great loss of life entailed by the defence of the place, and the impres- sion which prevailed in the House of Commons that the garrison of Tangier was fast becoming the nu- cleus of a Popish army, Lord Dartmouth was sent out to Morocco in January, 1683, to destroy the fortifications and evacuate the place, which was done after an occupation of twenty years. It is interesting to recall that it was in Morocco that "handsome John Churchill," afterwards the Duke of Marlboro^, first saw service. He was an ensign in the King's Guard, and served in the Tangier garrison for two years ; but there are, I believe, no records extant of his life and exploits there. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Barbary coast was noted as the home of the Salee pirates. Thousands and thousands of English sailors during those years were captured by the pirates off the Moorish coast, and carried in chains into the in- terior towns, whence very few of them ever returned. In the year 1721 the Sultan^ Muley Ismael, noted for his cruelty, the number of his wives and his five thou- sand children, held in captivity in the capital of 8 MOROCCO AS IT IS. iMequincz alone about a thousand Christians. The story of their cruel treatment at the hands of their taskmasters aroused public feeling in England, and a special embassy was despatched by the Government of the day to endeavour to obtain their release. The envoy chosen was Commodore Stewart, of the navy, who was accompanied by Master John Windus, to whom we are indebted for an exceedingly quaint description of the conditions of life in Morocco at the time of which he writes. Unfortunately, the embassy found, on its arrival in Mequinez, that a very large number of the captives, in the hope of bettering their condition, had apostatized, and had been received in the mosques as Mahommedans. They had also married Moorish women. In spite of the entreaties of these men, who seem to have wanted to be relieved at once from their new religious and matrimonial tics, the Sultan absolutely refused to liberate them. Those of the captives, however, who had dwelt in single blessedness and remained true to their Church were liberated, and Commodore Stewart escorted them back to the coast. There were about 300 Europeans in all, of whom about 120 were ICnglish. The original number of these captives in Mequinez had been very great, but ch'seasc, the climate, and the severity of their treatment had more than decimated their numbers. As to how they were decimated, Windus gives the following interest- ing description : — "When the Sultan was angry with the Moors, then the Christian slaves were in favour, and he would sometimes talk to them, caUing tlicm lion Christiano^ DECLINE OF THE SHEREEFIAN EMPIRE. 9 and wishing God would give them their liberty ! His wrath is terrible, which the Christians have some- times felt, for one day, passing by a high wall on which they were at work, and being affronted that they did not keep time in their stroke as he expected them to, he made his guards go up and throw them all off the wall, breaking their legs and arms, and knocking them on the head in a miserable manner." Another time he had one of the Christians buried alive, and beaten down along with the mortar in the wall. Portugal for several hundred years was in posses- sion of most of the Moorish towns on the Atlantic coast, and the second title of the Kings of Portugal to-day is that of King of the Algarves, referring to their Moorish possessions which have disappeared like their Indian dependencies. At one time also Portugal was in possession of the northern coast as far inland as Al-Kesar, and in 1578 Dom Sebastian, King of Portugal, equipped an army with which he hoped to overrun the whole country. He was, how- ever, defeated and killed near Al-Kesar. From this time the Portuguese power in North-West Africa began to wane, until with the cession of Tangier to the English in 1660 it almost disappeared. In 1675 a British Envoy arrived at the Shereefian court for the purpose of negotiating a peace, as Tangier was at that time held by England, although constantly in a state of siege owing to the hostility of the Moors. Muley Ismael favoured the proposal, but a fanatical marabout having told him that the Prophet had lO MOROCCO AS IT IS. appeared to him and said that he would assist the Emperor to conquer all his enemies, provided he refused to make peace with the English, Ismael kissed the dirty face of the saint, and then excused himself to the British Envoy on the plea of not daring to incur the Prophet's displeasure — a specious pretext such as is never wanting when the Sheree- fian Court, to cover its duplicity and hypocrisy, wishes to back out of its engagements, or to break off any negotiation. Strangely enough, over two hundred years later the same line of argument was followed by the present Sultan ; and the same reasons, the fear of offending his fanatical subjects, advanced as good and sufficient for not signing the commercial treaty proposed by Sir Charles Euan-Smith. Owing to the depredations of the Barbary pirates the diplomatic relations of Morocco with the Euro- pean powers have during the last two hundred years been at various times very strained, and with the possible exception of Salee and its holy mosque, [)erhaps every port town of the country has been at one lime or another bombarded by the Christians. Finally, however, an arrangement rather discreditable to us was reached, by which all the commercial nations whose ships frequented the Ilciculean Straits consented to pay the Sultan an annual tribute pro- portioned to the value of their commerce in the Barbary Seas, in return for which the Sultan promised his good offices to restrain the piratical proclivities of the Salee and Saffi sailors. This discreditable tribute was paid annually by the representatives of DECLINE OF THE SHEREEFIAN EMPIRE. II the European powers in the form of a free gift to the Sultan for nearly 200 years. It was only dis- continued after the bombardment of Mogador and Tangier (1844) by the French under the Prince de Joinville. The Spanish war of i860 rather added to than detracted from the very high estimate the Moors have always had of their own military prowess. While the Spaniards fought with great bravery and succeeded in bringing about a peace a stipulation of which was that the Sultan should pay a war indemnity and cede several unimportant patches of his territory, the fact still remains that it took them almost two years to advance twenty miles into the interior of Morocco, and that in so doing they lost by disease and death in battle 20,000 men, and expended as many millions of pounds in munitions of war. The policy of the rulers of Morocco during the past half century has been one of complete isolation from the rest of the world, Mahommedan as well as Christian. In this policy they have thought to find safety from the openly designed encroachments of Christian neighbours. In the execution of this policy the Moorish Government was strongly supported by Sir John Drummond Hay, for over thirty years, I believe^ her Majesty's representative at the Shereefian Court. Sir John Drummond Hay discouraged Europeans from settling in the country. He was averse to the removal of the restrictions the Sultan, with fanatical purpose, had placed on commerce. It seemed to the spectators of the game that he regarded Moorish affairs from the standpoint of 12 MOROCCO AS IT IS. Moulai Edriss, rather than from the point of view of the Foreign Office. Certainly this policy resulted in certain political and strategic advantages. Since the days of Nelson it would seem to have been an unwritten instrument of the British Constitution that no Christian power should be allowed to set foot on the mainland of Northern Morocco, from which they could command the entrance to the Mediterranean and menace Gibraltar. While thousands of valu- able lives and millions of money were being spent by England and Englishmen in the violent laying of hands on various undesirable African swamps, Morocco, one of the garden spots of the earth, was left severely alone, with only Sir John Hay placed over it as a watch- dog to see that no other Euro- pean power should annex it. As far as the strategic position of England at the entrance to the Mediterranean was concerned, this policy was the next best thing to formally taking possession of the country. During the past decade, however, there have been visible on the political horizon signs and S}-mbols which would seem to indicate that the days of the dynasty of the Fileli Sherccfs arc ncaring an end. The Shcrecfian au- thority is growing visibly weaker, and the designs of Spain and of France upon the country daily more manifest. In the belief that if the Sultan could be persuaded to .sign a commerci.il treaty that wouki give the world of commerce a tlesire to still further support the present tixittte in Morocco, and an interest in its continuance, the present situation so advantageous to the interests of the British Empire, DECLINE OF THE SHEREEFIAN EMPIRE. 1 3 at the mouth of Herculean Straits, might still be maintained for a score of years^ Sir Charles Euan- Smith was sent to Fez, His mission was a failure, and England is now confronted with the Western Question, a delicate puny child of the last decade that promises to give Europe more serious trouble than even the " Sick man " who hangs on to political existence at the other end of the Midland Sea. Lord Salisbury has said that the present condition of Morocco may at any moment become a menace to the peace of Europe. Last January M. Ribot was cheered to the echo when he spoke of an armed intervention of France in Morocco. I should not then be accused of alarmist tendencies when I add that the present situation in Morocco is fraught with many grave perils, and that it demands the closest attention in the interests of peace. CHAPTER II. THE WESTERN QUESTION. Prince Bismarck's prophecy — All Christendom apparently united — The disillusion of the " Bashador " on reaching the Shereefian Court— The granary of the world — The Sultan's power — The Embassy of the Shereefs to His Holiness — French dreams of Empire — Another " Scientific " frontier — The Missionary work of the " Roumis " — The diplomatic antecedents of the French Minister — The present French Mission to Fez — Bou-Amcna and his Touregs — Annoying saints — England's policy — The diplomacy of Sir John Hay — The security of Gibraltar — Tangier necessary to Eng- land — The attitude of Germany — Her commercial and diplomatic interests — Spain's cry for "poetic justice" — The success of H'mam's rebellion. WlHLE the red flag of the Barbary Corsairs has long since disappeared from the seas, the political future of the Empire which they founded and made infamous throughout Christendom still causes the statesmen of the Mediterranean powers many a sleepless night. For, despite the many well-meant attempts to keep it in the background, the Western question looms up darkly on the political horizon, ominous of serious diplomatic comi^lications, if of nothing worse, in the immediate future. It is but another proof of the fact that Prince 1) (J Ph to C ri -*-f "5 C/2 l6 MOROCCO AS IT IS. Bismarck possesses the gift of political foresight and discernment, to recall that now some ten years ago, when the coming danger was apparent to but few of us, he saw the lowering war-clouds that are gathering over the western entrance of the Mediterranean, and was the first statesman in authority to perceive how dangerous they were to the peace of Europe. It is a matter of history that long before the Western question had come within the range of other short- sighted mortals, the German Chancellor hazarded the prophecy that towards the close of our century the Western question would cause as great a stir and pother in diplomatic circles, and eventually occasion as much shedding of blood, as did the Eastern ques- tion in the fifties. Let us trust that for once the Sage of Varzin will come a cropper in exercising the functions of a political prophet, which, while not without honour, arc not without danger. But the signs of the trouble that is brewing become daily more manifest, and the indications which multiply unfortunately all point in the same dis- quieting direction. No disinterested observer can escape the conclusion that there is more going on here behind the shifting scenes of diplomacy than we poor occupants of the stalls are permitted to see. Another not altogether novel feature of the imbroglio is, that whenever the wishes and desires of the in- terested Mediterranean powers are authoritatively set forth the claims of all seem to combine and coincide in the most charming manner. There is no clashing of interest, and such a thing as a hitch in the execu- tion of the expressed will of the powers seems quite THE WESTERN QUESTION. 1 7 impossible. It is quite clear that all the nations of Christendom have combined in the spirit of the Cru- saders to bring about a new order of things in this truly benighted country. They would seem to have combined in the most Christian spirit to convert the Sultan and his viziers from their heathen ways, to manumit the black slave, to shield the cringing Jew from his taskmaster and oppressor, and, in other words, to make commercial intercourse with one of the richest countries of the world possible and profit- able. But the moment one of these good " Bashadors " goes to the Shereefian Court en mission^ and endea- vours to obtain from the Sultan the concessions which his colleagues have encouraged him to ask for, he finds to his astonishment that the Christian ambassa- dors who gave him the escort of courtesy for several miles out of Tangier, and who wished him God-speed on his errand, are the most formidable adversaries he has to cope with at the Shereefian Court. Further, should the misguided Moor, seeing how divided are the councils of the Christian nations^ think fit to insult, or even maltreat, the innovator, he will learn with surprise, if, after a stay at the Shereefian Court, he be capable of such an emotion, that the treatment he has met with at the hands of the Moor is viewed by his colleagues with ill-concealed approval, or, at best, fraternally shared in a spirit of Christian forti- tude and resignation truly beautiful to view. The Eastern question can be described as a never-ending serial of twice-told tales. We know to a cipher the hands the interested powers hold, their trumps, and c 1 8 MOROCCO AS IT IS. their weak suites ; but when we come to fathom Ics an dessous of the Western question, our investigations are handicapped at the outset by the fact that in this diplomatic game the cards as yet have not been shown, nor shall I in this chapter give my readers the benefit of any telepathic skill I may possess. I shall not even offer a solution to the question, or propose a panacea in the interests of peace. In appreciation of this self-denial I hope that what I say in regard to the actions of the various interested powers will be received as the result of observations made by one who, though not claiming to be, or deserving to be, accepted as an exceptional authority on the question, still occupies the somewhat unusual position of not having any patriotic bias or commer- cial interest at stake. Indeed I am a citizen of that great power which may suffer in her commerce for a time should Morocco, under a protectorate or in other form, be induced to enter upon the comity of nations. For the moment the Barbary ports are thrown open to commerce, and the corn lands of the country culti- vated in a somewhat less primitive fashion, I am sure that not a bushel of grain will be brought from America to Europe. Morocco will have become again, as she was for so many centuries, the granary of Europe. But there are one or two facts in the great tangle of surmise and conjecture which tend to obscure the subject that it is well to remember. First among these is the fact that the only basis of the Sultan's authority is the ignorance and the fanaticism of his people, and that being well aware of this, the Sultan spares no effort to encourage ihcm in ihcir brutish backward THE WESTERN QUESTION. 1 9 tendencies. Again, it should be borne in mind that so weak is the Imperial or federal power, that only by playing the unneighbourly tribesmen against one another does the Sultan succeed in remaining master of the situation. The combined intellectual force of the Sultan's religious and diplomatic advisers, his fukies, notables^ and oolemas, is engaged in devising some way in which the present system of protection to the native- born agents and servants of Europeans may be abolished. This system, which the Powers have found necessary for the protection of those enlightened natives, who by entering into commercial relations with Europeans have kept Morocco in touch with the outside world, and prevented its relapse into barbarism. In so diminishing the taxable basis of the Empire, and in other ways limiting and restricting the power of the Sultan, the protection system cer- tainly has its drawback. Both in theory and in its workings the protection system is resented by the Shereefs. Still, before abrogating present treaty rights Christian diplomats should be very careful to see that the recently proposed system of mixed tribunals, not only in theory but in practice, offers as effective a check to the cruelty of the Moors as does the present custom of protection without pos- sessing any of its disadvantages. This very strong desire of the Sultan for the abolishment of the present system of protection we have to thank for the most picturesque scene that the kaleidoscope of European politics has revealed to us in the last few years. Without a word of C 2 20 MOROCCO AS IT IS. warning, even unheralded by rumour, an embassy of Shereefs, all reputed descendants of the Prophet, left Tangier in 1888 on a frigate of Her Catholic Majesty the Queen Regent of Spain, disembarked at Civita Vecchia, and, entering the Eternal City as pilgrims, besought an audience of His Holiness the Pope. Their request was graciously granted, and on the following day the Vicar of Christ on earth and the children of Mahomet discussed the protege system. The Shereefs requested His Holiness to intercede with the Christian powers in their behalf, and to exert his great influence in favour of the abolition of the obnoxious system. His Holiness promised his good offices, and the Shereefs returned from the City of Seven Hills to Fez on the vine-clad slopes of Giebel Salah. Nothing ever came of this embassy, but it was a magnificent theatrical coup, and seemed to indicate that the Moors possess rather a fine political sense. For before this embassy the representatives of European powers seemed quite decided on an identical plan of action at the Shereefian Court to put an end to grievances which present treaty rights seem powerless to remed}-. Since this embassy, and as a result of it, their bickerings and disunion have been more apparent than ever. So the embassy should not be remembered simply as an interesting and picturesque pageant, though as such it was certainly unique. France, with her dream of a great ICmpire in North Africa but partially realized, -naturally wishes to obtain strong diplomatic if not territorial position on the Straits of Gibraltar. The demands, however, that I'Vance makes upon Morocco openly before all THE WESTERN QUESTION. 21 the world are so just and so insignificant that as they are not granted we are almost forced to the conclu- sion that the Shereefian Court is better informed as to the real designs of France on the country than out- side observers. Through her accredited diplomatic agents France only demands a new western frontier for Algeria along the banks of the Mulaya, and the cession of that portion of the Touat country, which is undoubtedly the connecting and indispensable link between her Lake Tchad and Senegal possessions and her colonies in Northern Africa. But in addi- tion to these demands France certainly does desire a railway from Tlemcen to Fez, and the French Em- bassy at present journeying to the Moorish capital is empowered by their Government to demand a con- cession for such a railway. This statement will be authoritatively denied from the Quai d'Orsai, espe- cially if the mission is a failure ; but the fact is none the less true. French statesmen in their genial moods admit that years ago they did harbour terri- torial designs upon Morocco, say fifteen, twenty years ago, but they have long since given up such dreams of conquest. With these frank statements it is hard to coincide the presence of French agents and emissaries throughout the country, or to com- prehend the great outlay and the great pains which are being taken by the French War Office in draw- ing up maps of Morocco — and very excellent maps they are. The way in which French agents seem to take a hand in any local uprising or rebellion against the Sultan very naturally excites sus- picions. In making a study of the Western question which 22 MOROCCO AS IT IS. is looming up before us, it should not be forf^otten that France is the country most feared by the Moors. Of French power they have a very appreciative esti- mate. England and Germany and Italy seem far away, and their power is intangible, evanescent. Every now and then a ship of war is seen in Tangier harbour bearing their flags, supporting some claim, but the bombardments that are so often threatened never come off, and the ships sail away. But the red-trousered "roumis" are there, right on the Moorish frontier at h^l-Goleah and Insuffra, only 200 miles away from the sacred mosque of Western Bar- bary. They never draw back. They are always advancing. They have conquered Algeria, Tunis is in their power, and the fear that they may some day undertake the conquest of Morocco is the ab- sorbing thought of the Sultan and of his viziers. In view of the negotiations now progressing in Fez, it will prove interesting to look into the antecedents of Count D'Aubigny, the present French minister-pleni- potentiary to Morocco. It will be remembered by close observers of the political board, that Count D'Aubigny was the Consul-General in Cairo when Alexandria was bombarded. It will also be remembered that he was made responsible for the failure of the I'^ench Government of the day to intervene, an abstention which has never ceased to be regretted by our neighbours across the Channel. The crime charged against Count d'Aubigny was his failure to f(;rcscc the easy collapse of Arabi's rebel- lion and his so-called national parly. The nomina- tion of Count D'Aubigny by M. Kibot tcj the THE WESTERN QUESTION. 2$ Moorish Mission some eighteen months ago was the signal for a howl of indignation from the French press, and even those papers in Paris which are least likely to err on the side of hasty judgment gave vent to loud cries of disappointment. Count D'Aubigny had been allowed to lead the life of a country gentle- man for several years after the Egyptian campaign^ and, as the Radical papers remarked, after giving their unflattering version of the Egyptian incident, should be allowed to cultivate his cabbages in peace. So great was this outcry, that it was perhaps only owing to the influence of M. de Freycinet, the present War Minister, for whom Count D'Aubigny in the Egyptian fiasco would seem to have served as scape- goat, that he was enabled to assume his present post. But even with such a powerful supporter it was not deemed advisable for him to go to Tangier until after a delay of nearly a year, when the newspaper outcry had abated somewhat, and a new Question dujoiir en- grossed the attention of the volatile Parisians. If he ever in the past was guilty of too much consideration for English claims, and a too conciliatory attitude towards la perfide Albion, he never will, in my opinion, after this experience, err in the same direction again. The demands of French diplomacy in the Touat ques- tion, and the loudly expressed wish of the Algerian Government to have the River Muluya as a western frontier, are, as I have said, very small concessions indeed, and if the Sultan thereby could obtain the frank firm friendship of his eastern neighbour, I am quite certain he would grant these concessions and greater ones. But while it is true that the Muluya 24 MOROCCO AS IT IS. where it empties into the Mediterranean is hardly twenty miles west of Nemours, the last coast town of Algeria, inland it will be noticed that the course of the river is distinctly south-west towards its source. The new frontier which the French propose along its banks to the source of the river on the north side of Djcbcl-cl-abart would certainly bring the French frontier within six days' easy journey through fertile well-watered valleys to the Holy City itself. This frontier-line proposed by the French is certainly very scientific and clean cut, geographically speaking, but it should always be remembered that when we hear of the reluctance of the Moors to make the concession that it would certainly place them at a great strategical disadvantage, as the strip of sand and the waterless desert, that is now their eastern border, proved in the days of Marshal Bugeaud, and is now a very strong first line of defence. Up to the present at least, the Sultan has made no concession to French demands in the Touat question ; whether he will be able to resist the importunity of the French Embassy now in Fez, I do not care to express an opinion. It is very generally believed that the main object of Count D'Aubigny's Mission is to reconsider and go over the cjucstion of the possession of the Touat oasis again, though the subject would seem to have dropped out of sight almost entirely during the past eighteen months. The Sultan, as is well known, claims that the desert chiefs of this neighbourhood, the Amhari and the Gourarah tribesmen, have from time immemorial been in the custom of paying him and his predecessors tribute. The French, on the THE WESTERN QUESTION. 2$ contrary, claim that the territory in question is a " No man's land," and that they have rather more right to it than anybody else. To strengthen their pre- tensions and to inspire the Touregs with feelings of friendship, the late Shereef of Wazzan and the Gov- ernor-General of Algeria, M. Cambon, visited the country in great state last spring. They conferred with Bou-Amena and the other great chieftains of the country, and I think it will be found if hostilities should ever break out in this quarter, that the un- tutored Touregs have been induced to take a business- like view of the situation, and are keenly alive to the fact that it is with France that the preponderance of power lies. They have grasped the meaning of the Sud-Oranais railway and its many branches, which, during the last few months have been so hurriedly constructed, and when next it suits the French Foreign Office to make an advance in this quarter to secure their caravan connection with Lake Tchad and Timbuctoo, or for any other purpose, I feel con- fident that the opposition to annexation by the local chiefs will, in a great measure, have disappeared. If Bou-Amena ever sent the Sultan Mulai Hassan dates from his oasis in token of submission after his recent pow-wow with M. Cambon, he will send them no more. That there are good and cogent reasons to justify the desire of the French to annex the Touat I have already stated. It should also not be forgotten that the Moorish tribes on the Algerian border are a great annoyance and a certain danger to the security of Algeria. Indeed the whole country is one nest of fanatical sects, the home of saints who never weary of 26 MOROCCO AS IT IS. inciting the Algerians to rebellion against the autho- rity of the French. Hardly a year passes but what these holy men either go themselves or send emissaries into Algeria, and by their preaching bring about those little rebellions and insurrections which help to make the war budget of the colony so large and French tenure of the colony insecure. After these rebellions have been suppressed generally at a great expendi- ture of money and of life, these saints generally make good their retreat back into Morocco, where they are sure of a warm welcome, and where, safe from any interruption, they plan new campaigns and new troubles for the French. It is on these grounds that the French demand a better frontier line. England's policy towards Morocco has undergone a complete change since the days when Sir John Drummond I lay was the British pro-consul in Western liarbary, and a great power behind the Shcrecfian umbrella. England, or perhaps it would be more correct to say Sir John Hay, then seemed only desirous of keeping Morocco hermetically sealed against all comers, not excepting his countrymen. Indeed, he made no secret of his opinion that El- Moghrcbwas not a proper place for Christians to live in except those who were compelled to reside there officially. This policy, though short-sighted, was certainly very successful in keeping all luiropeans out of the country, and so preventing the incidents that their presence would give rise to. As long as he, through his knowledge of Moorish character, customs, anrl language, was able to hold the com- THE WESTERN QUESTION. 27 mandlng position he did at the Shereefian Court, the Foreign Office never complained. When the late Sir William Kirby Green was appointed Minister Resident in Morocco, the sign of the times could no longer be disregarded. The last market of the world was about to be opened up. Morocco was not to be allowed to remain any longer a stagnant morass outside the pale of human progress and advance- ment. This new policy Lord Salisbury inaugu- rated with a mission he sent to the Shereefian Court in 1887, which, owing to the unfortunate death of Sir William Kirby Green, while in the city of Morocco, resulted in nothing. But this new depar- ture was openly avowed in the speech which the then Prime Minister made in Glasgow, in May, 1891. Having at last, it appears, given heed to the oft re- peated petitions and memorials of commercial bodies all over Great Britain, Lord Salisbury left us all under the impression after this speech, which at the time created great excitement among the Mediterranean powers, that England was about to assume a more energetic attitude in dealing with the Western question. He warned the rulers of Morocco in polite language, it is true, but his meaning was none the less unmistak- able, that their country could not continue indefinitely to bid defiance to international law, or place itself in opposition to the civilized world. The speech was hailed with delight by the manufacturers of Great Britain, who have always regarded Morocco as a suitable market for their goods. It was all the more lamentable after this trumpet blast, or speech that sounded so very much like one, that Sir Charles Euan- 28 MOROCCO AS IT IS. Smith's Mission to the Shereefian Court undertaken and executed in the sense of the words spoken by the Prime Minister in Glasgow, should have been allowed to collapse as it did, and even become ridicu- lous, solely from the want of support of any kind from the Foreign Office. Of course, England's vital inter- est in Morocco is its bearing upon Gibraltar and the free navigation of the straits. Gibraltar has always been considered the key to the western Mediterranean. In this connection it has been well said by an officer of the English army that Tangier is the key guard. The question whether or not Gibraltar, in view of the improvements in armament and in cannon that have taken place in the last hundred years, is still capable of being defended and consequently a place of great strategic value, has been answered in the affirmative by all military experts. I^ut the same military critics are always unanimously of the opinion that Gibraltar could not be defended success- fully if Tangier were in possession of a power hostile to English interests. Let us suppose for a moment that Spain occupied Tangier, and that Her Catholic Majesty the Queen Regent should seize an oppor- tunity when the foreign complications of England and the state of Europe were such as to admit of a possibility i)f regaining possession of Gibraltar, an event which the inhabitants of Andalusia at least seem to have regarded as imminent every month for the past two hundred years. For do not the Royal decrees of Sjiain still assert that Gibraltar is only temporarily in the hands of the ICnglish, and is not the Royal Governor of Algeciras also Governor of the Sir Charles Euan-Smith, K.C.B. From a FhotogyaJ'h by Elliott and Fry. 30 MOROCCO AS IT IS. Rock ? Backed up, as they then would be by the guns ofCeuta and of Tangier, the fleet of Spain and her aUies, even if less powerful than the English fleet, would require a great many more English vessels than England at such a junction perhaps could afford to spare, to secure the provisioning of the rock garrison, even if it did not prove impossible to raise the siege, liut with Tangier in the hands of the Eng- lish, or unfortified and in the possession of the indolent Moors, Gibraltar would become once again well-nigh impregnable, and with Tangier as its base of food supply and Gibraltar for munitions of war and refit- ting, a smaller English fleet could hold the mouth of the Mediterranean against all comers, than under the circumstances that I have outlined above would be necessary to convoy a cargo of grain under the guns of the mighty rock fortress. If Tangier falls into the hands of the TVench it could not be defentlcd, and it might as well be returned to Spain. I think if people had it brought home to them, the abs<>lute necessity of Tangier to the security of Gibr.iltar, and consequently to the integrity of the Empire, they would cease from regarding Morocco as an out-of-the-way place, in whicii ICngland has no right to meddle, and that steps would be taken to provide that Morocco the " feeder " of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean fleet in time of peace, be still open to the fleet as a necessary base of supplies in time of war. W'iiat England wants now in Morocco is to obtain for her merchandise an open market for her ships, the unrestricted navigation of the straits, and from the valley of the Scbou, which was the granary THE WESTERN QUESTION. 3 I of the world in centuries past, corn for her hungry milHons, To obtain these things England must re- gain the supremacy of influence at the Shereefian Court. The Moors have fallen into the hands of crafty advisers of late years, and they have been in- duced to believe that so necessary is their friendship to England's position at the entrance of the Mediter- ranean, that come what may she is prepared to defend their independence and maintain the integrity of the Shereefian Empire. The Sultan and his advisers should be given to understand in unambiguous terms what an insignificant pawn the power they represent really is in the political game that is being played be- tween the Herculean Pillars. They should be forced to recall the intervention of England after the naval demonstration of the French in 1844, ^"d the bom- bardment of Tangier by the Prince de Joinville in 1844^ and the manner in which Sir John Hay saved the integrity of their Empire in i860. They should also be given to understand that when next they are in need of a strong protector, a need which, as is well known, may make itself felt any day, England may be found lukewarm or more inclined to exact a sub- stantial return for friendly offices than on former occasions. The position assumed by German diplomacy in Morocco is most interesting. Ten years ago I believe the interests of the great central European Empire were represented in Morocco by a simple consul. Two years ago His Excellency Count Tattenbach went on a mission to Fez, with the largest and most brilliant suite that has ever accompanied a 32 MOROCCO AS IT IS. Christian envoy to the capital of the Mogrcbbin Moslems. I believe his military staff alone numbered twenty-two officers. Of course this sudden growth of German interest in a country lying so well outside of its political sphere was not purely academic. The mission occasioned much comment and gave rise to many conjectures. The possibility of a German protectorate over the country has again and again been mentioned, and should not, in my opinion, be sneered at as impossible or as out of the realm of practical politics as has been the case. The Colonial- Menschen of Hamburg and Bremen, who induced the Empire to spend so many millions of marks in obtaining possession of the swamps about Bagamoyo, mi^ht succeed in inducing the German Government to endeavour to gain control of the most fertile country in the Dark Continent. By subterfuge and all manner of chicanery the Moors during the last fifty years have succeeded very well in holding their own, and in keeping their Empire impermeable to all European ideas and civilizing influences. But if driven to a corner they are quite capable of placing their country under the political tutelage of the German lunperor. They might adopt this course in the first place merely to spite those powers whose designs on their country arc more open and undis- guised, and in the second place because they may be of opini'^n that Germany does not care for any more African colonics, and that the relations thus entered on would never become those of master and man. That such a course of action is not entirely impro- bable is shown by the fact that fifteen years ago the THE WESTERN QUESTION. 33 Sultan of Morocco sent an embassy to the President of the United States, with a request that he should take them under his protection. This embassy was stopped by the Minister of the United States in Morocco in Tangier as soon as they made known to him the object of their mission. But perhaps after all the sudden interest that Germany has taken in Morocco is due to commercial reasons only. Cer- tainly as a result of it the exports from Germany to Morocco have increased five hundredfold. German goods are to be met with throughout the whole country, and they are, in my opinion, displacing English wares and manufactures in almost every market. The gross value of English imports is still considerably superior to the German ; but unless English merchants bestir themselves in two or three years the balance of trade will be in favour of their new commercial rival. It is thought by not a few that the unexpected activity of the Germans in Morocco is due to a desire to watch and hinder French aspirations for empire in Northern Africa, and it has struck many as a plausible explanation of it, that after having attained a position of importance in Morocco, by gracefully yielding to the French on the banks of the Muluya, an improvement in the relations of the two powers might be brought about on the banks of the Vosges. SpaiUj of course, pants for the rich and fertile river lands of Morocco as does the hart for cooling brooks. I mean, of course, new Spain, the enthusiastic and sentimental youth of the universities and of the great cities, not the long-headed business men who manage D 34 MOROCCO AS IT IS. with difficulty the affairs of the nation that has seen better days, who find their time fully occupied in skating round the craters that indicate the volcanic substrata over which the}* live. The conquest of Morocco by Spanish troops appeals to anyone with a sense of poetic justice. It seems only right that the Spaniards should lord it over the Moors who for so many centuries ruled Spain. But one requires very little knowledge of the two countries as they are to-day to see that this dream for the present is not likely to be realized. This is a practical age, and poetic justice is not often considered in practical politics. Spain will always be against England in any dispute in which the supremacy or the possession of the western entrance to the Mediterranean is involved ; first, because of Gibraltar, and secondly, because it is generally believed in Spain, and rightly believed, that it was England who robbed her of the hardly won fruits of the Moorish cam- paigns in 1859 and i860; but except as an ally of some greater power I do not believe that Spain will play a very prominent part in the settle- ment of the Western question. In the present state of her finances and of her army, she has not the taillc to satisfy aspirations which arc certainly quite natural. The policy of Italy is to be found in the word " Anti-Ercnch." And the Consulta will go to any length rather than witness a repetition here of the Tunisian Protectorate. Incidentally Italy hopes to play her cards in Morocco in such a way as to enter upon the possession ol Tripoli without the firing of a gun. THE WESTERN QUESTION. 35 The success of El H'mam and the Andjerite Highlanders in holding their own against the very- numerous force the Sultan sent against him, is but another indication of the general disintegration of the Shereefian Empire. Instead of being drawn and quartered, or shaken in the spiked Ghelabir, the Andjerite notables who supported H'mam have been rewarded, in the prosaic language of a Fez corre- spondent, with a "new suit of clothes all around." Though according to the legend that ran through the Andjera hills last winter, when the bold brigand escaped from his prison in Fez, H'mam bears a charmed life, I am afraid a way will soon be found to terminate his successful career, possibly by the tradi- tional method of arsenical poisoning. Still I may be in error. H'mam has to-day more powerful protectors than Sid Absalom and Sidi Boazza, in whose sanc- tuary in the beautiful Sahel wood he has so often taken refuge in the days before he had gathered about him the large following that is his to-day. D 2 CHAPTER HI. THE SULTAX MULAI HASSAN. Absolute Ruler of all True Believers — His personal appearance — His fear of assassination — "To dole unequal laws unto a savage race" — Three Cabinet Councils a day — How the Empire is subdivided and governed — The functions of Bashaws and Caids — The Sultan at his correspondence — His unpopularity in Fez — His fear of the approach of tlie French from the East — The Algerian frontier — The Sul- tan's new Palace at Tafilct — Anecdotes told about the Sultan — The Sultan at the head of his army. Tni: present dueller in the plcas:int shade of the scarlet umbrella, the emblem of Shereefian sove- rc'v^niy, is Mulai-al-IIassan, the fitteenth or sixteenth monarch of the Fileli dynasty, officially known as the Emir-al-Muniemin, or absoltite ruler of all true believers. He is better known, however, through the length and breadth of his Empire as " Seedna," "the great lord." The Sultan is every inch of him a king and a ruler of men. As to his age authorities differ. Some say he is forty, and others say he is sixty. It is a question, however, in which the Moor takes little interest, and certainly it would never occur to any of the courtiers to ask of their lord his age, nor is it '-■■•^aK."<^\ ■.?;.? * '*i?^'' ". 4 -^4^4 I I V -— O ^2 . . I/: (U b "^ .— *j — .in rt p 3 3 S3 w5 > o a ci 1) H H -3 38 MOROCCO AS IT IS anywhere set down. There arc locusts in Morocco but no birthday-books. But Mulai Hassan does not appear to be more than filty. He is evidently in the enjoyment of vigorous health ; in fact the surgeon who accom- panied the British Mission to Fez, at the request of the Sultan made a careful medical examination, tapped him all over, and pronounced him "a very good life." Personally he is very handsome ; his forehead is high, and boviht\ not receding like those of so many of the Moors. His expression is com- manding ; his eyes are fearless, and his gaze searching. The brave, hardy life he led in his youth, when there seemed no probability of his coming to the throne, has left him with a magnificent physique and an iron constitution which have helped him to bear up under the heavy cares of his office. Twenty years ago, Edmond de Amicis, the Italian traveller and writer, described him as a dcmi-god, a centaur on horseback, on foot a dusky Apollo ; but, when I saw him last summer, it was quite apparent that he had been a demi-god too long — by twenty years. His under lip protruded, and wore a very sensual expression, and his eyes were dull, and at times expressionless. ICvery now and then a suspicious, fearful look flashes across his face, even though he is engaged in perform- ing some public function, and you see that the monarch of Mauritania is subject to the same fears, the same ohst'ssioii, that torture the minds of kings in cc>ldcr climes — he, too, lives in daily fear of assassination. While his features arc indicative of THE SULTAN MULAI HASSAN. 39 the self-indulgence that has characterized his later life, it should be said that the Sultan is admittedly a stranger to many of the unspeak- able vices of his court and of his chief capital, which is so notoriously vicious, that at least in one widely-read Encyclopjedia the statement is made that Fez is the most corrupt and immoral city on the face of the earth. However, let no zealous seeker after human documents set out with this information for Fez to gather fin-de-sicde details of decadent manners. The hated kaffir may spend months and years in the ^Moorish capital with- out coming in contact with the social movement, and after staying as long as you like, on coming away, you could only say truthfully of your own knowledge that the Fazzi are addicted to lying and to prayer, and to passing their days in industriously going to mosque, or indolently lolling in the sun. On his face, however, the Sultan bears unmistakable marks of the hard life he has led these twenty years. The following lines are written in the hope of conveying some idea of his daily life, his activity as a soldier and as a statesman, in a word to give an idea of what manner of man the supreme Sultan of Morocco is. Of one thing there could be no two opinions, the Sultan does play his role well. At the head of his motley army, in his audience chamber, at the religious fetes, prostrating himself before the tomb of Mulai Edriss, he is always peerless, always Sultan. His dignified bearing is the same whether it be to a naked muleteer, who comes before him to beseech 40 .}/ORQCCO AS IT IS. a boon, or a haughty desert chief, who sues for pardon or threatens war ; the mystic, mummy figure, all enveloped in white, whose smile commands the hoarse, wild applause of the multitudes, who imposes upon them silent awe and obsequious fear by a nod, a wink or a glance, who is always the same — the un- disputed master of the situation. Every European who has come in contact with him loudly sings his praises. The grace and thoughtful dignity of his speech, his noble carriage and bearing, are always observed and have never failed to impress. His decrees are executed with the bloodthirsty cruelty of a monster. He lives in a world that is al- most incredible to us. Some indeed who have noticed the antithesis to be found between the Sultan's grave, thoughtful conversation and the laws which he im- poses, and the blood-curdling punishments for trivial offences which he permits^ have come to the conclu- sion that, like many another monarch for whom omnipotence is claimed, he is merely the creature of circumstances, or perhaps that after all he knows best how to perform the destiny that is his — "to dole unequal laws unto a savage race." liut, above everything else, the Sultan is a hard worker. I hear the sarcastic laughter that this state- ment will, I am suie, n(jt fail to provoke. It has become rather the fashion during the last decade to picture the monarchs of the earth as slaves to duty, as burning the nn'dnight oil far into the night, and jum]»ing into the saddle for but half an hour's recrea- tion in the morning long bcf(Me the day has dawned and we work-a-day people are awake, l^ut, be this as THE SULTAX MULAI HASSAN. 4I it may, the Sultan of INIorocco is a hard worker ; and, if the reader were inclined to scepticism be- fore, I am sure it will be dispelled when he hears that the Sultan holds cabinet meetings three times a day. It is absolutely impossible to fairly state exactly what the Sultan does do every day ; his days are different. One day he proclaims a war ; the next day he concludes a peace. He is judge, priest, soldier, tax-gatherer, and justice of the peace, and yet, while performing all these more or less im- portant functions, not a mule can leave the Imperial stables that are scattered all over the Empire without his written consent having been obtained first. As I say, in ordinary times, that is when he is residing in one of his capitals, Fez, Mekinez, or Morocco, he holds three cabinet councils a day, at which his officers are bound to attend. Once or twice a week, or oftener if circumstances demand it, he convokes the grand council of the Empire, an assembly of men appointed by himself to functions similar to those of the German Wirkliche Gehei- merathe, which assembly is formed of the notable men in the capital cities, and is convened when he wishes to share his responsibilit}- in the deciding of some important question, or to place upon their shoulders the responsibilit}- for some course of action which he has decided upon without consulting them. He gives public audiences twice a week, and private audiences daily. The Empire is divided into three kingdoms, Fez, Tafilet and Morocco, each of which is ruled by a Viceroy whom the Sultan appoints. The outlying 42 ' MOROCCO AS IT IS. province of the Suss is governed by an Imperial Commissioner, almost always a general. The Empire is divided very unequally (in a territorial sense) into departments, over which the Bashaw in times of peace reigns supreme. In case of rebellion, or of war, he is often superseded in his functions by an Imperial Commissioner or political officer. These Bashaws or Governors are never prominent local men. They are always nominees of the " gang " that rules in court circles for the time being. The Bashaw in his turn appoints the Caids for the districts into which his department is divided. These Caids are always local men, popular or powerful in the neighbourhood, and arc never ihc creatures of the court. When a Caid dies, or is removed for a cause, the Bashaw calls upon the head man of the district to .send him in names from which to select a new Caid. This office has many patriarchal functions ; the chief duty, how- ever, is to arrange with the imperial tax-gatherers how much taxes are expected from the community by the Treasury, and how little the tax-gatherer will let them off with. As was the case with I I'mani in the Anghcra High- lands, the liashaw is often conipelletl to appoint a suc- cessful brigand to the post. When the Sultan finds he can make no headway against the local opposition, he very often appoints the heatl of the rebellion as his Caid, a policy on a par with that of I knry II., who, if I remember rightly, when he could not rule Ireland without Richard .Strongbow, determined to rule it with his aid. Kvery official document issued by the Viziers passes through the .Sultan's own liands, THE SULTAN MULAI HASSAN. 43 and is not issued until approved by him, even, as I say, documents relating to the hire of mules. The Sultan never writes himself, for the same reason, I believe, as that told me by Professor Vambery as the reason why the Sultan of Turkey does not speak French, that is, he might make a mistake, which would never do. But for several hours every Sid Gharnet, Grand Vizier. morning the Sultan sits cross-legged on his divan, and with a pencil ticks off the documents that come up from his Ministers to him for his approval. I received a letter from Sid Gharnet that had passed through the Sultan's hands, and at the end of the letter, in the right hand corner, was a sharp, nervous dash of the lead. Sid Gharnet told me that it was 44 MOROCCO .AS IT IS. the Sultan's si>n manual for private correspondence, and that it showed that he had read and approved the contents. Of course, however, official documents bear the Shercefian seal. His every act, even the most insignificant, is jealously watched by a suspicious people. There is no newspaper press in Morocco to cavil and take exception, but there are cafes, and with that all is said. The particular shortcoming which is charged against the present Sultan by the inhabitants of the capitals, who should know better, as well as by the wild horsemen of the desert, who naturally enough are not very well informed, must be exasperating reading for the diplomats who have come in contact with the Caliph of the Lord. The fanatical populace of Fez charge their Sultan, Mulai Hassan, with having entirely too much commerce, that is, of a diplomatic rharactcr, with the Christians. They accuse him of having I'clped to breach the wall of fanaticism and isolation which the MoDrs of Morocco for 300 years have l)cen erecting around the ICmpirc, and the emissaries of the Senussi Mahdi, for reasons that it is here unnecessary to enter into, whisper at the street corners that the Sultan is an unworthy Calij^h, that his heart has wandered from the faith of his fathers, and that in secret he too is a Kaffir (Christian). These murmurcrs should listen to the complaints of the Christian diplomats in Tangier, who, though they disagree with each other on every other subject under the sun, do agree in admitting that the Sultan has kept the heritage that came to him from hisfather intact,and that no favour or even show of justice has been granted THE SULTAN MULAI HASSAN. 45 a Christian except under the strongest compulsion ; that, throughout the score of years he has reigned, only very few and very insignificant claims have been paid for injuries done to Christians and Christian powers, and of the English claims at least it can be said that a very great number of them that are just and legitimate he has even refused to consider. His present tantalizing policy of hesitation and irresolution which characterizes everything he under- takes (and also what he leaves undone), is inspired by his ever-increasing fear of the French, whose position and attitude on his eastern frontier he considers menacing. In this connection I should say that he has perhaps better means of knowing les an dcssoiis of the Touat question than, perhaps, anyone else, not excepting the wise ones of the English and Continental Foreign Offices. French diplomacy for the last five years in Morocco at least has assumed a distinctly positive tone, and the profuse pretensions that are made at the Ouai d'Orsai that their active diplomacy in Morocco has solely for its object the delimitation of the more scientific frontier between Algeria and Morocco, is not believed by the Sultan, nor has it struck me as very plausible. Every evening as he wanders beneath the mandra- gora and pomegranate trees of his magnificent garden in Fez the Sultan finds no rest or peace from think- ing of the " red-trousered Roumi," only 200 miles away, at El Goleah and Insufra. This feeling of dread anticipation, strengthened by the conscious- ness which he has that the reins of power are slipping 46 MOROCCO AS IT IS. from his grasp, has found more substantial expres- sion than in anxious and querulous inquiries of the British Minister. Since last year the Sultan has been building a magnificent palace in Tafilet, a southern inland city, famous for its dates. There, where the Atlas slopes begin to rise, far from the seas which the Christians now command, he is pre- paring a suitable residence and a home for the day when Northern Morocco will no longer be his, when the palaces of Fez and Mekinez will be closed to him. To Tafilet, too, all the treasures of the Empire have been removed. The Sultan possesses palaces also in Mekinez, Fez, and in the cit\' of Morocco, also, I believe, in Rabbat, while the palaces of the Bashaws in the various Governments in his Empire arc nominally his property. They are not very interesting edifices, though the Fez palace is certainly large. The palace and its courtyards cover certainly forty acres of ground, but the Sultan's installation is surprisingly poor and fault}-. Mis apartments are scantily fur- nished, if furnished at all ; a low cushion on the floor, a tattered haytie on the wall, and the end of Imperial adornment, as understood in Morocco, has been reached. The gardens of the Sultan in Fez, so far as the bird's-eye views I was able to obtain justify me in forming an opinion, are very beautiful indeed. Sid Abdurrahman, the father of the present ruler, was a great lover of plants, and to him, per- liaps, the beauty of the gardens is due. They have run very much to seed now, but the (lowers and the trees arc magnificent. In the garden at Fez are THE SULTAN MULAI HASSAX. 47 kept falcons, with which, in his younger days, the Sultan hunted the gazelles. He was a passionate sportsman, and still occasionally takes the field after the Abou Snau (the father of tusks), i.e. boar. The Sultan hunts the boar with slogies, a hybrid Turkish greyhound, and several years ago, when he visited the Beni-M'Ghil, he killed several lions. As the years go by he remains more and more shut up in his harem, and marches less than formerly at the head of his troops. He is popular with the soldiers, and reputed to be a hardy and intrepid soldier. He carries wounds received in close combat with the arch enemies of the Shereefian regime, the Zair and the Zimoor nomads. As he is always on the march, the camp is his true capital, and his army his true court. Though he has learnt to love his ease, and fear the hazard of battle, he still spends six months of the year under canvas, either on the war-path or merely journeying from one of his capitals to the other. Sidi Mahommed proudly said, " The throne of the Emperor of Morocco is his horse, and his canopy the sky." We will have a look at the Sultan on his throne then, surrounded by his court. The camp is roused generally at four o'clock in the morning. The tents are sent ahead to be ready for their tenants on their arrival at the next encamp- ment. Then the troops spread out over the country, forming an immense straggling line, in the centre of which is the Sultan, followed by a picked body of the elite of his soldiers, and by a few of the women of his harem on mule-back and carefully veiled. At a little distance in front of the Sultan rides the Kaid- 48 MOROCCO AS IT IS. el-Meshwar, or Grand Master of the Ceremonies, followed by a group of favoured attendants, each of whom carries some object necessary for the Sultan's progress, or likely to add to his comfort. Thus there is the Mul-el-Fas, or Master of the Hatchet, whose dut\- it is to clear away brushwood that might inconvenience the Sultan ; the Mul Mahamaz, or Master of the Spurs, who carries the Sultan's spurs, which his Majesty only requires when he performs feats of horsemanship ; the Mul Zarbia, or Master of the Carpet, which is spread on the ground when the Sultan desires to sit down ; the Mul Strombia, or Master of the Cushions, on which the Sultan re- clines ; the Mul Bclghah, or INIastcr of the Slippers, ready to provide the Sultan with a fresh pair if he desires a change from those he has on ; the Mul-el- Ma, who gives the Sultan water from a gazelle-skin when he is thirsty ; the Mul AtaT, who prepares tea for his use; and then, after an interval, come two mounted spearmen, behind whom, at a little distance, rides the Sultan, having on either side a Mul Zif, or fly-flicker, and behind his right stinuji the Mul M'dul, bearer of the Shereefian umbrella. The camp is pitched again at eight o'clock, and for the day, the Sultan never marching more than four hours daily, except when in retreat before a pursuing enemy. ICverything is ready on the Sultan's arrival at the halting place. His lent is a vast structure placed in the middle of the cami), separated by a very large open space from every other tent. It is surrounded by a sort of spiral wall of canvas, which buunds a circular path leading to the principal en- cj a 'our wife and your daughter, and every membtr of the Mission, and in the morning I shall send ("aid Maclean with one thousand THE BRITISH MISSION TO FEZ. lOI Askari (foot soldiers) to escort you to the coast. Believe me, I speak as a friend when I advise you to adopt this course. Until I know that you and your family and the members of your Mission are in Tangier, I wi'l neither sleep, nor eat, nor drink." Bushta closes the Gates. From " The Daily Graphic,^' l>y permission. Sir Charles replied, " Your Majesty is mistaken. My life is not in danger, for I am in your Majesty's safe keeping.'" The Sultan answered, " I am power- less to protect you. The direction of events has I02 MOROCCO AS IT /S. escaped from my hands. Again I say )'Our life is in danger. If you return to the Mission you will be killed, I am sure." Sir Charles Euan-Smith retorted, " Perhaps I am to be killed. Perhaps Mr. McLeod,the British Vice- Consul, may be killed. Perhaps, as you say, the whole Mission may be massacred, if you permit it ; but one thing I can assure you of is, that if this happens, there will be another British Minister in Fez within a month. He will be accompanied by a Vice-Consul and a staff as well equipped as mine, and better ; but," the Minister added in deliberate tones, " then there will not be a Sultan at P"ez." Sir Charles, after telling the story of the murder of Major Cavagnari in Cabul, and the consequent deposition of the Ameer, stated that under no circumstances would he sleep in the Palace, nor allow Lady Euan-Smith or any member of the Mission to take refuge anywhere. " Lady Euan," said Sir Charles, when the Sultan again endeavoured to weaken his resolution by point- ing at the dangers the lady members of the Mission ran, " is a soldier's wife. She has seen service in every corner of the globe, and she has never needed any protection but that which the broad folds of the British flag have always afforded her." " I shall then write," said the Sultan petulantly, " to her Majesty's Government and insist that your Mission be withdrawn. I am no longer master of the situation, and I can no longer be responsible for your safety here or for ) our safe return to the coast. I shall despatch a special courier to London and ask that you be ordered to return immediately." " Vou THE BRITISH MISSION TO FEZ. IO3 are at perfect liberty to do so," said the British Minister. " If you give me the letter I will forward it to London with the greatest despatch, and when the wishes of her gracious Majesty have been ex- pressed they will be obeyed instantly ; but in the meantime I remain at my post in Fez, and should your Majesty permit these riotous demonstrations against the Mission to continue, we shall know how to protect ourselves and the dignity of the flag." At the conclusion of this interview the Sultan nearly fainted. His nervous system seemed completely exhausted, either from the strain of anxiety under which he was labouring, or from his discomfiture at being unable to weaken the firm resolution of the soldier diplomatist. Sir Charles requested the Sultan to put in writing the Sultan's statement that he no longer considered himself master of the situation, but without success. The Sultan appeared astounded at the words and demeanour of the British Minister. He was to all appearance firmly persuaded that the Mission was in imminent peril, and he repeatedly endeavoured to induce Sir Charles to remain in the Palace, and to send for the other members of his party, but to no purpose. After one of these appeals, which sounded strangely from the mouth of the Sovereign whose word was law, even in the fanatical city, Sir Charles adroitly turned the conversation to the subject of the treaty. The Sultan at once said, with apparent frankness and show of emotion, " I will sign the treaty as you write it. I had intended to sign the treaty at all 104 MOROCCO AS IT IS. hazards just as you presented it to me, which is, I know, as advantageous to Morocco as it is to the interests of your country. After the affronts which my unhappy people have heaped upon your Mission this afternoon, what can I do to atone for it ? " Sir Charles then demanded the punishment of Bushta-el- Bagdadi, the Bashaw of Fez, the imprisonment of the second Governor, and the flogging of the various soldiers who had made themselves particularl}' ob- noxious in their threats to members of the Mission. The Sultan fined the Governor, Bushta-el-Bagdadi, 2COo/. for his aiding and abetting of the riotous demonstration, and ordered this sum of money to be delivered at the British Mission on the next morning, to be disposed of as Sir Charles saw fit. At the conclusion of the interview the Sultan again endeavoured to detain the British Minister in the Palace, and even went so far as to commit a great breach of Moorish etiquette by accompanying him almost to the door of the Palace. The last words exchanged between the Sultan and the British Minister were in regard to the treaty. " I have told you," said the Sultan, " that I will sign the treaty as you have presented it to me. You ha\e behaved in such a magnanimous manner in setting this local and unhappy demonstration against your Mission that I feel inclined to place myself under still another obligation to )oii. As you know, I only conceded in princij)le the exportation of wheat in my treaty with Count Taltcnbach, the German Minister, last year. .Since making this great concession we have not had time to sec what a drain the exportation of wheat on THE BRITISH MISSION TO FEZ. 1 05 the Empire really is, and I ask you, in the name of my people^ that }'ou will waive the demand }-ou have made for a reduction of the export duty on wheat. Should a great demand on our wheat be made by foreign countries, favoured by a small duty, Morocco would be exposed to famine, which, owing to the primitive and slow methods of communication between my different states, would be a terrible calamity/' Sir Charles, moved by this appeal, stated that he would waive his demand in regard to the reduction of duty on wheat, and left the Palace with the under- standing that the remaining twenty-one paragraphs of his treaty were to be signed within the next twenty-four hours. We who during the exciting days of the Mission in Fez enjoyed the pleasant sensation of each and every one of us belonging to the same family, were indeed a strange array of Anglo-Saxons jostled together by chance in this heathen city. We came from every quarter of the globe where British brawn and British brain have won homes for the children of " merrie England." Colonel Hallam-Parr first saw the light of the day, I believe, on the banks of the mystic Ganges ; Captain Kirkpatrick was born " where rolls the mighty Ottawa ; " Reeder was the historic New Zealander, delighted to find that as yet the great Mother City was not in ruins ; Winthrop Chanler, a child of the majestic Hudson ; and I, who came from that " sweet and wholesome land " that Captain John Smith espied on the banks of the James. Shakespeare and Magna Charta were our bonds of I06 MOROCCO AS IT /S. s>'mpathy, but as the " heathen raved furiously with- out" we were drawn closer and closer together in admiration of the noble type of womanhood that stood revealed before us. As all the world knows now, on the evening of the Ait-el-Kebir, the day of the riotous demonstration against the Mission, at about six o'clock in the after- noon, Sir Charles Euan-Smith, accompanied by his secretaries, rode through the town to the Palace, w^ith only the very uncertain escort of the same men who throughout the day had been exciting the ignorant and fanatical Fazzi to make an attack upon the Mission House. Lady Euan was, as ever, bright, cheerful and gracious, though the memory of Manipur was uppermost in every mind. Hour dragged on slowly after hour, and still no word from the Palace, no sign of the return of the Mission. At eight o'clock dinner was served as usual ; a mere Moorish riot was not permitted to postpone or interfere with that .serious English function. At nine o'clock the dessert, and still no news from the Palace ; at ten, coffee and cigars. Still no news from the Palace — still no sign of his Excellency's return. As we bit at them savagely, the cigars seemed to have a bitter taste, and the sedative powder of the nicotine was gone. It was after ten, and still no news. The memory of Manipur possessed our souls, and conversation died away. Suddenly we heard the trampling of a largo caval- cade approaching in the distance. We paiil very little attention to it. Squadrons of cavalry and large bodies of Pcrbers were passing the Mission House c 1) c U 72 1) 1) lOS MOROCCO AS IT IS. every minute. But on liearing the sound, which to us had no meaning, there rolled away the mist of anxiety and dread apprehension which for the past hour had been gathering in the eyes of our hostess. " That is Sir Charles returning," said Lady Euan, gaily; "I recognize the tramp of his horse, and now I hear his voice." We, who were all incredulous, tried to enter into her hopeful spirit. Fully five minutes later the cavalcade with Sir Charles at the head road into the courtyard, and we saw how right Lady Euan had been — how a great affection quickens the senses. And Sir Charles Euan-Smith joined the dinner party^ with the appetite of a man who that day had given the Sultan of Morocco a revelation of English courage which, I venture to predict, it will not be necessary to repeat fur some years to come. Though Lady Euan-Smith, after the recent events in Fez, may no longer hope to escape history, she is in every sense of the word a vcr\- happy woman, happy in husband, happy in her daughter, happy in all things save the accident of her present unworthy historian — a better ciualified pen than mine has told the world of Lady I'^uan's antecedents. We who were bidden to her table in far-off Fez only knew that she was a gracious hostess, and a scion of a soldier line — "where all the sons were brave and all the daughters virtuous." I cannot close this ch.ipter without paying my tribute of admiration to the courage and sang-froid of the ICn^^lish ladies with the Mission. At six o'clock on the afternoon of July 5th, when the hostile THE BRITISH MISSION TO FEZ. lOQ demonstration was at its height, when Bushta-el- Bagdadi and his divan fondly flattered themselves that the British Minister was trembling in his shoes, and that his followers were only too anxious to leave the Holy city, Lady Euan-Smith could have been seen placidly photographing the " angry knots of rioters " outside and inside the Mission garden, and her niece was making a formal application to Sir Charles that in case the Mission was attacked she should be allotted a repeating rifle. It was at this juncture that El Arbi ben el Moghter, the War Minister, rushed into the Mission with Sid Gharnet and the other viziers, and he thus obtained a panoramic view of the peace and quiet and per- fect composure that reign throughout the Mission, and apparently in the minds of all its members. Though doubtless depressed at the failure of the hostile demonstration at which he had undeniably connived, the old warrior could not help saying, in admiration, beginning with his usual expletive " Allah, burn the devil ! What soldiers these English- women make ! " CHAPTER VII. THE BRITISH MISSION TO FEZ~{Co)ttt)liied). Bushta-elBagdadi's Mission to Italy — The reward of the swift Rekkas — The Bashaw's humiliation — The pay- ment of the ten thousand dollar fine — The Bashaw's slaves who instigated the riot "eat stick'' — The Bashaw calls the Son of Scotia " his beloved one " — The Sultan returns the baggage-train — The Bashaw and his friends intimidate the Sultan — They do not appear at his New Year's reception — Fearing a conspiracy in the Court, the Sultan refuses to sign the treaty — French influence and the news of Lord Salisbury's defeat at the polls — Sir Charles tears up the bogus treaty— The Pickwickian bribe of 30,000/. — The Mission leaves Fez — Myself, Euan- Smith, and the Times — Light thrown on the Morocco " Mystery." Ir will prove, I think, interesting and useful in view of .sub.sequent events, to speak more fully in re- gard to the beginning of the unpleasantness between the British Envoy and the Bashaw of Fez, Bushta-el- Bagdadi. This fanatical and bigoted Moor first showed his hostility to the British Minister by osten- tatiously absenting himself from the reception cere- monies upon the arrival of Sir Charles and the Mission at Fez early in June, and he added insult to this breach of etiquette by ostentatiously riding past the Mission House on the very day of the arrival of the Mission in order to show that he was in excellent Sir Charles tears up the bogus Treaty. From " The Illustrated London Neius," l>y permission. 112 MOROCCO AS IT /S. health, and could, had he so desired, have ridden out and received Sir Charles, as etiquette and custom requires of the Governor of Fez. Bushta-el-Bagdadi is an old cmhagni, or Shcrcefian soldier, who can neither read nor write. Bigoted, ignorant, and fana- tical, and a typical member of that class of his sub- jects from whom the Sultan invariably recruits his high officials, for the indispensable and only qualifi- cation for exalted office under the regime of Mulei Hassan, is undying and unshakeable hatred to the Christian. This quality Bagdadi possesses in a large measure. Some years ago Bushta was sent on a mission as l\Iinister Plenipotentiary to Italy, and at the Ouirinal enjoyed the great honour of escorting Queen Mar- gherita into dinner, but he returned to Africa with views and ideas of the Christian world apparently more limited even than before. I cannot here for- bear from telling an anecdote which stamps the man, and gives one some idea of the mental calibre of one of the most powerful and influential officials of the Moorish Empire. When Bushta arrived in Tangier and was preparing to embark for Italy, it was noticed that among his baggage was a large quantity of swarrces or straw paniers, with which camels are loaded in Morocco. It was pointed out to him how useless these were, and he was informed that in Italy there were no camels, and that Ministers travelled on railways. Bushta, however, replied that it would be the duly of the King of Italy to procure camels for him, as he and all men of his high rank were ac- customed tu travel on camels. This story is historic. THE BRITISH MISSION TO FEZ. II3 I do not know what the sequel was, or how the old Governor's desire for camels was met on his arrival in Italy. Sir Charles Euan-Smith treated with the contempt it merited the insult the Governor offered in absenting himself from the reception ceremonies. Early in June, however, the Governor's hostility to the British Mission passed from the negative to the positive and active stage. One evening he called at the Mission House, interrupting a dinner party, and insisted upon seeing the Minister. Sir Charles con- sented to receive him, and Bushta then stated to the Minister that his life was in danger, that the Mission was to be attacked that night, and strongly advised that they should be moved immediately out of the house and camp outside the city. Sir Charles naturally resented this interruption, and sent him out of the house. In a very few days the Basha took the opportunity of showing that his enmity to the Minister and all connected with him was unabated. On the loth of June the British Minister sent from Fez a most important despatch to Tangier to be immediately wired to the Foreign Office. A rekkas, or native courier, v/as found, named Mukta, to whom this despatch was entrusted. The runner succeeded in reaching Tangier in two days and a half, waited there ten hours, while his message was wired to Lon- don and a reply was received from Downing-street, and then immediately started back to Fez, reaching there on the evening of the sixth day after his depar- ture ; an exploit which had never been accomplished before and was naturally much talked about in Fez I 114 MOROCCO AS IT IS. among the Moors, who have a great admiration for athletic prowess. The news reached the ears of the Governor, who sent for Mukta and spoke to him in this wise : " So I hear you rival the speed of the wind in carrj-ing despatches for the English Bashador, and I suppose he has rewarded you richly." The carrier stated that Sir Charles had been very generous. " I also will not be behind the British Minister in gene- rosity," said the Bashaw, " and you have run so well that you will never run again." He then had the man manacled in his presence and carried to the prison. Friends of Mukta, the rekkas, directly went to Sir Charles and told him the story. He immediately demanded and obtained of the Sultan the man's instant release, and, to avert any danger of his life or liberty after the Mission had departed, he made him a British protected citizen for life. So again the Governor was discomfited. Some days later, in one of the interviews in regard to the Commercial Treaty, the Sultan asked Sir Charles if he would forgive the Basha. Sir Charles stated that he did not bear malice, and if the Bashaw satisfied him with proper apologies, he would forgive him. On June 22nd the Bashaw called at the Mission, expressed his regret for his attitude, and Sir Charles shook hands with him. Ihnv much the incorrigible old heathen took the lesson to heart is shown by his behaviour on the day o( the grtat Moorish feast, July 5th. No one m^rc enjoyed the humiliation of their Bashaw in the f^arden (jf the British Mission on July 6th than did tlu- inhabitants of !*"(/, who availed THE BRITISH MISSION TO FEZ. I I 5 themselves of the British Envoy's permission^ and thronged the courtyard in great numbers to see the greedy, avaricious, and rapacious Governor humiliated in the dust. Acting under the Sultan's imperative orders, the Bashaw appeared about seven in the morn- ing before the Mission House, He came as a sup- pliant, on foot and unattended by any of his usual suite. He sat down in the garden of the Mission on the ground, under a pomegranate tree, and there for three hours, in the broiling sun and in a humour I can only describe with the poet of " Chevy Chase " as " most doleful dumps," awaited the Minister's plea- sure. One by one the slaves brought up from his palace mules laden with the heavy bags of silver pardon money to be distributed to the poor of Fez, as Sir Charles ordered — the poor whom Bushta had so often robbed and outraged during his long years of office. As each bag of his ill-gotten gains was thrown out and rang on the beautifully tiled floor- ing of the courtyard the Bashaw heaved a sigh that was calculated to evoke sympathetic tears from the coldest stones. At ten o'clock in the morning Sir Charles came out on the terrace and motioned to the Bashaw that he might approach. This he did, and as he approached the Minister he still had the temerity to endeavour to shake him by the hand. Sir Charles indignantly waved him back, and then read him a lecture such as it has never been my pleasure heretofore to hear, even in our good old Anglo-Saxon tongue, and I was pleased to notice that owing to the painstaking and graphic interpretation of Mr. E. Carleton, dragoman of the I 2 I 1 6 MOROCCO AS IT IS. Mission, the oii£,M'nal vigour and the force of the British Minister's language lost none of its power when translated into the guttural Arabic of the West. As misdeed after misdeed was dragged out from the capacious closets of the British Minister's memory, the Bashaw's form drooped and bent forward until at the conclusion of the lecture he sank forward to the ground. It does not seem necessary in view of the subsequent more important events to dwell upon the scenes which attended the distribution of the pardon money among the solders, servants, and attendants who had been struck or insulted during the riotous demon- stration, or the scenes still more interesting which attended the distribution of the money to the poor, the lame, the halt, and the blind of the City of Fez, who for the next few days thronged about the Mission and made both night and day hideous with their loud prayers and boisterous wishes for the long life anti happiness of Sir Charles and Lady Euan- Smith, though these scenes were indeed highly interesting and full of wild barbaric colour. Having again expressed his regret for the occur- rences and disclaimed any responsibility for or particii)alion in the riotous demonstration before the Mission House on the preceding day, the Bashaw severally apologized to Mr. Vismes de Ponthicu, the First Secretary, ami to Mr. I'crnau, the drago- man of the Mission — and while four of his "confi- dential " slaves and soldiers were dispatched to the Palace to " eat stick " for their encouraging attitude towards the rioters, the Bashaw, humiliated in the THE BRITISH MISSION TO FEZ. I I / sight of his own people and in the very dust before the people of the city he had ruled with a rod of iron, was sent down into the Medinah to apologize to Mr. Macleod, the Vice-Consul. The Bashaw would have greatly prefered to '^ eat stick " like his slaves^ or to go to prison loaded with chains like his Kahlifa, so very strong was his hatred to Macleod. But the Bashador was inexorable, and down he trudged the road to the Medinah; an easy gentle decline, but to him as steep as any Calvary. The Swani men had already carried to the Vice- Consulate one thousand shining Spanish dollars, which the Bashador had awarded the Vice-Consul out of the Bashaw's fine, as an indemnity for the dangers he had run on the preceding day, and for the indignities he had suffered from the hands of Bagdadi during his two years' residence in Fez. The glittering coin was spread out on the table of Mr. Macleod's office, and being counted, when the tottering form and perspiring face of the Bashaw appeared in the doorway of the Vice-Consulate. Seeing his pertinacious enemy in such a woeful plight, the Scotchman behaved with admirable generosity. He ordered tea, and for the first time that day the Bashaw took nourishment. The sturdy old soldier almost immediately re- gained his aplomb, and smiled benignly upon the man who for the past two years he had subjected to a hundred and one petty annoyances in the hope of driving him away from Fez. " I wonder how the Bashador could have said in his speech this morning," began Bushta, " that I had I I 8 MOROCCO AS IT IS. treated thee with unkindness ever since thou didst come to the Holy City. Bad men — men with forked tong^ues — must have abused his confidence. I know. O Son of Scotia, that thou didst not pour these slanders into his ears. I know thou art a man of one speech. But how could the mistake have arisen ? All the people of Fez know the affection and the esteem in which I hold thee. They can testify that I have cherished thee as the apple of my eye, that thou art my liabecb}\ my beloved one." It was magnificent acting, but not the truth. Finishing his cup of tea, and saying, " O Son of Scotia, let the true God pardon between us two," he took his leave. Clasping the hand of his forgiving enemy, the Bashaw said : " Great as our affection has been in the past, it will seem as nothing to the offices of friendship that I will shower upon thee in the future." This cleverly concealed threat would have troubled the spirit of any one less sturdy and self- reliant than the liritish Vice-Consul. I have neglected to say that at the interview with the Sultan on July 6th the British Fnvoy demanded explanations of the removal of ail the animals and pack-horses from the Mission House. The Sultan feigned complete ignorance of the occurrence, and expressed his regret that the members of the Mission had been so inconvenienced. The British Envoy then told the Sultan unless the am'mals were restored to him that evening, he would despatch Mr. IC. C!arleton, third dragoman to the Mission, whose knowledge of the country and thorough mastery of Moorish made him peculiarly fitted fir the task, to Beggars at entrance of British Mission. From the "Illustrated London Nezvs," by permission. 120 MOROCCO AS IT IS. ride to the coast with a requisition upon Sir Lothian Nicholson, tlie Governor of Gibraltar, for an armed escort and a baggage train to tran=;port the Mission to the coast. Seeing into what dangerous waters his treacherous diplomacy had brought him, the Sultan towards midnight returned the horses and mules to the Legation stables. I am of the opinion that when the Sultan stated on July 5th to the l^ritish Envoy he was prepared to sign the treaty without delay, he fully meant what he said, and intended to do so ; but, immediately after the punishment of Bushta-el- Bagdadi, and perhaps owing in a very great degree to the severity of that punishment, the tide of fanatical feeling in Fez began to rise, and became so strong that the Sultan paused in his fright, and failed, because he was unable, to complj' with his given word. The manner in which the Sultan receded from his position is distinctly Moorish. He evidently wanted to satisfy everybody concerned. It was not for want (jf good-will certainly that he failed to satisfy anybody. Powerful men like ]Uishta-el- Hagdadi were threatening rebellion, and went so far even as to absent themselves from the fcle of the Hydia that was then in progress. The II)dia is a reception lasting for seven days after the New Year's feast. On the afternoons of these da\'s the Sultan receives deputations from all over the countr>' in the Meshwa, or I'lacc of Audit-nce, surrounded by his C(jurt. Here the produce of the fields and the fruits of the earth are presented in the presence of a vast concourse of people. The more valuable presents or THE BRITISH MISSION TO FEZ. 121 bribes of gold and silver are given to him and to his Viziers in a less public manner. One by one the notables of Fez and the leaders of the Berber deputations passed before the Sultan, prostrating their proud heads in the dust at his feet, and crying out " Allah-i-bark-Ameer-Seedna — God prolong the days of our Lord." The Sultan was very much displeased, and very much disquieted to find that Bagdadi failed to appear in the procession, and thatj as the days went on and on, he neither sent an excuse or a present : and as many of his friends — equally important men — were also notably absent from the functions, the Sultan became really alarmed and fearful of a revolution in Fez itself, which has never been well affected towards him. The French emissaries did not fail to avail them- selves of this opportunity of thwarting the British En- voy in his attempt to open up the closed market of Morocco to the commerce of the world. On the 8th of July the Sultan was informed that if he granted the commercial concessions, France would reconsider her attitude in the Touat question. The day before this t4ie Sultan was informed of the general result of the English Parliamentary elections, and he was aware that Mr. Gladstone was likely to succeed Lord .Salisbury as Prime Minister and in the general direc- tion of foreign affairs. The French emissaries rang the changes on this probable transfer of power, and, unfortunately, there was not one of the viziers suffi- ciently well informed to know that in the British Foreign Office there is such a thing as continuity of policy above party life and struggles. The Sultan's 122 MOROCCO AS IT IS. French advisers, who do not seem to have been hampered by conscientious scruples of any kind, told the Sultan that when Lord Salisbury went out of office Sir Charles Euan-Smith would undoubtedly be removed from his post. They strengthened this by stating that the British Envoy was a family connec- tion of the English Premier's, and that on that account, if on no other, Mr. Gladstone would remove him from his post in Morocco. It was only on the morning of the 7th of July that it became apparent that the Sultan did not intend to sign the treaty, as he had solemnly pledged himself to do before the Grand Vizier and in the presence of the members of the Mission at the historic interview of July 5th. It had seemed desirable to submit the treaty drafts for signature on July Cth, but the copyists emulated the speed of the tortoise in their labours, and the Commissioners under whf.se supervision the copying was done were always endeavouring to insert a word here, or to omit a word there, amendments to the treaty which, though apparently always quite trivial, on investigation invariabl)' proved to be of vital im- portance. Sid Gharnet, the Grand Vizier, spent his days and his nights at the Mission House. No one could have gathered from his suave smile, his gentle, pleading manner — pleading for time, I mean, and for the pardon of the sluggish copyists — that his instruc- tions at the time probably were not to sign a treaty under any circumstances whatever. On the 8th of July the Sultan sent to inform the Minister that he wished to cancel certain privileges which the treaty accorded to imports. Sir Charles hiuan-Smith reminded the THE BRITISH MISSION TO FEZ. 123 Sultan of the promise he had given him on the 5th, and begged him to withdraw his request. On the evening of the 9th Sid Gharnet appeared in the Mission House with a treaty, which he said — and the lamb-like Vizier had now suddenly become very bold and lion-like — was the only one that the Sultan would sign. It was a treaty that granted no concessions to English com- merce whatever, and would have prevented — if signed — any further attempt being made to open up the country to civilization and to progress for at least five years to come. There is very strong reason to believe that the Prime Minister had been instructed to endeavour to obtain Sir Charles Euan-Smith's signature to this treaty, first, in the belief that, owing to the Envoy's ignorance of Mogrebbin Arabic, he would not notice that another treaty had been substi- tuted. But in case that Sir Charles should perceive the substitution, and ask Sid Gharnet for an explanation, both of which he did, the Vizier should set to work in another manner. He should state that this was the only treaty his master would sign, and that he had been instructed by the Sultan to pay Sir Charles the sum of 30,000/. in cash if he would accept and sign the useless treaty. Sir Charles tore up the bogus document into half a dozen pieces, and the trembling Vizier left the Mission House, the hospitality of which he had abused. Sir Charles then addressed a formal letter to the Sultan announcing his intention of immediately leaving the capital, and stating in detail the reasons which had led him to this decision. On the 12th the camp was raised, and the Sultan received the Envoy at his 124 MOROCCO AS IT IS. Palace in a formal audience of farewell. In referring to the treaty he said he hoped that all difficulties would }'et be removed. He would consent to the treaty, he said, if Sir Charles would only <^\wq way on the matter of the export of flour. The British Envoy having agreed to make this concession, the Sultan expressed his thanks, but observed that there were still some sixteen or seventeen modifications that he was desirous of intro- ducing into the draft treaty. Sir Charles then imme- diately withdrew from the audience chamber, and set out on his return journey from Fez to Rabat. On the I3t]i instant the Mission was overtaken when about forty miles from Fez, by two High Com- missioners whom the Sultan had sent after Sir Charles with full powers to settle and sign the treaty. A fresh copy of it was immediately prepared for signature, and presented to them, but the Com- missioners then insisted that, though merely as a matter of form, the treaty must be once more laid before the Sultan. They said thc)' would return to Fez, and that, as they had swift horses, they would rejoin thc Mission in the course of si.K hours. They disappeared, and did not return until mid- night of thc ne.xt day. They brought a message from the Sultan that he wished to make further changes in the treaty. Sir Charles Kuan-Smith declined to enter into any further discussion of thc subject, and raised the camp the following day, con- tinuing the march to Rabat. Since then, I believe, he has had no further coininunication with the Moorish Government. THE BRITISH MISSION TO FEZ. 125 I have been somewhat amused to see that the Sultan's gorgeous " bribe" of 30,000/. has been taken seriously by some of the English newspapers. Of course the offer was never meant seriously for a moment. It was merely an indication of the high esteem in which the Sultan held Sir Charles, and of the fictitious value he placed on his services. The bribe was meant entirely in a Pickwickian sense, and I very much doubt whether the Sultan has any such sum of money at his disposal outside of his custom-house receipts, which are certainly mort- gaged for some years to come at least. While bills of exchange are known to the Moorish authorities in the coast towns, payments are made in Fez only with meskals of copper, and my head grows dizzy as I endeavour to enumerate how many donkeys it would take to carry 30,000/. sterling in the copper coin of the Moorish realm. It would be a difficult bribe to transport and an impossible one to conceal. Roughly speaking, I should say that a line of don- keys stretching from the city of Morocco to Tangier might carr}' it. Mathematical enthusiasts may wish to work out the problem^ and can do so on the basis that threepence in the impure Moorish iloos weighs about half a pound. Newspaper readers will recall that several state- ments of fact which appear in the foregoing chapters were vaguely contradicted from official sources shortly after their publication in the columns of the London press. The source from which these contradictions came remained a secret for some days. In writing me about this time, and thanking me for what he was 126 MOROCCO AS IT IS. [rood enough to call the " valued support " I had given his Mission, the English Envoy put me on my guard against several Tangier journalists, who, as he said, were "jealous of my success." Finally, on July 31st, 1892, an alleged interview with Sir Charles Euan- Smith appeared in the columns of the Times, which it was claimed " a " correspondent of the Times had had with the British Minister to Morocco, and faith- fully reported and wired from Tangier. I immediately wired to Sir Charles Euan-Smith whether he accepted the personal and official responsi- bility for the publication, or whether he had in any way authorized the statements which reflected so severely upon my correspondence. I received imme- diately two telegrams from Sir Charles Euan-Smith, in which he denied most emphatically having either •* made or inspired the criticisms, and he certainly left mc and the world at large under the impression that the interview had never taken place. On ^\ugust the 5th, however, the Tunes published a telegram from Sir Charles Euan-Smith, stating that the interview published by them was inaccurate, but that he denied absolutely having torn up a draft treaty and several other minor details which had appeared in my correspondence. The Times seemed hugely delii^htcd that only a little over two-thirds of the interview was disavoAcd. Amusingly enough, this very statement as to the torn treaty had been published at great length and with many picturesque details in the 'Ti>nes of July the 25th, from the pen (jf a gentleman whom I had known as the correspondent in Morocco of that i)apcr, and THE BRITISH MISSION TO FEZ. 12/ who in that capacity was received at the Shereefian Court during the visit of the Mission to Fez. Further- more, this gentleman favoured one of the great illus- trated papers with a signed sketch of the sensational incident. Ignoring this fact, the T^zWj-, with conscious virtue, in publishing the interview with Sir Charles Euan-Smith, stated that the reports which they were endeavouring to discredit had not appeared in their columns. As a matter of fact, they had appeared in the Times. Of course they appeared some three or four days after their publication in every other London paper, and the Times, to cover up its discomfiture, was simply endeavouring to mislead the public. Mais qa cest bien de la niaison. The writer of these pages visited Morocco in the winter of 1891- 92, and it was his intention to have returned to that country in the early spring to conclude his travels by a journey to Fez ; and, with this inten- tion, he had engaged a passage to Gibraltar on the 1st of April, but was prevented by illness from going. The writer sailed for Gibraltar on June 2nd, and it was a matter of great regret to him that the postponement of his visit brought him to Fez at the same time as the British Mission, He would have greatly preferred to have seen the Moors in their fanatical capital en neglige, rather than on the alert and in the dress parade they assumed with the eyes of the accredited representatives of a great Christian power upon them. When the objects of the British Mission were, as I was informed by Sir Charles, unscrupulously misrepresented by the Continental papers, Sir Charles Euan-Smith appealed 128 MOROCCO AS\IT IS. to me, as a journalist, to see that the truth regarding the Mission was told and his traducers silenced. I informed the British Minister that I was no longer connected with the great American journal with which, as he said, he had often heard my name con- nected. On the day after the demonstration before the Mission, Sir Charles Euan-Smith again appealed to me to see that the incident was not allowed to be garbled by French correspondents and editors, point- ing out to me that the only qualified English corre- spondent accompanying the Mission had left Fez for Tangier some two weeks previously. Having been hospitably received by the British Mission, and having at the time a genuine regard for the British Minister, at a considerable financial risk, for cabling from Morocco is expensive, and newspapers very properly reserve to themselves the right to pay or not to pay the tolls on unsolicited telegrams, I took up the cudgels on his behalf, and five days later my despatches, which were read to several members of his staff, and the contents made known to Sir Charles Euan-Smith himself, were published in London by the Central Ne^vs^ and in Paris by the New York Herald (Paris edition), and distributed by that paper to every important journal in France. I''ulhcrmore, I sketched out the despatch which was sent at the same time to the London 7'inies. The gentleman deputed t(i act as Times correspondent had never enjoyed any journalistic training, so I think it will be quite clear that my interference in the matter as a journalist was neither unsolicited nor selfish. Taking leave of the Sultan. From the "Daily Graphic," by pemiission. K 130 MOROCCO AS IT IS. On reaching London, after my rapid journey from Fez, it did not occur to me that I should falsify history, simply because, during the stay of the Mission at the Shereefian Court, Lord Salisbury had been succeeded by Mr. Gladstone as Prime Minister. What I have written is based upon what I saw, upon what I heard, and upon information that I gathered from creditable sources in Fez. Un- like several of the principal actors in the incidents, it has not struck me as right or proper to garble the genuine impressions I received on the spot at the suggestion of afterthoughts not entirely unconnected with the change of Ministry in England. Had Sir Charles Euan-Smith seen fit in his official despatches to have taken a different view of the events, and to present them in a different form from that which I had already at his repeated and very earnest request published to the world, the public would, I believe, have easily coincided the differences in our respective accounts on the ground that one was official and diplomatic, and the other unofficial and journalistic, and further, that my despatches were written under circumstances hardly calculated to pro- mote accuracy or nicety of expression. But, when Sir Charles Euan-Smith, the British Minister to the Court of Morocco, saw fit to make statements to the Times correspondent which were calculated and evidently intended to discredit the journalist who only at his (Sir Charles Euan-Smith's) often repeated request had taken up the pen on his behalf, he had only to expect the treatment at my hands under which he is at present suffering. The only statement of fact of THE BRITISH MISSION TO FEZ. I3I any importance in my correspondence that was not fully confirmed by the Parliamentary paper con- taining the Morocco correspondence, was the question whether Sir Charles Euan-Smith tore up a treaty or not. The French Minister in London, like every- body else, heard that he had done so, and, several days before my despatches confirming the incident appeared in the London papers, M. Waddington called on Lord Salisbury at the Foreign Office (see Parliamentary paper), and asked him whether this information, which he had received from French agents in Morocco, was confirmed by the official English despatches. When cross-examined by Lord Salisbury over the wire. Sir Charles Euan-Smith, in a Foreign Office despatch, dated Tangier, July 29, and published in the Parliamentary paper on the subject, stated that the document he tore up was not the draft of a treaty. On August the loth a leading article appeared in the Journal des Debats, signed by Mr. John Lem- moine, the French academician, whose sources of information at the Quai d'Orsai are, as is well known, unexceptional, which stated that among other in- accuracies which Sir Charles Euan-Smith's official correspondence contained, the most notable was his denial of having torn up the bogus treaty that the Grand Vizier had attempted to palm off upon him. The article concluded with the statement that Sir Charles Euan-Smith's official despatches would be considerably filled out by the correspondence of French agents in Morocco, shortly to appear in the French '' Yellow book." I must add, however, K 2 132 MOROCCO AS IT IS. that I am not of the opinion expressed unani- mously by the French papers that the subsequent admission of Mr. Lowther, Under-Secretary of State, in the House of Commons, was in any way motived by this thinly veiled threat and inuendo ; but, at the same time^ it is a matter of history that, on the following day, in answer to a question in the House of Commons, Mr. Lowther stated that he was informed by Sir Charles Euan-Smith that he had torn up a document in the nature of a draft treaty, but the treaty in question was not the treaty that the Sultan had solemnly promised to sign on July the 5th, or very nearly verbatim et literatim the state- ment that I had made six weeks previousl)' in ni)' despatches from Morocco. So it would appear that Sir Charles Euan-Smith has gone on record as having given to the world at least three accounts of what he did with the bogus treaty, and that each account categorically contra- dicts the other two. Little wonder, then, that the question as to what really did happen in Fez proved a puzzler to the London press, and that all infor- mation from the seat of contradiction and counter- contradiction, was, as if by common consent, published for many days under the rubric, " The Morocco Mystery." CHAPTER VIII. A WHITE SLAVE IN MOROCCO. The story of a renegade Spaniard — How the Riff Highlanders convert Christians to Islamisni — A cruel ceremony — Broken in health and spirits, Pepe is exchanged for a donkey by his captors — The incidents of three years' slavery in Morocco — A white man sold at auction in Casa Blanca — His libera- tion. The following chapter will prove unpleasant reading to the misguided gentlemen who monthly meet in London to devise ways and means of preventing the aboriginal races from being swept off the face of the earth. It will also give a very clear idea of the treat- ment which the Spanish sailors captured off Cape Juby in September of this year may possibly receive at the hands of their pirate captors. I think also that it will go far to upset the arguments of those who claim that the IMoor is not nearly so black as he is painted. The unfortunate hero of my story was undoubtedly a fugitive from justice ; but the Riff mountaineers, into whose hands he fell, knew abso- lutely nothing of his antecedents, and would have undoubtedly treated in the same way Mr. Gladstone or any other distinguished Englishman who might have the misfortune to meet with shipwreck on that 134 MOROCCO AS IT IS. dangerous coast. His treatment may, therefore, be considered as not exceptional but typical. During the early part of our stay in Fez I noticed on several occasions a very ragged, dejected-looking man crouch- ing in a corner of the narrow street by the principal fondak of the town whenever we rode past it. Once, as we rode by, he ran out and kissed the feet of a member of our party, muttering something to him which we failed to catch. My servant said that the poor fellow spoke Spanish ; but this we did not consider as at all out of the way, as a very great number of the Moors can speak a few words of that language. We passed him several times again, and I noticed that he always scanned our features earnestly, and listened attentively to what we said. Then, as he caught our English speech, he would turn his head away wearily, re- assuming his listless attitude. He seemed very weak and feeble, and as one worn out by fatigue and fc\'cr. I was struck by the pallor of his complexion, his blue eyes and yellow hair — not but that I had seen many Fazzi quite as blonde as he was — indeed, the darker Moors of the South call the natives of Fez Zaari, or " I''air ones," in contcmj)! of their pallid complexion — but there was something distinctly Furopean about this man's countenance, though he was clothed in fcctid Moc^rish rags. A week later we saw him again lying in his usual [)osition by the fondak, with the weary, hunted look upon his face that wc had already noticed. On catching sight of us, with sudden unexpected energy he sprang up and began to follow us. Wc slowed down our pace so that lie nii;.;ht catch uj), and he cpiickly made a sign 136 MOROCCO AS IT IS. to US to go and that he would follow. When we arrived at our garden he slipped into the gate, after looking well about him to see that he was un- observed. Once safe within our walls, he threw himself sobbing on the ground, and burst out into a paroxysm of hysterical tears, from which he did not recover for several hours. I shall not dwell on the horrid, nauseating details of this poor wretch's story. I would rather not have heard it at all, for it gave me a lower opinion of the human race than I had ever had before. Our strange visitor was a young Spaniard from Almeria. He was about twenty-four years of age, and his face and manner, as he sat before us and told his tale, were singularly straiglitforward and frank. Four years ago he had been sent by his father, a well-to-do merchant of Almeria, with money to pay off the labourers in a vineyard he owned on the vine- clad hills outside of that city. He paid the men off, and, as was the custom, sat down and drank wine with the labourers. After spending a half- hour with his men in this way, the young Spaniard called for his horse, to ride back into the city ; but the men refused to let him go, remarking in drunken jest that he was their prisoner. As he insisted upon leaving the roysterers — half in play, half in earnest — one of their number caugiit hold of him to detain him. Seeing his master thus attacked, a shepherd's dog that was the young Spaniard's inseparable companion, s{)rang up at his master's assailant, and in a moment with his sharp teeth had inflicted a mortal wound, by severing the jugular vein. The man sank down A WHITE SLAVE IN MOROCCO. 137 on the ground, covered with blood, and almost immediately one of the labourer's companions shot and killed the dog. The young Spaniard, seeing his favourite animal dying before his eyes, in a moment of passion drew his revolver and shot his slayer. The young Spaniard, whom I will call Pepe, was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment with hard labour, and sent to the penal settlement of Mellila, on the Moorish Coast, to serve his sentence. After ten months of this terrible place, the young Spaniard determined to make an attempt to escape, not so much in the hope that he would succeed, but rather trusting to be killed by one of the guards in the attempt. While working with his gang, stone-break- ing, out on the narrow neck of land which connects the peninsula of Mellila with the INIoorish coast watching his opportunity, he hid himself away in some swampy underbush that grew in patches down by the sea. When night came he succeeded in swim- ming over the narrow strip of water from the penal fortress to the mainland. That night and all the next day he wandered about in the Riff Mountains, and on the following evening he was discovered by the Riff mountaineers. They carried him to their village, and held a council as to what they should do with him. The result of their deliberations was made to him on the following morning — provided he became a Mahommedan, they promised to give him food and receive him in the village as a man and a brother. If he would not, they stated they would torture him to death. The unfortunate Spaniard chose to become a Moor. Under pretence of an I3S MOROCCO AS IT /S. initiatory ceremony, the unsuspecting victim was securely bound and placed on a board contrived for the purpose they had in view. They then stabbed and mutilated him in the most horrible manner, using their knives slowly, with cruelty calcu- lated to heighten his agony. An attack of brain- fever followed this terrible shock to his system ; and when Pope gradually recovered he was made the drudge of the village by day and a butt for the mockery of the Riff bo)-s in the evening ; but as he never recovered his strength sufficiently to compete as a beast of burden with the other animals which the Riffs possessed, they were glad one day to trade him off to a travelling merchant, who, in return, left behind him in the village a donkey that had broken down. Pcpe carried this merchant's pack all the way across IMorocco to Tafilet, from there to Tarudant, and north again to Mogador and Casa Blanca, where in full view of the consulates of all the Great Powers, he was sold publicly to another owner. The price paid was thirty Spanish dollars, a considerable rise in value from the da)', a year before, when he was traded off for a lame donkey. With liis new owner Pcpc marched all across Morocco from Casa Blanca to Piguig on the Algerian fnjntier. IIltc, for a moment, he succeeded in making his escape from his watchful master, and in making his way to the camp of the I'rcnch garrison which now holds this frontier town ; but the com- mander did not understand Si)anish, and, as Pepc's master came up and tried to drag him away, he did A WHITE SLAVE IN MOROCCO. 139 not care to enter into what he considered a dispute merely between master and man. On his return journey his second owner died at Oudjda, and the young Spaniard begged his way on to Fez, where he had arrived only a few days before attracting our attention. During these wanderings over the length A Tafilet Merchant on liis Meliari (camel). and breadth of the country he had been compelled to submit to every indignity, to every insult which the Moor, his master, could devise. When the Moorish muleteers had finished their meal, and the dogs theirs, the scraps that remained were thrown to him. Only once during these years did he get a change of garment, which happened in this way, near Tafilet. 140 MOROCCO AS IT IS. He found a fiiirly good jclab lying on the road which he immediately put on, wondering who the extravagant owner might be who had thrown away a garment but half used. At the next camping-ground he learned that the man to whom the garment had belonged had died of small-pox, and that his companions, with singular prudence and caution for Moors, had thrown his clothes away ; but Pcpe clung to his new-found yi^/rt^, preferring the danger of con- tagion to the ragged nakedness that had been his lot. We kept the poor fellow in our garden for over a week, debating what we should do with him. He refused absolutely to communicate with his family in Almeria. He said he preferred that they should consider him dead rather than that they should learn of the suffering he had undergone. He would also on no account allow us to appeal to the Spanish Legation at Tangier. lie had an idea that the officials there would feel compelled to hand him over to the authorities and send him back to serve out his sentence. It was quite impossible to disabuse liim of this idea. I'^in.illy, our new protege was becoming rather an embarrassment, when Mr. Ansaldo, a ]5ritish subject of Tangier, took the poor fellow under his protection, and it is entirely due to this kind- hearted gentleman that the young Spaniard is now safe, and out of the reach both of the inhuman Riffs and the Spanisii authorities. As illustrating the effect such prolonged suffering and degiading ex- periences had upon a high-spirited young man, 1 reproduce the last words we had with him before A WHITE SLAVE IN MOROCCO. I4I sending him away out of Fez under a safe escort. He came to our tent with tears of gratitude in his eyes, and profuse and really touching words of thanks upon his lips for the little kindness we had been able to show him. W. C, in the kindness of his heart, made him a present, of a valuable hunting-knife, which he accepted with childish delight ; but half an hour later he appeared at our tent-door, and his face again wore the hopeless, hunted expression which we had seen there so often before, " I cannot accept your knife, sen or," he said to W. C. " I am afraid to take it. Hitherto the Moors ^have beaten me and treated me with the greatest cruelty, but they never killed me, because it was not worth their while ; but with this knife in my possession it would be. I would not sell it after the senor's kindness to me, but he must not be vexed with me for not taking it. I dare not accept so valuable a present." It was in vain that we assured him that now he was completely safe, that no harm could possibly come to him, that we would answer for his life. His only reply was, " You are very kind, senor ; but the Christian is never safe in El Maghreb." This, reader, is not a tale culled from " Hakluyt's Voyages," or a page from the story of some Jesuit sent out into the wilds of the earth by the Pro- paganda, but it is "the plain, unvarnished tale of the treatment of one whom the Riffs considered a ship- wrecked mariner on their coast, along which hundreds and hundreds of vessels annually ply, which is not distant one thousand miles from London town, and it took place in this year of our Lord 1892. CHAPTER IX. .A ROW WITH BUSHTA-EL-BAGDADI. The midnight encounter at the Lions' Gate — The Ait-Atta Berbers attack us in the Bazaars — Their complaint to the Sultan — The injured Ait-Atta turns out unfortunately to be a " Shereef " — The shop of the man who sold me caftans wrecked by the mob — Our complaint to the Grand Vizier — Interview with the Bashaw — Its stormy course — The pleasing interlude of the concealed music- box — Bushta Bagdadi refuses to listen to us— Re- proaches me with my beardless chin — W. C. brings the United States navy into sight — Apologies all around, we get a letter from the Sultan and " bejewelled swords." On the evening of July the 2nd, an incident occurred which has been so distorted in telegrams and newspaper notices that, in justice to myself, I shall enter into the matter at some leni^th. I had been dining at the mess with the military members of the Mission, and started back to our camp about midnight with Boazza, one of our servants. I was on horseback, he preceding me on foot with a lantern. It was a pitch-dark night, and we had considerable difficulty in finding our way to the Bab Akbet Sba, or Gate of the Lions' Hill, through which it was necessary for us to go in order to reach the suburban garden in which we were encamped. A ROW WITH BUSHTA-EL-BAGDADl. 1 43 Though it was still an hour before closing time the gate was shut. We knocked for ten minutes at least, nobody appeared to open it. Finally we rapped at the guard-house in the Palace of the Bashaw of the city, about fifty yards away from the gate. Here the keys were usually kept. The guards came out, about a dozen in number, and, after carefully examining our faces with their lanterns, and with anything but complimentary remarks, went back again into the guard-house, and slammed the door in my face. We, how- ever, knocked again, and knocked loudly, and soon the whole neighbourhood was aroused and denouncing us in unmeasured terms from the win- dows that commanded the scene of what was fast becoming a midnight brawl. Finally, the guards again threw open the doors, and this time, as they came out, I noticed that they were armed. Six of them at least had their rifles, three or four presented pistols, and the rest carried very truculent-looking bludgeons. They told us that if we did not go away they would shoot. Boazza, my muleteer, stood his ground manfully. It was only what I expected from the man who enjoyed such a univer- sally bad character. Finally, as the men continued to gather around me in a most threatening manner, I drew my pistols and covered them. It must have been amusing to look at, but it was not amusing to live through. For fully three minutes not a sound was heard. I am afraid I lost my temper, and certainly the provocation was great. I remember riding up to the Caid of the guard and giving him a 144 MOROCCO AS IT IS. rather sound box on the ears. Boazza and I were shouting for the key the while, and the guards were loud in the expression of a wish to see my grand- mother burnt in the seventh and nethermost storey of hell. Suddenly they made unanimously for tlie door, as I thought, to get the key ; but Boazza was quicker witted, and, as they suddenly turned to close the door after them in our faces, he put his foot on the threshold, and got it well smashed for his pains. Seeing that their idea was to let us spend the night in the dirty street by the Akbet Sba, I put my horse against the door which Boazza had succeeded in keeping a few inches open at the cost of a severe crushing to his knee ; and the next moment the door gave wa}-, and, to the unspeakable sur- prise of the guards, Mulai Hassan, my pony, and I, closely followed by Boazza, were parading in the most magnificent manner inside the guard- house. Mulai Hassan, who was as much frightened and nervous as his rider, which is saj'ing a good deal, prancing and kicking about, contrived to do a lot of damage. Two beautiful little tiled tables, upon which the Caid was taking his midnight tea, were kicked into smithereens. Cups and saucers were broken, and lie pranced about on the Zimmoor rugs as though these beautiful carpets were his nightly bedding. The guards, myself, and Boazza, presented arms again for about five minutes, somewhat after the menacing attitude of rival armies in an Italian opera. I soon discovered that the old Caid in charge of the night guard was its weakest member, and so, catching him by the car, and giving it a good tug, A ROW WITH BUSHTA-EL-BAGDADI. I45 I placed my pistol very near to his temple, and explained that unless the keys of the gate were forthcoming in very short order, there would be bloodshed. The Caid was very much flustered at this sudden onslaught. He swore that no insult had been intended, that the keys of the gate were under the Bashaw's pillow, and that it was impossible for him to get at them. Seeing, however, that I was obdurate, he implored one of the soldiers, his son, I believe, to go upstairs, awake the Bashaw, and beg him for the keys. For five minutes we stood in statuesque pose, the Moors covering me with their rifles, and I with the shining barrel of my revolver within six inches of the old Caid's bald cranium. Finally the young soldier returned, and with him came the most absolutely repulsive-looking old re- probate that I have ever seen in my life. It was Bushta-el-Bagdadi, the Bashaw. He had been dis- turbed in his sleep ; his eyes were bloodshot, and his under-lip hung over like a hound's. He carried a candle, which he held up, and studied my face with an expression of the most concentrated hatred that I have ever seen on a human visage — which I hope I may never excite again. My statuesque attitude of murderous menace was growing wearisome, when the Bashaw terminated the trying situation by saying to the young soldier, " Bring the keys," and in a moment the gate was opened^ and we rode through amid the curses of the angry crowds that had now assembled. It was unpleasant to have to turn our backs upon these people, but it had to be done. They stood there armed, cursing as we rode L 146 MOROCCO AS IT IS. by, and I can answer for my own feelings at least when I say that I did not feel perfectly safe from stray bullets until we had turned the corner. The following morning was the last business day before the commencement of the New Year festivities, and, as we were leaving Fez in a week, we had to gather together all our purchases on that day. About ten o'clock I started down into the bazaars on horse- back, v/ith Salem-el-Sheshouani accompanying me on foot. I went from bazaar to bazaar until finally I reached the little shop of a sleek merchant named Absalom, who had been making some caftans for me. For ten minutes we had noticed half a dozen wild- looking Berbers following us, but I attributed this to their curiosity at seeing a Christian. They were evidently strangers to Fez, of the Ait-Atta tribe, and live between Wadnoon and Timbuctoo. They are the men who murdered the English traveller Davidson when he endeavoured to reach Timbuctoo in 1836, as I afterwards learned. Absalom, the caftan maker, was engaged with another customer when we appeared. He, however, pointed to a shelf in his shop on which, he said, our bundle of caftans was done up and ready. Salem was reaching up to get down my bundle when one of the Ait-Atta tribesmen gave him a good blow across the back with the handle of the spear he was carrying. " Servant of a dog of a Christian," he said, " how dare you lay hands on the caftans of the True Believers?" Salem was very much taken back, and I very angry indeed, at this sudden onslaught. I gave the man a cut across the head with my riding- crop, and his turban rolled off into the gutter. Un- A now WITH BUSHTA-EL'BAGDADI. 1 47 fortunately his turban was a green one, showing that he was of Shereefian or saintly descent, and it was not until I saw the look of horror that came over Salem's face, and heard the cries of indignation that burst from every lip, that I realized what I had done. I had struck a descendant of Mahomet, and knocked off his holy turban. We were in a little side alley off the main street that runs through the bazaars, and if the Ait-Atta had had any " snap " in them at all they could have cut us up into pieces in the winking of an eye. There was no way to get out except through the angry crowd of five or six hun- The Sultan's sword and Shereefian belt. dred Moors in front of us, angry and raging at the thought of the sacrilegious blow that had been in- flicted on one of the anointed of their race and creed. Poor Salem's complexion was now a mottled green colour ; I have no means of knowing what was the colour of mine, but my knees were jumping against the side of my horse in the most remarkable fashion, and certainly I was cursing my impulsiveness, and never expecting to get out of that blind alley alive. Fortunately Absalom, the old caftan maker, made a diversion in our favour. He had made a good deal of money out of the strangers who were in Fez, so he was good enough to say that it was not my fault at all, and that I was perfectly justified in striking the L 2 148 MOROCCO AS IT IS. Shereef who had dared to punish my servant for taking down out of the shop caftans which belonged to me, and which had been paid for. This was all very true, but it was a very unwise thing for Absalom to say. I had two revolvers, and Salem had a very ugly-looking curved knife, so that we were more formidable than the sleek caftan maker, and could cer- tainly have " driven daylight through " three or four saints, or sinners, before being pinned down and over- powered by numbers. The crowd, seeing our deter- mined front, turned on Absalom. They cursed him for having brought Christians into the quarter, and , while they were massing in some numbers in front of his shop, Salem and I put on a bold front and rode out of the blind alley. I had a pistol in my right hand and another in myJeft. Several of the Ait-Atta now brought their guns up to the shoulder, but they took them down very quickly when I covered them with my Colt's revolvers. We backed out into the main street, and then it occurred to me that it would never do to leave the bazaars under compulsion, especi- ally as Salem knew that I had not half completed my purchases ; so we next visited the Babousha and the brass bazaars, and not for half an hour, when all my purchases were made and parcels collected, did I feel at liberty to start for the camp. During the whole time the Ait-Atta followed us, telling the Moors their version of the encounter, and endeavouring to bring about a religious row. It was very unpleasant to look out from a shop upon a sea of upturned, hostile faces, and expect every moment to have a knife stuck in you. The Ait-Atta, who I certainly believe, though I have no A ROW WITH BUSHTA-EL-BAGDADI. 1 49 manner of proof of it, had been sent to pick a quarrel with me by the Bashaw, followed me at a respectful dis- tance to the garden where my camp was. On arriving here, I found Absalom, the caftan maker, awaiting our return trembling like an aspen leaf, with his face as white as his haik. It seems that the shopkeepers and the Berbers had wrecked his shop immediately after my departure, and, after giving him a good flogging, had said that, if he ever returned to the shop again, they would kill him. Absalom enjoyed, or speaking more correctly endured, the rude hospi- tality of my garden for three days, but losing faith in the protection of the stars and stripes during the exciting days that followed, he " scuttled " one night and took sanctuary in the Mosque of Mulai Edriss_, where he may be cringing and crouching to this day, fed by the pitying priest and his own relations. Immediately after trailing me to my garden, the Ait-Atta rode to their encampment outside the walls, told their fellow-tribesmen of their grievance, and, two hours later they appeared before the Sultan's Palace on horseback, three hundred strong, and demanded an audience of the great Seedna. This was granted them. I believe the injured saint, whose holy turban had rolled in the gutter, demanded my head and ears as the only punish- ment at all adequate to my offence. This news reached me in my camp, where, after thinking the matter all over, I had concluded to drop it, to make no complaint, but to get out of Fez soon, the day after the fete if possible. Indeed it was won- derful how easy it is to dismiss the most important 150 MOROCCO AS IT IS. matters and the most flagrant insults from your mind during the red-hot Ansera month in Fez with the thermometer at no in the shade. Now I saw, however, that, if only in self-defence, something would have to be done, so the afternoon was spent in learned discussions with the taleebs or writers of the British Mission, who were placed at my disposal for the purpose of drafting a letter by the British Envoy. The result of our consultations was a very enigmatical letter which, after being duly signed by W. C. and myself, was despatched to the Grand Vizier. We also sent a verbal message to the Bashaw, asking for an interview, and on the follow- ing morning we received a request from him to call at three o'clock in the afternoon. With calculated want of punctuality, we arrived at the Bashaw's ramshackle Palace at the Lions' Gate twenty minutes after tiie hour at which we had been requested to appear. The l^ashaw got back at us, I think very neatly, in serving tea that had been standing at least for an hour. Wc were received by a huge black slave from the Sahara, whose expression of countenance was as dark and as lowering even as the Numich'an black- ness of his complexion. We were escorted b}- hini through the garden into the summer pavilion or koubba, in which it is tiie liashaw's custom to give audiences during the summer solstice. At the back of the pavilion the floor was raised about ten inches. Here in a little niche cushions were arranged awaiting the coming of the liishaw. This was his throne. To the right of the raised dais had A I^OW WITH BUSHTA-EL-BAGDADI. 15I been arranged three very dainty little chairs, all covered with gilt. They were, we were told, a present from a European sovereign desirous of con- ciliating the redoubtable Bashaw, and of securing his good offices at the Shereefian Court. We were accompanied by M. Vismes de Ponthieu, the first dragoman of the British Legation, who had kindly consented to act as our interpreter. In a iew moments the Bashaw appeared in the doorway. His brutal, ignorant face, wreathed in smiles, as it was now, seemed even more repugnant than in its natural ♦expression of unreasoning hatred to the roumi. He shook us warmly by the hand, put his hand then to his heart, and kissed his finger tips, all in our honour, very well before we knew what he was about. He then sat down on the tufted cushions after having requested us to be seated ; and, slowly telling his prayer beads the while, with monotonous voice he began to pay us the usual Moorish compli- ments which, for the purposes of direct narrative, I will omit here. He said he was indeed very glad to see us, as his soldiers had complained that I had whipped them, and pointed my revolver at them in the most threatening manner, and that, when after a slight delay in opening the gate, for which they were not respon- sible as the keys were mislaid, they said I had fired a fusillade of joy to celebrate my victory, and that the bullets had whizzed within a few inches of the Caid's head. "Of course. Son of America," he concluded, " I know there must be some mistake, and I am indeed glad that you have come to me frankly to tell me all about it." 152 MOROCCO AS IT IS. Very bluntly \vc restated the case, and told the Bashaw that we had come to demand an explanation and redress — not to give cither the one or the other. The Bashaw's facial expression, as he listened to my story, was simply inimitable. The corners of his mouth twitched with insuppressible incredulity, and his eyes twinkled with the sceptical amusement of a man who reads a good sea-serpent story in his news- paper during the "silly season." Every now and then he would throw back his head and emit a guttural " oollah, oollah "— " My God "—of astonish- ment and admiration ; and then he would turn towards me and survey me from head to feet with ever-increasing admiration for what he had evidently decided to consider the valued embroidery of a bald and otherwise uninteresting narrative. It was admirable, but at the same time very irritating, and I was about to break off abruptly my story when the Bashaw interrupted and brought upon his own shoulders the responsibility for the breaking off of all diplomatic relations with the sons of America. "You say my guards were armed ?" he inquired. " / say they had only sticks. As long as the Chris- tians arc in town I alwa>-s lock up the rifles in my own room every night before going to bed, so that my men, full of a h(jly hatred to the Christians, may yet do them no harm." This was indeed a very serious charge, but I controlled my temper, as I wished him to go on record as to whether he had witnessed the altercation, or not. In reply to the question I jiul to him, he rcj)licd unblushingly that he had not. Then I asked if he presumed to con- A J?01V WITH BUSHTA-EL-BAGDADI. 153 tradlct me on the facts of the occurrence in which I was an actor, and which, to credit his own words, he had not witnessed. He growled out that, by all the saints, including Mulai Abd-de-Kader, he did. Then I requested the interpreter to inform the Bashaw that he was a liar, but our interpreter, alas ! was a respecter of persons from a monarchical country, and perhaps he doubted very much the advisability of insulting such a lion in his very lair, so he hemmed and hawed, and said nothing. Finally, however, we got him on up to the correct translating point, and he told the Bashaw what I thought of him in Moorish, and a very ugly, sharp sounding, hissing word it is. The Bashaw gave a little start, as though he had been given an electric shock. Then, pulling himself together, he put his hand to his ear, and turning to Salem, my boy, asked him to explain. " What does the son of America say ? " he inquired. " He said," replied the boy, " O Bashaw, that thou liest." I have often envied Salem's cocksureness, and the perfect confidence he had that, if anything should happen to him, should a wrong ever be done him, his beloved mountaineers, the Sheshouani, would exact a complete and terrible revenge. The Bashaw had probably feigned deafness and made a pretence of not having understood our inter- preter in order to give us an opportunity to weigh our words, and, if possible, to avoid a rupture, which he knew his master, the Sultan, did not desire ; but, on the repetition of the statement from the mouth of a slave, and seeing that, as the necessity arose, we did not hesitate to call even the Bashaw a liar, he 154 MOROCCO AS IT IS. with very rage frothed at the mouth, and growled like a wild beast. He tugged at his beard, beat his hands against his head, and cried that it was indeed disgraceful that I, a beardless boy, should so insult a man of his age. " But it will not go unpunished," he cried, as he drew himself together, and crouched as though pre- paring to spring upon us. We had been prepared for a stormy interview, and our revolvers were in our pockets, and not in our holsters, which we had found was an unhandy place to have them in Morocco, even if moving in court circles as we were doing. The Bashaw continued to rage about the kouba, and by his menacing talk evidently tried to instigate his slaves to attack us then and there, or waylay us later on in the streets. At this point W. C. arose from his chair and made a speech, in which he drew a picture of the misfortunes that would accrue to Morocco from a rupture of diplomatic relations with America, so perfect in detail, and so magnifi- cently lifelike in word-painting, that, listening to his eloquent words, I saw our " Xk\v NavV " bearing down on the Barbary coast to bombard and harry the country, and a picture of the holy Mosque at Salce in smoking ashes rose before me. Indeed I experience the greatest difficulty now in believing that the Baltimore has* not bombarded Salec. As Chanlcr rose for this patriotic performance, a music- box attached to iiis chair, arrangetl to play as the sitter rose, pealed out the strains (»f " 1 leil dir im sciges Kran/,." The situation became side-splitting. With the greatest difficulty I preserved the necessary gravity of countenance. It had all evidently been pre-arranged A FOW WITH BUSHTA-EL-BAGDADI. 1 55 by the Bashaw, who had awaited a very different conclusion to our interview. W. C. wished to bring before him the ignominious manner in which he had treated Moses-ben-Amoor-ben-Assouli, our consular agent in Fez, who, as we had only found out that morning, when he called on the Bashaw with our letter from the Consul-General in Tangier, had been ignominiously thrown out of the Palace. But the Bashaw would have absolutely nothing more to say to us, and without any formal leave-taking, we returned to our garden to discuss the situation which had now assumed a rather serious aspect. The Ait- Atta were still encamped outside the walls of the city, vowing vengeance upon me for the blow I had given their saint. Salem, who was by no means timorous, asserted that in the morning he had met two of the Ait-Atta by Mulai Edriss, that they had drawn their knives on him, and that he had only succeeded in escaping from them by running. To make matters worse, Caid Sudec, our soldier, had left three days before for Mekinez on a visit to one of his very numerous wives — not that we could have counted in the least upon this stalwart coward in the hour of danger, but because in a weak moment I had lent him my rifle for the journey. He had worked upon my feelings by telling me that going to Mekinez he would have to pass through the terri- tory of the Berber tribe with whom his family had a blood feud. Our garden was half a mile away from the Mission House, and the messages we had sent to the consular agent remained unanswered. Shortly before sunset, however, a letter came from Sir Charles Euan-Smith in which he strongly advised us 156 MOROCCO AS IT IS. to take up residence temporarily at the Mission. He offered in case we did not care to leave our garden — a step which would have undoubtedly led the Moors to think that fear of them had inspired us to that move — to send down some of the Mission soldiers and servants to assist us in the event of an attack being made upon our camp. We were very grateful for the offer, but, after one look at the stars and stripes which floated over our heads, we declined it with thanks. Though the neces- sities of his diplomatic position prohibited Sir Charles from taking any official steps in our case, unofficially he was very active in our behalf, and it was no doubt due in a great measure to the suggestions and advice given by him to Sid Gharnet that our griev- ances with the Moori-h Government were so promptly settled. Early in the morning we received a note from Sid Gharr.et, asking us to meet him in the afternoon at the English Mission. There he expressed great regret that we should have been so molested, and said that the Sultan had instructed him to offer us 5000 dollars as indemnity for the dangers to which we had been exposed, and as a settlement of all differences. lie also proffered a Shcrecfian escort of fifty cavalry for our journey to the coast. This settlement wc refused to consider. He then asked what our demands were. Wc stated that wc required a letter from the Sultan expressing his regret at the occurrence, a personal apology from the Bashaw to mc for his insulting language, the whip- ping of the guards, and a small monetary compensa- tion for Sal(;m and Boa/.za who had been injured in A ROW WITH BUSHTA-EL-BAGDADI. 15/ the encounters. In the evening Sid Gharnet called and said that the Sultan requested him to thank us for what he chose to term our magnanimity, and to ^Lv;i nijw^ The Sultan's Letter. State that his Shereefian Majesty was very willing indeed to comply with our demands, and further, as an indication of the high esteem in which he held us, he hoped that we would each accept at his hands 158 MOROCCO AS IT IS. a Shereefian sword and belt. The next day we received the following letter which was written by the Grand Vizier, Sid Gharnet, himself. In the left- hand corner, at the end of the letter, there was a short dash in pencil which time and weather have now effaced. This was the sign of Imperial approval of its contents. The Sultan never writes his own letters, but runs them over carefully and approves of them with this pencil dash. Only his official letters and mandates are stamped with the Shereefian seal. (Translation). Praise be to God. There is no strength and power but in God. To our friends the men of wisdom, the gentlemen, the officers, the Americans. We always ask about your healtli and hope you arc all well. I have informed our Lord (may God protect him) of what has occurred between you and the Berbers of the tribe of Ait- Atta, for which our Lord is sorry, because you belong to a great and friendly nation, and our Lord objects to cases like this taking place in his Dominions, on the contrary, he desires that you be protected in his Dominions ; and his Majesty has ordered me to express to you these his wishes, and he expects that you will not be sorry for what has occurred, because the Berbers are very ignorant people, and know nothing about courtesy, they arc always on the wing like birds, and very seldonj come to our City of Fez. Our Lord makes you a present of these two gilded sabres (made in our happy country) through our friend the British Am" bassador, and he desires you to live in tranquility, joy and peace. 3 day of Dulbigia 1309 = to 28th day of June 1S92. (Signed) ^LxuoMEU Gharnei', Vizier. A EOW WITH BUSHTA-EL-BAGDADI. 159 The same evening we received the Shereefian swords, which were very handsome. The green and purple belts, the colours indicative of friendship and esteem of the Sultan, that accompanied them were particularly beautiful. Bushta made his personal apology, and the men were paid their money. We were asked then to appoint an hour convenient to us when the Bashaw's soldiers would be brought into our garden, and publicly thrashed with the filcly before our eyes. This offer, out of consideration for our nerves, and the feelings of the sweet-singing bul- buls that inhabited our garden, we declined, request- ing that the men might receive their punishment elsewhere. I suppose they were never punished at all in consequence. Even after this satisfactory settlement of all our grievances was reached, we deeply regretted the occurrence. For a time at least we had to say good-bye to o.ur long planned trip to the Beni-m'ghil country^ where we had hoped to hunt the "yellow-haired sheriffs," as Salem re- spectfully called the lions that abound there. Now, we could no longer hope to " pan " for gold in the country of Ait-Atta, or chase the agile mouflon on the slopes of the Atlas. It was quite apparent that " the men of wisdom, the Americans," after whose welfare and health the Sultan was so solicitous, would have to leave the country for a short time at least, and, if we had had any doubt as to the advisability of this course, it would have been dispelled by the reception of the request we made to Sid Gharnet that we might be allowed to view the fete of the Hydia on the following day, when the Berber chieftains bring in l6o MOROCCO AS IT IS. New Year's gifts of produce, and are received by the Sultan in the INIeshwa. " Oolah — by God/' he exclaimed ; " it would be as much as your life is worth. '^ We told him that we would accept the responsibilityj and take with- out a murmur the consequences of our presence there, but he replied that, though we seemed to value our lives cheaply, perhaps in the eyes of our relatives they would seem very valuable, in case we met with sudden death. He added that the Government was already groaning under the heavy compensations paid to the families of Europeans who had come to grief in Morocco. During the stay of the English Mission in Fez there was encamped in a garden near ours a bi-lingual journalist, and as the sequel proved, very well- informed he was as to the course of the negotiations. Probably in default of more important and exciting news, this gentleman informed the world in two languages that at the great feast of Ait-el-Keber, 1 had been stoned to death, and that W. C. had been severely mauled and mangled, that every breath he drew was expected to be his last. This information he sent to the coast by messenger, without making an effort to control its accuracy, though the garden over which the stars and stripes floated was hardly 300 yards away from his camp. On the following day we met him out, riding, and certainly he evinced no surprise at finding that we were still alive, and indeed, a rare thing for a French journalist, he did not have sufficient esprit dc con- frerie and courtesy to inform us that for the world A J?0]]' WITH DUSHTA-EL-BAGDADI. l6l at large at least we were dead, and consequently ought to go and bury ourselves. It was only on our arrival in Tangier that we were informed of our demise, and also learned that our friends in America had communicated with our Minister there by cable, and that boxes were being prepared for our shipment home. I believe we Vv'ere to go as " first-class anatomical specimens " — a flatter- ing subterfuge by which the remains of Americans who pass away in foreign countries are accepted b)- the steamship companies for their last journey home to the land of the McKinley Bill. .M CHAPTER X. THE SHEREEFS OF WAZZAN. The late Grand Shereef Mulai Abd-el-S!ilem— A direct de- scendant of Mahomet — The humbler origin of the Fileli family of Sultan Mulai Hassan — Chief of the Mahommedan sect, Manlai Taib — The late Grand Shereef as a con- spirator — He becomes a French protege — His marriage with an English lady — The " Fatha " lisped with a Cockney accent — Anglo-Moorish Saints — A heavy fine imposed on infidelity — The Grand Shereef sent to the Touat country — His spendthrift habits — The walking-staff and the Shereefian succession — Mulai Mohamed-el-Erbi succeeds to the Apostolic throne — He is a Nationalist — Averse to the interference of European diplomacy in Moorish affairs. The late Grand Shcrccf of Wazzan, the Pope of Mauritania, as he was often though \vron<^fuIly called, was an intcrcstinfj and powerful factor in the war of intrigue which is now going on in Morocco. With his death last month the halo' of sanctity which encircled his bullet-shaped head, descends upon his son and successor, and also in a great measure his political influence. Mulai Abd-cl-Salem was a direct lineal descendant of the Shereefian family of Medina. The present Sultan, Mulai Hassan, cannot compare with him in that order of sanctity, which in Islam is founded entirely upon the accident of birth. The 164 MOROCCO AS IT IS. Filcli dynasty, which has occupied the throne in IMorocco for several centuries^ can only claim, though by no means, prove descent through Mulai Edriss to a somewhat obscure sister of the Prophet. The Shereefs or saints of Wazzan, however, enjoy the supreme advantage of tracing their ancestry in an unbroken line to the daughter — the beloved Fatma — of the Prophet, and to AH his nephew, his favourite and his successor. As the head of the great Mahommedan sect of Maulai Taib, the Grand Shereef of Wazzan, no matter what his personal character may be, is feared and honoured throughout the world, and, even in this prosaic decade, pious pilgrims have come from the banks of the Ganges to ask the blessing of the great Saint of Islam in the land of the setting sun. The mail this very ^ui-de-sitcle saint receives is simply enormous, and I once saw a letter addressed to him from a Mahommedan Chinaman, written in the lan- guage of the flowery kingdom, the translation of which baffled even the pol)glot Tangerines. ]kit the Moorish pope — as have some other popes —has always shown a decided inclination for temporal rather than spiritual power, and, ever since attaining his majority, now nearly forty years ago, the late Grand Shereef never overlooked an opportunity to undermine the authority of the reigning dynasty. Some ten )-ears ago the well-known disaffection and discontent of the Shereef with the prevailing order of things burst out into open rebellion, when lie instigated the Anghera tribesmen to revolt against the Sultan. The rebellion was suppressed with great cruelty, CI (a St s; 1 66 MOROCCO AS IT IS. his Majesty, Mulai Hassan, taking the field in person, and the shrivelled heads of hundreds of the Anghera and Ouedras tribesmen adorned the crates of manv a Moorish town for months. Infuriated with the Shereef for his long-continued machinations against himself and family, the Sultan was on the point of attacking him even in his holy city of Wazzan, when the then French Minister to Morocco, M. Ordega, interfered and announced that the Shereef was a protcg^ or protected citizen of France. The casual observer would conclude that an Islam saint, on assum- ing French citizenship, would suffer considerable loss of sanctity and prestige among his fellows, but such is not the case. After a very short residence in Morocco, you become aware of the fact that a Shereef is absolutely infallible, that he can do no wrong, that his actions arc not to be measured by the cvery-day standards that are applied to ordinary mortals. In- deed, the late Grand Shereef was in many ways a genial trifler with the tenets of his faith, and was guilty of some misdemeanours that would have con- verted any other Mahommcdan into a perfect pariah. Some eighteen years ago, fur instance, he married an English lady by whom he has two sons ; but, though these Anglo- Moorish boys prefer to speak English, their appearance anywhere in Morocco suffices to set the whole population in ecstatic rapture. Indeed, the young Shercefs, who lisj) the JatJia with a cockney accent, travel all over Morocco and enjoy very large incomes from the tribute money and the presents which arc bestowed upon them by the coun- try Kabylcs. The Shereef of Wazzan. 1 68 MOROCCO AS IT IS. Should the coffin of the Prophet be still suspended between earth and heaven, I should think its equili- brium would be upset by Mahomet's surprise at hear- ing his direct lineal descendants singing the topical songs of the London music-halls as I have. I remember distinctly my first sight of Mulai Ali, the eldest of these Anglo-Moorish saints. They were returning from a long pilgrimage through the Zim- moor country and the Forest of Marmora, and were bringing back with them to Tangier some hundred ponies and other valuable presents that the adoring tribesmen had made them. Hundreds of the piously inclined assembled outside the gates of the city and welcomed Mulai Ali on his return. He was mounted on a .sluggish horse, which provoked the young saint's temper very much. Finally, throwing dignity to the winds, he shouted pctulantl}', " Ha'ang it, ga on, ca'an't yer } " and the adoring multitudes taking up the cry, some hundreds of pilgrims crowded around the recalcitrant animal, shouting as well as thc)- could, " Ha'ang it, ga on, ca'an't yer .'' " Poor Mahomet ! The English Shercefa is a very intelligent woman. On marrying thc Moorish saint she had the good sense to include in the marriage contract a clause to thc effect that in case thc Shcrcef should at any time afterwards take to his ample bosom a new wife, he would have to pay her, and ajjain with each repetition of his infidelity, a forfeit of twenty thousand dollars. After p lying the penalty of his uxoriousness twice, the marriages of the Shercef, it is saiei, became very informal affairs indeed. Since the Anghera and Oued-Ras rebellion, thc Interior of Sultan's Palace at Fez. I/O MOROCCO AS IT IS. Shereef of Wazzan has been entirely at the beck and call of the French Foreign Office, and it is said that he draws a large pension for the political services he renders France, and certainly they are very con- siderable. In his photograph he wears a French uni- form, and, as will be noticed, the Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honour. Last spring, when the Algerian Government decided to let the invasion of the Touat go over, or lapse for a year or two, perhaps only until the strategic railways in the Sud Oranis can be completed, the Shereef was despatched by M. Cambon, the Go\ernor-General of Algeria, to pacify the excited tribesmen who dwell on the green islands of the Touats and desert. Here he exercised undoubtedly a great influence over the Gourara and the Amhari tribesmen, and it is perhaps due to his intercession that we have heard nothing further of the hostility of the great chief Bou-Amena to French encroachments. His influence over the nomadic gentry of these regions is undoubted. They pray weekly for him in their mosques of woven camel's hair, and they never fail to put to death the hated tax-gatherer of the Sultan who ventures into their countr)', and with the spring-time some substantial and spontaneous tribute of their superstitious faith and belief always reaches the Shereef in his Holy City of Wazzan. Personally, the Tope of Mauritania had many admirable traits. He was generous to a fault, and succeeded with the greatest case in spending yearly the large pension the French Government allowed him for his political services and the generous pre- Bringing in Dishes at bid Ghiarnel's Dinner. from " The Illustrated London Xews," by permission. I/- MOROCCO AS IT IS. sents which are sent him by true believers all over the world. And, indeed, so lavish was he in the spending of an income which is never less than 20,000/. per annum, that the Saint of Wazzan some- times found himself very "hard up." The Shereef was always universally popular with Europeans in Tangier, despite the unhappy upshot of his matri- monial alliance. A curious story is told of how he came to succeed his father, and, as I have it vouched for on such good authority, I will repeat it here. Abd-el-Salem was one of the children of the late Shereef by a poor Houssa negress, a slave in the Grand Shereef's harem, as the Shereefs swarthy complexion and negroid features betray to the present day. When the great saint, his father, came to die, there crowded around his beside his wives, his friends, and his relatives. One of them asked, " And who, O lord, do you wish should succeed you on the saintly throne?" The old man, it seems, a few minutes before had given his favourite walking-staff to the child of his heart, the child he desired to succeed him. lie said, " In the garden you will find a boy playing with my staff; upon him I wish to see descend my Shcrecfian mantle, and by him I expect to sec the glory of my house upheld." While the sorrowing relatives and friends were awaiting the end in respect- ful silence, the Houssa negress, unobserved, slipped out of the death chamber, and took the staff away from the Shereefs favourite child, and gave it to her own offspring. When the relatives of the family of the late Shereef came out into the courtyard, they found that the child of the Houssa negress was the, Woman's Day in the Mosque of Mulai Edriss. From " The Illustrated London Xews," by pcriiiission. 174 MOROCCO .IS IT IS. son on whom the mantle of the Prophet had descended, and though the deception that had been practised was suspected, it was too late to do any- thing, and so Abd-el-Salem came into the vast pro- perty and the saintly prestige of the man of whom his mother had been the least of his slaves. The Grand Sherccf, who died very unexpectedly towards the end of September, will be succeeded in his apostolic office by Mulai Mahomed El-Erbi, the eldest son of the Sh^reef, who for many j-ears has governed the Holy City in the place of his father, who preferred Tangier as a place of residence. Mulai Mahomed has not the amiable weakness for Europeans that characterized his father. He is a thorough- going Moor, fanatical, and hating all encroachments of Western civilization and commerce. He, unlike his brother, knows no language but Mogrebbin Arabic. He is hospitable to all strangers who come to the Holy City properly introduced, but at the same time he is evidently relieved when they depart. He is a mighty hunter, and spends much of his time pursuing the " father of tusks" on the high hills that surround his city. Mulai Mahomed is undoubtedly of the opinion that Morocco should belong to the Moors, and has never shown a decided preference for any race or nation of the Nesrana. He evidently dislikes them all. He is a handsome, fine-looking man of five-and-thirty. 1 am inclined to think that his character is formed, ant! that, unlike his hapless father, he will not be turned frf)m the path which his conception of dut)' points out to him by foreign gold. CHAPTER Xr. THE SAINTS AND STUDENTS OF THE KAIROUIN UNIVERSITY.' The Sacred Mosque of Western Barbary — A Moorish Dick Whittington— Primary education in profanity — The four hundred Students assisted by the Foundation — Bettel- studenten — Office-holders must be without education — History of Mulai Hassan — "Self-made" Saints and here- ditary Shereefs — Professional etiquette of miracle-makers — Whiskey becomes mare's milk — The "gilded youth " with sacks of gold dust — Moorish football — Amusing stipulation of the marriage contract — Academic belles of many gene- rations — The Sultan of the Tholba — The geography of the world as taught by the learned Fukies — Christian countries ignored — A tournament of Pundits — The green standards of the Sulhama — Kairouin as a library — The missing classics — Many manuscripts in the sub-cellars of the Shrine The Kairouin University of Fez was founded by Fatma — not the beauty of that name— but a Tunisian woman from Kairouin, towards the end of the ninth century, or about fifty years after Mulai Edriss laid the corner stone of the Western Mecca. As one looks upon these crumbling ruins, the three hundred and sixty pillars of marble, dragged from Heaven ' A large portion of this chapter appeared in the October number of the Fortnightly Review, and is here reproduced by kind permission of Frank Harris, Esq. 1/6 MOKOCCO AS IT IS. knows where, which arc still upstanding, and as you hear the fanatical cries and see the lowering, threaten- ing gaze which invariably greets the coming of the Christian " pig " to this classic shade, you can hardly realize that you have before you all that remains of what was perhaps generally considered the greatest university in the world in the early Middle Ages. Mere, beyond all manner of doubt, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, students assembled from all over the world, Christian as well as Mahommedan. Those who thirsted after knowledge and sought the " pearls of wisdom " at any price came here on their quest from the Niger, from the Congo, from Andalusia, from Tripoli, Tunis, Egypt, and Italy ; and as is also a matter of absolute history, Englishmen, especially students of the science of the stars, came to the Sacred Mosque in Western Barbary. The Kairouin lies in the hollow of the city, surrounded by bazaars and the listless marts of trades, now only rarely enlivened by the arrival of some considerable caravan from Taradunt or Timbuctoo, or perhaps even from Upper Egypt via Tripoli and Insalah. It occupies an area of about ten acres, I should say, and on the eastern end of what is rather a con- glomeration of mosques than a single edifice there are two square and rather ugly minarets, though beautifully inlaid with tiles, in which are burned the most brilliant colours, at once the hope and despair of painters of eastern landscapes. In this mosque of many court)ards beautiful fountains are continually playing, the walls arc decorated with Salee mattings and many-coloured haytics embroidered in gold. THE KAIROUIN U^UVERSITY. 1/7 But perhaps the entrances to the mosque are the most remarkable exterior features. The huge doors are made entirely of copper,, revealing beautiful tracery of fretwork. Above the doors are wonderful cedar- wood carvings, which are said to have been designed by Geber, the architect of the Giralda in Seville, and the tower of the Beni-Hassan in Rabat. The floors oi the shrine are bare cold tilings, and the worshippers generally bring with them their prayer-rugs to kneel upon, and — as I am afraid is the custom in other places of worship — to sleep upon. The huge edifice, which is at once a shrine, a universit}', a library, and a caravanserai, is always thronged, and its doors are never closed night or day. These bare stone walls and innumerable moss-grown pillars exert power and influence over the popular mind, and command a respect which the Sultan has to count with. It is very hard to describe the ecclesiastical hier- archy that obtains in the " western province " of Islamism, and in fact it would be safer to say that there is none. The Kairouin Cathedral and Univer- sity is entirely ruled by the people who frequent it. In its sacred precincts Mahomet is the only high priest. There are, of course, fukies, or professors, and eviins, the faithful ones or priests, but woe betide the priest or fukie who dared to address the most ragged vagabond of the fondaks, or a bare-footed beggar from the Suss in anything but terms of con- sideration and civility. Here the vagabond and the muleteer has as much right to loiter and to learn as the wisest pundit, though one is a ragamuffin and the other may wear a caftan of green silk and shroud his N 178 MOROCCO AS IT IS. form in tlic serpentine folds of a sateen Jia'ik. It is generally stated and believed that the Sultan of Morocco, like the Czar, is at once the temporal and the spiritual head of his people ; but this is not quite true. Though one of his many titles is that of "Guardian and Commander of the True Believers," this authority is very shadowy, at least as far as the Kairouin is concerned, and the Sultan had an oppor- tunity of judging some three years ago of the danger that might result from his interference in purely Church government. For some reason or other, he commanded that the Mokaddum or chief trustee of the University — an office which has been hereditary in one family since the death of the Tunisian Fatma — be dismissed. This was done, but within three days there arose such an outcry and hubbub at the Sultan's attempt to exercise unwonted authority in Church matters, that he very wisely bethought him to announce that in a dream the apparition of his sainted father had appeared to him and requested him to reinstate the Mokaddum. The Mokaddum was reinstated, and the Sultan has never interfered again in tho aff.iirs of the University. As I have said, the Kairouin is also a caravanserai and an inn, in which arc welcome to sleep and to rest all thosL- who arc so pocM" as not to be able to pay the small copper coin which the fondak keeper re- quires before shelter is given ; and the fact that its doors are wide open, and its hosi)itality granted without any restriction whatever, is widely known throughout the empire. A typical Student. N 2 l8o MOROCCO AS IT IS. The last time I entered Fez, some twenty miles out of the city, at the shrine of Mulai Yaboub, a young lad joined us and made the day's journey in our company. He was very ragged, and went bare- footed, but carried a beautiful pair of embroidered slippers in his hand. He seemed to be a Moorish Dick Whittington, and had walked all the way from Oudjda to seek his fortune in the capital. His capital consisted of half an ounce of copper floss coins worth about threepence, but he placed a very high value on this sum, and begged to be allowed to go along with us on one of our baggage mules, as he was afraid he would be robbed in crossing the famous plain near Mekinez, so feared by travellers. We granted his request, and a very merry companion he was, and very musical with his double-stringed giuirch and shepherd's pipe of reeds. On reaching Fez, where he had never been before, he said he was going to sleep and eat in the Kairouin until he decided what calling he would adopt, and seek for a situation. He was, it seemed, quite uncertain whether he had a greater natural bent for mule-driving or water-carrying. Several times I met him afterwards in tiie bazaars, and on several occasions he greeted me effusively, and once when we were unobserved he even kissed the hem of my garment. This lip-service I was graciously jiieascd to acknowledge by giving him a few matches, which he proudly stuck in his kinky hair. About a month later it dawned upon me that owing to the entree into the Kairouin which he possessed the boy might become a useful channel of information, liut the young vagabond now cut me THE KAIROUIN UNIVERSITY. l8l dead. I passed him sitting before the gates of the Temple, crouching respectfully at the " feet of Gamaliel," who was represented in this case by an unhealthy and almost naked saint. He looked me squarely in the eyes, and ignored me completely, not seeming to suffer the slightest embarrassment or pangs of conscience at his ungrateful behaviour. His better nature had evidently succumbed to the fanatical atmosphere of the shrine and to the lessons of hatred to all Christians inculcated there. The education of Morocco's Hebe jugend is very simple indeed. The first words that boys — and girls too, for that matter — are taught, are words of execration and of blasphemy. In Tetuan, where, owing to the evidences of higher culture and the direct descent of its inhabitants from the distinguished families of the Caliphate of Cordova, better things are to be expected, I have heard women on the house-tops, women from the harems of nobles, shrieking with laughter at the blasphemous and sacrilegious words spoken by some toddling tot of four or five who had been carefully trained to afford them amusement in this unusual way. These ex- hibitions of precocious profanity I could well under- stand — that is, viewed from the Moorish standpoint — if their object was always a Jew or a Christian ; but such is not the case. Then at the age of five or six the boys are sent to a jama, or preliminary school, where the old taleeb, by dint of thrashing and by occasionally compelling a more than usually back- ward scholar to wear an enormous dunce-cap, goads 1 82 MOROCCO AS IT IS. them into learning the principal verses of the Koran. If the parents are wealthy, or, what I venture to say is very rare, wish that their offspring should receive a higher education, they are handed over to the care of a ialeeb, or educated man, from whom they acquire further knowledge — or nonsense, as you may please to call it. Now we come to the work ol the Kairouin University properly speaking. If any roll were kept, I should say there are about one thousand students regularly matriculated. Of these about four hundred are given a daily pittance of bread by the trustees of the fund bequeathed by the sainted Fatma, which has been held sacred and remained intact all through the vicissitudes of the civil and dynastic wars that have raged continually for the last six hundred years in Morocco. These four hundred assisted students are recruited by the village schoolmasters throughout the empire, and sent up to Fez to receive the "higher education," which I shall endeavour to describe, and arc su[)portcd by the funds of the foundation. These bcttel-studetitcn receive daily aloaf of bread and a new icllab once a year. They wear no other clothing but the jcllab, under-clothing being (juite l)C)'ond their means and ideas of u hat is proper. They sleep in the court-yards of the moscjue. 'Jhc most sous^ht- afier sleeping ajjarlments for the students are little vaulted cells called ifia/eixas, in the immediate neigh- bourhood of the Kairouin. Possibly this is because the Moorish students have the same difficulty as stu- dents of the Western world in persuading themselves at daybreak that praj'er is better than sleep. At all THE KAIROUIN UNIVERSITY. 1^3 events, if they have to go to chapel they do not want to go far. But these medercas can only be sought after with any hope of success b}' students either possessing a long purse or a recognized tendency towards holy living as they understand it. Many of the academic youth, however, succeed in finding favour in the sight of some merchant, who allows them to sleep in his house, and to take a hand — I mean this literally — in devouring the family kouscouso. In return for these favours the students are expected to do odd jobs, "chores," such as the New England students perform for farmers or inn-keepers in order that they may obtain the money necessary for carry- ing on their University work during the winter. The Kairouin student looks after the merchant's mules, keeps his books, and carries his turban once a week to be rolled by [Nlouktar, the fashionable hatter, who has a shop near to the Shrine of ]\Iulai Edriss, frequented and patronized by all the notables from the Grand Vizier downward. These pensioners are the only serious students, if even they can be so called, that frequent the University. They certainly come under the denomination of what Schiller in his cele- brated Jena address termed contemptuously " brod- gelehrte," for they study only that they may receive some bread-winning position. To the flames of the sacred fire they are indeed mental salamanders. They generally become, after four or five years of the curriculum, adools or notaries, taleebs or doctors of law, or perhaps secretaries, clerks to cadis (judges) who cannot write. The higher government offices are closed to them owing to the very education they 184 MOROCCO AS IT IS. have taken such pains to obtain. Bashaws and Cadis are always chosen from the military caste or the local gentry, the very men who have not even the smatter- ing of knowledge which the poor Kairouin students must pick up during the four or five years they hang about the venerable foundation. Every government position is awarded to the highest bidder, and the happy office-holders are expected, like the nominees of the late Boss Tweed, to " work " their office for all its worth, and to send nine-tenths of the profits to Fez to be presented to the Sultan or the Vizier, who may happen to be the chief of their particular depart- ment. Should the office-holder be not as are the children of Mammon, he will enjoy his office-holding distinction a very short time indeed. Of course the Sultan does occasionally yield to what is at first sight an impulse or a yearning for better things, and does give a valuable post to a man without exacting a large advance payment ; but it is generally found, I regret to say, that the discerning eye of the Scedna has discovered in his nominee predatory instincts, and a slumbering rapacity which has only awaited an opportunity to show itself. Some of the other " brodgelchrte " gradually succeed their professors in the posts to which the Mokaddum and the trustees of the f(junclation appoint them. Some, those for choice who wield an ornate pen and command a flow of complimentary and eulogistic language, get ap- pointments as attacltL^s to the Corps of Historians who follow the Sultan's every movement, catch his most insignificant word, and once a week submit to his inspection the beautiful writings and illuminated THE KAIROUIN UNIVERSITY. 1 85 missals in which are chronicled the doings and say- ings of their lord for the past seven days. These beautifully-bound volumes when completed are care- fully placed in the Kairouin library to serve as docu- ments to the history of Morocco, ay, as the Sultan doubtless fondly imagines, of the world. The history of the present ruler, Mulai Hassan, has reached the six hundredth volume. Wisest, indeed, are those students who " take to religion," and gradually set themselves up in the "saint business." Of course, for this purpose it is very advantageous to be con- nected with a saint, to have Shereefian blood flowing in your veins, or even to be descended, or, what is about the same thing, to claim unchallenged descent from some well-known marabout, or one of the Sul- hama, a term which in Morocco is not applied to all the militant apostles of Mahomet, but exclusively to the conquerors of the " Western province." But, if these claims cannot be proved, or if the pretensions of the holy man in embryo are not received with favour, the resources of the Moorish religion in the manufacture of saints are not by any means exhausted. In Morocco the Church, like the communal govern- ment of the Kabyles, is the essence of pure demo- cracy, and, throwing pretensions of pride and holy descent to the winds, the clever student, weary of the misere of his academic career, can with patience and long-suffering become a " self-made saint," and rise to a proud and lucrative position by his own exer- tions. The apprenticeship to this profession is not, of course, by any means the most delightful way of spending your time between the years of twenty-five I 86 MOROCCO AS IT IS. and thirty-five. In Morocco the odour of sanctity is not a pleasant atmosphere to dwell in. Still the rewards are dazzling, and indeed they are the only solid and substantial rewards, safe from the whim and caprice of Bashaw and Sultan, that are to be reaped by the children of men in Morocco. For a few years the aspirant must content himself with the most meagre fare. Me must content himself with taking his food at the table d'hote of Fortune. He must allow his hair and beard to grow untrimmcd. He must discard all clothing, and carefully cultivate and encourage any inclination to skin disease that he may be so fortunate as to inherit or develop by his life during his zvandcrja/ire. He must abuse his person in the most brutal manner, bang his head against stone walls, until so callous does it become that he can cleave it with an axe without so much as winking. Then the aspiring saint, who will h\' these exploits and this manner of life have won quite a reputation as a holy man, generally retires from the world to some place suitable for a shrine on the out- skirts of a rich and superstitious i)rovincc. He here sets himself up by the entrance of a cave, or un«.ier the shade of a splendid olive or ile.x tree for choice ; the country people minister to his wants, which at first arc simple. As he feels himself firmly started as a saint, his simple wants expand, and he becomes more difficult to please. TIk c<.uiitiy people readily accept the situation and give him his tithes, paying him ro)all)' for the blessings he bestows on their flocks and their fields, or for his condescension in laying his holy hand upon their .sick and diseased. In time A Minaret of tlie Kairouin. 1 88 MOROCCO AS IT IS. the country people, generally with very slight provo- cation, become ardent believers in the prowess and miracle-making power of their own particular and local saint ; and as we in England sometimes pit our local pugilists against each other in a mill to decide which is the best man, so the Kab}-les sometimes bring their saints together for a tourney in working wonders ; but the miracle-makers, it would seem, like other more civilized impostors, have a professional etiquette of their own, and always succeed in hood- winking the sinners without in any way impairing their prestige. The faith of the Kabylcs is too un- thinking and too considerate to ever subject them to the rude surprise that overtook the unhappy bishop, who, according to the Magj'ar legend, while preaching to an assembly of Huns on the Blocksberg by Buda, was suddenly thrown over the mountain in order, as his benevolent murderers contended, that he might be given an opportunity of showing that he was as good a man as any of the rest of the apostles — and could fly. The saint, once formally established, lives in lazi- ness and luxury, and bequeathes his bones to his progeny — generally a very numerous one, for, though the saints generally live ignorant of wine, their rtcquaintance with women is invariably cjuitc an extended one. The fortunate progeny form them- selves into a company, and build for their saintly ancestor a tomb in a "simple inex[)ensive " mosque, that they erect generally on the very spot which he hallowed for years in the exercise of his saintly func- tions. In rotation tin: relatives stand at watch over THE KAIROUIN UNIVERSITY. I 89 the tomb, and take gate-money from all who enter the mosque, and, if the saint was widely known, his bones generally bring in to the family a fat living for generations. Perhaps the most pleasing thing about the saint business in Morocco is that, however prone you maybe to backsliding, you cannot fall from grace however much you may want to ; clerical vagaries which in other worlds and in other religions would call forth condign punishment, are always lightly regarded by the Moorish public and accorded plenary indulgence. A saint cannot commit a sin. There is at least one saint in Morocco whom I have time and again seen in a state of intoxication only to be accounted for by his well-known indulgence in alcoholic beverages. I have even pointed him out to his worshippers as the contents of a whiskey bottle went gurgling down his throat, but they only smiled at my ignorance, and treated the petty malice of my remarks with pity and contempt. " It is very true," they said, " the saint is drinking whiskey, but he's such a holy man that the moment the exciting liquid reaches his throaty by contact with his holy person it immediately becomes innocent mare's milk." Who would not be a saint in Morocco? But, of course, the great majority of the students return to their native villages, where they enjoy a reputation for erudition, and convert their knowledge into the copper coin of the realm. In addition to the " brodgelehrte/^ whose careers I have endeavoured to describe, there come every year to Fez some four or five hundred other young men to attend lectures at the Kairouin in a desultory 190 MOROCCO AS IT IS. way. They do not matriculate, are very casual i n their attendance, and come very much under the category of the foreigners who frequent Heidelberg and Bonn as aiiserordcntUcJic horer. They are the sons of high Government functionaries, or of Taradunt and Tafilet merchants suddenly enriched by some successful slave or salt caravan excursion to Timbuctoo ; and then there is generally a Mahommedan princclet or two from the Niger delta, who has been sent by his fond parents to the fascinating city of many fountains and of many pleasures to fashion his manners, broaden his mind,orjctersao^our//ie, the peculiar folly of fond parents all the world over. These wealthy students bring with them frequently their harems and major-domos, and attendant slaves carrying their sacks of gold-dust. They have secret and masonic societies, very much after the fashion, I dare say, of the D.K.E. at Harvard, or the " Skull and Bones " at Yale ; but I must say, to their credit, I never heard it ever charged against them that they convened to debate on literary or historic subjects, or wrote essays on the cardinal virtues. Thcjhinessc done of the Morocco Universities take their pleasures, apparently at least, very sadly. They never awaken the slumbering echoes of Vcv. with merry student song.s. They have the stately deport- ment of Venetian notables, and many of them the girlh of bishops. They have only one field sport, which they do not indulge in very frec|uently. Tt bears a ludicrous resemblance to football. They choose a field about a hundred yards long, and make narrow goals at each end. Then a wooden or a rope THE KAIROUIN UNIVERSITY. I9I ball is thrown in their midst, which they kick about most dexterously. How they succeed in doing it without kicking off their babosJias or slippers is a mystery ; but this misadventure, naturally to be expected, I never witnessed. They do not seem to divide into sides, but every man seems to play on his own hand, or rather with his own foot. If he cannot kick the ball through one goal — inshalah ! — he will try to kick it through the other. But, generally, they spend their time in drinking mint tea, anointing themselves with vile scents, smoking keef in large quantities, wearing rich silk caftans embroidered in crying colours very much after the custom of our own Hebe jiigend of wearing many-coloured waistcoats, and the academic day is invariably concluded with a prodigious spread ot koiiscous. If they study nothing else, it must be said they do set themselves seriously and conscientiously to the study of women, the root of all evil, perhaps, but surely the root, branch and tree-top of all know- ledge. In this pursuit they are greatly facilitated by the lax divorce laws which obtain in Fez. I hope the reader has not misunderstood me — these academic studies of femininity are always carried on well within the strict bonds of matrimony. Only after a week's research — if it seem to the student that the study is not a congenial one, or one not likely to repay the expenditure of energy required — he puts his wife of a week away and takes a new one, always, as I say, under the shelter of the law. An amusing stipula- tion always inserted in these academic marriages 192 MOROCCO AS IT IS. reads to the effect that, when the student leaves Fez with a siunina cum laudc — or without it — in his saddle bags, the wife cannot be compelled to follow him ; also that his absence from Fez at any time, for a period of any length, dissolves the marriage without any further proceedings. This strange custom has grown up owing to the \ery natural reluctance of the Fazzi women to leave the gay capital, to change the luxurious life on the house-tops of Fez for a mule- back ambling hither and thither on the burning sands of the Sahara. I never heard of one of these student wives following her lord and master to his southern home. They very much resemble the griseties of the Ouartier Latin, I never heard of a student at the Beaux Arts carrying off in triumph to his distant home an etudiayite of the Rue de Seine. One of these belles of the academic youth, with her eyes encircled with kohl and her fingers tipped with henna, was once pointed out to me. She was a tall, finely-built woman, and had that great beauty which the Italian proverb commends and extols as the greatest beauty of woman — una bella andatnra. She was clothed in a rich Jia'ik, which revealed the grace- ful outlines of a lithe and active figure. I could well understand, even under the disadvantages of meeting licr in her street costume, the charms for which she was famous. I was told that her looks had been the only books of a succession of students for the past ten years — one after another these poor fellows, when their gold-dust was exhausted, had gone southward to their homes, to begin the serious business of life, while she stayed on and lived and THE KAIROUIX UXIVEJRSITY. 1 93 loved in the shadow of the holy shrine. Knowing that as a Christian I should be debarred from enter- ing the lists, I put Salem El Sheshouani, my faithful and particular boy, on her track, for the purpose of getting out of her what information I could as to the lives of the academic youth. I have every reason to believe that Salem executed my commission, which he entered upon with enthusiasm, with more than his customary thoroughness and despatch. The next day he came to me for money to buy the " lady " a pair of embroidered boots. On the follow- ing day he wanted a Breber anklet for the fair one ; but the only information about her life I succeeded in extracting in return was that he found her " muy bonita" (very pretty). As I became insistent he said she was " one nice lady woman," and then the confession wrung from him with great difficulty, that he liked her very much— "bezoff, bezoff ! " (Very much, very much). The fervour which Salem put into that word " bezoff," the flash of the eye that accompanied it, would have carried him far on the operatic stage as a tenore robusto. Towards the end of May the students requisition tents from the Grand Vizier, and, leaving their lowly abodes in the city, go into camp, generally on the banks of the Fez, near the Sultan's gardens. Here a fortnight is spent in very serious fooling. To supply the indispensable, deputations of students march through the town from door to door, assessing every inhabitant according to his means, so that, at least during their summer outing, they may all have plenty of sheep kous-cous-o and mint tea. O 194 MOROCCO AS IT IS. Extravagant tales are told of the mad antics they perform during their vacation, and I have heard it asserted that these grave and reverend seigneurs of sixteen to twenty even condescend to play at leap- frog and turn "hand-springs. But, in all fairness, I must say that I have never seen them so engaged MOUnirAINS MOUNTAr.n THE WE.ST MOUNTAINi ' T/U MeOITf^KAIneAlt SIA MOUNTAINS MAP oi IHt WOHLO *% utio uy TNI UNIVERSITY or, FtZ Rtfiroduccd/rotit " The Fortnightly Kevicw," by kind permisiion oj /•'rank /fitrrii, lisq. myself, and, if I did, I should feel very much inclined to discredit my eyesight. On going into camp the students, by popular vote, elect one of their number " Sult;in of the Tholba," and as long as they remain under canvas his sway is as undisputed as the word of the "Caliph of the Lord enthroned on high," the great Seedna himself. I iiavc been told that the corruption and the briber)' THE KAIROUIN UNIVERSITY. 195 practised at these elections far surpass anything known even in more democratic countries where the ballot has a regularly quoted market value. On several occasions of late years the Sultan has visited the encampment, and conferred, with mock serious- ness, with " his brother," the Sultan of the Tholba, on matters of State as well as of academ ic interest. I made every effort to cultivate the acquaintance of the Tholba, and, after experiencing many a rebuff, became fast friends with three or four of their number, who, under cover of darkness, would come to my garden and discourse learnedly upon the greatness of their University. At last I succeeded in inducing them to bring some of their text-books with them, and many a long night session we spent in discussing their merits, and in comparing them with the educational works of Christendom. It was in one of these night sessions, greatly prolonged owing to my small supply of Arabic, that I stumbled upon the geography con- taining the map of the world of which the illustration on p. 194 is a fac-simile copy. This learned work was written some fifty years ago by a learned pundit who had travelled to Mecca, and was a Lord Pilgrim as well as fiikie. I do not believe there is a student or a professor attached to the University that has any misgivings in his mind but what this map is a perfectly correct representation of the world in which he lives. Englishmen, who do not as a rule suffer in any great numbers from the modern disease of self-contempt, and are generally found to have a just appreciation of the magnitude of the empire on which the sun never sets, will regret to learn that O 2 196 MOROCCO AS IT IS. one of the infinitel}- small inlands in the ocean south of Thibet was thought by my Tholb to represent very fairh- the geographical situation and importance of England. *' That, I suppose, is Ireland," I said, pointing out the adjacent sister island. "Where is Ireland? What is Ireland.? I never heard of Ireland," replied the Tholb, shaking his head dubiously. I saw then that I was confronted with an instance of where ignorance is truly something very nearly akin to bliss. Spain, it will be noticed, is mentioned by name on the map — an honour accorded to but one other Christian country. Tiiis is doubtless because the Iberian peninsula is a large and un- deniable geographical fact in plain view of the northern coast of the " W^estern Province." Why Russia is the only other Christian country having the honour of mention I can only explain on the ground that, as that country never bothers the Sultan with missions and embassies, the Moors are corre- spondingly grateful. I found it very difficull, in fact almost impossible, to get any clear idea of the curriculum followed at the University. There are certainly distinct faculties of ecclesiastical and of civil law (the Shraa), and there arc very many lectures on astrology, for to this basest variety of science the descendants of the great Arabian astronomers have come. Then there arc always going on learned discjuisitions on the Bokliari, a scries of holy volumes that o cupy the same posi- tion to Islam as the Talmud docs to Jewry ; also THE KAIROUIN UNIVERSITY. 1 9/ courses in higher mathematics, and in alchemy and divination, I must say that the Tholba whom I met showed remarkable quickness in solving mathe- matical problems which were far beyond my depth. With this meagre information, the knowledge I gathered with such difficulty regarding the Kairouin as an educational centre is quite exhausted. When I left the holy city a great tournament of learned men and pundits was announced to come off shortly, and I certainly would have remained to witness the proceedings if there had been any chance of my being permitted to assist at their sessions. Wise and learned pundits, the intellectual giants of Mauritania, were coming from Tlemcen, Mazagran, and Marakesh, to discuss with imperturbable gravity the large ques- tion as to whether the earth revolves around the sun or vice versa. As a hot-bed of fanaticism and a never- failing well of religious feeling, volumes might be written about the Kairouin. In case there be any truth in the rumours which are continually appearing in the political press of Europe, to the effect that one or more of the European powers are on the point of annexing this much-coveted and very desirable country, it would be well for these statesmen to pause and count well the cost before entering upon an enterprise which, if undertaken, will be certainly costly. They should take note of the great renais- sance of fanatical feeling in African Islam in the past decade, due partly to the successes of the INIahdi in the Eastern Soudan, and partly to the wonderful growth of the Senussi brotherhood throughout the 198 MOROCCO AS IT IS. Dark Continent, and the extraordinary power which the Senussi Mahdi himself, from his seat in Southern Tripoh", exercises throughout Northern Africa. There is no doubt in my mind that, the next time Morocco declares hostilities against any Christian power, the green standard of the Prophet and the Sulhama, now carefully guarded in the Kairouin, will be unfurled, and a holy war proclaimed with far- reaching consequences, that it is difficult, in fact im- possible, to estimate in advance. After having experienced some rather severe snubbing, I succeeded in entering upon relations with several of the fiikics or professors of the ancient foundation. When I met them in the bazaars, in reply to my Catholic " Peace be with you," they would, with characteristic narrow-minded- ness, reply, " Peace be unto all true believers!' Finally, however, I succeeded in luring them also to my encampment. They drank my tea, carefully guarding their garments and their persons as much as possible from coming into defiling contact with their Christian host. When I showed them the New Testament, and reminded them that in the Koran they arc expressly commanded to read the life of Seedna Aissi (the Lord Jesus) and the Acts of the Apostles, they positively shuddered. When at last they found speech, they said they were cjuite willing to do that, but unfortunately wicked men among the Kaffirs had laid impious hands on the good book, and that its meaning had been very much distorted and its precepts perverted, since the days of the Prophet. THE KAIROUIN UNIVERSITY. 1 99 I then offered to place them in possession of a Greek Testament, and of an EngHsh one for com- parative study of the translation, but as they neither had the EngHsh nor the Greek at their disposal , and evidently did not care a rushlight one way or the other about it, my offer came to nothing. So the Fukies went their way of ignorance and dark- ness, in which they delight, after a stately leave- taking, and though they had quaffed my tea and partaken of my sweets, their parting salutation was still the un-CathoHc " Peace be to all true believers." But, perhaps, it is as a library and a great deposi- tory of ancient writings that the Kairouin excites interest and curiosity rather than from the other points of view which I have here dwelt upon. It has been thought, or rather, more correctly speaking, only fondly hoped, by the learned men throughout Christendom, that among the rubbishy chronicles of the Kairouin there would some day be found the missing classics, the lost books of Euclid and of Livy, among others. Indeed in some of the more ancient books of travel on Morocco it is expressly stated that many of the manuscripts that were saved from the burning of the Alexandrian Library were taken to Seville, Granada, and Fez. In weighing these statements I think it should bs remembered that the Kairouin was founded at the very least one hundred years after the fire that was so disastrous to learning, and that these manuscripts would have had a lot of knocking about before they found a home on the shelves in the subterranean cellars of the Kairouin. I think it possible that on 200 MOROCCO AS IT IS. leaving Seville and Granada the Moors may have brought with them to Morocco many of the precious volumes which are known to have been in these libraries, but which have now disappeared. For the last fifty years it has been the effort of every European minister accredited to Morocco to obtain some in- formation regarding these treasures, but the Sultan has always sturdily asserted that there were no books at all in the Kairouin, or that they had crumbled into dust from age long centuries before. My inquiries, though hardly in a measure commen- surate with the labour and amount of time expended, were certainly more successful. There can be no two opinions as to the presence of a very large number of ancient manuscripts in the Kairouin Library, and these volumes — a creditable thing for the lazy and indolent Moors — are certainly the object of very great care. The trustees of the Kairouin have a regular staff of custodians chosen from the University professors and teachers, who arc charged with the safe keeping of the books ; and the cellars are annually inspected, and the books repaired when the necessity arises. I should say that, bar accidents of fire, in the future, when the library is thrown open, the manuscripts will be found in a very fair state of preservation. Upon ancjlher p(jint my informants all agreed. They said that in the library there arc quite a num- ber of books written in strange unknown tongues. Gcncrall)', my genial Tholba friends asserted, they were written in Greek ; but on my showing them a book in German, they were unanimously of opinion Court -yards of Kairouin. Snap-shots with a Camera. 202 MOROCCO AS IT IS. that this was the language in which the volumes were written. So I am forced to the conclusion that any- writing which is not Arabic is Greek to the Fukies and Tholba of Fez. I was devising a scheme, and planning to get into the closely guarded cellars under the sanctuary, where the books are kept, and having a look at the volumes myself ; when, misled by the unscrupulous lies that were circulated by the emissaries of other powers, the Fazzi suddenly assumed an attitude of such hostility to the English Mission and the other foreigners in Fez, on a friendly footing with its mem- bers, that wc had quite enough adventures and fights forced upon us as we rode quietly through the city, without running the risk of surreptitiously explor- ing the Kairouin. Prevented from investigating the library with my own eyes, I, however, succeeded in getting hold of some of the manuscripts. I suppose I ought to blush at the recital, but I was forced to bribe my friends, the Tholba, to steal the volumes for me. During the last ten days of my stay in Fez they purloined from the shelves of the library some thirty manuscripts, and brought them to me hidden awa)' in the capa- cious folds of \}[n:\r jclaabs. Unfortunately, however, they had neither time nor the knowledge to steal with discrimination ; so the books they brought me were of comparatively sinall value, and 1 had them all re- placed, with four or five exceptions. I kept a very beautifully illuminated edition of the Hokh.iri, bound at Seville, several volumes of amatory poetry, written in the thirteenth century, I believe, and a long and THE KAIROUIN UNIVERSITY. 203 very prosy account of a pilgrimage to Mecca, made by a Fukie of Fez in the fifteenth century. I, how- ever, failed to get hold of any of the manuscripts, which, as the Tholba assert, are written in " Greek." I feel quite incapable of conveying by mere words the condescension, the pity and the contempt which the Moors of the University class have for our achieve- ments in every branch of knowledge. They are just as firmly convinced of their immeasurable superiority as is the Sultan that his army is the most magnificent fighting machine in the world. The learned Fukies and the wise Tholbas of the Kairouin regard our universities as puny, struggling schools, where for- tunately only false knowledge and the black arts are taught. The following anecdote I consider character- istic of their views. One evening several of the Tholbas had been drinking tea with me in my garden, and, in the course of a rather Ollendorfian conversation which took place on these occasions, I spoke of two of the members of the Mission. " One is a great military caid," I said, " and the other a very wise man ; a tabeeb [a doctor] and a taleeb [a learned man of law] in one." As my guests departed I heard one of them say to the other, " What an awful lie ! There are no great caids or learned men outside of Morocco." " Of course there are not," replied the other wise man, laughing at my attempt to impose upon their superior knowledge of the world. CHAPTER XII. FROM FEZ TO FLEET STREET. Refused credit by our Fez banker — The forced sale of our rifles — A blessing in disguise — Veuve Cliquot and her burden — The phial of Mcphistophelcs — A ghastly exhibition — Tlie Sultan's Emin — The call to prayer — A night with scorpions and centipedes — W. C.'s devotion — A wretched wilderness of foul-smelling huts — A mad jest — The joy of the blind men — A terrible ride. We had many knotty problems to solve on that warm day of July in far-off Fez, witii the temperature at 1 10 de