It had long been my intention to make a journey of exploration into, and if possible beyond, the Atlas Mountains; and though on several occasions my plans had been already formulated, I had been obliged, almost at the last moment, to abandon the idea.

However, the close of the year 1893 offered an opportunity which could not be neglected; but before entering upon the description of my journey, a few words must be said as to what not a little helped it toward success.

Mulai el Hassen, the Sultan of Morocco, had been meditating for some years an expedition into the southern regions of his dominions, toward that indefinite frontier which divided his country from the wastes of the Sahara desert. Until, however, the spring of the year 1893 he had been so occupied with summer expeditions, organised to crush petty rebellions and intertribal strife, that he had found no favourable opportunity of making any protracted absence from the seat of his Government; for so miserable are the means of communication in Morocco, that, once across the Atlas Mountains, he was practically as distant from his capital—and still more from the residence of the European Ministers accredited to his Court, who reside at Tangier—as Kamskatka is from London.

However, during the summer of 1892 the tribes had been so punished for their many rebellious offences, and so heavily taxed in consequence, that his Majesty felt but little anxiety in carrying out his projected visit to his trans-Atlas dominions.

But there were other questions almost as serious to be considered—first, his relations with foreign Powers; and, secondly, the reception that might await him in those far-off corners of his realm.

With regard to the former, while avoiding all political questions, one or two words must be said. First, it must be understood that Mulai el Hassen, the late Sultan, was not only an autocratic ruler, but his own Minister of Foreign Affairs; and a great difficulty therefore arose as to who, in the case of sudden foreign complications, should be directed to fill his place. No one knew the temperament of his Ministers and Viziers better than the Sultan, and probably no one could trust them less; for although their patriotism might be all that was desired, it was very possible that this same over-zeal might lead them into difficulties. For this reason the relations of his country with the European Governments were temporarily put into the hands of a council, in which the acting Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sid Fadhul Gharnit, held but only an equal voice with the rest; while the powers vested in Sid el Haj Mohammed Torres, the Vizier-resident at Tangier, were more fully specified and amplified, for alone of all the members of the Sultan’s Government this man could be said to possess the confidence both of the European Ministers and his master.

Having announced the manner in which all questions of foreign affairs were to be regulated during his absence, there was to be considered the second serious difficulty of the enterprise—the reception he would receive. For the purpose of ensuring success in this respect, long before his Majesty started from Fez for the south, influential members of his family, already acquainted with the tribes in question and their attitude toward the Sultan, were sent out to bully and bribe. Of the two, the latter did the most toward ensuring his Majesty’s safe passage through the Berber tribes, and by March 1893 everything was prepared for a start to be made.

It is usual for the rulers of Morocco to change their residence from year to year, spending the winters in one of the larger cities, either Fez, Meknas, or Marakesh, and during the summer and autumn to make the long marches from the north to the south of the empire, or vice versa. The enormous retinue accompanying the Sultan, the quantity of baggage to be transported, to say nothing of the insufficiency of all commissariat arrangements and the entire absence of roads, renders these royal progresses matters often of several months’ duration.

None can have known better than the Sultan the difficulties—even dangers—of the journey before him; for, although he possessed no personal knowledge of the country to be traversed, he was well informed as to the climatic changes that would have to be endured, as to difficulty in finding food for his troops, and still greater difficulty for his horses and mules, and as to the physical aspect of the country, which presented, along the proposed routes, not only the heat and cold of the desert, but the passage of mountain-passes, one alone of which reaches an altitude of over 8000 feet above the sea-level,—and this amongst subjects who, by birth a different and a semi-conquered nation, would provide nothing or little for his welfare, and whose reception, if hearty enough in words, would lack any real enthusiasm.

There can be no doubt that influence was used to prevent Mulai el Hassen starting out upon this journey, the expenses of which, even to a European Government, would be enormous, while the dangers were scarcely less; but so persistent was his Majesty in carrying out his idea, that he showed little favour to those who tendered him advice, and let it be clearly understood that the matter rested with him alone.

In April a start was made from Fez, the direction being due south, and a halt of a few days was called at Sufru, a small town some sixteen miles away from the capital. Here the European officers attached to the Sultan’s suite were informed that it had been decided that they were not to accompany his Majesty, and they forthwith returned to Fez. The sole exception made was in the case of the French doctor, M. Linares, who was commanded to remain with the army, and to make the journey with the Sultan.

After weary months of hard travel and equally hard delays, Mulai el Hassen reached his goal, Tafilet, the home of his ancestors, in the first week of November.

There is no need here to recount the march from Fez to that oasis; suffice it to say that, in spite of the physical difficulties of the country, the scarcity of provisions and fodder, and the half-hearted reception of the Berber tribes, it was successfully accomplished.

It may be thought that I have already digressed too far from the purpose of my book in making these introductory remarks; but as it was owing to the Sultan’s presence in Tafilet that I was able to undertake my journey at all, and happily bring it to a successful end, I have felt constrained to briefly state the reasons that had taken Mulai el Hassen to the far-away oasis in the desert from which his dynasty originally sprung.

As to the motives of the Sultan, it is difficult to state anything with certainty. No doubt religious zeal to pray at the reverenced tomb of his ancestor, Mulai Ali Shereef, had much to do with the desire to undertake so long and trying a journey, for it could have been from no hope that by so doing any considerable sums of money could be collected or extorted, as was generally believed to be the case, for none could have been better aware than he of the poverty of the country and its inhabitants. Probably it was solely the religious point, touched with some anxious curiosity to see the home of his ancestors, that led him to empty the treasury upon an expedition from which no real, and but little moral, benefit could accrue.

I had meanwhile been carefully watching such glimpses of information as from time to time reached England as to the whereabouts of the Sultan and his army, and scanty and contradictory as they were, I was able by the beginning of September 1893 to gather that his Majesty’s journey, in spite of a general belief to the contrary, would be successful, and that Tafilet would be reached.

I therefore left England in the middle of September, and collecting the few necessaries for my journey at Tangier, reached Saffi, some 400 miles down the Atlantic coast of Morocco, in the second week of October.

The journey from Tangier to Saffi was one that presented but little of interest. The coast-steamer in which I travelled visited the various ports,—Laraiche, Rabat, Casablanca (Dar el baida), and Mazagan, all of which I knew well. The weather was rough, and we had some difficulty in communicating at more than one of the ports, lying for some twenty hours off Rabat before the lighters were able to issue from the mouth of the river—the Bu Regreg—that separates that town from Sallee, the home of the old rovers, whose depredations upon English sailing-ships were at one time so well known and so much dreaded.

However, on the fifth day after leaving, Saffi was reached, and fortunately the sea was calm enough to allow of our landing in one of the strangely built and decorated surf-boats in use at that port.

What a shouting and yelling there was of the boatmen, as my Riffi servant Mohammed, of whom more anon, and I, perched on the top of our little pile of baggage, were tossed to and fro by the curling seas that one after another broke along the beach! In silence the steersman watched his opportunity, and with a smooth gliding motion we were borne between rugged rocks, and our boat lay high and dry upon the beach.

Saffi has been too often described to need more than the merest mention here. It is a strange, flat-roofed, white town, reaching from the sea-beach high up the semicircle of hills by which it is enclosed, the summit capped by the windowless walls and peaked towers of the great castle, once a palace of the Sultans, now little more than a deserted ruin.

Within the town the streets are narrow and dirty. In rainy seasons the mud is almost knee-deep, and a torrent flows through the main street. The native inhabitants are poor, and accordingly but little signs of luxury or trade are to be found, with the exceptions of the large stores of the few European merchants who reside there. The town is walled, in parts of Moorish workmanship, in others the remains of the old Portuguese occupation; for Saffi, like most of the other towns of the Atlantic coast of Morocco, once formed a small colony of the “King of the Algarves.”

The few days I spent at Saffi passed pleasantly enough, for I was entertained by Mr Hunot, her Majesty’s Vice-Consul, whose knowledge of Arabic and Morocco, gained from a residence of some forty years in the country, is exceptional; and though I chafed at the delays that always meet one in dealing with Moors, he did much to render my time as agreeable as could be to a man who was intent upon nothing but in making a start.

Small as my preparations were, they caused me several days’ more delay than I liked; but before the week was out I found myself on the eve of departure, with a couple of mules, an old man who was to be my guide, philosopher, and friend, his son and his nephew, a black slave-girl belonging to his establishment, a stray Sahara pilgrim, and my Riffi servant.

Adopting the dress of the country on my departure, and mounting a pack-mule on the top of the luggage, we set out one morning, not at sunrise as I had hoped, for the old man forgot everything that he could forget, and remembered an enormous quantity of things he should have left behind, and it was near mid-day before we passed out under the old gateway of the town and climbed the steep hill, in the valley below which the only gardens that Saffi can boast are situated.

The heat was intense and water scarce, and both we and our poor animals suffered the entire road to Marakesh, or, as it is more commonly called, Morocco City, a distance of about a hundred miles. There had been no rain for some five months, and even the metafir, as the natives call their underground cisterns, were nearly dry, and many quite so.

The road from Saffi to Marakesh presents no aspect of peculiar interest. The tribes of Abda and Beled Ahmar are passed through, the latter boasting the dreary circular salt lake of Zima, near which is a cluster of white buildings, a mdarsa or sort of college, where the late Sultan and many of his sons received their education. The inhabitants are all Arabs, but their villages are few and far between, or lie off the road. The country, at this time of year a dreary stony waste, is in the spring one great field of waving corn; and the horses of Beled Ahmar are famous. Owing to the heat, we did not arrive at Morocco City until the fourth day, and did not actually enter until the morning of the fifth, preferring to spend the night just outside the walls.

There is one scene, however, that presents itself as one nears the city that cannot be passed over without mention, though I myself, amongst others, have described it before. Yet so strikingly grand is it, and so unique, that it demands reference in any work that deals with this portion of Morocco. I refer to the first view of the wide valley of the Tensift, with its wonderful background of the range of the Atlas Mountains.

We had been climbing the steep slopes of Jibeelet, the name given to the range of hills that form the north boundary of the wide valley of the Tensift, for some little time before the plain beneath came into view. The ascent had been a hot and tiring one,

and we and our mules were thirsty indeed. Nor were there any means of obtaining water, for during some hours we only passed one small village belonging to a few shepherds of the Arab tribe of Ulad Dlim, and their waterjars were empty. The well was a couple of miles away, and not till sunset were they going to fill the jars again. Dirty and poverty-stricken their little collection of thatched hovels and grimy tents were, but picturesque all the same, with a group of women in dark-blue cotton in the foreground, wearing necklaces of large amber beads and coral, and with long plaits of untidy hair, while dogs and naked children stood by and watched our little caravan pass. Up we toiled until, passing through a narrow gorge, the scene opened out before us in indescribable beauty. At our feet lay the valley of the Tensift, far below us, stretching away some thirty miles or so to where the great range of the Atlas rose majestically from the plain. Green was the valley, green with crops and groves of date-palms, while here, there, and everywhere sparkled and glittered the river Tensift and the many canals that carry water from its stream to irrigate the surrounding country. A haze hung over the valley, that sufficed, without in any way hiding its beauties, to soften the effect of the fierce sunlight; so that beyond the river the plain appeared to shimmer in semi-unreality until there arose from the level ground the great barrier of mountain beyond, its summit white with snow, its base blue with distance.

Inexpressibly grand it was, yet not with the grandeur that rugged cliffs and precipices can give, for beyond everything appealed to one the richness of the scene. After the hot weary march across waterless plains, the vegetation was surpassingly welcome; and the dark forest of palm-trees, stretching for miles along the valley, was as cheering to our eyes as are the lights of his village to the storm-tossed mariner. There are few views in the world that can equal the first sight one obtains of the Tensift valley and the Atlas Mountains,—the strange mingling of tropical vegetation, of fields green with crops, and of peaks 13,000 and 14,000 feet high, one and all capped with snow, forming a unique scene. There, too, was the city, its minarets, like little needles, peeping above the level of the feathery heads of the palms, but still far away.

The glimpse of shade and water gave energy to our weary bodies, and we pushed on as fast as was possible for the tired mules, who, nevertheless, needed but little urging, for to them, too, the scene must have appealed as much as, if not more than, to ourselves.

At a stream we drank; then entering the palm-groves, threaded our way, here through a forest of tall straight stems, there through fields of green maize, until within a mile or two of the city we camped for the night at a small nzala, or resting-place for caravans.

As often in these pages this word nzala will be found, it may be as well to explain its purport here. Owing to the lawlessness of the tribes, small villages have been planted by the native Government along all the tracks which in Morocco answer the purposes of roads. Usually the inhabitants of these wayside caravanserais are natives of some other tribe, brought there and given a small grant of land. The villages consist merely of thatch huts and the brown ghiem or tents of the Arabs; but there is always a large zareba, or open space enclosed with a high and thick thorn hedge, in which travellers and their pack-animals spend the night. The village community furnishes a guard at the only entrance to this zareba, and in case of robbery the inhabitants are held responsible by the Government. In return for this responsibility they collect a small tax from any who make use of their protection. The system is a good one, and theft is very uncommon, it being greatly to the villagers’ benefit to carefully guard the traveller’s property and exact the small fee, rather than by stealing call down upon themselves the wrath of the native Government and the rapacity of the local officials.

So at the last nzala on the road from Saffi to Marakesh we spent the night, pitching our one little tent in the zareba, and hiring an elderly female, who possessed only one eye, to cook us some supper in her hut of thatch; and, considering that her fire consisted only of bunches of thistles, which had to be replaced almost as soon as they were lit, she performed her task with skill and success.

The next morning, at the tail of our little caravan, I entered Marakesh on foot, grimy and travel-stained, and reached my destination, the house of Sid Abu Bekr el Ghanjaui, without attracting any attention as a Christian in disguise.

Here comfort, even luxury, awaited me, and pleasant indeed were the eight days I spent in the city before continuing my journey—this time into unknown regions.

Sid Abu Bekr el Ghanjaui is almost the best-known man in Morocco, and probably the most disliked, a fact in which he takes particular pride. Protected by the British Government, to all intents and purposes a British subject, he has by these means been able to amass a large fortune without the native Government having annexed it and imprisoned the possessor. Whether this fortune has been altogether collected by creditable means, according to European ideas of business, I am unable to say, nor is it a matter of any importance. Suffice it that his fortune has made him many enemies, whose jealousy at seeing him easily and safely amassing wealth, while they have been under the constant dread of confiscation by officials, and continual taxation, has reached such a pitch that they have not hesitated to spread all kinds of scandalous reports about his goings on. These reports reached the ears, amongst others, of British philanthropists in England; and while Sid Abu Bekr was engaged in building fresh houses and buying new gardens in his native city, the House of Commons was being harangued as to the perfidies of the so-called “Government Agent” in Morocco City. It did not stop there; newspapers, even foreign European Governments, took the question up, and his name became of common mention in official despatches. As long, however, as his personal liberty was not affected, he merely laughed at these hazardous statements, until one day it was brought to his ears that things looked serious, and that the only English newspaper in Morocco was calling him a slave-dealer, a brothel-keeper, and, if I remember right, a murderer.

Then Abu Bekr girt up his loins to fight, and for some ten days his action for libel occupied the time of the High Court of Gibraltar. I was present on the occasion, and shall never forget the scene when, seated in the witness-box, Sid Abu Bekr, robed in silks and fine linens, answered calmly and expressionlessly the extremely unpleasant questions put to him by the defendant—unpleasant in that they referred to that, to the Moor, most private of questions, his wives and his daughters. Every atrocity, every crime, was stated to have been committed by him; but with no result more than the fact that Sid Abu Bekr won his action with costs, and 500 dollars damages, and an injunction that the libel should not be repeated.

Thereupon, his character legally cleared, he returned once more to Marakesh, where, surrounded by his little daughters, to whom he is devotedly attached, he lives in luxury and wealth.

In the house of this man my days were spent, just as I lived another three weeks with him on my return journey, and I received from him then, just as I have always done, every mark of kindness and hospitality. Even the interior of his house was open to me, and many a pleasant hour I passed playing with his little daughters, whose dresses of silks and brocades sparkled with jewels.

By this time I had found opportunity to take stock of my travelling companions, who, as they played a by no means unimportant part in the success of my journey, deserve some notice.

The chief of our party, by position, age, and, he himself would probably add, acquirements, was the elderly Shereef. In person he was dark, of a sort of coffee-colour, with a grey beard and moustache; a short figure inclined to stoutness, and a bad habit of trying to sing. Himself a native of the Sahara, it was on him that I principally relied for success in my undertaking, my personality and disguise being concealed under the bushel of his reputation and accomplishments. Principal amongst the latter was his knowledge of medicine, a hereditary knowledge it must be understood, part of the baraka, or blessing, of his august family, for he was a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed. I unfortunately had no opportunity of seeing the result of his skill, for when in his company I was never in one place sufficiently long to obtain any information as to the potency of the draughts he administered out of one of the three empty soda-water-bottles he had with him. It was entirely my own fault, though, that I did not see him perform the operation he was most skilled in—namely, cataract—for before leaving Tangier I had received a letter from him asking me to bring a large bottle of chloroform and a knife suitable for the purpose. This I steadily refused to do, and I think that the old man felt the slight I had unintentionally offered him, and fancied that I doubted his skill. At least he was always holding forth upon the subject, and continually repeating the story that when in Algeria he had been offered a fabulous salary—the sum varied each time the tale was told—to remain in charge of the military hospital at Algiers, an honour which he had declined. He never tired of narrating the facts and details of his most successful operation. There is a sect in Morocco called “Hamacha,” who are followers of a certain saint by name Sidi Ali ben Hamduch, who lies buried near Meknas. These devotees amuse their audience—and themselves too, let us hope—by throwing into the air heavy cannon-balls, which they allow to fall upon their shaven crowns. On the occasion in question a Hamdushi had unfortunately evidently been wanting in religious power, for the cannon-ball crushed his skull. My old Shereef friend had been called to the rescue, and according to his account, which, let us hope, for the sake of science as well as his own reputation, is a true one, he removed the broken patch of skull, replacing it with the rind of a green pumpkin, and closing the skin over it. In a month’s time the patient was not only convalescent but was once more hard at work practising his religio-acrobatic feats, with not only a remodelled and renovated skull, but even a new crop of hair! Such, then, was the skill of the leader of our caravan.

But there was another member who aspired to play the chief part in our little camp—the black slave-girl. Of all the mischievous impertinent hussies that ever saw the light of day she was the worst. Alternately shrieking with laughter at her practical jokes, and howling with rage because she couldn’t get what she wanted for supper, she was equally annoying in either capacity. At the same time, one could not help laughing at her strange antics. Why she had come at all was at first a mystery to me, until it leaked out that she had insisted upon doing so, and had pulled the old man’s beard until, with tears in his eyes, he had promised to take her—anyhow, come she did. Her mother was a slave of the Shereef’s wife—the wife who lived at Saffi, for there were a couple more at Dads, where he had formerly resided, and where his home really was—who had been bought with her little daughter, our fellow-traveller, some ten years before. The girl was fearfully ugly, as black as jet, with all the typical features of the negro. However, one readily forgave her this, and all her sins as well, for many a laugh her antics caused us when hunger and cold made a laugh worth double its ordinary value. When she was riding she wanted to walk; as soon as she commenced to walk she wanted some one to mount her again on the mule, from which, if she did not purposely alight, she would invariably tumble off. Such was the lady of our party, and she accompanied us as far as Dads, leaving there with the old Shereef some four days before I arrived at Tafilet. She stood the cold and fatigue of the journey well, and ought to be made a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, for she had a wonderfully retentive memory of the road and all the places we had stayed at, though as often as not she managed to forget the sternly delivered command that she was not to eat our complete store of dates while our backs were turned. Enough of Embarka, for such was her name.

The next individual in our caravan was of a very different kind and class,—a long, tall, delicate, thin man of some four-and-twenty years of age, with one of the most beautiful voices in speaking I ever heard. He was himself a Shereef, a nephew of the old doctor’s; and a man of absolute fearlessness in danger, and equal gentleness and sweetness of manner in time of peace. He never complained of cold or hunger, though we suffered much from both, but bore all the hardships of the journey, and they were many indeed, not only with every fortitude, but also without ever losing an opportunity to attempt to add to my comfort. As we trudged along the weary desert roads he would for hours together, with a voice that would be the fortune of a Member of Parliament, and gestures that an actor might spend years and never acquire, relate to me strange stories of the past, page after page of Moorish history and tradition, in Arabic as pure and as poetical as any that can exist.

The very opposite was the old Shereef’s son, a boy of some twelve or thirteen years of age. Heavy in body and mind, he had neither the intellect to be amusing nor the inclination to be useful, and served no other purpose of advantage than to be the object of the black girl’s practical jokes instead of any other of us.

There was, too, in our party the returning pilgrim, a devotee of the sect of Mulai Ali el Derkaui, as was apparent from his green turban and the string of large wooden beads he wore suspended round his neck. A strange quiet man he was, always ready to help us load our animals or pitch our one little tent, but seldom speaking; never missing the hour of prayer, and often himself bearing part of the load of his little donkey, on which he was carrying to his native village a few bars of rough iron to be forged into ploughshares. We saw but little of him: he was always a hundred yards ahead or behind, counting his beads as he came along; and often when we missed him altogether we could see away back along the road his figure, or its shadow, for his colour and that of his clothes corresponded too truly with the yellow sand, as he rose and fell in prayer. I was much struck by his quiet, patient, uncomplaining way. He didn’t belong to us, but travelling in the same direction, he joined our little caravan, and we made the journey together. I of all our party had some conversation with him, for kind as were they all to the solitary stranger, he was timid and retired. However, we often talked together as I trudged beside him, and he seemed to be a man of no little power of reasoning and thought. Often in discussing theological questions, and he would talk of nothing else, it became apparent that a battle was raging in his heart, a battle of common-sense against prejudice and fanaticism. He had travelled to Mecca and back, and his eyes had been opened, and he seemed to realise the narrow-mindedness of the school in which he had been brought up. He spoke openly to me, for to the day he left us at Dads to turn aside to his home, he never knew I was a Christian and a European, and often we prayed together by the roadside.

There remains but one more man to mention, my servant Mohammed er-Rifi, who followed me faithfully throughout the long journey, and returned with me to Tangier to commence again the humdrum existence of waiting at table and sweeping floors. An excellent youth he is, all good nature and smiles, strong and trustworthy, but preferring the luxuries and warmth of my kitchen to sharing the hardships of a desert tramp of several hundred miles. However, he never complained until the end of the journey, and then, arrived once more in Marakesh, he cursed the desert, and all that in it is, with all the curses he could muster—a very tolerable lot, on the whole. However, I cannot speak too highly of his fidelity and of the patience with which he bore what must have been to him a most terrible journey—nor forget to say that at times he hints that he and I should set out afresh for pastures new.

I have entered somewhat at length into the characters and description of my men, but some word of praise is only due to them; for had I not been surrounded by a faithful and uncomplaining band, my success in reaching Tafilet would never have come about.

The usual delays occurred in Marakesh before we got started once more, this time again the fault of the old Shereef, who wanted to buy presents to take to his relations at Dads,—the existence of whom, although he had two wives and quite a number of children there, he had apparently forgotten for several years,—and could not decide what to purchase.

So having found quarters for my men and my mules, I determined to enjoy the last few days of rest and plenty that I was destined to know for several months.