The pillars of Hercules

Rabat, Dec. 17th.

The thermometer, in a room where the sun never shines, stands nearly at temperate. During twenty days, we have only had two days of bad weather: it is hot in the sun, and cold at night. The days and nights are of resplendent beauty, with almost always a cloudless sky towards evening. The landscape up the river has a delicacy of colouring as peculiar as beautiful. At night the moon is so brilliant, that stars only of the third magnitude are visible. Walking on the top of the house, for here one leads a cat-like life—always on the roof—it is like a mixture of summer and winter. The houses around seem in their whiteness as if under a load of snow; above, there is a summer sky, and around, verdant hills and fields. I gathered in a garden a branch of a pear-tree in full blossom, though the rest of the tree was quite dead; and flocks of swallows were disporting in the air, making, by our proverb, a summer of December. Yet, during this time, there have been disasters upon the coast: the schooner with which we were in company has been entirely lost at Dar-el-Baída.[236]

A French steam-vessel of war has also been lost, and eighty men have perished: this is the second.

The representative of Muley Idris has been here several times: the last time he came alone, and said his servants and baggage were waiting for him at Salee, where he was going to join them, but that he had come first to bid me “good-bye.” I offered him a trifling present—a microscope; he said he could neither eat it nor wear it, and rejected it with disdain. I said I had nothing less unworthy of his acceptance; on which he said, “Then, give me money.” I was aware that saints cannot ask for coin. He next cast his eyes round the room, and said, “I will take away with me that loaf of sugar.” I intimated to him that he should do nothing of the sort: he instantly dropped the saint and the madman, and we parted in the civilest manner.

I was consulted as to sending some children to be educated at Paris: it was some time before I could believe they were in earnest. On my dissuading them, I was answered, “We want physicians, chemists, astronomers, mechanics, miners, makers of arms, and instructed men. We had all these formerly, and gave these sciences to Europe: why should we not take them back again?” I endeavoured to represent to them the distinction between science and the manners of the people who might, in any particular age, be scientific; that, if they could take the science of Europe naked, and without the plague-garments in which it was at present dressed, viz. our ideas, morals, and manners, it would be well. But they were not men to discriminate, and, certainly, it was not by children that the separation could be effected. They told me that the Moorish envoy, who was recently at Paris, had seen an Algerine boy highly commended by his French instructors, who, nevertheless, nourished in his heart almost a detestation of the French; and said that he was striving to acquire the knowledge they possessed to be able to drive them out of Africa. I pointed out the difference between a captive taken in war and children voluntarily sent for instruction, who could not come back to their primitive life but to look with contempt on their fathers.

Some remarks ensued, which showed that I was suspected of jealousy of France, so I had to argue the point. I told them, that if I coveted their land for a country, I should be glad to see France there, or even conquering it, for it would fall out as in India and America. France doing everything by her Government, as they said in Algiers, she always had awakened and ever must arouse such an amount of animosity against her, as to render untenable every conquest effected by her arms. In India, France had opened the way; had established a system of native government, and created the whole of those implements through which we obtained possession of India, and at this moment retain it. The English Government itself had nothing to do with India. A company of merchants managed it, and thereby succeeded the French. In America, the same thing had happened twice over. We had lost our colonies, which France could not take, and got hers, which she could not keep. The New World presented the great warnings, which I turned to account, instancing the numerous population, the magnificent cities, the industrious and polished races, the highly cultivated lands, the works of irrigation, and, in some cases, the admirable laws which existed until the European came with his light, and science, and philanthropy—and decay followed his steps: his rule was a curse, and race after race has been exterminated.

To primitive races, national genealogy is above all things attractive; and the question was raised as to the possible blood relationship between themselves and the Mexicans, through the Phœnicians. I will not rehearse the conversation, but cannot at once dismiss the subject.

That Western world may have had its beginning, its progress, its multifarious phases, its great existencies, its long life, and its decay in the same way that we have had ours, without there being a necessary connexion, although there be infinite points of resemblance with the numerous forms and accidents of Egypt and Etruria, of India and Chaldea. Still, the objection to intercourse, on the score of insuperable obstacles in the navigation of the oceans on either side, appears to me to be, in a philosophic age, the most strange of hallucinations. Every dot upon the surface of the water has been found occupied by the human race, and there have been indubitable crossings, both of the Pacific and Atlantic, by large vessels and junks, and by small boats and canoes. The tradition of the Atlantic Islands seems an indubitable, though indistinct trace, amongst the Greeks, of a Phœnician discovery. If, as I believe, I have almost succeeded in showing the magnetic needle was possessed by that people, the obstacles to the crossing the Atlantic, and to continuous intercourse, are still further removed. It was not, however, until I entered the room which I here occupy, that I perceived direct proof of this connexion. There hangs up an ornamented Table of the Law, such as is common in the houses of the Jews—that mysterious open hand on the one side; on the other, a diagram, which occupies a prominent place in the symbols of Masonry, the double triangle. It is also a cabalistic and astrological figure. It forms five points, and is, I believe (not the six-pointed one), the proper “Solomon’s seal.” They could give no explanation of its meaning or origin, and only said, “It has been always so.” I find this same sign is on the signet of the Sultan, and on his coin. The Moors have adopted it as their arms. They, no more than the Jews, can tell what it means. It is lost in the mists of their common antiquity. The very same symbol is found in Mexico.

Roads, worthy of being compared to, and alone rivalling (by the confession of Humboldt) those of the Romans; pottery, equalling, and resembling, that of the Etruscans; resemblances of costume, as with the head-dress of the Etruscans; instruments of music, the double flute of the Curians—do not go so far to indicate a connexion, as the adoption of a symbol such as this; but when you have an exact correspondence in a peculiar and arbitrary figure, then other resemblances may be admitted, as furnishing corroborative proof of a common matrix, if not for the races, at least for their arts.

There are, however, other resemblances, which it would require a vigorous imagination to explain by the doctrine of coincidence. Gladiators contending with the Retiarius, derived by the Latins from the Etruscans;—tombs, like the Etruscan, constructed of enormous heaps of earth, upon a basement of masonry; mortar, that most remarkable discovery of the Phœnicians; tapia, or the mixture of mortar and clay;—papyrus, prepared crosswise, like that of Egypt; and tesselated pavements. Again, the Mexican year, coinciding with the Etruscan, the Mexican being three hundred and sixty-five days, five hours, and fifty minutes; the Etruscan, three hundred and sixty-five days, five hours, and forty minutes. There are traces of unknown characters reported, so that some people who used letters must have set foot upon that continent. The buildings are almost all turned to the cardinal points. Mention, in two instances, is made of glass and of enamel.

The Mexicans had baths. However magnificent their public monuments, these were not on that scale which corresponded with the Roman and the Greek Thermæ, but such as are found in almost every house in Morocco—a small apartment, seven feet square, with a cupola roof, five to six feet, and a slightly convex floor, under one side of which there is a fire, and a small, low door to creep in by.

If Phœnicians found their way across the Atlantic, they would have taught, amongst the first things, the bath and the points of the compass, trinkets of glass, the art of dyeing, &c.; and these things are there, with that peculiar mark and stamp of the people who have specially preserved the usages of the ancient world. Putting together these things, with the fact that the Phœnicians were the navigators exclusively to the West and to the East, I cannot help looking upon America as within the range of their enterprise, and many of its works as the record of their passage.

Dec. 18th.

In this country, as I should think must happen in China, the attention is fixed on the most trivial things; or, rather, the importance appears of things held to be trivial. One feels in contact with the world in its infancy; as if, by stretching forth the hand, you could reach the source of the earliest inventions for supplying our wants, or gratifying our desires. I can only compare it to a museum of antiquities, whether in what they wear; what they do; the houses they inhabit; the names they bear; or the words they speak;—all is as it was of old. Here, too, are the rudiments of what we find in other forms elsewhere. What can be more striking than to be called, as I was myself to-day, a Nazarene! the first title applied to the Apostles by the Jews.

By the exclusion of atmospheric air, the most delicate flower may be handed down to future ages. Here a similar process seems to have been applied to man: the cause of change is excluded in the one case—change itself in the other: elsewhere, letters graven upon brass and marble, are our guides through the evolution of ages; but here man himself is the undying and unchangeable record of himself.

This morning I was watching a Negress who rejoiced in the Punic name of Barca, washing and cooking in the court below. Her extreme and minute cleanliness suggested the question: “In what could cleanliness have consisted before the discovery of soap?” Soap comes next to absolute necessaries. What must have been the condition of nations without either soap or the bath? What a benefit to the human race the discovery of either;—where neither was known, filth would be as habitual as clothing: there could be nothing clean or unclean. The use of the bath must then have made that difference between one people and another, that exists between filthy and cleanly animals, altering their very nature. Yet I could not tell when it was discovered, or who were the inventors. Why should it alone be without honour, or parentage? Whence its name?[237] Our word is from the Latin, but soap has no Latin etymon. The name is not derived from the Greek; it has, in that language, no corresponding term. The modern Greeks use the same—either their soap has travelled eastward since the decline of the Roman Empire, or it belongs to the East at an earlier time. In this dilemma I apply to Barca, and at once obtain the solution. Soap, in Arabic, is Saboon. They have the verb, Sabeïn, which does not mean to ‘soap,’ but, to ‘wash.’ The Arabs did not adopt the name from Rome, and coin out of it a verb for so primitive a usage as washing.

The Moors possessed soap made to their hands, measured by mountains, and cheaper than manure. This substance is decomposed flints, or soap-stone: it is called Gazule, or Razule; it polishes the skin, makes it soft, and gives it lustre. It abounds on the river Seboo, and may, when exported, have got that name abroad. It is not fit for washing clothes, for which purpose they have a primitive soft soap like that of the ancient Celts—this is what they call Saboun. The first mention made of it is amongst the Gauls. The Romans had so little acquaintance with it in Pliny’s time, that he thought it was used for the purpose of turning the hair red. It is no trifling honour to the Gaulish race, looked upon as barbarous, that the Romans should have taken from them beds and mattresses, jewellery, and soap. “Soap,” says Pliny, “is an invention of the Gauls to colour the head yellow: it is made of tallow and ashes. The best which they make is of beech wood ashes and goat’s suet, and it is made in two ways, either thick and hard, or liquid and soft; but the one, as well as the other, is very much used in Germany; and a great deal more indeed by men than women.”[238]

Great ingenuity was exerted in discovering and applying various kinds of earths and solvents to clean the body and the clothes, as may be followed at length in Pliny; but yet the best mixture at which they seem to have arrived, is that which was used in Greece, of which the preparation is described by Aristophanes in the Frogs—a composition[239] of ashes, nitre and crinoline earth. The Romans, like the French at present, lessieved their dirty linen.[240]