The pillars of Hercules

I have already stated my object in visiting Barbary, and its frustration. I thought it best, therefore, to abstain from any intercourse with the Moorish government on political matters, and to take advantage of the entrance I had obtained to see the country. I soon, however, found myself the object of suspicion. If I spoke of visiting Fez or Morocco, I was mysteriously motioned to be silent. The guards assigned to me watched me as a prisoner. I was not suffered to cross the threshold without a written order from the Caïd. The prospect before me was close confinement until I could get over the bar as I had entered, and for that deliverance I might have to wait six months. In this dilemma, I bethought myself of an expedient. Geology, in these countries, is a delicate subject. There are the jealousy of avarice and the fear of consequences. They associate with their mines the former invasion, and almost conquest by Portugal; and indeed the Portuguese seem to have drawn considerable stores of gold from this country. They opened many mines; in every case, as soon as the Moors got possession, the mines were filled up. A promising sulphur manufactory had been recently set up at Fez, by a renegade Frenchman: it was, by order of the government, levelled with the ground, and all the instruments destroyed, lest it should furnish a new attraction to the French; yet it was to geology and mines that I had recourse to unbolt the gates of Rabat. I raised the question ex abrupto—spoke of mines to everybody, and exposed the folly of denying to themselves resources, &c. These discussions reached the Sultan; curiosity was excited, and the matter debated; the ludicrous exhibition they had made by ruining the sulphur works, partly admitted mineral investigation, and had its partizans, and at last I received the acceptable intimation that I might go and “hunt wild boars” in the province of Shavoya, whence an inquisitive chief had brought a specimen of “madein,”—a magnificent crystal, or spiculated mass of cromate of iron.

On the forenoon of the 23rd of December, the permission reached me, and the Sheik, with geological cravings, the chief of the provincial tribe, was to be my companion, together with three of the Sultan’s own body-guard, and a guard from the Caïd of Rabat. The consul, Mr. Leraza, volunteered his services as interpreter, and in the scarcity of horses, I was obliged to leave behind my English scribe.

The consulate was immediately like a disturbed ant-hill, and the sun was still some fathoms above his western bed, when we found ourselves beyond the walls, and fairly plunged into the living desert—for desert it was as soon as the town was shut out. We shortly turned down to the right and threaded our way along the margin, where Africa and the Atlantic meet. The one bore no house, the other no sail—not a vestige of man’s toil on the earth, nor on the ocean a sign of his daring:—they were alone in their immensity. Again striking inward we lost sight of the sea, and under the reigning solitude could fancy ourselves approaching the Zahara.

The waste was not, however, dry sand or parched deserts; the land wore a rich vesture, and its tissue was of flowers. The wild growth of the fan-like palmetto, that most useful of comparatively useless plants, predominated. Its services to man were presently made known to me. I had on board a package of saddles and bridles used years ago while travelling in the East. Three sets had been put in requisition without undergoing the requisite repairs and revisions; girths, buckles, straps, gave way one after the other in a manner which in any other country would soon have brought us to a stand still; but on each mischance a man would slip off, make a grasp at a doum branch, and commence plaiting: between the ductility of the leaf and the dexterity of their fingers, girths and bands were miraculously restored, buckles and ties supplied.

Around the doum were scattered the narcissus, and the plant of the “gardens of the blessed,” the asphodel. Here we were on the very verge of that sacred west, towards which the living looked where the dead should dwell, within those granitic arms which extend to receive the departed spirit.[246] The fourth plant was the festouk. This is honoured by the name of Esculapius: it resembles fennel, but is much longer, the shoots standing eight or ten feet. The gum ammoniac is collected from it in the south. A fly with a horn in the head pierces the trunk, and causes the gum to flow. The stem serves in Spain and Morocco as a razor strop. Great as is our proficiency in cutlery, we cannot put an edge on a razor like the Moors, or shave as they do. They lay the instrument to the very root and make, so to speak, an excision of its growth. Barbers get their name, no doubt, from Breber; that was the early mode of supplying names to professions. The shaving of the head was unknown to the Greeks, Romans or Egyptians, and the hair was always left untouched till the age of manhood, when it was cut short and consecrated. The tombs of Lycia exhibit to us boys with shaved heads and a little tuft, as at present worn by the Mussulmans. This practice of the “Barbarians” of Asia Minor may well have suggested the word, though we do not apply it as it was originally applied, in a geographical sense. The usages of Morocco are so far Mussulman only as the Mussulmans have adopted them. The shaved head and chin are Philistine, and, therefore, perhaps the Jews were forbidden to shave the corners of their beards, and the lock on the temple remains their distinctive mark. The first man who shaved the chin daily at Rome was Scipio Africanus. The pith of the festouk serves as a slow match. It was in it (νάσθηξ) that Prometheus concealed the fire he filched from Heaven.

These four plants seemed equally distributed over every patch of ground, and extended over the whole face of the country. The flowers of the asphodel stood higher than a man. The soil is mere sand; but between the clumps of flowers a little grass might be seen.

About seven o’clock, it having been some time dark, we came suddenly upon fires and crowds of squatters, and bales heaped around them: the herds of crouching camels had a strange appearance among the people and the smoke. It was a small caravan settled round a Douar. We were preparing to pitch outside, but in the hurry of our departure, or rather flight, the tent pins had been forgotten. The sheik immediately removed his family out of his own tent to accommodate us.

At length I beheld an Arab camp—at length I entered an Arab tent! I would not have exchanged that sight for the possession of a palace. That first hour must remain associated with every effort to picture the ancient world—with every judgment of its present condition.

When we were comfortably arranged, the sheik brought a flat bowl with a pile of hot scous. As he set them down he said, “scou!” The two Scotchmen of the party had been surprised at the sight of the dish, but they were electrified when they heard the word: their astonishment burst forth in a way that puzzled and amazed the sheik. In his turn he was delighted with the explanation. The Douar, the Buled, the Cabaile, are mere extensions of the family and multiplications of the tent: the blood relationship runs through all; the parentage, therefore, of a race is of as much interest to them as that of an individual. “Every Arab of the present day,” says Burckhardt, “can tell back his fathers and their collateral relatives to the ninth generation.” In the last generation a Highlander would do the same.[247] But memory, like man, has lost its early longevity. At the time of Mahomet every Arab could trace back twenty generations.[248] through ages; whose people had remained almost to our

This Arab was delighted to hear of a race in England with patriarchal chiefs whose line ascended unbroken times unchanged; who had their own language,[249] who had a diet, part of which was “scous,”[250] and a dress, part of which was a haïk. He came and embraced me, when I told him that my forefathers had dwelt amongst them, and had left the usted as their memorial. The sympathy for which I was here indebted to my Highland blood, did not, as in Europe, spring from antipathy to England. At this moment, in Morocco, England is the idol. To her every eye is turned: they make inquiries, and hang upon your answer. One Englishman is peculiarly the object of their regard. There is not one of them who is not familiar with the name of “Palmerston.” Seldom did a day pass that I was not asked respecting the chances of his return to office, and many a kindly pat on the back did I receive.

Though our journey had not exceeded a dozen miles, we were completely exhausted by our day of preparations, and had not yet tasted food; so, making our supper upon this hors d’œuvre, the scous, we laid ourselves down. My companions soon resigned themselves to the empire of fatigue, and I, mesmerized by the waves of the Numidian folds, seemed to see the sides of the tent open on dim vistas of long years, through which great shadows flitted. Tacferinas rose, and, beyond, Jugurtha; there were mingled, like ghosts upon the shore of Styx, Hunerick and Hannibal, Nebuchadnezzar and Cervantes, Don Sebastian and St. Louis. Pictured scenes danced on the textile cloud—Moosa on the cliff of the Atlantic; Marius amidst Byrsa’s shattered battlements; Juba in his purple; Lot in his sackcloth; Rachel at the well; and, walking from the canvas, Abraham stood in the door. How many more from Atlas to Nelson—how many deeds from the battle of the gods to that of Trafalgar—what thrones and sceptred hands from the old Muley of Carteïa,[251] to the present one of Fez! At length the phantoms were cleared away, though not by light, and the vision was broken, because I fell from trance to slumber; and sense then let in what fancy had before kept out—the noises of an Arab camp by night.

To each tent there is at least one dog. The sheep ten per tent, expert in imitating old men’s cough. There are asses and horses secured with chains, and cattle (the mugitus bovum) mingle with the brayings of the one and the clanking of the other. The steeds are peculiarly quarrelsome, and their differences provoke the otherwise tranquil camels, who, when aroused, give it to one another in their own Xantippe fashion. Through all these pierced the infantine cry of the kid and goat. Lastly, there is chanticleer, reared from Jebusite eggs,—not like our sober cock, contented with a morning crow or two—but repeating hour by hour, and all night long, the warning notes which startled Peter. Take then the sum—eighty cocks, forty camels, forty asses, forty horses, eight hundred sheep, four hundred goats, one hundred dogs—or fifteen hundred animals, called “dumb,” pent up in a circle of three hundred yards’ diameter, in the middle of which your tent is pitched! Speak, then, of “Nature’s soft nurse.”

A watch was appointed. They came, bringing their dogs to sleep round the tent, and, of course, to sup with our guards and attendants. It was near eleven o’clock before they “sat down.” Arabs speak loud and long, and all together. They were long at their supper—longer at their talk. When they had done, the dogs fought for the bones, and continued after they were picked. As soon as they had concluded, the children in the school commenced, all at once, every one a different lesson, as loud as their throats could shriek, and as fast as their tongues could clatter. One sense was not, however, to be racked alone:—the process of acupuncture soon commenced with such vigour and method that, when daylight appeared, not one square line of my whole body remained unsuffused with a roseate hue. Hitherto, I had secured myself against this Egyptian plague, by a musquito curtain sewed to a sheet,[252] but had neglected to have one when needed most. When I stirred up the party, as I did betimes, the consolation I received was, “You are lucky that it is winter, or you must have had musquitoes into the bargain!” Each night it was the same. I recognized my old acquaintance among sheep, kids, dogs, camels—the same school-boys followed us everywhere, and we had over and over again the Lancasterian method in the morning. Not till the fourth night—after all expedients—cotton-stuffing, bandages, &c., had failed—did exhausted Nature close her ears and mine.

We started next morning under a Scotch mist, and were soon wet to the skin. After four or five hours’ toiling, yet advancing little, we turned restiff from cold and hunger, and desired to be housed, dried, or, at all events, fed. I insisted, as the direction we travelled in mattered little, on going in search of a Douar. For two hours more we continued to stray. Having missed the one we had sought, and avoiding others which were in sight, our course became to me at last utterly incomprehensible. I thought that wherever there was a tent there was a welcome, and wherever a roof, a shelter. I now discovered my mistake. I insisted on approaching a very small Douar of about fifteen tents, to which some old men and boys of most forbidding appearance, were driving in the cattle. The soldiers went to them, and standing long conversing, I advanced towards the Douar; they rushed at me with violent gestures. M. Seruya offered them money, but they derided him, and signed to us to be off.

It was strange: we had offended in nothing; we demanded nothing; we only begged for shelter, and we were willing to pay for it. They were Arabs: we were strangers. Our party was calculated to command respect or enforce obedience, being composed of officers from the city, the sheik of a neighbouring tribe, emissaries of the Sultan: we outnumbered them, and were armed and mounted. Yet the sense of hospitality, money, authority, strength availed us nothing; I asked for an explanation but gained none. Then came the question—the Homeric question, “Who are you?—of what race, of what land?”

Εἴπὲ δέ μοι γαῖαν τε τεὴν δῆμον τε πόλιν τέ.

Now light broke in. I had to ask the name, not of a village but a tribe.[253] A tribe might be trodden down, not the individuals; these were not a dozen shepherds:—they were Saba, who muster two thousand five hundred firelocks. This tribe had travelled from Arabia: they could go back to-morrow if they liked. They might have come yesterday, or a thousand, or two, or three thousand years ago. To such as they are, time brings no change, distance presents no obstacle. But this name was not heard now for the first time. Was it they, perchance, who stole Job’s cattle? Did any of them accompany their queen to Jerusalem? How do these bear the patronymic of that mysterious stock? Sheba was the firstborn of Cush and elder to Phut and Canaan and Mizram. Yet I could not call them with Isaiah “men of stature.” These Saba have seen arise and pass away the great empires of the earth. They will live when that one to which the wanderer belongs, whom they would not receive, is gone to be addressed by the shades of Nineveh and Babylon, “Art thou too become as one of us?” Well, they did not choose that we should enter, and we had neither right to question nor complain. My escort were Moors, not Frenchmen.

The Saba were, however, civil enough to direct us to one of the Douars of our sheik’s tribe,—the Zieïda. We reached it about nightfall, and without halt or parley, rode right in. Like the change of a theatre by the scene-shifter’s whistle, a couple of tents all standing, the poles, cords, &c., being manned, were lifted from their place and advanced into the centre: matting was spread upon the deep, wet verdure: blazing wood was brought from neighbouring fires, piled into a fire, and in the twinkling of an eye we were roofed, sheltered, settled about our hearth, and in our home, where a moment before the earth lay bare, wet, cold, dark, and comfortless. Then came the elders. The owner of the tent brought a sheep to present at the door: another eggs; another a jar of butter. It was painful and strange to me not to be able to converse with them, and to my instant and repeated inquiries, I could get from my interpreter nothing more than “compliments,”—“compliments.” They soon retired to leave us to get dried, and then was repeated to me their request, which was, that we should think favourably of them now, and speak well of them hereafter. I said, “the proverb runs through the world, ‘hospitable as an Arab,’ now I know it is a truth.” They presently returned with demonstrations of gratitude, my words having been repeated from tent to tent round the Douar.

Often during this second sleepless night did those words recur to me—“We are Saba.” Suppose that one of Job’s descendants had been of the party, we might have set up a claim for the cattle. The Egyptians demanded from the colony of Jews introduced into Egypt by Alexander, repayment for the jewels which the Jewish women had carried away. The claim was admitted, but they pleaded value given in “brick-making.” Alexander held the defendants entitled to a verdict. Eight centuries did not give amongst them the strength to Time which with us is acquired from seven years.

Sheba signified oath;[254] thus Beersheba, the well of the oath. They were the words of the mystery of objurgation, the basis of religions and governments.

The inventions of a people have in antiquity received their name; thus have many vocables been formed. It is in this manner that language becomes history. We have centre courts (atrea), from the manner of building of Atrea. Gauze from Gaza; calico from Calient; muslin from Masulipatam; embroiderers (Phrygiones) from Phrygia. Towers from the Tyrians; ceremonies from Cere. In Spain to-day a waggon is called Elheudi (the Jew). These single words, as clearly as if written on tables of brass, as surely as if sworn to by myriads of witnesses, prove their etymon to be fact. The Jews introduced chariots into Spain; the Etruscans religious forms into Rome, and so for oath, the Saba use the inventions of the ritual of ancient superstition.

Above one thousand years ago, the answer given to me was given to a Calif El Mamrou, who while on his march to attack the Roman empire, meeting a tribe with narrow tunics like the Persians, and long hair, called them to him, and asked them who they were. They answered, “We are Harrane.” He then said, “Are you Christians?” which they denied. He then asked, “Are you Jews?” That they denied also. Then he said, “Have you got no book, and do you follow no prophet?” And as they returned an uncertain answer, he said to them, “Ye are idolaters, and deserve death!” They then alleged that they paid tribute and had contracted with the Mussulmans; but he tells them that they are not of the number of those who can make contracts, and threatens to extirpate them to the last child unless, on his return, they had professed Islam, or one of the religions mentioned in the book (Judaism or Christianity). They then changed their clothes and cut off their hair; and some became Christians and some Mussulmans; but many would not; and being in great fear of the Calif’s return, they applied to an old man to know what they should do. He said to them, “When Mamrou returns, answer him, ‘We are Saba,’ which is the name of the religion which the Great God has named in the Koran; and thus let us be freed from him!”[255]

Mahomet makes Abraham, when passing from Irak into Syria, fall in with Saba, “versed in old books, and who believed what they contained.” Then Abraham says to God: “It does not appear that in the world there are any but I and those who are with me, who are faithful and believe in thee alone. So God ordered him to preach to them; and he called to them, but they would not obey him. ‘How should we,’ said they, ‘believe thee who canst not read?’ So God sent upon them forgetfulness of those sciences and books which they knew.”

And this, then, is the last remnant of the people who first fixed the hours of the day—the points of the compass,—who taught the courses of the stars[256]—who were the teachers of letters, and the first law-givers.[257] Small in numbers, scattered without being disconnected, they had their settlements in Arabia Felix; on the Red Sea; on the Persian Gulf; in Syria; in Asia Minor, and in the far regions of the West; and linked with their camels the sea-borne traffic of their twin race with the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. Yet of them the stock remains—not one orphan of Tyre subsists.

The next morning was beautiful; and turning to the eastward, we proceeded on our journey, expecting early in the day to reach sheik Tibi’s own Douar. We came upon patches or outliers of the cork forests. In ten miles I counted sixteen Douars, averaging seventy tents; and the furthest from us on each side was not more than two miles. Thence for fifteen miles, though the land was cultivated, there was neither tent nor tree to be seen. The soil, almost sand, is thinly spread over a face of rock. The festouks and asphodels had disappeared, and lilies supplied their place; but not a fly, nor a bird, nor a spider, nor insect, save ants. The hollows were marshes or little lakes; but nowhere was the mould shaped by the action of water,—nowhere did the soil imbibe the rain to hold and discharge it,—no trace of a rivulet.

This tract extends along the whole coast, averaging twenty miles in width and five hundred feet in height. Schist, slate, and quartz-rock protrude through it in some places, the line of bearing being at right angles to the coast. I have already explained this formation, the peculiarity of which consists in the surface being converted into stone. At one place the road crossed what looked like a rivulet; but the extent of its course was 250 yards, that is to say, this was the whole distance from the first indenting of the ground till it had opened into a deep chasm. Wherever water filters through, the sand is removed and the rock falls in; and then the rent goes on like a crack in a plate of glass, widening and deepening to the sea.

This is a landscape requiring a new name. I now could understand that strange term, “Rolling Prairies:”—it must be a similar formation, swelling, but not hill-like; tame, but not valley-like; expanse not like that of the sea; undulations not like those of the land; and over the whole a preadamite vastness, unbroken till you come abruptly to the edge of the gulfs. Were the elevation thousands instead of hundreds of feet, and the distance from the sea thousands instead of tens of miles, then it would require but snake-grass and buffaloes to witness an estampado without crossing the Atlantic. It was quite delightful to get upon the hills again: they were rugged aluminous schist, well clothed with trees of extreme beauty, but moderate size, principally the cork oak. I here first saw the Arar, the Thuya articulata, a tree between a cypress in the leaf, and a pine in the figure. The wood is invaluable; no worm touches it, and it endures for ever; it does not split; and though hard is easily wrought. They use it for the beams of the houses which are near the ceilings of apartments: those ceilings of “cedar and vermilion,” that we read of in the Prophets and the “Arabian Nights.” It has the odour of the cedar, and yields pitch and turpentine. There is also an evergreen like the thorn, bearing a berry like the haw: they call it Berri, and make oil from it. This is the Eliodendron of the Greeks. Further to the south there is the Argan, from the nut of which a much esteemed oil is made. The oak furnishes the Bellotis, which, without ceasing to be an Arcadian, is here a real food.

Habits still draw very closely on the Arcadian. Water is their drink; their food milk and wheat not fermented, and subjected to scarcely any cooking. To their grain and milk they add dried fruits, fresh acorns, palmetto root, truffles, the lotus berry, and the like. The country produces the plants which yield sago and arrow-root.

Hunting was not the primitive state of man, nor flesh his original diet. If all the literature of the world were destroyed except that of the Hudson’s Bay Company, such a belief might be pardonable in future times. We put ourselves in a similar predicament when we take the pictures of early Greece as the first steps of the human race. The names of the first slayers of animals and eaters of flesh have been recorded, and yet we treat as a fable all that is enumerated of these times, because they talk of living upon acorns. A garden was the residence of our first parents.

I had made one step backward towards the reality of early fable, when I wandered in the indubitable Hesperides and plucked their golden fruit; but now, amongst the cork forests, and seeing acorns and glands plucked and fed upon, I made a second, and reached the golden age itself.

A man may thus travel and find food wherever he stretches out his hand, or lays him down to rest. I do not say it is a very agreeable diet, perhaps not a very nutritious one; but still here are roots, and plants, and glands, which will sustain life without the aid of cookery; and populations might spread and multiply, sustained by the spontaneous gifts of the earth. The first peopling of the globe remains the greatest of wonders; for what can be to us more unaccountable than the ease of their travels, the order of their society, the distinctness of their character, the rapidity of their growth?

The Douar for which we were bound was beyond the hills. We had, therefore, to cross them, and from the summit the view opened to the eastward a totally different scene. From this height the country behind looked like a swelling sea—before us it was all in heaps. No vacant space and no rocky side, but as if earth had been carted to the spot by tunnelling giants, and shot out there.

We found the Douar perched on the summit of a knoll;—the circle of tents looked like a diadem upon its brow. Our tent was pitched in the centre, that is, at the top. As soon as it was in order, our Tibi came to bid us welcome: he was a simple, sedulous man, and from the first to the last moment was just the same. They paraded us round the circle, and we were passed from group to group to be examined, patted, and discussed. The round of visits ended at the Sheik, and I was ushered in among his three wives;—and here was a busy scene. The tent, though I speak from recollection, was little short of forty feet in length and twenty in width; the cross-bar supporting it in the middle might be ten or twelve feet high; the covering swept down, so that towards the extremities you had to crouch or creep. In the centre and around were piled up stores of provisions, clothing, and the like, arranged for the convenience of sitting or sleeping. There were three or four small fires, chiefly of embers, on which were boiling large brown jars with long necks, as if preparing for some great feast. The principal wife would soon by her appearance have arrested my attention, had she allowed me or any one else to be ignorant of her presence and authority. She was comely, bold, haughty, supple in body, dexterous of hand. Seated within reach of the two or three fires, she was proceeding to dispose of the cooking viands, which, with a huge ladle, she heaped up in corresponding dishes. She was giving her orders without intermitting her work, and all the work of the tent—culinary, at least,—seemed to pass through her hands.

The dish was kuscoussoo, so I was not to lose such an opportunity. What had been despatched was for the supply of guests who had arrived before us: she now had to recommence for us. When I had succeeded in conveying to her my desire to be instructed in the process of its manufacture, she gazed at me, and asked what I had eaten all my life, and what the women in my country did? After briefly satisfying her curiosity, she made a place for me beside herself, and though her hands never ceased to flutter about and skim over the contents of her tray, like a bird’s wings, nor her tongue to run on; when any part of the operation required attention, she did not fail to awaken mine.