The pillars of Hercules

We thought we might now dispense with the precautions to secure our property before going to rest, to which we had been hitherto constrained; but were surprised, while making our beds, at the sheik’s entering with a heavy chain to secure our fowling-pieces round the tent-pole. Intending to convey a compliment, we resisted; but he got angry. He did not understand suspicion of his Turks, and understood nothing else of any other people. The chain for picketing our horses would have served for the anchor of a boat of ten tons. Every horse is secured with iron: there is either a shackle to two feet or a chain to one leg; the end under the master’s pillow, although in the inside of a circle, which no one can enter without passing through a tent or between two, in each of which there is at least one dog. One lives thus in constant extremes. The same person is at one moment the object of affection and confidence, at another of fear and suspicion. The Arab lives in the full glare of the light of the passions; as he is a statue in his figure, so is he an epic in his mind. It is not only not base to rob, but, as one of them expressed it, “to carry off a horse is a sign of being a man;” yet this man was trusty as a sword, and faithful as a dog. So the basis of all law resides in contract—not the “contract social,” of Jean Jacques, but the real word of man, surely known and truly pledged—in a word, the third commandment.

This contract is contained in the salutation. The “salem alillum” is a preliminary and a question. “Is there peace?”—on the affirmative, the salutation follows.[295] The Turk has converted into a distinction between creeds that which was the parley on the approach of two disciplined bodies.

Our word greeting comes from the mutual hailing of the sea-kings’ ships. “I greet with grith;” we translate “I greet with peace.” Greet has still preserved in the North its original meaning—of crying or hailing.

Two Greek lines have preserved to us a distinction between the forms of the Arabs and the Phœnicians, which throw light on their respective character. The latter had dropt the “Salam” as not requisite for their avocations and mode of life—

Ἀλλ’ εὶ μὲν Σύρος ἔσσὶ Σαλὰμ, εὶ δ’ οὔν σύγε Φοῖνιξ
Αὔδονες, εὶ δ’ Ἐλλην χαῖρε, τὸ δ’ αὐτὸ φράσον.[296]

Nothing is more dignified than the dumb show of a Mussulman in salutation. The right arm is raised and the open hand is laid upon the breast. Such a habit would make any people graceful and courtly. This is the common form; the more refined is called “Gemenas,”[297] and consists in carrying the hand to the mouth, touching the lips with the points of the fingers and then the forehead with a simultaneous inclination of the head and body—the meaning is vulgarly interpreted, “I kiss your words and treasure them up in my brain This is the salute to a superior. To an inferior, the hand is carried to the lips and then to the breast, or it is raised to the breast only—the shades are infinite.”

The visit ended by a discussion upon government. It was always the same question—does the sultan of the Christians seize the property of a man because he is rich? When answered in the negative, they smiled and remained satisfied (because they themselves know no other evil) that we enjoy the most perfect felicity. Then, after a pause the inquiry will come—if there be any chance of the English occupying their country? Such things are apt to lead Europeans into the mistake of fancying such a country easily conquered.

In the morning we started in a southerly direction to visit a spot from which the sheik had formerly brought a remarkable specimen. We found the block from which he had taken it lying in a field. I was giving directions to dig around that I might ascertain whether it was in situ; when they, fancying I desired to move it, despatched a messenger for a couple of camels. While I was at work, a sulam fell over me, and on clearing myself and looking up, I saw a stranger on horseback, and found myself bound to refuse no favour he should ask. Elisha and Elijah immediately came before me. Elisha, when the mantle is thrown on him, asks no questions, but leaves his twelve pair of oxen. The stranger said, “Cure me.” I answered, “God alone can cure.” He then took his sulam, and, throwing it over my shoulders, brought the collar part of it close round my neck, and kissed my head. If a criminal can throw a sulam on the Sultan, or on the ground before him, he has taken sanctuary and cannot be put to death.

Soon afterwards I observed some singular black rocks, which proved to be masses of iron: close by there was a hard limestone containing very fine and beautiful madrepores. Two thick layers of the metal stood up in fragments some feet above the ground. We traced it in one direction for about three miles, when it was again covered by the horizontal sand-stone. They told us that in the other direction the same black stone was found in great quantities; in fact, in the cultivated fields the stones were iron, realizing to the letter the description of the Promised Land—a land flowing with milk and honey where the stones are iron, and from the hills of which copper[298] is melted. We found a good deal of slag, but the working had been merely superficial. I afterwards obtained a specimen of lead from the same neighbourhood.

We returned to our home in another place. We had left the camp crowning a knoll. We found it in the evening settled on a plain. Two other douars along our route had also moved, and in the same direction, and we passed one of the migrating bodies. There were neither men nor horses, nor any cattle used in tillage. These were, as usual, employed in the fields. This business belonged to the women and children. The tents and utensils were laden on the spare cows and camels. Every creature that could carry, from the camel to the goat, was put in requisition, and you might see, as when flying before Pharaoh, “their kneading troughs in their clothes upon their backs.” The men returned from their work in the field, without the loss of an hour, to their new abode. By these removals the country for five miles was like a fair. The pasturing flocks, too, were falling in; and at our new pitching ground we had five douars within two miles. We counted them, as if they had been so many vessels that had taken shelter in the same creek with ourselves.

We diversified our geological pursuits by dragging a valley for boars, but were unsuccessful: they were, however, round us in thousands; their digging and rooting equalled the ploughing of the natives. We could not take ten steps in any direction without walking on the earth they had recently turned up, and their industry was prosecuted to within a hundred paces of the douar. It was with some difficulty that we regained our geological specimens, for the Arabs had entered into the spirit of the science, which consists in making collections. The expedition reminded me of Dr. Buckland’s equestrian lecture at Oxford. Hitherto a scrutinizing look at a stone had been supposed to endanger a man’s head.

I feel some compunction in obliterating what to my fellow-travellers are absurd prejudices; to me they are valuable records, like the disregarded fragments of some antediluvian creature, by which at the opposite sides of the globe the parts of a common stratum may be identified. This same prejudice guarded against Phœnician and Carthaginian the mineral wealth of Mauritania, while they were ravaging that of Spain. In the settlement of Mauritania made by Augustus, which was followed by four centuries of repose and prosperity, no traces of its mineral wealth appear, whilst the Roman world was supplied periodically with wheat from its fields. An ancient law forbade the working of gold and silver mines within the confines of Italy. There was reason in this. The facilities we have devised for centrating wealth have rendered of easy accomplishment things which men, had they been wise, would have surrounded with every obstruction. Until the funding system commenced, wars of aggression could be carried on only by a government which possessed a store of gold.[299] It was not, therefore, merely the depopulation of a district which was associated with the working of mines, but the loss of liberty; for the conqueror abroad became inevitably the tyrant at home.

For the purposes of commerce Africa required no gold. Throughout that region there is to be found a process for adjusting exchange, at once the most simple and the most perfect; such as the plainest man would have first hit upon, such as the profoundest mathematician would have at last devised. It is a “standard of value.” I mean not that perversion to which we give the name, but an ideal standard in which all objects are alike rated, be they money, be they merchandise.

In my anxiety to entertain my geological companions, I was nearly involving the community in war. I had given directions for sheep to be bought for the party for supper. They came to me presently to say that the sheep were ready, but that the people would take no money. I then sent a Jew servant of Mr. Seraya, to one of the other douars to buy them. Soon after there was a great commotion. Seeing him return with the sheep, and suspecting the intention, several of our tribe had run for their muskets, and sallied forth to drive the other people back who presumed to sell food to their guests.

A boar-hunt was settled for next morning. The plough was abandoned, and every man mustered with his gun. Preceded by a tamborine, we marched along the front of the other douars, and each poured forth its troop, amidst great and fierce excitement. There was yelling, running, and firing. My course was impeded by the sick and maimed who were brought and laid down before me. I could do nothing for them; and they were only jostled by the crowd. After we had cleared the douars, we were summoned to the top of a tumulus. A circle was cleared, and a man of another tribe came forward; they all held up their hands in the attitude in which the Tyrian Hercules is represented, and following the chief or priest, pronounced these words, “In the name of God, we, this day, are brothers; if any man’s hand be on his neighbour, may the hand of the Most Merciful be on him; if no man has evil thoughts, may our work be prospered.” The beaters, of whom there were about a hundred boys and old men, were told off, and we set forward, with nearly four hundred guns, dropping parties to crown the winding heights. The station assigned to us was the brow of a hill! I started without parley for the gorge below, but as soon as the soldiers divined my intention, they (having come mounted) gave me chase as if I had been an escaped felon. There was no want of boars; we saw them hopping out of our way, and they all, of course, got off. Not often has a pig kept so much good company waiting without disappointing any one of his supper; for if we had killed a score not one of the party would have cooked a morsel.

Mr. Seraya having early withdrawn, I remained amongst this concourse the whole day without the means of understanding or uttering a single word, and yet, though I was not aware of it at the time, this was the wildest people in the whole of Morocco. There was nothing here of the fanaticism or hatred of Europeans which characterizes those of the north. They did not so much as know the common terms of abuse which in Mussulman countries are applied to Christians. They gave us and received from us the salutation of peace. As we were returning, they were all picking up flat stones about the size of a man’s hand, and one after the other came to me with his stone. I had no means of comprehending what they said, and imagined that this was an effect of the expedition of the day before, and that they had all been bitten by the geological mania. We presently assembled in a little dell, and they went and threw their stones on the opposite side. One of these was set up on an old stump, and I saw what we were to be about. We sat down in a semicircle, in front of which each in succession, taking off his shoes, advanced, and after saluting the company, fired, and then again saluted and withdrew. There was no avoiding the trial. They set for us the very smallest stones, and we fired without advancing from our places. M. L. and myself hit the mark in succession, and were vociferously commended, but we declined a second trial. Their muskets might be called rampart pieces. To cock one of their guns (there is no half-cock) is like arming an arbalette, or stringing a bow. In taking aim, they stretch out the left arm as far as they can reach, and hold out the right elbow higher than the ear, and in this awkward attitude are a long time levelling.

After a good deal of powder had been expended, a great many stones shattered, and a great many jokes cracked on those who missed them, we wended our way back to the douar from which, with all the marching, running, scaling of steep sides, and plunging into deep dells, we had not been five miles distant during the whole day.

On our return a dance was proposed, and carried by acclamation. An old woman set about pulling up the lilies, and clearing from other incumbrances, a piece of sward outside the circle. Two girls rushed up with kuscoussoo sieves to beat as tambourines;—these are sheep’s skin, pierced with holes, and called sonag.[300] A woman seizing one of the cooking jars drew off her slipper, and striking the open mouth with it, we had at once a tum-tum. The girls and women danced to the sieves and the jar, but beating time, as well as all the company, with their hands and uttering a cadenced cry. The shuffling of feet was most extraordinary, all pressing into the centre round the chief performer, who sang and rattled a tambourine. The dance was interrupted whilst he sang, and then they kept marking time by their hands meeting alternately at the height of the face and breast. The whole party joined in beating time and singing the choruses.[301] The singer commenced each stanza with that peculiar and indescribable, though never-to-be-forgotten, bird-like jerk of the head, with which the Spanish dancers throw off. Here in the germ was all the Spanish castanet dance, song, &c.

It being proposed to stop, the girls exclaimed “Not till the cows come home.” So off they went again until the sun dipped under the horizon. The crowd dispersed in an instant, not, however, before we had thrown some coins into the tambourine. The minstrel gallantly distributed them to the girls who had distinguished themselves. Some one brought him a skirt full of raisins and walnuts, which were heaped into his sieve. This he distributed amongst the younger portion of the audience. There was then a good deal of kissing of his head and hands, and so we dispersed. I afterwards learnt that the castanet is in use amongst the tribes of the interior.[302] They have also a castanet of metal, and double. The striking of the hands is not, as in other parts of the East, the hollow of the fingers of the right hand upon the palm of the left; it is the two palms that are brought to make a sharp clack. They produce a variety of sounds and exhibit a variety of evolutions.

Living in a circle engenders peculiar habits. When a man is wanted, (as was often the case in arranging hunting parties,) his name is called quietly, as you sit within your canvass walls, thus: “Eh! Hamed!” If there is no answer, the call is repeated; then some one in the next tent takes it up, and right and left you hear “Eh! Hamed,” and round it goes till the man is found. If you want to buy anything, you go into the middle of the circle, and call out, “Who has milk to sell?—let him come.” “Who has eggs?”[303]

In the centre of each douar, there is a tent set apart as a mosque, with a fire burning before it, and there we were without difficulty admitted while our tent was getting ready. It is also used as a school as—late and early—we could testify. If Arabs are not taught foreign tongues, they do learn to use their own. Each douar besides its sheik has its Cadi and priest or schoolmaster. The tents of the persons of distinction are black, the others brown; there are white marks upon them, to distinguish respective ranks; seven for the principal.

The tent covering is in the longest forty feet, and somewhat less than twenty in width. It is in stripes lengthways, for the convenience of carriage. This cover is stretched over a transverse bar, supported by two upright poles in the form of the Greek letter Π, under which generally hangs a curtain which divides the tent into two parts, each about fifteen feet square. The poles are ten or twelve feet high, the extremities of the covering coming to within two feet of the ground, where sometimes bundles of rushes are placed. The tent may be easily enlarged by adding a stripe or more to the covering, and then stretching out the hanging parts, but that would require the uprights and the pins to be strengthened. Thus, Isaiah (chap. liv. 2), “Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not; lengthen thy cords and strengthen thy stakes.”

The stripes are unlaced when they remove their encampment and rolled up. The length of the tent is facing the centre of the circle. The form seems to have undergone a change. The gable, which is now transversely placed, must have formerly run through the length. At least so alone could the description of Sallust be correct, “Oblonga incurvis lateribus tecta, quasi navium carinæ.”—The tents were formerly transported on waggons.