The Project Gutenberg eBook of In the Tail of the Peacock, by Isabel Savory.

A Berber and an Arab may easily be distinguished from each other. Berbers, taken as a whole, have square frames, high cheek-bones, small eyes, and are great walkers, not horsemen. The mountains are to them what the plains are to the Arabs, and they prefer an agricultural life to any other.

Leo Africanus describes them, and his picture in all essentials holds good to-day: "They are strong, terrible, robust men, who fear neither cold nor snow; their dress a tunic of wool over bare flesh, and above the tunic a mantle, round their legs twisted thongs, never anything on the head. They rear sheep, mules, and asses; and they are the greatest thieves, traitors, and assassins in the world."

From personal experience let this ryder be added: that they make good servants, faithful up to a certain point, to be trusted up to a certain point; but they are rascals.

In Tetuan many more Berbers are to be met with than Arabs: the Riff tribe is Berber, and Tetuan is full of Riffis.

Until the last thirty years the Berbers owned only a nominal allegiance to the Sultan; to-day he could pass through little of their territory without an army at his back, and into the Riff country he has never been at all.

Among the Berbers there is plenty of throat-cutting as a legal punishment, and murder on the score of private vengeance, while Government oppression is rampant. As for travellers journeying across their country, only certain "roads" are "open" and safe: a Christian, with proper precaution, is seldom attacked on the way to Fez or Morocco City—a Jew occasionally. Off the beaten track and anywhere in the Riff country his life would not be worth a flus (small copper coin).

The Arabs have given the Berbers a name of their own—Shillah, which means "Outcast," referring back to the days when they drove them out of the plains up into the mountains; and it has stuck to them ever since.

Travellers descant upon the noble Shillah race. The dialect which they speak is called Shillah: the Riffis at Tetuan spoke Shillah among themselves, but soon picked up Arabic of a sort, and a little Spanish.

The Arab differs in every respect from the Berber. One of the finest types among mankind, he has a tall, spare frame, aquiline nose, fine eyes. He is kind, hospitable, dignified, abstemious, a poet, a gentleman, and a horseman. He is capable of great things, and of all Orientals has most impressed himself upon the world. At the same time he is too often treacherous and blood-thirsty, inclined to be sensual and inquisitive.

Perhaps his faults have led to the extolling of the noble Shillah race at the Arab's expense. On this subject Mr. Cunninghame Graham writes, that certain travellers in Morocco must have "been humiliated at finding in the Arabs a finer type than their own, and have turned to the Shillah race with the relief that the earthen teapot must find when taken away from the drawing-room companionship of Dresden china and put back again on the kitchen dresser." For myself "earthen teapot" and "Dresden china" have both much fascination. I would trust either just as far as I could see him.

Thus Morocco is populated by two antipathetic races, who neither singly nor jointly have or can consolidate it into a thriving empire. The Arab cared only to convert a conquered people to Mohammedanism and to push his individual fortune, heedless of assimilating individuals into one nation, as did the Romans. Great Arab chiefs there have been, but never a patriot. With the fatalistic spirit of the East, and a tendency to see life only from the personal standpoint, it followed that, when a holy war no longer fired the wandering and independent shepherds to fight and forced them to obey, they became "slack," remained stationary, or retrograded.

The Arab would not advance civilization in Morocco, nor would the wild and lawless Berber; the Moorish refugees from Spain had sadly degenerated; to crown all, civil war led to the destruction of the libraries and universities in Fez and Morocco City, and education was no more.

Ignorance begat worse government; decline and poverty followed one after the other. Corruption among the rulers spread downwards and ran through the country, until the whole body politic was unsound, and is so to-day.

Though the name of the Sultan, as Head of the Church, is held in reverence, yet many of the tribes would resist to the uttermost any attempt on his part to subdue them by force of arms, so unsettled is his empire.

He holds himself to be far superior to the Sultan of Turkey, who is not descended from the Prophet, but who, on the other hand, is the guardian of the sacred city of Mecca, and who possesses superior forces.

Second in rank to the Sultan of Morocco follow his ministers—the Chief Minister, the Foreign Minister, the Chief Adviser, the Minister of the Interior, and the Minister of Finance. Their duties are to carry out the Sultan's wishes, and, receiving no pay, they look to enriching themselves at the expense of their respective billets.

A body of secretaries come after the ministers, who write and dispatch the Sultan's decrees to distant cities, where their letters are read aloud in the mosques to the people by the governors. A special body of messengers is employed under the secretaries.

Each district and city has its kaid or basha (its governor), whose duty is to read the Sultan's letter aloud and carry out his instructions, who oversees the city market, prices food, detects false weight, deals with robbers and murderers, and sees that the peace is kept.

As well as basha every city has its kadi, or judge of civil law, who settles all questions of land, of grants, divorces, etc.

We visited the Court of Civil Justice at Tetuan, a tiny room, carpeted with yellow matting, where the white-haired kadi, attired in white, sat like a magnificent white rabbit on a large red cushion on the floor, beside him a table six inches high, with learned-looking books, ink, parchment, and thin slips of wood for pens.

Below the basha or kaid come sheikhs (village elders), who may be called gentlemen farmers. They collect the taxes directly from the country people. A province is taxed according to what it produces: no one pays the sum demanded of him, nor at the time it is demanded, but eventually every householder in the district is judiciously squeezed to the uttermost farthing, and half of what he pays goes into the sheikh's pocket.

Morocco conceals its wealth in times of visitations such as these: money and corn alike are buried in the ground. Some of the people are imprisoned, some tortured, and eventually all disgorge, and are left with barely enough for their every-day wants.

It is a system typical of the East and its slipshod, rough-and-ready dealings: its great element of simplicity harks back to a life in tents, where red tape was unknown.

The highest officials are in the habit of transacting business at their street doors or in their stables: the basha invariably sits in some gateway near his house, hearing and judging matters which two or three gesticulating claimants explain to him. Private matters are public property: the man in the street chats with the Minister of Finance—for are not all men equal? The minister may have sold groceries at one time, before he was called upon to fill a position at Court. Who can tell what a day may not bring forth?

The Sultan—who is known as "The Lofty Portal, the Exalted of God, the Noble Presence"—has a body of servants and retainers round him: first of all "The Learned Ones," men who advise him, but make a point of ascertaining his wishes before they give an opinion, and are of no use at all except in conducting negotiations; next the officer who carries the great pearl-and-gold-embroidered parasol over his head; next an officer who flicks away flies; then a master of ceremonies, a headsman, a flogger, a shooter, a water-bearer, a tent-layer, a tea-maker, a standard-bearer, and a "taster" to see that no poison is given.

More closely connected than any of these with the Sultan is of course his harem, of both black and white women, who have been honoured by admission into the much-sought-after precincts. Some of them are Circassians, supplied by Constantinople: all are the best which money can buy, or ease and position tempt. When their numbers have been greatly swelled, certain of them are drafted on as presents to kaids and bashas.

The offspring of the Sultan's numerous wives are brought up in isolated sanctuaries, each boy in company with a slave of his own age, whom he calls brother. Girls inherit no rank.

One and all are married when they reach maturity, at a State function which takes place each year, the Sultan choosing their consorts. He gives his favourite son—whom he has named as his successor—a high command in the army or an important governorship: as long as the boy is too young for either, the Sultan associates him with himself in official receptions.

Guarding the intriguing and inflammable harem are eunuchs, imported at great expense from Abyssinia, and responsible for the Sultan's wives and concubines, whom "wise women" prepare to meet their lord. The late Sultan was in the habit of having his harem paraded in his garden on Thursdays, in order to select the most attractive, and spend Friday—the Mohammedan Sunday—in her company.

It is a curious fact that the Imperial Treasure, which is distributed between Fez, Morocco City, and Mequinez, of which no details are ever made public, can only be opened by agreement between the keeper, the governor of the palace, the trusted eunuch, and the head woman in charge of the harem. The secrets of its treasures are jealously guarded. It is probably impoverished.

Every one who approaches the Court is expected to make the Sultan a present, and his collection of offerings would stock a museum.

In the time of George I. we read of the Sultan's being sent "a rich crimson velvet sedan or chair for the favourite Sultana, and ten pounds of the finest tea at thirty shillings a pound." In the present day telephones, heliographs, gramophones, bicycles, motor-cars, guns, fireworks, and the latest inventions of all kinds find their way into Morocco.

In return the staple Moorish offering has always been, and still is, Arab horses, with richly embroidered saddles and bridles.

It is impossible to estimate the strength of the Moorish army. The only regulars are under European instruction, Sir Harry Maclean (known as Kaid Maclean) acting as commander-in-chief. Their pay is something like a penny half-penny a day for infantry, fourpence for cavalry, a shilling for commanding offices. The ranks consist of private, sergeant, captain, centurion, and colonel, each officer having a lieutenant.

Every Moor capable of bearing arms in Morocco is liable to be pressed for service.

In May, when the country is dry, each basha or kaid is ordered to collect troops in his own district: then is Tetuan deserted, and every boy and young man absents himself. How the lady missionaries hid their house-boy! Tetuan sent off two hundred men, under a colonel, while we were there, which were to help punish certain rebellious tribes. Often these expeditions are for the purpose of raising taxes. In any case the tribes against which the Sultan's troops are sent are said to be "eaten up." Long before it happened it was known and talked of.

The Tetuan two hundred were sent to help eat up the Beni M`Saira tribe, some of whom had abducted two Spanish children a year ago. The children had driven their pigs on to land belonging to the tribe—a thing abhorred of by Mohammedans, to whom pigs are unclean. Expostulation was not heeded, and the Beni M`Saira resorted to strong measures, and kidnapped the children. They were sold from family to family beyond hope of recovery, and it would be hard to say what was their fate. Of course they were never seen again. Tales were circulated which said that the girl had been turned into a dancing-girl, and taught to dance upon hot ashes, or she may have become slave and concubine to some Moor. She was sixteen years old, and the lady missionaries at Tetuan knew her well, and her ten-year-old brother.

The Spanish Government had complained to the Sultan, and now a year after the offence the Beni M`Saira were to be eaten up; there was to be a general raid upon their country: men would be killed, women taken as slaves, villages burnt, and corn destroyed. The worst part of the whole business is the fate of the prisoners on these occasions. These unfortunate men, suffering scarcely for their own misdeeds, are sent in chains to far-distant city prisons, whence they seldom emerge alive.

The colonel of the Tetuan contingent was an example of the rapid rises and the vicissitudes of life in Morocco. Only the other day he had been harbour-master down at Martine, but was accused of smuggling and turned out of that berth; he then took a café and sold drinks in Tetuan, when suddenly the Sultan's pleasure took the shape of making him a full-blown colonel in his troops. As in the days of Joseph, the chief butler is sent for out of prison and made much of: the baker is sent for and hanged.

The lucky colonel and his two hundred left Tetuan in bad weather: their pay was such that many of them, before starting, sold the bullets supplied them, in order to buy food with the money, preferring to fight without ammunition rather than on empty stomachs; but only one quarter of them got as far as El K`sar—the rest deserted on the road, to escape hunger and exhaustion from rain and cold.

The Oolad Moosa tribe were eaten up not long ago; their land was harried, their fruit-trees destroyed, and themselves killed, imprisoned, and enslaved. I was told by a Spaniard that he had seen five camel-loads of the heads of tribesmen brought into Larache while he was there. The Sultan offered three shillings per head. His soldiers sent up not a few heads which belonged to their own companions-in-arms. Consignments were sent off to various cities throughout Morocco, where the Jews, as usual, salted them, and they were set up over the gates and on the walls.

There is little or no artillery in his Sharīfian Majesty's army, though the few cannon he has, render him all-powerful against his rebellious tribesmen, who are only armed with rifles (principally French), which are smuggled into the country.

Soldiers are supplied with the same rifles and European swords: the native curved dagger is also used.

Pitched battles are seldom heard of. The troops entrench themselves strongly, gallop out in parties against the foe, fire a volley into his line, and gallop back again to reload. Pillage is the great element in this species of guerilla warfare.

In connection with the army are the Makhaznia (mounted police): they are practically cavalry. A few were quartered in Tetuan, and the basha employed them to take men prisoners and preserve peace and take messages and so on. The Makhaznia are paid for whatever they do by any one who employs them, and they often act as soldier-escort to Europeans.

The Government of Morocco has but one hinge—a golden one. Thirty thousand pounds was paid by the late governor of Morocco City for his billet, and a capable man would still make his fortune before he retired, by means of bribes and presents from every one in connection with him, and a little undue pressure and taxation here and there. But no governor is exempt from that war-cry in Morocco, "Pay! pay! pay!" And if he or a basha wish for the Sultan's favour, which in order to remain in office is most desirable, he will forward a present regularly to Court, though at every feast he is obliged to send another in addition. When a Sultan imprisons a minister, he confiscates all his money.

Bribes largely contribute towards filling the coffers of Government officials, from toadies down to unfortunate sufferers. A man has to buy himself out of prison: it costs a murderer about four pounds. Those who cannot afford to pay do not come out.

Not long ago a poor man whom we knew was suddenly appointed to fill a lucrative post under Government. He dare not refuse it, but he was head over ears in debt, and of course a large sum of money was due in return for the appointment. He borrowed from the Jews and took up office. In one year he had paid all his debts, he had paid the Jews, and built himself a luxurious house. And who can wonder at it? Customs-house officers can all retire after three years (if they choose), and live well. It is calculated that the Government gets exactly half of the duties.

Tetuan had a favourite tale of bribery. A man wanted to make sure of a case he was bringing before the basha. He knew that the basha had a weakness for mirrors. He was a poor man, but he bought the best looking-glass he could afford, and dispatched it. The case came on; the basha gave it against him.

"Yes," replied the basha coolly; "but immediately afterwards a very fine mule came along, and he kicked the looking-glass into a thousand fragments."

So when a man is disappointed of his due, they say, "The mule has kicked the glass."

Another man had a brother in prison whom he wished to buy out: he took the basha a mule, and presented himself with his present.

"You shall not bribe me," said the basha. "Soldier! put this man into prison with his brother, and put the mule into my stable."

CHAPTER VI

Ah! Moon of my delight, who know'st no wane

The Moon of Heaven is rising once again:

How oft hereafter rising shall she look

Through this same garden after me—in vain!

Christmas Day in a Mohammedan city passed with nothing to mark it except deluges of rain. The fonda had not grown upon us; and when two Moorish houses in the city at last presented themselves, the result of weeks of inquiry, we decided to take one, if, as was apparently the case, a garden-house outside the city was not to be had for love or money. The Moors all told us it was impossible. The fact is, that they are chary of letting their houses to unbelievers: the thing is not encouraged in the land; indeed, they are liable to be imprisoned for doing so, unless they have "protection" from a foreigner.

All sorts of complications have arisen out of permission granted to Europeans to settle in the country: it depends on the European; he does something foolish, and legal or social or religious difficulties arise, and a storm in a teacup may end in serious dispute and a heavy indemnity to pay. So, naturally enough, the Sultan's advisers are averse to extending the limits of property owned by Europeans, and the barriers which they put in the way, debar ordinary people from running up villas and committing outrages such as half the world endures in silence.

In Morocco it is necessary first of all to obtain the consent of the Government for the purchase of land. Interest can sometimes do it, and the pill must be heavily gilt. The next obstacle lies with Moorish jurisdiction, which, with forethought, sets forth that all disputes relating to property shall be referred to native courts and settled by Moorish law. This opens a door to barefaced bribery and intimidation: some one will be fleeced. Last of all, Moorish workmen building for an Englishman or any foreigner are liable to persecution and arrest. Thus foreign labour must be employed. And how is foreign labour to be had? A Jew or Spaniard may not be available. It is scarcely less difficult to rent a house in Morocco, unless it is in Tangier.

Of the two which were thus unexpectedly offered us one was out of the question—it was damp; but the other, standing empty in a long narrow alley in the middle of the city, was as sound as houses built of rubbish and thin bricks can be, and we went to look over it, well prepared to ignore petty defects.

It was entered, as usual, by a wide yellow door, studded with giant nails and a resounding knocker: a courtyard house—a most quaint and original construction in which to spend two or three months. From the ochre-coloured door we walked into a tiny tiled patio open to the sky, too small and insignificant for a fountain or an orange-tree: the kitchen and one other room where servants could sleep opened out of it, lighted only by their wide doors, which were never shut. So much for the ground floor.

A tiny tiled staircase led to the first floor. Four narrow rooms, windowless, flanked the four sides of the square, and looked down into the little court below. Each room had double doors standing open for light and air. From the house-top above the first floor, on to which we went last, there was at least a view of a thousand flat white roofs, of pencil-shaped minarets, of turtle-backed mosques; but at the same time the sun itself could not be more dazzling to look at than was the impossible whitewash which besmeared all the roofs, and we soon left for our first floor, in whose four little dark rooms we proposed to live. Standing on the gallery which ran outside them, and leaning on the balustrade looking down into the minute patio, it was a case of the view below into that, and the view above up at the sky, and no more—a limited, and on wet days gloomy, prospect. Added to that, the orgies worked in the kitchen by a Moorish cook could not do other than proclaim themselves all over the first floor. True, the little patio embodied the Moorish conception of al-fresco seclusion, and a depth of shadow lay in the inner rooms within the thin shell of the white walls. And yet—and yet—the lines of old-fashioned Eliza Cook returned insistently, and refused to be silenced:—

Double the labour of my task,

Lessen my poor and scanty fare,

But give, oh! give me what I ask—

The sunlight and the mountain air.

And in the end the vote was given against the little windowless dwelling in the Moorish Quarter. No doubt a courtyard house is bizarre, but it has its imperfections.

A Scotch proverb has it that "Where twa are seeking, they are sure to find." In time we found. A certain Moor of Tetuan, named Ali Slowee, a Spanish protected subject, was guardian, uncle, and stepfather to a boy named Dolero. Dolero owned a garden-house outside the city, called Jinan Dolero (The Garden of Dolero). Ali Slowee heard of our wants and offered us his nephew's house, provided we undertook to give it up at the end of March. Than the unexpected, when it does come, nothing is so good. After a little difference over the rent (our landlord began by asking two pounds five a month, and came down to thirty shillings) all was settled, and New Year's Day, 1902, found us living in a whitewashed garden-house in Morocco, out in the country.

Moors have extravagant ideas of the sums English people will pay. Mr. Bewicke was offered a house and garden for seven pounds ten a month: some time after the landlord asked three pounds; eventually he came down to thirty-nine shillings.

Having handed a month's rent over to Ali Slowee, he had Jinan Dolero done up, whitewashed at least, outside and in, from top to toe—a rite performed on every opportunity all the year round in Morocco, like spring-cleanings at home. Tiles were mended, windows repainted, glass put in, and we followed,—the simplest thing in the world; "furnishing" takes no time in Morocco. Three mules carried out all we put into the empty little house—all our effects, that is to say, from the fonda. A few rugs were unrolled, camp-beds, table, and chairs put together, some nails driven into the walls, and in one hour we were "in." Gibraltar supplied the camp furniture; necessaries were raked together in Tetuan, including the dome-shaped pewter teapot, and the painted tins, pink and green and blue, for tea, coffee, and sugar, which mark the tramp of the European across Morocco, and are both of them for ever associated with sweet green tea and turbans. Mattresses we had made, and made ourselves, of moss, brought in by the countrywomen and dried; and an Englishman, A—— (one of the few who have become Mohammedans and settled in Morocco), lent several more, which made divans round our walls.

A—— has a little house close to Jinan Dolero, and occupies himself with his garden outside the city. He dresses like a Moor. In spite of it all, he is not welcomed among them as a brother, but goes by the name of "The Renegade." They probably divine that he adopts their religion as a part of the customs of the country with which he identifies himself, less for the sake of Mohammedanism itself than for the life which that religion inculcates.

Apparently men in such a position rarely benefit the country in which they settle, and often do harm, ending by paying the penalty of meddling with the manners and customs of another race.

Now, at the time of writing this chapter, A—— has paid in full. Only a few months after we left Tetuan he was shot one evening in his garden and killed on the spot, apparently from close quarters, probably from behind the hedge. The servants had gone home and found his body next morning. If they are to be believed, no one heard a shot. Men have been imprisoned and men will suffer death for the murder, no doubt; but whether the actual murderer is shot or goes scot-free, and what his inducement for committing the crime, probably half Tetuan will know and half Tetuan will tell, and tell a lie.

Some say that A—— was shot for the sake of his gun and his money. Others that he was shot by some Riffi brothers because he was in the habit of talking to their sister. Others that the murder was connected with his having lived at one time with a Moorish woman, from whom he eventually separated.

Jinan Dolero would have been called in the Riviera "a villa": it was a typical Moorish garden-house. We lived upstairs, after the manner of the country, in the airiest and lightest of small whitewashed sitting-rooms: its three windows, set certainly with head-splitting glass, looked south, east, and west, on sea, mountains, and city. The second larger room, in which we slept, had a thick white pillar in the very middle of it, supporting the ceiling. A store-room on the same floor did duty as larder, and a staircase led up on to the flat white roof.

Underneath us were kitchen, mules' stable, and two rooms for our two servants: a little staircase led down to them and on to the hall and front door. The floors were all tiled: a dip in the corner of each room and a hole in the wall carried off the water when they were sluiced down. Innocent of spouting, the water merely streamed down the outside wall. Each window reached to the floor, and an inartistic iron grille removed all danger of falling out. It was the sunniest house in the world, and an airy one, for the passage and rooms had loop-holes, a foot high and four inches wide, cut in the wall, through which air freely circulated. On the ground floor the windows were nil, but more loop-holes let in ample light. One was constructed on each side our hall door, that before unbarring at night we might know what manner of visitor we had, and even fire a charge through the aperture if the occasion warranted.

Our garden was another Moorish wilderness, another "Field of the Slothful," thick in a waste of weeds, blue borage, and yellow marigolds. But it was also a vineyard. Dead-looking branches of vines trailed among the weeds, which later on were cut down with a sickle and turned into green meat for cows. Splendid muscats, we were told, our vines would produce: branches are spread over them in the summer as a slight protection from the sun, but the grapes are left on the ground and often soiled; nor has a Moor the slightest idea of picking them, or of preserving their bloom. Besides the vines, there were fruit-trees in Jinan Dolero. Pink almonds blossomed first; the leaf and the flower of apricots followed; apples, peaches, and pears came almost at the same time; and we lived in a pink world. The fig-tree softened its hard heart last of all, and its ashy-grey arms burst into tender green leaf and infant figs; at the same time the pomegranates shot into warm red leaflets. There were lemons which were ripe on the trees on New Year's Day, and made many a lemon-squash: there was double narcissus in flower everywhere; it sprouted up in the grass paths which divided our garden, and got badly trodden down: there were rows and rows of beans, which scented the air: last of all, there were some red geraniums in flower.

A hedge of prickly pear ran down the east side of the enclosure, a tall cane fence effectually hedged in the rest, and the whole was entered by the inevitable locked and barred door, and whitewashed doorway, the long key of which, was a care in life, till we learnt that in Morocco every precaution is taken up to a certain point; matters are then handed over to Providence, and man, forbearing to meddle further, sits down and awaits their development.

Thus, with all their locks and bolts, garden doors were often left open, and the cane fences were full of gaps. But none of our lemons were stolen—not, at least, after we got rid of the guard of soldiers which for the first week the basha insisted on sending to Jinan Dolero every night. They ate them.

Fine days were never long enough in the little garden-house facing the mountains: in the mornings an opal light; the sunrise stalking across their summits, while a cloud of white mist would sweep down the valley out to the blue sea-line; all day bright light and dazzle, a wind soft and yet racy; at night an abrupt sunset, leaving for a few moments a rose-pink after-glow, followed by an intense silence.

The first thing in the morning, we always wandered in our garden down the grassy paths among the dew; measured the rain-gauge; looked at the sky; watched the birds, of which a flight, chiefly flocks of finches, invariably travelled over the little terraces of fruit-trees towards the river, taking our garden on the way, and feeding there for a while. A white jasmine almost hid our white steps and pillars: a rose grew with lavish prodigality; as Jinan Dolero stood there, in the middle of the Garden of the Slothful, a certain imperious dignity was given to the little white-walled structure by means of its magnificent situation.

Sometimes we breakfasted in the garden: we were never in to lunch on fine days, but rode and walked all over the country, occasionally with the lady missionaries or Mr. Bewicke, but oftener alone with the big grey donkey and a boy. There were Moors to see in Tetuan, and always something of interest: we came away from that corner of Morocco without having got through half of what might have been done. To live in a country, adopting some of its ways and imbibing a little of its spirit, is the only satisfactory way to "travel." Hotels with home conventionalities and English tourists never amount to the same thing. Either camp out or settle down for a month or two in a hut, with one of the country people to cook. There must be sport, or agriculture, or village characters, or architecture, or botany, or geology to study: bird-life and bird-watching are never-ending interests; the fields are never empty. Only by living its own life, can the country and its ways unfold themselves, and become understood and cared for, by the traveller who has time for, and a love of, such things.

As a whole, and seen in January before spring has begun, around Tetuan it is a tired and brownish-looking country: its colour is bleached and dried out of it, and it has the air of a sun-dried, wind-blown land, patched with pieces of brilliant greenery where corn has been sown near water. And yet it possesses the charm of strength and repose which simplicity gives; for it has been worried by man but little, rather allowed to straggle through the centuries at its own sweet will.

In the evening every Friday, to mark the Mussulman's Sabbath, the sunset gun boomed and echoed among the opposite mountains. Watching the grey turreted walls of the Kasbah bitten out against a primrose sky, with watch in hand, at last the weekly flash of red, then a puff of brown smoke shot out of the wall, and last of all, a reverberating roar, tossed backwards and forwards among the hills. It is long before the "thunder" dies away, and we watch a gigantic smoke-ring, sprung from the mouth of the gun, float lazily out to the south; while the mueddzin's cry from the top of the mosque rises and falls on the waves of sound, drifting now clear, now faint, over the garden.

When the sun dropped, the frogs began, from the cracks in the moist clay soil where they sat, all over our acre and a half, croaking in a wet, guttural chorus—the whole garden called; and the rattle of the tree-beetle which followed was one of those tropical sounds which recall the East. The frogs were tiny brown fellows, hard to get at. The owls would begin after the frogs—a brown owl, which flew noiselessly in the twilight among the fruit-trees and on to the edge of the roof, hooting long and low or chuckling oddly. Then stillness, and wonderful starlight nights, all through January. That month no rain fell. In February we had seven and a quarter inches, and more in March.

Having found Jinan Dolero, and furnished it after a fashion, we still lacked servants, and they seemed to be almost as difficult to meet with as houses—that is, trustworthy ones. Again, however, we were fortunate. A soldier-servant who had lived with a missionary happened to have nothing to do, and agreed to come to us with his young wife, Tahara. They both of them knew something of European ways, and were scrupulously honest. They brought a few oddments, a little looking-glass, a mattress on which they slept upon the floor of the room near the kitchen, and a few cooking-pots and pans of their own. We overcame their objection to sleeping outside the city at that time of year; but I believe they never liked it up to the last, though they comforted themselves with two guns (one of which belonged to the man, and one he borrowed) and the fact of a revolver as well, being all under the same roof with them.

They were both of them Riffis, and their own home was in the Riff country, two days' journey into the mountains from Tetuan. His name was S`lam Ben Haddon Riffi of Bekiona, son of Haddon and of Fettouch Ben Haddon of Bekiona. S`lam's wife was Tahara. He had served for a year in the French army in Algeria, in the 2nd Regiment of Tirailleurs Algériens; and having picked up a little French, we learnt, with a few Arabic words, to understand each other. He and Tahara spoke Shillah to each other.

S`lam was about twenty-six years old, Tahara about twenty. He was a sinewy, long-legged ruffian, well over six feet, and holding himself creditably. He had a pair of fierce, dark, restless eyes, little beard or moustache, the front half of his head shaved, and a few locks left long at the back in token of his being a "brave" and having slain his man in a blood-feud. The Riffi turban, of strings of dark red wool, was wound round his head; a white shirt showed at his neck; he wore a black waistcoat, a white tunic down to his knees, and red knicks, below which came his long hairy shanks, ending in a pair of yellow slippers.

A scarlet leather bag, hung by a red cord over his shoulders, a leather belt, and his gun, finished off our Moorish servant, who shot us partridges, roasted chickens, and was as good a hand at buttered eggs and coffee as I have ever seen.

Out of doors he always wore his brown jellab, embroidered with silk tufts of green and yellow and white.

Tahara was a pretty, pale, dark girl, with curious cabalistic Riffi marks tattooed in blue on her forehead and chin. She bound round her head an orange-coloured silk handkerchief; wore, except when at work, an embroidered yellow waistcoat, a pale blue kaftan down to her ankles, a sprigged, white muslin, loose garment, all over that; and a creamy woollen haik, when she went out or was cold, covered everything.

S`lam acted as butler, Tahara kept our rooms in order, and they were joint cooks. Their standing dish was mutton stewed in vegetables, or a chicken; and given time, four hours in the pot, on the pan of charcoal, it was quite a success. But they learnt many things in a Dutch oven lent by the missionaries, besides stews. They had eccentricities—as when S`lam prepared to put the toast-rack itself on the charcoal fire, with the bread in it, thus to "toast": the toast-rack we made ourselves, too, out of some old wire. They kept chickens, which S`lam brought home from market, either in their bedrooms for the night, or else in the kitchen, until their crops were empty and they could be killed.

Every morning S`lam was dispatched to the city with a basket, instructions, and two or three shillings. He stayed there an unconscionable time, visiting his mother, and sitting sunning himself in the doorway of a little Moorish café, returning laden before lunch. He never went into the city without his gun and best jellab, striding along with his long legs—a most picturesque figure. After dinner every evening he rendered his account, stalking into the sitting-room when we called, pulling up a chair, and sitting down at the table opposite R. From his leather bag, change was produced, and if the change was wrong, there was agony; but that only happened once or twice. A scrap of paper was brought out covered with Arabic writing, items of the day's expenditure, which read more or less as follows:—

Chicken	7d.
Milk	1d.
Four eggs	2½d.
Mutton	6d.
Apples	2d.
Vegetables	2d.
Bread three times a week	4½d.
Butter twice a week	9½d.

Charcoal for cooking purposes, and oil for lamps, added three shillings to our moderate weekly expenditure. Living is cheap enough in Morocco, nor are servants' wages heavy. S`lam and Tahara had eighteen shillings a month and their food, which was simple indeed—a loaf each of native bread a day, green tea, lump sugar, and odds and ends from our meals. Our rent, it will be remembered, came to thirty shillings a month. Morocco suits "reduced circumstances."

Once a week, one of the little donkeys, which passed along our "lane" in droves, carrying charcoal into the sok, was waylaid, brought into the garden, and its three pannierfuls commandeered for us and stored in the mules' stable, where Tahara did the washing in a great tub bought from Mr. Bewicke.

When the accounts were all settled up, S`lam would swing out of the room with a "Bon soir tout-le-monde," unless he stayed to give R. a lesson in Arabic, which he could write as well as read—an unusual thing, and marking him for a scholar in his country.

Blood-feuds among the Riff tribe are common enough. S`lam's father was shot when S`lam was a boy. As soon as he grew up, S`lam shot the man. He had left the Riff in consequence: he was a "marked man," they said; but he began to talk of going back again, and while he was with us he bought a new French rifle. In the Riff he might be potted at, he might not: he would risk that. The brother or son of the man whom he had shot would never trouble to journey far for the purpose of shooting him. Why should they? All in good time. Some day, when he came their way, they would put a bullet into him. Only women die in their beds in the Riff. "Sudden death, Good Lord, grant us."

Men in the Riff who have blood-feuds will not go out of their houses in the early mornings without first sending the women and children to look if the coast is clear: neither will they walk up a hedgerow nor in a wood, but across the fields, keeping well in the open, since murder is always committed out of sight, decently, and in good order.

A man living in Tetuan now, has a blood-feud with an enemy, who has been in consequence obliged to move to Tangier. Sometimes he comes over, secretly, by night, to see his mother, and lies hidden in her house till the sok is full of market people in the middle of the day, when he can go out into the crowd without running great risk,—though in the sok a quarrel sometimes arises; in a flash, guns are up at men's shoulders—bang—bang—and bullets ping into the soft walls, if not into some one or other. Only lately a boy was shot twice in the thigh, happening to be in the way in a scuffle.

S`lam and Tahara were often amusing, if not interesting: never commonplace or "well-meaning." One corner of the roof of Jinan Dolero had been left unwhitewashed, the whitewashers' ladder was still there, and one morning S`lam came to say in his best French, "Deux mesdames. Pour arranger en haut."

The two madams were the whitewashers—two black madams, clad in a couple of striped towels each, Ali Slowee's slaves, bought for, say, £7 each. A very ragged countrywoman who came and weeded the garden, and seemed almost devoid of intelligence, was also a madam.

S`lam was deft with a needle; he borrowed one of ours and a thimble, sat himself down in the kitchen, and stitched away at a large white garment "pour Maman," he said—sat up half the night, finished it, and took it to her next day.

He did not make a bad man-servant; but he was fond of tempting Fate by carrying trays, laden with china and glass, balanced on one hand; then he would stoop down and pick up a kettle in the other, there would be an ominous clatter, if not crash, in the tray amongst our crockery, and S`lam would murmur reproachfully under his breath, "O tray! tray!"

He bought a new jellab for wearing on visits to the sok; and after it had been proudly shown us, it was found, neatly folded up, placed on a hat-box in our bedroom. When we asked why it was there, he was taken aback. "Mightn't he keep it there? It was new: it was very clean."

One evening, when he came in to settle accounts, he said that he wished to write a letter. Would we give him a sheet of paper and envelope? They were produced. We were not quite prepared for it, when he at once drew up a chair, sat down at the table, and politely asked for a pencil. But it was impossible to snub so simple and well-meaning a child. I sharpened a pencil, and S`lam wrote diligently for quite half an hour, without a pause, from right to left, wonderful spidery characters: it was a long letter to his old master down in Morocco City. He held his string-turbaned head on one side, and was without embarrassment as he sat between R. and myself (one of us worked, the other wrote); indeed, S`lam might have spent his evenings in a drawing-room all his life. When the letter was finished, he accepted a stamp most gratefully, wished us "Bon soir," and departed.

Tahara had her eccentricities too, of which one was an extraordinary aptitude for annexing wherewithal to tie round her head in place of her own yellow silk scarf, which was kept for high days. One week one of our table-napkins was raised to this honour; the next one of our clean bedroom towels had taken its place round her dark locks.

I made her a present of a flannel shirt to wear, but the second day S`lam had appropriated that, and wore it in place of his waistcoat, unbuttoned.

Apparently, in the eyes of the Tetuan world, we were taking a most unprecedented and foolhardy step in sleeping outside the city in the winter: the Ceuta "road" near us was said to be famous for robbery and murder. For some reason or other a reputation clung to us of being fabulously rich. The Moors warned, the missionaries seriously expostulated with us. None of them would have done it, and Mr. Bewicke was put down as mad for countenancing such an action. But we had two men in the house at night; for, besides S`lam, a labourer was induced to sleep in the mules' stable for our protection, and we had a couple of rifles and a revolver. Now, since the news of the murder of A——, one wonders . . . . . But he was alone: we had the safety of numbers.

To show how jealous Moors can be, and what precautions they take about their women, S`lam never allowed the labourer inside the garden gate unless he himself had come in. The man sat and waited on the bank. Then, after he was installed in the stable, the door between the kitchen and stable was locked and bolted. When we went out, Tahara was made to bolt every door; and if any one came to the house, she would only call down to them out of our bedroom window.

The first night we slept in our garden-house and for several nights after, the basha took upon himself to send us out a guard of soldiers, who were responsible for our safety. We never asked this favour, and were annoyed; for they slept under our windows, talked and coughed the whole night, lay on the bulbs in a flower-bed, and stole the lemons. Seeing, however, that we did not pay them anything at all for the attention, the basha soon grew tired of sending them, much to our relief; for when, to prevent their depredations, we locked them outside the garden door, they broke down our fence, scrambled into the garden, and lay under the prickly pears, as being a safer place than the lane outside.

There has never such a thing been known, as a guard without a cough, or who do not talk. If told to be silent, they reply that they must talk to keep awake; for if they fell asleep, how could they guard? Occasionally, to show how much on the alert they are, guards will discharge their guns in the dead of night. Altogether Moorish soldiers at close quarters are not conducive to sleep.

We had an excitement one night, but it turned out to be groundless. Guns were fired from the garden-house below ours, repeatedly, about 10 p.m., and S`lam got into a fever of excitement, brought his rifle up into our sitting-room, and sat watching at one of the windows. He thought it was tribesmen come down from the hills to rob. At last the firing stopped, and R. and I went to bed; but S`lam was up all night, and Tahara brought their mattress upstairs and slept in our sitting-room for safety. It turned out to be Moors who had come out to sleep for one night, and were amusing themselves by firing rifles from the loop-holes and out in the garden.

There is an advantage in being in a country where game is not sacred. For instance, one evening after tea, standing on the steps outside our "bungalow," in the hush which came just after sunset, R. and I were startled by a familiar call over in the garden next ours. S`lam was strolling about, and confirmed our supposition—a partridge. We went indoors and forgot about it; but ten minutes later the report of a gun brought us out again, and there was S`lam crashing over the great bamboo fence into "next door" with his rifle, scudding across our neighbour's beans, then stooping down over something; a second later and he was back again, across the palisade like a lamplighter, and striding triumphantly up our path with a partridge dangling from his hand—a red-legged Frenchman, which we hung long. This acquisition to the larder had to be applauded perforce, in spite of its being shot sitting, and on some one else's acres. As luck would have it, S`lam's great bullet, about the size commonly used for big game, had gone through its head: he naïvely explained the advantages of shooting birds through the head. But I think he was a fair shot. Most Riffis are.

I suppose that the Riff tribe is more or less an anomaly. Think, if you can, of a clan or a tribe who are pirates, wreckers, who encourage slavery, who count the vendetta an admirable custom, who have no laws, no governors, who acknowledge as their supreme head a Sultan who has never from all ages ventured within their borders—a tribe who have, as it has been said, "no fear, no anything, save and excepting their faith in One God and Mohammed as his Prophet, their own daggers, a Martini-Henry if they can get one, and failing that, a ten-foot-long Riff gun, coral-studded, ivory-butted, brass-bound, and deadly to handle"—a people who live in a country without roads, and all within a few hours of Gibraltar: have they their parallel, except among adventurers in the Far East, and those but a few upon distant seas?

To explore the unknown Riff country would be interesting indeed. No book has been written upon it except from hearsay, and no European has penetrated across its length and breadth. The Riffis want no foreign interlopers among their sacred hills, and would "knife" the first who showed his face. It is but two days' journey eastwards from Tetuan, this select and exclusive country, and it extends about a hundred and fifty miles, with a population, it is reported, of one hundred and fifty thousand souls. Strange to think that no European pioneer, nor gentleman-rover, has ever exploited the Riff.

The law of the vendetta, is the law and the ten commandments of the Riffi, which, if he fail to keep, renders him in the eyes of his country-folk damned to all eternity, to be ostracised among men. A widow will teach her baby-son to shoot, and studiously prepare him for his one great duty, that as early as possible he may put a bullet into the murderer of his father. And thus the feud is nourished. Even the great-great-grandson of a man who has taken a life years upon years ago is not safe. He will probably meet with a dagger or the muzzle of a long gun one day.

But a people who inculcate such severe and cursory measures have their redeeming-points. It is a fact that cursing and swearing, so common among Moors, and polygamy and adultery, are seldom, if ever, met with in the Riff: for if one Riffi insults another, it is at the peril of his life; while the stain of immorality is wiped out at once by death.

The gun, pistol, or dagger is the Riffi's summary judge and jury. He submits to no authority. Questions on land, on inheritance, all legal questions, are settled in each village by the keeper of the mosque. He arranges marriages.

The Riffis are therefore a moral people: a man has but one wife; the women do not veil, and yet familiarity is not tolerated between the sexes; a young man will go out of his way to avoid passing close by a young woman whom he sees in the distance, lest he be suspected of behaving lightly to her.

The Riffis are an indomitable race, one which has never been conquered, magnificent raw material out of which to shape a battalion of infantry. Though acknowledged as the Kaliph of the Prophet and their religious head, the Sultan, as has been said, has never dared to put his head in this independent hornets' nest.

They are an industrious tribe, growing crops assiduously and rearing cattle: their valleys are fertile and well farmed for an uncivilized country. But these details must be taken for what they are worth. S`lam could say nothing but good of the Riff: how cheap living was, and how abundant food,—except when rain failed, and then there followed disastrous famine, and starving Riffis would come down to Tetuan, and lie in the caves outside the city, and live on roots, doing any work which offered; and some of them would die, in spite of the missionaries' kindness and unremitting efforts.

There are many legends about the Riffis: they boast one tribe among themselves who are said to be descended from the Romans; and there is no reason against the assumption, since the Romans were in Morocco after Cæsar's day. Another family claims to be descended from the inhabitants of Sodom. Some of them are quite fair—regular "carrots": Vandal blood may run in their veins. While, again, some people say there are Celts among them, with Irish characteristics and Irish words. Possibly. Pirates and rovers are apt to introduce foreign strains.

At any rate they have nothing in common with the Arabs, but are as unlike that race as a Scotchman is unlike an Italian. Berber is of course their common origin, and they are identical with the Kabyles of Algeria, the Touariks of the Sahara, and the Guanches of the Canary Isles. Shillah, the Berber dialect which they speak—one of the many dialects belonging to that race—is not a written language; but an educated Riffi learns to write and read at his village jama (mosque school); he uses the Arabic character in writing, and he learns to read the Korān.

Yet in one great point, like the Arabs, the Riffi, in common with the Berber race, lacks the power of cohesion and the spirit of patriotism, which should have welded all Berbers into one powerful people. Internal strife, that curse of Africa, has split them up into isolated units, and they stand at the same point they stood at a thousand years ago.

Nor have the Riffis, in common with the Moors, reached the point of discarding "petticoats and drapery"—that is to say, they wear the brown, hooded, woollen jellab, and the white woollen haik—a sheet of material without seam, which they cast round themselves something like a Roman toga. Perhaps a cotton tunic is worn underneath.

Part of the sleeves, the hood, and front of the jellab are often beautifully embroidered in coloured silks. On the border of the cloth thin leaves of dried grass are laid, which are worked over and over with coloured silk, and make a thick, handsome edging. The coloured leather belts which they wear; the large embroidered leather pouches, with deep-cut leather fringes, which hold bullets and powder and money and hemp-tobacco; their shaved heads, with one long oiled and combed or plaited lock; their turbans, red or brown, of strings of wool,—all complete a Riffi, and a very fine-looking fellow he can be.

The labour element, which as a whole is antagonistic to the spirit of Morocco, crops up here and there, less in the casually fanned fields than in out-of-the-way corners. The Potters' Caves just outside Tetuan constitute one of those corners. There is always work going on in the caves, and smoke coming out of one or other of the many kilns, all the year round. Morocco and Moorish architecture would be nowhere without the potteries. Those infinitesimal little tiles which fit together and make such artistic colour-patterns, lining the al-fresco patios, facing the walls of the rooms, the pillars and doorways and flooring, the houses throughout, are every one of them kneaded and cut and baked there: crocks to wash in, pans for charcoal, immense water-pots, small water-pots, bowls and shallow basins, dishes of all sizes, and saucers down to the smallest, even ink-bottles, all come into being there.

Leaving the city by Báb-el-Nooadtha (the Gate of Sheaves), a little winding path leads to the caves, which lie among thickets of prickly pear, at the foot of the Anjera Hills, out of which they have been hollowed, probably by the action of water. Immense ramifications they are—great dark halls, roofed au naturel in corrugated rock with fissured sides, where maiden-hair fern hangs cool and green. Here in the dark shadows are a little company of workmen, chiefly in brown jellabs and leathern aprons, one cutting squares out of the soft clay with a penknife—he has a pattern to help him keep them exact; another cuts diamonds, another stars: piled up together, they look like little pastry shapes in brown, beside the workmen, who are all sitting cross-legged on the ground.

A little farther on two more men are dipping the top surfaces of the diamonds into an earthenware bowl full of yellow "cream," which will glaze and colour them, all in one. This sulphur-colour, and a blue, and a white, are generally used for the tiles—no other shades, as a rule. A boy in a corner is at work at one of the first processes, treading out a vast circle of yellowish clay into the consistency of stiff dough. A rather superior old Moor in a white turban, perhaps the master-workman, is deftly cutting out rosettes. In the front of the cave a little brown donkey, with pasterns as weak as a reed, is standing under the weight of four great earthenware pots full of water, two balanced on each side its pack. A boy empties them one by one of the water, pouring it into a natural basin scooped out in the ground, well puddled with clay, and therefore without a leak. The water is wanted to mix with the "dough." Then the donkey patters off for another load, the boy sitting sideways on its pack and shaking his heels—that makes it go.

To the left stands a kiln in process of being packed with millions of the clay dice, which, baked hard, dove-tailed together, and forming a smooth, polished surface, will keep many a room cool. The kiln next door to it, is full of pots and pans of all shapes and sizes, but its opening is plastered up with clay, and they are not to be seen. Into the great fiery furnace underneath, a man is thrusting dry brown bushes, and dried prickly pear, and whatever rubbish will burn. Much of it has been hacked off the hillside by women, and has come on their backs many a mile. There is a crackling sound, smoke comes out, and a pink flame glows behind the man's body. The tiles ought to bake all right.

Meanwhile, the same boy inside the cave has got his clay into good order—it is about two inches thick, and something the size of a big round table; then he stoops down, and, with a knife held in both hands, scores the clay across, much as toffee is scored; which done, each square, about a foot in diameter, is carried off to be cut up into little shapes or to go upon the potter's wheel.

The potter sat in his little pit, working the wheel with his foot—as Carlyle says, "one of the venerablest objects, old as the Prophet Ezekiel and far older. Rude lumps of clay, how they spin themselves up, by mere quick whirling, into beautiful circular dishes."

The potter thumped his wet clay; then, as the wheel turned, pressed and moulded it with clever clay-encrusted hands: the sleeves were turned back from his bony chocolate-coloured arms. He had a grey goatee and a quiet smile, a dirty turban round his head, a white tunic mostly clay, and underneath a claret-coloured garment showed at the neck.

He was a spare, wizened old man: perhaps his work, like Dante's, had made him "lean for many years." The faster his wheel revolved, the truer apparently was the shape of the vessel he turned out. His country might accept the lesson—that labour, like the wheel, conduces towards a good end. I fancy that a decadent people, who will neither work nor spin, but choose to rest and lie at ease, give the potter Destiny no chance. He has no wheel, this potter—for Morocco will not labour, nor be broken, nor disciplined; and so he is reduced to a mere kneading and baking, without the means he fain would employ; and he turns out a mere makeshift—his production at best is "not a dish; no, a bulging, kneaded, crooked, shambling, squint-cornered, amorphous botch—a mere enamelled vessel of dishonour."

The great pot which the potter slowly evolved out of the soft brown clay under our eyes was not perfect: he made it entirely by eye, and it matched the rest of the group to the ordinary observer; yet it had a distinct "lean." Did it grumble to itself, that