Mogreb-el-Acksa: A Journey in Morocco. R. B. Cunninghame Graham

a hill underneath which the river runs, and the spray from the bar is drifted occasionally into the houses like a shower of snow. Here is the richest colony of the Spanish Jews, and here the best Morisco [12a] families took refuge after the expulsion of the Moors from Spain. The town is estimated to contain some 20,000 inhabitants, and it is one of the four official capitals; [12b] the Sultan has a palace with enormous gardens on the outskirts of the town. Just opposite is built Salee, called by the Moors “Salá,” famous for having given its name to the most enterprising of the pirates of the coast in days gone by. To-day it is a little white, mouldering place, baked in the fierce sun, or swept by south-west gales, according to the season and the time of year. The inhabitants are still renowned for their fanaticism, and the traveller who passes through the place is seldom able to dismount, but traverses the place trying to look as dignified as possible amid a shower of curses, a sporadic curse or two, and some saliva if he ventures within range of mouth. Many a poor Christian has worked his life out in the construction of the walls, and the superior whiteness of the inhabitants would seem to show that some of the Christian dogs have left their blood amongst the people of the place. Men still alive can tell of what a scourge the pirates were, and I myself once knew a venerable lady who in her youth had the distinction of having been taken by a Salee rover; an honour in itself to be compared alone to that enjoyed by ladies who are styled peeresses in their own right. Robinson Crusoe, I think, once landed at the place, and the voyages of imaginary travellers make a place more authentic than the visit of the unsubstantial personages of real life. A little up the river is the deserted city of Schellah, and on the way to it, upon a promontory jutting into the stream, is built the half-finished tower of Hassan, an enormous structure much like the Giralda at Seville, and by tradition said to be built by the same architect who built that tower, and also built the tower of the Kutubich, which, at Morocco city, serves as a landmark in the great plain around. The Giralda and the Kutubich spring from the level of the street, but the Hassan tower excels them both in site, standing as it does upon a cliff, and “looming lofty” [13] as one passes in a boat beneath. Schellah contains the tombs of the Sultans of the Beni Merini dynasty. El Mansur (the victorious) sleeps underneath a carved stone tomb, over which date palms rustle, and by which a little stream sings a perpetual dirge. The tomb is held so sacred that till but lately neither Christians nor Jews could visit it. Even to-day the incursions of the fierce Zimouri, a Berber tribe, render a visit at times precarious. The walls of the town enclose a space of about a mile circumference; sheep, goats, and camels feed inside them, and a footpath leads from one deserted gate-house to the other, a shepherd boy or two play on their reeds, and though the sun beats fiercely on the open space, it looks forlorn and melancholy, and even the green lizards peering from the walls look about timidly, as if they feared to see a ghost. On gates and walls, on ruined tombs and palaces, the lichens grow red after the fashion of hot countries, and the fine stonework, resembling the stucco work of the Alhambra, remains as keen in edge and execution as when the last stroke of the chisel turned it out. Outside the town are olive yards and orange gardens, and one comes upon the long-deserted place with the same feelings as a traveller sees Palenque burst on him out of the forests of Yucatan, or as in Paraguay after a weary following of dark forest trails, the spires of some old Jesuit Mission suddenly appear in a green clearing, as at Jesus or Trinidad, San Cosme Los Apostoles, or any other of the ruined “capillas,” where the bellbird calls amongst the trees, and the inhabitants take off their hats at sunset and sink upon their knees, bearing in their minds the teaching of the Jesuits, whom Charles III. expelled from Spain and from the Indies, to show his liberalism.

      Our most important passenger was Don Jose Miravent, the Spanish Consul at Mogador, returning to his post after a holiday; a formal Spaniard of the old school, pompous and kind, able to bombast out a platitude with the air of a philosopher communicating what he supposes truth. At dinner he would square his elbows, and, throwing back his head, inform the world “the Kings of Portugal are now at Caldas”; or if asked about the war in Cuba, say: “War, sir, there is none; true some negroes in the Manigua [14] are giving trouble to our troops, but General Blanco is about to go, and all will soon be over; it is really nothing (no es na), peace will, please God, soon reign upon that lovely land.” At night he would sit talking to his cook, a Spanish woman (the widow of an English soldier), whom he was taking back to Mogador; but though he talked, and she replied for hours most volubly, not for a moment were good manners set aside, nor did the cook presume in any way, and throughout the conversation talked better than most ladies; but the “tertulia” over, straight became a cook again, brought him his tea, calling him “Amo” (master), “Don Jose,” and he quite affably listened to her opinions and ideas of things, which seemed at least as valuable as were his own. A Jewish merchant dressed in the height of Cadiz fashion, and known as Tagir [15a] Isaac, occupied much the same sort of social state on board as does a Eurasian in Calcutta or Bombay. Tall, thin, and up-to-date, he had divested himself almost entirely of the guttural Toledan accent, but the sign of his “election” still remained about his hair, which tended to come off in patches like an old hair trunk, and at the ends showed knotty, as if he suffered from the disease to which so many of his compatriots in Morocco are subject, and which makes each separate hair stand out as if it were alive. [15b]

      But, as is often seen even in more ambitious vessels than the Rabat, the passengers of greatest interest were in the steerage. Not that there was a regular steerage as in ocean-going ships, but still, some thirty people went as deck passengers, and amongst them was to be seen a perfect microcosm of the eastern world. Firstly a miserable, pale-faced Frenchman, dressed in a dirty “duster” coat, bed-ticking “pants,” black velvet waistcoat, and blue velvet slippers, with foxes’ heads embroidered on them in yellow beads, his beard trimmed to a point, in what is termed (I think) Elizabethan fashion, and thin white hands, more disagreeable in appearance than if they had been soiled by all the meanest work on earth. His “taifa” [15c] (that is band) consisted of one Spanish girl and two half-French half-Spanish women, whom he referred to as his “company,” and whom he said were to enact “cuadros vivos,” that is “living pictures,” in the various ports. They, less polite than he, called him “el Alcahuete,” which word I leave in Spanish, merely premising (as North Britons say) that it is taken from the Arabic “el Cahueit,” and that the celebrated “Celestina” [16] was perhaps in modern times the finest specimen of the profession in any literature. So whilst our captain read “Jack el Ripero” (it cost him two pesetas when new in Cadiz), I take a glance at the inferior races, who were well represented in the steerage of the ship.

      Firstly, I came across a confrère in the healing art who hailed from Tunis, a fattish Arab dressed in Algerian trousers, short zouave jacket, red fez, pink and white sash, and watch chain of two carat silver with an imitation seal of glass, brown thread stockings and cheap sand shoes after the pattern to be seen at Margate. “Tabib numero Wahed,” that is an A1 doctor, so he says, has studied in Stamboul, where he remained nine years studying and diligently noting down all that he learnt. But, curiously enough, all that he now remembers of the Turkish language is the word “Mashallah,” which he displayed to my bewilderment, until Lutaif, who spoke good Turkish, turned on a flood of pertinent remarks, to which the doctor answered in vile Tunisian Arabic, not having understood a word. Though not a linguist, still a competent practitioner, trepanning people’s heads with ease, and putting in pieces of gourd instead of silver as being lighter, and if the patient died, or by the force of constitution lived through his treatment, the praise was God’s, Allah the great Tabib (doctor), although he sends his delegates to practice on mankind, just in the same way that in the east each man commits his work to some one else to do. At least he said so, and I agree, but fail to see the use of substituting gourd for silver, seeing the vast majority of heads are gourds from birth. Quinine he had, and blistering fluid, with calomel and other simples, and when the Christian quinine ran out, he made more for himself out of the ashes of an oleander stick mixed with burnt scales of fish and dead men’s bones, and found his preparation, which he styled “El quina beladia” (native-made quinine), even more efficacious than the drug from over sea. Also he used the seven herbs, known as the “confirmed herbs,” for tertian fevers, with notable success. A cheerful, not too superstitious son of Æsculapius, taking himself as seriously as if he had had a large brass plate upon his door in Harley Street, and welcomed by his surviving patients in Rabat on our arrival with great enthusiasm. [17a] His wife, a shrouded figure lost in white veils and fleecy shawls, had the