Chapter IV: Part 4

Our guests remain with us from morning until evening, departing just before the hour when the great wooden gates of every district are closed securely for the night. In Fez, the populace keeps early hours. After nine o'clock it is impossible to enter or to leave the city or even to pass from one quarter to another, be it adjacent or remote. The gates once closed, each district is completely isolated, and all who are shut in must wait till morning to escape; all who are shut out must spend the night away from home, unless they be men of influence, or carry written orders for the opening of the barriers. There is, of course, nothing to do at night; there are no theaters, clubs, or evening parties; the city life dies out at sunset. The people go to their homes before the gates are closed. There is by night no movement save the flowing of the waters. A river sings its way through the heart of Fez, and swift canals are laughing in every quarter. There is everywhere in Fez the sound of running water, as in Rome, as at Nikko in Japan, as round the hill of the Alhambra. The sound is thus associated in my mind with four of the most fascinating places in the world. There is not in the entire city a building that is reminiscent of the cities of our world; there is no smoke, and there are no chimneys; there are no vehicles of any kind in Fez, there is but one wheeled vehicle in the whole Empire; it is the state-coach given by Queen Victoria to the Sultan, a curiosity that is exhibited on state occasions, but a turnout in which the Sultan never rides. There is no noise in Fez—no noise as we understand the word; there are sounds, pleasant and unpleasant, but the ceaseless roar of western cities is not there. The struggle for existence is almost a silent struggle. Moreover, I believe that Fez is in a higher state of civilization, and that its people are less given to crime than are the dwellers in the poorer quarters of London, Paris, and New York. It is safe for a Moorish citizen to walk these crowded streets by day; at night he sleeps securely in his home. There is no flagrant immorality, yet there is no regular police.

The streets of Fez can never cease to astonish men from the modern world. We may have seen similar settings on the stage, similar costumes in pictures or museums; so these are not new to us. What astonishes us is that these things should anywhere form a part of the actual daily life of men and women of our own time. And this life does not even touch our life; its points of contact with the outside world are few. Commercial Fez communicates with the mysterious regions of the south, with Senegambia and Timbuktoo, by means of camel fleets that traverse seas of sand. This commerce has naught in common with the commerce of our world; its methods and its means of transport are totally foreign to our own, and its itineraries are far beyond our ken.

But this city that appears so dim and so mysterious as we walk through the roofless dungeons that serve as streets, reveals to us a brilliant, dazzling aspect, when, disregarding the unwritten law forbidding men to go upon housetops, we venture out upon the terrace of our villa. The roof terraces are sacred to the women; there they may bare their faces in the light of day, there they may lay aside their shrouds, and, bathed in the soft evening light, appear for a brief space as living women,—women with charms and personalities. The men of Fez have tacitly agreed that on the housetops the women shall be free from male observation, free to forget that they are practically slaves. We could not bind ourselves to keep this courteous law, the view from our roof terrace was too tempting. All Fez was there spread out before us, Fez with its snowy dwellings reflecting the golden rays of the declining sun, Fez with its minarets, its mosques, its palaces; Fez with its streets seldom trodden by the feet of unbelievers, its sacred places never polluted by an alien glance.

Old Fez so long the city of our dreams now become the city of our waking thoughts, is soon to become the city of our reminiscences. For alas! this is to be our last evening in the holy city. The limit of official tolerance is reached; our passports have been suggestively returned, and, knowing the futility of protest, we dine in regretful silence close to the open window that we may not lose a single phase of the ever-changing coloring and lighting of the picture there revealed to us. For the last time we watch the city grow dim in the twilight; although we have witnessed ten times the dying of the day from this same window, the spectacle has not lost its charm, the picture has not lost its fascinating mystery. A sojourn of ten days in Fez has not dissipated, it has but deepened the sense of mystery. But we, to our surprise, have not yet suffered from that strange mental disease, the "longing to get away" that infallibly attacks ambassadors and representatives of foreign powers and is a political force upon which Moorish diplomats may count to rid them of annoying visitors who have come to press vexing demands upon their government. At last a sudden glow, like a great flood of fire, overspreads the city; it is the glow of sunset, the last signal of the dying day, and for a moment it suffuses the entire heavens, as if there were a distant world in conflagration. Fez has assumed a shroud of black; it is the sacred hour of Moghreb, and the lower darkness is resounding with the cries of the Muezzin, those cries of intense faith, those wailing laments that seem to express the nothingness of all things earthly.

The Moors speak of their country as "Moghreb-al-Aksa," the "Country of the Setting Sun." How prophetic!—for in very truth the sun of civilization has set forever upon this land, and though its past be brilliant as the heavenly sunset fires, its future is as dim as the soft-footed night that, stealing in from the black, fierce surrounding country, broods like a pall of death above the sleeping city of the Moors.

THROUGH THE HEART OF THE MOORISH EMPIRE

The spell of mystery is still upon Morocco. The Moors are still the people of romance. Of the land we know comparatively little; of the race as it exists to-day we know still less. Christendom assumes that the Moorish Empire expired with the last sigh of Boabdil, leaving the Alhambra as its only legacy.

Almost novel is the thought that the Moors still live as a nation; that Morocco is to-day what Spain would have become had the forces of the Prophet prevailed in the Peninsula. Who would not welcome as a precious privilege the possibility of turning back the pages of history in Spain, to revel in the actual Moorish life as it was lived before the Christian victories of 1492? Who would not gladly leave, at least for a short space, the familiar round of present-day existence and the hackneyed paths of travel, to plunge into a past so picturesque, to see a civilization so refined and yet so utterly unlike our own? No reader of Washington Irving but has longed to people with white-clad cavaliers the courts on the Alhambra Hill, to hear the Arab accents in the streets of old Granada, or the murmuring of the Moslem prayers in the old mosques. But why persist in holding Spain to be the sole stage on which the Moors appropriately can play their parts?

Morocco was their home ere Spain was conquered for them. When Andalusia ungratefully cast out the race that brought it light and knowledge at a time when Europe groped in the blackness of deep ignorance, back to Morocco went the Empire of the Moors. Empires rise and fall. The Moorish Empire rose but did not fall; it was shaken but not shattered; it is still erect. It stands a living skeleton wrapt in the shroud of Islam, its hollowness concealed by the vague folds of ceremonial observances; its government a pompous sham; its cities empty imposing shells of former greatness; its boundless plains the haunts of savage Berber tribes to whom the Emperor is but a name, the Empire a free space in which to ride broad-chested chargers and do battle with hereditary enemies.

In two preceding lectures I have told the story of a journey into Morocco, and of a sojourn in Fez, the metropolis of the Moors. There yet remains to tell a third, concluding chapter of the tale—the narrative of the return from Fez to the sea, from a remote yesterday back to the world of to-day. "Out of Morocco" would serve as an appropriate heading for this chapter,—a chapter rich in adventure and in picturesque experiences. For ten days we have dwelt in mediæval Moslem Fez—unwelcome visitors, objects of suspicion to the jealous Moors.

Two routes are open to us—the direct road to Tangier and the less-frequented road to Rabat on the Atlantic Coast. Despite the protest of the authorities, who warn us of many dangers, we chose the road that leads westward to Mequinez, the Beni-Hasan Plain, and the Atlantic. But the word "road" must be regarded only in its Moroccan sense. As has been said already, there are no roads in this wild land; the slow caravans and the swift troops of Moorish horsemen have followed the hoofmarks left by the caravans or troops which have preceded them, until a system of narrow trails meandering in uncertain parallels has been created between the inland cities and the sea.

These Moorish highways were never surveyed and never tended; like Topsy—who, also, by the way, was an African product—they were never born, "they just growed;" and like Topsy they are wilfully unreasonable; they exasperate us by their defiance of conventionality; amuse us with their peculiar antics, and delight us with preposterous surprises.

As an example, take the highway that leads from Fez to the neighboring city of Mequinez. As we approach a river, the wandering trails converge and form a beaten track that grows more and more like a real road as it winds down toward a substantial bridge. But just as we are about to compliment the road on its reform, it suddenly grows weary of good behavior, becomes rebellious, and, like a balky mule, refuses to cross the bridge. Incredible as it may seem to those who do not know this land of contradictions, Moorish roads will not cross Moorish rivers by means of Moorish bridges. The old way is preferred. Fording was good enough in the old days, and it is good enough to-day. The roads turn sharply from the bridge abutments, scramble down the muddy banks, and plunge into the yellow rivers to emerge slimy and dripping on the opposite shore. The bridges, ponderously useless, studiously neglected, are falling into decay, and have become almost impassable.

We pitch our camp not far from one of those disdained reminders of an attempt at progress. We are midway between Fez and Mequinez in a region notorious because of the thieving bands with which it is infested. It appears wholly unpeopled; yet we are not without misgivings, for, of our caravan, four mules and two men have gone astray. With us are Haj, the dragoman, Achmedo, the valet, and the muleteers, Abuktayer and Bokhurmur. The missing are Kaid Lharbi, the military escort, and the new packer who joined our force in Fez. We have our tent and Haj's kitchen; the other tents and all the supplies and furniture are in the packs of the missing mules somewhere on this gloomy plain, possibly already become the loot of some lawless sheik, or, as we hope, merely delayed because of broken harness, or gone astray because of a mistaken trail. Our groundless fears are set at rest an hour later by the safe arrival of the precious convoy, and once more our palates are delighted by the delicious dinner cooked by Haj, our thirst quenched by cooled oranges, and our weary bodies laid to rest upon our comfortable camp-cots.

After the confinement incident to our residence in city quarters, the free life of the plains is doubly exhilarating, and we find intense pleasure in the satisfaction of the simple, keen desires to eat, drink, and sleep. All food is good, all drink is better, sleep the sweetest gift of the gods.

The morning finds us early in the saddle; four hours' westward progress brings us at noon to one of those rare oases of shadow in this bare land of sunshine. Here hunger, thirst, and weariness are again assuaged by food and drink and sleep. Sharp darts of brilliant, blinding sunshine burn through the leafy masses of the two fig-trees, and with almost malicious persistence pursue the would-be slumberer, who, to avoid this, must every now and then crawl after the receding shadows.

But we are not the only travelers who have sought midday shelter in this forest. On our approach we were greeted by a family group,—a man and woman with a little child, and a black slave. To our surprise the man addressed us in Spanish:—

"_Buenos dias, Señor, habla usted Español?_"

"_Si, Señor, un poco_," we reply, and then begins an interesting conversation.

"Where are your animals?" we ask.

"Stolen with all my goods, last night," he answers. "We must now go on foot to Fez to report our loss to the authorities."

We learn that our unfortunate friend is a maker of sausage cases, that he lives in Mequinez, and that he is hospitably inclined; for in return for our sympathy, he begs us to make use of his house in Mequinez, where another of his wives will welcome us and give us food and lodging.

This strange offer of hospitality, coupled with a something in the man's expression leads me to say, "But, Señor, you are not like a Moor."

"Why should I be?" he smilingly asks. "_Yo, yo soy Chino._" "I, I am a Chinese."

He is the happy father of a dainty little girl, a type of Chinese beauty, and two lusty boys, who bear upon their faces maps of Peking and Canton. The negress, his slave, he is sending back to Mequinez with tidings of his loss. Haj, with Occidental gallantry, offers the dusky damsel his place on a pack-mule, and after the exchange of many kindnesses our little company, made up of individuals so diverse in race, in language, and in thought, breaks up.

Our Chinese Moor with wife and child go trudging off toward Fez, while the American caravan with its Arab escort and African passenger moves toward the other great interior city, Mequinez. Long before we come in sight of Mequinez, we find our progress barred by a huge wall forty feet or more in height, stretching away in two directions as far as the eye can reach. But there are ogive archways, through which our caravan passes as freely as the sunshine or the breeze. There are no gates, no guards, to hinder us. On we file across vacant fields until we reach a second wall as forbidding as the first and apparently as interminable.

"What are these walls?" we ask. "Why were they built? what purpose can they serve?"

And Haj tells us that they were reared to protect the city from the turbulent surrounding tribes, to cut off, if need be, the approach of hostile bands.

A third wall, wide and high, beginning at the city gate wanders away toward the south, its utility not easily divined. As we trace its curving course over a distant ridge, we think of the Roman aqueducts in the Campagna, and of the great wall of China, for this unknown Moorish work vies with those famous masses of masonry in impressiveness of aspect if not in hugeness and in length of years. It was the creation of the crazy Sultan, Mulai Ismail, a contemporary of Louis XIV, of France, a Moorish emperor who suffered from a mania for masonry, and made his people suffer that he might satisfy his madness for works of colossal inutility.

One of his wildest projects was the building of an elevated boulevard, two hundred miles in length, along which he could ride from Mequinez to Morocco City, safe from the attack of the rebellious tribesmen who hold the intervening provinces.

The huge north gate of this his favored city appears to us as we approach late in the afternoon like the entrance to some "mysterious nowhere." It seems to be a portal to the empty sky, a door through which the traveler might pass into the infinity of space. It is, in fact, the gate of an almost deserted metropolis, a city that was built for a population of one hundred thousand and contains to-day less than six thousand souls. Small wonder that we find it empty and forsaken in aspect as we pass from court to court and through gate after gate. There are in Mequinez more houses vacant than occupied, more roofs fallen than intact, more palaces in ruins than huts in good repair. The Sultan is forced to maintain a palace here, for Mequinez ranks with Fez and Morocco City as one of the three capitals of the Moorish Empire, each city jealous of its dignity as the abode of the Imperial master.

The Sultan always dwells amid the wreck of ages. The snow-white palace of the actual sovereign may be seen rising above the crumbling walls of the Imperial Garden. Around it are vague piles of age-worn masonry, the abandoned palaces of emperors who ruled here in the past. Custom demands that on the death of a Sultan his palace be abandoned and a new one built for his successor. It is regarded as a sacrilege for any one to occupy the abode of a departed emperor. Thus, during the centuries, these imperial inclosures in all the Moorish cities have become encumbered with acres of decaying palaces in which bats and owls hold carnival.

In Mequinez everything speaks of Mulai Ismail, the tyrant Sultan of the sixteenth century, that imperial monster whose deeds surpass in horror those of Nero or Caligula, the ruins of whose palaces and public works rival in magnitude the Roman mountains of brick and stone upon the Palatine or in the broad Campagna.

Mulai Ismail built three miles of stables for his twelve thousand horses. We see, to-day, the endless aisles of arches where his chargers were lodged in splendor, every ten horses tended by a negro slave. As a horseman, he was superb. It is said that he was able, in one graceful movement, to mount his steed, draw his sword, and neatly decapitate the slave who held his stirrup. He held that to die by his imperial hand insured immediate entry into paradise, and throughout the latter part of his life of eighty-one vigorous years he went about his land dispensing, with his scimitar, passports to a beatitudinous eternity. Twenty thousand of his subjects were thus favored, Friday being the day chosen by the imperial murderer for these executionary exercises. His pet lions were fed upon the flesh of slaves; his forty cats were treated better than his children, though one disobedient cat was formally executed by his order. Workmen caught idling on the walls, at which his myriad slaves and prisoners were unceasingly engaged, were tumbled into the molds and rammed down into the concrete.

An incredibly atrocious deed crowned his career of crime. A wife suspected of infidelity was filled with powder and blown to pieces. The mere drowning of a wife in the small artificial lake was but a gentle pastime. He had two thousand wives. As to the number of his children we must accept the word of an ambassador of Louis XIV, who visited the court of Mulai Ismail in 1703. He asked the favorite son how many brothers and sisters he possessed. After two days spent in compiling a catalogue, the Prince submitted the names of five hundred and twenty-five brothers and three hundred and forty-two sisters. Later reports give the number of sons who lived to mount horse the astounding total of seven hundred. To create palaces and to people them was the life-work of Mulai Ismail.

One incident that makes this impossible man seem real to us is this: He actually sent ambassadors to France to demand of Louis XIV the hand of Mlle. de Blois, the natural daughter of the King and Louise de la Valliére! The honor was declined in polite terms by the Grand Monarque.

In Mulai's day Europeans were not strangers to Morocco; but they came—not as we come to-day, as travelers with tents and guides to camp freely for a few sunny days under the imperial walls—they came as slaves and captives taken from merchant-ships by pirates; they came with chains and manacles, to toil for dark, hopeless years in building these same walls, in piling up these useless miles of mud, brick, and cement. The thought of the sufferings endured by them makes doubly strange our actual comfort; the dangers of the living past throw into striking contrast the security of the dead present. We are not even annoyed by crowds. Perhaps there are no crowds in Mequinez to-day. The only citizen who deigns to take an interest in us is an old man who rides up on a tiny donkey and sits studying the strangers with a plainly puzzled look upon his wrinkled face. That he may not depart without some mark of our appreciation of his call, we display our modern arsenal, a shotgun and a rifle, testing the latter by firing at an eagle that is soaring overhead. By chance the shot is a successful one. Down comes the big bird like a meteorite, grazing the donkey's ear, and falling with a thud at his astonished nose; whereupon our visitor having seen enough rides off in silence to tell of our prowess in the half-deserted bazaars.

From Mequinez we carry away impressions as enduring as its walls and gates. We know that we shall never forget the sadness of this empty city, its silence, and its forlorn magnificence. In all Morocco there is no more artistic structure than the Kasbah Gate of Mequinez. It is as it was; no restoration has marred it. Time has but softened it, made it more beautiful. Corinthian pillars, brought from the ruins of the Roman city of Volubilis, add to its dignity and tell of a civilization that long antedates that of the Arab conquerors. It, too, like every gate and every palace in the city of Mulai Ismail recounts its tragedy. The man whose mind conceived its form, its intricate designs, its unsymmetrical perfections, fell victim to his artist-pride. For, when the Sultan complimented him on his achievements, he declared that he could build a gate more beautiful, more imposing, did the imperial master so desire; and this boast cost the architect his eyes, for the Sultan was resolved that this, his favorite gate, should have no rival and no peer. Less beautiful, but more imposing is the great North Gate by which we enter and through which we ride out into the black, treacherous country. Our muleteers have halted at a fountain to drink and pray; for the fountain marks the burial-place of a great Moslem saint, the founder of the fraternity of the Hamdouchi, a kindred society to that of the fanatical Aissaoua, a sect of self-torturers and religious maniacs.

Devotions ended, the caravan reforms, and we find ourselves trailing across an empty land, which we have been warned on no account to enter. Two days of uneventful travel over the hills of a rolling region brings us to the brink of the interior highland, from which we look down upon the level plain that stretches westward to the wide Atlantic, many miles away. Below us lies the country of the famous Beni-Hasan tribe. The "Sons of Hasan" are famous as horsemen, warriors, and pirates of the plain. Our route lies westward across their territory to the seaport city called Rabat, where we hope to embark in due time on one of the infrequent coasting-steamers that ply up and down the western coast of Africa.

As we descend the steep trail winding down from the hill region, we look in vain for any sign of town or village. A few clumps of dark green trees and yellow streams are all that break the dull monotony of the wide vista,—all, save a patch of gray, which looks at first like a heap of rags spread out for an airing and a sunning. But as we draw nearer to it, we observe that the rag-pile is alive, that it swarms and moves in slow confusion. Each rag enwraps a human-being; there are at least a thousand of them come together in this desert-place to buy and barter food and drink and raiment.

A curious feature of commerce in Morocco are these fairs held periodically in chosen localities, far from any settlement or village. A few days later this spot, now the scene of picturesque activity, will be brooded over by the silence and desolation of the surrounding plain. It will remain unvisited until, at the advent of another fair, the people of the broad region roundabout will come again to this townless market-place, with cattle, fruits and vegetables, woolen goods and Manchester cotton, old flintlock muskets and inlaid Moorish daggers, to meet their fellow-merchants, to haggle with crafty customers, and to indulge that desire for social intercourse, innate even in the forgotten people of this empty, lonely land.

We spend an hour or two at this Soko in the wilderness, watching the ant-hill-like activity of the gray-clad sons of Hasan. The water-sellers do a thriving business, for the sun beats down relentlessly on this unsheltered mart. From tented restaurants are wafted odors which may be appetizing to the native epicure. The butchers are at their work out in the full glare of the midday sun. There is but little delay between the abattoir and the pot or frying-pan. In fact, the fresh meat might almost be broiled without the aid of any fire whatever when the sun is high and hot.

It is but natural that we should be objects of curiosity, but so reserved and proud are the Moslems that even in this remote place they refrain from paying us the compliment of popular attention. We are neither courted nor insulted. Indifferent glances are all that they vouchsafe us. Whatever of hostility they feel toward the "dog of a Christian" is vented upon our servants. A man attempted to steal a knife from Haj. Haj strikes at him, the crowd sides with the would-be thief, and begins to rain blows upon our guide and muleteers, but they defend themselves until lazy Kaid Lharbi can be induced to make haste slowly to the rescue. The appearance of our soldier quells the tumult. The dispute is referred to a young sheik of the tribe, who, as one in authority, listens to our story and to the clamor of the crowd, and like a righteous judge, orders Haj's assailant put in chains. Before leaving, in order to propitiate the crowd, we beg the sheik to release the culprit. This done, we depart amid approving murmurs.

Just before sunset we reach a narrow, turbid river. There is no bridge. Our pack-mules glissade down the slippery bank and trudge unhesitatingly across the shallow ford. Fortunately, we have crossed the many rivers without inconvenience; but had we entered Morocco a month earlier, while the rivers are swollen by the April rain, we should have suffered tedious and dangerous delays at every ford. The yellow flood respects not even the caravans of ambassadors and ministers. Official pack-mules have been swept away, official bedding soaked in Moorish rivers, and many a diplomat traveling in state to Fez on some important mission has been compelled to doff his uniform and dignity, and to breast the turgid waters of the River Sebu or the Wad Makhazan. Half regretting that we are deprived of similar experiences, we ride on till we reach a place called Boghari, where we apply for the protection of the Kaid of the village. The traveler should lose no time in taking advantage of the laws of hospitality. In them he finds his surest safeguard. The person and property of a guest are sacred. A robber Kaid becomes an ideal host, answering for your safety with his life, guarding your property better than he guards his own. But the very man who shelters you one night may, on the morrow, after you have passed beyond the territory for the peace of which he is held responsible, swoop down upon your caravan with a cloud of gaily arrayed followers and seize such of your possessions as may have attracted his fancy while you were enjoying his protection. By so doing he also gets the neighboring chieftain into hot water, for failing to protect you. Our official letters from the Moorish authorities at Tangier command all Kaids and bashas to give us hospitality and protection and, when necessary, to provide an escort for our safe-conduct across their respective territories.

Kaid Absalam of Bogari is pleased to order our camp pitched in his front-yard. We should have preferred an isolated site beyond the village amid the freshness and the flowers of the plain, but we feel more secure under the eaves of the official residence, a mud-brick hut, with disheveled thatch.

Kaid Absalam grants us the use of his front-yard, including the dirt, dust, and flies, imposing only one condition upon us. He has been informed by men familiar with the ways of Christians that they invariably travel with "picture-making boxes," or "painting machines," with which they do sinfully and wilfully break the Mosaic commandment, "Thou shalt not make unto thyself the likeness of any living thing." The Kaid's will is that if we possess such inventions of the devil, we shall religiously refrain from using them in his domain.

In this emergency we turn to Haj Abd-er-Rahman Salama, for we know him to be the most artistic prevaricator in Morocco. He rises to the occasion. Never was a village more thoroughly photographed than Bogari, never was a Kaid and a community more blissfully unconscious that crime was rampant under their very noses. Haj presents us formally as two great American astronomers traveling in Morocco on a scientific mission. The Moors of old prided themselves upon their knowledge of the heavens. Astronomy is still in high esteem. The Kaid begs us to display our astronomical instruments. We promptly unpack and set up two photographic-cameras, and arm ourselves with kodaks. One by one, or rather three by three, the dignified villagers put their heads beneath the focusing cloth, from the black folds of which come smothered exclamations of delight as they behold upon the glass inverted images of familiar forms and faces.

Meantime we are "taking the altitude of the sun" with kodaks. The result of our first attempt shows an African "son" black as an eclipse; there are wooly prominences on the disk, and several satellites are visible. A second experiment reveals a young Phœbus Apollo, dark as Pluto, and almost as naked as Eros. Later observations show the constellation of Venus shedding the light of smiles upon this land of darkness.

Meantime my friend wins popularity with the ladies of the galaxy by performing a series of simple tricks of sleight-of-hand. He catches money in the air, or pretends to find it in their veils or sleeves.

Encouraged by his success, I bring into play the skill acquired in my schoolboy days, when Hermann, not Stoddard, was the man whose career appeared most tempting to me. I, too, win smiles of surprise and wonder-struck expressions from the simple folk of Bogari by swallowing coins and corks, performing card-tricks, or picking pennies from the folds of ragged garments. The last trick is the most popular, for the pennies are invariably claimed by those from whom they have been plucked into visibility. Fond mothers bring forward several lots of Berber babies, and present them, one by one, to the magician, that he may deftly extract the latent wealth from their scant clothing.

But not only did we succeed in fooling the fledglings and the female birds, our magic powers won us the respect and reverence even of the grim, hawk-like cavaliers. We gave a matinée for the Kaid and his chief men. They were deeply impressed and murmured compliments with bated breath; for that which he cannot understand the Moor regards as supernatural. The man with occult powers is to be feared, respected, and propitiated. We had not counted upon this; but Haj, the clever rascal who was under contract to furnish all provisions for our larder, encouraged us thereafter to give daily performances, for every performance elicited substantial tokens of respect in the form of chickens, baskets of eggs, haunches of fine mutton, pails of goats' milk, and plates of honey.

Our reputation as conjurors once established, Haj paid out no more money to the villagers, exacting everywhere a willing tribute or "mouna" from the Sheiks or Kaids.

But one more achievement crowned our perfidy to the kind people of Bogari. The Kaid bade us take tea in his mud-house the night before our departure. We donned our Moorish jelabas, and at the appointed hour sat with the Hasan tribemen around the steaming samovar—for the Russian samovar is the "_grande luxe_" of even the pettiest of chieftains. The situation was rich in its appeal to our love of things remote and strange. Here were we, robed in white garments made by the tailors of Fez, crouching on mats, sipping sweetened mint-tea in company with men of Berber blood, whose profession is plunder, whose relaxation is battle. The Kaid's brother lies prostrate, undergoing a rough massage treatment to allay the pain caused by bullet-wounds received in a recent foray. Grim visaged retainers peer in at the door, keen eyes flash in the outer darkness. The candle flickers, the samovar sings softly, now and then a word is spoken, and a few seconds later a guttural reply is heard, or a grunt of pain from the wounded warrior breaks the hush of the assembly.

Resolved that this scene must be pictured, I appeal to Haj to put his powers of prevarication once more to the test—to lie us into a favorable opportunity for discharging one of our flash-lights here and now.

He hesitates. Dare he attempt another fabrication? Success has made him bold. He speaks, "Oh, Kaid, my masters the astronomers, to whose skill your village can bear witness, ask of you one more favor. To-morrow they set out across our unknown country. To lay their course across this wide land without roads they must take observation of the sun by night as well as by day. At their command the sun will pierce the veil of night. Permit them once more to set up their instruments, and they will cause the brightness of the orb of day to flash for a brief instant even here between the four walls, beneath thy roof."

Allured by the promise of this miracle, the Kaid consents. The cameras are placed. The flash-powder is spread. Then with impressive gestures I invoke the god of day, and Haj ignites the fuse.

A great light fills the chamber, clouds form and roll out into the night, the sons of Hasan gasp and murmur prayers. The astronomers calmly sit down and figure out their reckoning, and lay the course for the caravan voyage for the morrow.

No suspicion rested on us. Kaid Absalam next day escorted us to the confines of his territory, and thanked us for having kept our pledge not to paint pictures of his people.

Our caravan files westward across the plain, which is as peaceful as a summer sea. We traverse patches of color, bigger than townships, where the earth is steeped in the crimson of anemones, or the yellow of buttercups. At midday, while the sun hangs almost in the zenith, and the mules trample on their own shadows at every step, an incident breaks the monotony of our ever silent progress. A solitary man appears on the horizon, his hooded head the only thing that rises above the level of the weeds and flowers. At last he comes within hailing distance, and we exchange greetings. He is a courier, bearing dispatches to Mequinez. He speaks excitedly to Haj, who listens to his words with visible anxiety, for he conveys tidings of trouble from the west. It is the old story of inter-tribal hostilities, of Beni-Zimour razzias in the Beni-Hasan plain, of Beni-Hasan retaliatory trips into the hill-country of the Beni-Zimour. The village of Twazit, where we intend to spend the night, was attacked early this very morning, the Beni-Zimour troupe was driven off, the Beni-Hasan horsemen have been called out to defend their frontier. We press on rapidly until we meet a company of cavaliers led by the young Kaid of Twazit, who is scouring the country to assemble all the available fighting men. He halts our caravan and demands to know our destination and the purpose of our journey. He forbids our advance into the disturbed region, being responsible to the central government for our safety. But seeing picturesque possibilities in the adventure, we insist upon our right to official protection, and Haj demands an escort for us. The Kaid cannot refuse. Eight men are detached from his troop and detailed for escort-duty. With eagerness we ride on toward the seat of war, if war be not too dignified a name for one of these periodic inter-tribal squabbles.

Peace is upon the plain, calm is in the air; yet danger and suspicion ride with us, and point across the flowery expanse toward the dark line far to the south,—a line that indicates the wooded country of the Zimour tribe, which holds the region between Mequinez and the southern capital city, Marrakesh (or, as it appears on many maps, Morocco City).

So successfully have the Beni-Zimour held the Sultan's troops at bay that it has never been possible for the Imperial master, even with the usual escort of thirty thousand men, to march by the direct route from city to city. He has always been forced to go around the very heart of his own empire, to cross this plain to Rabat, thence travel down the coast, and finally strike inland along the southern boundary of the possessions of his rebellious subjects. Thus every state-progress from one of his capitals to the other becomes a public humiliation of Morocco's ruler, whose boast is that his throne is his horse's saddle, his canopy the sky, his palace the great tent in which he spends more than half of every year.

The Beni-Hasan, while none too loyal to the Sultan in the season when he sends to them his Bashas to collect the taxes, are hereditary enemies of their rebellious neighbors, and therefore nominally supporters of the Imperial cause.

Our picturesque protectors pause every now and then, peering anxiously toward the south, suspicious of every dot on the horizon, of every patch that seems to move in the distance upon that sea of heat-waves that rolls above the plain. Most of our guards are young men under twenty-five, one only is older. Even sterner than the rest in aspect, he has a cruel face, thick lips, and wears a gray skull-cap drawn tightly above his furrowed forehead. We might well have some misgivings for our safety were not our guards also our hosts, and answerable for us to their chief, who is answerable to the Sultan. Should we suffer harm, the central government must make amends to the United States.

As if in preparation for the expected fray, the horsemen are continually rehearsing sham battles, half the troop dashing furiously ahead, then returning at full gallop to attack the caravan, which is stoutly defended by the other half. At first no shots are fired, but when we agree to pay for all the ammunition used by both friends and mimic enemies, blank charges are rammed into the elaborate old flintlocks, and the roar and smoke of harmless battle mark our advance into a hostile territory.

At sunset we arrive at Twazit. We expected to find a village. We find instead a circle of thirty-six Bedouin tents pitched in the open plain. The men of our escort are here at home, and are greeted by their wives who ask for news of the chief and the rest of the troop. The women wring their hands and weep on learning that we are to camp with them. The reason is that should we be robbed while under the protection of their chief, the Sultan's government would hold their husbands responsible for all damages, and bleed even the poorest of them to repay us for our losses.

An atmosphere of anxiety pervades the village. One man was killed in the morning's battle; he has just been hastily buried. Another is lying wounded in his tent, and we are urged to go to his relief; for every foreigner is supposed to be skilled in surgery and medicine. We are conducted to a low tent in which the wounded man is lying. He is surrounded by a stupid crowd, which keeps away fresh air. We strive to clear the tent, but curiosity is strong, and a score of villagers insist on witnessing the doctor's visit. The man lies on a rug groaning in fever, his garments stained with blood. His wound is red with clotted blood. No one has thought to wash him and give him water. My friend puts cooling bandages upon his head, and to the best of his ability dresses the wound. It is ugly, but not fatal; for the ball has glanced along the ribs and passed out on the side.

While I am striving to keep the crowd away, two women, smeared with slimy mud from head to foot, come running from the river. They break into the tent, and throw themselves upon the prostrate form, uttering loud cries; and it is with the greatest difficulty that we prevent those miserable mud-daubed wives from overwhelming the sufferer with their conventional expressions of grief. They have put on mud and slime as substitutes for sackcloth and ashes.

It is insisted that some medicine should be administered internally. "All doctors make sick people swallow medicine," they say; and to conform to custom, and yet do no harm, we give our patient a cup of water in which a little paregoric has been dropped. Then, with a "Trust in Allah!" the foreign doctors retire amid the blessings of the crowd.

Could we have cured but one tenth of the maladies, or in any small way relieved the needless suffering which greets the traveler in Morocco, we should have been happy; but we were not prepared; we lacked both knowledge and medical supplies. It grieved us to play the impostor, yet it was kinder to the people, who in many things are simple as children. To refuse them advice and treatment would have been cruel, however worthless the advice and treatment. Our willingness to serve our doses of paregoric, our injunctions to trust in the one God, pleased and cheered them. That was all that we could hope to accomplish.

We even do a little veterinary surgery for a wounded horse, a fine gray steed, lamed by a bullet in the leg. The poor beast is held prostrate while the bullet is cut out with my pocket-knife, and the wound is cauterized with red-hot iron. The excitement keeps us from a realizing sense of our situation, and it is only when in the gathering darkness we have returned to our tent that we begin clearly to recognize the fact that these little scenes of such a painful interest are not prepared merely to amuse the curious traveler. There is a stern reality in it all; and the Beni-Zimour who, this very morning, attacked the village and laid low men and horses, are not many miles away.

The night is clear. The few men in camp are constantly on the alert. We see the chief mount and ride outside that circle of flimsy tents, our only fortification. He goes to see that the patrols are not neglecting duty, to scan with anxious eyes the southern distance.

All is still till half-past nine. Then comes the most uncomfortable quarter of an hour that I have ever passed. A shrill, loud cry rings out; we think it is the call to prayer. Not so; it is the call to arms. "_Hayel!_"—"to horse," the sentinels have shouted; and that cry of "_Hayel_" is answered by pandemonium in the village. The tribesmen rush to loose their shackled steeds, a hundred cowardly dogs begin to bark, and from every tent women and children rush out terror-stricken and weeping.

Their cries, the tramp of hoofs, the guttural shouts of our wild-eyed protectors combine to wake us to a sense of personal danger. The sentinels have seen a moving mass upon the plain, supposedly a band of Zimour horsemen. They are in expectation of a prompt attack. Our troop hurriedly assembled, sallies out to meet the coming foe. A troubled silence reigns.

We wait and wait. No sound; no clash of arms; no shots exchanged. Five, ten, twenty minutes pass, then comes tramp of hoofs, a dark mass sweeps into the vague circle of Bedouin tents, the dogs stop barking, and with relief we recognize our faithful cavaliers as they dismount, giving grunts of satisfaction.

The approaching enemy had been frightened off by the unexpected appearance of our little army. Their force was small, they had believed the village unprotected, and they did not know that the bravest Beni-Hasan men had returned to guard their women and their homes. The sentinels are doubled, and after an hour more of watching, we fall asleep, weary with the day's excitement.

And as, next day, our journey is peacefully resumed with a smaller escort than before, we are inclined to laugh at the terrors of the night, and to chaff one another on our respective preparations for defense or flight. My warlike friend had spent that anxious hour cleaning his shotgun, removing bird-shot from his shells, and substituting crude lumps of lead obtained from Kaid Lharbi's store of ammunition. I had quietly packed my photographic films into the smallest possible bundle, and went to bed, ready at a moment's notice to seize the precious packet and escape—whither, I did not know.

By midday on the morrow we are beyond the reach of harm. Making a small present to the Beni-Hasan guards, we watched them disappear in the direction of the seat of war, where they will continue their life of skirmish and pillage until laid low by bullets from their hated Zimour neighbors.

And as, some hours later, we approach the coast, our caravan plunges into a veritable ocean of freshness, where the wild daisies are so tall that our animals appear to be lying down, while in reality they are toiling on as best they may through a sea of flowers four feet deep. Our pet mule, the little white one, is almost up to his eyes in daisies, while the others revenge themselves for many days of dry, short, withered grass by feasting upon the rich fare so unexpectedly encountered. For several miles we slowly advance along this curious road (for we are still upon a road, though one little used) and at last, reaching a hilltop, we are greeted by a glorious salt breeze, and looking westward we behold the dim blue stretches of the broad Atlantic.

An hour more and we arrive at Mehedia, formerly a city of the Portuguese, to-day a vast ruin in the midst of which a miserable Arab hamlet is concealed. We camp near the decaying walls, where storks and men, gifted with equal intelligence, observe us with a silent curiosity. This Mehedia was once a flourishing port, and the fortifications left by the Portuguese are very stately and must have been at one time thoroughly impregnable. To-day, however, everything is dilapidated and forsaken.

We descend to the beach and enjoy a dip in the salty waters where the River Sebu meets the sea. Above us loom the imposing walls and bastions of Mehedia, silent and abandoned, yet eloquent of the vanished glory of Portugal. In the thought of this empty fortress, so formidable in aspect, so monumentally defenseless in its desolation, there is something almost awe-inspiring. Its few miserable human denizens seem like dejected ghosts gliding through the crumbling portals, haunting the roofless palaces. The stork population on the wall-tops and the battlements seems more real. The Moors declare, "Storks are men who have come from islands far away to the west upon the great ocean to see Morocco. Like all the world they know there is no other land to compare with it; they abandon their outward form of men, and come hither to behold it. Therefore we give them hospitality and do not harm them." Nay, the Moors do more than this for the long-legged dwellers on their house-tops—they maintain in Fez a hospital for invalid storks, founded, so runs the legend, in this wise: Several hundred years ago a stork came to the Kadi of Fez bringing a pearl necklace that it had stolen. As the owner could not be found, with the proceeds from the sale of the necklace, the Kadi bought a house that is still in existence, called the Stork House, an institution where storks are received and treated as human beings.[a]

The Moorish lover looks upon the stork with a peculiar reverence and affection, for from its haunts on terrace or tower the bird looks down upon the habitations of the women, and daily beholds the beloved one. But storks of Mehedia take no more heed of us than do the gray-robed human inhabitants.

On the eve of our departure, the Kaid of the village cannot resist exhibiting his skill with a recently acquired Winchester rifle that, he tells us, has been taken from smugglers in the performance of his official duties. Learning that we are Americans and therefore compatriots of his new gun, he deigns to look with favor upon us and invites us to his dwelling. There he prepares to astonish us with his marksmanship. An egg is placed upon a wall fifty feet distant. The Kaid seats himself comfortably on a ledge, takes leisurely aim, amid the respectful silence of his followers, and then bangs away. The plaster on the wall was badly damaged, but after the smoke had cleared away, the egg, intact, looked down upon the humbled Moor, who proceeded to examine and criticise the sights of the Winchester.

My friend, when his turn came to try the gun, was not considerate enough to spare the egg. His pride in his marksmanship overcame his politeness, as a yellow blotch on that old wall may still attest.

From Mehedia it is one day's ride southward to the sister-cities of Salli and Rabat, sister-cities which have never been on the best of terms with one another. We follow a sandy trail along the coast—the monotony of the journey broken by but a single incident, an encounter with a gaily furnished caravan. Six Moorish women robed in white, with covered faces, attended by a dozen guards and servants, come slowly along the dusty track. At their approach Kaid Lharbi, evincing a sudden bashfulness, dashes off to the right, points his horse's head toward the sea, and sits there with his back turned to the veiled beauties until the gay parade has passed. The other men of our escort follow his example, galloping off to one side or the other, planting their steeds with tails toward the trail, not venturing to look around until the dust raised by the passing caravan has settled. We naturally seize our cameras to record this strange proceeding, whereupon they shout imperatively, "Turn your backs quickly! These are the Sultan's wives. No man may look upon them!" Accordingly we, too, conform to a custom which seems to us rude rather than courteous and turn our backs upon the mysterious beauties, a contingent of Imperial wives whom Mulai El-Hasan is shipping in advance to await his arrival at Mehedia or Mequinez.

A few hours later we pass beneath the aqueduct of Salli, which serves also as an outer city-wall. Then, after watering our animals, we ride on across vast vacant spaces until the gates of Salli admit us to the famous city of the old-time "Salli Rovers."