Part 1

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THE BURTON HOLMES LECTURES

_With Illustrations from Photographs By the Author_

COMPLETE IN TEN VOLUMES

BATTLE CREEK, MICHIGAN THE LITTLE-PRESTON COMPANY, LIMITED M C M I

COPYRIGHT 1901 BY E. BURTON HOLMES

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The "Edition Original" of The Burton Holmes Lectures is Limited to One Thousand Sets.

The Registered Number of This Set is —— ——.

Mr. Holmes has been asked to supply data for a biographical sketch. He replies that his biography will be found in his lectures, each lecture being a chapter from his life of travel. Thirty chapters of this autobiography appear in these volumes,—thirty preliminary chapters,—for Mr. Holmes hopes that his life of travel is but just begun.

Elias Burton Holmes was born in Chicago in January, 1870, inheriting a love for travel. In 1883 he acquired a love for photography. In 1886 he traveled abroad and took pictures. He has been traveling and taking pictures ever since. In 1890 he appeared before his first audience,—the members of the Chicago Camera Club, reading and illustrating an account of a tour "Through Europe with a Camera." In 1893 he made his first professional appearance in the recital hall of the Auditorium, Chicago, describing a journey to Japan. Kind friends and curious acquaintances insured the success of this venture, and encouraged Mr. Holmes to enter upon a career in which the labor has been a labor of love. For five successive winters the Burton Holmes Lectures were among the features of the amusement season in the cities of the Middle West. In 1897, on the retirement of Mr. John L. Stoddard from the field which he had created and occupied for nineteen years, Mr. Holmes found himself prepared to carry on the work begun by Mr. Stoddard.

TO MY THREE

_Half-Tone Etchings and Colored Inserts by_ WHIPPLE ENGRAVING CO., _Chicago.... Decorative Titles by_ ARTHUR DODDS, _Rochester, N. Y.... Typography, Electrotyping, Presswork and Binding by_ ELLIS PUBLISHING COMPANY, LTD., _Battle Creek, Mich._

FOREWORD

To transfer the illustrated lecture from public platform to printed page is to give permanent form to the ephemeral. To set down in formal black and white the phrases framed for the informality of speech is to offer them to a keener scrutiny than they were meant to bear. To reproduce in miniature, by means of the half-tone engraver's art, pictures that were intended to meet the eye, enriched by color and projected in a darkened auditorium, is to reduce mountains to mole-hills and to dim the brilliancy of nature to a sober gray.

In these volumes The Burton Holmes Lectures undergo a trying transformation. The words and the pictures are the same, but the manner of presentation must affect the value and force of both. The appeal is now made not to expectant auditors in the sympathetic atmosphere of a place of entertainment, but to readers uninfluenced by the tone and the inflection of the speaker, and free from the magical influence of pictures that glow and fade as the traveler tells his tale.

In an illustrated lecture the impression upon eye and ear should be simultaneous, that the suggestion of travel may be successfully produced. It may be pardonable to cite, in proof of the completeness of the illusion, an incident which conveys a convincing compliment to the art of the illustrated lecture. On the screen a picture of a village at sunset—a river flows at the spectators' feet—misty mountains rise in the distance—the calmness of approaching night seems to hover in the golden twilight. All this simply an effect produced by the projection of a colored photograph and the utterance of a few suggestive words. A woman in the audience looks and listens—and then unconscious of the humor of her words, murmurs to a companion, "Oh, if some one could only paint that!"

Therefore the author begs that all who read, will, at the same time, listen with the mental ear to catch the shade of meaning that should be conveyed by every phrase, and that they will endeavor to project the illustrations, through the lenses of imagination upon the screen of fancy, and thus re-magnify the mole-hills into mountains, re-tint the landscapes and the cities, and restore to the sunset-skies their wonted wealth of color.

In appearing before a new audience—the reading public—the author is cheered by the thought that it is an audience, not of strangers, but of friends, who, as readers in their easy chairs at home, will manifest toward him the same indulgence that they have shown as auditors in the orchestra stalls of theaters or the seats of lecture-halls.

The author gladly acknowledges his debt of gratitude to his auditors, who, by their support and sympathy, have made possible the years of travel which these volumes represent; and to his fellow-workers whose efforts have contributed in so large a measure to the success of his lectures, to Katharine Gordon Breed, who was the first to realize the possibilities of the art of coloring lantern slides; to Oscar Bennett Depue, who, with modesty and self-effacement, has devoted himself to the operating of the illustrating instruments and to the development of the art of motion-photography, and to Louis Francis Brown, who, with business ability and tact, has directed the public presentations of The Burton Holmes Lectures.

E. BURTON HOLMES.

New York, March 4, 1901. THE PLAYERS.

INTO MOROCCO

The transatlantic steamers, that every season bear so many of our fellow-countrymen from our own shores directly to the ports of Italy, pass, as all travelers know, through the Gibraltar Straits. Those who have sailed this course undoubtedly recall with a thrill of pleasure the morning when, after eight days upon the broad Atlantic, they waked to find on either hand the shores of a great continent,—the hills of Spain upon the north, and opposite, the grim forbidding mountains of Morocco.

They will recall, as well, those two gigantic rocky promontories which guard the western entrance to the Mediterranean,—those historic Pillars of Hercules called by the ancients Calpe and Abyla,—the rocks that for the men of that time marked the extreme western boundary of the known world.

For centuries Calpe and Abyla, sea-girt mountains torn asunder by some god of might, were looked upon as the very ends of the earth. Beyond them no man dared venture.

Calpe is now the famous fortress of Gibraltar, a bit of Spain held by the British Empire. Abyla, upon the shore of Africa, is now the penal colony Ceuta, a piece of Moorish territory, conquered and held by force of Spanish arms. At the bases of these two mighty cliffs the waters of two oceans mingle; for there the wide Atlantic, the waterway of the new world, touches the historic inland ocean, around the shores of which are grouped the nations that have ruled the world in ages past. The narrow channel that links the seas together serves also to separate two lands so widely dissimilar that nowhere in the world may the traveler, with so little effort, enjoy a greater shock of contrast than by crossing the Gibraltar Strait from Southern Spain to Tangier, in Morocco.

In the space of a few short hours he may there go back a thousand years; pass from to-day to a mysterious yesterday, strangely remote from us in life and thought. Within sight of the shores of Europe, within sight of the Spanish railway stations, within sound of the cannon of Gibraltar, he will find a land in which there are no roads of any sort, a people who still use in war the picturesque Arabian flintlock and the clumsy yataghan; he will find a remnant of the Middle Ages, so perfectly preserved by the peculiar embalming influence of the Mohammedan religion that the Morocco of to-day differs little from the Morocco of the year one thousand.

One of the most keenly relished moments of my life was the moment when that tiny patch of white, at first so like a drift of snow on the distant Moorish hills, finally resolved itself into a city of strange African aspect, and our ship dropped anchor in what the Moors are pleased to call the _harbor_ of Tangier. At last we are about to touch the shore of the strangest, most inaccessible, and most mysterious land that borders on the Mediterranean. Algeria and Tunis have been modernized by France; railways transport pilgrims to and from the Holy Sepulcher in Palestine; Egypt is but an Anglo-Saxon playground; Greece also has her roads of steel, her daily papers, and her parliament. But Morocco remains unique. Isolated from the world of to-day, and—thanks to that isolation—completely independent, the Empire of the Moorish Sultan has preserved the customs and traditions of its past, untouched by modern civilization, unchanged by European influence. The land is to-day as it was, and as it shall be—at least until it be conquered by the infidel, and the throne of the descendants of the Prophet be overthrown by the enemies of Allah.

Meantime, the contemporary devotees of Allah have taken cognizance of our arrival. Lighters are quickly manned, and we are treated to an excellent representation of the manner in which Christian ships were boarded and pillaged by Barbary pirates, in the day when the Corsairs ruled the sea, and all Christendom paid forced tribute to the Sultans, Deys, and Bashas of the Barbary States. A horde of turbaned porters and guides overrun the decks, seize indiscriminately all visible handbags, bundles, and boxes, and toss them, yelling madly all the while, into the boats which rise and fall alongside as the huge swells from the Atlantic glide swiftly underneath our ship. Emulating wise and pious Moslems, we decide to trust in Allah for the recovery of our belongings in due time; and, while the battle of the baggage rages, we turn our attention to a neighboring cattle-ship, where the embarkation of its bovine passengers is proceeding with much celerity and considerable discomfort to the unhappy creatures. The horns of each steer are bound with rope; a hook descends, is engaged in the loops; the donkey-engine snorts, and skyward go the astonished steers, two at a time, in attitudes painfully undignified. But painful as is this rise in beef, the worst is still to come. To land the animal in the proper place upon the deck, fearless Arabs seize his tail, and by a series of vigorous yanks and twists cause the suffering creature to alight with his nose pointed toward the pen in which he may leisurely readjust his elongated carcass, recover from his undisguised indignation, and console himself by watching the precipitate arrival of some other steer with whom he may have had unfriendly relations on the Moorish plains. Thus it is that hundreds of head of Moorish cattle begin their fatal voyage across the strait; for vast quantities of Moroccan beef go to feed the lean and hungry Spaniard, or to supply the brawn and muscle of Gibraltar's sturdy English garrison.

Having witnessed the acme of this cruelty, we observe with comparative unconcern the unceremonious manner in which the animals are persuaded to enter the lighters. A yelling band of Arabs and negroes boost and shove the resisting brute up the gangplank and tumble him head foremost into an already crowded boat, where he regains his feet as best he may. The thuds of falling bodies, the wild cries of the savage workers, continue until, the cargo complete, the craft puts off.

Looking around we find that we have neared the beach, above which rise the frowning walls of old Tangier. Formerly all passengers landed on the beach, and in rough weather the arrival of a tourist party was a diverting spectacle, the frightened passengers being carried from the tossing rowboats to the sandy beach upon the broad backs of native porters. These porters are invariably Jews, for we are given to understand that no self-respecting Moslem would bend his back to so vile a burden as the carcass of a "Christian dog." We almost regret the tameness of our own arrival, for, thanks to a comparatively calm sea, our boats are able to approach the little pier, and to land us without danger or discomfort save that occasioned by the pressing curiosity of the crowd assembled to watch the coming of the money-spending infidel.

The pier, by the way, represents the one harbor-improvement grudgingly executed by the Moors. The harbor of Tangier could be made most secure at small expense, but the Moors prefer not to tamper with it. "God made it so," they tell us; "we would not presume to alter the wise arrangements of the Almighty." They did not even attempt to repair the old breakwater built by the English years ago and blown up by them upon the close of the brief British occupation. The mention of a British occupation recalls a bit of history. Tangier was taken by the Portuguese in 1471. By them it was held until a Portuguese princess, Catarina of Braganza, went to England as the bride of Charles the Second. She brought to him a splendid dower, including two then unimportant pieces of real estate,—the island of Bombay in far-off India, and this city of Tangier at the Mediterranean's western gate. Strange indeed the fate of these two bits of real estate. Bombay, the hopeless, far-away possession, became in time the glorious Indian Empire. Tangier, with its unrivaled situation at one of the great doorways of the western world, was held for twenty years, and then, through sheer stupidity, abandoned to barbarism. It was returned by England to the Moors as a free gift; a transaction almost unique in Britain's history. But we must not forget that Gibraltar was not yet a cushion for the British lion's paw; had it been so, another paw would have rested firmly on this Moorish shore, insuring to England absolute control of the Gibraltar Strait.

But if the Anglo-Saxon armies long since relinquished this invaluable prize, the Anglo-Saxon tourist has made Tangier his own. Having passed the solemn Moors who sit at the water-gate at receipt of custom, we find ourselves in a trough-like passage above which rises that stronghold of the globe-trotter, the Continental Hotel. It appears like a huge grin upon the frowning face of the walled city; and its hospitable and cheery aspect contradicts the hostile impression produced by the cannon on the ramparts and the scowling looks of some of the inhabitants.

Let not the tourist be disappointed because a modern structure first obtrudes itself. Tangier is not the real Morocco; it is a Moslem seaport, defiled by contact with an infidel world.

The late Sultan of Morocco disowned the city. When last he came and beheld the changes wrought by foreigners, it is said that he exclaimed: "Allah confound these greedy Christians!—they have stolen from me my beautiful Tangier!"

The crowd we see near yonder doorway is gathered by a distribution of pennies to the poor,—an act of charity performed every week by the officials of the custom-house. How superbly important seems the white robed Moor charged with the graceful task of pressing into every outstretched dirty palm a shining Spanish copper worth about two cents, while his assistant keeps his eyes well open to detect repeaters. Every now and then there is a lively row, resulting from the detection of some clever unfortunate, who has changed rags with a fellow pauper, and has complacently applied for a second dose of governmental generosity. Utter poverty and black misery are depicted upon the rags and visages of the expectant throng—even the babies wear oldish, knowing expressions on their little faces. A strange feature is the curious little pigtail worn by the boys,—a pigtail growing all awry, sprouting, not from the crown, but from one side of the head. The pigtail is an agent of salvation; on it depends the hope of heaven; for we are told that at the day of judgment Allah is to lift the righteous faithful by their pigtails into paradise. Apropos of this statement and other statements heard in the course of our journey, it may be well to quote an Arab maxim: "Never believe all you hear; for he who believes all he hears often will believe that which is not." Another maxim from the same source contains excellent advice for the traveler, and much comfort for the lazy: "Do not do all that you can; for he who does all he can, often will do that which he should not." Another is a pearl of great price to the returned traveler especially: "Do not say all you know; for he who says all he knows often will say that which he knows not." There is yet a fourth gem of Arabian wisdom with a similar setting: "Do not spend all you have; for he who spends all he hath, often will spend that which he hath not."

The arrival in Tangier is unlike that in any other city in the world. Every native face is a type, every group a picture. We begin to love the dirt, the smells (not all bad ones, by any means, merely strange foreign smells suggestive of what is old and Oriental), and as we make our way into the perplexing maze of Tangier's weird little alleys, we seem to have taken a journey backward through the ages. Our sensations might be those of one suddenly transported from this familiar earth to a strange planet; and yet the hills of Spain are seen across the straits. A group of water-carriers earnestly discussing some important piece of news that probably will never be published to the Christian world, forms a picture almost Biblical in its antiquity. They are retailers of that precious beverage,—the beverage of all the worshipers of Allah,—the true gift of God, pure water. We can forgive the Moslem many things, because he never has been, and, so long as he clings to the religion of his fathers, never will be, a drunkard. The water-bags are goat-skins, the hind leg serving as a faucet; but although we are as thirsty as the African sun itself, we do not patronize these itinerant fountains; being newly come to Tangier, our squeamishness interferes with an indulgence in many little comforts; but what a surprising revolution will be worked by an expedition into Morocco! We shall return from the interior with adamantine sensibilities as regards such trifles. But to-day we are open to impressions of all kinds. So dazed are we by the strangeness of our surroundings that we have left no words with which to express our delight when, stepping out at last upon the balcony of our hotel, we look down upon Tangier, the "White City of the Straits." Below us is the beach, dotted with the rude camps of pilgrims who are awaiting ships for Mecca; above it are tiers of batteries; beyond we see a mass of white cubes, the dwelling-houses of the Moors. A dainty minaret, green-tiled and graceful, rises from this angular snow-bank; near it, the flags of foreign nations float above their respective consulates and legations. Strange indeed this mingling of the Occidental and the Oriental, beautiful indeed this city of Tangier, the sentinel city of Morocco, posted here at the corner of Africa to watch with jealous eyes for the coming of the inevitable conqueror who is to sally forth from the gates of Christendom, dimly discerned across the Gibraltar Channel. Of small account will be these batteries, furnished with antiquated cannon. These crippled dogs of war rend nothing more tangible than air, and damage nothing but ear-drums. And frequently is the air rent, and the ear assaulted, for the arrival of every man-of-war is greeted with a ferocious salvo of artillery, at sound of which the Moors gaze proudly seaward, expand their chests, recall the days when Moorish corsairs ruled the seas, and dream of future victories for the armies of the Prophet.

The sunshine in this land is wonderful; at seven in the morning it is so brilliant that we cannot bear the reflection from the chalky housetops, and recover the use of our eyesight only when in the dark and narrow corridors that serve the Tangerines in lieu of streets. The thoroughfare which every visitor must traverse when going from the hotel to the great or lesser market-places, is distinctly banal in aspect. It is the leading shopping street of the European residents; its shops are stuffed with canned provisions, patent-medicines, and playing-cards, while a saloon or two make known their presence, even to the blind, by strong gin-like aromas wafted thence. When lost in the labyrinthine maze of Moorish Tangier, the foreigner has but to follow his nose to reach the place where rum and brandy are on sale, and European civilization well in evidence. Then he may emerge into the lesser market-place, or "Soko," as it is called in local speech. Here he finds one tiny French cafe and the postal stations of England, Spain, and France; for as Morocco's postal-service is on a par with its other governmental enterprises, these nations each maintain post-offices in Tangier and an elaborate courier service in the interior. European mails now penetrate to Fez, even to Mequinez and Morocco City, with tolerable dispatch and certainty.

While we refresh ourselves at the cafe, we are amused by the ape-like antics of a negro from the far-away province of Suss. His wig of wool is hung with shells and teeth and nails, all of which clatter as he dances to the music of a pair of iron castanets.

But he cannot compare in picturesqueness with this other visitor—a superb representative of the saintly beggar class. So imposing a revelation of dignity in rags it is not possible to find among men of any other race or creed. We learn that this haughty mendicant is crazy; that in Morocco, insanity is the most valuable asset of those who desire to engage in what European residents irreverently term the "saint business." The Moors are convinced that if the mind of a man inhabit not his body, it is because God, having discerned in that mind much beauty of holiness, retains it in paradise as a thing too precious to be sent with the man to earth. Therefore great consideration should be shown for the mortal coil pertaining to that mind. Thus "crazy" has become a synonym for "sanctified," and an insane man has but to mumble prayers, and watch his saner fellow-citizens vie with one another in propitiating him with gifts and offerings. But sometimes this insanity is only feigned, and some of these weird characters are in reality agents of the militant Moslem brotherhoods of Tripoli and Tunis, charged with the spreading of a Mohammedan propaganda and the keeping alive of bitter anti-Christian agitation.