Part 4

The interview being over, we return to our residence to find our men indulging in their daily tipple—tea. Kaid Lharbi, sitting aloof as befits his higher rank, brews the tea, and serves it with much ceremony to the rest. Meantime Haj gives us some information regarding the Shareefs of Wazzan. The present saint is, he assures us, a very proper personage, but his late father who owed his title to a clever ruse, was a scandal to the holy name. When his immediate predecessor was upon his deathbed, his ministers implored him to designate which of his many children should succeed him. The old man answered: "In the garden you will find a child playing with my staff. Him shall ye consider the one chosen of God to become Shareef." At this, one of the negresses, a slave, slipped secretly from the room, and finding in the garden the favorite white child of the dying saint, snatched away from the little one the staff, and placed it in the hands of her own little boy, a jet-black imp, who also had the right to call the Shareef father. When the ministers appeared, they bowed low before the negro child, and upon him the mantel of impeccability descended; but whoever has gazed upon him as he appeared in later years will not wonder that the mantle of impeccability was not worn gracefully, and that it frequently slipped off. The charm of European life appealed too strongly to him. He forsook Wazzan, and built for himself a palace in Tangier, where he wined and dined the foreign diplomats, and ended by falling in love with an English governess. As to his liking for liquor, that sin was forgiven him, since wine cannot enter the mouth of a Shareef—it turns to water at the merest touch of saintly lips. As to his love-affair, that was more serious; for he married his English sweetheart, to the horror of his people and despite the protests of the woman's friends. The marriage was not performed, however, until he had been forced to sign a contract, abolishing his harem, and making her his wife in a Christian sense. Moreover, one clause provided that should he, "the party of the first part," in spite of all take to himself other wives in the future, a forfeit of twenty thousand dollars should be paid, per wife, to "the party of the second part." Alas, how many thousands of his great income went to balance this account, so rashly opened with his Christian spouse! After a brief spell of good behavior, the husband fell back into his old ways; marriages occurred with startling frequency, and, finally worn out by his excesses, the "holiest man in all Morocco," revered by Moslems from the east to the west of Islam, died from the effects of too frequently performing his favorite miracle—that of changing champagne and brandy into water by pouring them between his sacred lips.

The English wife of the wicked old Shareef bore him two sons, now young men. They have been educated abroad, speak English well, and are distinctly up to date. Yet when they travel in Morocco they wear the native dress, and their journey is like a triumphal progress; all the people worship them. I have seen large crowds in Tangier fighting only for the opportunity to kiss their garments as they rode through the market-place. Neither, however, became grand Shareef on their father's death, for he appointed Sidi Mohammed, his son by a Moorish wife, the man to whom we gave the Waterbury watch. The English widow lives a very secluded life near Oran, in Algeria, but she is loved and revered by the Moors; for while her influence endured, she went about doing good, relieving distress, bringing a little Anglo-Saxon light into the dark lives of her people.

And dark indeed must be the lives of the people in the villages near which we pitch our camp. Perhaps a woman would, with great vehemence, bid us begone, lamenting the desolation that will surely come to her village if the strangers camp under the protection of its chief. Her reason is that should we meet with loss from the attack of some wandering band of marauders, this village will be held responsible, and punishment for offenses committed against us will be visited upon those who, by the sacred laws of hospitality, are bound to protect us.

But disregarding prayers and threats we make ourselves at home; and finally the women, reconciled, come with their babies to beg for aid and medical advice. Every white man is supposed to possess the power to cure disease, and many were the pitiful appeals made to us for relief and help. We were asked to treat all kinds of maladies, but we discovered one unique and hitherto unknown ailment: "What is your trouble?" was asked of a man who came with sadness written on his face. "Oh!" he replied, "I cannot eat as much as I should like to." Poverty and ignorance are the common lot, yet flowers and babies grow in these Moorish villages.

We have now approached a portion of the Beni Hassan territory, a region inhabited by a tribe whose chief pursuit is robbery, whose supreme joy is murder; and the placing of a guard around the tent is no longer a mere formality. As yet, however, we have seen no roving bands; but next day as we file across the flower-spotted plain, we observe on the horizon a number of moving patches of bright color. With lightning-like rapidity, these flashes of color sweep toward us, each one resolving itself into a Moorish cavalier, well mounted, fully armed, and seemingly upon the lookout for adventure. These, then, are Beni Hassan men! What will they do to us and how shall we greet them? is our anxious thought, as they draw nearer, brandishing their rifles, shouting as they ride. The first brief moment of alarm is, however, quickly ended. The chief salutes us cordially; asks Haj whence we come, whither we are going; and then, desirous of showing honor to us (for foreign travelers are always looked upon as men of great distinction), he offers to perform for us a fantasia. The fantasia is an exhibition of Arabian horsemanship, a sort of glorified cavalry-charge, a spectacular manœuver, the favorite amusement of the Moorish cavalier, the exercise in which he takes most pleasure and most pride. It is called by him lab-el-baroud, "the powder play." A dozen cavaliers, each one a savage, long-haired son of Hassan, advance across the plain, their horses aligned, breast with breast. They twirl aloft their richly inlaid guns; then, putting their chargers to their fullest speed, the riders rise in the stirrups, seize the reins between their teeth, and sweep toward us in swift majesty. On go the horses at full gallop, still accurately in line. Faster and faster spin the guns above the riders' heads; now muskets are tossed high in air, and descending are caught by strong bronzed hands that never fail. On go the horses; then the men, still standing in the stirrups, their loose garments enveloping them like rapid-flying clouds, at a signal discharge a rousing volley, and under cover of the smoke check—almost instantaneously with the cruel bits—their panting horses, bloody-mouthed and deeply scarred and wounded by the spurs. This intensely thrilling and picturesque performance is rehearsed before us several times, the chief being proud of his little band of "rough riders."

The men disdainfully examine our English saddles, our horses with docked tails, and laugh at our tiny spurs, for their spurs are sharp spikes three or four inches long. They mockingly challenge us to join them in another fantasia, and to the amazement of the chief my friend accepts the challenge. The long muzzle-loading rifles are charged again, and the entire troop, with an American in its midst, slowly canters away. Facing about, the horsemen form in line and begin to twirl their guns on high. Having no rifle, the stranger draws and flourishes an American revolver. Then, suddenly, the horses leap away, and like a whirlwind the fantasia is upon us. The muskets are discharged; the revolver pops away, and then a mad race begins. Strange to say, the Tangier horse outruns the chargers of the plains, and we see the white helmet of the American flash past, one length in advance of the line of frenzied horsemen!

Chagrined at this defeat, the chief attempts to unseat the victor, charging directly at my friend, who, by a skillful movement, avoids a dangerous collision. Then, spurring after that boasting Beni Hassan tribesman, the American overtakes him, and throws an arm around his neck; and, as they dash on, locked in this embrace, my friend, with a voice that was trained in the Athletic Field at New Haven, shouts a rousing "Rah, Rah, Rah!—Yale!" into the ear of the astonished savage, and thus ends our adventure with the wild Beni Hassan band.

Reassured by the amusing outcome of this first encounter, we ride on toward our noonday halting-place. Our marches are so timed that at midday we may find ourselves near some patch of shade. Shade in Morocco is rare indeed, but as every tree and bush between Tangier and Fez is marked on Haj's mental map, we are usually assured of leafy shelter during our noonday rest. Throughout the burning hours from noon till three or four o'clock, we lie at full length amid the flowers, carefully following the shadows as they slowly creep around the trees. The animals, relieved of pack, though not of saddle, browse dreamily, or roll in ecstasy amid the fragrant grasses. Our men with Oriental resignation lunch frugally, sit and smoke in silence, or indulge in semi-slumber, with one eye open lest the mules escape. Then, after the sun's rays have lost a little of their torrid sting, we jog on once more in the comparative coolness of the afternoon across the Moorish prairies.

Space in Morocco is still a stern reality. The city Fez, to reach which we must travel thus during eleven days, could be reached by rail (were there a railway leading thither) in a half-dozen hours! Apropos of this, let me repeat a scrap of wayside conversation.

"Morocco is indeed a spacious country," said I one day to dignified Kaid Lharbi.

"It is the biggest country in the world," gravely replied the Kaid. Then gently I endeavored to disabuse his mind of this impression by telling of the vastness of the territory of the United States.

"But how long does it take to cross your country?" he inquired.

"We travel five days in fast trains to go from San Francisco to New York," I answered.

"Bah! that is nothing," rejoined our military escort with a sneer of triumph. "To go from Tafilet in the south to Tangier in the north, the fastest caravan must travel _forty days_. You see Morocco is the biggest country in the world!"

Nor can we blame him for his opinion, for the land looks boundless. The grand, free lines of the Moorish landscape are unbroken; no trees, no houses, no hedges, and no highways are there to spoil the composition of the picture drawn and painted by the master artist, Nature. The country, although fertile, is uncultivated. The horizon seems wider than in other lands. Apparently there is no end, no limit to the landscape. We know that beyond each range of hills there will be revealed a replica of this primeval picture. One scene like this will succeed another with scarce an interruption until the minarets of Fez shall cut their square majestic outlines against the southern sky.

Who can describe the floral beauty of these boundless prairies?—who except Pierre Loti? It was his dainty volume, "Au Maroc," that inspired me with a desire to follow him into Morocco. When I was reading his beautiful descriptions of the floral mosaic that covers both the plains and hillsides of the land, I could not easily accept as true the seemingly exaggerated assertions of the author; his glowing word-pictures of an "empire carpeted with flowers." Yet he spoke truly, and as I rode across these broad stretches of pure white, where marguerites in all their modest loveliness lie thick upon the greensward, I knew that I had seen it all before—seen it upon his printed page, as real, as beautifully vivid as it is to me to-day. To visit Morocco after reading Pierre Loti is like returning to a land that is familiar, to a land already seen, to a land the charm of which has been revealed in the magic pages of his poetic prose.

For miles and miles this bundle of narrow intersecting trails, the only Imperial Highway of the Sultan of Morocco, leads us on through a veritable garden—between interminable flower-beds. Our foreground is at times pure white, at others purple with a sea of iris flowers, at others scarlet with the blood of anemones, at others yellow with the golden glory of the buttercups and daisies. The mountain slopes and hillsides meanwhile reflect the many colors of the spectrum. It is as if some gorgeous rainbow, shattered in the Moorish heaven, had fallen upon the deserted hills and valleys of this savage, silent land. It is as if the divine Artist had resolved to make this wilderness the palette from which to take the colors for all future landscapes. It is as if the sunset of the day before was lingering here to meet the sunset of the morrow. It is as if Almighty Allah had selected the Empire of Moghreb for his sanctuary, and had spread out upon its sacred floor a prayer-rug of unutterable beauty, woven by the divine looms—a carpet of heavenly design to inspire man to fall upon his knees and pray.

This is our life during ten delightful, never-to-be-forgotten days. All day we journey southward, pausing at noon "midway twixt here and there;" at night we arrive, as my friend expressed it, at "nowhere in particular," and in the glow of the sunset we pitch our little camp. Then, when the evening fire is lighted, the encircling night grows blacker, the surrounding darkness becomes a protecting wall, and we feel almost secure. Our animals are hobbled in a row before the tent, each with a heap of fresh green grass or clover. They eat all night; and when we wake, startled by the cry of a jackal, or by a shout from one of the men on guard, we are sure to hear that music of nine munching mouths. It is our lullaby, and we fall asleep again to dream of Fez, the mysterious city which we shall enter on the morrow.

On the eleventh morning of our journey this semblance of a highway comes straggling from the south to meet us. The countless caravans, crawling toward the holy city, have created this illusion of a road—a road that will lead us in a few short hours to the gates of a great city, the fascination of which, for him who has the slightest love of romance in his soul, is irresistible. Fez is no banal, modernized, or tourist-ridden city, nor is it a mere heap of ugliness and ruin of which the only charm is a remoteness from the living world. Fez is a city that has been in its time one of the proudest and most splendid cities of the Moslem world. Its fall has been so gradual that there has been no change, nothing but a slow decay, so gentle that it has not scarred old Fez, but beautified it. Fez, like Venice, requires but a touch of the imagination, aided by the long shadows of the early morning, the mystery of twilight, or the silvery magic of the moonlight, to restore it to us as it stood in all its somber beauty eight hundred years ago.

Therefore do we most eagerly await the moment that will reveal to us this crumbling stronghold of a dying race, this beautiful but fragile shell of Moorish civilization,—a civilization that long ago ceased to progress, and, ceasing to progress, has thereby ceased to live.

FEZ

THE METROPOLIS OF THE MOORS

To modern minds the word "metropolis" suggests a city, great in extent, in the heart of a thickly populated country; a place of marvels and of wonderful contrivances; a place where commerce has worn mighty cañons between huge cliffs of masonry; a place toward which all roads converge; a place whence radiate interminable rails of steel, along which speed steaming monsters, annihilating space and bringing vast regions under the spell of urban supremacy; or else the suggestion is of a mighty seaport, to which the great ships of the deep bring men from far-off lands and cargoes from the far ends of the earth.

Metropolis, moreover, means a place where burn the beacon-lights of intelligence and culture; where the latest word of science is spoken; where every day a superstition dies; where seekers after truth come nearest to their goal. A metropolis is the essence of our New Century civilization,—the creation of an irresistible modern impulse, an entity that challenges our admiration and inspires us with awe.

But there is in this world a great city, the metropolis of a nation, which is not like the cities that we know.

In the midst of a fertile, smiling wilderness, it is a stranger to all things that are new; its commerce ebbs and flows through channels unknown to the world. At its gates are no railways and no carriage-roads, but it holds infrequent communication with a distant port by means of caravans of mules and camels, and of messengers who run on foot. Its culture is the culture of the Fifteenth Century, its science of still earlier date; and truth there is yet hid by clouds of superstition. This city is the essence of the Middle Ages; it is the heart of a nation that was mummified eight hundred years ago by the religion of Mohammed. This city is called Fez; the land of which it is the capital is Morocco.

The first glimpse of Fez is an event in the life of a traveler. Then, if ever, will be experienced one of those delicious little thrills that make their way down the spinal column of a man when he realizes that he has accomplished something of which he has long been dreaming. And when we, who have long been dreaming of a visit to the Moor's metropolis, actually behold it, though it first appears as only a faint line of walls and towers, almost undiscernible through the rough sea of heated air-waves that surge between us and the city, now that Fez at last has risen from this endless plain over which we have been toiling southward for eleven days, we feel that we must draw rein, and for a few minutes indulge in the enjoyment of that creeping thrill. There are so few of them in life; the traveler who can remember twenty of these delicious moments in as many years is fortunate above his kind!

Happy in the assurance that a new and thoroughly uncommon experience is opening before us, we ride rapidly on. Leaving our baggage caravan far in the rear, and halting at a respectful distance from the walls, we snatch a hasty luncheon before entering the gates of Fez; and this luncheon is the last incident of our delightful journey into Morocco. We have been eleven long days in the saddle. We recall the departure from Tangier, the nights in camp near Berber villages, the passing glimpse of the city of Alcazar-el-Kebir, and the visit to Morocco's greatest saint, the Shareef of Wazzan; nor can we forget the great sun-flooded land, bright with the colors of a million-million flowers, across which our little caravan has struggled at a snail-like pace, crawling scarce twenty miles between the rising and the setting of the sun.

Still with us are the Faithful Five—the five men who formed our escort, the men to whom we looked for comfort, willing service, and protection. There is Kaid Lharbi, the military guard, under his broad-brimmed hat; and as for the dragoman-in-chief, who can forget the smiling face of Haj Abd-er-Rahman? A marvel of tact and cleverness was "Haj," but though he has successfully piloted our fleet of mules and horses, with their cargoes of tents, furniture, provisions, cameras, and presents, across trackless expanses where the only law is the Law of Might, he may well assume an anxious expression as we approach the gates of Fez; for there his task will be even more difficult. Instead of the lawless, but simple-minded, easily-won people of the plains, he will now have to deal with city men, men of strong anti-Christian prejudices, with the proud, ignorant, fanatical, and cunning population of this untaken stronghold of Mohammed's faith. We shall be met at every turn by a polite resistance, and although our letters, obtained in Tangier from the Moorish Minister of Foreign Affairs, assure us official protection, we shall be given to understand that we are not welcome visitors, and that our sojourn must be made as short as possible.

The surroundings are so smiling and peaceful that we can scarcely realize that yonder city is one of the most fanatical, one of the most rigidly opposed to foreign intrusion of any in the world. Our first impression is that Fez lies on a level plain; but we find this is not true, for it is spread out on the slopes of an irregular valley. Another view than our first will tell us more of the situation of the place. I must confess, however, that although my bump of locality is fairly well developed, I found the situation of Fez most difficult clearly to understand, and it was only after repeated excursions to the surrounding eminences that I was able to map out mentally the various quarters of the town. That there are two great divisions, each almost independent of the other, we very soon discover.

First, there is the Imperial and official quarter, where the palaces and gardens of the Sultan and the buildings of the government are scattered over uncounted acres of high-walled areas. In native speech, this quarter is called Fass-el-Djedid; that is, "Fez, the new," for it is new when measured by the age of Fass-Bali, or Old Fez, which soon reveals itself to us, lying in a hollow to the left of Fass-el-Djedid. This is the _medina_, or city proper, wherein are situated the most sacred mosques, the busiest bazaars, the dwellings of the poorer classes, and the modest Vice-Consulates of only two or three European nations. Between the animated Medina,—a mass of closely packed cubes of white, appearing when viewed from a distance like a saucer filled with sugar lumps,—and the spacious, stately governmental quarter, lies what is called the garden region.