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nificance of that undecorative apparition. Then indeed you understand that Tangier is not Morocco at all, that it is an excrescence on the country, a lodgment of the European bacillus, a Moorish city where the European, if he does not rule, at least prevents the Moor from ruling, where a compromise between two civilizations is arrived at by accepting the vices of both.

Of course even in Tangier Moorish life exists unaffected by the influence of the stranger; but the stranger in a general way will not see it. Moorish homes are closed against him, the mosques are inaccessible; there remains only the market-place, which he does see, and the cafés, which he does not. Your guide will undoubtedly take you to a place where Moorish musicians play and sing, where you may see well-dressed Moors smoking and playing cards. But these Moors are generally professional guides; there are seats specially provided for the European; for his edification the walls are covered with a glare of tawdry decoration, and to him the band look for payment, after they have finished the wild tune which quickens strident strings and clashing cymbals to a savage whirl of battle fury,-the tune to which the Moors conquered Spain. A strange irony, is it not? Yet every genuine Moor, though he may come begging to you for pence in exchange for some trivial service, believes implicity that the proper place for his foot is on the neck of the European.

The real thing can of course be seen easily enough, but the ordinary guide will not take you to see it, nor does the ordinary resident go to the really Moorish cafés. The reason is sufficiently simple; one goes at the risk of a certain most unromantic affliction. But the friend under whose auspices I went to Morocco (commended by him to the Moorish gentleman who had been his companion during several

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years of residence and travel up and down the country) told me that it was worth while to take the risk, though he himself had expended large sums on the admirable Keating. I followed his advice (with tolerable impunity too); and though I have pleasant memories of rides about Tangier, of bargaining in little shops, and of watching the ever-changing pageant of the marketplace and the streets, what I really saw of Morocco in Tangier I saw in this

manner.

It is the usage of the hillmen when they come to Tangier to gather in a café kept by some man of their own clan; near my hotel on the marketplace was a row of these cafés, and the owner of one had served my friend. Here I used to spend hours with my guide, a shereef belonging to the same clan; and here one saw no trace of the European. The accommodation was of the simplest. Against the wall of a stable-yard were built party-walls, dividing the space, so that each café when roofed over made a single long room perhaps twenty-five feet by twelve. This was carpeted with matting, and at the entrance sackcloth was thrown down, on which shoes bad to be left. To the right of the door was a large barrel of water; in the corner, to the left, the charcoal fire, set high up in a stove, over which tea and coffee were always preparing, cup by cup. A couple of stools and boxes stood by the water-tank, and here I used to sit; the Moors squatted cross-legged on the floor, and of an evening they would be close as sardines in a tin. The whole picture was in tones of brown, for all these countrymen wore the jelab, or cloak, of brown sackcloth, sometimes tagged here and there with red and green, and though a few might be turbaned, the generality wore round their heads either a rope of camel's hair, or the brown cloth rifle-case. A goodly show of rifles hung on the walls, for

guns, though carried in the marketplace, were not, as a rule, taken into the town. But once I saw the goodhumored host, Abd-el-Kerim, rise and depart, and before he set out sling a large cutlass about him. "I suppose." said the shereef, in answer to my question, "he has an enemy." No one else took the least notice.

Once, as I sat there, a company of people came in, all robed in white, with hoods pulled over their heads; the leader, a man of about thirty, began rapidly, but with impressive utterance, to declaim a form of words, and it came with a sort of shock to me to hear the youths who followed 'him Ichime in at the close, amen. While he went through a series of these prayers, punctuated with the amens close and sharp as volley-firing, the shereef explained to me that this was a scribe with pupils training to be scribes; that they left their college and went on tour for a while, asking alms from town to town in order to provide for the great festivity with which their holiday opened. When the prayers ended, one of the pupils went through the company collecting pence, and as he went past I gave my contribution to the shereef to offer. But the scribe stopped short, looked a little confused, and said hurriedly (so the shereef interpreted) that he offered prayers for money and that he could not offer prayers for an infidel. However, when we explained that it was the gift of a scribe to a scribe and that I was willing to forego my part in the prayers, he bowed and smiled courteously, and with his pupils vanished into the night, to resume his collections elsewhere.

Such small traits of usage can be seen in a hundred places in Tangier. I did not stray beyond Abd-el-Kerim's fold, partly because of my liking for his genial welcome, partly because of a belief that the less one moves about in a country, where all is strange, the

more one sees. But the place in which I really feel that I saw something of Moorish life was the little port of Laraiche, some fifty miles from Tangier, where I was detained by foul weather for a matter of ten days. There were Europeans here, about one in a thousand of the population, but one hardly saw them; they managed nothing except the steamer traffic. Doubtless the rules which governed the town could be suspended or evaded for their benefit, but not always. The gates of Laraiche, for example, shut at sundown, after that the ordinary person could not enter or go out, and travellers, camped in the market-place outside, had to complete their purchases in good time. Once, moreover, after a ride in the surrounding country, I found the town shut against me not long after noon; and my shereef explained that it was a Friday, the Moorish Sunday, and the hour of prayer. Long ago in Andalusia, Spaniards had fallen on a town and surprised it, while the whole body of believers were at their devotions; since then it was the usage to bar out all comers during that sacred hour. All this discipline of life, normal everywhere else in Morocco, is not found in Tangier.

Nor was this the only curtailment of liberty. At half-past eight a gun was fired, and after it no one was entitled to walk the streets. I am bound to say that my shereef disregarded the rule, but he was, to begin with, a shereef, and, to go on with, a Russian subject; it is the extraordinary practice of European nations in Morocco to issue protections to favored Moors, enabling these citizens to defy their own Government. Moreover, he was acquainted with the authorities, as I found when we went to view the prison,-which again marked the contrast between Morocco and Tangier. For at Tangier everybody goes as a matter of course to see the gaols, where prisoners stick

their heads through a wicket and accost you volubly (I noted with interest that every inmate of the town-gaol was a fluent speaker of English), and where the gaoler is an oily impertinent ruffian, with a hand indecently itching for tips. Here at Laraiche the prison was an edifice of some dignity; a strong place, it guarded the more important captives, kaids and other high officials in disgrace, and no communication was permitted. Outside it, in a sort of guardhouse at the entrance, on a cushioned seat, reclined an elderly but very handsome Moor, faultlessly arrayed in dark blue and white. This was no less a person than the Khalifa, and the shereef presented me. I expressed my thanks for civilities which we had received, and my admiration for his town; and we parted as we had met with a long hand-clasp, suggestive of a masonic grip. His hands, I noticed, were cared for like a woman's, plump and well-shaped. Many times after that I thought of the Scriptural phrase of greetings in the market-place; for I would meet the Khalifa often in my strolling through the town, and though I had no more words than salaamah, nor he than addio, we always met as friends, and I could see glances and gestures among the bystanders which made me feel my social position heightened.

The market-place within the walls struck me as more beautiful architecturally than anything in Tangier. It had indeed none of the richness in ornament which make the great gateways to the mosques so exquisite in the more flourishing towns; that minute chiselling is a marvel of workmanship. I saw in Tangier an artist or artisan at work on a wall, cutting the plaster into the likeness of a honeycomb; the cells were chiselled two or three inches deep, and slanted upwards so that the eye pierced into the depth of shadow. But although at Laraiche there was no sin

gle splendor, the total effect was excellent; for this oblong enclosure, perhaps a hundred yards in length, was irregular in its lines; the two colonnades, with their rows of shops inside (Jews in the western, Moors in the eastern arcade), were charmingly proportioned, and it seemed to me an added beauty that the arcades were not parallel, but as you looked towards the gate of the citadel, they inclined towards each other. And in the far distance, near the gate, one perceived another tiny arcade in which on warm days the Khalifa sat in judgment. The front of the citadel was of fine red brick, decorated with the commonest and most effective of Moorish devices for a frieze, crescent-shaped tiles set with the points alternately upwards and downwards, and overlapping so that two points met in the arc of each crescent. The color of the tiles is always a dark green, which after some exposure in the sun takes a flecked gloss, like snake-skin. The same color is always used to paint the heavy doors, splendidly patterned with heavy iron studs, which are a beautiful feature of Moorish streets, though nothing could more emphasize the exclusiveness of a Moorish interior.

And indeed, if the stricter sect had their way, it is not only from the houses that the European would be shut out. We spent our first night camped uncomfortably in the dirty market-place outside the walls; next day, by the Khalifa's invitation, we moved in and camped on the great Portuguese-built wall. Here we had been lodged a day or two, when one evening the shereef, returning with me, was stopped by a tall white-robed figure. In a few minutes he joined me explaining that this was the “holy man" of the town, who had come to express his displeasure at finding an infidel camped "on the wall of the holy fort." "But," added the shereef, "he

But my

says for my sake he will forgive you," not out of any personal kindness, let it be understood, but as a sign of the respect due from one descendant of Muley Idris to another. Two or three days later we entered the café which my shereef frequented, the usual bare, carpeted room, with the tiny stove in one corner. Between this and the door giving on to the street stood a small table filling the whole wall (for the room lay parallel to the street), and on this table was the place of honor. It could hold three men at a pinch, and it held them now. One was a friend of ours, the captain of a lighter in the harbor, a shereef, and more than that, a hadji, one who had made the journey to Mecca. friend Hadj Abdssalam had made another journey,-to London, no less, and had stayed there three months while his ship was discharging cargo and reloading; he had acquired a few phrases of English and much London experience, and it delighted him to air both. A pleasanter, honester countenance than that of this Moorish sailor I have never seen. Ruddy rather than swarthy, he might have passed readily for a Biscayan, and cheerful good-humor beamed from every line of his bearded face. With him, as with so many Moors, the beard, never shaved, grew fine and silky, its short growth following and not concealing the lines from ear to chin. His clear blue eyes and tanned face spoke of the prime of condition: he had indeed the name of one of Laraiche's best seamen; but there was nothing hard or bony about his healthy vigor.

Very different was the man who sat on his right in the place of honor next the stove. Hadj Abdssalam was curled up, snug as a dormouse; his neighbor sat erect and stiff, even in the loose folds of his white burnous. His complexion dark and bilious, his beard black and stiff, his eyes unsmiling, his

eyebrows raised and peaked, his cheekbones accentuated, all spoke the religious enthusiast; and this was indeed the holy man. My shereef greeted him, but when the greeting was received in silence, continued his conversation with yet another shereef, a common sailor, but receiving respect and precedence like the others. I leaned with my elbow on the table, chatting with much friendship but much difficulty to Hadj Abdssalam, when suddenly the saint, without moving, began to speak in a loud, harsh, resonant voice; then, still continuing to declaim, he stretched out a bony hand and pointed it at me like a pistol.

People laughed through the room, Hadj Abdssalam chuckled quietly, and I asked my shereef what the saint was saying. "He says you belong to the fellowship of devils," was the version I got; but it must have been a scanty rendering, for the enthusiast spoke on, louder and louder, with brief pauses. His spittle ran on to his beard, his outstretched hand quivered as if in epilepsy; then suddenly he brought out from beside him a big ashen staff, and propping his two hands upon it repeated twice a word which I knew the meaning of, “baráka, baráka (enough, it is enough)." Evidently he did not mean that his discourse sufficed, for he went off again at score, and the shereef told me in undertones that he was heaping reproaches on the Sultan for leaning so much on Europeans. I asked my interpreter to say that the Sultan was young and would learn better, but I was told that it "was not good to talk politics." To talk politics in public you must be privileged, and the privileges of a holy man in this matter are unlimited. For a good quarter of an hour he declaimed fiercely, always with his finger like a pistol-barrel at my head, against the new ways that had come into Morocco, against the Sultan, and against the Shereef of

Wazzan, who in his judgment had begun all the mischief. For this shereef, the richest and most influential in Morocco, married an Englishwoman, and then procured protection as a French subject.

It was as curious a display of fanatic oratory as one could see, and my interest in it was heightened by the ashen staff so near my head. But the assemblage, though they listened, changed nothing of their friendly aspect, and to my surprise, punctuated the discourse with laughter. Often when I asked for a translation my shereef would answer: "It is difficult to understand; he speaks what comes to his mouth." He declaimed, in fact, the riddling language of prophecy.

I found afterwards that without an audience he was less declamatory and less fierce. We came in one morning when he had the café to himself, and after some reluctance he was drawn into conversation, and interested himself in my movements so much that when my shereef took the cup of tea which he had ordered, the holy man stopped him. "Drink coffee," he said, "so the bar will become good for you." We substituted coffee at his bidding: I may add that the tea was not wasted, for the holy man drank it, in addition to the cup which we had already provided. On no occasion did he show any unwillingness to smoke the unbeliever's cigarettes. But on this day he became positively friendly, invited me to become a dweller in Laraiche, and upon explanation that my most urgent desire was to get out of it, he undertook to go down and "shout" to the bar for me.

The bar is the governing future of the life of Laraiche. With a good bar steamers lie off, and the big lighters, with their fifteen oars a-side, ply busily; the wharf is a scene of bustle, with sweating porters carrying bales and loading them on to mules, while placid

officials sit statuesque in their draperies, ticking off items in an incongruously European note-book. With a bad bar the sea is vacant for days (for the coast is harborless) except where there is some hope that the surf may abate; then perhaps steamers come down and wait forlornly, anxious to discharge their wares; but the captain of the port forbids any to attempt going out, and the Moorish boatmen acquiesce in great contentment. I was kept a prisoner long enough to realize how the conditions fell in with Moorish fatalism. No one could judge securely of the bar; only Allah knew; for indeed its motions depended on the weather in the North Atlantic and showed often only the recoil after unfelt storms. But since Allah knew, no one cared to grumble except the two or three Europeans whose movements were thus obscurely impeded. And we sat and cursed at the roaring surf and resented the existence of a Government which would not dredge a channel to keep the port open.

The Moor, however, is free from all this itch of impatience. He desires no changes. Just as he has devised a costume which suits him and remains constant to it through the centuries, exempt from fashion, so he has the kind of country that he desires, and leaves it as it is. If he is not content with the administration of justice, he steers clear of it so far as he can, and makes a proverb: "Beware of fire, water, and the Government." If he finds travel difficult, he does not seek to build roads, he makes a proverb: "If wealth is to come, why go to seek it?"-since in any case Allah decides whether you shall be rich or poor. The one thing that will rouse him to activity is the fear of radical change,—that is, the fear of the European. When I was at Laraiche, two bronze lions stood on the wharf, consigned from England to the Sultan, and they were

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