S.L. Bensusan - Morocco

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Here the village folk were able to keep themselves posted in the country's
contemporary history, for traders had come from all points of the compass,
and had met men at other markets who, in their turn, brought news from
places still more remote. Consequently you might learn in Hanchen's
Tuesday market what the Sultan was doing in Fez, and how the Rogui was
occupied in Er-Riff. French penetration in the far-off districts of no
man's land beyond Tafilalt was well-known to these travelling market-folk;
the Saharowi had spoken with the heads of a caravan that had come with
slaves from Ghadames, by way of the Tuat, bound for Marrakesh. Resting by
day and travelling by night, they had passed without challenge through the
French lines. A visitor knowing Arabic and Shilha, and able to discount
the stories properly, might have had a faithful picture of Morocco as its
own people see it, had he been admitted to join the weather-worn, hardy
traders who sat complacently eyeing their diminished store towards the
close of day. Truth is nowhere highly esteemed in Morocco,[52] and the
colouring superimposed upon most stories must have destroyed their
original hue, but it served to please the Moors and Berbers who, like the
men of other countries one knows, have small use for unadorned facts.
Perhaps the troubles that were reported from every side of the doomed
country accounted for the professional story-teller's thin audience. By
the side of tales that had some connection with fact the salt of his
legends lost its savour.

[Illustration: IN CAMP]

Towards evening the crowd melted away silently, as it had come. A few
mules passed along the road to Mogador, the Bedouin and his company moved
off in the direction of Saffi, and the greater part of the traders turned
south-east to M'touga, where there was a Thursday market that could be
reached in comfort. Hanchen retired within its boundaries, rich in the
proceeds of the sale of fodder, which had been in great demand throughout
the day. Small companies of boys roamed over the market-place, seeking to
snap up any trifles that had been left behind, just as English boys will
at the Crystal Palace or Alexandra Park, after a firework display. The
Moorish youngsters had even less luck than their English brethren, for in
Morocco, where life is simple and men need and have little, everything has
its use, and a native throws nothing away. The dogs, eager to forestall
the vultures, were still fighting among themselves for the offal left
by the butcher, when the villagers, who had come to take a late cup of tea
with Salam and M'Barak, resumed their slippers, testified to the Unity of
Allah, and turned to ascend Hanchen's steep hill.

Among the stories circulated in the Tuesday market was one to the effect
that a lion had come down from the Atlas, and after taking toll of the
cattle belonging to the douars on its road, had been shot at the western
end of the forest. This tale was told with so much circumstance that it
seemed worth inquiry, and I found in Mogador that a great beast had indeed
come from the hills and wrought considerable harm; but it was a leopard,
not a lion. It may be doubted whether lions are to be found anywhere north
of the Atlas to-day, though they were common enough in times past, and one
is said to have been shot close to Tangier in the middle of last century.
If they still exist it is in the farthest Atlas range, in the country of
the Beni M'gild, a district that cannot be approached from the west at
all, and in far lands beyond, that have been placed under observation
lately by the advance-columns of the French Algerian army, which does not
suffer from scruples where its neighbour's landmarks are concerned. Most
of the old writers gave the title of lion or tiger to leopards, panthers,
and lemurs; indeed, the error flourishes to-day.

[Illustration: A COUNTRYMAN]

On the road once again, I found myself wondering at the way in which
British sportsmen have neglected the Argan Forest. If they had to reach it
as we did, after long days and nights in a country that affords little
attraction for sportsmen, it would be no matter for wonder that they stay
away. But the outskirts of the forest can be reached from Mogador at the
expense of a five-mile ride across the miniature Sahara that cuts off Sidi
M'godol's city from the fertile lands, and Mogador has a weekly service of
steamers coming direct from London by way of the other Moorish ports. No
part of the forest is preserved, gun licenses are unknown, and the woods
teem with game. Stories about the ouadad or moufflon may be disregarded,
for this animal is only found in the passes of the Atlas Mountains, miles
beyond the forest's boundaries. But, on the other hand, the wild boar is
plentiful, while lynx, porcupine, hyaena, jackal, and hare are by no means
rare. Sand-grouse and partridge thrive in large quantities. There are
parts of the forest that recall the Highlands of Scotland, though the
vegetation is richer than any that Scotland can show, and in these places,
unknown save to a very few, the streams are full of trout, and the otter
may be hunted along the banks. The small quantity and poor quality of
native guns may be held to account for the continual presence of birds and
beasts in a part of the world that may not fairly be deemed remote, and
where, save in times of stress, a sportsman who will treat the natives
with courtesy and consideration may be sure of a hearty welcome and all
the assistance he deserves. Withal, no man who has once enjoyed a few days
in the Argan Forest can sincerely regret Europe's neglect of it: human
nature is not unselfish enough for that.

The ride through the last part of the forest was uneventful. Argan,
kharob, and lotus, with the help of a few of the "arar" or gum sandarac
trees, shut off the view to the right and left. Below them dwarf-palm,
aloe, cactus, and sweet broom made a dense undergrowth, and where the
woodland opened suddenly the ground was aflame with flowers that recalled
England as clearly as the cuckoo's note. Pimpernel, convolvulus,
mignonette, marigold, and pansy were English enough, and in addition to
these the ox-daisies of our meadows were almost as common here. Many
companies of the true Bedouins passed us on the road, heralded by great
flocks of sheep and goats, the sheep pausing to eat the tops of the
dwarf-palms, the goats to climb the low-lying argan trees, while their
owners stayed to ask about the water supply and the state of the country
beyond.

Though we might consider ourselves far removed from civilisation, these
Bedouins felt that they were all too near it. The change from their desert
land, with its few and far-scattered oases, to this country where there
was a douar at the end of every day's journey, was like a change from the
country to the town. They could not view without concern a part of the
world in which men wore several garments, ate bread and vegetables, and
slept under cover in a walled village, and one wild fellow, who carried a
very old flint-lock musket, lamented the drought that had forced them from
their homes to a place so full of men. So far as I was able to observe the
matter, the Berber muleteers of El Arbi bel Hadj ben Haidah looked with
great scorn upon these Bedouins, and their contempt was reciprocated. In
the eyes of the Berbers these men were outcasts and "eaters of sand," and
in the eyes of the Bedouins the muleteers were puling, town-bred slaves,
who dared not say their right hands were their own.

Perhaps the difficulty in the way of a proper understanding was largely
physical. The Berbers believe they came to Morocco from Canaan, forced out
of Palestine by the movement of the Jews under Joshua. They settled in the
mountains of the "Far West," and have never been absorbed or driven out by
their Arab conquerors. Strong, sturdy, temperate men, devoid of
imagination, and of the impulse to create or develop an artistic side to
their lives, they can have nothing in common with the slenderly built,
far-seeing Arab of the plains, who dreams dreams and sees visions all the
days of his life. Between Salam and the Bedouins, on the other hand, good
feeling came naturally. The poor travellers, whose worldly wealth was ever
in their sight--a camel or two, a tent with scanty furniture, and a few
goats and sheep--had all the unexplored places of the world to wander in,
and all the heavens for their canopy. That is the life the Arabs love, and
it had tempted Salam many hundreds of miles from his native place, the
sacred city of Sheshawan, on the border of Er-Riff. The wandering instinct
is never very far from any of us who have once passed east of Suez, and
learned that the highest end and aim of life is not to live in a town,
however large and ugly, and suffer without complaining the inevitable
visits of the tax collector.

Our tent was set for the night in a valley that we reached by a path
half-buried in undergrowth and known only to the head muleteer. It was a
spot far removed from the beaten tracks of the travellers. In times past a
great southern kaid had set his summer-house there: its skeleton, changed
from grey to pink in the rosy light of sun-setting, stood before us, just
across a tiny stream fringed by rushes, willows, and oleanders. When the
Court Elevated by Allah left Marrakesh for the north some years ago, the
sorely-tried natives had risen against their master, they had captured and
plundered his house, and he had been fortunate in getting away with a
whole skin. Thereafter the tribesmen had fought among themselves for the
spoils of war, the division of the china and cutlery accounting for
several deaths. All the land round our little camp had been a garden, a
place famous for roses and jessamine, verbena and the geraniums that grow
in bushes, together with countless other flowers, that make the garden of
Sunset Land suggest to Moors the beauties of the paradise that is to come.
Now the flowers that had been so carefully tended ran wild, the boar
rooted among them, and the porcupine made a home in their shade. As
evening closed in, the wreck of the great house became vague and shadowy,
a thing without outline, the wraith of the home that had been. Grey owls
and spectral bats sailed or fluttered from the walls. They might have been
past owners or servitors who had suffered metamorphosis. The sight set me
thinking of the mutual suspicions of the Bedouins and the Susi traders,
the raiding of Sidi el Muktar, the other signs of tribal fighting that had
been apparent on the road, the persecution of the Moor by his protected
fellow-subjects,--in short, the whole failure of the administration to
which the ruin that stood before me seemed to give fitting expression.
This house had not stood, and, after all, I thought Morocco was but a
house divided against itself.

[Illustration: MOONLIGHT]

In the face of all the difficulties and dangers that beset the state, the
Sultan's subjects are concerned only with their own private animosities.
Berber cannot unite with Moor, village still wars against village, each
province is as a separate kingdom, so far as the adjacent province is
concerned. As of old, the kaids are concerned only with filling their
pockets; the villagers, when not fighting, are equally engrossed in saving
some small portion of their earnings and taking advantage of the inability
of the central Government to collect taxes. They all know that the land is
in confusion, that the Europeans at the Court are intriguing against its
independence. In camp and market-place men spread the news of the French
advance from the East. Yet if the forces of the country could be
organised,--if every official would but respond to the needs of the
Government and the people unite under their masters,--Morocco might still
hold Europe at bay, to the extent at least of making its subjection too
costly and difficult a task for any European Government to undertake.
If Morocco could but find its Abd el Kadr, the day of its partition
might even yet be postponed indefinitely. But next year, or the next--who
shall say?

My journey was well nigh over. I had leisure now to recall all seen and
heard in the past few weeks and contrast it with the mental notes I had
made on the occasion of previous visits. And the truth was forced upon me
that Morocco was nearer the brink of dissolution than it had ever
been--that instability was the dominant note of social and political life.
I recalled my glimpses of the Arabs who live in Algeria and Tunisia, and
even Egypt under European rule, and thought of the servility and
dependence of the lower classes and the gross, unintelligent lives of the
rest. Morocco alone had held out against Europe, aided, to be sure, by the
accident of her position at the corner of the Mediterranean where no one
European Power could permit another to secure permanent foothold. And with
the change, all the picturesque quality of life would go from the Moghreb,
and the kingdom founded by Mulai Idrees a thousand years ago would become
as vulgar as Algeria itself.

There is something very solemn about the passing of a great kingdom--and
Morocco has been renowned throughout Europe. It has preserved for us the
essence of the life recorded in the Pentateuch; it has lived in the light
of its own faith and enforced respect for its prejudices upon one and all.
In days when men overrun every square mile of territory in the sacred name
of progress, and the company promoter in London, Paris, or Berlin
acquires wealth he cannot estimate by juggling with mineralised land he
has never seen, Morocco has remained intact, and though her soil teems
with evidences of mineral wealth, no man dares disturb it. There is
something very fascinating about this defiance of all that the great
Powers of the world hold most dear.

One could not help remembering, too, the charm and courtesy, the simple
faith and chivalrous life, of the many who would be swallowed up in the
relentless maw of European progress, deliberately degraded, turned
literally or morally into hewers of wood and drawers of
water--misunderstood, made miserable and discontented. And to serve what
end? Only that the political and financial ambitions of a restless
generation might be gratified--that none might be able to say, "A weak
race has been allowed to follow its path in peace."

Salam disturbed my meditations.

"Everything shut up, sir," he said. "I think you have forgot: to-morrow we
go early to hunt the wild boar, sir."

So I left Morocco to look after its own business and turned in.

FOOTNOTES:

[51] Sidi is a Moorish title, and means "my Lord."

[52] It is related of one Sultan that when a "Bashador" remonstrated with
him for not fulfilling a contract, he replied, "Am I then a Nazarene, that
I should be bound by my word?"

TO THE GATE OF THE PICTURE CITY

[Illustration: A MOORISH GIRL]

CHAPTER XII

TO THE GATE OF THE PICTURE CITY

Is it Pan's breath, fierce in the tremulous maiden-hair,
That bids fear creep as a snake through the woodlands, felt
In the leaves that it stirs not yet, in the mute bright air,
In the stress of the sun?

_A Nympholept._

By the time the little camp was astir and the charcoal fires had done
their duty to eggs, coffee, and porridge, Pepe Ratto, accompanied by two
of his Berber trackers, rode into the valley, and dismounted on the level
ground where our tent was pitched. At first sight the sportsman stood
revealed in our welcome visitor. The man whose name will be handed down to
future generations in the annals of Morocco's sport would attract
attention anywhere. Tall, straight, sunburnt, grizzled, with keen grey
eyes and an alert expression, suggesting the easy and instantaneous change
from thought to action, Pepe Ratto is in every inch of him a sportsman.
Knowing South Morocco as few Europeans know it, and having an acquaintance
with the forest that is scarcely exceeded by either Moor or Berber, he
gives as much of his life as he can spare to the pursuit of the boar, and
he had ridden out with his hunters this morning from his forest home, the
Palm Tree House, to meet us before we left the Argans behind, so that we
might turn awhile on the track of a "solitaire" tusker.

So the mules were left to enjoy an unexpected rest while their owners
enjoyed an uninterrupted breakfast, and the kaid was given ample time in
which to groom his horse and prepare it and himself for sufficiently
imposing entrance into the Picture City[53] that evening. Salam was
instructed to pack tents and boxes at his leisure, before he took one of
my sporting guns and went to pursue fur and feather in parts of the forest
immediately adjacent to the camp. A straight shot and a keen sportsman, I
knew that Salam would not bother about the hares that might cross his
path, or birds that rose in sudden flight away from it. His is the Moorish
method of shooting, and he is wont to stalk his quarry and fire before it
rises. I protested once that this procedure was unsportsmanlike.

"Yes, sir," he replied simply. "If I wait for bird to fly may be I miss
him, an' waste cartridge."

[Illustration: A NARROW STREET IN MOGADOR]

This argument was, of course, unanswerable. He would follow birds slowly
and deliberately, taking advantage of wind and cover, patient in pursuit
and deadly in aim. Our points of view were different. I shot for sport,
and he, and all Moors, for the bag. In this I felt he was my superior.
But, barring storks, all creatures were game that came within Salam's
range.

No Moor will harm a stork. Even Moorish children, whose taste for
destruction and slaughter is as highly developed as any European's, will
pick up a young stork that has fallen from its nest and return it to the
mother bird if they can. Storks sit at peace among the women of the hareem
who come for their afternoon airing to the flat roof-tops of Moorish
houses. Moorish lovers in the streets below tell the story of their hopes
and fears to the favoured bird, who, when he is chattering with his
mandibles, is doing what he can to convey the message. Every True Believer
knows that the stork was once a Sultan, or a Grand Wazeer at least, who,
being vain and irreligious, laughed in the beards of the old men of his
city on a sacred day when they came to pay their respects to him. By so
doing he roused the wrath of Allah, who changed him suddenly to his
present form. But in spite of misdeeds, the Moors love the stately bird,
and there are hospitals for storks in Fez and Marrakesh, where men whose
sanctity surpasses their ignorance are paid to minister to the wants of
the sick or injured among them. Many a time Salam, in pursuit of birds,
has passed within a few-yards of the father of the red legs or his
children, but it has never occurred to him to do them harm. Strange fact,
but undeniable, that in great cities of the East, where Muslims and
Christians dwell, the storks will go to the quarter occupied by True
Believers, and leave the other districts severely alone. I have been
assured by Moors that the first of these birds having been a Muslim, the
storks recognise the True Faith, and wish to testify to their preference
for it. It is hard to persuade a Moor to catch a stork or take an egg from
the nest, though in pursuit of other birds and beasts he is a stranger to
compunction in any form.

One of the trackers gave me his horse, and Pepe Ratto led the way down the
stream for a short distance and then into thick scrub that seemed to be
part of wild life's natural sanctuary, so quiet it lay, so dense and
undisturbed. After the first five minutes I was conscious of the forest in
an aspect hitherto unknown to me; I was aware that only a man who knew the
place intimately could venture to make a path through untrodden growths
that were left in peace from year to year. It was no haphazard way, though
bushes required careful watching, the double-thorned lotus being too
common for comfort.

[Illustration: A NIGHT SCENE, MOGADOR]

My companion's eye, trained to the observation of the woodlands in every
aspect, noted the stories told by the bushes, the gravel, and the sand
with a rapidity that was amazing. Twenty-five years of tireless hunting
have given Pepe Ratto an instinct that seems to supplement the ordinary
human gifts of sight and hearing. Our forefathers, who hunted for their
living, must have had this gift so developed, and while lying dormant in
Europeans, whose range of sports is compassed by the life of cities and
limited game preserves, it persists among the men who devote the best
years of their life to pitting their intelligence against that of the
brute creation. The odds are of course very much in favour of the human
being, but we may not realise readily the extreme cunning of hunted
animals. The keen sportsman, who rode by my side pointing out the track of
boar or porcupine, showing where animals had been feeding, and judging how
recently they had passed by difference in the marks too faint for my eyes
to see, confessed that he had spent months on the track of a single
animal, baffled over and over again, but getting back to his quarry
because he had with him the mark of the feet as copied when he tracked it
for the first time.

"No boar has four feet absolutely identical with those of another boar,"
he said, "so when once you have the prints the animal must leave the
forest altogether and get off to the Atlas, or you will find him in the
end. He may double repeatedly on his own tracks, he may join a herd and
travel with them for days into the thick scrub, where the dogs are badly
torn in following him, but he can never get away, and the hunter following
his tracks learns to realise in the frenzied changes and manoeuvres of the
beast pursued, its consciousness of his pursuit." In these matters the
trained and confirmed hunter's heart grows cold as the physiologist's,
while his senses wax more and more acute, and near to the level of those
of his prey.

That is but a small part of the hunter's lore. As his eyes and ears
develop a power beyond the reach of dwellers of cities with stunted sight
and spoiled hearing, he grows conscious of the great forest laws that rule
the life of birds and beasts--laws yet unwritten in any language. He
finds all living things pursuing their destiny by the light of customs
that appeal as strongly to them as ours to us, and learns to know that the
order and dignity of the lower forms of life are not less remarkable in
their way than the phenomena associated with our own.

To me, the whirring of a covey of sand-grouse or partridges could express
little more than the swift passage of birds to a place of security. To the
man who grew almost as a part of the forest, the movement was something
well defined, clearly initiated, and the first step in a sequence that he
could trace without hesitation. One part of the forest might be the same
as another to the casual rider, or might at best vary in its purely
picturesque quality. To the long trained eye, on the other hand, it was a
place that would or would not be the haunt of certain beasts or birds at
certain hours of the day, by reason of its aspect with regard to the sun,
its soil, cover, proximity to the river or other source of water supply,
its freedom from certain winds and accessibility to others, its distance
from any of the tracks that led to the country beyond the forest and were
frequented at certain seasons of the year. The trained hunter reads all
this as in a book, but the most of us can do no more than recognise the
writing when it has been pointed out to us.

[Illustration: HOUSE-TOPS, MOGADOR]

So it happened that my morning ride with the hardy hunter, whose
achievements bulk next to those of the late Sir John Drummond Hay in the
history of Moorish sport, had an interest that did not depend altogether
upon the wild forest paths through which he led the way. He told me how
at daybreak the pack of cross-bred hounds came from garden, copse, and
woodland, racing to the steps of the Palm Tree House, and giving tongue
lustily, as though they knew there was sport afoot. One or two grizzled
huntsmen who had followed every track in the Argan Forest were waiting in
the patio for his final instructions, and he told them of hoof prints that
had revealed to his practised eye a "solitaire" boar of more than ordinary
size. He had tracked it for more than three hours on the previous day,
past the valley where our tents were set, and knew now where the lair was
chosen.

"He has been lying under an argan tree, one standing well away from the
rest at a point where the stream turns sharply, about a mile from the old
kasbah in the wood, and he has moved now to make a new lair. I have made a
note of his feet in my book; he had been wallowing less than twenty-four
hours before when I found him. To-morrow, when we hunt the beast I hope to
track to-day, the pack will follow in charge of the huntsmen. They will be
taken through the wood all the way, for it is necessary to avoid villages
and cattle pasture when you have more than a score of savage dogs that
have not been fed since three o'clock on the previous afternoon. They are
by no means averse from helping themselves to a sheep or a goat at such
times."

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