After much threading through the tortuous paths, getting well torn and sunburned by the fierce sun, we emerged at the crossing of the river El Ghoreb, which runs into the sea at Mogador.
Here we encountered the usual stream of travellers always to be met with at the crossing of a river in countries like Morocco; grave men on mules going to do nothing gravely, as if the business of the world depended on their doing it with due precision. Long trains of mules laden with cotton goods going up to the capital; a travelling Arab family, the father on his horse, his gun cased in a red cloth case, balanced across the pommel of his saddle; his wife, either on foot or seated on a donkey following him, the children trotting behind, a ragged boy or two drawing a few brown goats, a scraggy camel packed with the household goods on one side, and on the other with a pannier from which a foal stuck out its head; and, lastly, two or three grown-up girls, who, as we came upon them crossing the stream, lift up their single garment and veil their mouths according to the laws of Arab decency. We sit and eat under a tree as far away as possible from all the passers-by, and our clean clothes and look of most intense respectability, secure us from all danger of intrusion on our privacy.
No sooner seated than Swani seized my legs and pulled them violently, and rubbed the knee-joints after the fashion of a shampooer in a Turkish bath. On my enquiry he assured me he knew I must be suffering agony from the short Moorish stirrups and cramped seat. I had indeed felt for the past half-hour as if upon the rack; but a horseman’s pride and acquaintanceship with many forms of saddles had kept me silent. The rubbing and pulling afforded intense relief, and I acknowledged what I had endured, on his assurance that no one escapes the pain, and that the most experienced riders in the land are sometimes kept awake all night, after a long day’s march, owing to the stiffness of their legs.
In mediæval Spain, good riders were often designated as “Ginete en ambas sillas,” [63] that is accustomed to either saddle, i.e. the Moorish and the Christian, and I now understood why chroniclers have taken the trouble to record the fact. Strangely enough the high-peaked and short-stirruped saddle does not cross the Nile, the Arabs of Arabia riding rather flat saddles with an ordinary length of leg. The Arab saddle of Morocco, in itself, is perhaps the worst that man has yet designed, but curiously enough from it was made the Mexican saddle, perhaps the most useful for all kinds of horses and of countries that the world has seen.
The Moors girth loosely and keep their saddle in its place by a broad breast plate; so that it becomes extremely difficult to mount, and to do so gracefully, you have to seize the cantle and the pommel at the same time, and get as gingerly into your seat as possible. Like all natural horsemen, the Moors mount in one motion, and bend their knees in mounting; thus, in their loose clothes, they appear to sink into the saddle without an effort. Once in the saddle a man of any pretension to respectability has his clothes arranged for him by a retainer, as being so voluminous, it is quite an art to make them sit.
Swathed in the various cloaks and wrappings which constitute the Arab dress, the feet driven well home into the stirrups, and gripping your horse’s sides with all the leg, the seat is firm, though most uncomfortable at first. After a little it becomes more tolerable, but few men can walk a step without enduring agony when they dismount after three or four hours on horseback, especially as it is a superstition amongst the Moors to mount and dismount as seldom as they can, for they imagine the act of getting on and off fatigues the horse far more than the mere carrying the burden on his back. Of course, both getting on and off are done in the name of God, that is after the repetition of the sacramental word Bismillah, used on eating, drinking, riding or performing any action for which a true believer should give thanks to Him who giveth benefits to man. It is the fashion amongst Europeans to sneer at Arab riding, and no doubt an Arab in the hunting field would not look well; and it is possible that a hunting man might also find himself embarrassed to ride a Moorish horse in Moorish saddle fast downhill over a country strewn with boulders, or at the “powder play,” to stand upon his saddle and perform the feats the Moors perform.
Horsemen and theologians are both intolerant. Believe my faith, and ride my horse after my fashion, for no Nonconformist, Cossack, Anglican, Gaucho, Roman Catholic, or Mexican can see the least redeeming point about his fellows’ creed, his saddle, horse, ox, ass, or any other thing belonging to him.
Lunch despatched, green tea drunk, and cigarette carefully smoked behind a bush, for men in our position must not give offence by “drinking the shameful” [64] in the face of true believers, we mount again, and plunge into an angle of the Argan forest, which extends from Mogador to Saffi.
Goats climb upon the trees, and camels here and there browse on the shoots; under the trees grow a few Aras (Callitris Quadrivalvis), and in the sandy soil some liliaceous plants gleam like stars in the expanse of heaven. After an hour the trees grow sparser and we emerge into a rolling country, and pass a granary, which marks the boundary between the provinces of Ha-Ha and Shiadma, and take our last look of the sea.
The Argan trees become more scarce as we cross into the fertile and well-cultivated province of Shiadma. Sand now gives place to rich red earth, and Swani, pricking his mule with his new dagger, which he had wheedled me to buy him under pretence that it did not befit my follower to go unarmed, comes up and asks if, even in England, there is a better cultivated land. I answer, diplomatically, that there is none, although perhaps the soil of England in certain parts is just as rich. Being an Arab he does not believe me for a moment, but ejaculates, with perfect manners, “God is Great, to him the praise for fertile lands, whether in England or Morocco.”
The Kaid’s house on a hill stands as the outward visible sign of law and order, and Mohammed el Hosein imparts the information that the prison is always full. ’Tis pleasant to go back, not in imagination, but reality, to the piping times when prisons were always full, [65] maidens sat spinning (I think) in bowers, and the gallows-tree was never long without its “knot.” This leads me to consider whether, if all the world were regulated by a duly elected county council, all chosen from a properly qualified and democratic, well-educated, pious electorate, and all men went about minding each other’s business—with fornication, covetousness, evil concupiscence, adultery, and murder quite unknown, and only slander and a little cheating left to give a zest to life—they would be happier upon the whole than are the unregenerate Moors, who lie and steal, fight, fornicate, and generally behave themselves as if blood circulated in their veins and not sour whey? Despite the Sultan’s tyranny, with every form of evil government thrown in, with murder rampant, vices that we call hideous (but which some practice on the sly) common to everyone, the faces of the poor heathen Moors, whom we bombard with missionaries, are never so degraded as the types which haunt the streets of manufacturing towns. And if the face is the best index to the mind, it may be that the degraded heathen Moor is at the heart not greatly worse than his baptised and educated rag-clad English brother in the Lord.
As evening falls we pass a shepherd close to the high road, sitting down to pray, beside him are his shoes and crook, and not far off his dog looks on half cynically, and up above, Allah preserves his attitude of “non mi ricordo,” which is excusable where men worry him five or six times a day. Still the shepherd must have been genuine, and could not have known that infidels would pass his way.
The country here is chiefly composed of red argillaceous earth, the rock limestone, and the general configuration round-topped hills rising towards the Atlas. The Argan trees become more rare, and within sight of our destination we see the last of them.
The Argan, like the Cacti of the Rio Gila, in Arizona, seems to be able to resist any drought. Strange that all-wise Providence failed to endow Africa with either the Cactus or the Aloe, both plants so eminently suited to its climate. It was, however, left to poor, weak, erring human reason to supply the want.
It is pleasing to reflect that for once the powers [66] generally opposed to one another should have united in endowing a country with two non-indigenous plants, which have taken to the soil as if they had been originally found there. Is it reason after all that is infallible?
Meskala reminded