A group of high-class Arabs sat by themselves upon the decks, waited upon by a tall tribesman faced like a camel, and with the handle of his pistol and curved dagger outlined beneath his clothes. This group was composed of sherifs [17b] from Algeria, all high-caste men, dignified, slow, and soft of speech, deliberate in movement, their clothes as white as snow, nails dyed with henna, each with a heavy rosary in his hand, their business somewhat mysterious, but bound to see the Sultan in his camp. Throughout Algeria the sherifs are not allowed to levy contributions from the people openly, but it is said in private, they receive them all the same. Of all the population they are the least contented with French rule, as since the conquest naturally they have fallen somewhat from the position they once occupied, and cannot go about receiving presents for the pains they have taken to preserve their lineage, as they do in Morocco, making themselves a travelling offertory.
All of them wished to know of the late war between the Sultan of Turkey and the “Emperor of the Greeks.” They seemed to think the latter was a descendant of the Paleologi, and asked if it were true the Sultan had killed all the Greeks except fifteen, and if these latter had not fled to “Windres” (London) to seek protection from the Great Queen and to advise her to make preparations against the “Jehad” [18] to come. With them they carried sundry hide bags of gold with which they said they wished to purchase permission from the Sultan of Morocco to export grain, as the harvest in Algeria had not been good owing to locusts, and the lack of rain. Of course this may have been the object of their visit, but since the Greco-Turkish war all the Mohammedan world is on the stir, and men are travelling about from place to place disseminating news, and all the talk is on the victories of the Turks, and on the rising of the tribes in India; in fact, a feeling seems to be abroad that the Christian power is on the wane, and that their own religion once again may triumph and prevail.
At Casa Blanca—called by the Arabs Dar el Baida, that is, the White House—the sherifs go ashore, and I last saw them seated on their bags, outside the waterport, their backs against the ramparts of the town, their eyes apparently fixed upon nothing though seeing everything, telling their beads and waiting patiently, enduring sun and flies until their servant should return and tell them of a lodging fit for persons of their quality. Of all the towns on the Morocco coast Dar el Baida has the most business, the country at the back of it is fertile and grows much wheat, the tribes are fairly prosperous, and the best horses of the country come from the districts known as Abda and Dukala, a few leagues from the place.
Consuls abound, of course, so do hyenas—that is, outside the town—but both are harmless and furnish little sport, except the Consul of America, my good friend Captain Cobb. He, if my memory fails me not, piled up his brig some thirty years ago upon the beach in the vicinity, liked the climate, became a Consul, naturally, and to this day has never returned to his sorrowing family in Portland, Maine.
In thirty years tradition says he has not learned a word of Arabic with the exception of the word “Balak” (look out), which he pronounces “Balaaker,” and yet holds conversations by the hour in Arabic, and both the patients seem contented with their lot. All the attractions to be met with in the town do not detain me; what takes my fancy most is to see tribesmen from the country, armed to the teeth, and balancing a gun full six feet long upon their saddles, sit on their horses bargaining at shops in the same fashion I have seen the Gauchos at a camp-town in South America, their horses nodding their heads and looking half asleep, their owners seated with one leg passed round the pommel of the saddle, and passing hours seated as comfortably as in a chair.
Back to the steamer in a boat, and at the waterport we pass a group of Jews washing themselves, in preparation for a feast. Lutaif ranks as a wit for saying that the Jews will defile the sea, for any wit is small enough to bait a Jew with; and the Arabs, though they will say the same things of a Christian behind his back, all laugh consumedly when a Christian takes their side against a Jew.
On board the uneasy ship, tossing like a buck-jumper in the Atlantic swell, we find more Oriental items ready to hand. The first a tall, thin, cuckoldy-looking Arab knave, dressed in a suit of slop-made European clothes, his trousers half-a-foot too short, his boots unblacked, and himself closely watched by two Franciscan Friars. [20a] It appeared he was a convert. Now, in Morocco a convert is a most rare and curious animal, and he is usually not a great credit to his capturers. On this occasion, it appears, the convert had been dallying with the Protestants, had given them hopes, had led them on, and at the last, perhaps because he found the North-British water [20b] of their baptism too cold for him, or perchance because the Friars gave a dollar more, had fallen away to Rome. However, there he was, a veritable “brand,” a sheep, who had come into one of the folds, leaving the other seven million nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand and ninety-nine still straying about Morocco, steeped in the errors of Mohammedanism. His captors were a gentlemanlike, extremely handsome, quiet Castilian, who to speak silver (hablar en plata) seemed a little diffident about his prize, and went about after the fashion of a boy in Texas who has caught a skunk. The other guardian had no doubts. He was a sturdy Catalonian lay-brother, who pointed to the “brand” with pride, and told us, with a phrase verging upon an oath, that he was glad the Protestants had had their noses well put out of joint. The victim was a merry sort of knave, who chewed tobacco, spoke almost every language in the world, had travelled, and informed me, when I asked him where he was going, that the “Frayliehs” (Friars) were taking him to Cadiz “to have the water put upon his head.” He seemed an old hand at the business, and recognised my follower, Swani, as a friend, and they retired to talk things over, with the result that, e’er night fell, the “convert” was in a most unseemly state and singing Spanish songs in which Dolores, Mercedillas, and other “Chicas” figured largely, and were addressed in terms sufficient to upset a convent of Franciscan Friars. Peace to his baptism, and may the Protestants, when their turn comes to mark a sheep, secure as fine a specimen as the one I saw going to Cadiz to have “the water put upon his head.” This missionary question and the decoying of God-fearing men out of the ranks of the religion they were born in, is most thorny in every country like Morocco, where the religion of the land is one to which the people are attached. An earnest missionary, a pious publican, a minister of the crown who never told a lie, are men to praise God for, continually. Honour to all of them, labouring in their vocations and striving after truth as it appears to them. I, for my part, have found honest and earnest men both in the Scottish missions in Morocco and in the ranks of the Franciscan Friars from Spain. Amongst both classes, and in the missions sent by other churches, good men abound; and in so far as these good men confine themselves to giving medicines, healing the sick, and showing by the example of their lives that even Christians (whom Arabs all believe are influenced in all they do by money) can live pure, self-denying lives for an idea, the good they do is great; but that by living, as they do, amongst the Moors, they do more good than they could do at home by living the same lives, that I deny. Amongst Mohammedans plenty of people lead good lives, as good appears to them—that is, they follow out the precepts of their faith, give to the poor, do not lend money upon usury; and, to be brief, practice morality, [22] and believe by doing so that they are sacrificing to some fetish, invented by mankind, to make men miserable. When, though, it comes to marking sheep—the object, after all, for which a missionary is sent—I never saw a statement of accounts which brought the balance out upon the credit side. The excuse is, generally, “Oh, give us time; these things work slowly;”—as indeed they do; and if the missions think it worth their while to send men out to doctor syphilis, cure gonorrhoea, and to attend to every form of the venereal disease, their field is wide; but if they wish to convert Mohammedans let them produce a balance-sheet, and show how many of the infidel they have converted in the last twenty years. Not that I blame them for endeavouring to perform what seems impossible, or try to detract an atom from the praise due to them for their efforts, but when so many savages still exist in Central Africa and in East London—not to speak of Glasgow and the like—it seems a pity to expend upon a people, civilised according to their needs, so much good faith, which might be used with good effect upon less stony ground.
Prophets, reformers, missionaries, “illuminated” folk, and those who leave their homes to preach a faith, no matter what it is, are people set apart from the flat-footed ordinary race of human kind; of such are missionaries and the dream world they live in. How many