CHAPTER II.
All Mogador we found much exercised about the province of the Sus, the very province in which the inaccessible Tarudant, the city of our dreams, was situated. It seemed that about eighteen months ago, one Abdul Kerim Bey, an Austrian subject, had arrived and hoisted his flag as Patagonian consul. Brazil and Portugal, Andorra, San Marino, Guatemala, Hayti, and San Domingo, Siam, the Sandwich Islands, Kotei, Acheen, the Transvaal, Orange Free State, and almost every place where there was revenue sufficient to buy a flag and issue postage stamps for philatelists, had long ago sent consuls to Mogador. Their flag-staffs reared aloft looked like a mighty canebrake, from the sea; their banners shaded the streets after the fashion of the covering which the Romans drew over their amphitheatres, and half the population were consuls of some semi-bankrupt state. Yet Patagonia, even in Mogador, excited some surprise. Jews who had been in Buenos Ayres (and a considerable quantity emigrate thence from Mogador) argued that Patagonia was under the authority of the Argentine Republic. Those who had been in Valparaiso said it belonged to Chile. Few knew where Patagonia really was. The Arabs, whose geography is fragmentary, thought “Batagonia” was situated somewhere in Franguestan, and that contented them. What struck their fancy most was certainly the colour and design of the new oriflamme. Barred white and blue, a rising sun grinning across three mountain tops, a cap of liberty, and a huanaco ruminant; an Araucanian Indian in his war paint in one corner, and here and there stars, daggers, scales, and other democratic trade-marks, made up a banner the like of which had seldom been observed in all the much be-bannered town of Mogador. The owner of this standard and the defender in Morocco of the lives and liberties of Patagonian subjects, dressed like a Turk (long single-breasted black frock coat and fez), and spoke a little Turkish, but no Arabic. His age was that of all the world, that is, somewhere between twenty-eight and fifty, and his appearance insignificant, all but his eyes, which some declared to have the power of seeing through a brick, and others that of piercing through cloth and leather, and discerning gold from silver in the recesses of a purse. Be all that as it may, a travelled man, a doctor; that is, “tabib,” for the two words, though given in dictionaries as the Arabic and English for the equivalents of the same thing in either tongue, in point of fact, are different. “Tabib,” in Oriental lands, is a convenient travelling designation, as “Colonel” in the Southern States, and as “Captain” was in Georgian times; it rather indicates a status than a profession, and, in addition, is not out of place upon a traveller’s card.
Dr. el Haj Abdul Kerim apparently enjoyed his designation and his “tabibship” by the grace of God. His consulate he held by virtue of a mandate of an extraordinary potentate.
Some two-and-twenty years ago, a Frenchman, one Aureille de Tounens, a man of family and an advocate of Bordeaux, succeeded in persuading the Indians of Arauco that he was their king. This soon aroused the anxiety both of the Chilians and the Argentines; for from the time when first Ercilla wrote his “Araucana,” the Indians of Araucania had been free, and if they had had a king perhaps they would have taught the neighbouring Republics what liberty really meant. For a brief space De Tounens flourished under the style and title of “Aurelio Primero, rey de los Araucanos,” and then diplomacy or treachery, or both, ousted him, and he died “i’ the spital” in his own town of Bordeaux. During his efflorescence he coined money, designed a flag, gave titles of nobility, and appointed consuls; and it appears that one of them was this Kerim Bey, the Turco-Austrian, who swooped upon Mogador, out-consuling all consuls hitherto known by the size and pattern of his flag. It is not likely that Aurelio Primero ever heard of Mogador, still less that from Arauco he sent a special envoy to such a place. Most probably he sent out consuls generally, after the fashion of bishops in partibus, with a roving consulship, and with instructions to set up their flags wherever they found three or four dozen fools assembled and a sufficient roof to bear the pole.
One of these roving consular commissions no doubt was given to Dr. Abdul Kerim Bey, in days gone by, in South America. Indeed, I fancy I remember at Bahia Blanca a forlorn Austrian who was said to have held some illusory employment about the person of the Araucanian King, such as head bottle-washer, holder of the royal stirrup, or guardian of the royal purse, the last, of course, a sinecure which, in all courts that have no money, should be abolished in the interest of economy. Our Mr. Abdul, [36] during his residence in Mogador, having heard that the province of the Sus was rich in mines, and that no port open for European trade existed south of Mogador, the grandfather of the present Sultan having closed Agadhir (formerly known as Santa Cruz when in possession of the Spaniards), bethought himself that it would be a master stroke to make a treaty with the semi-independent chieftains of the Sus, open either Agadhir, Asaka, or some other port, and trade direct with Europe. Sus being mainly peopled by Berber tribes, who, it is said, are the descendants of the Numidians, who certainly were in possession of the country at the epoch of the invasion of the Arabs, has always been but ill-affected to the central government. The town of Tarudant and the Zowia of Si Hamed O’Musa have hitherto been the two chief centres of the Shereefian [37] authority, but recently, from some fancied slight or from ambitious motives, the representative of Si Hamed O’Musa, one Sidi Hascham, has wavered in his allegiance to his lord.
That which is most desired by every Arab intriguer is the possession of good rifles, and it appears that Kerim Bey, Esq., promised to help the chiefs to unlimited supplies of Winchesters. But be this as it may, Kerim appeared in London with a treaty, real or supposititious, a fez, some twenty words of Arabic, several tons of assurance, and the experience of five-and-forty years. With these commodities he got a syndicate together to engage in trade with the province of the Sus, open a harbour, divert the caravans which now come from the interior and the south to Mogador, supply the ingenuous natives with rifles, bibles, Manchester “sized” cottons, work the real or hypothetic mines, introduce progress—that is electric light, whisky, and all that—and give the acrobats of Taseruelt a reasonable music-hall which might spare them the long voyage to London to seek a fitting place in which to show their powers.
The necessary gentlemen (tribe of Manasseh) with money being found, it was incumbent to get a man de pelo en pecho, [38] as the Spaniards say, to visit Morocco, see the Sultan, go to the Sus, and arrange matters with the various chieftains personally. Like all the world, Abdul Kerim had many faults, but amongst them the fault of rashness was not numbered. In his wildest moments he had never asserted that he personally had penetrated in the little visited Sus; it was thought if the treaty (which he exhibited, but could not read) was genuine, that it had been negotiated by a third person who knew the country well.
Brave men are not so far to seek in London, and one, Major Spilsbury, soon volunteered. He was the kind of man able and willing to walk up to a cannon’s mouth; the sort of man who risks his life ten times a day for forty years to gain his livelihood, and dies—either by an Indian arrow, Malay parang, or Arab bullet—“one of our pioneers of empire” or else a “foolish filibuster,” according as he succeeds or fails. Quiet and courteous, a linguist, and brave to rashness, he was the very antithesis of Abdul; but such as they were they started out together on their quest.
Sus being the most southern province of Morocco, Abdul Kerim quite naturally went to the north, and dragged his wondering companion all round the empire till at last they found the Sultan, who was in Morocco city, when it turned out that all the boasted influence Abdul Kerim had set forth he possessed was nothing, and the Sultan refused permission to trade direct with Sus. At Mogador the inevitable quarrel took place, and Abdul started for Montenegro, Muscat or elsewhere, and left poor Major Spilsbury alone.
He being determined to see the adventure through, engaged a Jewish interpreter, went to the Canaries, chartered a schooner and landed at Asaka after having entered into negotiations from Mogador as to his reception with the chiefs.
Eight or ten days he fought with contrary