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Title: The Pillars of Hercules: A Narrative of Travels in Spain and Morocco in 1848; vol. 1
Author: Urquart, David
Language: English
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HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY.
MEMOIRS OF PRINCE RUPERT AND THE CAVALIERS. BY ELIOT WARBURTON.
Numerous Fine Portraits. 3 vols., 8vo., 42s.
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DIARIES AND CORRESPONDENCE OF JAMES HARRIS, FIRST EARL OF MALMESBURY.
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NAPOLEON’S EXILE AND DEATH AT ST. HELENA. By M. BOURRIENNE. Numerous
Portraits. 4 vols., 8vo., 30s.
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AND PROSPECTS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. By R. W. GRISWOLD. 1 vol., 8vo.,
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Second Edition. 2 vols., post 8vo., 21s.
ROLLO AND HIS RACE; OR, FOOTSTEPS OF THE NORMANS. By ACTON WARBURTON.
Second Edition. 2 vols., 21s.
RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
THE
PILLARS OF HERCULES;
OR
A NARRATIVE OF TRAVELS
IN
SPAIN AND MOROCCO
IN 1848.
BY
DAVID URQUHART, ESQ., MP.,
AUTHOR OF
“TURKEY AND ITS RESOURCES,” “THE SPIRIT OF THE EAST,” ETC.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY,
Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty.
1850.
LONDON:
Printed by S. & J. BENTLEY and HENRY FLEY,
Bangor House, Shoe Lane.
INTRODUCTION.
I did not visit Morocco or Spain on any settled plan. I was on my way
to Italy by sea, and passing through the Straits of Gibraltar, was so
fascinated by the beauty and mysteries of the adjoining lands, that I
relinquished my proposed excursion for the explorations which are here
recorded.
Barbary, to the attraction of the unknown and the original, which
it shares in common with China and Japan, adds that of association
with the country which, of all others, has a claim on our
affections--_Canaan_. With Barbary also is interwoven the history
of various races, great, ancient, and mysterious: the _Canaanite_,
the _Hebrew_, the Highland _Celt_, and the _Saracen_. It has become
the last refuge of the Philistine. The Jews, in other countries, by
adopting the habits of strangers, have lost their type, which is to be
seen alone in Barbary, where Judæa, effaced in Asia, doubly survives.
Here must we seek the living interpretation of the Scriptures; here may
we find insight into early things.
The connexion of the Scotch clans with Barbary depends on no
ethnographic affinity, but their passage through, and sojourn in,
this land, reveal the history of their wanderings, and explain the
peculiarities of their race. Here are to be found to-day the people
who made Spain a garden, taught it at once the arts of war and peace;
and thence spread that knowledge to the rest of Europe. That stream
which then overflowed, has retired to its fountain, where it lies deep,
but not changed.
Spain and Morocco present treasures unknown, in those regions which
have been subject to repeoplings and fundamental changes. “The life of
nations,” says Erchhoff, “manifests itself in their language, which is
the faithful representative of their vicissitudes. Where chronology
stops, and the thread of tradition is broken, the antique genealogy
of words that have survived the ruin of empires comes in to shed
light on the very cradle of humanity, and to consecrate the memory
of generations long since engulfed in the quicksands of time.” The
unchanged tongue here gives additional force to that genealogy--here
history is nearly mute. The same monumental character, however, belongs
to manners, costume, and tradition. I have not, therefore, hesitated
to devote considerable space to these inquiries, as, indeed, they
constituted the chief attraction of the excursions, which seemed to be
less through new countries than remote ages.
I have to bespeak the reader’s indulgence for inviting him often to
accompany me with his attention through homely paths. I have brought
him in presence of the most trivial practices. I have not described,
as a stranger would, a different manner of life; but endeavoured, as
a native, to explain matters from which we might derive benefits
in health, comfort, happiness, or taste, from their old experience.
Wherever I have drawn comparisons, it has been for our advantage, not
for theirs. It has, therefore, been their merits, not ours, that I have
placed in evidence.
I have no expectation that my suggestions will modify the lappet of a
coat, or the leavening of a loaf; but there is one subject in which I
am not without hope of having placed a profitable habit more within the
chance of adoption than it has hitherto been--I mean the bath.
Cleanliness, like inebriety or intemperance, may be at once a fashion
and a passion. Appearing amongst us under both shapes, it has also
assumed that of charity. As soon as it was felt that it was shameful
to be dirty, it became a work of charity to wash the filthy, no less
than to feed the hungry. These dispositions offer an opportunity of
reviving the bath in all its classic grace, and investing it with all
its Eastern attractions; but the occasion may be lost--that is, we may
rest satisfied with what we have done, and the new wash-houses may
pass current as achievements of economy and models of cleanliness. The
occasion can be put to profit only by the knowledge of the bath in its
bearings on the individual and on society; and I have made the attempt
to describe it, so that it shall be understood in its uses, enjoyments,
and construction.
We have recently been imitating barbarous times in church architecture.
These times offer to our admiration usages as well as forms. Shall
we have eyes for a Gothic spire, and none for a Roman bath? Nations
may have refinement, and yet be destitute of common sense; they may be
possessed of sense, and yet be without refinement. A people without the
bath can lay claim to neither.
Morocco calls attention to the past; Spain directs it to the future.
We pass from dreams to delusions, from poetry to politics. Belgium
has been termed the battle-field of Europe--Spain is its bone of
contention. The Italian Peninsula is the field of the rivalries of
France and Austria, which England balances and adjusts. In the East,
England and France are united by the advance of Russia; in the Spanish
Peninsula they are alone in presence of each other: the aim of each is
to gain ascendancy, and thence a constant source of irritation.
The political experiment which is at present being made in Spain,
consists in applying European terms to a country where there are no
European ideas, and European institutions to a state of things wholly
unlike Europe. The following fragment of a conversation with a leading
statesman conveys that contrast in the fewest words.
_Spaniard._--I am sorry that you see Spain in such a distracted
condition.
_Author._--I am rejoiced to find her in one so flourishing.
_Sp._--I wish it were so. Surely you are not in earnest?
_A._--I wish my country were in the same condition as yours.
_Sp._--But your country is rich, powerful, united. We are poor, weak,
and distracted.
_A._--I am thinking of the contrast between your people and ours.
_Sp._--In what does that contrast consist?
_A._--In a larger share of comforts, and fewer political evils.
_Sp._--As to the former, I think you are right. I do not think that the
people of France have so much of the enjoyments of life as ours; but as
for our being freer from political evils than England, I cannot agree
with you.
_A._--If you will permit me to take them separately, I think we shall
find no difficulty in agreeing.
_Sp._--Certainly.
_A._--The chief source of our animosities springs from differences in
religion.
_Sp._--We are not troubled with these in Spain.
_A._--The next is difference of race.
_Sp._--We are free from this too.
_A._--Have you two great organized interests, commercial and
agricultural?
_Sp._--From these too we are free.
_A._--Have you two powerful opinions, monarchical and republican, as
those which divide France?
_Sp._--We have not.
_A._--Have you been brought to within an hour of revolution and
bankruptcy by an “ideal standard?”
_Sp._--Spain has no financial difficulties of an abstract kind.
_A._--Do you suffer from the despotic power of a sovereign?
_Sp._--No.
_A._--Have you to fear the turbulence of a mob?
_Sp._--No; the people of Spain are docile, _when left alone_.
_A._--Are there oppressive privileges belonging to the aristocracy?
_Sp._--No.
_A._--Is the power of the Church excessive, and misapplied, or its
wealth inordinate?
_Sp._--No, we have none of these evils in Spain.
_A._--Have you pauperism?
_Sp._--No;--nevertheless we are distracted.
_A._--It is, therefore, my turn now to ask, why?
_Sp._--I should like to hear your reasons.
_A._--They are contained in the fact, that it is I who ask these
questions, and you who reply.
_Sp._--Our distractions would not subside, if I thought as well of
Spain as you do.
_A._--My meaning is, that the imitation of Europe is the source of the
troubles of Spain.
Since this conversation occurred, Spain has justified these
conclusions, by remaining unmoved amidst the storm of opinion which has
swept over Europe.
LONDON, _October, 1849_.
CONTENTS
OF
THE FIRST VOLUME.
BOOK I.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
THE STRAITS OF GIBRALTAR 1
CHAPTER II.
THE CURRENTS OF THE STRAITS 21
CHAPTER III.
GIBRALTAR OF THE MOORS 32
CHAPTER IV.
EXCURSION ROUND THE STRAITS 51
CHAPTER V.
ALGECIRAS--TARIFA 60
CHAPTER VI.
CEUTA 85
CHAPTER VII.
CEUTA--BOMBARDMENT OF TANGIER 114
CHAPTER VIII.
CADIZ 126
CHAPTER IX.
EXCURSION ROUND THE STRAITS 145
CHAPTER X.
EXCURSION IN THE STRAITS--CADIZ POLITENESS 172
CHAPTER XI.
CARTEIA--TYRE AND HER WARES--GLASS 188
CHAPTER XII.
THE STONE OF HERCULES 204
BOOK II.
THE COUNTRY OF THE ROVERS.
CHAPTER I.
OFF SALEE 254
CHAPTER II.
RABAT 277
CHAPTER III.
THE JEWS AND JEWRY IN RABAT 299
CHAPTER IV.
THE BAÏRAM 317
CHAPTER V.
THE SULTAN: HIS COMMERCIAL SYSTEM 332
CHAPTER VI.
THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE IN RABAT 339
CHAPTER VII.
CONNEXION BETWEEN MAURITANIA AND AMERICA 353
CHAPTER VIII.
DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE OF THE MOORS 364
BOOK III.
THE ARAB TENT.
CHAPTER I.
HUNTING EXPEDITION TO SHAVOYA 377
CHAPTER II.
KUSCOUSSOO 398
CHAPTER III.
THE HAÏK 416
CHAPTER IV.
A BOAR-HUNT 440
THE
PILLARS OF HERCULES.
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I.
THE STRAITS OF GIBRALTAR.
“Nullus amor populi nec fœdera sunto:
Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor,
Qui face Dardanios ferroque sequare colonos;
Nunc, olim, quocunque dabunt se tempore vires.
Littora littoribus contraria, fluctibus undas
Imprecor, arma armis, pugnent ipsique nepotes.”
To thread one’s way through a narrow gap from the outer Ocean into
a basin spread between Asia, Africa, and Europe, is an occasion
which even books of geography cannot render wholly uninteresting and
common-place.
This sea has, at each extremity, a narrow entrance; through both the
water rushes in: each forms the point of junction of two quarters
of the globe,--Europe there meeting Asia--here, Africa. The first
is acknowledged to be the most important position of the globe. The
land and sea there reciprocally command each other. A capital, an
emporium, and a fortress, combined in one, are placed at the meeting
of two continents and two seas, “like a diamond,” to use the words
of a Turkish annalist, “between two emeralds and two sapphires, the
master-stone in the ring of empire.”
Had the western entrance received the slightest pressure at its
formation, had one of the hills since slipped down into its channel,
the Gut of Gibraltar would not be the Ring on the finger, but the rod
of Empire in the hand of whoever possessed it. Happily, however, no
guns can cross, and no batteries command, the passage through which
flows the commerce of the world, and, at times, the food of nations.
Both banks of the Bosphorus are under the same dominion, and inhabited
by the same people. The channel bisects an Empire and traverses a
Capital. Two people, so dissimilar, occupy here the opposite shores,
that they might belong to different planets. No fishing-boat ventures
across, and if so driven, they take care if they can to anchor beyond
musket-shot. As to neighbourhood, the whole Atlantic might as well roll
between them. As to intercourse, they might as well belong to distinct
orders of creation. They hold each other like to those unsightly and
malignant monsters to which ancient mythology consigned the western
portions of the world. If intercourse is rendered necessary, there is
a preliminary parley and a flag of truce, and even the ceremonial of
a friendly meeting records the accomplishment of Dido’s prophecy and
curse.
Yet this is no forbidding land. There are neither sands nor precipices.
There are neither rudeness and asperity, nor barrenness and waste.
There are lowly vales and verdant plains, as well as gigantic
mountains. This great, this beautiful country--this corner of a mighty
continent--almost touches Europe. One-half of our whole trade passes
along it; yet it is sealed against us more effectually than China or
Japan.
European enterprize, by lust of conquest, love of gain, or spirit of
proselytism, has made the wide world its vineyard; and, combining its
various engines, has, far and near, shattered thrones, and subjugated
or extinguished races. How is it that Morocco stands unmoved and
unassailed?
All the nations which formed part of the Roman Empire, and have become
Mussulmans, have fallen under the sway of Constantinople, Morocco alone
excepted. All the barbarous States, which have attracted the cupidity
of Europeans, have fallen under their sway, Morocco alone excepted. But
the breakers of her shores, the sands of her deserts, the valour of her
sons, the wildness of her tribes, have not alone done this. Threatened
now by a new enemy and a new danger, the past is worth sifting, in
order to anticipate whether or not she will hold her own; or if
she fall, whether she will rot away, or sink brightly and bravely,
preserving
Genio y figura
Hasta la sepultura.
It is an old story, and we have forgotten it, that on Morocco our
first and greatest essays of conquest were made. England expended upon
the fortification of Tangier more than all she ever advanced for the
conquest of India. Portugal and Spain, who had found it necessary to
separate, by half the globe, their other enterprizes, here combined,
and expended more lives, ships, and treasure in their fruitless
attempts than in the subjugation of the East Indies and the West.
Neighbourhood, political hatred, religious animosity, combined with
the prospects of dominion, and the hope of obtaining supplies of the
precious metals, to urge them to make and continue these attempts.
Elsewhere, by their wonderful successes, unknown adventurers--a
Cortez, a Pizzaro, and an Albukerque--were converted into heroes.
Here Princes of the State and Church, Kings and Emperors, were the
leaders--to experience only failure and disgrace. Elsewhere handfuls
of men conquered myriads. Here mighty armaments have been annihilated
by despised foes. Elsewhere a native power had to do with but one
European assailant. Morocco numbered amongst her assailants every
European power. She holds the bones of English peers, of Turkish beys,
of Portuguese princes, Andalusian kings. She has foiled an Emperor of
Austria, and discomfited in succession the warlike operations, or the
political plans of Cardinal Ximenes, of Philip II., Don Sebastian, and
Barbarossa. Spain has some fortified points upon the coast, but they
are _blockaded_; and this smothered warfare is a living record of our
aggressions, and her delivery.
That event is one of the most remarkable of revolutions.[1] The
Spaniards were in possession of all the north country. The Portuguese
had extended themselves along the whole of the seaboard of the west,
down as far as Suz. The native troops in their pay at one time exceeded
100,000. The four kingdoms of which Morocco is now constituted,
were then distinct, and the various courts rivalled each other in
pusillanimity and corruption, exhibiting every symptom of dissolution,
from the disorders within and the power that threatened from abroad.
It was then that a family of mendicants and fanatics issued like lions
from the desert, upset the ruling dynasties, re-kindled the flame of
patriotism, rallied the sinking people, drove forth the invaders,
constructed a common Empire out of these divided States, and placed
their Dynasty upon the throne, which it occupies to this day.
From that time only have Europe and Africa become strangers to each
other; and so Morocco has maintained the independence so strangely won.
What renders this non-intercourse surprising is neighbourhood; yet that
is its explanation. Here Europeans could not be taken for Children of
the Sun, nor supposed to be quiet traders seeking only commerce: the
watchfulness of this people was not, as in India, overreached, nor
their affections, as in America, surprised.
The men who, in times of difficulty, have made themselves immortal
names, have done nothing more than endeavour to arouse their countrymen
from false security, or to guard them against mistaken confidence. The
Moor is deficient in polite literature and is ignorant of Greek; but he
already was in himself what the wisest words of Demosthenes might have
taught him to be, and was prepared to do what the loftiest strains of
Tyrtæus might have inspired. From the beginning the African has been
preyed upon by the other quarters of the globe. His wrongs have been
stored up in his retentive breast.[2] Thence that hate which is his
life; by it he has anticipated the lessons of wisdom, and by it he is a
match for science and power.[3]
Morocco has consequently been in this distinguished from the other
countries that surround the Mediterranean--she has not till now
furnished to France and England fuel or field for rivalry and
contention. Now she is brought again within the vortex of European
politics, and identified in interest with Spain by having the same
neighbour, and that neighbour the rival of England. We may again see
rehearsed on the same arena, the drama of Rome and Carthage.
As I floated down this river, of which the Atlantic is the fountain,
and the Mediterranean the sea, remembering the Dardanelles, I felt with
Cicero, that he indeed was happy who could visit, on the one hand, the
Straits of Pontus, and on the other, those
“Europam Lybiamque rapax ubi dividit unda.”
And that Atlas, sustaining the heavens on his shoulders,[4] no less
than Prometheus fixed upon the Caucasus, might convey in fables early
and divine truths.
This is a spot which has influenced the destinies and formed the
character, not of one but of many people: it is the home of the fleeing
Canaanite, the bourne of the wandering Arab; it was the limit of the
ancient world. That world of mystery and of poetry, was not like ours.
It was not crammed into a Gazetteer, nor were its laws a school-boy
lesson learned by rote. These Straits,[5] then the peculiar domain of
mythology, were approached with natural wonder and religious awe. The
doubtful inquirer came hither to see if the sky met and rested upon the
earth--if Atlas did indeed bear a starry burden--to discover what the
world was--whether an interminable plain, or a ball launched in space
or floating on the water--whether the ocean was a portion of it or
supported it--whether beyond the “Pillars”[6] was the origin of present
things, or the receptacle of departed ones--whether the road lay to
Chaos or to Hades.
And something, too, of these feelings crept over me, even although I
came hither merely to ruminate on the past deeds of men, the shadows
of which I looked for on the face of that watery mirror, which was
the centre of their solid globe--the resolver, the adjuster of all
their contests. The Mediterranean has made the world such as it is.
Ancient history has been balanced on its bosom; and without the passage
connecting it with the ocean, none of the events of recent history
could have happened.
To the dwellers on the skirt of Palestine she was a handmaid for
a thousand years, affording a liquid way for the wares which they
scattered over half the globe: From her bosom rose on all sides those
sea-kings of the south, the Pelasgi. She bore the Etruscans to their
Ausonian homes. She furnished to the African daughter of Tyre the
elements of the power by which she was enabled to compete for the
dominion of the world. Transferred by the struggle of a few hours, and
by the sinking of a few craft--she carried with her that dominion to
Rome, and fixed it there for centuries.
When the course of that Empire was run, and barbarism had spread over
the land, she fitted up new and beautiful things upon her shores;
nurtured Amalphi and Venice and Pisa, and built up Genoa and Barcelona.
Then opened a new order. Seamanship, by magnetic touch endowed with
wings, dared to lose sight of earth: issuing from these portals, it
gave to the princes of the Peninsula the knowledge of a new world, and
the title of lords of the eastern and western hemispheres.
Maritime power, now no longer pent up within the land, was successively
competed for and attained by Holland and by England: it conferred upon
the one independence at home--upon the other, dominion in the remotest
regions of the earth. Here are connected the first enterprizes of man
and his last struggles. Hence was the path sought to Britain. Here now
floats Britain’s standard. The ruins of the Temple of Hercules saw
Trafalgar’s fight. Here the hero of the Phœnix, prince, navigator,
trader, conqueror of monsters, fertilizer of lands, found again the
tides of his early home in the Indian ocean,[7] and set up his
Pillars. His mighty shade has its resting place on the spot which is
honoured with his name.
The next stage of discovery brings us to Columbus and Gama: this was
the goal of the enterprise of the Phœnician--it was the starting-post
of the Ligurian. In the unexplored waste a second Thule succeeded, and
a new Peru supplied the exhausted one of old. “The stone of Hercules”
and the “cup of Apollo”[8] showed the way to the regions towards
which the one had travelled and where the other set. But the modern
adventurers had the problem solved for them, not in the reasonings
only, but in the poetry of the ancients.[9] They had divided the earth,
by degrees--fixed their number and measure--they knew the length of the
day--they knew how many hours the sun spent over the regions they were
acquainted with. Fifteen twenty-fourths of his time they could account
for. Nine hours remained unexplored to complete the circle.[10]
But whilst Don Henry was daily gazing over the unmeasured expanse to
the west, the use of the globes and the rationale of geography were
being taught in Italy in verse. The sun must be expected, Pulci sings,
there whither he hastens; where he sets, it cannot be night: space is
not useless because to us unknown, nor that ocean without shores beyond
which washes ours. Then there are continents bordering the deep, and
islands studding its bosom; nor are these barren of herbs, nor are
herbs and fruits given in vain: there, too, there must be men, who have
gods like us, the work of their hands, and sorrows the fruit of their
will. Read his vaticination.
“Passato il fiume Bagrade ch’io dico,
Presso a lo stretto son di Gibilterra,
Dove pose i suoi segni il Greco antico
Abila e Calpe, a dimostrar ch’egli erra
Non per iscogli o per vento nimico,
Ma perchè il globo _cala de la terra_
Chi va più oltre, e non trova poi fondo,
Tanto che cade giu nel basso mondo.
“Rinaldo allor riconosciuto il loco,
Perche altra volta I’aveva veduto,
Dicea con Astarotte: dimmi un poco.
A quel che questo segno ha proveduto?
Disse Astarotte: un error lungo e fioco
Per molti secol non ben conosciuto,
Fa che si dice d’Ercol le colonne,
E che più là molti periti sonne.
“Sappi che questa opinione è vana;
Perchè più oltre navicar si puote
Però che _l’acqua in ogni parte è piana_,
_Benchè la terra abbi forma di ruote_:
Era più grossa allor la gente umana:
Tal che potrebbe arrossirne le gote
Ercole ancor d’aver posti que segni,
_Perchè più oltre passerano i legni_.
“E puossi andar qui ne _l’altro emisperio_,
Però che _al centro ogni cosa reprime_;
Si che la terra per divin misterio
Sospesa sta fra le stelle sublime,
_E là giù son città, castella e imperio,
Ma nol cognobbon quelle genti prime:
Vedi che il sol di camminar s’affretta,
Dove io ti dico che là giù s’aspetta_.
“E come un segno surge in oriente,
Un altro cade con mirabil’ arte,
Come si vede qua ne l’occidente,
Però che il ciel giustamente comparte;
Antipodi appellata è quella gente;
Adora il sole e Juppiterra e Marte
_E piante e animal come voi hanno,
E spesso insieme gran battaglie fanno_.”[11]
This remarkable passage has been esteemed a prognostication of the
discovery of America; it should rather be called directions to find it
out.[12]
But what were the Pillars of Hercules, and where are we to look for
them? Are they really the rocks which frown or smile across the
Straits, such as it has pleased the imagination of poets to picture
them? If so, then might the fable be deemed an extravagance. As Jacob
set up his stone at Bethel, and called it the house of God;[13] as
Joshua set up in Jordan pillars for the tribes of Israel, so did
Hercules set up his altars, when he had reached the ocean. Over them
in subsequent times the temple which bore his name was raised, but
there was no image;[14] none of the child-sacrifices of Baal; none of
the lasciviousness[15] of Bætica, and of the worship of Astaraoth.
They worshipped, indeed, deities unknown, or consecrated thoughts,
and services contemned elsewhere. Three altars were there to Art, Old
Age, and Poverty. From a Greek tourist, who, thaumaturgist as he was,
comprehended very little of what he saw, I quote the following:--
“In this temple, two Herculeses are worshipped without having statues
erected to them. The Egyptian Hercules has two brazen altars without
inscriptions, the Theban but one. Here we saw engraved in stone the
Hydra, and Diomedes’ mares, and the twelve labours of Hercules,
together with the golden olive of Pygmalion, wrought with exquisite
skill, and placed here no less on account of the beauty of its
branches, than on that of its fruit, of emeralds, which appeared as
if real. Besides the above, the golden belt of the Telamonian Teucer
was shown to us.... The Pillars in the temple were composed of gold
and silver; and so nicely blended were the metals as to form but one
colour. They were more than a cubit high, of a quadrangular form,
like anvils, whose capitals were inscribed with characters _neither
Egyptian, nor Indian_, nor such as could be deciphered. These Pillars
are the chains which bind together the earth and sea. The inscriptions
on them were executed by Hercules in the house of the Parcæ, to
prevent discord arising among the elements, and that friendship being
interrupted which they have for each other.”[16]
There was no Hercules, but the Tyrian worshipped here. The temple was
Tyrian, the rites were Tyrian, and the Tyrians did not borrow from the
Greeks. What I say is but the repetition of what Appian, Arrian[17] and
others have said. In fact, there was but one Hercules. The writing
could only be Phœnician. By the testimony of Greek travellers, the
pillars were _square stones_; and the tradition of their being the
links which bind together the earth and the sea, again connects these
with the occasion upon which they were erected: they were both in
Europe.[18]
To call Calpe and Abyla “The Pillars of Hercules” was a license,
and might be a poetic one; but to assume these mountains to be so
geographically, was to withdraw the license by destroying the poetry.
This solecism modern philosophy has adopted![19]
Out of this error arose the dull plagiarism of the Bœotian Charles,
who gave to the presumptuous arms, in which those of the Peninsula
were quartered with those of the Empire, two Pillars as supporters,
which are to stand for the traditional altars and the figurative
hills. The motto was “plus ultra,” taken from “ne plus ultra,” both
equally meaningless after the discovery of America. The dropping of the
particle _ne_ announced the unlimited ambition of his nature, and the
narrow limits of his mind and scholarship.[20]
The Two Columns are still often heard of throughout the Mediterranean,
and sometimes seen in the shape of the dollar of Charles V., which is
superior in value to those of his successors, and is known by the name
of _Colonato_. Strange vicissitude! The Phœnician Melcarth’s votive
offering become a money-changer’s tale! The story is now ended, and the
circle complete. Bright-eyed poetry--strong-handed enterprise, have
descended to ambition and solecism, vulgarity and gain, and having
begun with virtue idolized, we end with gold become the idol.
I have been speculating on the influence exercised by this passage on
human events: the physical condition of the globe offers a parallel
field.
Let us suppose, that the gap had been just wide enough to supply the
water lost by evaporation, for which the thousandth part of the present
passage would suffice:--the Mediterranean would have been a salt-pan.
The yearly deposit would have been an inch, the yearly produce 80
millions of cart loads, or 50,000 times the quantity of earth displaced
in constructing the London and Birmingham Railway. Supposing then this
evaporation to have gone on since the deluge, the result would be,
a field of 750,000 square miles of salt, fifty fathoms thick--that
is, the Mediterranean would be a tank of brine, and perhaps we should
have a fresh-water ocean outside in lieu of a salt one.[21] This has
been prevented by the straits being wide and deep enough to allow an
admixture of the waters.
In all other geological facts, there are presented subordinate effects
only. You may reason from the completeness of the whole, and the
adaptation of the parts to a supreme creating Will. But this adjustment
of the forms of nature to the use of man, appears less a geological
incident than a specimen of animal organization.
Going a step further, let us suppose the ocean shut out altogether.[22]
What sights should we then have seen? Since the Deluge the evaporation,
at the present rate, would have reduced by this time the level 8,000
or 10,000 feet; but in proportion as it sunk, and the shallow borders
became dry land, the temperature would rise, and the moisture of the
atmosphere diminish. The evaporation would be more and more rapid, and
the surface of the Mediterranean might have sunk as far beneath its
present level as Mont Blanc soars above it.[23]
It is singular that the Tartarus of Virgil and Dante is cast in this
very region; but it would then have been no fabled terrors: natural
objects would have outstripped their fancies. The breath of this
furnace would not have been pent up in its caverns, but have spread its
blight over the finest regions of Africa, Europe, and Asia, blasting
in their bud the glories of the Capitol, the eloquence of the Bema,
the sculptures of the Parthenon, the trophies of the Memnonium, the
enterprise of Tyre, and the wealth of Carthage; and these fair and
fertile shores would have been a wilderness, overhanging an abyss
of death. The Chinese, the Hindoo, or, perchance, the Seminole
philosopher, would have been journeying here to visit the bowels of the
earth laid open to the sun.
What observations and experiments to make on the converse phenomena to
ours--on the increase of intensity of heat and pressure on the powers
of men or animals! What speculations on the old orders of the animal
and vegetable kingdoms under new conditions! What new ones called
into existence! What magnetic and electric phenomena to reward the
Empedocles who ventured into this crater of 4,000 miles circumference!
Imagine Lebanon or Etna rising 30,000 or 60,000 feet, and Cyprus, a
plateau, suspended a mile and a half above the plain of burning salt or
boiling brine! What treasures for the historian--the exuviæ of animals
and men--the refuse of centuries washed down by the streams--the dead
of extinguished races buoyed up and floating through each other in the
brine, or caught and cured in the salt as the mammoth in the ice! The
geologist would then have enjoyed the sight of strata unmodified by a
retiring deluge, and feasted his eyes on the reality of chaos, and an
earth fitted for salamanders, megalosauri, cheirotheria, and mastodons.
The Simoon would have extended its empire from the Zahara to the plains
of Languedoc, and, cherished by his breath, the locust would have
asserted her sway up to the English sea. Such, horrid and inane, must
have been the “sweet south,” had not this channel been dug, and this
purple sea poured in--reflecting the heavens above,--dispensing around
moisture to the fields, health to the people,--yielding its body to
their keels, its breezes to their sails. For this were these portals
opened, which man so long has deemed a mystery denying his scrutiny,
and a barrier defying his adventure.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Ferdinand of Castile, after the death of Isabella, and the
conclusion of the Neapolitan war, joined the Portuguese in the
conquest of Morocco, on which they were then engaged, and settled
the distribution of future conquests. The Spaniards were to have all
eastward of Tetuan, the Portuguese all westward of Ceuta. Ferdinand
himself led a great expedition of a hundred thousand men; and a second,
equally powerful, sailed under Cardinal Ximenes. Millella, Penon de
Velez, Oran, Tremcen, Fidelitz, Mostagan, Algiers, Bugia, Tunis, and
finally Tripoli, were captured, or occupied on the flight of the
inhabitants; so that the Kings of Spain were in possession of the whole
coast of Africa, from Egypt to the Straits of Gibraltar; while the
distracted Moorish State was vigorously attacked by the Portuguese on
the other side, where they had obtained either permanent or temporary
possession of Ceuta, Tangier, Arzilla, Larache, Salee, Azymore,
Mogadore; and their conquests extended beyond the Ha Ha spur of the
Atlas into Suz.
[2] “EXTRAORDINARY OCCURRENCE IN AFRICA.--A letter from Gerli (Gerba),
regency of Tunis, recounts a strange scene of recent occurrence.
There exists at Gerli a sort of pyramid, constructed of the heads of
decapitated Christians, principally Maltese, Sicilians, and Spaniards,
who fell or were taken prisoners at the battle of the 29th of July,
1560. At the request of Sir T. Reade, the British Consul, and the Vicar
Apostolic of Terrara, the Bey sent orders to the Governor for the
demolition of this lugubrious monument. Saturday, the 7th of August,
was the day fixed for the ceremony. All the authorities were assembled.
No sooner, however, had the masons commenced operations, than some
Zouavian soldiers and other armed individuals rushed into the arena,
and with yells of rage shouted that the time was come for substituting
the skulls of the Christians present on the spot for those of which
the pyramid was constructed. The Governor attempted in vain to appease
these fanatics. He was so ill-treated as to be compelled to retire. It
is hoped that Sir T. Reade will be called upon to obtain satisfaction
for this outrage.”--_Paris paper._
[3] “Africa, in its interior, is the least known quarter of the
globe, and perhaps fortunately for its inhabitants will long remain
so.”--HEEREN, _Carthag._ c. iv.
[4]
Ἐπεί με χ’ ἁἱ κασιγνήτου τύχοι
Τείρουσ’ Ἄτλαντος, ὁς πρὸς ἑσπέρους τύπους
ἔστηκε, κίον’ ούρανοῦ τε καὶ χθονὸς
ὤμοιν ἐρείδων, ἄχθος οὺκ εὐάγκαλον.
ESCH. _Prom._
[5] The Straits were the pivot of Cicero’s cosmography. In the Tusculan
Disputations, commemorating the wonders of nature, he speaks of “_the
globe of the Earth standing forth out of the Sea_, fixed in the middle
space of the universal World, habitable and cultivated in two distant
regions; that which we inhabit being placed under the axis towards
the seven stars; the other region, the Australian, unknown to us; the
remainder uncultivated, stiffened with cold, or burnt up with heat.”
[6]
Ὑμεἴς δ’, ὥ μοῦσαι, σκολίας ἐνέποιτε κελεύθους
Ἀρξάμεναι στοιχηδὸν ἀφ’ ἑσπέρου Ὠκεανοῖο.
Ἔνθά τε καὶ στῆλαι περὶ τέρμασιν Ἡρακλῆος
Ἑστῦσιν, μέγα θαῦμα παρ’ ἐσχατόεντα Γἀδειρα,
Μακρὸν ὑπὸ πρηῶνα πολυσπέρεων Ἀτλάντων,
Ἡχί τε καὶ χάλκειος ἐς οὐρανὸν ἔδραμε κίων,
Ἡλίβατος, πυκινοῖσι καλυπτόμενος νεφέεσσι.
DIONYSIUS AFRICANUS.
[7] Philostratus, in the life of Apollonius, mentions that he himself
had seen the ebb and flow, which he ascribes to the true cause. “All
the phases of the moon during the increase, fulness and wane, are to be
observed in the sea. Hence it comes to pass that the ocean follows the
changes of the moon by increasing and decreasing with it.”
[8] By the rediscovery of the mariner’s compass, the voyage along the
Western coast of Africa became practicable, and to this is owing the
passage by the Cape to India, as well as the discovery of America.
Without Columbus that discovery would have been made. The Portuguese,
in their second expedition to India, fell on the Brazils just as the
Chinese junk on its way to England was forced to America.
[9]
Ὠκεανός τε πέριξ ἐν ὔδασι γαῖαν
Ἑἱλἰσσων.
_Song of Orpheus._
Ὁς περικυμαίνει γαίης περιτέρμονα κύκλον. _Id._
[10] Eratosthenes of Cyrene measured the terrestrial meridian by the
problem worked out from the well of Syene. To predict eclipses the
mechanism of the heavens must be known. They were predicted by the
ancients, _e.g._ Thales in the seventh century before Christ, Eparcus
of Mycea, in the second; Hellico of Cyzycus, and Eudemus. Anaxagoras of
Clasomene narrowly escaped death for explaining their cause. Among the
Romans, Sulpicius Gallus predicted an eclipse during the war against
Perseus; and Drusus, by doing so, quelled an insurrection (Tacit.
Annals. I. 28). Pythagoras taught publicly that the earth was a sphere,
and the centre of the universe; but he communicated to the initiated
its double motion round its axis and the sun. Cicero was the friend of
the man who calculated the exact distance of the moon, and approached
to that of the sun.
[11] “Morgante Maggiore,” Canto xxv. stanza 205-9.
[12] The proposition of Columbus was, “Buscar el levante por el
ponente.” To find the east by the west. This was precisely the mistake
made by the Greeks, who had gained the idea of the spherical form of
the east without the knowledge of its dimensions. It was, in fact, the
repetition of the words of Aristotle--
--Συνάπτειν τὰν, περὶ τὰς Ἡρακλείους στήλας, τόπον περὶ τῷ τὴν
Ἰνδικήν.
[13] In the Highlands the church is still called _clachan_, or the
stones.
[14] “Sed nulla effigies simulacrave nota deorum.”--SIL. ITAL.
[15] “Castumque cubile.”--_Id._
[16] Phil. in Apoll. v. 5.
[17] Καὶ τῷ φοινίκων νόμῳ ὄτι νεὼς πεποίηται τῷ Ἡρακλεῖ τῷ ἔκει καὶ
θυσίαι θύοντο.--L. 2.
[18] Ἀπὸ Ἡρακλεἴων στηλὼν τὼν εν τῇ Εὐρὡπη ἑμπόρια πολλὰ,
κ.τ.λ.--SCYLAX.
Cadiz has still retained them as her arms:--
“The Tyrian islanders,
On whose proud ensigns floating to the wind,
Alcides’ Pillars towered.”--_The Lusiad_, b. iv.
[19] There is a dispute between Mannert and Gosselin about Hanno’s
measurements, because they will not take his point of departure, viz.
“the pillars of Hercules,” but will take mounts Abyla and Calpe.
Heeren, as usual, interferes, and settles the matter thus: “The
pillars of Hercules did not so much mean Abyla and Calpe as the _whole
Straits_!”
[20] Bacon has adorned his first edition of his “Novum Organum” with
a frontispiece, where a vessel is seen sailing forth between the two
columns.
[21] I am here venturing to anticipate a future conclusion of science,
viz. that the sea is salt only to a certain depth.
[22] “How different would have been the present state of temperature,
of vegetation, of agriculture, and even of human society, if the major
axes of the old and new continents had been given the same direction;
if the chain of the Andes, instead of following a meridian, had been
directed from east to west; if no heat-radiating mass of tropical land
extended to the south of Europe; or if the Mediterranean, which was
once in connection both with the Caspian and Red Sea, and which has so
powerfully favoured the social establishment of nations, were not in
existence; that is to say, if its bed had been raised to the level of
the plains of Lombardy and of the ancient Cyrene.”--_Cosmos_, vol. i.
p. 205.
[23] “The levels of the Sea of Tiberias and the Dead Sea are
respectively 666 and 1,311 English feet below the level of the
Mediterranean.”--_Cosmos_, vol. i. p. 288.
CHAPTER II.
THE CURRENTS OF THE STRAITS.
The Mediterranean is like a bag with two necks filling at both ends.
The current through the Dardanelles presents exciting varieties, but no
perplexing mysteries. It is the discharge of the surplus of the Black
Sea, and the current is subject to the influences of the northerly
and southerly winds; being reversed when the latter long prevails. At
Gibraltar all is disorder--the stream incessant--the level on both
sides the same. The tide rises and falls, yet the current always runs
out of the ocean and into the Mediterranean. So determined is this
rush, that the gales of the Equinox neither quicken nor retard it, and
the phases of the moon have no power over it. It bursts through all
obstacles and transgresses all laws, and seems to move by a will of
its own--too strong to be disturbed, too deep to be discovered. During
my excursions I was engaged in examining these phenomena, and I will
commence with stating the results of several months’ cogitation and
inquiries.
I first applied myself to test the old explanation of an under-current,
by endeavouring to float substances at various levels, and after great
trouble in procuring lines, and having machines of various kinds made,
I found that without a frigate’s tackle and crew no results could be
obtained. I was thus reduced to mere scrutiny of the alleged facts, and
of the alleged theory. The facts amount to this: a vessel, in 1754,[24]
was fired into from the battery, it sank in face of the rock, and was
afterwards cast up in the bay of Tangier.
A vessel, when it sinks, goes to the bottom, and if fragments of it are
detached and are cast ashore, it is only because they float, that is,
they rise to the surface. This story will not, therefore, serve the
theory, even if authentic. There is nothing to prevent a ship or timber
from floating out; for close in shore, on both sides, the tides of the
ocean rise within the Straits to the height of four feet: of these,
boats take advantage to get through against both wind and current.
Sometimes, indeed, though it very rarely happens, the whole current
is reversed; and vessels working during the night, and reckoning on
being carried fifty miles to the eastward, have found themselves in the
morning ninety miles to the westward of the point where they expected
to be, that is to say, carried forty miles over the ground to the
westward during the night.[25]
Having thus disposed of the only, but incessantly quoted fact, I
proceed to the theory. Reasoning, however, there is none, for it
amounts to nothing more than this: “What becomes of all this water?
It cannot go to the Black Sea, from which the Mediterranean receives
water; it cannot escape by a subterranean passage into the Red Sea, for
the level of the Red Sea is higher by thirty feet. Then there is an
under-current discharging the water back again into the ocean.”
Water moves by its weight. Unless there is difference of level, there
is no motion. The resistance is from the bottom according to its
roughness, and the _vis inertiæ_ is felt at the top--thus the greatest
speed is at about two-thirds of the depth; here there is no difference
of level, nor is the water acted on superficially by any propelling
power. There is no prevalence of winds to account for a current at
the surface. So great is the momentum of the stream, that, unlike the
currents of the Dardanelles, it is neither accelerated by favourable
winds, nor even retarded by adverse storms. The idea of an over-current
running against an under-current is so opposed to all experience, that
to be admissible, proofs would be required, and it could never be
received as an hypothesis to account for an unexplained phenomenon.
Thus, the theoretical explanations utterly fail; yet there is action
without agent, momentum without motor, currents without winds or
declivity, and a vessel constantly filling without escape or overflow.
A mighty river rushes over its bed; but this river is not moved by
its weight; it runs on a dead level[26] to the sea it reaches from the
fountain whence it springs.--That fountain is the ocean itself! No
wonder that this should be the first of ancient mysteries, and the last
to be explained.
Before I had discarded the idea of an under-current, or had discovered
the insufficiency of the evaporation to account for the indraught, I
was sitting on Partridge Island, (a small rock within the Straits,) and
gazing with astonishment at the enormous mass of water running by me,
when the question occurred to me, _what becomes of the salt_? If the
water evaporate, the salt remains; here then is the sluice of a mighty
salt-pan--where is the produce? This has been going on for thousands
of years; is there a deposit of salt at the bottom? If so, why have
the abysses of the Mediterranean not been filled up? But salt is not
deposited; how then is the Mediterranean not become brine? Then I saw
that the evaporation would not account for the indraught, and before
I descended from that rock, I had solved the problem. That solution
is--an under-current produced by a difference of specific gravity
between the water of the Mediterranean and the ocean.
If you take two vessels, and fill one with fresh water, and the other
with salt, or the one with sea-water at its ordinary charge of 1030,
and the other with sea-water of higher specific gravity, such as
would result from evaporating a portion of it, say 1100, and colour
differently the water in the two vessels, and then raise a sluice
between them, you will instantly have two currents established in
_opposite directions_. In fact, you produce currents of water, like
currents of wind, by the converse of rarefaction.
“Recent discoveries,” says Humboldt, “have shown that the ocean has
its currents exactly as the air. Living, as we do, upon the surface,
they have been beyond our reach; but now, having obtained soundings to
the depth of four miles, we have ascertained that there is a rush of
icy water from the Pole to the Equator, just as there is a draft of
air close to the earth into the centre of Africa. The Mediterranean
offers an apparent anomaly of a higher temperature at great depths.
This Arago explains by the fact, ‘That the surface of the water flows
in as a Westerly current, whilst a counter current prevails beneath,
and prevents the influx from the ocean of the cold current from the
Pole.’[27] If there was nothing to determine the currents at the
entrance of the Mediterranean, save the relative degrees of cold at
great depths between it and the ocean, the cold water would run in at
the lowest depths, and the warm water would run out on the surface,
which is precisely the reverse of what it does.
Here is a body of water 740,000 square miles in extent, subject
hourly to the increase of its specific gravity. Upon the surface, a
crust of salt is left in the course of every year, sufficient to give
a double charge to the depth of six fathoms. To adjust the difference
thus created with the ocean, there is but a narrow inlet,--a mere
crack upon the side of the vessel, an interval of six miles left in
a circumference of four thousand. By this, in its deepest part, the
heavier water will have to find its way out, and thus occasion an
indraught of water above, besides the demand created by evaporation. It
remains to be ascertained by experiment, that the specific gravity of
the water in the Straits varies at different levels, and at what level
it commences to move outwards. These experiments will present great
practical difficulties from the tides at the sides, which will mingle
the streams; and, from the shallowness towards the ocean, they must be
made in the middle and at the Mediterranean side. The evaporation, and
the differences of specific gravity, will give the means of calculating
the amount of water passing through in both directions, and the depth
and velocity of the two currents. But it may be inferred that the
currents will have the greatest speed at the top and the bottom,--that
their velocity will diminish towards the centre, and that a neutral
space of dead water will remain, not only in consequence of the
counter-impetus of the currents, but because of the nearer approach
of specific gravity, and the mingling of the two waters, which would
destroy the moving power.
With this solution we can at once understand the powerlessness of
tides and storms, currents without difference of level, or prevalence
of winds: the volume of the stream is accounted for, the mass of salt
disposed of, and the apparent rebellion against the laws of Nature put
down.
By tables kept for several years at Malta, it appears that the
Mediterranean, at that point, varies in level between winter and summer
no less than three feet. In winter, when there is no evaporation, and
when the quantity of water falling in the immediate vicinity of the
Mediterranean is greatest, the level is lowest. The cause, I should
take to be the pressure of wintry wind. In like manner, those erratic
movements in the Straits may result from difference of atmospheric
pressure without and within.
These currents, by the testimony of the ancients, have not held from
the beginning--they have been the results of successive modifications
of the channel. This is singularly borne out by the traditions of the
neighbouring people and the geological features of the coast.
Eldressi narrates, as an old and popular story of his day, that “the
Sea of Cham (Mediterranean) was in ancient times a lake surrounded on
all sides, like the Sea of Tabaristan (Caspian), the waters of which
have no communication with any other seas. So that the inhabitants
of the extreme west invaded the people of Andalusia, doing them much
injury, which they, in like manner, did to the others, living always
in war, until the time of Alexander,[28] who consulted his wise men
and artificers about cutting that arid isthmus and opening a canal.
Thereupon they measured the earth, and the depth of the two seas,
and saw that the Sea of Cham was not much lower than the Sea Muhit,
(Ocean); so they raised the towns that were on the coast of the Sea
of Cham, changing them to the high ground. Then he ordered the earth
to be dug out; and they dug it away to the bottom of the mountains on
both sides; and he built there two terraces with stones and lime the
whole length between the two seas, which was twelve miles; one on the
side of Tankhe (Tangier), and one on the side of Andeluz. When this was
done, he caused the mound to be broken, and the water rushed in from
the great sea with violence, raising the waters of the Sea of Cham, so
that many cities perished, and their inhabitants were drowned, and the
waters rose above the dykes, and carried them away, and did not rest
until they had reached the mountains on both sides.”
The Moors have also a Myth. “The sea,” they say, “was created fresh,
but exalting itself against its Maker, gnats were sent to drink it up.
It then humbled itself in the stomach of the gnats, and prayed to be
relieved, so the gnats were ordered to vomit it forth again, but the
salt remained from the stomach of the gnats an eternal sign of its
disobedience.”
Before suggesting the interpretation of these Myths, I will point out
the change which the coasts and channel have undergone.
The description of the Straits by Greek and Roman writers is so unlike
their present appearance, that, but for the impossibility of doubting
the identity of the objects, we must have supposed their words to apply
to some undiscovered region. Who could recognize the deep sea and the
iron-bound coasts of these narrows, in a plain of sand furrowed by
rivers running in from the ocean, which it was difficult to reach,
not from the strength of the stream, but the intricacies of the
passage--who would imagine the necessity of constructing flat-bottomed
boats to get across from Gibraltar to Ceuta, where now there is above
one thousand fathoms, or of transferring the ferry to the Atlantic
side of the Straits, where at present the depth is not one-sixth of
what it is in the other, in order to get more water? Yet there is no
doubt that these details apply to these spots, nor can we question the
known accuracy of the writers, or escape from the concurrence of their
testimony. We are reduced, then, to the necessity of admitting some
great revolution in the features of the country, and a total change in
the nature of the current.
The explanation is easy: the bank of sand, left by the retiring waters
of the Deluge, which covers the western border of Africa, reached to
the coast of Andalusia, and the remnants of it still lie on the eastern
side of Gibraltar, and fill the caverns exposed to that side; on the
depression of the Mediterranean by evaporation, the water of the ocean
would filter in, the sand would be gradually removed. The amount of
sand on the Mediterranean side of the “Rock,” shows that a plain nearly
one thousand feet above the level of the sea, once stretched across to
Africa, where now the channel is one thousand fathoms deep. This has
been worked out by the overfall, while on the Atlantic side the water
shoals to one hundred and eighty fathoms, presenting the character of
an estuary with a bar from the rush outward of the under waters, since
the Gut was sufficiently deepened to admit of the currents in opposite
directions. The centre part of the channel is worn down to the rock or
to gravel, every particle of sand has been removed from the bottom. Two
inferences may be drawn: 1st. That the process of removal was likely to
be accompanied by sudden inbursts, which would submerge the borders.
2nd. That the Mediterranean, in early ages, was fresh, and afterwards
became, as it evaporated, very salt, until the channel was deepened to
allow of its mixing with the ocean. What else is implied by the Myth of
the midges and the fable of Alexander?
FOOTNOTES:
[24] See James’s History of Gibraltar.
[25] This happened to the _Phantome_.
[26] The excellent geodesic operations of Corabœuf and Deleros
have shown, that at the two extremities of the Pyrenæan chain, as
well as at Marseilles and the northern coast of Holland, there is
no sensible difference between the level of the Atlantic and the
Mediterranean.--_Cosmos_, vol. i. p. 297.
[27] _Cosmos_, vol. i. p. 296.
[28] In eastern tradition there are two Alexanders: the first is
Dualkernein, whom the Bretons claim as their leader from the Holy Land,
and the opponent of Joshua. According to the authorities cited in
Price’s Arabia (p. 54), the first Alexander was also a Macedonian, and
built a city in Egypt, on the site of the city afterwards raised by the
Macedonian. The ramparts of brass at the Caspian gate were attributed
to both Alexanders--they are by the Koran given to the first. (Sale’s
Koran, ch. xvii. p. 120; Merkhond’s Early Kings of Persia, p. 368). Al
Makkari says, the same Alexander built towns of brass in the Canary
Islands. Macarius, patriarch of Antioch, speaks of the Dardanelles
being opened by Alexander, and that he placed his own statue on the
top of one of the hills (Travels, vol. i. p. 33-40). Thus confounding
together the deluge of Ogyges--the cutting the canal of Athos--the
opening the Straits of Gibraltar. Alexander seems to have adopted the
title of the two former to favour the analogy (see Merkhnd, 334; Price,
49; Temple of Jerusalem, p. 119). Alexander Dualkernein, is still a
hero of the Spanish nurseries.
CHAPTER III.
GIBRALTAR OF THE MOORS.
There is no place of which it is more difficult to form an idea without
seeing it, than Gibraltar. One naturally expects to find a fortress
closing the Mediterranean with its celebrated galleries and enormous
guns facing the Straits. It is nothing of the kind.
The Straits are, at the narrowest part, seven miles and a quarter
wide; but that part is fifteen miles from Gibraltar. It is only after
you have passed the Narrows that you see the “Rock” away to the left.
Ceuta, in like manner, recedes to the right; the width being here
twelve miles. The current runs in the centre, sweeping vessels along,
and instead of being exposed to inconvenience from either fortress,
they would generally find it difficult to get under their guns. The
batteries and galleries face Spain, and look landward, not seaward.
Whatever its value in other respects, it is quite a mistake to suppose
that it commands the Straits, or has ever had a gun mounted for that
purpose.
Gibraltar is a tongue three miles long and one broad, running out into
the sea, pointing to Africa, and joined to Spain at the northern
extremity by a low isthmus of sand: it presents an almost perpendicular
face to the Spanish coast. Seen from the “Queen of Spain’s Chair,” it
resembles a lion couching on the point, its head towards Spain, its
tail towards Africa, as if it had cleared the Straits at a spring.
Geologically speaking, it belongs to the African hills, which are
limestone, and not to those of the opposite Spanish coast, which
are crystalline. Mount Abyla is called by the Moors after Muza, who
planned the expedition, and Calpe is now named after Tarif, the leader
who conducted it. Seen from the mountains above Algesiras, the rock
resembles a man lying on his back with his head on one side. The
resemblance of Mount Athos to a man I have made out in a similar manner.
The side towards the Mediterranean is now made inaccessible by
scarping, but it was nearly so before. Towards the point at the south,
the rock lowers and breaks down till, on the Bay side, it shelves
into the sea; thence along the Bay, which in its natural state was
an open beach of sand, gently sloping up until shouldered by the
steep sides or precipices of the Rock. This level ground affords the
site for the present town. The southern and larger portion has been
converted into the beautiful pleasure-ground called the Almeida, or is
occupied by barracks and private residences. Half of this bristling
tongue was formed unapproachable,--man has fenced in the other. This
sea-wall from end to end is the work of the Moors. Antiquarians have
endeavoured to find here Roman and Phœnician remains. I should just as
soon expect to find a Roman fortress at John O’Groat’s, or a Phœnician
emporium on Salisbury Plain. It was reserved for a shrewder people than
Carthaginians, Romans, Greeks, or Goths, to discover Gibraltar’s worth.
There are three elevations on the ridge, one in the centre, and one
at each extremity. That in the centre is the highest; and here is the
signal station, from which works are carried straight down to the beach
at the ragged staff. The upper part of the Rock is like a roof, and
down it, like forked lightning, runs a zig-zag wall. Below this stony
thatching there is a story or two of precipices; the line of defence
drops over them and on the works, which shut in the town on the south,
and which consist of a curtain-bastion and ditch. In the rear of this
wall (the zig-zag) there are the remains of a still more ancient one. A
great amount of labour has been expended upon this almost inaccessible
height. These zig-zag, or flanking lines, are naturally assumed to
be modern, and the wall goes by the name of Charles V., who restored
the fortification below; but the loop-holes are for cross-bows. The
diagonal steps at the landing-places, the materials and the coating, as
well as the whole aspect, show them to be Moorish. Heterodox as this
opinion was held when I first broached it, it was not impugned after
two inspections by the officers best qualified to pronounce on such a
matter.
On the north, too, all our defences are restorations of the Moorish
works: even in the galleries they have been our forerunners. Their
open works were in advance of ours, and a staircase is cut out through
the Rock down to the beach. In fact, save in what is requisite for
the application of gunpowder, or what is superfluous for defence,
the Moors had rendered Gibraltar what it is to-day. They have
even left us structures of the greatest service, as resisting the
effects of gunpowder, and such as we are able neither to rival nor
to imitate. On the great lines, in consequence of the many changes
which have taken place, the original work has been displaced, or
covered up, and especially so along the sea-wall; but, ascend to the
signal-post,--crawl out on the face of the Rock to the north,--examine
even yet Europa Point--Rozier Bay, and everywhere you find the Moor.
It is impossible to move about at Gibraltar, without having the old
tower in sight, and it is difficult to take one’s eyes off it when it
is so. No aspiring lines, no graceful sweeps, no columned terraces
exert their fascination, nor is it ruin and dilapidation that speak to
the heart. The building is plain in its aspect, mathematical in its
forms, clean in its outlines, with a sturdy and stubborn middle-aged
air, without a shade of fancy or of wildness. Nevertheless, the eye is
drawn to it, and then your thoughts are fixed on it--and they are so,
precisely because you cannot tell why.
It constitutes the apex of a triangular fort, and massy and lofty
itself, it thus assumes a station of dignity and command. The annals
of time are traced on it--here by the arrow-head still sticking,[29]
there by the hollow of the shot and shell. It has borne the brunt of
a score of sieges, and stands to-day without a single repair. On its
summit, seventy feet from the ground, guns are planted. The terrace
on the roof is cracked, but the surface is otherwise as smooth as if
just finished. The pottery-pipes fitted in to carry away the water, are
precisely such as might have been shipped from London. A semicircular
arch supports a gallery on the inner side. A window opening in this
gallery, now blocked up, is like a church window with the Gothic arch
chamfered. The exterior was plastered in fine lime, and there are
traces of its having been divided off into figures. It has now, by the
barbarians in possession, been rubbed over with dirty brown to make it
look _ancient_. The turrets on the walls below have been furbished up
to look like cruet-stands, and the staring face of a clock[30] is stuck
in a Saracen tower.
The upper story only is explored and open; the flooring is perfectly
smooth, and the roof stuccoed. There is a bath-room, and a mosque; the
former has a figured aperture slanting through ten or twelve feet of
wall to admit the light, as in the domes of Eastern baths. The other
parts of the building are as much unknown as those of the unopened
Pyramids. If these ruins had been in the hands of the tribe that live
on the rock above, there would have been exhibited at least as much
taste, and certainly more curiosity.
The standing walls adjoining the towers exhibit faces of arches that
covered in halls and surrounded courts. The second portion of the fort
is at present used as a prison. The lower enclosure is of greater
extent, and in the line of the wall is a remarkable Egyptian-looking
building, square with buttresses at the angles and a pyramidal
roof--roof and walls one mass of Moorish concrete (Tapia). It is
as perfect as it was a thousand years ago, and may be equally so a
thousand years hence. It is at present used as a powder-magazine,
and is divided into two stories. The flooring of the upper hall is
supported in the middle by a block of masonry some fifty feet square.
This apartment is curiously ventilated.
This Moorish fort is, as a whole, a building of great interest.
An architect of the last century speaks of it as one of the most
remarkable on the soil of Europe. It was no embellishment of, or
defence for a capital; it was raised in time of trouble on a remote
promontory as a protection for insurgents. It was antecedent to art in
Europe,--the people who raised it did not imitate Rome; they must have
brought this art with them. It stands a match for man and time, defying
at once the inventions of the one and the ravages of the other.
Here is an original in design and substance, a work surpassing those
of the Romans in strength, and equalling those of the Egyptians in
durability.
As the zig-zag lines have been attributed to the Spaniards, so on high
authority is a much more recent date[31] than that which I here assign
to them given to the Moorish fort and tower; but supposing them to
be of no earlier date than the fourteenth century, they would still
illustrate a style of architecture which the Moors introduced, and
which, like language, is lost in the mists of antiquity.
They are now busy in demolishing the works that connected the Moorish
fort with the harbour. Whilst tracing the old wall from the former to
the latter, I came upon a large arch, and satisfied myself that this
had been an entrance to an inner harbour. On subsequent reference to
James’s History of Gibraltar, I find that this was well known in his
time.
During these researches, in which I spent a month, I had not the aid
that is generally obtained from the observations of others. I often
attempted to look into books, but was always constrained to throw them
aside, and return to the writings on the wall. What manner of men were
these Moors?--the ruins suggested the question, and books furnished no
answer.
On the sea-side, Gibraltar is open to the fire of vessels, and would
have been captured on one occasion, but for the dissensions between the
combined forces. We have retained it only by a new invention, _red-hot
shot_.
The land-entrance is defended as follows: first, the isthmus round
the north face of the Rock is dug out and filled with water, and
between this basin, called the Inundation, and the Bay, a causeway
only is left, which can be swept away at once by the enormous guns
from the overhanging caverns. Behind the Inundation, is the glacis,
elaborately mined; and behind the ditch there is a curtain, mounting
eighteen or twenty guns, which fills up the gap between the Rock
and the works on the port. As you advance along the narrow causeway
between the Inundation and the Bay, you have this curtain in front.
To the right stretches out into the water, a long low mole called the
“Devil’s Tongue,” and between it and the curtain, there is tier upon
tier of embrasures over the Port and the Port entrance. To the left
of the curtain, the sharp engineering lines scale the rocks, and link
the chain of defence to the Moorish Tower. Thence the cliffs sweep
away round to the left, parallel to the causeway, along which you are
advancing. The Rock is shaved into lines for musketry, or pierced with
port-holes, which stretch away in rows far and high. On the crest of
the first precipice, batteries and guns are scattered. You see them
again on the loftiest summit of the Rock, so that as you approach, you
pass over ground swept with metal, and through successive centres of
converging fire. This is by the Spaniards called “Bocca del Fuego.”
At each step, from all around, above, below, from Merlon, rock, and
cavern, mouths of iron--some of them caverns themselves--open upon you.
This is the only portion of the contour of the place that an assailant
could approach or batter. With a sufficient garrison, and superiority
at sea, so as to throw in provisions, the place is clearly impregnable.
The breaching batteries would have to be advanced beyond the guns
on the northern portion of the rock, and the advanced works would
be looked into, and down upon. In no sieges had either breach been
attempted, or third parallel drawn. The batteries on the crest of the
Rock, termed Willis’s, were the effectual defence, by their plunging
fire into the Spanish works. The siege, properly speaking, was an
attempt to starve, by cutting off supplies at sea, and to break down
by sheer superiority of fire and shelling. The operations from the
sea would have been successful but for the red-hot shot. The vaunted
galleries have been constructed since the siege, and are mere matters
of ostentation.
Gibraltar has neither dock nor harbour. The Bay and anchorage are
commanded by the Spanish forts, St. Barbara and St. Philip. These are
levelled at present; but they will arise on the only occasion that
we can require protection--that is to say, a war with Spain. They,
therefore, must be restored in the mind’s eye, if you would form any
estimate of the value of this fortress in case of war. They were
dismantled during the late war by the Spanish government, lest the
French _should occupy them_, and destroy the English shipping. The
Spanish government, however, formally reserved its right to rebuild
them. The question has been lately raised by our sinking one of their
men-of-war in their own waters, while pursuing a smuggler.
The guns of St. Barbara command the anchorage and batter the harbour;
the shells from it and St. Philip pass clean over the Rock, lengthways,
and can be dropped into every creek where a shoulder of rock might
shelter a vessel from the direct fire. During the siege by France and
Spain, the post was of no use. Unless when superior at sea, we had to
sink our vessels to save them.
In Gibraltar, there is little trade except contraband; the natural
commerce having been systematically discouraged, that the martial
departments might not be troubled, and with the view of reducing it
to a mere military establishment. The fiscal regulations of Spain,
which sustain this traffic, would long since have fallen but for its
retention by England. We, therefore, lose the legitimate trade of all
Spain for the smuggling profits (which go to the Spaniards) at this
port.
Gibraltar does not command the Straits. It does not present means of
repairs for the navy. It does not afford shelter for shipping in case
of war. It does not advantage, but seriously incommodes our trade. It
does not afford the means of invading or of overawing, or even in any
way annoying Spain, however much it may irritate her; for no fertile
country, populous region, or wealthy city is exposed to it, and there
is no highway by land or sea which it can command.
William III., when he conspired for the partition of the Spanish
monarchy, on the demise of Charles the Second, stipulated for
Gibraltar, the ports of Mahon, and Oran, and a portion of Spain’s
transatlantic dominions. On the death of the last of the line of Philip
Le Bel, Louis XIV. was bought off by the offer of the crown for his
grandson. The English and the Dutch then set up Charles the Third,
and sent a squadron in his name to summon Gibraltar to surrender. The
garrison consisted only of one hundred and ninety men; but it held
out. The Dutch and English battered, and took it. The flag of Charles
the Third was hoisted, but suddenly hauled down and replaced by the
English, to the surprise and indignation of our Dutch allies. Thus was
revealed the secret condition of the compact.
Gibraltar was all that England did get out of that war, and as this
robbery went a great way to ensure her discomfiture, and to establish
Philip the Fifth upon the throne, we may consider Gibraltar as the
cause of the first of those ruinous wars which, made without due
authority, and carried on by anticipations of Revenue, have introduced
among us those social diseases which have counterbalanced and perverted
the mechanical advancement of modern times.
Gibraltar was confirmed to us at the Treaty of Utrecht, but without any
jurisdiction attached to it, and upon the condition that no smuggling
should be carried on thence into Spain. These conditions we daily
violate. We exercise jurisdiction by cannon shot in the Spanish waters
(for the Bay is all Spanish). Under our batteries, the smuggler runs
for protection; he ships his bales at our quays; he is either the agent
of our merchants, or is insured by them; and the flag-post at the top
of the Rock is used to signal to him the movements of the Spanish
cruisers.[32]
We take it for granted that Gibraltar has been honourably, some will
even say chivalrously, won in fair fight; that it has been secured by
treaty and is retained on duly observed conditions; or, perhaps, we
never trouble ourselves about such matters, and imagine, therefore,
that other nations are equally indifferent; but if any one of us would
take the trouble to imagine the fortress of Dover in the possession of
France, or Austria, or Russia, he would then comprehend why Napoleon
said that “Gibraltar was a pledge which England had given to France by
securing to herself the undying hatred of Spain.”[33]
Now let us see the cost. The first item in the account is the Spanish
War of Succession. From the consequences of that war and the retention
of Gibraltar, the family compact of the Bourbons arose. The subsequent
European wars are thus partly the cost-price of Gibraltar.
This combined power weighed constantly against England and her
fortune. If these effects were to be calculated in money, it would
be by hundreds of millions. The actual outlay, however, is enormous.
Gibraltar must have cost at least, 50,000,000_l._[34] If any one
were to do us the favour of taking it off our hands, we should save
30,000,000_l._ more, for the interest of that sum is absorbed by its
yearly outlay.
I cannot speak of this place in any sense as English. I must recollect
only and describe it as Moorish. To the Moors it owes its reputation
and its strength; and it had for them value. It was acquired by them in
a fair, open, stand-up fight. It was selected with judgment, fortified
with skill, and defended with valour. The reason why the place was
of importance to the Moors was, that they were _invading Spain from
Africa_, and that, without the _superiority at sea_.
We have had experience of Gibraltar for a century and a half: we have
carried on great wars during that time, maritime and territorial
combined. The Mediterranean, as much as the ocean, has been the field
of our operations. Spain has been the arena of contest. In the history
of time, there has been no series of events so calculated to bring out
the value of this fortress, if it had any (except as above stated), yet
what have we to show?--Merely a position which we have defended. We
have never acted from it; we have never invaded Spain by it; we have
never supported Spain through it; we have never refitted at it. It has
figured in war solely in consequence of operations against it, or by
the necessity of accumulating and locking up there our resources for
its protection.
The question of its value for England can only arise in the case of
Spain being against us. Spain being with England, Gibraltar would be at
our disposal as Ceuta was during the last war. In the hands of Spain
no sane man would ever think of attacking it. When William III. fixed
upon it, it was because he was seeking for something to cover his real
purpose, which was to involve the nation in foreign wars.
Gibraltar is the very point where it would be desirable for Spain
that an invader should land. It is the apex of a rocky province, well
defended and destitute of towns and subsistences. Without the command
of the sea, you cannot attack Spain from the sea; and having that
command it is the plains of the Guadalquiver you would seek, the open
entrances into Grenada and Valencia. It would be the towns of Malaga,
Cadiz, and Barcelona--there the vital parts are exposed.
The Carthaginians attacked Spain from Africa. The Romans, like the
English, supported Spain; at least, they began by doing so. Yet neither
Carthaginian nor Roman fixed upon Gibraltar. Scipio has told the whole
story, and Livy has preserved his words, yet no one seems to have read
them. They are of special value; for the contest for Spain, and through
Spain, for the world, was not so much between Rome and Carthage,
as between two families, the Scipios and the Barcas. The passage I
refer to, is in Scipio’s speech to the soldiers before the walls of
Carthagena, the spot where Spain was most vulnerable from Africa, and
where Africa might be most heavily struck from Spain.[35]
Had the Moors been able to do what the Carthaginians did, they would
not have fixed on this rock. Having been defeated at sea before the
first invasion, they had to steal over by the nearest point. Gibraltar
was their _tête de pont_ across the Straits. Ceuta, their place
of arms, was immediately opposite, yet, with all these propitious
circumstances, Gibraltar came to be of importance only _as commanding
the Bay of Algesiras_, which they had made strong, though not naturally
so, by sheer building and fortification.
Gibraltar now lives on its former credit. There are no Scipios or
Hannibals now-a-days, nor even Napoleons or Walpoles.[36] We are now
men learned in facts. Gibraltar being a place of great strength, it is
assumed to be a place of great value, and we are perfectly content with
having for the sake of it disturbed Europe, endured the abomination and
the load of public debt, sullied our name, and squandered our treasure.
And yet this cost would not be wholly vain, if the word “Gibraltar,”
could but bring some of that blood to the cheek of the Englishman,
which it causes to rush to the heart of the Spaniard. No doubt there is
for the Spaniard, a conflict of disgusts, and he has severally been
under obligations to England and France, when spoiled by the other;
but that has been, as regards him only, a temporary relaxation of
wickedness and perfidy, and in aiding him, each has only been opposing
its own antagonist.
The Spaniard alone in Europe has retained the faculty of looking at a
nation’s acts as those of a man, and appreciating it thereby. He does
not ask what it says or intends, or what food it eats, or how many
servants it has. He looks at its _dealings_ with himself. The Spaniard
knows that his two neighbours, for one hundred and forty years, have
been seeking to rob and overreach him; plotting one day the partition
of his property, the next, the supplanting of his heir; constantly
engaged in intrigues amongst his servants, and the one or the other
insisting on ruining his steward. He sees that, during all that time,
they have gained nothing; but while injuring him, have themselves
squandered incalculable fortunes and innumerable lives,--what can he
feel towards them but hatred and disgust? Fortunate is it for them, he
does so; for this prevents either of them getting a footing in Spain:
if the one could, the other would and could also; and the scenes of
the Inquisition would then be repeated. But in the struggle of Rome
and Carthage the world remained the prize of the victor; the struggle
between England and France will be certainly at the cost of both, and
assuredly will terminate in the supremacy of neither, and out of Spain
that contest may yet come, unless there be sense enough in one country
or the other to know what its agents are about, and to stop them.
GIBRALTAR AS EXHIBITED IN MURRAY’S HAND-BOOK.
“It was captured during the War of the Succession by Sir George Rooke,
July 24th, 1704, who attacked it suddenly, and found it garrisoned
by only one hundred and fifty men, who immediately had recourse to
relics and saints. It was taken by us in the name of the Archduke
Charles; this was the first stone which fell from the vast but ruinous
edifice of the Spanish monarchy, and George I. would have given it up
at the peace of Utrecht, so little did he estimate its worth, and the
nation thought it ‘a barren rock, an insignificant fort, and a useless
charge.’ What its real value is as regards Spain, will be understood
by supposing Portland Island to be in the hands of the French. It is
a bridle in the mouth of Spain and Barbary. It speaks a language of
power which alone is understood and obeyed by those cognate nations.
The Spaniards never knew the value of this barren rock until its
loss, which now so wounds their national pride. Yet Gibraltar in the
hands of England is a safeguard that Spain never can become a French
province, or the Mediterranean a French lake. Hence the Bourbons north
of the Pyrenees have urged their poor kinsmen-tools to make gigantic
efforts to pluck out this thorn in their path. The siege by France
and Spain lasted four years. Then the very ingenious M. d’Arcon’s
_invincible_ floating batteries, that could neither be burnt, sunk,
nor taken, were burnt, sunk, and taken by plain Englishmen, who stood
to their guns on the 13th of September, 1783.”--(p. 341.)
“Gibraltar, from having been made the hotbed of revolutionists of
all kinds, from Torrijos downwards, has rendered every Spanish
garrison near it singularly sensitive; thus the Phœnicians welcomed
every stranger who pryed about the Straits, by throwing him into the
sea.”--(p. 226.) “There is very little intercommunication between
Algeciras and Gibraltar; the former is the naval and military position
from whence the latter is watched, and the _foreigner’s_ possession of
Gibraltar rankles deeply, as well it may. Here are the head-quarters
of Spanish preventive cutters, which prowl about the Bay, and often
cut out those smugglers who have _not_ bribed them, even from under
the guns of our batteries: some are now and then just sunk for the
intrusion; but all this breeds bad blood, and mars, on the Spaniards’
part, the _entente cordiale_.”--(p. 227).
FOOTNOTES:
[29] The last one disappeared while I was at Gibraltar.
[30] This Vandalism was gazetted, and the turret termed “Stanley Tower.”
[31] Afterwards, at Madrid, Don P. Gayangos referred me to Ibn Batuta
as fixing the date in the fourteenth century. On consulting that
traveller, I find that he spoke of repairs under Abn El Haran, who
ascended the throne of Fez in 1330. An inscription which existed in
the last century, and of which a fac-simile is given in Col. James’s
History of Gibraltar, seems to fix the date at A.D. 750. The following
is the passage from Ibn Batuta:--“A despicable foe had had possession
of it for twenty years, until our lord the Sultan Abn El Haran reduced
him; he then rebuilt and strengthened its fortifications and walls, and
stored it with cavalry, treasure, and warlike machines.”
[32] When this was told to M. Thiers, he would not believe it, till he
went out and watched the balls and flags, and had the use explained to
him by a boatmen of the port.
[33] Napoleon in captivity, being asked if he really had the
intention of attacking Gibraltar, or the hope of getting possession
of it, answered, “It was not my business to relieve England from
such a possession. It shuts nothing, it opens nothing, it leads to
nothing,--it is a pledge given by England to France, because it ensures
to England the undying hatred of Spain.”
[34] The following is only suggested as a rough guess:--
Ordinary expenditure during ninety years
of peace £18,000,000
Extraordinary expenditure during
fifty-five years of war 22,000,000
Sieges, including expenses of fleets
for its defence, vessels for its supply,
loss of ships to the enemy, &c. 10,000,000
Fortifications 5,000,000
------------
£55,000,000
============
[35] “Potiemur præterea cum pulcherima opulentissima que urbe tum
opportunissima, portu egregio unde terra marique quæ belli usus poscunt
suppeditentur * * Hæc illis arx, hoc horreum, ærarium, armamentarium,
hoc omnium rerum receptaculum est. Huc rectus ex Africa cursus est.
Hæc una inter Pyrenæum et Gades statio. Hinc omnis Hispania imminet
Africæ.”--LIVY.
[36] He did his best to restore it to its rightful owner.
CHAPTER IV.
EXCURSION ROUND THE STRAITS.
Tetuan, June 15th.
I have been a week in Barbary. I landed at Tangier, and crossed
the country to this place, but I have been too busy taking in and
digesting, to put pen to paper. If I could abstract my eastern self,
the task of description would be comparatively easy. Yet Morocco is as
different from the East, as the East is from Europe; nor has it only
the interest of diversity. This land seems the common parent of both:
things come suddenly upon you, which carry you back to the earliest
times, or afford the key to the commonest present customs. The idle
curiosity first awakened, is soon changed to a sense of the importance
of every trifle.
I will begin with the last thing I have seen. I have just returned
from the gardens called Kitan, about three miles from this place:
they are in a wooded valley at the beginning of the fore-foot of the
lesser Atlas, which towers above. We passed through lanes of tall
reeds, partitioning off other gardens, and entered by a gate a lofty
apartment, composed of split reeds woven together in various trellice
patterns: over the higher parts, the vine was trained; the sides,
windows, and doors were festooned with jasmine. Here our horses were
left; but the gardens in Morocco are adjusted for equitation, and the
covered alleys are high enough to be ridden through. The ornamental
buildings were ruined and the garden is let out as an orchard for its
fruit. A broad terrace supported a reservoir on a level with the tops
of the trees, and on it stood a pavilion. The whole exhibited a stamp
and character of its own, and one could quite imagine it to belong to
the people who had introduced gardening into Spain; or rather, who had
converted Spain into a garden. I was no less surprised to find realised
an early association of my own, of Morocco and gardens. No doubt the
materials are here ready formed,--luxuriant vegetation, infinite
variety of plants, charming sites; and these alone are enchanting to
us of more northern climes; but none of these are wanting in Spain--at
least the difference is slight, and in degree only; but here there is a
type and style.
There were the same hedges of reeds; lanes of cactus, trellices of
cane. Before Mirza crossed the Straits, or the Saracens issued from
the desert, the Arabs came not to teach, but to learn the culture of
flowers, and the irrigation of fields: they came to pluck the fruit,
not to plant the seed of the golden tree. So, in like manner, came the
Greeks. I want no books to tell me where were the Hesperides. I tried
to forget the taste, figure, and perfumes of the orange and lemon, and
the trees that bear them, that I might, with the Greeks who first saw
these bowers, enjoy the surprise of their dark perpetual green, of the
white untiring flowers, of the freshness, ever ready for the thirsty,
stinted by no season, and throughout the year lavishing on all the
bounty and the fragrance of their golden fruit.
I have never seen men so wild and savage; yet they are of a noble
nature. The costume of the East is grand, rich, picturesque; but here
is the antique. Elsewhere men are dressed, here they are draped. The
figures around are statues, not men.
This is the most interesting country I have ever been in. I have
trodden a new quarter of the globe,--I have beheld a new form of room,
a new costume, a new kind of garden, novel and yet most ancient.
At a glance you perceive that here you have got to the fountain which
falls back to whence it rises. If you had broken through to a people
dwelling beneath the Pyramids, you could not have firmer assurance
of rest and immutability; yet they are alive and on the surface of
the earth, and in sight of that giant of velocity, Europe, which has
been bounding from precipice to precipice of years, spanning gulfs of
centuries, and counting thousands of revolutions of the sun to arrive
only at forgetfulness. These know nothing of Old Time. He cannot,
indeed, be denied in private intercourse; but as regards the state and
society, his glass has no sand, his scythe no edge, his arm no swing.
At last I have met a janissary! Here only that proscribed race could
find a resting-place for their foot. The persecuted, the tracked and
hunted of all times, creeds, and systems, have found here their last
home. The ocean here stopped the wanderer and the fugitive; the desert
afforded them cover. His delight was unbounded: he has been following
me about all day. The old janissary was of the Oda “FISH.” He showed
me the fatal mark upon his arm. He took me to visit some Algerines
who were employed in spinning silk, and in embroidery. They unbosomed
themselves, and I discovered, although I might have known it before,
that the Moors and the Algerines are two. One of these men had property
in, I think, Tlemsin, which the French had offered to restore to him;
but he preferred staying where he was, because not afflicted by the
_sight_ of the French. Our dress, and especially our uniform, produces
a painful impression upon the eye of the eastern, and I could refer
in illustration to Napoleon’s remarks on military costume when in
Egypt, as given in the great work of the “_Victoires et Conquêtes des
Français_.”
At Tangier I had to take up my quarters in a Jew’s house, and I went
there late--merely to sleep; but that was out of the question, for
the Jews collected in the _patio_, or centre court, made too much
clatter. One night I was invited to tea by a party of Moors, from Fez,
who were occupying an apartment in the same house. This happened to
be my first meeting with the gentlemen of the country--and I shall
not forget it. They wore large white turbans; were very portly, with
sallow countenances, broad faces and foreheads. The haïk or white gauze
web, in which they are wrapped in the streets, was laid aside, and
they were seated cross-legged in a small circle with the tea-tray in
the middle. Tea, and a large quantity of sugar, and sweet herbs, are
put into the pot together. It was the first time I had heard the name
of Abd-el-Kadir pronounced. I introduced it by asking them what news
of the “_Emir_?” A sudden movement of surprise followed: they turned
glances of astonishment the one to the other. One of them inquired
what was thought of the Emir in Europe? I answered it was known that
he was fighting in defence of his native land. There the conversation
dropped. I, at the time, imagined this reserve to be prudential; but
they hate him as an Algerine, and fear him as a disturber. They urged
upon me that France was repeating in Algiers her former game in Egypt;
and England doing the reverse of what she had done; and that France,
stretching to Tunis on the one side, and to Morocco on the other,
would involve Europe in war. I was often stopped in the streets with
questions about the fortifications of Gibraltar.
“May I see,” said one, “a war ‘between England’ and France, and I shall
die content.” “All the Mussulmans,” said another, “look to you. We have
God in Heaven, and only England on earth.” An old Algerine captain
told me that, at the time of the Spanish War, the Spanish consul had
explained to him as follows, why England had succoured Spain. “The
founder of their race had left to them a paper on which was written, ‘I
leave you ships and men, and this commandment--when a robber appears on
the earth, strike him; but touch not the booty;’ therefore the English
drove the great Napoleon first out of Egypt, and then out of Spain, and
took neither for herself.”
A Moor at Tangier, who speaks a little English, said to me, pointing to
shot-marks, “French got guns _so_ big--Moors _so_ big (making a circle
with both arms, and then a small hole with his forefinger and thumb)
and then fire away. Shame! shame!”
The word Moor is a very awkward one. I do not like to use it, and know
not what to substitute for it. There is no race so named. Barbary is
inhabited by Arabs and Breber. The western part is again subdivided
between the town and the country, the inhabitants of which are
essentially distinct. Then the so-called kingdom of Morocco is composed
of four distinct kingdoms, namely, _Fas_, which we call Fez, to the
north; _Marueccos_, which we call Morocco, in the middle; _Tafilelt_
to the east; _Suz_ to the south. The term Moor, cannot be derived from
Morocco, as is generally supposed, for if it were so derived, it would
be confined to Morocco.
The metropolis has been sometimes at Morocco, sometimes at Fez. These
kingdoms have been separated. Then the Mussulman dominion in Spain
has been subdivided; then the African power predominating in Spain,
and then the Spanish in Africa. Then there have been different
dynasties and systems. A tribe has established its supremacy over the
rest. A religious sect has done the same, whence the term Benimarines
al Mahadehs and al Moravides. In the impossibility of fixing any
term which should apply to the whole system, its races, faiths, and
circumstances, the Spaniards adopted that which belonged to ancient
Mauritania, and which, no doubt, was the name by which strangers knew
the original race.
The difficulty which has presented itself to strangers has been no
less a puzzle to themselves, and they have been wholly unable to
confer a name either upon themselves or upon their country. They style
themselves Mussulmans, and nothing more, and they use that term in
every way. They would say “France has attacked the Mussulmans;” and,
again, “There are many Mussulmans in the market,” meaning, in the one
case the _Moorish State_, and in the other a mere _crowd_. Their own
history is told in the name which they give to the country, the “West;”
and the proper title of the Emperor of Morocco is the “Sultan of the
West.” This was imitated by the monarchs of Portugal when they took the
title of Prince of the _Algarves_.
The matter at present of most immediate interest in this quarter, is
the imposition of heavy duties on British Trade, of which I heard a
good deal at Gibraltar. I objected to a merchant who was complaining
of it, that the Sultan of Morocco was only conforming to European
science and practice. Yielding to this argument, he declared it to be
_ungrateful_, as we had stood their friends against the French--so
ignorant were they at Gibraltar of what people thought and said at
Tangier. I observed, that if the French did as he said, it was very
ungrateful in _them_, yet only a consequence of our own acts. He said,
“Oh we have treaties with Morocco, and our government will take care
to have them enforced.” I asked him what confidence he could have in
treaties with any power, since at Algiers, where we had a right to
trade on paying five per cent., we have submitted to the French tariff.
“Oh,” said he, “the Moors are not sharp enough to see, or strong enough
to take advantage of that.”
There is nothing more amusing than to hear a merchant of Gibraltar
speaking about “right” and “treaties.” It is the only place where you
hear such words. Yet their commerce is smuggling, which is here alone
on earth interdicted by treaty.
I have several times seen Dr. Hughes, the Roman-catholic Bishop, a
venerable and worthy man, whose name is well known in England from the
persecutions he has undergone in his endeavours--and I am glad to say
successful endeavours--to put down at Gibraltar that system of Church
government, or rather priestly usurpation, which prevails in Ireland,
and which makes Ireland England’s chief difficulty--namely, paying
priests by fees. He was very much puzzled to comprehend that I intended
to go to Rome, and that I should be acquainted with leading persons of
his church, and interested in it, without being about to join it: our
conversation was constantly interrupted by his returning, with a view
to proselytism, to dogmatic points. It occurred to me to repeat to him
what the captain of a Tunisian man-of-war, lying in the Bay, had said
to me just before. “What the Muscovites have long been in the East,
the French are now becoming in the West: the world is changed; _all_
(meaning Christians) have become robbers.” The subject of proselytism
was then dropped. Yet the Turk had put the case very mildly. Sir
Charles Napier wrote after the battle of Meeanee, “I rode over the
horrid field, and questioned my conscience. _The blood be on the head
of the Ameers!_” Alas! is this the way in which a Christian questions
his conscience?
CHAPTER V.
ALGECIRAS--TARIFA.
Towards the end of August I determined to profit by the last of the
fine weather, and to take a cruise in and about the Straits, shaping my
course by the will of the winds. Police and quarantine regulations are
in this neighbourhood perplexing; so I first sailed to Algeciras to get
letters of introduction, and such papers as would admit me at Ceuta,
and the other Spanish Presidios on the African coast.
The governor anticipated my request; the letters were folded, and the
address put, in the Turkish fashion, _across_. The Spaniards use this
form for official letters only; it is of course a remnant of the Moors.
I observed also at Algeciras, that a black cord tied to a walking
stick, is the mark of judicial authority, whether civil or military,
and is said to be a practice of the Goths.
As we were landing, the cargo of a smuggler, just brought in, was being
conveyed on men’s shoulders to the royal stores. In coming across, we
were enlivened with the chase of a little punt, by two scampanas. The
_Terrible_, celebrated as a smuggler, and subsequently as a catcher of
smugglers, lay at anchor beside us. Other vessels have been constructed
on her lines, but none have equalled her speed. The rig of the
smuggling boats is one large lateen-sail, the mast stayed forward, a
long bowsprit, carrying a jib of like proportions, and a lateen jigger.
Three sails thus compose the suit: they have nearly an upright stem, a
round stern, and spread well out upon the water. The _Terrible_, as a
smuggler, could have ‘run’ in one night goods to the value of £20,000.
We walked in very pretty gardens of a social kind--at once public and
private; they are laid out in stars, the paths diverging from centres.
The gardens are separated from the path by a small ditch and a low
hedge, enough to keep out an intruder, but not to intercept the view;
so that each person has the profit of his own grounds, and the sight of
all the others.
After our walk, I was conducted to his house by the Fiscal, and we
discussed ancient usages. He almost repeated Sir Francis Palgrave’s
words in speaking of liberty, that the purpose of government is only to
obtain adjudication. He laughed at the use of Greek words in politics,
&c. I happened to refer to the address to Charles V. of the Cortes of
Arragon, when they said, “How shall the king have strength to carry on
war, unless the nation has examined into its causes, and found it to
be expedient and just?” He expressed his astonishment at hearing such
a maxim quoted by an Englishman. “For two hundred years,” said he,
“Spain has injured no one, and has been unceasingly injured by England
and France, without benefit to themselves.” On parting, he made me a
present of Cornejo’s “Law Dictionary,” a rare work.
The following morning, accompanied by Mr. D. and Mr. B., I paid a visit
to the general, who bore the old Iberian name of Lara; when a very
interesting conversation took place. He was much excited by a reference
to some discussions with the Governor of Gibraltar, about rebuilding
the forts of St. Barbara and St. Philip, and took occasion to expatiate
on the mistake of the English on the subject of Gibraltar. “By it,” he
said, “you may irritate Spain, but you cannot injure her or benefit
yourselves. You mistake these Straits for the Dardanelles: there is no
padlock on the Mediterranean. Tarifa would command the Straits if they
could be commanded: you blow up and abandon Tangier which, being to
windward, might have served you, and hold Gibraltar, which can never
serve you in any way, unless indeed your object be to convulse Spain,
and fill her with hatred of the English name.” The gentlemen present
dwelt much on the dishonourable nature of the capture of the place, and
on the injury they suffered by our retention of it, and the use we made
of it. One of them said it would be worth their while to give Cuba in
exchange. They were surprised and delighted at hearing my opinion; but
the note was changed when I referred to Ceuta.
Though I had been at Algeciras on several occasions, I now, for the
first time, visited the walls. I commenced on the southern side, and
I could trace them around the crest of a low flat hill. The towers are
close to each other, and about twenty feet square, of solid Moorish
_tapia_. To the north they are more remarkable. A large tower projects
into the sea, and is still forty feet in height. I had to scramble
over solid pieces of masonry, lying about like fragments of dislocated
strata! It is not the carefully-chiselled and mathematically-adjusted
blocks of the Egyptian, Persian, Greek, or Roman architecture. The
materials of these walls, not their building, is the marvel. One mass,
twelve feet thick, twenty-five feet high, and thirty long, has fallen
fifty feet, without breaking. While examining these masses, I observed
in the water large globes, and thought at first they were urns, but
on closer inspection they proved to be _shot_, and I found one twenty
inches in diameter, and weighing about seven hundred pounds. The
governor was kind enough to permit me to have it carried away--indeed,
he offered me one still larger from the store in the artillery-ground.
These, it is true, might have been intended for the catapulta; but
gunpowder was unquestionably known at the time to the Mussulmans.
Algeciras was rased immediately on its capture, and has never been
restored. That event preceded, by two years, the battle of Cressy,
which England gained partly by her first use of gunpowder. Was this
art, then, learned at Algeciras? There were English auxiliaries in the
ranks of the besiegers.
Looking on these remains, I tried to put myself in the place of our
forefathers beleaguering this fortress, when, for the first time, they
saw, heard, and felt this terrestrial lightning. It was not Neptune
with his trident upturning the walls, but Jupiter with his bolts
defending them. Algeciras, Troy-like, is memorable by its destruction.
The Princes of Christendom and of Islam assembled from far and near
to its siege. During this operation, the Spaniards so suffered from
Gibraltar, then in the hands of the Moors, that Alonzo the Great,
during whose minority it had been lost, vowed that he would retake it.
After great and vain efforts, he ended his days in the camp before it.
To raise money for the siege, excises were first invented. The French
word _Gabelle_, and _Gabella_ the Italian, come from the Spanish _Al
Cabala_, which is from the Arabic.[37] This Bay is thus remarkable as
the birthplace of two inventions, which have changed in modern times
the features of war and the characters of peace. The other to which I
refer is at Cressy, two centuries before that.[38]
The Chinese, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, used not
merely gunpowder, but bombs, against the Moguls. Nothing can be more
clear than the description of the latter in the Turkish writers quoted
by D’Ohsson in his history of the Mogul conquests. From China and the
Tartars, the discovery might have passed, as paper did, to the Arabs.
The link was established between Pekin and the Amoor, the Amoor and the
Oxus, the Oxus and Bagdad, Bagdad and Cordova. But indisputably the
Saracens were working their way towards the discovery--the granulation
of that composition, which was all that Friar Bacon, the pupil of the
Moors, wanted to convert his crackers and squibs into cartridges.[39]
It is but natural that they should have possessed gunpowder before we
did, for they anticipated us in guns. Artillery, at its very origin,
attained in their hands perfection. Discoveries and practice only
conduct us back to the kinds of ordnance at which they arrived _per
saltum_ and at once. Murat II. at the siege of Leodra, cast guns
which carried ball of fourteen hundred weight. Such Titanic engines
may still be seen at the Dardanelles, and Baron de Tott consulted
respecting their use. At the battle of Chesme, in 1790, the Russian
Admiral fell aboard the Turkish Admiral and drove in his guns. While
the vessels were thus foul and grappling, the Turk discharged _one
shot_ from inboard; it broke through the Russian on the opposite side.
She immediately filled and sank, but locked in her deadly grasp, her
antagonist sank with her. They now lie side by side “full fathom
five.” At that time, the armament of our heaviest vessels consisted of
twenty-four pounders, and of course a “First Lord” would have scoffed
at the idea of a sixty-eight or eighty-four pounder afloat.
I am afraid I should never get on if I entered on the subject of
fortification; but I may say in two words, that the structures of
the Moors, so long in advance of artillery, have borne unscathed its
brunt. At the Gibelfar of Malaga, Tarifa, Alcala, &c., are to be
found rudiments of advanced works, of glacis and counterscarp, with
a regular system of flanking walls. At Estepona, I observed angular
fortification, the link between the old system and the new. There are
walls for the purpose of resisting artillery, twenty-five feet high and
as many thick, on which the guns must have been mounted _en barbette_.
Their Spanish pupils anticipated Vauban.[40]
This region has been fertile in destructive inventions. Gunpowder was
first used for mining by the Spaniards at Baza, about 1480, superseding
the old practice detailed in Timour’s Memoirs, which was, to set fire
to the beams which supported the roof of the mine after it had been
carried under the walls.[41]
It was in the Straits of Gibraltar, before Ceuta, that artillery was
first introduced afloat, in 1518, by Don Gonzalo Zarto, in the service
of Don John of Portugal.
It was at the last siege of Gibraltar that shells were thrown
horizontally, and that red-hot shot were first used. But antiquity also
furnishes her share of discoveries. It is not travelling too far to set
down as belonging to the same list, the sling of the Balearic Islands,
and the leaden bullets which, as Ælian tells us, the Romans obtained
from Morocco. The battering-ram was first used at Cadiz, during the
short struggle between the Phœnician colonists and their unnatural
brothers of Carthage.[42] The Iberian sword borrowed by Rome, may also
be recorded in presence of the first Roman colony--Carteia.
We were under weigh at daylight with a light wind; but were baffled
all day by the currents. There was no room to complain of detention
with such a panorama--so many monuments of man to recall, and such a
phenomenon of Nature as the currents to pry into. Close on the right
were the brows and bays of Andalusia bearing strange-looking towers. On
the left the bold and beautiful mountains of Abyla. Behind, the rock
of Gibraltar presents itself as a point isolated from the land, and in
the middle of the Mediterranean. Before us opened the ocean, from which
rushed in the never-tiring stream. In the bay which we had quitted
stood Carteia, founded and peopled by the inhabitants of the coast of
Palestine. On the African shore, opposite its rival in antiquity, if
not in splendour, Ceuta. On the western coast of the African strait,
the Bay of Tingis, the country of Danaus and Antæus, and round the
European shore, opposed to it, Gadera, and the enchanted island of
Circe. On the one side the gardens of Hesperus, on the other the fields
of Hades, and between, the road to the Cassiterides. I saw before me
the worshipper landing to visit the sacred groves of Calpe, and then
threading his way through the then narrow passages of the channel,
I could read in his thoughts and catch from his tongue the names of
Atlas and of Hercules, as he saluted the one and invoked the other.
Not Greece alone, nor Phœnicia, nor Egypt; not the known only, or the
imagined, but all these together, seemed to converge to this passage
and to settle on this spot. The great shades of the past wandered among
the clouds, and the memory of every people floated upon the bosom of
the stream. Had that forehead of Africa been adorned with its ancient
clusters of the vine; had it borne hamlets, villages, and towns; had
the ploughman and the herdsman been there, I might have admired the
richness of the landscape, but should not have known its power.
I landed on Pigeon’s Island to fish, but was soon lost in the problem,
what becomes of the water which pours in? But I have already bestowed
upon the reader my thoughts on this subject. Suddenly the wind veered
round to the north-east, so we were immediately on board, and dashing
away for Ceuta; but the wind dropping as suddenly, we again made for
the European coast, and, aided by the tide, about midnight reached the
rocky island of Tarifa, which projects into the Straits at nearly the
narrowest part, and is joined by a causeway to the land. Scarcely had
we come to an anchor under the rock, when it began to blow heavily from
the east, the current running strongly from the west. We were entirely
sheltered from both, but not from the roll of the sea; yet in the midst
of this raging storm and boiling sea, stunned by the one, and tossed by
the other--we felt not a breath of wind.
As morning broke, a dismal prospect presented itself--the water white
with foam, and the heavens black. We were close under the rock, with
a sort of cave or cavern abreast of us: boats were lying within, for
their masts appeared over a breakwater of loose rocks. We durst not
attempt to weather the point, and every moment were exposed to the
utmost peril by the slightest shift of wind or current. The long and
varied sweep of the Moorish battlements became visible through the
sleet, lighting up gradually, and changing as if presented on a stage:
suddenly a long boat, well manned, emerged as if from under water, and
casting us a line, towed us into the entrance, which looked landwards,
and had hitherto been concealed from us. We struck once or twice on a
bar, and the very moment that we cleared the jetty, a sudden gust from
the north laid us on our beam-ends, and swinging inside instead of out,
we were not dashed to pieces.
During three months, I had seen nothing but clear skies and smooth
seas. I could now feelingly revert to the words of a Spaniard, who,
when Philip V. asked which were the principal harbours of Spain,
answered, “June, July, and Cadiz.”[43]
We had to stand nearly two hours, dripping and shivering, till the
necessary sanitary formalities were gone through, and the permission of
the governor to enter the town, received. Of this we availed ourselves
with more alacrity than speed, in drenched clothes and water-logged
boots, over soft wet sand. We entered this strange town through the
gate of Guzman the Good.
I found myself at the Posada for the first time, under a gipsy roof.
The author of “The Gipsies in Spain” has selected this house as the
scene of the most salient incident of his work. In it he exhibits
the gipsy race with diabolical features, and under circumstances
scarcely credible. Nevertheless, the story tended rather to diminish my
distrust, than to augment it, for here it was no midnight adventure; no
meeting with an unarmed person in a nameless street--the names are all
given. Little did I expect, at the time of reading the story, to have
the opportunity of verifying it.
Mr. Borrow says that the innkeeper’s sister and cousin (as he
severally makes her) had had a Spanish child to nurse, and in sheer
spite had injured it, with the purpose and effect of depriving it of
reason. The idiot is then brought in as a young “caballero,” to play a
part in a very dramatic cozening scene, where a countryman and woman
are cheated out of an ass; all this is narrated circumstantially,
explained sensibly--there is no hearsay, no metaphor. Of this idiot
“caballero” I could obtain no trace; he was neither known nor had
been heard of at Tarifa in the memory of man, yet I made diligent
inquiry for him, and sent out Mr. Stark, who, from long residence at
Gibraltar, was familiar with the place and people, to see if he could
hear of him; but all in vain. The Alcalde, to whom I told the story,
contented himself with repeating the writer’s name, and laughing long
and quietly. As a last resource I applied to the people themselves.
The innkeeper had no “sister” and no “cousin;” there was, however, a
sister-in-law, so I questioned her about “the child she had nursed.”
She declared that she never had had a child of her own, and when I
asked if her sister had nursed any child? she answered, that her
sister’s youngest son was eight years old when they came to Tarifa.
Her testimony was confirmed by the neighbours, and the fact was
notorious. Mr. Borrow puts them in possession from father to son. They
imagined him to be a gipsy, he says, by his talking their language. I,
consequently, inquired about him as the English Gipsy. They did not
comprehend me; but recollected a tall man who was always writing:
holding up their hands, they exclaimed, “We thought he was writing some
learned things, and not lies about poor people like us.” The story
fills fourteen pages. Mr. Borrow sends a Jew before him to the Posada;
he returns and reports that they were Jews, and then he addresses this
Jew in “_Moorish_,” and tells him they are gipsies. As if a Jew could
have been mistaken about Jews; and, as if a person who could speak
Arabic, would call it “Moorish.” A few pages before he has told his
readers in the most off-hand manner, that the Basques are Tartars, and
that the Basque tongue comes between the Mongolian and the Manchou! all
which is equally authentic and profound--to “his chum” Mr. Ford.
It is the misfortune of Spain to be misrepresented. She has been the
subject of two standard and classical works--Don Quixote and Gil Blas.
The former, by its sterling worth, has made its way into the literature
of other countries. Being a satire upon a particular temper and habit
of mind, the scene and personages of which are Spanish, it is accepted
as a description of Spain. As well might England be studied in “Dr.
Syntax.” Those peculiarities which it is intended to ridicule, and
those extravagancies which are exaggerated in order that they may be
exposed, are to the stranger the instructive portion of the work.
“Gil Blas” is a romance by a Paris bookmaker. It owes its celebrity to
an admirable sketch of a great minister, another of his successor,
and an episode portraying Spanish manners. The Barber, Olivarez, the
Count-Duke, the Barber, and the story of the adventurer himself, in his
retirement, are all taken from the Spanish, and give to the work its
value. It is then dressed up with Spanish peculiarities, and Madrid or
Paris morals, and passes from hand to hand as a mirror of the Spanish
mind.
In reviewing the catalogue of recent works, I can point, as really
influencing opinion or as referred to by travellers, only to Blanco
White’s Letters, and the work out of which these remarks originated.
Blanco White[44] is a man who, writing upon any foreign country, could
not fail to perplex the judgment. How much more in respect to his own,
when describing it to another, where he had made himself at home? In
some parts, by keeping distinct the Englishman and the Spaniard, he
has been able to translate the one to the other. Those parts are the
domestic only. In all the rest he has jumbled the two characters,
and has made the prejudices of the one override the simplicity of
the other; falsifying the commonest facts, distorting the plainest
conclusions. The effect is to puff up the Englishman and to degrade the
Spaniard.
To Mr. Ford’s book, however disagreeable the task, I had intended to
devote a special chapter; but understanding that the two volumes are,
in the second edition, reduced to one, I must infer that the author
has anticipated my conclusion--that the work might be made valuable by
cutting out the slang, ribaldry, opinions, and false quotations.
The Governor of Tarifa had somewhat the air of an English country
gentleman. He afforded me all the facilities I could desire for
landing and embarking, and sent his aid-de-camp with me to inspect the
fortifications. On presenting to the Alcalde a letter from his brother
at Algeciras, he declined to open it, saying, “You are expected.” He
conducted me from his office to his house to see his family. Scarcely
were we seated when he remarked that the arrival of a stranger was an
extraordinary event at Tarifa, and still more so, of one interested in
their country, and who busied himself in studying the laws and manners
of different people. He then asked me whether I had thought of anything
for their benefit? I said I had, and that it was, “Bury your new laws
and return to your old customs.” Having explained that my meaning was
to get rid of a general Cortes, not to substitute a despotism, but to
revive the local constitutions--that is, the _law_, leaving to each the
burthen of its own management and the conduct of its own business; he
said, that indeed would be putting an end to _theories_ of “liberty”
or “despotism,” and that the plan would be most popular if any leading
man brought it forward. He then asked me how I came to devise such
a scheme? I told him it was as old as the hills--that it was, in
fact, the law of the Peninsula, encroached upon, but not destroyed
by Austrian or Bourbon--that these ancient customs were looked to
with veneration by the profoundest men of those countries, which the
Spaniards fancied they were imitating while they were destroying them.
Notwithstanding the war which the Spanish Government has for centuries
waged against every vestige of the race who made Spain the strongest,
most learned, chivalrous, and polished country in Europe, the women of
Tarifa appear in the streets muffled up as Mussulman women, and expose
but one eye.
I was invited in the evening to what I was told was a club. The place
was an apothecary’s shop. I was introduced into a sort of vault, and I
found myself in a gambling establishment. Their cards were like those
used by the Greeks; the club being represented, not by the French
trefoil, but by a club; the spade by a sword; the heart by a cup; and
the diamond by a gold coin. The names being _Bastones_, _Espadas_,
_Copas_, _Oros_. The conversation having turned upon cards, I mentioned
its supposed astronomical origin: the four seasons represented by the
four suits; the fifty-two weeks by the number of the cards; and the
thirteen lunar months by the thirteen tricks, proving whist to be
the original game. I was here stopped. They had only twelve tricks
and forty-eight cards; and “Of course,” said a Spanish Major (a Mr.
Kennedy), “our game is more scientific, because adapted to the Julian
Calendar!”
Conversation having been thus substituted for gambling, I asked what
they thought of the abolition of the Tithes and confiscation of Church
property? They all shrugged their shoulders. I repeated my question,
saying, that as a stranger I wanted to know if the nation had been
benefited by the measures which its wisdom had devised for its own
relief. This elicited a loud and general “No.” I then asked what had
been the result of the experiment? The answer was, “The poor man pays
more, and the rich less.” This, I said, was satisfactory, it having
been laid down as the great object for Spain “to put her institutions
in harmony with the spirit that rules those nations more advanced than
herself.”[45] They at first thought I was in jest, but I explained to
them something about the legislation of these advanced nations. The
increased burthen on the poor was then explained--thus: the tithes are
remitted, but a tax for _public worship_ has been imposed; it is less
in amount than the tithe, but a new set of fiscal officers has been
introduced to collect it: the other taxes since the abolition of tithes
have been increased. Pasturage and cattle, which bore under the tithe
system equal charges with the cultivated land, have been spared in
the new burthens: the rich are thus doubly benefited, possessing the
pasturage and not suffering in the same proportion as the poor from
tax-gatherers.
These grave politicians could not recover from their astonishment at
perceiving that there existed a human being who could question the
wisdom, far less the sanity, of their imitating England and France. I
was called upon to declare my sentiments on the great question which
I was told constituted the essential difference between England and
France, viz., the principle of direct or indirect _election_; nor could
they believe me in earnest when I assured them that I had never so much
as heard the names of these “principles” in the countries referred to.
“England and France,” said they, “are great and powerful; must we not
imitate them and become so too?” I submitted, that imitation is not an
easy matter; that it is more difficult than invention; that it requires
a perfect knowledge of the thing imitated, in which case there could be
no reason to copy; besides, it was impossible to copy institutions. “In
what particular,” I asked, “would you copy us? Two things only have we
to offer you as sanctioned by English consent--the Guelph Family and
Johnson’s Dictionary. Will you have them in lieu of the Bourbons and
the Castilian?”
As they would hear of neither, I then ventured to offer a Coburg for
their Queen, on which there was an outburst of what, in the French
Chambers, is called “Denegation.” I said that we were very well
satisfied with a similar arrangement. “The very reason,” exclaimed one
of the party, “why it will not suit us;” an avowal which I did not
fail to turn to account. I was then questioned as to Parliamentary
proceedings, currency laws, and so on, and I endeavoured to make
them apprehend that in regard to the real business of Government, the
liberties of England depended upon the Judges, with whom rested the
interpretation of the law and who alone had the power of action; and to
whom were rendered amenable the Executive and its functions, and the
House of Commons, if ever it took upon itself by an act _of its own_ to
infringe the liberty of the subject. That these were the two elements
at war in England--the unwritten and the written law: the last was the
disease, and that alone they saw or dreamed of copying. “Then,” said
they, “let us have your courts and judges.” I told them they could not
have the Bench without the Bar, and that neither could be transplanted
like lettuces, or grafted like slips of orange-trees.
They were endeavouring to begin where we had left off. That which was
abuse to us, and therefore, capable of remedy, came to be to them
principle. “After all,” said one of them, “look at the cloth you
wear,” putting his hand on my sleeve; “we make none such. Probably
you have a penknife in your pocket;--at all events, you have shaved
with a razor this morning: it is far beyond anything that we can make.
We owe you a great deal of money, which you have lent us out of your
superfluity.” I replied that there was no connexion between individual
dexterity and collective wisdom. They made the mistake of attributing
our prosperity--the result of private industry--to our political
institutions; and we, in like manner, attributed their disorders--the
results of the political theories which they had copied from us--to
their individual character.
The general Cortes of Spain has been constructed theoretically, without
the consent or the presence of the separate kingdoms. They are thus
figuratively merged, not in one of the kingdoms more powerful than the
rest, but in an abstraction which they call “constitution.” Lamentable
would be the fate of humanity if follies such as these could profit or
endure.
But the cards out of which this conversation arose, are worth returning
to. I was surprised to see the figures such as those used by the
Greeks; to hear the suits designated as by them, and not according to
the names used in Europe: but this is not all. The Spaniards are not
content with the name which all other countries know them by: card,
_carte_, _carta_, _spielkarten_, will not do for them--they call them
_naipes_. A learned French abbé (Boullet) in his “_Recherches sur
l’Origine des Cartes à jouer_,” makes them a French invention posterior
to the use of paper, as proved by their being called _cartes_!
introduced into Spain through the Basque provinces, where they took the
name of _naipes_, from the Basque word _napa_, which signifies smooth!
May not this, like so many other European inventions, turn out to be a
mere copy, and Spain the transmitter to Europe rather than the debtor
of Europe? If we go back to the once-famed game of Ombre, we shall find
the terms of the game all Spanish, such as spadillo, matador, &c. If
we go to Hindostan, we find the manner of playing to correspond with
the game of ombre. Here is the link established between the Hindoos and
Modern Europe through the Spaniards--that is, the Arabs. This latter
point the name naipe confirms--Naib or Nawab, whence Nabob, being the
equivalent to king. “The Four Kings” was the original name of cards
in Europe. An old writer quoted in Bursi’s “_Istoria della città di
Viterbo_,” has these words, “Cards were introduced into Viterbo in
1379, from the country of the Saracens, where they are called _Naib_.
In Italy, they were formerly known by the name Naîbi. The two old
Spanish lexicographers, Tamarid and Broceuse, derive the word from the
Arabs. Alderete gives the fantastic origin of the initials N. and P. of
the supposed inventor, Nicholas Pepin, which the moderns have followed.
Islamism has driven cards out of use among the Arabs, and has thus left
us to dispute about the origin of the name.
Cards and chess seem to have been combined and originally played by
four persons, there being four suits of chessmen as well as of cards.
The history of them would be a great book, if it could be written.
Next morning I came down to embark at the island; but a violent
storm coming on, I took refuge in the house of the keeper of the
lighthouse, on the point of the rock. The channel was covered with
vessels: they had been all the morning sweeping away to the westward,
with studding-sails on both sides, low and aloft; now they were fast
measuring back their distance, and dashing past us under close-reefed
topsails. We scrambled over the sharp points of the ledges of rock to
watch the current where it is most straitened and convulsive. The dark
deep current close in-shore was running out; a hundred yards or so from
the rock it was running in; farther out again, there appeared another
stream from the eastward. This must have been the spot where the action
took place between Didius and the Carthaginian galleys, “when those
were seen pursuing and these flying, who hoped not for victory and
dreamed not of flight.”
About one o’clock, it suddenly cleared up, and the sun burst forth
in brightness over the cooled and watered earth. The shroud of the
heavens broke up into heaps of white clouds, “showing the dark blue,”
as the Highlanders say, “through the windows of the heavens.” The
bosom of the Straits and the brows and heads of the hills were mottled
by their shadow, as they drifted along, chasing each other: at equal
pace poured the current, and in the same direction. Soon reissuing
from cove and rock, flocks of white sails were crowding on their way
back over the course which they had already twice measured. Invited
by the breeze, and shamed by the example, we lingered for a while to
enjoy the pleasant mood of this fitful torrent, and then hurried on
board, and were soon sweeping down before the batteries. We took good
care to clear our colours and to make them blow out well, to save them
the trouble of hulling us, as they did an American in the morning,
because his stripes and stars had not been flashing to windward of
the spanker, with as much coolness as if they had been firing at a
partridge. That sort of thing is all very well at Gibraltar, with a
thousand guns in battery, and four thousand men behind them; but four
artillery-men with three mounted field-pieces, to be busy with rammer,
sponge, cartridge, and ball, ready to blaze away at all the nations
of the world, should any luckless wight forget to exhibit a bit of
bunting by day, or a lantern by night, is about the most absurd prank
one ever heard of. They will fire as glibly on a three-decker as on a
cock-boat, if the ensign happens to draw to leeward, as was the case
recently with the _Phantom_, at Ceuta; and yet they make no profit of
the statistical information they seek with so much ardour. They have no
toll to receive, as at the Sound; no sovereignty to assert, as at the
Dardanelles; no neighbour to browbeat, and no smuggling to protect, as
at Gibraltar:--besides, we sink their vessels.
To provide against being carried down to the Mediterranean, had it
fallen calm, which might have entailed a week’s cruise, we stretched at
once to the African shore. Despite the fears of my Scorpion[46] pilot,
and cook, we skimmed along the edge of the stream, and shaved every
headland, until we reached the last point of the Straits, to which we
had to give a wide berth, on account of the “race.” Inquiring the
name, the answer was, “Punta Leone.” The man may paint the lion as he
likes, but he has but one name to call him by.
But why call the point that looks towards Europe, Lion? A few centuries
ago, and the question would not have been to be asked. Then from this
spot the spectator who observed the hordes ferried in an uninterrupted
stream of galleys across, and beheld the rock of Calpe, which from
here, as from the north, is the very likeness of a lion crouching on
the point, would have seen in the figure the emblem of the event, and
turning to the hill above to look whence the beast of the desert had
taken his spring, instinctively must so have named it.
FOOTNOTES:
[37] From _Kabyle_, (tribe) came cabala, which signified both
corporation and market-place. This tax was levied in the market-place,
and was a repetition of the tenth, which by the Mussulman law was
levied on the spot of production.
[38] “The battle of Cressy furnished the earliest instance on record
of the use of artillery by the European Christians. The history
of the Spanish Arabs carries it to a much earlier period. It was
employed by the Moorish king of Granada, at the siege of Baza, in
1312. It is distinctly noticed in an Arabian treatise as ancient
as 1249, and Casiri quotes a passage from a Spanish author at the
close of the eleventh century, which describes the use of artillery
in a naval engagement of that period between the Moors of Tunis and
Seville.”--PRESCOTT.
[39] See “The Merchant and Friar.” It has been imagined that explosive
powder was known to the ancients. It is singular that the priests of
Delphi could always protect their Temple against barbarians (who were
uninitiated) by thunder and lightning; but never against Greeks (who
were initiated).
Pliny speaks of the art of bringing down lightning being made common
after the siege of Troy.--Lib. ii. ch. 53. Philostratus, Lib. ii.
_Life of Apoll._ 1. iii. ch. 3 says that Hercules was repelled by the
Indians, who launched lightnings. The Gentoo code forbids the use of
fire-arms.
Coming down to modern times, Langlès supposes it to have been used by
the Saracens against St. Louis. In the work of Marcus Græcus, “Liber
ignium ad Comb. hostes,” it is said to be referred to, and exactly
described in, Julius Africanus, ch. 44; and about the time that Roger
Bacon was amusing himself with crackers, an Arab poet was describing
the granulation of gunpowder in verse, Langlès “Apud Salverte,” t. ii.
c. 8. If the Arabs had had it from us, they would have taken our word,
or given to it a constructive name. Their term is original--_Barut._
[40] Bastions à Oréillons were constructed by a canon of Barcelona,
1514. Vauban was born one hundred and twenty years later.--See LABORDE,
vol. i. p. 58. The bastion is accidentally noticed, and not as then a
new construction.
[41] This practice was also known in Spain. “In 1445 a report was
spread that the Jews had undermined the streets of Toledo,--through
which, on the festival of Corpus Christi, the procession of the Host
was to pass--with the intention of _setting fire to it at the time_.
The mob would have fallen on them had not the authorities proved the
report to be false, and prevented the massacre.”--LINDO’S _Jews of
Spain_, p. 226.
[42] The bas-reliefs from the Palace of Ninus, lately brought home,
exhibit battering rams in full play, and archers:--so there is nothing
new under the sun.
[43] It is singular how sentences like this descend and adapt
themselves to the times. A Carthaginian being asked the same question
above two thousand years ago, answered “June, July, and Mago.”--Port
Mahon was named after its founder.
[44] I have only seen this book while revising these sheets for the
press.
[45] Miraflores.
[46] The name given to those born on the Rock.
CHAPTER VI.
CEUTA.
Oct. 10th.
I considered it quite a feat to get at this Spanish key to the Straits,
having been foiled in two attempts, the one by land, the other by sea:
once the Spaniards stopped me, once the Moors. Like its _vis-à-vis_, to
which it stands at right angles, it is a rocky tongue, joined to the
main by a low and narrow neck, and pointing down the Mediterranean. It
is all rounded and smooth: in its figure it presents nothing salient,
and in its defences displays nothing formidable. The place derives its
character not from the fortifications, but from the gardens, and each
serves the purpose of the other. The public works are all laid out as
pleasure-grounds, and the cactus orchards are disposed in alleys on
every rising ground, so as to form stockades.
The tongue is formed of a chain of six dunes, or hillocks, with
a seventh considerably larger at the eastern point, on which is
seated a small fortress. These are the seven brothers whence the
name is supposed to be derived.[47] The fortifications, like those
of Gibraltar, are directed, not to command the sea, but to defend
it against the land. It has no level ground in front, swept by its
galleries and batteries; but, instead, a hill approaches nearly to the
glacis, and looks into the works. The landscape beyond stretches away,
wooded and picturesque, to the foot of the chain or block of mountains
which fill up this angle of Africa, overshadowing Tetuan on the one
side, Tangier on the other, and ranging along the Straits. The only
sign of human habitation is a small enclosure of white walls, with a
tower perched on the green mountain side, like a city on old tapestry
in some Arcadian scene. All was silent in that landscape, and it might
have been taken for a panorama, but for the Roman _vexillum_[48]
fluttering from the tower, which showed that a Saracen eye watched the
keep of the Goth.
Two thousand years before Gibraltar was heard of, Ceuta was an
important place. It is enumerated as one of the three earliest of
cities. Since the discovery of Gibraltar their fortunes have been
strangely similar. Each has been wrested from the land to which it
belonged. Each is held by a foreign Power to which it is useless.
Neither has been won in honourable war: the one usurped, the other
pilfered--the wrongful possession of each is the tenure by which the
other is held. Spain retained Ceuta when she abandoned Oran as a
set-off to Gibraltar, and England, who abandoned Tangier, must have
lost Gibraltar but for the help of the Moors, which was rendered
because Spain occupied Ceuta; so that, if Ceuta were not Spanish,
Gibraltar would not be English; and if Gibraltar were not English,
Ceuta would not be Spanish. The Spaniards lose their own door-post
of the Straits, and seize the post of their neighbours; the English
abandon Tangier (alone of the Portuguese possessions diverted from
Spain), and seize that of the Spaniards. In the history of sieges,
they both present the most remarkable incidents, from the unparalleled
amount of power directed against the one, and the length of time
expended in attempts to reduce the other. Both have at various times
exhausted the countries to which they belonged, and the nations by
which they have been held. Ceuta brought on the fall of Gothic Spain.
Gibraltar was the immediate cause of the war of the Spanish Succession;
and finally the smuggling trade of Gibraltar furnishes the school for
the proficients for whom Ceuta is the prison.
During the war the Spanish Government placed Ceuta, to defend it from
France, in the possession of England. Several English establishments
were formed, and considerable sums expended, in the belief that England
would never give it up; but the immorality of the Government had not
then overtaken the baseness of the people. The Moorish Government,
however, thought this an opportunity of recovering its own, and having
furnished supplies to Gibraltar, and to our fleet, and corn for our
army in Spain, conceiving itself entitled to some favour, claimed the
restitution of the place. The appeal proved ineffectual, although it
was backed by the offer of a million of dollars. The English Government
could not, as may be supposed, well urge on the Spanish Government the
claims of its Moorish ally. Muley Suleyman expressed the anguish of his
spirit in a distich which might have suggested Moore’s celebrated lines
on Poland:--
“There is no faith in our foe,
There is no comfort in our friend.”
We landed within a mole or jetty which corresponds with the Ragged
Staff at Gibraltar, thence ascended by a stair to the gate, crossed a
bridge, and found ourselves on a lively esplanade. An alley of trees
opened upwards through the straggling town, and a terrace along the
sea-wall stretched eastward to the extremity of the promontory. The
buildings were in the Moresco style with the columned court. The arms
of Spain are to be seen at Gibraltar beside those of England--here the
arms of Portugal are beside those of Spain. To the whitewash of the
Spaniards and the Moors, was here added the yellow of the Portuguese,
running two or three feet as a skirting round the court-yards, and
along the streets: everything was dazzlingly bright, exquisitely
clean, and elaborately ornamented.[49]
The streets are one continuation of tesselated pavement, green, white,
and red. The white is marble, the black a very dark serpentine, and
the red ancient tiles, which are used as outlines for the figures:
the gutter is in the centre, the pattern running on each side with a
border joining in the middle. The running pattern is a device, such as
a sprig in a Tuscan border; but here and there, you find more ambitious
conceptions--a snake, a stag, a ship, a coat-of-arms, a dog attacking a
bull, and, in one place, the figure of a man. I have seen something of
the kind in the garden of the fortress at Lisbon. There were also the
hollow bricks along the tops of walls for flowers, and the demi-flower
pots, which they nail against the walls and houses, converting them
into perpendicular parterres. They have also adopted the Moorish
tesselated pavements for the garden walks, and yet they have neglected
to copy that garden architecture which I observed at Kitan--halls and
alleys constructed of a lacework of reeds, than which there is nothing
more beautiful; and as to its uses, what can be so well adapted to the
training of foliage and flowers, so fitted to ensure the luxuries of
the clime--that is, shade and air--and to afford protection against its
inclemency--the sun with his heat and light?
But the Spaniards here are as little in Africa, as if they were in
garrison at St. Juan d’Ulloa. There is not a man who knows the language
of the country. They live like cattle in a pen, and spend their lives
here without ever having been without the walls. They are under strict
blockade--a vidette on the hill, a picket at the gate. Should a Moor
bring in eggs, he has to steal out of sight of his own sentries; and
to furnish an ox, is to commit a capital offence. When the Christians
venture within reach of the Moors, they are shot like dogs: they meet
only after despatching a flag of truce. What a ludicrous disproportion
between this array of towers, battlements, materials, troops, and
discipline, and the half dozen wild mountaineers in a reed hut on
the other side. It was said of the Arabs by a French general, “Among
them, peace cannot be purchased by victory.” Defeat does not bring
submission, nor hopelessness despair, because the brain has not robbed
the heart, nor the tongue the brain. They cannot comprehend the wisdom,
that a fact which is wrong should be submitted to because it is
accomplished, and called a fact.
As I was, some time before, sailing by Ceuta in a bullock-boat,
from Tetuan, a Spanish sailor called the attention of a young and
delicate-looking Moor, who had embarked with us on his way to Mecca,
to the Spanish flag flying on the fortress. The young man, who had
scarcely spoken before, seemed absorbed in grief; started to his feet,
his eyes glowing and his fists clenched, and roared out: “That no
Christian, that Moor land.”
The Government of Algiers recently projected sending steamers to touch
regularly at the Spanish Presidios to _gain intelligence of what was
going on in the interior_. They were then to present themselves in the
Bay of Tangier, communicate with the French Consul, visit Gibraltar,
and return to Algiers--a nicely-devised scheme to convince the Moor
that a conspiracy against them was on foot, common to France, England,
and Spain. But the French Government not having altogether resigned
itself into the hands of its “Algerines,” thought proper to appoint a
superior officer of another service to go this round and report upon
it. The first place he called at was Melilla; he inquired, “What news
from Morocco?” The governor told him that he would be able to satisfy
his curiosity on the day following, as they expected the _Madrid
papers_. The French Admiral dined with the governor, took a siesta,
Spanish fashion, and had, on awaking, an opportunity of judging of the
intercourse with the interior. Two or three Moors got into an out-post
unobserved, and had escaped in like manner, leaving behind the bodies
of six Spaniards, but carrying off the heads.
The next morning I started early to visit the works on the lines,
accompanied by a merchant of the place whom the governor sent to me,
as the person best qualified to act as cicerone. Issuing from the
first gate, we came on a drawbridge: below ran the sea over yellow
sand, there being a clear passage by the ditch from one side to the
other. Fishing-boats were splashing round the sharp angles. The old
lofty Portuguese battlements rose above us; these masses of building
are enormous, though the space of ground covered is small. The body
of the place from which we had emerged, consists of a curtain and two
bastions, three hundred yards in length, ninety feet in height; the
bastion to the south carrying a second, is twenty feet higher. As we
proceeded, ditch succeeded to ditch, and battery to battery. There
are three lines and three ditches, with corresponding demi-lunes; in
all six tiers of guns. The basis from sea to sea does not exceed four
hundred yards, and the radius may be equal: I give the dimensions
from memory. There are few guns mounted; I counted about one hundred
and fifty embrasures for guns, and twenty beds for mortars. The inner
curtain is completely pitted with shot and grape. The upper works and
merlons are refaced.
Emerging from the fortification, we began to ascend the hill: the face
of it was cut into by level spaces, the earth banked up by stone walls,
lining which, infantry could level their pieces up the hill. The whole
ground is mined and traversed by passages, the roofs of which project
above the soil with loop-holes. The vidette on the hill pointed out to
us on a brow opposite, at a short distance--but divided by a chasm--the
Moorish post, a low shed of reeds: we saw no one. Some fig-trees in
the gulley between, we were forbidden to pass; and he warned us to
keep always in his sight. I came suddenly on a mass of ruins clustering
round eminences, or running in long straight lines, castellated and
turreted: the angles were fresh and sharp. The holes left in the walls
by the fastenings of the planks, into which the compost is beaten, gave
them the appearance of enormous pigeon-houses. There were no Roman
blocks; yet the style was Roman. There was none of the massiveness
of the Moorish, but their materials. There was more of the palm-like
lightness of Fars than of the troglodyte of ancient or modern Africa.
I hoped that these might belong to some remnants of the earlier and
untraced races; but a nearer inspection soon decided that question. A
gate on the western face is still almost perfect, and is Moorish; yet
who can find the date of that style which may have belonged to the days
of Juba, as well as to those of Almanzor and Abderahman.
My companion was excessively alarmed when I proposed to visit the
ruins, as they are beyond the neutral ground. I endeavoured to relieve
him, by making a forward cast through the brushwood. He followed,
detailing how those savages would lie for hours in wait for a shot,
and how a few days before a man had been wounded at the same place.
Presently he exclaimed, “A Moor! a Moor!” I had, however, for some time
seen the figure in a clear space on the opposite brow, wrapped in its
haik, and motionless.
How pleasing would it not be to find the original of some
dubiously-figured chimera! What then to discover a living
representative of a race that has left behind it an undying name and
immortal ruins? Such was to me that solitary figure. The Assyrian bowed
his back to the burthen and his neck to the yoke, and the first of
conquerors became the meanest of slaves. The Mede served in his turn,
and so the Persian. The Egyptian, the first and greatest, became the
outcast of nations. The Macedonian and Attic conquerors of the East
were bondsmen at Rome. The Roman was a hewer of wood and a drawer of
water, at the door of the Gothic hut and the Vandal tent. In all times,
in all climes, the conquered have dwelt as Helot bondsman or slave
with the conqueror. This wild man, this Moor, alone has followed no
conqueror’s car, and served no master’s bidding. Vanquished, he has
departed--disappearing from the land which ceased to own him lord.
He has not by familiarity worn out the terrors of his name, nor the
indignation of his heart; and there he stands to-day, not yielding to
facts his reason, nor to fortune his fate.
But to compare the old Moor of Spain with the African Moor of to-day,
might appear like comparing the British of to-day with their (assumed)
naked ancestors. It, however, seems to me doubtful whether the old
light be all extinct. Look at the Moor! Is there not dignity in his
deportment--grandeur in his costume? The produce of the looms of
Morocco to-day equals in beauty and taste, if it does not surpass,
that of any country. At Tetuan the Mosaics are now made which adorn the
Alhambra. Science has departed, but is that an essential of greatness?
When a nation sinks to the barbarism that follows light, it is
indifferent to honour: it hates itself more than its foe or conqueror.
The Moor is not such.
The Moors at home are more wedded than any Mussulman people to their
usages; more fanatic, more abhorrent of all intercourse with strangers.
When they come to Europe they make themselves at home. They are seen
at Gibraltar, in the streets, on the battlements, sauntering in the
public walks, as if they entirely belonged to us. The civil magistrate
represents them as orderly and peaceable: the police-court may be said
to ignore their existence: legal practitioners declare that the cases
of litigation chiefly arise from their being overreached. They are
an example of sobriety, industry, and integrity. Their community at
Gibraltar is neither small nor select, nor composed solely of those in
easy circumstances: they come and go, and many are flying destitute
from war and persecution. No one has heard of a Moor being a drunkard,
or a swindler: no one doubts a Moor’s word: no one fears either his
vengeance or his ferocity.
But may it not be that these men are here influenced by European
manners? May they not, like the civilized and instructed classes of
the Spaniards, be assimilated to Europe? _There_ precisely is the
difference. A Moor, after spending twenty years in Europe, goes back
and demeans himself as if he had never left home. They carry their
habits with them, and at Gibraltar live much in the same way as to the
south of the Straits. As a people, they avoid us more than any other,
excepting, perhaps, the Japanese: yet, individually they have greater
intercourse with us, and in a more familiar manner; because from the
distance and the difficulties of the land journey, the pilgrims almost
always go and return from Egypt in European vessels.
As we returned into town, a stone nearly the size of a man’s head was
shown to us, by which the skull of the Portuguese commander who first
entered the place was, like that of Pyrrhus, broken by a woman from a
tower. A Moorish sovereign, who was so wounded, despatched himself like
Abimelech, with his own sword, to cover the disgrace.
The Romans at one time substituted this place for Tangier, as a
provincial capital; yet it has neither a harbour nor road, being at
the extreme point of the land, and shut out by a range of mountains
from a fertile and peopled country, while Tangier is at the bottom of
a bay, surrounded with rich lands, and is on the highway from Spain to
Mauritania, from the ocean to the interior.
To us a capital is different from what it was to the Romans: we have a
mass of organization and administration, which requires that it should
be placed at the head in respect to the members. We expect to find all
this in vigour under so rigorous a government as that of Rome. But
Rome gave herself no such trouble; introduced neither principles, nor
laws, nor language, nor costume. These spread, because not forced. The
field of administration, down to her latter days, was kept sufficiently
clear for each individual to embrace the whole: the subdivisions of
modern statesmanship and government were unknown.[50]
Her judicatories were solely appellant: the people were everywhere free
to follow their own customs, execute their own laws, select their own
magistrates, impose their own taxes. In fact, the Romans were kings:
they reigned, they did not administer; nor did they scatter their
strength in exciting irritation on every point; but remained with a
force collected to smite resistance whenever it appeared, and which
they were careful never to provoke by systematic interference.
Ceuta might thus, cut off from traffic and population, be a good
provincial capital for those masters in the art of governing men--that
art which, like health in the body and judgment in the mind, depends
not on science and labour, but abstinence and simplicity.
The idea of the Romans in garrison at Ceuta was incessantly returning
on me, and prompting pictures of the consequences. The Romans to-day
at Ceuta would be masters of Africa, from the Atlantic to the Red Sea,
as rapidly as the Saracens were of Spain, after showing themselves at
Gibraltar. When the French first attacked Algiers, the Moors, having
heard that Europe was governed by justice (the justice that every one
understands), were ready to invite them; but the French were soon
found not to be Romans: they had not the bath, not the toga, not the
salutation of the Roman or Eastern; they could in their persons command
no respect. In ablutions, tone of voice, gesture, manner of eating,
disregard of religious observances,[51] they could only excite the
disgust of a Mussulman. Very subordinate matters are principles of
administration, and forms of government, compared to the cleanliness
of the bath, dignity of deportment, ceremony and etiquette. But to the
elegance of costume the Roman did, however, add forms of administration
equally adapted, as his warlike discipline and personal habits, to
enable him to gain and secure ground as a conqueror,--he would have
left the Moor or the Algerine to the jurisdiction of his own code--he
would have left in their hands the administration of their own laws: he
would have given to _their_ senate the power of impeaching a Bugeaud
or a Vallée before the Senate of Rome.
When the Romans possessed that country, it was four or five times as
populous and not less warlike or stubborn in spirit. For four hundred
years their dominion endured with almost unbroken tranquillity.
During that period it was the granary of the world. It replenished,
not exhausted, the Roman treasures--it supplied and did not drain her
armies. During all that, time there was neither parliamentary law, nor
Royal ordinances for its good government; there were no scientific
commissions to inquire into its state; there were no quartos of
statistical information published for the enlightenment of its rulers;
there was no system of colonization, no project of enlightenment,
Christianity, or civilization; there was no _flamen_ of Chalons,[52]
sacrificing to Mars and Bellona for successful raids and butcheries.
Rome held Africa with two legions; France began[53] with a half more
than that number; she has now ten times as many: it costs her as
much in outlay as the Imperial expenses of the whole _empire under
Augustus_; and notwithstanding all the unfortunate French can do, the
people will not be civilized[54]--and run away.[55] In fourteen years
a European government has reduced the population to one-half. With ten
thousand men the Turks managed to hold Algiers, and to govern it in
tranquillity. Instead of the public debt of a “civilized” government,
they left behind a large treasure;[56] yet their troops would have
raised the contempt of any European _officer_, and their government
that of every European _politician_.
I have met some Frenchmen who believed that the French went to put down
piracy: I know no Englishman who doubts it. England attacked Algiers
with the view of putting an end to Christian slavery, and relieving
the smaller powers from the disturbance of their Mediterranean trade,
she having no quarrel of her own with that State. She succeeded,[57]
retired--kept and claimed nothing.
The first quarrel between France and Algiers was about a debt to a
Jew merchant of Algiers, which France refused to pay. This was an
outstanding balance of eighteen millions of francs, on the accounts
for the supply of France with grain for her necessities. By enormous
bribing of the Chamber of Deputies, the money was repaid: _it went into
French pockets_. In the list of recipients are names which may not
astonish a future age, but which would astonish this.
The last quarrel was about the same Jew and the coral fisheries. The
French consul having, according to instructions, made a quarrel,[58]
and excited the anger of the Pacha, he flung towards him his fan. The
consul was not touched. France got the pretext she wanted for not
paying the money, and pillaged the treasury of Algiers of £5,000,000.
England and Holland, who, at their own cost twenty years before,
had put an end to roving and to Christian slavery, nevertheless
believe that France went to Algiers to put down piracy and to spread
civilization: an instance of the value of the press in enlightened
times.
Rome conquered the warlike west, and the rich east, and possessed
the countries she conquered. The great people, lying in the heart of
Europe, possessed of unparalleled power, in as far as warlike means go,
and unequalled unity, subjugates a little state of pirates--or at least
so called pirates--without numbers, wealth, service, or literature, and
immediately France is subjugated by Algiers. I have heard Hassam Pacha,
the Ex-Dey of Algiers, say, “the barricades of July have avenged me.”
Abd-el-kadir in like manner sees himself avenged by the barricades of
February. Each African treachery is followed by a Parisian revolution.
Had it been Rome, Abd-el-kadir might have become pro-consul, or like
Severus,[59] emperor: pro-consul or emperor, he could have become
Roman. But it is a modern government: it is France which conquers
Algiers; then the Frenchman becomes an Algerine, and order has to be
restored in a constitutional state, by Algerine practices.
France, in putting down the Algiers of Africa, was preparing herself to
become the Algiers of Europe.
With the same certainty that Pyrrhus foretold the destruction of
Carthage or Rome, by the bone of contention which Sicily afforded,
may the destruction of England or France, or both, be prognosticated
from the French occupation of Africa. France by her mismanagement has
only retarded the explosion, and she has not the courage to withdraw.
Her invasion of Africa was as little her own purpose or will, as the
invasion of Spain in 1823. A foreign hand planned and prompted it in
mystery at Versailles, and publicly hailed and encouraged it from
beyond the English Channel,[60] whence alone was to be apprehended
censure or dissatisfaction.
Ceuta is the great Botany Bay of the Spaniards. There were here
recently three thousand five hundred convicts; but two thousand have
been sent off to Castille to work on some canal there; those left
are the worst class, transported for not less than ten years and
“retention,” which means that they may be kept as much longer as the
governor thinks fit. After five years’ residence, they are hired out.
The landlord of the _café_ where I stayed gave them, as a class, an
excellent character. Inquiring the kind of crimes some of them had
committed, he said, “the two young men who attend you are here for
murder.” There is here a greater accumulation of malefactors than on
any other spot of the earth, yet you might lay down gold in the streets
with impunity. There are abundant facilities for escape; the sea is
open, the town accessible at every point; there are boats all round,
and the convicts outnumber the other population. They are not, as in
Gibraltar, driven in gangs, ironed, and with “_Convict_” stamped on
every article of their dress. Here they go about free; the watchmen
in the street at night are themselves convicts. This humanity in the
treatment of convicts extends equally to slaves: the Spaniards extend
to them the protection of the laws, giving up to them the feast days;
allow them progressively to re-purchase their liberty, and when they
have done so, admit them to perfect equality of consideration with the
white men.
The governor was no less interesting than the _Presidio_. He seemed
like an exile of ancient times, and with a melancholy dignity dwelt
on the thought of his country. He had been several years an emigrant
in Europe, without knowing or choosing to know any language save his
own. He laboured to assure me that many things that were done were not
according to the heart of the nation, and repeated several times, “If
I could go with you into the peasants’ huts, and make them speak what
is in their minds, you would have reason to respect Spain.” He had
been forty-four years in the service, and had never known his country,
except suffering from injuries inflicted on her by foreign powers,
while Spain had done nothing against any one. But that was not all.
“It is impossible for a Spaniard not to feel that his country is the
object of--” and here he paused as if to muster courage to utter the
word “_desprecio_.” He was pleased when I said that the real Spaniards
were dumb, and the bastards loquacious, and the stranger who wished not
to mistake Spain must close his ears. He asked the proportions of the
two:--my answer was, as one and a half to ninety-eight and a half.
“Whoever says that Spain is poor or weak, lies.--Where do you see
a people that work so little, and possess so much? Where in Europe
is there a government so extravagant, or such a horde of public
functionaries? The ‘administrators’ in Spain would supply France,
Germany, and England put together; and what is all the political
agitation, except a scramble for these posts? We want no new laws or
constitutions; but only to administer those that our fathers have
left us. One man, without genius or originality, but with courage
and honesty, might make Spain the happiest country in Europe. As to
resources, I say they are enormous. If you were to put in one heap
the money that goes into the public treasury, and in the other, that
which is kept back by the public functionaries, the latter would be the
higher of the two. All we want is order. Look at our army. What can
Europe show superior in vigour, endurance, discipline, intelligence, or
docility? Look, too, at its numbers: two hundred thousand!”
I ventured to dissent on this last point, and showed that Spain entered
on her war with France without any army, as on her war with England at
the beginning of the previous century. On both occasions she had no
fleet. Armies were requisite to attack, but incapacitated for defence:
heroic defences were always made by a people, as shown in the contrast
of Algeria with Poland; as shown in the contrast of Spain with Germany
and Italy, which had all bowed before Napoleon: Spain’s strength
appeared after army, king, government, had been swept away; she was the
only country in Europe whose people did not want soldiers to protect
them, &c.
I observed that Spain stood in an anomalous position. Unlike a
secondary state, she had nothing to apprehend on the score of her
independence; unlike a first-rate one, she was engaged in no schemes
against the independence of other people: that an army in Spain was
consequently as needless as it was noxious.
He replied, that what I said did not apply specially to Spain, and
might be predicated of the whole of Europe; to which I readily
assented. His Spanish self-love, for a moment alarmed, was soothed
when I showed him that I was as adverse to standing armies for the
internal interest of the great and preponderating States, as he could
be, because of the facilities which it gave them of interfering with
and oppressing the others. I pointed to this, as the master-disease of
our times, and as signalized as such even in the last century, by some
of the greatest men; that it feeds, as Montesquieu says, upon itself,
growing by competition; and that, independently of their misuse,
standing armies by their pressure must ultimately bring every one of
the existing European States to the ground.
Spain, separated by the Pyrenees from the rest of Europe, as she is
distinct from them in ideas, could easily relieve herself; she had
fewer obstacles to contend with than any other State, except England.
Our whole parliamentary history had been a struggle of patriotic men
against standing armies and funded debt. He himself had admitted, that
one honest man might restore Spain; and how so, unless there were great
abuses in practice which had not degenerated into principle? He had
particularized the armies of functionaries; let him add to these this
horde of two hundred thousand regulars.
“Where is the man,” he said, “to do it?” I observed, that it could only
be by seeing and showing what was wrong, that the man could ever be
made or found to put it right.
This conversation was strikingly recalled to me by a book, entitled
“Political Testament of Cardinal Alberoni,” which, on my return, I
found at a stall. I turned over the pages with extreme curiosity,
to see if it presented any stamp of authenticity. One of the first
sentences I fell upon was the following:
“It is an error of this and the preceding century to think that the
strength of a nation consists in the large number of regular forces
kept on foot. To be convinced of the falsity of this notion, we
have only to cast an eye on the wars of Europe within these four or
five hundred years. As soon as an army is beaten on the frontier,
the prince, whose troops are vanquished, has no other resource left
but to clap up a peace: his country lies open to the enemy, and he
has only cowardly burghers and disheartened peasants to oppose to
veteran soldiers. He loses a whole province as soon as the capital of
it surrenders. He is reduced to bury himself under the ruins of his
throne, or to comply with the conditions prescribed by the conqueror.
“But when princes undertook only to lead their people in defending
their country, they reckoned as many soldiers as subjects: the whole
state was a frontier against the enemy, who were sure to meet with
opposition so long as they fought to conquer. Every inch of ground was
disputed. When a city or town surrendered, after repeated assaults, it
did not capitulate for the other towns within its jurisdiction. Every
borough, every village cost a siege. So long as a prince kept but a
corner of his country, he might hope to drive the enemy from what they
possessed, and to recover all he had lost. The most powerful prince
in Europe was dreaded only as his ambition might give disturbance and
uneasiness to his neighbours. They were sure that time would impair his
strength, like a body worn out by too frequent attrition.
“The difference between the reigns of Charles VI. and Louis XIV., in
France, shows this contrast in its full light. The King of England
was then master of the finest provinces in France, quiet possessor
of its principal cities, and crowned at Paris; while his adversary,
though reduced to the single lordship of Bourges, was able to hold
out against him. Louis XIV. sees a frontier province invaded by two
of the enemy’s generals; he offers, at St. Gertrudenberg, the fruit
of twenty victories, to persuade them to retire. His kingdom is still
untouched: millions of his subjects have not so much as heard the
sound of the enemy’s cannon, and yet he does not think himself able to
make a stand against seventy or eighty thousand men. He has not as yet
lost one battle on his ancient territories; nevertheless, he thinks
that nothing more remains for him than to die gloriously, pushed on
by temerity and despair. The enemy is still two days’ journey from
the frontier, which this kingdom had at the time when Philip Augustus
withstood and triumphed over the joint efforts of all Europe; and Louis
the Great believes it impossible to hinder the enemy from making a
conquest of his kingdom. Though he has a country two hundred leagues
in extent behind him, above a hundred on each side of him, yet he does
not think this sufficient to secure him an honourable retreat. Jandrecy
and Quenoy determine the fate of France. Valenciennes and Dunquerque,
Arras, Amiens, Cambrai, Maubeuge and so many other strong-holds, which
his predecessors either never possessed, or, if they did, afterwards
resigned, without imagining they weakened thereby their throne; all
these places, I say, to him appear as of no sort of use, because he has
no regular troops to defend them.
“If the land forces of Spain had been upon this footing in the
beginning of the present century, the nation would have beheld with
as much security as contempt, the combination of the Courts of Vienna
and London to impose a master upon her, and to divide her possessions.
With the advantages in regard to war, which this kingdom has even from
nature, it might have bidden defiance to France herself conspiring with
the other Powers, to oblige her to submit to the treaty of partition.”
It was quite intelligible to me now, that three great rival nations
should concert to banish Alberoni from the counsels of the grandson
of Louis XIV. He had penetrated to the Gothic foundations of the
society of the peninsula, and had ascended to those Gothic pinnacles,
from which he could survey the littleness of his contemporaries. He
foresaw in the event of a general military despotism, the possibility
of Europe’s being recovered by the latent energy of the Spanish people,
and the ultimate range of his provision and prophecy was Southern and
Western Europe quelled, and its rivalries composed by the intrusion of
the two northern powers, Prussia and Russia.
He was above the arts of government, and knew where the greatness of
his adopted country resided. He scouted acquisitions as a source of
splendour to the state, or patronage as a means of strength to the
government.
The great men of the period attained by peculiar powers the management
of men; but there is not one whose words time has undertaken to
confirm. Where is Richelieu’s management; Colbert’s finance; where are
Fleury’s devices; or Louis le Grand’s victories? They have vanished
with the fortunes they created, and have left us such instruction only
as we may derive from the cell of a culprit, or the fragments of a
column.
Those who have prognosticated one among a thousand events, have been
held wise in their generation. Alberoni has traced out before the event
the salient features of the European system, as if he were describing
it now. He foresaw the failure of all the endeavours of the Bourbon
courts to restore the Pretender. He warned them that their fleets
would fail against England, told them that[61] “cruisers” were the only
effectual arm with which to assail her commercial greatness, laughed
at their projects of a hundred thousand men in arms in the Highlands,
or in Ireland, and recommended as a surer recipe for ruining England,
the securing “_Ten members of the House of Commons, with a few Peers of
note_.” He pointed to the sagacity of William III., who had established
his throne by the then bold but well-considered measure of plunging the
country in war, and loading it with debt.
He furnishes a parallel to Talleyrand, both driven from office by a
combination of foreign powers;[62] but all Europe feared the Cardinal
of Parma, Russia alone feared the ex-bishop of Autun.
Spain, in the selection of public servants, to a certain degree
imitated Rome, and resembled Russia. She did not think, that, to
insure fidelity and authority, it was necessary that they should be
her own nobles and chief men, as in the case of all modern European
governments. Spain owed perhaps to the caprice of her monarchs, a
facility which Rome possessed by the comprehensive nature of her
institutions. Rome, however, so dignified the nations only that she had
already incorporated; Russia, the subjects of the state she purposes to
acquire.
FOOTNOTES:
[47] Septem.
[48] This flag is small and square, and hangs from a rod which is
hoisted to an iron crane, to give it play and spread it out in calm
weather, like the _vexillum_. I do not suppose it to be a relic of
the Romans, but rather, that when the Romans landed, it had already
fluttered for a thousand years on the leafy sides of Atlas. It is
called _Alem_, and is hoisted at the hours of prayer. On Friday it is
white, on other days blue.
[49] I am told that where there are in Barbary Christian houses, they
are coloured yellow by means of copperas water over the lime.
[50] “Aristote en donnant des éloges à ce gouvernement lui fait des
reproches qui paraissent mal fondés. Le premier porte sur la cumulation
des emplois. Il est certain qui cette coutume forma de grands hommes
dans la Grèce, à Carthage, et à Rome, en obligeant les citoyens à
étudier également l’art de la guerre, la science de l’administration
et celle des lois, parties differentes mais qui se touchent plus qu’on
ne pense. Leur séparation dans les temps modernes a fait naitre de
dangereux esprits de corps et de funestes rivalités.”--SEGUR, _Hist.
Univ. Carthage_, p. 83.
[51] Marshal Bugeaud published an order on attendance at
worship--alleging as a reason that it was requisite to secure the
respect of the Arabs.
[52] See circular of the Bishop of Chalons, in 1843, for prayers of
thanksgiving.
[53] “A great fact is written at full length at p. 9 of the
report:--‘In 1831, the effective of the French troops amounted to
18,000 men of all arms; in 1834, to 30,000; in 1838, to 48,000; in
1841, to 70,000; in 1843, to 76,000; in 1845, to 83,000; in 1846, to
101,000.’ Is it not the contrary which would appear simple? We could
understand having commenced with 101,000 men in Africa, and now having
only 18,000; but that we should have commenced with 18,000 men, to
arrive after fifteen years, at 101,000--is not this the most severe
condemnation that could be pronounced against the absurd and false
system which has been followed?”--_La Presse._
[54] “De tous les fléaux que la France doit combattre en Algérie,
l’ignorance est sans contredit le plus terrible. Vis-à-vis d’un peuple
éclairé, un raisonnement juste et droit produit toujours un résultat
avantageux, mais vis-à-vis d’une nation barbare, les paroles sont
vaines et les leçons stériles. Nous sommes obligés de recourir sans
cesse à la force pour contraindre les indigènes à suivre nos avis et
se pénetrer du bien que nous voulons leur faire.”--_Les Khouan Ordres
Religieux chez les Musulmans de l’Algérie_, p. 109.
[55] “This great movement of emigration, 5,000 cavalry, 30,000 foot,
and more than 30,000 tents, changes the character of the struggle.
Abd-el-Kader carries off the population that we have been unable to
organize, administer, or govern.”--_L’Algérie._
[56] Taking the average according to the population for England to be
financially in as flourishing a condition as Algiers at the time of its
capture, the Treasury (_not_ the Bank) should contain £50,000,000.
[57] “L’Angleterre n’avait elle pas _échoué_ devant Alger peu d’années
avant notre succès.”--_La France en Afrique_--Published under the
auspices of M. Guizot.
[58] Avowed by the Duc de Rovigo, at once Minister of War and Commander
of the expedition, in the letter he published after the fall of Charles
X.
[59] His sister could not speak Latin, and he was ashamed of her
_Breber_ tongue.
[60] “Some of our contemporaries have described in vivid language, the
danger to the balance of power, of the French possessions extended
along the northern coast of Africa in such a manner as to give France
the command of that important part of the shores of the Mediterranean;
but we hope that the alarm which exists on this subject will not cause
the advantages which the civilized world might reap from the Algerine
expedition to be altogether abandoned. It will be a common disgrace to
Christendom, if the splendid expedition which has now sailed for Africa
is obliged, after giving a temporary check to the insolence of the
pirates, to leave that quarter of the world to barbarism, because the
powers of Europe are all envious of the prosperity of one another. * *
* If the French expedition succeeds, the formation of establishments on
the coast of Africa under the guarantee of the great Powers, to which
all Europeans should have a right to resort, but with such privileges
secured to France as would repay her the expense of the conquest, might
not be impossible. At any rate, we are convinced that the present
French government, whatever its defects may be, is not grasping
or dishonest, and that a just arrangement for securing to Europe
collectively the benefit of the civilization of the north of Africa, if
not rendered impracticable by the jealousies of other governments, will
not be obstructed by the ambition of France.
“We confess that, considering the length of time, &c., we had rather
see such a colony established in Africa, without any precaution on
the part of the other European Powers, than to see Algiers, if once
conquered, again abandoned to its barbarous rulers.”--_Globe_, May
20th, 1830.
[61] This idea has presented itself within the last few years, and
prompted our present precautionary measures.
[62] The Allies remitted to France 100,000,000 as the price of the
removal of Talleyrand from the Foreign Office, he having been the
originator of the Quadruple Treaty, secret but defensive, of England,
France, Austria, and Sweden, against the two aggressive and military
governments of the North. Napoleon, on his return from Elba, found the
treaty and sent it to St. Petersburg. Genz subsequently published it.
It is the epitome of Europe in the 19th century.
CHAPTER VII.
CEUTA.--BOMBARDMENT OF TANGIER.
Turning the corner of a street, I saw a Moor walking familiarly along,
as if he were quite at home. I was just as much surprised as if I had
seen a wolf sauntering in the midst of a sheep-fold, or a sheep in
the midst of a flock of wolves. I saluted him, and he replied in pure
Castilian. I found it was the Imaum of a community of--I suppose I must
call them--Saracens, who having been settled at Oran when it was under
the Spanish government had, on the abandonment of that place, fifty-two
years ago, been transferred to Ceuta. He proposed to me to come in the
evening and take tea with his wife and daughters. He conducted me into
a _meson corral_, that is, a court or enclosure, which may be described
either as the centre of one house or as a court common to several.
This was the quarter of the Moors, who amounted to five families. They
have all a small pension from the government, and the men are in the
military service. He led me into his own house, which was a strange
mixture of Africa and Europe, but orderly and clean to fastidiousness.
The women were in Spanish dresses, with head and neck bare.
This was the first time I had seen a Mussulman community resident
for a period of time in the midst of a Christian people; so that, of
course, I was soon engaged in a minute investigation of their social,
religious, and domestic habits. Under this scrutiny the Imaum soon
began to wince, and the women affected--but very awkwardly--to laugh.
The glibness with which they had commenced the conversation had
vanished before I suspected the cause,--they took me for a Mussulman in
disguise, who had come to pry into the nakedness of the land. They do
practise the Abdest. They profess to keep the Ramazan (it is at this
moment Ramazan). They have no bath and no mosque; but maintained that
the mosque at the Moorish head-quarters, to which they sometimes go, is
within the prescribed distance. One native practice they had preserved
in its pristine vigour, and that was the _kouskouson_, with which they
presented me, and to which we all did justice. When I had succeeded in
convincing them that I was no Mussulman, their hilarity returned, and
they were much amused at the description of my surprise at finding in
Europe, Christian women muffled up, and meeting in Africa, Mussulman
women with naked shoulders.
The Imaum then gave me the detail of a dispute about the neutral
ground, which raged at the very moment of the French bombardment of
Tangier, and which had been adjusted through the intervention of
England--by leaving things exactly where they were! An act of greater
insanity there could not be than our interference in any such matter.
It is impossible to preserve Gibraltar without the goodwill either of
Spain or of Morocco, because our subsistence must be drawn either from
the one or the other country. When we are with Spain the Moors are
against us; but then we do not need them: when we are against Spain,
then we are sure to have the Moors with us.
This is the meaning of Lord Nelson’s words,--“Should Great Britain be
at war with any European maritime state, Morocco must be friendly to
us, or else we must obtain possession of Tangier.” Lord Nelson did
not, however, see that the measure he proposed for obtaining that aid,
would have had the opposite effect. If you seized Tangier you would
place yourselves in the same position in respect to Morocco that Spain
is at Ceuta, and be under a total inability of gaining the means of
subsistence either from Morocco or Spain, for Tangier or Gibraltar.
This judgment of Lord Nelson, thus reduced to its true application, is
of the greatest importance.
The old man was loud in praise of Mr. Hay’s proficiency in Arabic, and
he smiled and winked when I said that I could wish nothing better for
England than that its servants should be dumb. The Algerine government
lately assigned this very reason,--proficiency in the Arabic--for
appointing one of their creatures as consul at Tangier: a member of the
home government answered that that was the very reason why he was the
person least qualified. But Algiers has triumphed over Paris.
The wind seemed settled from the westward, so I determined to return
to Gibraltar to catch the steamer from England, and on the following
morning bade adieu to this fancy warehouse of guns and convicts--this
military toy-shop and Utopian penal settlement.
Just as we were getting into the current, we sprung our gaff, and were
fortunately yet near enough to the African shore to regain it. We
anchored and repaired the damage out of musket-shot. Had this accident
happened an hour afterwards, we should probably not have seen Gibraltar
for a week.
As soon as we got put to rights and had the Rock “on again,” three
points under our lee-bow, I asked one of the idlers to read something
out of Mr. Hay’s “Barbary,” and he commenced with this passage. “And
that famous Rock has always been a hotbed for engendering mischievous
reports which, if connected in any way with Morocco, are sure to find
their way over the Straits and thence to the court at Morocco in an
exaggerated and distorted form.”[63]
There is no escape from this Rock, which, like that of the Arabian
Nights, is ever attracting and wrecking you. The first thing I heard of
at the beginning of this excursion, was the exasperation produced in
Spain by the sinking of their cruiser, and the subsequent discussion
respecting the rebuilding of the forts of St. Philip and St. Barbara.
I had learnt these circumstances through official persons, I was now
come to the other side of the water. Here again from an official
person, and this time in a published book, breaks out the disgust and
irritation engendered in Morocco.
Common fame represents the governor of Gibraltar as having been engaged
without measure or disguise, in embroiling the French and the Moors. He
and the ambassador from Madrid took the extraordinary step of landing
in Morocco at the moment when the appearance of any intermeddling on
their part was exactly the thing to drive matters to extremity: they
publicly held out encouragement to the Moors. The government at home
has declared itself most formally in an opposite sense, and the foreign
minister is a man whose word no one ever doubted. The only conclusion,
therefore, is that the cabinet is not in the confidence of its agents.
It stands to reason that in affairs carried on in secret, the acting
hand will be the one which is not seen.
Former governors of this place have managed their own garrison and
fort without distracting Spain or Morocco; this governor, then, must
have been selected for the work he has performed. The qualifications
and antecedents required are those of a soldier. Out of all the army,
one only could be selected on whom had been inflicted the penalty
of professional disgrace for heading a mob against his sovereign’s
troops:--that one was selected. The selection was the subject of
astonishment, and it was felt by the service to be an insult. It was
indeed inconceivable that a man who had been in his own person guilty
of the greatest outrage upon discipline, should have been chosen for
the command of the most military garrison in Europe, so as to exhibit
to every youth who commences his military career in the garrison,--and
every regiment takes its turn,--that mutiny is compatible with the
highest honours, and is even the road to preferment. This outrage upon
discipline was perpetrated by the head of the British army, and the
strictest of disciplinarians.
In 1817 there was a pamphlet published which, with equal ability and
foresight, exposed the great error which had been committed at the
congress of Vienna, in looking to France as the power from which future
danger would emanate. In that pamphlet it was shown that by an undue
depression of France the future peace of Europe was placed in jeopardy:
its text and conclusion was, “_Alexander has inherited Europe from
Napoleon_.”
The author of this pamphlet had henceforth to be classed amongst the
men peculiarly deserving the attention of the Russian cabinet. He
is that governor, selected, in defiance of all decency, to send to
Gibraltar, and there overstepping the limits of his functions, he
nearly embroils England and France.
A Russian steam-vessel of war was admitted to the quay of her Majesty’s
vessels to get coal, which was furnished her from the royal stores,
while French men-of-war were allowed no such indulgence; on departing
she _was saluted by the fortress, with twenty-one guns_![64] This I
witnessed with my own eyes and heard with my own ears. The assembled
crowd said, “Es loco,”--“He is mad.” A foreign consul, the next day,
used these words, “Now this appointment is explained.”[65]
I may here set down some matters connected with the recent land and sea
raid of the French in Morocco; but, like the father of history, I will
give what I have heard without vouching for it.
BOMBARDMENT OF TANGIER.
On the 2d of August, 1844, Mr. Hay received the submission of the
Sultan to the demands of France. On the 5th, the intelligence arrived
at Tangier. A telegraphic despatch dated that day, reached Paris on the
11th, and the peace with Morocco was officially announced. But five
days before--that is, on the 6th--Tangier had been bombarded!
So far the dates. The change of dispositions between the 5th and
6th, was brought about by the arrival of letters from Paris after the
intelligence from Tangier had been despatched. The commanders of the
squadron, to their great disappointment, were informed on the 5th,
that they would presently receive orders to make sail for Toulon, and
had repaired on board their respective ships, when the smoke of a
steamer was perceived coming through the Straits. It was successively
made out that she was standing in for Tangier, that she was French, a
man-of-war, and the bearer of despatches. The negotiations with Morocco
had been in the hands of M. de Nion, who had acted in concert with Mr.
Hay. It was in consequence of an agreement entered into, reduced to
writing and signed between them, that Mr. Hay proceeded to Fez, and had
there settled the matter between France and Morocco.[66] The Prince de
Joinville, irritated by the interference of the English authorities
(the ambassador from Madrid, and the Governor from Gibraltar), was
prevented from breaking up the settlement only by want of powers, M.
de Nion being charged with the diplomatic post. The steamer brought
three despatches, one from the King, one from the Minister of Foreign
Affairs, and one from the Minister of Marine. The first had no
reference to the business in hand; the second left it just where it
was; the third was upon a simple matter of administration (_Anglicè_,
detail of service); but there was a postscript in these terms:--
“I suppose, if _you_ have not been satisfied with the answer, _you will
have bombarded_.”
The Prince declared the question to be now in his hands. This letter
was addressed to _him_, not to M. de Nion. _He_ had to be satisfied,
and if not, might bombard--he was not satisfied, and would bombard. M.
de Nion objected the engagement with Mr. Hay, the peace made, &c. The
Prince replied that the Caid of Tangier had not answered his letter! In
a word, the affair was fixed to come off next morning.
The Prince selected the _Jemappe_ as the most powerful vessel to
place before the batteries, expecting that it would have to bear the
whole fire of the place, while the other vessels were taking up their
stations. Not a shot, however, was fired by the Moors until the French
were in order and had opened their fire. It was just as at Navarino.
At Tangier, of course, on the night of the 5th, all anxiety had
ceased; peace was considered concluded, and three boat-loads of fresh
provisions had been sent off to the squadron by the Caid.[67]
THE BATTLE OF ISLY.
The son of the Emperor had exchanged letters with Marshal Bugeaud
during the first days of August: both spoke of peace, and only of
peace. Letters from the Emperor of a prior date to the 2d--afterwards
taken--breathe nothing but peace; they announce that peace is about
to be made, and he enjoins his son not to leave till all is finally
settled, and to do everything that could be agreeable to the French.
On the 11th, the intelligence arrived that peace had been concluded:
then arrived an aide-de-camp of Marshal Soult at the French camp with
letters from the government in Paris, enjoining the Marshal to abstain
from all offensive measures, and inclosing a letter from Lord Aberdeen
to M. Guizot, which stated that in that event he could not answer for
the consequences. The Marshal threw the letter upon the ground and
stamped upon it, and taking the aide-de-camp by the arm, said “M. de V.
vous en serez.”
On the 14th the son of the Sultan is awakened by an alarm, “_The French
army is in sight_.” He tells his people the Marshal is coming to pay
him a visit before his departure, and after giving orders for a tent to
be pitched, and coffee--which he knew the French liked--to be sought
for and prepared, he again assumed, to use the phraseology of Antar,
“the attitude of repose.” He is again awakened--“_The French are on
us_”--and the French _were_ on them--found _the coffee ready_, and
instead of drinking, spilt it. The loss of the Moors was eight hundred
men by _suffocation_.
While the Emperor had every wish to make peace, and every dread of war,
the troops had no disposition to fight. The Ai Tata (fifteen thousand)
and several other tribes, their best cavalry, had drawn apart, having
come to observe, not to act. They had formally announced to the Sultan,
that if he prosecuted his present system of intercourse with Europeans,
and of commercial monopoly, they would reserve their strength to defend
their own mountains.
The French government, in like manner, had every disposition to make
peace, and every reason to avoid war. Its dread was not Morocco,
but Algiers: its interests were bound up with Morocco against the
military colonial usurpation that defied the power of the cabinet,
and threatened the institutions of the country. Consequently, after
intelligence received of the victory of Isly, of the bombardment of
Tangier,[68] and with the certainty that Mogadore was at the time also
bombarded, the instructions were despatched for the treaty signed at
Tangier on the 10th September, by which nothing was demanded more than
had been settled before.[69]
FOOTNOTES:
[63] “Western Barbary,” p. 165.
[64] In answer to the comments to which the circumstance gave rise,
it was stated “from the Convent,” that the reason why the Russian was
saluted first, was that as it was near sunset, the fort would not have
had time to return the salute, if it had waited till she had saluted
first.
[65] Since the above was written, Sir R. Wilson has disappeared from
this scene. I do not on that account suppress what I have written, as
I have not brought any charge against him; and his acts here commented
upon, are viewed merely as illustrative of the system of government by
secrecy and intrigue.
[66] The days of Mr. Hay are said to have been shortened by the
vexation to which these transactions exposed him.
[67] I afterwards ascertained at Paris that the Prince had paid the Jew
interpreter for these provisions!
[68] These events are recorded in a composition which itself is worthy
of a place in history.
“The Governor of all the French lands in the Pacific Sea, grand Speaker
of the King of the French near the King-Lady of the Isles of the
Society.
“To all the chiefs and all the men of all the lands of the Society.
FRIENDS,
“Health to you all! Here is the word which I say to all. Two grand
battles were gained by the arms of the King Louis Philippe, the
protector of you all and the sovereign of us; the one on land and the
other below on sea. In the battle on land forty thousand soldiers of
the kingdom of Morocco were beaten by ten thousand French soldiers;
the son of the King of this land of Morocco was the grand chief of all
his soldiers.
“At the other battle two cities were ravaged by the cannonade of
the French vessels of war commanded by the son of the King Louis
Philippe, Prince Henry de Joinville, French Admiral. And in the great
consternation of the enemy, peace was asked for by him. Eight hundred
men of Morocco were killed, and two thousand and above that, wounded,
and the enemy lost all their land-guns (cannons) which were taken. And
a glorious treaty for the French was concluded immediately after on
this land.
“Here is another word.
“The King Lady of Britain came to France some moons ago.
“And after that our King, the Protector of you all, went into Britain
to visit Victoria.
“There were great honours done to those Kings in France and in
Britain; and the two governments breathe well--the one for the other.
“That is the true word which I make known to you all, that you may not
be deceived by lying words.
“BRUAT.”
“Papaeta, 11th March, 1845.
[69] A very singular _dénouement_ well nigh occurred;--that of
referring the whole matter to the Emperor of Russia: this was prevented
by an accident. When I asked who had suggested this idea, I was
answered “_It came from Gibraltar._”
CHAPTER VIII.
CADIZ.
Oct. 22nd.
A Moorish house is a square, with blind walls outside, and a court
within. A corridor, sustained by pillars, runs round, and affords an
opening and light to the rooms: the court is paved with marble, or is
in mosaics, the place of meeting of the family. From this type the
domestic architecture of Cadiz is derived. The soil upon which the
city stands is occupied with those square blocks fitted one against
the other, leaving no patch vacant. There is nothing that is not house
or street. The houses, however, have windows on that side which faces
the street. The roofs are flat, terraced, parapeted, and surmounted
by square towers, sometimes three stories high. These roofs are the
_basse cour_. There the poultry is kept, the washing, and all dirty
work done, and the linen hung out to dry.[70] Here the inmates ascend,
in the summer evenings, to enjoy the breeze, and in the winter days to
bask in the sun. Above the sounds and bustle of the city, amid airy
terraces, which, but for the want of water, might rival the hanging
gardens of Babylon, looking out on the bright sea, and down and around
on the shining city, the Gaditanas walk, converse, and observe their
neighbours similarly employed on the neighbouring battlements. As the
houses adjoin, they are cut off from each other by parapets. Otherwise,
the means of communication above would be nearly as complete as in the
deep cuts of the streets that divide the masses. But to see Cadiz, you
must ascend one of her towers,[71] in the still night, and under the
moon.
The aspect from below is scarcely less striking. The streets are very
narrow: to exclude the sun, the houses are constructed to keep out the
heat. From every window projects an iron cage (rejà) or balcony--many
of these glazed round, and resembling an oriel window. These verandas
are filled with flowers, or shrouded in a mantle of ivy. The building
is relieved by the gayest colours--bright sea-green, red, and yellow.
The iron work is green. The houses are separated, as also the floors,
by lines of red: a narrow border of yellow runs round the base of each
balcony, and of the houses. There is no more charming, urban sight,
than that presented in looking down the narrow streets. The verandas
approach from the opposite sides, with their lively colours, their
shrubs, and flowers. Everything is fresh, and clean, and bright, as
if just from the workman’s hands. Within, white reigns alone, above,
and around. As you pass by, you have a succession of glimpses into the
columned _patios_, neat, bright, and shiny, embellished with plants,
flowers, and fountains.[72]
The doorways are grand and beautiful, and resemble the portals of
cathedrals, rather than the entrances to dwelling-houses. In the larger
houses the doors are made of slabs of shining mahogany, studded with
knobs of brass. The lintels and architraves are ornamented and carved
with an elaboration and a variety that afford constant occupation
to the stranger in his walks. The Gate belongs, of course, to the
land of the Caravan. It is the place of welcome, and its grandeur is
the sign of hospitality. The threshold passed, you are in the midst
of the dwelling; for the patio is the hall--the hall, as of ancient
days--not the mere passage to the dining-room, and the receptacle of
hats and walking-canes. We cannot imagine comfort in a court open to
the heavens, or elegance in a room with no windows in the walls. New
experience awaits us here: when marble is exchanged for brick, and the
sun takes the place of fog, shade is comfort, and damp luxury.
The Spanish portal acquired a dignity rather Chinese than Moorish, from
the escutcheon. At Valez Malaga I was shown the built-up door in the
mansion of a noble, who, being ordered to take down his arms from his
door, built up the entrance, leaving the arms, and struck out a hole in
the wall beside it.
The cathedral is a graceful and original modern building. There is a
great falling off in the parts recently completed. From its top there
is a splendid view of the sea-girt city, the bay, and the surrounding
lands. It is all marble, and the roof shelves off from the cupola to
the edge without parapet, so that you look out on the sea. In winter
the spray passes over the building, so that it well merits its arms,--a
cross standing on the water.
In the sacristy there were five large marble reservoirs, with the
syphon of a fountain over them, for the priests to wash at. My
gratification in recognising this relic will be intelligible only to
those among Eastern travellers, who have conformed to the manners
of the country, and known the secret of washing with running water;
and the disgust and aversion that are inspired by our dabbling in a
basin full of dirty water. Yet the practice can only have disappeared
within two generations.[73] The Russians still wash in this way. This
usage, however interesting as a relic, is not fruitful as a practice.
The Spaniards are not a cleanly people: in their struggle of seven
centuries with their washing and bathing foes, they placed their
patriotism on the side of filth.
From the top of the cathedral I had observed some old ruins, and a
circular tower, that looked Roman. It was the Moorish castle, and
afforded me the opportunity of verifying a point which previously had
been to me doubtful. These ruins are so built on, and so covered up,
that it is difficult to trace them; but I made out Moorish walls, with
square stones joined with lime. It has been a small castle standing by
itself, opposite the water-gate of the town, and not part of a circuit
of walls. One round tower still stands, about forty feet high. There
is a portion of wall exposed, of between thirty and forty feet in
thickness, in stone and lime. The chamber in the principal tower is,
like all those in Moorish towers, neatly arched and ornamented. The
staircase is in the substance of the wall, not in the centre of the
tower.
At Porta St. Maria, opposite Cadiz, I found a similar Moorish ruin.
This is the point of embarkation of Xeres, or the Port of Sherry. It
is the place for tasting wines,--the Pacharete, Montillado, and most
noble Mansanilla. The cellars are worth seeing--if spacious and lofty
edifices can be so called.
The people of Cadiz neither put their bodies in graves nor their wines
in cellars: the dead are built up in walls, resembling bins of a
wine-cellar; their wines are deposited in structures like cathedrals.
The niches are like the dwellings of the living, some for ever and
a day, others for a term of years; after which the fragments of the
former tenant are ejected, and the place swept clean for another.
I observed, on a placard, the two following signs of progress and
civilization, in titles of new works: “The defender of the fair sex,”
and “The Ass, a beastly periodical.” The words were, “Il Burro,
periodico bestial.”
You may see a long row of boys, very small at one end and full grown at
the other, dressed out in the sprucest and gayest uniforms--blue coat,
single breasted, with standing collar and large flaps; gold buttons
and lace; white trousers most mathematically cut, and strapped down on
very camp-like boots; and, on inquiring what military institution this
belongs to, you are answered, “It is a boarding-school!”
They have, in connection with schools, a practice which might suit
“Modern Athens”--I mean the hyperborean one. A person from each school
goes the round of the town, calling for the boys in the morning,
and dropping them in the evening; just as sheep, goats, or cows are
collected by a common herd.
The “Hospicio” is at once a Poor-house, a house of Industry, a School,
a Foundling Hospital, a Hospital, and a Mad-house;--that is, it
supplies the places of all these Institutions. It is imposing in its
form, embellished in its interior, and as unlike, in all its attributes
and effects, as anything can be, to the edifices consecrated to the
remedying of human misery, by our own charity and wisdom.
The church of St. Philippo Negri deserves a visit. It is a lofty oval
hall. The altar is in a deep recess, and two narrow galleries run round
it at a considerable height. In this church, in a back street of an
out-post almost cut off from Spain, some unknown and self-designated
politicians wove, in 1812, out of the threads of the philosophy of
France, a tissue which was to clothe the nakedness of Spain, and to
regenerate her. At that moment she was engaged in a desperate war with
France. By those very doctrines her despot trampled on the liberties of
France, and then converted her into the slavish instrument of his evil
passions and lawless purposes against Spain. Up to the time when this
constitution was proclaimed, faction, which had divided and distracted,
for a century and a half, the other countries of Europe, had still in
Spain been unknown.
St. Philippo is thus a spot associated with greatness--but greatness of
an easy kind. It is easier to kill a camel than--sometimes--to catch a
flea.
Cadiz, Oct. 26th.
I made an excursion yesterday, in a Calesa, to the mainland, or rather,
to the Isla St. Leon, which adjoins it. After travelling about four
miles along the narrow ridge of sand that joins Cadiz to the main, you
turn to the left, round the bottom of the bay, and enter on the salt
pans, which extend throughout the Isla. There were ditches, tanks, and
reservoirs, cut out in all shapes and dimensions. Heaps of salt were
scattered about like pyramids; some, twenty feet high. I expected to
obtain data respecting the evaporation of the Mediterranean, but was
disappointed: neither is the water allowed to deposit in one place,
nor are there successive fillings of water into the same basin before
the salt is made. In either case, the rate of evaporation would have
been furnished exactly; but the water passes through successive pans,
becoming more and more charged as it advances to the inner tanks,
where the crystallization is ultimately effected,--a process even then
attended with difficulty.[74] There are, in the Isla, twelve government
and seventy-two private works; the produce of the first is 12,000,
of the other, 40,000 lasts. The cost is six quarts the Fanega; it is
sold at fifty-two reals. The salt made at the private works is for
exportation, and is taken off by the English, Americans, and French.
These and the other salt-works of Galicia, the Asturias, &c., are
farmed for 12,000,000 reals, by a singular adventurer of the court and
the exchange,--M. Salamanca.
The observatory at St. Fernando is, of course, like all observatories;
and, being built to look at the heavens, affords a good view of the
earth. From the top of it I inspected this labyrinth. There was, in
front, Cadiz, hanging by its narrow isthmus. The Isla de Leon is a
low marsh, which forms the bottom of the bay. In the island is St.
Fernando, situated on broken ground. I could trace the salt river from
its source, or mouth, in the sea, to its other source, or mouth, in the
bay. At the sea-entrance, I could distinguish the small island or knoll
of St. Petri. Here stood the ALTARS OF HERCULES. It was to visit this
spot that I had started from Cadiz; and finding it impracticable, from
the time of day and the roughness of the weather, I had, with great
reluctance, given up the project. It was some compensation to see, at
least, the spot. An antique bridge joins the Isla to the mainland: it
stands about half-way between the bay and the sea. It was rather a
causeway, with arches, than a bridge, and was said to be Phœnician.
At Cadiz, one is in the midst of a town, and the very type and essence
of towns. The eye has no scope, and the mind no sight, for anything but
itself. It is impossible to think of it as Gades, or to recall Circe’s
smile, or Cerberus’ growl; but here I recovered myself, and yielded
to the intoxication which, on certain spots, the mists of past things
produce. Cadiz did again become Gades. Behind appeared, on the side
of a hill, or rather, close to its summit, Medina Sidonia, recalling,
in one name, the Phœnician and the Moor. The salt marshes could be
transmuted to the ancient groves and gardens, by the aid of some
palm-trees scattered over the broken ground.
But that islet, now shrouded by the spray from an easterly storm, with
its temple, where Hannibal offered sacrifice before departing to live
on Italy for fourteen years--where Cæsar was fired with the love of the
purple, by the sight of the statue of the victor of Darius--was the
magnet of the scene. Who built this temple? What was it? The temple
of Phœnicians,--of idolaters? yet idols were excluded. There was a
sacrifice, but not to idols; there was an altar, but no groves or high
places. Wines were forbidden, which were not forbidden in Phœnicia or
Egypt. Women were excluded from the sacrifices; the sacred flame was
kept burning; the priests served barefoot. When they entered, their
faces were veiled, and their heads covered with white linen. This,
then, was a temple of the Hebrews, and not of idolaters.[75] Amongst
the dwellers in Canaan, there were those who had preserved primeval
light, and are called in scripture “worshippers of the true God.”
Balaam was a prophet, and the book of the Arab Job is one of the books
of Scripture.
From St. Fernando I could command the field where Tarik triumphed, and
where Roderick fell. The sudden extinction of the Gothic empire has led
to the inference that it was rotten: the valour with which that field
was contested forbids that conclusion. The factions, and the contests
for the crown amongst the Goths, differed little from those amongst
the Saracens; the _people_ were not divided, and had lost nothing of
their valour and their warlike spirit.[76] The Arabs triumphed in
Spain in like manner as Islamism did in Africa. The Goths were not the
only inhabitants; the original population was still in existence, and
identified with that of Hispania Transfretana. To these the Saracens
were deliverers, not invaders. They were invited over by the Jews, a
numerous, and then a warlike people, preserving many ties with the
Arab population of both countries, and forming the link between them
and the old Iberians. It is not extraordinary that there should have
been native Spaniards in the armies of the Goths, without the fact
being recorded. So uncertain are all our data, that it is disputed
whether Count Julian was a Mussulman or a Christian; whether Tarik was
a Breber, a Persian, or an Arab. In periods nearer to our own, when
European literature flourished, omissions and mistakes of a similar
kind are not uncommon. For instance, at the battle of Angora the
contest, as it is supposed, was between the Turks and the Tartars; but
the body of the troops of Bajazet were neither Turks nor Mussulmans,
but Servians.
The association of the people of Spain with those of Mauritania, while
both were Christians, is further established by the use of Arabic in
the old Spanish church. It is recorded with wonder that their works
on theology were in that tongue, and that a large proportion of its
priesthood knew no other. This Arabic literature dates from a time
_anterior to the Arab conquest_. It was from Africa that Spain received
Christianity. But modern Spanish writers would be careful to conceal or
disguise the early association of Spain with the people and the system
against which raged their fanaticism. It is the suppression of all this
that has made the conquest of the Arabs appear like a fable.
Cardonne estimates, at the battle of the Guadalete, the Goths at
100,000, and the Arabs at 12,000. Gibbon makes the Arabs less. Another
writer says:--“It was no longer the terrible Goths, whose valour had
overthrown the Roman empire, that had penetrated from the shores of
the Euxine to those of the Atlantic. The youth, enervated with peace
and luxury, had abandoned the exercise of arms. The chiefs, impelled
by jealousy, revenge, or ambition, betrayed their monarch to those who
sought his ruin.” And presently we have,--“The two armies fought long
and with equal ardour. The uncertain victory was decided in favour of
the Mussulmans by a horrible treason. Opas, Archbishop of Seville,
collecting his vassals, joined the ranks of the Mussulmans and attacked
the Christians. The Spaniards were immediately broken,” &c.
How could there be a struggle in an open country by 12,000 against
100,000, where arms and courage were equal--where both were warlike?
The Goths were engaged in continual warfare between themselves; they
were making incursions into France; they were at the very time masters,
by recent triumphs, of the sea, and possessors until that very year, of
strong places in Africa, whence they were carrying on aggressive war
against the Moors! We have therefore to look for some other cause than
the effeminacy of the one, and the valour of the other. Count Julian
could put the Moors in possession of Ceuta, and in joining them draw
all his adherents with him,--the Archbishop of Seville could quit the
camp with all his followers, a fact which has no parallel, and join
the invading Mussulman:--there existed, then, links between the two
people not to be found in the romances of the Spanish writers, or in
the phrases of Gibbon. Thus, the enterprise ceases to be a fable, and
regains its just station as one of the most hardy and successful of
human achievements.
In speaking of the burning, by Cortes, of his vessels on the coast
of Mexico, Robertson remarks:--“Thus, by an act of magnanimity to
which history offers nothing to be compared, did 500 men consent to
shut themselves up in a hostile land, covered with nations numerous
and unknown, and after destroying their means of retreat, remained
with no other resource than their valour and their perseverance.” He
forgot horses, gunpowder, and artillery. But the Spaniards in the
New World only repeated the lesson they had learnt from the Moors in
the Old, and the Moors only repeated what the Sicilian Agathocles had
already performed in his wonderful home-thrust against Carthage. The
Moorish chief, at the head of 7,000, or--as Gibbon makes them--5000
men, sent, Scipio-like, to invade the powerful and warlike peninsula
(that was itself invading Africa), adopted the same expedient, and
induced his more numerous followers, in face of a far greater danger,
to submit to the same alternative. They burnt their vessels in the port
of Gibraltar. They thus cut off their retreat, in case of a repulse,
as effectually as if the whole Atlantic spread between them and their
native land. The address of Tarik to his followers was,--“The enemy is
before you, the sea is behind,--follow me.”
After the victory, the Moors, instead of advancing, as in a hostile
country, dispersed, as after the defeat of a usurper, to take
possession. One body marched upon Ecija, a strongly-fortified place;
the whole population perished in the defence, or after the capture:
another upon Corduba; it was surrendered by the inhabitants; the
governor of the garrison, however, preferred death to submission.
Another body took possession of Granada; Tarik himself marched on
the capital, Toledo. All these places made separate capitulations,
and preserved the exercise of their religion: they were to pay only
such taxes as were paid to their kings; they were to preserve their
laws, and their magistrates. The churches were generally divided
between the Mussulman and the Christian. The same conditions,
excepting double tribute, were granted to the cities that made the
most desperate resistance. It was on a system that they acted, and
not upon emergency--by a rule, and not according to circumstances or
expediency.[77]
The valour of the Goths was desperate and self-devoted. The division of
the churches between the two religions shows the rapidity with which
conversion accompanied, or rather had prepared, their triumph. The
Goths were originally but an army that entered Spain, to protect its
inhabitants. When Spain afterwards recovered herself from the Saracens,
she was altogether Gothic, with no trace of the old population, except
in the Basque provinces, where neither the Goths had penetrated before,
nor did the Saracens after. The remainder of the original--that is, the
Iberian--population had, therefore, become Mussulmans.
Here was exposed the imbecility of the supposition that Islamism was
propagated by the sword. It was Islamism that aided the conquests
of the Saracens. Its force lay in applying the dictates of religion
directly as a restraint upon the conduct of government, rendering the
king, as well as his humblest vassal, equally subjects of the law.
Within a few months from the battle of Guadalete, the Moorish troops
had passed beyond the Pyrenees, and were encamped at Carcassone. There
the tide of victory was arrested, not by the hammer of Martel, but
by orders from Damascus. It was the project of the Saracen chief to
conquer France, and thence to march to the attack of the Greek empire
in the rear. When the Saracens did invade France, it was after the
generation of conquerors had passed away--when France was recovering
from the lethargy of her Merovingian race, and when a schism had been
established between Spain and the Caliphate.
The empire established by this victory is the most remarkable instance
of prosperity that the world has ever seen. The town of Corduba
contained 200,000 houses; in its public library there were 600,000
volumes. It had 900 public baths. On the banks of the Guadalquivir
there were 12,000 villages; and such were the fruits they drew from
the soil, such the profits of their industry, which furnished to the
East luxuries and arms, that the public revenue of Spain in the tenth
century was equal to the collective revenues of all the other kings of
Europe. Twelve millions of dinars--a sum of gold which, calculating
the dinar at 10s., and multiplying by ten, to give the difference of
the value of gold, is equal to £60,000,000 of our present money.
Five centuries and a half later, this plain was again the theatre of
great events: the Christian principalities had again regained strength,
the Mussulmans expending themselves in internal wars in Spain, and
between the Peninsula and Morocco. The battle of Las Navas de Tolosa
had taken place. St. Ferdinand had entered their capital and taken
Seville, when the elevation of his son Alfonso the Sage--but in his
early years designated _the Brave_--to the crown of Castile, gave
promise of a speedy emancipation of the Peninsula, aided as he was by
the valiant James of Aragon, who had successfully contested against
them no less than thirty fields.
Alfonso retook from the Mussulmans, Xeres and all the surrounding
towns; but, very soon absorbed in the vain expectation of becoming
Emperor of Germany, and less successful than his successor, Charles
V., or England’s candidate for the Spanish crown, Charles VI., he
squandered the means of his subjects in a project that was hateful to
them; lost the time and the occasion of following up his successes, and
brought upon Spain new dangers from Africa. This was the first time
that Spain appeared influencing the relations of Europe, and mingling
in its councils. Squandering her treasures to sway the elections
of Frankfort, and moving Africa by his intrigues in Germany, the
successful competitor was Rudolph, the founder of the imperial house
of Austria.
Xeres was soon retaken by the Moors; and on that occasion, a Spanish
commander distinguished himself by a trait of heroism not less signal
than that, the memory of which is preserved at Tarifa. The soldiers
on the wall having all fallen, the governor, Don Garcia di Gomez,
maintained the place alone, and refused to surrender, though himself
covered with wounds: the Moors, struck with admiration, determined to
preserve his life in spite of himself; lifted him off the wall with
hooks, and then cured him of his wounds.
I found the astronomer at the observatory, M. de Sercera, a person no
less interesting in his general conversation than distinguished for his
scientific acquirements; and I received from him and from others some
most unexpected information respecting a recent event which has had
most important consequences for Europe. I refer to the revolt of the
Isla de Leon, and the proclamation there of the Constitution of 1812,
on the 1st January, 1820. It appears that the plot was undisguisedly
conducted by Russia; that the Bailiff de Tatischeff,[78]--then the
representative of Russia at Madrid,--came down himself to watch over
the conspiracy, and openly used his predominating influence at court
to sacrifice those superior officers who endeavoured to enlighten the
government regarding what was there in progress. It was this revolution
which matured and brought forth those dissensions which have since
distracted the Peninsula; and afforded the occasion which was taken by
Russia at the Congress of Verona, to constrain, or rather cheat, France
into the invasion of 1823, the parent of subsequent reactions and
endless troubles.
FOOTNOTES:
[70] It is hung up wet for two reasons;--not to strain it by wringing,
and to bleach it better.
[71] Such were the outlooks, or Distegia, which were placed on the
terraces of the Greeks; from such a one (μελάθρων ἐς διῆρες ἔσχατον)
Antigone, in that beautiful episode which has been imitated in
“Ivanhoe,” viewed the Pelasgian host, drawn up near the fountain of
Dirce. These were, and are, distinguished from the terraces roofed with
tiles. The _Tuilleries_ of Athens were not for the common roofs, but
for the Distegia, or double roofs, and for the temples. In Morocco also
the mosques are tiled, and with gable roofs, while the houses are flat.
[72] Prescott, speaking of Cordova, says--“The streets are represented
to have been narrow; many of the houses lofty, with turrets of
curiously-wrought larch or marble, and with cornices of shining metal
that glittered like stars through the dark foliage of the orange
groves, and the whole is compared to an enamelled vase sparkling with
hyacinths and emeralds.”
[73] In a picture by Holbein, a girl is represented washing her hands:
an attendant pours the water as in the East.
[74] In England a bit of butter is used.
[75] Herodotus (ii. 46. 145) mentions one tribe of the Pelasgi who
had no images, and worshipped one supreme God, whose name they never
pronounced.
[76] Muza when questioned by the Kalif as to the character of the
different people of the West, says of the Goths, “They are champions
who do not turn the back on the foe.”
[77] “Thing incomprehensible! History shows us the Arabs as the
least exacting, the least cruel of all conquerors. They have shown
the example of those peaceful conquests, which we recommend to the
governments of the nineteenth century. By the capitulations which
the earliest Arab chiefs granted to the Christians of Spain, these
last retained the free exercise of their religion. This toleration,
scrupulously respected, facilitated and rendered more prompt the
reconciliation of the two people. Ocba, Gehrarben-Muhamad, Youzef, have
left, in the Spanish chronicles, written even by the Christians, the
most touching instances of tolerance, justice, and magnanimity.”--_La
France en Afrique_, p. 17.
[78] This diplomatist was subsequently removed, on the application of
Ferdinand to the Emperor Alexander, through Capo D’Istrias. The king
wrote these words: “I, who appear to be King of Spain, am only the
servant (_criado_) of the Bailé de Tatischeff.” Capo D’Istrias, to whom
the scrap of paper was brought, and who was then passing through Italy,
promised that, fifteen days after his arrival at St. Petersburg, the
obnoxious ambassador should be removed. He kept his word. Russia lost
nothing. The work had been accomplished, and Ugarte was left behind.
The Bailé having proved himself so successful with a king, was then
sent to try his hand on an emperor.
This fact I have had from the agent employed by Ferdinand. It is
curious that Spain should have got rid of a Russian ambassador, and
kicked out an English one. It is curious that it should have been
for the same cause. In the first case, however, the evil was already
done. What service might not Spain render to Europe, if, moved by the
tortures she has undergone, and by the happy consequences which she has
experienced from having one intriguer the less at Madrid, she should
withdraw her own from foreign courts, and thus be herself relieved from
the others!
CHAPTER IX.
EXCURSION ROUND THE STRAITS.
Cadiz, Oct. 24th.
In the land of the Hindoos, far away from the ocean, there is a
building called the _Pearl_ Mosque. The Spaniards call their Cadiz, the
City of Silver. But Cadiz is the daughter, not of the land but, of the
sea, and is the pearl of cities.
The impression of brightness I have received in Cadiz does not,
however, arise from the lustre of these silvery turrets, but from a
swarm of women covering the floor of the cathedral with a mass of
silk blonde tresses, and eyes, shining, fluttering, gleaming--and all
is black. I had passed from the Ommiades to the Abassides. In that
monumental uniformity there are a fascination and a grandeur, which
scatter to the wind our freaks of fashion. How contemptible the devices
of our continual change, when contrasted with the things discovered,
used, and preserved by a whole people!
If I venture on this track so often beaten, and re-attempt the
description of things so often described, yet never conveyed, my excuse
is, that I have adjusted my eye and observation to a more distant
point, and have looked to making what I saw, intelligible to a future
time. To this I have been led by the fact that changes are in progress.
The day may come when, having exhausted variety without finding
contentment, this people may try to go back, and endeavour with pain to
regain what now, in heedlessness, they are casting away: then will it
be interesting to know what, while Spain still retained manners of her
own, struck the passing stranger.
The milliners of Paris, it is a common saying, have accomplished[79]
what the arms of Napoleon were unable to achieve,--as if female vanity
had broken down national character and taste, which masculine sense
struggled to uphold. Alas! for the dignity of manhood;--it is the
tailors, not the milliners of Paris, who have triumphed where German
insolence, Bourbon fraud, and imperial victories alike had failed.
Spain lives only in the peasantry, and in that sex which an Eastern
sage has said is “the first to hope and the last to despair.” The men
we see walking about the streets are the ordinary persons inhabiting
European towns. You are reminded that you are in a country which is
itself only when you see the women.
The crown of this costume is the _mantilla_. It belongs to the class of
vestures intended to screen, not to parade: it nevertheless enhances
and sets off beyond every device and contrivance of mere display. The
ancient form, the _manta_, was within the century known in sequestered
places. It is in common use in the transatlantic possessions or
offshoots of Spain: it lingers still on the verge of the Peninsula at
Tarifa, where I have mentioned it.
The manta[80] is a stripe of black taffeta or serge, two yards long by
one broad. Three cords are run through it lengthways at one edge; by
these it is bound and puckered round the waist: it is then turned up
like a petticoat over the head and shoulders, and is gathered in the
hand upon the breast. In front there is a lappet of about six inches’
width, lined with crimson silk, which comes round the face. Encasing
the person from the waist upwards, it is an admirable protection
against wind, rain, and sun. One eye only--generally the left one--is
exposed. Thus Solomon sings:
“With thy one eye thou hast bewitched me.”
Backed by such authority, I may venture to say that it is not
without its ostensible beauties as well as its revelations of grace
and attractions of concealment. The Turkish _yashmac_ conceals the
face; the _farigee_ shrouds the person: the manta serves at once
for both purposes. The _faldett_ of the women of Malta is of the
same description. The petticoat being also black, the dress appears
all of one piece, as originally it was. The name of the costume is
_saya-manta_.
The _mantilla_ is the manta narrowed, loosened from the waist and
fastened on the head. There are two kinds.[81] The _mantilla de tiro_
is that worn by the peasantry: it is of black serge trimmed with
velvet. It is worn high on the head, and round upon the face. The
second, the costume of the city, is the _mantilla de blonda_: it is of
silk, rich and stiff; plain or flowered, and differs from the other
by having blonde to the depth of twelve inches all round. The blonde
is deeper in front, so as to serve as a veil. The edge of the silk is
fastened to the comb at the crown of the head; the silk falls behind,
the lace before, unless gathered up. It is secured in windy weather
against the cheek by the tip of the fan. The mantilla, when dropped on
the shoulders, degenerates into a veil joined to an unmeaning scarf or
a tippet; yet this is now become the fashion. The whole is sometimes of
lace--when it is only a bagged hood.
The mantilla is not spoken of as a piece of dress that fits well or
ill. Such a lady, they say, wears her mantilla well, just as if they
were speaking of a ship carrying her colours. The port of a Spanish
lady is, indeed, like the bearing of a ship. The mantillas, reversing
the effect of our costume--which is to impress the wearer with the
feelings of a block--gives at once freedom and dexterity. The mantilla,
fan, castanet, guitar and dance--which last is not here the business of
the legs alone--keep the arms always busy. The head is disencumbered of
bonnet, cap, ribands and curls; hence that grace of the Spanish women,
which all recognize and none can describe, for mere form or feature
does not explain it.
I need not say that beneath a mantilla there are no curls; nor need
I add, that where neither bonnets nor caps are worn, and the head is
always exposed, the hair is well kept. A Spanish lady remarked to me,
that what struck her principally when she travelled in other countries,
was the want of cleanliness in the women’s hair. It is always exposed,
as hair was intended to be, to the air and wind, and it is every day in
water, for they wet it before using the comb.
The hair is dressed in two styles. One is called _sarrano_. The
only explanation I could get for this name was, that _sierra_ means
mountain, and that the mountaineers dress in this way. But neither does
it seem to be the style of the Sierra, nor does the word sarrano mean
mountain: there is, indeed, no such word in Spanish.[82]
_Sar_ and _sarrano_ were Phœnician forms of Tyre[83] and Tyrian. The
Tyrian, not the Greek or Roman, pronunciation would prevail in Spain
and Africa. Columella, a Spaniard, says, “_Sarranam violam_;” Silvius
Italicus has “_Sarranum muricem_;” Ennius, “_Sarranum ostrum_;”
consequently, “Sarrano head-dress” means neither more nor less than
“Tyrian head-dress.”[84] Such an etymology is in no ways far-fetched.
It is quite natural to look for a Tyrian mode of dressing the hair,
under a covering of the head, described by Solomon, in a city built by
the Tyrians, and from which you can perceive another city, which to
this day bears the name of Sidon.
Saint Augustine quotes it as an instance of the retentive memory of the
people of his age, that the rustics in the neighbourhood of Carthage,
when asked who and what they were, answered, “We are from Canaan;”
whence they had come one thousand and ninety years before, and after
the name of Canaan had long been obliterated. Here is a head-dress with
the name of Tyre,[85] more than double that interval of years.
In the “Tyrian” (Sarrano) style, the hair is divided over the forehead,
turned back with an ample fold, the ends fastened behind: the back
hair is divided and plaited, and hangs down the back; and no doubt
formerly, as in the East and in Barbary, silk of the colour of the hair
was plaited in and hung down to the heels in tassels. There appears to
be a reason why this style was called “Tyrian.” The Jewesses wear their
hair bound upon the head in a very elaborate manner, with feathers,
a cushion, and handkerchief, the Tyrian being all open and exposed.
I find that I am concurrently using the past and present tenses,
referring at one moment to the spot where I am; at the next to the
times of Hiram and Solomon; but, in fact, they are so intermingled that
it is impossible to dissever the Scriptural descriptions and the things
themselves.
The other style is _moño_;--and has also a foreign association not,
however, with Jerusalem, but with Paris, for it has been recently
imitated there. The front hair, parted, is plaited on each side into
one plait, then rolled as a wheel upon the temple, and fastened by a
hair-pin. The back hair is gathered light, and secured behind by a
riband. It is then divided into two parts and plaited; these are turned
up like a bow, and secured by the same riband. The bow (I mean of the
hair) is then twisted, so as to spread on both sides, resting on the
nape of the neck. It derives its name from _moño_, which is a large
rose of variously-coloured riband, which is sometimes used to set it
off. It is placed on the crown of the head: from it hang two tassels of
gold or silver, lace or embroidery.
There is no gown of a piece; the costume is in separate parts: the
sleeves and body may be of any colour. They are, out of doors, covered
by the mantilla; like it, the petticoat is black: formerly it was not
above two yards in width, and fell to the _mi-jambe_ with weights
round to keep it down. In a discussion on these subjects with Spanish
ladies, an English gentleman maintained, on the authority of Murray’s
new “Guide-Book,” which had just come out, and which had been looked
forward to with as much expectation as it produced disappointment,
that only recently the ladies of Cadiz had taken to show their feet:
that, “formerly, they wore their petticoats so long that you could not
tell if they had any feet at all.” This produced an exclamation of
astonishment and anger. A Gaditana mentioned that, having returned in
1823 from Paris to Madrid in the wake of the French army, bringing her
mantilla with her, she sent for a milliner to order the other parts
of the Spanish dress. The milliner told her that her Paris dresses
would do, for that nothing else was worn; on which she apostrophised
the _artiste_ thus:--“Go out into the streets with mantilla and long
petticoats!” Her astonishment equalled her indignation at seeing this
hideous petticoat imposed on Spaniards, who, as she said, did not
require it, not having “feet an ell long.”
The petticoat of the peasants in Andalusia is yellow, of a homely but
excellent woollen stuff, and bordered with red, the two colours which
the Spanish women most affect--the colours of their gorgeous standard,
those of gold and blood.
A Spanish woman is no less attentive to her foot and shoe[86] than
to her hair: from below the saga comes forth the plump leg in its
creaseless stocking. The impression that remained on me of Spain,
having been there as a child, was a black lace-bedizened female figure,
with a bunch of flowers on the head and on the foot, and a white satin
shoe, cheapening cod in the fish-market at six in the morning. If the
wise man was bewitched by the sight of the “one eye,” so was the paynim
Holofernes “ravished” by the sight of Judith’s sandal. But the sandal
must not be taken for that thing which Abigails call by that name:
it was not the service of riband that held the sole on, but the sole
itself. Spain is still the country of the sandal: you may see it every
day, and there is nothing that more recalls antiquity than the bands
(stone-blue) by which it is secured round the ankle and foot.[87]
The old Spanish shoe is very low, and scarcely held at all at the
heel: like the slipper of the Easterns, it required the action of the
toes to hold it on. The calf of the leg accordingly was full, because
its muscles were called into play. So important is this to the grace
and ease of the figure, that at Rome the models, male and female, lose
their pension if they wear a shoe with a thick sole.
There still wants something to complete the Spanish costume, or,
perhaps, I might say the Spanish woman--and that is THE FAN. Yet, how
supply this want? at least, without herself--how convey her and it
on paper? You might as well attempt to teach on paper how to roll a
turban, make coffee, or hit the bull’s-eye.
The petticoat has two names, _basqueña_ and _saga_. The latter recalls
the sagum of the Greeks and Romans, which is derived from _sagi_ or
_sogi_ of the Touaregs: sagum designated a web or mantle. How it has
come to be a petticoat I shall presently explain.
The sleeves, _mangas_, are tight to the arm, and buttoned up the
fore-arm, not by button-holes in the stuff, but in the Eastern manner,
with loops. The buttons are gold filigree, which we call Maltese: they
are used in large numbers for ornamenting the _maja_ dress. The body is
low round the shoulders, as the present evening dress of Europe; but
they do not sin against mechanics and modesty by bringing the edge of
the dress to the angle of the shoulder. A scarf is fastened above the
dress, which comes up behind, is secured upon the shoulders by clasps,
and then brought down in front. There is something approaching to this
worn by the women in Morocco. The buckles and clasps on the shoulders
are frequently mentioned in the Old Testament.
The parts of the dress in which colour is allowed are the body and the
sleeves, which, when out of doors, are shrouded by the mantilla. The
dress for the streets is black, and invariably black; while the men
display the most gaudy and variegated colours.
The _avanico_ is used ceremoniously and socially:--in the first place,
it is stiffly and demurely restricted to its legitimate end. When it
enters common life, held firmly, yet freely between the fingers and
the ball of the hand, it serves as an extension of it, feathered to
flout the air. The ordinary fan practice is to throw the hand outwards
while letting go one side of the fan; then turning the hand inwards to
recover it by a jerk. If we had no fans in Europe there would be less
difficulty in describing, because our imagination would be free and at
work. Having fans, and using them to disturb the air, we have settled
notions of them; and when we hear what a Spanish fan can accomplish,
we conclude that there is a code of signals--some sort of constructive
slang imparted to the initiated. The Spanish fan is no more the arm of
a telegraph than the leaf of a winnowing machine. A fan is to a Spanish
woman what feathers are to a bird. Is she content and happy?--there
is its gentle fluttering--in its vivacious and rapid catch--in its
long-drawn motion--in its short pulse. There is all that is conveyed to
us by the brow when it lowers the eye; when it flushes the cheek--when
it glows. She wants not the frown to dismiss, nor the smile to invite:
it is an additional and mute voice:--I might compare it to the rod of
a magician, or to the passes of a mesmerist. Once seen, you feel that
it is what was required to complete--woman. The ideal was always in the
mind, guessed only before, but recognised the moment it is seen.[88]
An English lady plays on the harp or the pianoforte. A French lady
touches the one and pinches the other. The guitar belongs to the
Spaniard--as constant as her mantilla; as familiar as her fan--it is
ready to please a guest; to solace a leisure hour. It is no matter of
ostentation; it is no performance. Her proficiency is not the result of
study; there are no hours,--no years consumed in practising; it is an
unceasing amusement, an inseparable companion.
That which would strike the stranger as most extraordinary, is our
having one costume in the morning and one in the evening; one dress
which lives only in daylight, another which never sees the sun. This
is a peculiarity for which no age and no race afford a parallel.
Take Cherokee or ancient Egyptian, Hindoo, Athenian, Hottentot, or
Kamschatdale, you will not find one who has dressed his body according
to the motions of the sun and earth; or held a checked waistcoat, or
a close-bodied gown as appropriate at one hour and inappropriate at
another. When dress was associated with respect, change either by the
hour or month was impossible: the man was then more than the food and
the body--than the raiment;--change could only become habitual where
such feelings were dead; and then dress, escaping from the guidance of
taste, became the trappings of vanity. This evening-dress of Europe is
the common in-door dress, slightly disfigured, of the Spanish lady.
The veil and fan, the chief adornment of the female costume, are
from Spain; so also is that richest and most distinguishing of its
materials, _lace_.
Barbara of Brabant has received the credit of the discovery; but her
share can extend no further than to the mode of working in flax. The
texture in silk and cotton must have been carried thither by the
Spaniards. In the beginning of the fifteenth century, the word _blonda_
is found in a Castilian law,[89] it is referred to as a manufacture
in general use, and consequently long established. It was not known in
Europe for at least a century later.[90]
Lace is to be seen in every hut, on every domestic
article:--pillow-case, napkins, sheets--it is a national type, and
must be of ancient date; in all likelihood, from that common source of
Spanish things, Judæa. In this conclusion, I was confirmed by finding
in Barbary the term _Guipoör_. It is used by the Jews for the festival
of atonement, when they wear white mantles in the synagogue, with the
fringes in open embroidery. The name of the country was given to the
texture. The texture, then, comes from the Jews.[91]
The word _dentelle_[92] is explained as meaning the teethlike points of
the serrated border lace, as distinguished from the Guipoör, Mechlin,
Brussels, and English point, &c. But there was an ancient festival
in Spain on the occasion of the child cutting its teeth, which was
known to the Christians under the name of Dentilia.[93] Such would be
a fitting time for the display of this finery. Whoever has seen the
festival of _Corpus Christi_ in Spain, or Portugal, will understand
how natural it was to give the name; for on it all the procession, or
at least all the public functionaries to this day, wear scarfs of lace
over their uniforms.
The blonde is made on the frame. The common lace, which is used as
seams and edging, is made with the _crochet_, which is as familiar
in the hands of every Moor, as formerly the _cronag_ in those of the
Highland shepherd. The Barbary caps were originally so made, and
indeed are so still. In the same way, may yet be seen Highland hose,
and formerly the _trews_. The Shetland shawl still bears testimony
to the recorded beauty of the manufactures of the Hebrides, in early
times; and in Barbary--although I know not that the art is still
preserved--magnificent pieces of Guypoör come from time to time to
light. One was brought me at Tetuan three yards and a half in length,
and above a yard in width.
The supposed invention, therefore, of lace-making in the Low Countries,
must be understood merely as that of a new process, viz., the bobbins,
pins, and cushion, by which a new variety was obtained, and which has
its beauty and its facility; but which can stand no comparison with the
original, which it has caused to fall into disuse; and now that the
taste for it is revived, the art is lost.
While the Spanish female costume is unquestionably the most beautiful
in Europe, it would thus appear to be at the same time a valuable
historical monument. Nor is its antiquarian interest limited to the
Peninsula: it carries us back to the land and the people, which, of
all others, possess claims on the affections, and merit the study of
Christendom.
It is curious that there should be but two countries in the world that
have adopted and restricted themselves to a single colour,--that these
countries should lie opposite each other--that in the one it should be
black, and in the other white; that the one should be the derivative of
which the other is the original; that the wearers of black should be
the offspring of the people of white, and that the white country should
have the title of Mauritania!
It is not to be supposed that the black was assumed after the expulsion
of the Moors. General usages are not of these days. We have besides
proof that black was the colour of Spain twelve hundred years before
the invasion of the Saracens: they wear “black sayas,” says the Greek
geographer. But the people of Mauritania were not called black, because
of their complexion,--they were a fair people: Scylax applies to them
the epithet of ξάνθοι.[94] They were μανζοφόζοι, or clad in black, and
hence, no doubt, their name. The two Mauritanias equally wore black,
and no doubt the adoption of white by the Mussulmans of the West was
the result of the establishment there of the dynasty of the Ommiades.
But beyond the zone of white, there is another zone of black, or of
mixed black and white. A portion of the Tuarisks, who occupy the vast
tract of Africa between the equator and the habitable portions upon the
coast, wear the black sulam with black cowl,[95] a black turban rolled
round, not the head only, but the face, the neck, and body, so as to
leave exposed alone their black, small, sparkling eyes.
The mantilla is generally considered a relic of Mussulman usages, but
the women in Morocco do not now wear the veil. There, men and women
have one and the same dress: they wear it in the same manner over the
head, the only difference being, that the women keep it closer drawn.
The first clothing must have been the single garment, such as we see it
in Africa still. Noble as it is simple, it conforms itself to every use
in the adaptation, and displays every grace in the adjustment of its
folds. It was subsequently divided and cut up into distinct parts or
coverings; and dress became a set of integuments for casing the limbs,
rather than for clothing the body. The veil cannot, therefore, be known
where the original vesture remains in use.
The haïk, as worn by the Jewesses, is the saya manta. It is of enormous
dimensions; from one and a half to two yards wide, and from six to
eight long.[96] It comes four times round the body, one of the turns
being measured by the outstretched arms to form the hood. The Jewesses
double two yards and a half, one part longer than the other, so as to
serve, when wrapped round the waist, for a petticoat; folds to give
play to the limbs are added at one side, and secured by a large pin;
a turn is then taken with the whole haïk round the waist, and the
remainder is brought from behind over the head and shoulders. They of
course wore it so in Spain.[97]
For the source of peculiarities in Spain it is natural that we should
look to Morocco; not so for the origin of a costume apparently as
different in form as remote in situation--the Highland garb; yet
that it does come from the same stock is indubitable. It is no
accidental coincidence here and there: the whole build and purpose are
identical--every variation can be traced and accounted for. There is
nothing that militates against this conclusion, which there is so much
directly and collaterally to establish.
If the costume were an original one in its present form, we should
have primitive names for kilt and plaid, its distinguishing features.
_Kilt_ is not a Gaelic word: there is _no word in Gaelic_ for kilt.
It is called “The short plaits” (fillibeg), as distinguished from the
“long plaits” (fillimore),[98] now fallen into disuse. _Plaid_ is not
a Gaelic word, and for plaid there is in Gaelic no other name than
brechan, or “colours.” Plaid and kilt are equally of the brechan, and
it is admitted by the best authorities that formerly they were one: the
belted plaid still shows it. With “long plaits” the plaid would reach
to the dimensions of the present Moorish haïk. In putting on the plaid
you bring the corner over the breast, take one turn round the body, and
throw the end over the left shoulder: it is precisely the way a Moor
accustomed to the haïk would put it on. The kilt and plaid alone are in
tartan, being alike composed of the “flag mantle:”[99] the jacket, like
the tunic of the Moor, or the body and sleeves of the Spanish lady,
was of any colour. To the saya manta and the haïk the peculiarity of
colour is in like manner reserved: _brechan feil_ is the name of the
Highland garb, and identical with saya manta. Thus, in the haïk still
lives the common parent of the costume of the Highland clansmen and the
Spanish lady: in the one case the name has descended on the covering
of the shoulders (_brechan_,[100] Gaelic), in the other (saya) in that
of the legs. It is curious that the old name is given in Spain to the
petticoat of the women; in England to the breeches of the men.
In the mountains between Baeza and Guadix, which were the last refuge
of the Moors, I have seen the manta worn by the men, corresponding in
texture exactly with the haïk worn by the Arab women in the tents,
which are sometimes striped in colours: the colours in like manner
being pure, and of course rich and brilliant, are dyed at home.
Sometimes the stripes are crossed, which is not the practice in
Barbary. The first I saw was so like a Scotch plaid, that, until I
examined it, I took it for a piece of English manufacture.
The manta or plaid of the shepherd is doubled, and stitched at one end
to serve as a hood, just as our Highlanders do, to put the feet in at
night, or to use as a hood or as a bag. In this part of Spain the men
wear large white drawers, which leave the knee bare, and appear like
a white kilt. The _medias_, like the Scotch hose, are bound below the
knee, and are sometimes of leather like those the Moors use for riding.
To the plaid and tartan, to the _fac-simile_ of the kilt and hose, they
add the strathspey tune, and the reel step, and “set,” to each other.
Seeing them footing it toe and heel, smacking fingers, clapping hands,
shouting and wheeling, I was carried at once to the glens and straths
of the North. While this merriment was in progress, several carts
stopped. These carts had two wheels and two horses, the pole resting on
their necks. It was the ancient chariot. In the dialect of the country
they are called _Elheudi_, pure Arabic for _the Jewish_.
Festivals or solemnities, meetings beyond the commonplaces of ordinary
intercourse, are required from time to time to quicken the spirit
of a people, and to refresh and preserve its costume. When, in the
Highlands, you inquire the date of the disuse of tartan kilt and
arms, they will reckon back to the time when they were last worn, “at
church.” Yet our clergy have never cultured the Celtic spirit, and have
held the trappings of our race but as pagan emblems, disloyal badges,
or mundane toys.
Amongst European countries, Spain is distinguished for the splendour
of her church, and alone retains the Roman festivities of the
bull-fight; and, no doubt, she is partly indebted to these for what
she has retained of her ancient character. The men, when they enter
the circus, the women when they pass the porch, drop the millinery and
tailoring of Paris. What the bull-ring is for the one, the church is
for the other; from the one, is inseparable the majo dress, from the
other, the saya manta.
The wearing the mantilla at church, I have heard attributed to the
despotic power of the priests over the women:--the chulos of the
bull-ring, there exercise equal despotism over the men. Blanco White
narrates that during the plague at Seville, and when religious fervour
was, in consequence, at its height, a priest at Alcala “claimed and
exercised a right to exclude from church such females as by a showy
dress were apt to disturb the abstracted yet susceptible minds of the
clergy. It should be observed, by the way, that as the walking dress of
the Spanish females absolutely precludes immodesty, the conduct of this
religious madman admits of no excuse or palliation. Yet this is so far
from being a singular instance, that what sumptuary laws would never
be able to accomplish, the rude and insolent zeal of a few priests has
fully obtained in every part of Spain. Our females, especially those of
the better classes, never venture to church in any dress but such as
habit has made familiar to the eyes of the zealots.”
I was present at the festival of the patron saints of the place, and,
throughout the whole population, saw not one coloured dress or one
bonnet. The mantilla was worn in deference to the priests, who are
to-day as powerful as they ever have been, and as despotic as they
could ever wish to be.
A more perfect contrast there cannot be than between the cathedral
and a fashionable tertulia. In the former nothing is to be seen but
the black and glittering silk and the rich blonde: at the other no
trace of Spain--not even in the music or the dances--no mantilla, no
bolero, no fandango, no guitar, no castanet--nothing but the unmeaning
quadrille, the shuffling heedless step, the Paris millinery, the false
tints and kaleidoscope patterns:--everything commonplace and vulgar, or
rather the bad imitation of vulgarity and commonplace. The conversation
wanted even the compensation you meet with in Europe--stored memories,
clever flippancy, and gladiatorial faculties. Thus a people who,
had they remained themselves,[101] would have been, in their forms
as in their character, an object of study and of admiration, are
converted (the higher orders, I mean) into something which must inflict
disappointment, if not inspire contempt.
What would a nation be without a flag? What is a nation without
a costume? A flag is an emblem, a costume is a property. A flag
designates and defies, a costume ennobles and preserves. A flag has
come by accident, costume is the produce of a people’s taste. The Medes
had a dress; the Persians, the Romans, the Egyptians had each a dress.
To say, then, a dress, is to say a people. A costume is to a people
like its mountains, its floods, and its lakes. The costume of its land
and its fathers has been to every noble people like their tongue, their
fame, their precepts, and their laws; in independence, giving dignity;
in chains, none. The tyrant and the patriot alike know its worth. The
wandering Israelite for two thousand years, has worn, concealed on his
person, the proscribed garb of Judæa--a mystic shred, the emblem and
promise of restoration. So late as the middle of the last century, the
Parliament of England did not conceive its dominion secure until it had
put down the Highland dress.
The last in Europe to retain one, the Spaniard has yet a costume. He
is in the act of surrendering it, yet no foreign hordes cover the
Peninsula and hunt down its inhabitants. Itself, with unnatural hands,
tears it off and casts it away, and adopts in lieu of it a foreign
garb--which, indeed, is no garb--for it belongs to no people, furnished
forth not by a combination of the tastes of all the people of Europe,
but by a concentration of their vulgarism. Have they changed with a
purpose Ask them: they can give you no reason for what it means. “_It
is the fashion._”
I have a curious illustration before me, where I am correcting these
pages. On the side of Benledi there is a vale, now, with the exception
of a few fields, uncultivated below, and bare of trees above. In the
wilderness, a burial-ground may be traced, the record of an _extinct
clan_, the last having left the country forty years ago. Immediately
above, a hollow in the rock is called, “The Deer’s Repose.” The
antlered tribe has also disappeared--forests, deer, culture, and men
are all gone. There are six families: the patriarch (still living) in
his youthful days remembered twelve. None of the younger generation are
married--at least, in their native valley.
While seeking into the causes of this decay, I found that they were
_changing their diet_[102]--the last thing a nation changes. They had
loaf-bread from Callender. I asked, “Do you like it better?” “No.” “Is
it cheaper?” “No.” “Is it more healthy? Have you no time to knead your
cakes? Do you not know how to spend your money?” “No! no!” At last out
came--“_It is the fashion._”
If the Stuarts of Glenfinlass had said, “It is the custom,” instead of
“It is the fashion,” the families would not have fallen from twelve to
six within one generation; the sheep would not have eaten up the deer
and the forest.
A people with a phrase, “It is the custom,” can never be destroyed. A
people with the phrase, “It is the fashion,” cannot be said to exist,
for it has nothing of all it possesses that it can call its own. A
people that can articulate such a phrase on the lips, has encouraged a
power which, tyrannizing over heart and brain, rots the one and steals
away the other.
But has a people with the antiquity and the history of the Celts, and
amongst the Celts of the Highlanders, no equivalent for Adet-dur? Yes,
they have or had. “It was nature,” or “It was natural,” or “It was
family,” the word signifying all these. With that word they would have
kept their numbers, their customs, their kilts, and their swords. They
would have still their songs and songsters. There was in that sentence
a knot of life--a knot that no hands but their own could untie.
The Spaniards, too, have a sentence of their own, _Cosas de España_.
FOOTNOTES:
[79] A lady, writing from the north of Scotland, thus speaks of the
double invasion there of bonnets and poor:--“Bonnets have been the
destruction of the Caithness servants: what they spend on these, and
flowers and ribands (instead of the linsey-wolsey petticoat, cotton
jacket, and snood), would keep their parents in meal for months; but,
of course, now that there is a ‘legal assessment,’ what need they
care or “scrimp” themselves, only to spare the parish.”--“She (an old
woman of ninety-two) told me, that formerly there was more love among
neighbours than now among brothers.”
[80] The name of the cloak worn by the gentlemen, and of the plaid used
by the peasants.
[81] I have heard of another mantilla--de _Cacherula_--longer than the
others, and like a scarf.
[82] The word _Sarra_ is given in Aldevete: he renders it _princess_;
also _Sarria_, Valencian for _net_. He derives both from the Hebrew.
[83] “Quod nunc Tyrus dicitur olim Sarra vocabatur.”--_Scholiast on
Virgil_.
“Pœnos Sarra oriundos.”--ENNIUS.
[84] “Mantilla de _Tiro_” may be from the same word.
[85] The dance _Sarrabanda_, the saraband of our old writers, is, of
course, nothing else but “Tyrian bounding.”
[86] “In doors they wear _mules_, or shoes very low, the rest of the
leg being naked; out of doors, and particularly in Andalusia, they wear
drawers, long and very neatly folded, to exhibit a fine leg, for their
garments only come down to half the leg. They are very particular about
their feet, and they have shoes of thin Morocco, very soft, embroidered
in silk of different colours. They have for bracelets large manacles
of gold and silver, so weighty that those of gold are worth a hundred
ducats. They have similar ones above the ankle, which are round, and
thicker than the wrist.”--MARMOL’S _Africa_, vol. ii. p. 192.
[87] The _alpargata_ is not strictly the sandal, for the sole is of
untanned leather, or a thick texture of hemp. The sandal proper has
been seen on Jews from the Atlas: it is still in use in Arabia and
Ethiopia.
[88] An _artiste_ thus advertises in the _Times_:--“THE FAN.--The most
graceful mode of using this elegant companion, so indispensable to the
distinguished, will be imparted by a lady who is well skilled in an
exercise so charming and fascinating in the brilliant society of the
continent, particularly of the Court of Spain. A fortnight’s practice
would remove that impression of inaptitude and want of grace, hitherto
so apparent in its use in the most fashionable circles in this country.
The lady will be at home from 12 to 4 on Wednesday, Thursday, and
Friday of each week, commencing the 10th of January. _The lessons are
for the select few_, at five guineas the course. For cards of address
apply to Mde. Ramazzoti, French Room, Soho Bazaar.”
[89] “Furthermore, I ordain and command that no Jewesses of our
kingdoms shall wear mantillas with lace or trimmings.”--_Ord. John
II._, Cifuentes, July, 1412.
[90] The _Magasin des Demoiselles_, (October, 1847,) which ought on
such a subject to be a good authority, says that coarse lace was first
used by the priests and women in the time of Francis I., soon after
two varieties appeared called _Visette_, and _Gueuse_: next appeared,
from the manufacturers of Brussels, &c., _Mignonette_, _La Compour_,
and lastly _La Guypure_, sometimes embellished with silk and gold and
silver thread. The original patterns of the guypure resemble those
of the lace which at present is known by that name. These, strongly
meshed, run and entwine, capriciously imitating the forms of the
architecture of the “_rénaissance_,” which evidently suggested it. The
guypures in narrow strips are called “_tête de more_.”
[91] At Jerusalem the fringes _Tzetzes_ were sometimes so long that
carpets were carried about to bear them on.
[92] Nicod, Monnet, Henri, Etienne, dictionaries of the eighteenth
century, do not contain the word Dentelle. In the Encyclopedie
Méthodique is mentioned a work published in 1587, being a translation
and a third edition of Frederick de Vinciolo Venilæri, of which the
title is “Le Réseau premier et la point coupé et locis de plusieurs
beaux et dìfferens pour traicts de reseaux de point de côté avec le
nombre de mailles, chose non encore vue ni inventée.” The engravings
seem to represent two kinds of lace, figures forming a _toilé_ without
field, _i. e._ guypure; the other figures on a square thick-set ground
or net work as in Valenciennes appliquées.
Of the same period, a set of engravings representing the avocations of
men (by Dubruyn and A. V. Londerseel) shows a girl at work on lace with
the cushion now in common use on her knee. Colbert protected it in 1629.
[93] “They (the Moors) have Festival days instituted of old by the
Christians, whereupon they use certain ceremonies which themselves
understand not.... When their children’s teeth begin to grow, they
make another feast called, according to the Latins, _Dentilia_.”--LEO
AFRICANUS, Book iii. _Description of Fez._
[94] “The Tuaregs are divided into two bodies, the black and the white.
These denominations do not correspond, as might be supposed, with a
difference of colour, but only of costume. The white are clothed like
the Arabs, the black have a costume of their own. A large blouse falls
to the feet: the sleeves are not less than two _metres_ in width.
It is called _Tob_ or _Sayi_, and is in cotton from the country of
the blacks. When they travel, a piece of cloth, deep blue, fifteen
centimetres wide, called _tynala_, is wrapped round the whole body,
from the middle upwards, enveloping the neck, mouth, and nose, and
covering the head; and through the small interval that is left between
the folds of this mask, they can see by throwing back their head.”
_Exploration de l’Algerie_, vol. ii. p. 164.
[95] May not this be the mantle introduced by Caracalla into Rome, and
from which he derived the soubriquet by which posterity has known him,
Cara Cowl, or black hood?
[96] As known to the Greeks, it was of the same dimensions. The
exquisite beauty of that of Alcisthenis the Sybarite has preserved its
description. It was fifteen cubits long, and was sold for one hundred
and twenty talents, or nearly £30,000. The dye is Tyrian, the border of
animals; the gods are in the centre, and Alcisthenis himself is at each
end, and all this wrought in the loom.--_Arist. de Mirab._ xvi. 199;
_Athen._ xii. 58.
[97] “That all Jewesses and Moriscos of our kingdoms and dominions,
shall, within ten days of this date, wear long mantles reaching
to their feet, and cover their heads with the same. Those who act
contrary, for so doing are to forfeit all the clothes they have on, to
their under-garment.”--Don John II. Valladolid, January, 1412.
[98] One of the oldest Celtic figures in stone, is at Carn _Serai_ in
Argyleshire; it exhibits the fillimore, as the Jewish women wear the
haïk; one selvage is a few inches lower than the other, as the haïk is
not folded exactly in the middle. The name of the place is curious.
[99] This monstrous solecism of the jacket, in tartan, may be observed
in Wilkie’s picture of George IV., at Holyrood House.
[100] Tartan is the English for Brechan. It is generally supposed to be
Gaelic, but it is not so: it seems originally to have signified _shot
colours_, which always appear in the tartan from the crossings of the
colours. It has by some been derived from _Tyre tint_. The Brechan or
Tartan is the set of each clan. The English confound Tartan and plaid,
and speak barbarously of a “plaid waistcoat,” when they mean a tartan
waistcoat. The plaid is in Gaelic a shepherd’s mantle, but is never
used for the Brechan mantle, or “battle colours.” It may be derived
from διπλοιδιον (Pollux vii. 49), a name given by the Greeks to a
mantle which was supposed to be worn double.
[101] Addison, commenting in his time on the vulgarising influence of
the capital, says, “If you want to know a man who has seen the world,
you will know him by his deficiency in those characters which seem to
belong to good society.”
[102] They were resigning their diet of milk and honey, and taking to
sloe-leaves and toast. The reason brought back on me Spain, Greece,
and all the changelings. Ask a Turk why he does anything? he answers
_Adet-dur_--“It is the custom.”
CHAPTER X.
EXCURSION IN THE STRAITS.--CADIZ POLITENESS.
The demeanour of men towards women could not fail to engage attention
in the birthplace of chivalry, as among the orientals men and women
salute in the same manner. It was some time before I could have said,
“The women in Spain do not curtsey;” yet I should have been shocked to
see a Spanish lady do so. I have been looking over a book entitled,
“Travels in the land of Monkeys,” meaning England and France. It
is uncertain whether the work is originally Spanish or Italian. I
am satisfied that it is not Spanish, for it does not notice what a
Spaniard could not have failed to set down in those lands--a different
salutation for males and females. Can one imagine a Roman matron
curtseying? A bobbing up and down of the body, a salutation with the
legs, and no inclination of the head? Surely it was invented for
quadrupeds. It has only a foreign name in English, and that too absurd
to have been applied to the antic in its native tongue. A courtesy
(courtoisie) is a thing courteous; and a curtsey was a step in a
French dance. The ladies of Spain can dance, but cannot curtsey.[103]
To salute--to reverence, requires that the noble parts of the body
should be called into play. There is nothing so good that it may not
be perverted, and the best then becomes the worst. Curtseying is now
respectable because men have taken to nodding, and poking their hat
with the forefinger. How great would their surprise be, if they heard
that the dominion of the world may hinge on a form of salutation.
“Language,”. said Ali, “is the mirror of the understanding; manners, of
the man.” Bacon tells us that “Reason may affect the judgment, interest
the conduct, but manners alone touch the heart.” It is by manners that
the teaching of the child begins before he has learnt his letters.
Manners are the curb on the passions. They are the guide of life from
the cradle to the tomb, and by them you judge of the nation as well as
of the man. A people’s history is written in a salutation. Alwakide,
in the early days of Islam, records as an event, that a man receiving
sentence of death had not saluted the judge.
In the secluded places of Spain, even yet, on the bell tolling at
“oration,” whoever is walking, stops; whoever is seated, rises; the
prayer concluded, each turns round and salutes those around him.
What can be more impressive than this sudden and simultaneous act
of adoration of a whole people, followed by a mutual expression of
goodwill from man to man. This could not survive. From the forms of
salutation meaning is not yet expelled. No one sends as a message,
“Give my compliments.” It would be asked, “What compliments?” The
Spaniard, like the Eastern, says, “I kiss such a one’s hand, or I
lay myself at such a lady’s feet.” Our word compliment is equal to
their word ceremony; and our compliments they render _espressiones_.
These matters are, however, abridged. The _espressiones_ are run up
in an unintelligible articulation when spoken, and when written are
reduced to a cypher. You may receive a letter ending “S. S. S. Q. S.
M. B,”[104] and take it, as I once did, for a charade instead of a
compliment.
Unlike the Eastern, the Spaniard has the word “thanks;” but it is not
his sole resource in the embarrassment occasioned among some nations
by every act or speech of civility. When one Spaniard says to another,
“Do you please to eat with me?” the other does not say, “No, I thank
you;” but, “may it do you good.” When he says, “This house is at your
disposal,” the answer is not, “I thank you,” or “I am much obliged to
you,” but “You know me to serve you.”
Civility and ceremony do not belong to particular classes. There is
not a refined and a vulgar class. The humblest address each other
with the forms of the highest. Two human beings do not require an
introduction to know each other; they never pass without salutation. No
one breaks bread in the presence of another, whatever the difference
of rank, without an invitation to partake. The title of the pastrycook
on his sign-board is no other than that of the king. The master is as
courtier-like to his servant as to his equal. The beggar is not turned
away, even from the door of a tavern, and when he is refused by a
prince, it is with the words, “Pardon me, brother.”
“To the honour of Spain,” says even Borrow, “be it spoken, it is one
of the few countries in Europe where poverty is never insulted, nor
looked on with contempt. In their social intercourse no people exhibit
a juster feeling of what is due to the dignity of human nature. I have
said that it is one of the few countries in Europe where poverty is not
treated with contempt: I may add, where the wealthy are not blindly
idolized.”
Riches and poverty are deprived of their peculiar qualities; the first
losing the value which they owe to exclusiveness, the other, sufferings
contingent on privation. By the facile interchange which these habits
have established, their circumstances are influenced no less than their
minds, and the extremes of fortune are modified and equalised.
The earth may not be scientifically compressed into the rendering of
its fatness. Man’s muscle may not be condensed into minted gain; but
what is gathered from nature’s bounty is not refused to man’s wants.
If Spain produces less from her soil than any other country of Europe,
the Spaniard enjoys a larger share, and more equable distribution of
the produce than any other people.
It may not be uninteresting to place beside this a passage descriptive
of the Moors: it speaks of the law, but the remark is prompted by the
practice.
“The acts of common charity or casual alms are almost of injurious
obligation on a Mussulman; he dares not sit down to dinner without
inviting those who are near him to partake of it, of whatever condition
or religion they may be, and he cannot refuse assistance to any poor
person who may apply to him, if he have the means. Hospitality is to
be exercised towards every one who claims it,[105] without regard to
religion.”--Ali Bey’s travels, i. 95.
It would require no further evidence than this, that in Spain is
to be found domestic affection, attachment of servants and master,
charitable dispositions, tenderness for the afflicted, and aid for
the necessitous. A man here truly woos, not his wife only, but her
relatives, if they are less fortunate than himself; and, when families
fall into distress, they are supported with a generosity that is only
outdone by the delicacy with which it is applied:--those who sink in
the world, instead of losing caste are the more tenderly considered.
The mere habit of politeness is a possession greater than all a people
has besides, and for the want of which there is no compensation; and
that tone of voice, and those forms of address which in individuals are
the sign of proper bringing up, are to a nation the source and stay of
their good order and well-being. In Spain the term “politico” is still
synonymous with polite. They have dignity, which we take for pride, and
none of our so-called ease, which to them is vulgarity. Therefore did
they beat France when all Europe was at her feet, and therefore will
Spain live on when we shall have passed away--unless, indeed, we live
long enough to teach them _our_ civility.
Chateaubriand in 1805 anticipated the events of 1808. He said: “Spain,
separated from other nations, presents yet to history an original
character: the stagnation of manners may yet save her; and when the
people of Europe are exhausted by corruption, she alone may re-appear
with splendour on the scene of the world, because the foundation of
manners is still undisturbed.”
Spain has been called a “fragment of Africa;” the Spaniards have been
called “the Arabs of Europe.” They have proved alike inscrutable and
indomitable to all who have attempted to study or subdue them; and
so completely has that peninsula swayed in the events of our world,
that you may calculate the ascent or the decline of great enterprises
according to the estimation of her by its conductors. Marius, Pompey,
Napoleon, failed through their misjudgment of Spain: by apprehending
her, Cæsar won the diadem, Scipio saved his country, and Wellesley
Europe.
Whenever Europeans have judged of Spain, they have been at fault;
whenever they have acted upon her, they have failed; whenever they have
administered nostrums to her, she has suffered. _Madrid_ presents the
features of European governments: _Spain_ preserves the character of
the Moorish people--the character that enabled them to expel the Moors,
in after times the English, and more recently the French; and the
capital is actually in arms against the spirit of the age. The familiar
forms we see at Madrid, the glibness with which the diplomatist speaks
of this thing and that, this party and that, paves the way to plans
and schemes;--then intervenes the unknown element, the spirit of the
Spanish people, and capsizes all the plots.
If Europe is the source of the evils of Spain, so is Spain the source
of the dangers of Europe. As she cannot leave our follies alone until
she be wise, so can we not leave her affairs alone till we be honest.
It requires little to secure the good will of a Spaniard: in fact, it
is secured when he is not offended. A question addressed with deference
will always meet a courteous answer, and a ready offer of service and
assistance. If you ask a Spaniard your way, he will not be content with
pointing it out to you: he will generally accompany you. If you exceed
the strict bounds of civility, you lay him under an obligation; if you
do less, you have done him a wrong, which as surely he will remember. A
little kindness goes a great way; and the worst of injuries is mistrust.
An English merchant in this neighbourhood, having no money in his
pocket, gave a handful of cigars to a beggar: the poorest Spaniard will
be more gratified with a cigar than with money, as it is a compliment.
Three years afterwards, this merchant was seized near his country-house
by a band of robbers. While they were settling his ransom, they were
joined by an absent comrade, who instantly dismounted and, approaching
the Englishman, saluted him, and asked if he did not remember having
given at such a place and time a handful of cigars to a beggar; then
turning to his comrades he said, “This is my benefactor--whoever lays a
hand on him lays it on me.”
On turning over the pages of a writer on Spain, I am reminded that
the offer of the house is nothing more than an evidence of Spanish
hollowness and insincerity. The offer of the house is a sign of
civility, just as much as the words, “Your obedient humble servant,”
and these words are just as much an evidence of our insincerity as the
“offer of the house.”
It is the same thing with the offer of pot-luck. When first made,
it is declined. But when the answer is, “No se meta usted in eso,”
“Do not trouble yourself in that matter,” by which is implied that
no engagement stands in the way, the offer is then again repeated
and accepted. That there should be three questions put and answered,
in reference to an invitation to dinner, will be construed into an
evidence of a want of hospitality. Are _we_ a people to judge of
hospitality? A very hospitable person (in our way) I had once the
misfortune to arouse to fierce indignation by selecting this term to
show the perversion, in modern idioms, of classical terms, we applying
the Latin word to a repast from which are excluded those to whom the
Roman hospitality was offered--the poor and hungry.
Those who have travelled in the East will surely not say that the
people of the East are inhospitable; yet the people of the East never
invite you to dinner. In fact, hospitality is incompatible with
invitations to dinner. Where every one is welcome, it is impossible
that you should invite. You may invite a person for the sake of his
company, and coming to you at the time of meals, he may eat with you;
but he is not invited for the purpose of eating. The meal offered is,
in fact, an obligation conferred, and must be felt as such by a person
of delicacy, and will be accepted with the same measure as any other
favour. Is not this the interpretation of the contempt of the Romans
for the Parasites or the Dinner-hunters. In one of the Dialogues of
Xenophon the difference is illustrated. Socrates being invited to
supper, at first refuses, and only accepts after a due reluctance on
his part, and as due a persistence on the part of Amphytria,--Xenophon
taking care to point out that he had acted in this respect properly.
It is acknowledged, that the facility of intercourse in France, as
contrasted with England, and the ease with which people may congregate
and visit each other at the time of day when such meetings are most
appropriate--the evening--arises from the absence of formal invitation;
in other words, restriction on intercourse is the result of our fashion
of hospitality.
A word is even misused with impunity, and here the mistake of a Latin
term covers the perversion of a Christian maxim. The hospitality of
the Romans was that of Judæa. The manners of Judæa are the matrix of
Christianity. When Christ sent forth the seventy, he told them to carry
no scrip, and to make no provision. Wherever _they first entered_
(were received) there should they abide. They were to eat _what was
set before them_ (given them). Hospitality was the condition of the
reception of the Gospel: shall it be needless for, or incompatible
with, its maintenance? Those who, in Jewish Canaan or Judæa, had no
place where to lay their head, shook off the dust from their feet, in
testimony against those who received them not. In Christian England,
the Apostles of the Saviour would be sent to the workhouse or put upon
the treadmill.
I was here interrupted by a visit from a French merchant. The
conversation turned upon the Spanish mercantile character. He said,
there is no public credit in our sense, but there is real credit,
for man trusts man. A great traffic had been carried on through the
Basque provinces, during the Continental blockade: no books were kept;
the recovery of debts by legal process was impossible; yet was it
distinguished by the most perfect confidence, and entire absence of
failures or embezzlement.
The statement was subsequently confirmed by Mr. George Jones, of
Manchester, who managed the largest English concern in the Basque
provinces during the war. He had no clerks. The goods were disembarked
and put in warehouses. He could keep no regular accounts. The muleteers
came themselves to get the bales, and all he could do was, to tell them
what the bales contained, and to receive their own note of what they
had taken in an amount of 300,000_l._, and there was but one parcel
missing. Several years afterwards, a priest brought him fifty dollars,
which was the value of the missing bale of goods, saying, “Take that
and ask no questions.”
My visitor related to me the following anecdote:--A French merchant
from Bordeaux, who had a house at Barcelona, where he resided,
received, in the course of business, a large sum of money from a
Spaniard at a time when he was much embarrassed in his affairs; he was
therefore unwilling to receive the money, and yet fearful to refuse it,
lest his credit should be shaken. Shortly afterwards, he failed and
absconded. His creditor traced him to Gibraltar and thence to Cadiz.
There he found him lying sick, without attendants, in a garret. On
entering the room, the Spaniard sternly demanded his debtor’s books.
Receiving them, he sat himself down and spent several hours examining
them, referring to the Frenchman merely upon points where he wanted
information. When he had completed his investigation he returned the
books without comment, and departed. Shortly afterwards he returned,
accompanied by a physician, and had his debtor removed to a comfortable
apartment, and then addressed him thus: “I am satisfied that you have
not been guilty of fraud; but you have done me a great wrong: had
you been frank, I should have enabled you to hold your ground. Now
that we are in the same boat, let me know how much will enable you to
re-commence business.” The sum being specified, he said, “Well, you
shall have it upon the condition that you pledge me your word of honour
that you will not leave Spain without my permission.” The debtor was
about to pour forth expressions of gratitude, when his creditor stopped
him: “It is you,” said he, “who have rendered me a service;” and,
unbuttoning his coat, showed him a brace of pistols, adding, “One of
these was for myself.” My informant concluded: “I am the man, and it
happened under this roof.”
Those who come to Spain to see something that belongs to her, would
not wish her peculiarities to be diminished; those who wish to find
in Spain what they can have in Paris or in London, had better stay
away. In travel, profit and enjoyment always coincide, for none can
profitably travel who do not go to seek out for things different from
what they are accustomed to, and none can agreeably travel but those
for whom it is an enjoyment to be and to feel like the people of the
country in which they are. For my part, I should be as careful to
possess completely the thought or the habit of a people as to master
a problem of Euclid; and as careful to keep distinct in my mind the
thoughts and customs of one people from those of another, as if they
were medicines or chemical substances ranged upon a shelf. There is
no difficulty in learning half-a-dozen different languages; but you
could not learn one if you jumbled in every sentence the words of your
own tongue, or converted the foreign one into your own syntax. If you
did so, the knowledge of words would extinguish the faculty of speech,
and this is what we do when we reason, in our own country’s fashion,
on the thoughts of another;--keep these distinct and you can multiply
existence as you can multiply languages. Then you can put yourself in
the place of a Frenchman or Italian, and will know what, under any
given circumstances, he will think or do; this you do not reason upon,
and therefore are sure of.
This character of interest scarcely, indeed, presents itself amongst
the people of Europe, on the one hand from their close resemblance, and
on the other from the extinction of habits and traditional thoughts;
but when you get into Spain, there it does present itself to whoever
will discriminate it; the word of every peasant is not a reverberation
of a proposition, but a record of centuries. To one who feels this,
Spain will present the most interesting field of travel in Europe; to
one who does not, the most gratifying. An English resident at Gibraltar
told me that, by following a certain rule, he found travelling in Spain
very agreeable, and recommended it to my adoption. He said, “I always
address a Spanish peasant as if he were my equal.” “I do not require,”
I replied, “your rule, for I feel myself honoured whenever a Spanish
peasant condescends to speak to me.”
There is, however, a rule not only by which to make travelling
pleasant, but to make life itself so, and that is, to seek for and see
in others only what is good and profitable, in order to correct, or, at
least, comprehend, that in ourselves which is useless or faulty; but
this is not a rule.
Another weakness is the idea of being able to rate enjoyments or
estimate hardships. It is not merely that the hardships and enjoyments
are not equal in degree when similar in character, but very often they
are reversed. A German coming to England will complain of the misery of
hard beds. The English, but twenty years ago, would have made the same
complaint: their habit is changed, their enjoyments are changed with
them, or their fancied enjoyments are changed.
The climax in the picture which a writer draws of the sufferings of
the Spanish nuns, is their having to go about bare-foot. Tell this
in Scotland. To myself there cannot be a greater source of annoyance
and vexation--there is nothing in which I have a greater sense of
astonishment and surprise--than at nations wearing shoes and boots. The
whole economy of the feet in Europe is something as disgusting as it
is marvellous. We see the poorer orders clogging themselves with heavy
shoes out of doors,[106] and the wealthier classes confining their feet
and soiling their apartments in doors. Those who have lived in Scotland
will understand the first, those who have lived in the East will
apprehend the second.
In regard to cookery, costume, and forms of society, we have habits
formed; and, surely, he is an unreasoning being who proceeds by
means of those habits to estimate the habits of other nations: the
consequence of attempting to do so is a vague uncertainty of spirit,
which concentrates itself in his eye wherein he looks.
The useful traveller and the profitable observer will commence by
a process the very opposite. He will set aside all attempts at
comparison; he will eschew every thought and judgment; he will know
he has to begin by lifting himself out of his own habits and modes of
thought, in order to place himself in those of the country which he
visits. He will do so by endeavouring to feel like them, which he never
can do, if he presume for a moment to reason about them.
Imlac’s description of a poet had not proceeded to its close when
the captive Prince of Abyssinia told him he had already said enough
to convince him that no man on earth could be a poet; but Imlac’s
catalogue of the qualifications of a poet extended no further than to
acquirements and talents. The qualifications of a traveller are far
more extensive; for while it is necessary for him to possess all the
materials of which a poet ought to be possessor, while he ought to be
gifted with the imaginative qualities in which lives the poet’s very
essence, he should also have the scrutinizing eye of a philosopher, the
analytical spirit of a metaphysician, and all these put together can
only be of use when lifting him out of his times:--they restore to him
the use of his own eyes and ears.
FOOTNOTES:
[103] A lady at a masquerade dressed in maga, and astonishing some
Spaniards with her avonica and mialilto, curtseyed; they immediately
detected the false sister.
[104] Su Seguro Servidor que su Mano besa.
[105] “I quitted this mosque after having left a considerable sum to
the beggars who besiege the door. These people are not, indeed, very
troublesome, for they are all registered, and their chief is the only
person who asks for and receives the gifts of the faithful, which he
divides among the others.”--ALI BEY, ii. 337.
[106] A peasant in the New Forest once said to me, “Shoe-leather drives
us to the workhouse: it costs more than all our clothes.”
CHAPTER XI.
CARTEIA.--TYRE AND HER WARES.--GLASS.
Every time I left the “Rock,” or returned to it, I had to pass round or
through the ruins of Carteia, always deferring an examination of them
to a special day. At last that day was fixed, and I went with three
friends, who more or less indulged in Phœnician predilections--the
French consul, M. Bero, Mr. Cornwell, and Dr. Dunbreck. We talked
over its old fortunes and great names, until it seemed that we were
paying a visit to Balbus, and had made an excursion of some thousand
years. We wandered over the red earth, which is a mass of pounded
brick, interspersed with broken marble of all colours, and fragments
of mortar which here and there showed surfaces smooth and painted
like those of the walls of Pompeii. We gathered tiles of sundry
dimensions, some grooved so as to fit together like those which have
been recently discovered in Arabia; some two feet square, with borders
raised like trays. They are quarrying still here, to build little boxes
like those on Hampstead Heath. In one place they had opened rows of
amphoræ standing on end. The only building which can be made out is
Roman,--the amphitheatre,--it is on the side of the hill, overlooking
the bay: the part resting against the hill still stands, even to the
upper stories, to commemorate the importance of this first colony,
and of the Romans, the settlement of the Hybrides, the Creoles of
antiquity; a race produced from Roman fathers and Iberian mothers,--as
before them the Bastuli were from Carthaginian fathers and Iberian
mothers. It is curious to see the instinct with which a Spaniard,--I
mean, of course, the educated class,--will catch at any allusion to
those races: they do not relish it, and do, therefore, understand the
intellectual bastardy of their own nature. It is, however, strange,
that they should be ashamed of association with a cross which produced
Hannibal and Asdrubal. I should like to see how _they_ would have taken
the assimilation with the dry and rootless stumps of men[107] to whom
Spain is now given over.
After we had completed our researches and concluded our homilies, we
repaired to a ruined convent to get figs. The inmates deal in relics,
and the stock was principally composed of flattened drops of blue
glass, in shape and size resembling peppermint lozenges. They must have
been in enormous quantities, for they are even yet picked up along
the beach at Cadiz and other places. Some suppose that the Phœnicians
circulated them as money--they made money out of them by disposing
of them. The ancients did not cut stones in facets; their cups,
arms,[108] horse-trappings, even their ships,[109] were studded with
gems: these drops were adapted to this purpose. These were gems (glass
in the East still goes by that name):[110] so that in these drops we
had the staple of Tyre, hinted at by Ezekiel, when he spoke of “her
riches in the sand.”
In like manner, on the Guinea coast, they still find drops of
Phœnician glass, which they sell for their weight in gold. We have
in vain attempted to imitate them. They retain this value although
Africa is deluged with glass from every work-shop in Europe. The fact
is of importance, as bearing on traffic, which Herodotus makes the
Carthaginians carry on, and which moderns dispute. What must glass
have been when the knowledge of its manufacture was a secret; when the
people who possessed it worked with system, and neither glutted the
market nor undersold one another.
Observing at the bottom of a large chest in which their curiosities
were kept, a quantity of rubbish, I had it turned out. There were all
sorts of strange things, from glass lustre drops to blacking labels. I
selected some fragments of what seemed then earthen jars: when wetted
they proved to be glass of brilliant and variegated colours; some
opaque, some translucent. On one there was a flower with yellow leaves
and a red centre; the ground was green and translucent; the leaves
were opaque, the leaves twisted in passing through, so that the yellow
appeared through the green as if shaded with a brush. On the other
side it came out a comet with a red head and a yellow tail. From the
tombs of Egypt and Etruria have been obtained specimens of the same
manufacture; but I have seen none equal to this.
These broken fragments seemed to change in my hands into a magic
mirror, in which were reflected the workshops of Sidon and Aradus,
smelting to order the gems of Golconda. What is the Philosopher’s Stone
to their daily craft!
But it will be objected that the Egyptians were acquainted with
it--that it is found as far back as the tombs of the fourth dynasty,
and in the old Pyramids of Memphis; and that glass-blowing is recorded
on the walls of Beni Hassan, in a tomb of the eleventh or twelfth
dynasty.[111] Nevertheless, I think I shall very easily show that this
art, so far as the Egyptians are concerned, was the peculiar property
of the Phœnicians.
The invention is by all antiquity attributed to the Tyrians. When Pliny
wrote there were still histories of Tyre extant; still traditions
as well as interpretations of the hieroglyphics. It is difficult to
imagine that if it had been Egyptian, it should have been given to any
other people; and, if not Tyrian, claimed by and surrendered to them.
Even if communicated to the Egyptians at the period when it figures
on their walls, it may have been for many previous centuries the
exclusive possession of Tyre, for the Phœnicians were of equal date
with the Egyptians.[112] The monuments of Egypt were not pictures of
common things, but records of extraordinary ones. They were designed to
illustrate the lives of kings and heroes; representing their triumphal
entries; their trophies; the tribute offered; the captives brought
home; the arts they introduced; the inventions and incidents of their
time. We have in them a few repetitions: elephants are there: they
are seen but once; a cart but once; brick-making once; glass-blowing
once, and that is in the reign of Sesu Sesen, consequently I will not
say that this record proves, but that it at least suggests, that up
to that time the manufacture was unknown in Egypt. The representation
is not, however, of glass-making; it is of blowing only: no where is
glass-making seen. If the Egyptians had the art of blowing glass only,
they must have imported the raw material.
The monument of Carnac enumerates among the tribute paid to Tathmes
III., “ingots of enamel;” and this tribute was paid four hundred years
after the glass-blowing figures on the walls. The material for glass
abounded in Egypt. They were dexterous in preparing mineral compounds
for colouring: had they understood the manufacture they would not have
imported it; and had the manufacture been known, we should have seen
it figured with the blowing. But the Egyptians, having learnt the art
of blowing, would desire to have the unmanufactured material in order
to adapt it to their own fashions. This is entirely confirmed by the
description given by the Egyptian priests to Herodotus; for it must be
after them that he designates the ornaments of the sacred crocodiles
(which we know to be glass), λίθανα χύτα, _fused stones_.
This tribute came from “Maharama,” or Mesopotamia, in the first cities
of which the Phœnicians had establishments.
Having set aside the claims put in for Egypt, no other people making
any, I have, I think, restored the invention to the Phœnicians.
A new claim has now been set up for the Assyrians, according to Mr.
Layard. “They had acquired the art of making glass. Several small
bottles or vases of elegant shape in this material were found at
Nimroud and Konyunjik.”[113] But, strange to say, in the very spot
where he came upon the first glass vase he found pottery, with letters
which he supposes to be Phœnician.
The Greeks knew nothing of the art, though they possessed the
substance. Prometheus, in Eschylus, claims the honour of almost every
invention--glass is not enumerated among his titles to the hatred of
Jupiter. Socrates, in “The Clouds,” tricks a bum-bailiff out of his wit
by means of a burning-glass.[114] From the Scholiast we learn, that
these were sold at the apothecaries.
This burner may now seem of another substance, of which the Phœnicians
had possession--amber. I have seen it so used on the coast of the
Baltic, being formed in the most primitive manner by rubbing between
the palms of the hands. Amber was supposed to attract the sun’s rays,
as it did various substances, whence its name, ἔλεκτρον. The word was
also applied to glass,[115] from its possessing a similar quality.
There may be more in the association than we have yet discovered. Pliny
mentions the magnet as used in the preparation of glass. The Tyrians
employed glass as artillery; they discharged what was called “melted
sand” at Alexander’s troops in storms which inflicted torture, and
carried dismay and agonies against which no defensive armour could
avail. The Venetians, following in their steps, likewise made glass
their artillery. The first shells, and perhaps the most effectual, were
of glass; they are still to be seen used as ink-bottles.
But the art seems to have extended from burning glasses to microscopes
and telescopes, or they must have had eyes differently constituted from
ours; for without such aid we could not make out valleys and mountains
in the Moon; the milky-way[116] to be composed of stars; or count, as
there is reason to believe they had done, the satellites of Jupiter
and Saturn: and, supposing reflectors, and not lenses, were employed
to survey the heavens, we can hardly escape from acknowledging their
claim to microscopes and magic lanterns.[117] Their gems could not have
been engraved without such aid; indeed, we require glass to make out
the figures of some of them.[118] Eye-glasses we know they had, from
Nero, who, being short-sighted, used one in the amphitheatre: it is
called an emerald. One of the personages on the Greek stage had eyes of
different colours, which was represented in his mask, and of course by
coloured glasses. All these were the “wares of Tyre.”
In after times the manufacture of glass was transferred to Rome; but in
the early period the Phœnicians must have supplied glass to Greece and
Italy, as they did to Egypt, Assyria, Spain, and Africa.
In the chapter of Ezekiel, in which Tyre is described, a very
different country is represented as sending to Tyre their produce
for “her wares;” but what the “ten thousand”[119] wares of Tyre were
nowhere appears, unless in the “treasures hid in the sand.” We know
of no wares that she had except dyes and glass;--dyes implies the
dyeing of stuffs; but in Phœnicia there were no manufactories; and
she is herself represented as importing manufactured stuffs. A few
glass-houses, according to our notion, would not suffice to compel an
exchange of the metal of Ogg, and the beasts of Deden, and the pearls
of Chittim, and the gold of Tarshish. The wares consisted in the dye
itself which she extracted from the shells of her own coast, and from
that portion of the coast of Africa, where they were in like manner
found, and the drops of glass equivalent to gems, to prepare which a
few hands sufficed, and on which the profits must have exceeded all
calculation.[120]
The great nations of antiquity eschewed commerce and navigation: they
lived at home. It is the property of a primitive people so to live; and
that concentration of life upon the spot must be the character of all
institutions which are calculated to last long. To the Egyptian the
sea was unclean: the Hindoo, the Persian, the Chinese, all avoided the
sea-trade. Of the tribes nearly allied to the Phœnicians, one only, the
Arabs, were a transporting people;[121] the two monopolised the trade
of early times, the Arab carrying on the traffic of the desert by his
camels, the Phœnician that of the sea by his ships.
The great nations I have referred to were not anti-commercial: they
received the stranger who came amongst them as a friend; he was
more--he was a guest--the rites of hospitality extended to whole tribes
who came to settle wherever there was room for them. How much then
must have been the favour which attended the arrival and settlement
of trading strangers? There could have been in Tyre no competitions,
no under-sellings, no combinations. From the beginning to the end of
their exchanges there must have been an adaptation of the profits
of the community and of the individual--a union of traffic and
government.[122] This endured for not less than one thousand, and may
have extended to nearly two thousand, years.
The Phœnicians, in the structure of the old world, may be compared to
the lime cementing the blocks, or to the veins and arteries spreading
life through the body. Phœnicia was the smallest of states: arms had no
part in her growth, conquest no share in her greatness. She gathered
and spread around the produce of the earth and of the toil of man;
its business was on homely and vulgar things. More than the mystery
which shrouds the antiquity of the most visionary, is spread over the
origin of this most practical of people; our profoundest writers are at
variance as to whether she gave to, or borrowed from, Greece her gods;
as to the form of government which prevailed in her cities; as to the
taxes imposed on her merchandise. The avowed introducers of letters
into the Western world alone remain without the record of a written
page, or of a chiselled stone.
We see in this society dominion without conquest; greatness without
ambition; permanency without numbers; freedom without turbulence;
commerce without legislation;[123] and riches without pauperism.
Neither arrogant in their strength, nor servile in their weakness,
they could abstain from encroachments on the Lybian or Iberian
populations, who afforded them a settlement, and maintain their
peculiar character in Memphis, Babylon, and Persepolis. Their commerce
paid to, while it received tribute from, every shore it visited; and
was enriched in the aggregate wealth of all the wealth it bestowed.
Thus did it take tithe of the spices of Malabar and the Philippines; of
the frankincense of Abyssinia and Arabia; of the fine linen of Egypt;
of the herds and camels of Deden; of the corn and oil of Judæa; of
the ivory and ebony of Lybia and Hindoostan; of the gold of Spain; of
the tin of the Cassiterides; of the amber of the Baltic. It had its
colonies and its stores at Taprobane, as it had them at Cadiz and in
Britain.
[Illustration]
A few days after my visit to Carteia, I was looking over some coins
which a gentleman at Gibraltar had collected, and was astounded
to come upon one which is not copied, but which is represented in
the accompanying wood-cut.[124] This told the whole story of the
glass-houses and the tin. I wonder if the coin was censured as
indiscreet at Tyre. How is it that by putting the hand in this fashion
to the nose the fancy should be tickled? Whence did the custom come?
how did it travel to Britain? One is not prepared to have to search
for such a gesture in the Hebrew Talmudists, or the Greek scholiasts;
but here it is raised to numismatic dignity, and is worthy of the
philosopher.
There is a ludicrously supercilious animal, very strong and very
stupid, with a horn on his nose, belonging to Africa, the Holy Land,
Mesopotamia--in fact, all the Phœnician countries. He was the Behemoth,
for of no other animal could Job be thinking when he said, “With his
nose he pierceth through snares”--the horn, emblem of victorious
strength, denoting by its exaltation its own achievements, and the
proud bearing of the brow on which it is planted. Each year gives to
it increase, and each increase is marked by a wrinkle which comes to
signify acquirement. There are false acquirements as there are true;
and the horn of the nose is the burlesque of the horn of the forehead.
The motion that is given to the hand shows that it is the spiral
wreathings of a horn that are imitated: the rhinoceros represents the
one, the unicorn the other.
Of the two images, the African has preserved the grave one, we the
grotesque. The Abyssinian warrior, when he has gained a victory, adorns
his forehead with a horn. The London coalheaver, when he has made a
hit, puts his thumb to his nose.
This gesture in its grotesque form was known not long ago in Spain,
although at present it appears to have died out. Cervantes unmistakably
describes it, and in the person of Sancho Panza; the English have
therefore the sole honour and distinction of preserving this
peculiarity of the Phœnicians and Etruscans.[125]
I might be inclined to place beside this, the groups of lions and
unicorns at Persepolis, which so closely resemble the supporters of the
English arms, as scarcely to be referable to coincidence. They are,
indeed, of recent adoption as the arms of England, but of ancient date
in those of Scotland. The emblematic plants of England were, however,
those of Phœnicia--the oak and the ivy; and the rose of England is
still the flower of Spain. The blood-red hand of Ulster is in Morocco
stuck above every door. It wants not so much to raise the thought, or
justify the association. Instinctively one seeks for some sympathetic
deed, which shall link us to the Phœnicians; and Spain lies between,
and is bound therewith: she too at length prides herself on her Moorish
blood, and exalts herself (or at least did so till we robbed her
fortress) on her British friendship recorded in the proverb:--
Guerra con toda la tierra,
Pero par con Ynglaterra.
The extinction of written records has given importance in these
countries to every trifling usage or tradition, as will be best felt
by reviewing the catalogue of mischances which have befallen the
literature of Africa, and of the great people, who in the West have
given to it its celebrity.
Alexander destroyed the libraries of Tyre: those of Sidon perished in
the flames with their wealth and themselves. The whole mass of the
literature of Carthage was destroyed by the Romans, except a small
portion given to Massinissa.
The Alexandrian library was burnt by the troops of Julius Cæsar.
The various collections made at Rome by Asinius Pollio, Augustus,
and Tiberius, were lost in the fires under Nero and Titus. Domitian
endeavoured to repair the disaster by getting the manuscripts of
private collections copied, and ransacking Africa for the lost works:
these were deposited in the Temple of Peace, and destroyed by fire
under Commodus.
Finally, the gleanings of Rome were carried off by Genseric and _lost
at sea_. The persecution of the Donatists led to the burning, all
over Africa, of books and manuscripts. The Mussulman conquests led to
fresh burnings, and the great African collections of Alexandria again
perished under Omar.
The 600,000 volumes of Cordova, and the enormous collections of the
learned cities of the Moors, perished by Christian and Gothic hands.
The library of Tunis was destroyed by Charles V.; Muley Hassan lamented
it more than his city. After the ravages of war had ceased, Cardinal
Ximenes, the munificent patron of literature, consigned to the flames
88,000 African manuscripts. Lastly came the capture of the library of
the King of Morocco, a portion of which constitutes the collection of
the Escurial, and this again has suffered by fire.
Thus have been swept away the literary records of this quarter of
the globe, as completely as devouring sands and the human ravages of
more recent times have effaced all local signs. The curiosity of the
traveller is arrested on its inhospitable shores; the research of the
antiquarian baffled by the scantiness or uncertainty of data. Her
history remains what her interior still is: we can wander, guided only
by the stars--little points of light that shine only because of the
surrounding darkness.
FOOTNOTES:
[107] A late Queen of Spain, speaking of colonization,
said,--“Spaniards now-a-days have no roots.”
[108] Stellatus cuspide fulva ensis erat. _Æn._
[109] The antique Turkish galleys, some of which still continued to
navigate the Black Sea fifteen years ago, had their stems and sterns
largely ornamented in Venetian glass.
[110] In Turkish, _jam_ is applied generally to glass: the Arabs
restrict it to the bowl when empty.
[111] The Egyptians “were not only acquainted with glass, but excelled
in staining it of diverse hues, and their ingenuity had pointed out to
them the method of carrying devices of various colours directly through
the fused substance.”--WILKINSON. Abulfaragus says, it was known to the
Egyptians soon after the flood; and Diodorus says the Ethiopians used
it.
[112] Josephus, scouting the arrogance of the Greeks, who might be said
“to be of yesterday,” in presuming to speak of Jewish history, refers
them to the “Phœnicians and Egyptians.”
[113] Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 421.
[114] Servius in commenting on Æneid, xii. 200, says, “The first
inhabitants of the earth never carried fire to their altars, but by
their prayers brought it down from heaven.” The Parsees of India, when
by any accident their fire is extinguished, _use burning glasses_.
[115] See Scholiast to the Clouds of Aristophanes.
[116] Salanti, vol. i. p. 285. Aboulala (4th century) says, “The
stars which form the milky-way.” Aristotle speaks of the mirrors for
surveying the heavens. Those of Memphis and Pharos are often mentioned.
Strabo speaks of tubes for magnifying objects; such tubes are mentioned
in old Arabic writers.
[117] Damascius (apud Photium. Biblioth, cap. 242) describes the figure
of a head thrown upon the wall of the temple in this manner, which
could only be done by a magic lantern.
[118] Theodorus, who constructed the labyrinth of Samos, placed a
chariot and four horses on the finger of a statue of himself; the
chariot, horses, and charioteer could all be covered by the wings
of a fly, which he also devised. The same is related of Myrmecedes.
Callicrates cut insects, the limbs of which could not be discovered by
the naked eye. See Pliny, Nat. Hist., b. xxxiv. c. 5; B. xxxvi. c. 5.
[119] Μύρ’ ἄγοντες ἀθύρματα νηἱ μελαίνη.
[120] Ἀγοράζοντες τὸν ἄργυρον μικρὸς τινὸς ὰντιδότες ἄλλων
φορτιων.--STRABO.
[121] “We neither inhabit a maritime country,” says Josephus, “nor
do we delight in merchandise, nor in the mixture with other men that
arises from it. Our cities are remote from the sea, and having a
fruitful country, we take care in cultivating that only.”
In the expeditions under Solomon it is expressly stated that the men of
Tyre went to navigate their ships.
[122] I have described a similar state of things as existing in our own
times at Ambelakia in Thessaly, and the Mademo Choria in Macedonia. See
“The Spirit of the East.”
[123] “Nothing was known of the balance of trade, and consequently
all the violent measures resulting from it were unknown to the Greeks
... as everything was decided by examinations and not by theories,
there may have been exceptions, where the state for a time usurped a
monopoly. But how far was this from the mercantile and restrictive
system of the moderns.”--HEEREN _Pol. Hist. Ancient Greece_, c. x. 163.
[124] The coin is in one of the addenda to Flores;--it is not in the
copy at the British Museum. The coin is, however, known in the medal
room.
[125] It is figured on a vase in the Museo Borbonico.
CHAPTER XII.
THE STONE OF HERCULES.
“Behold thou art wiser than Daniel; there is no secret that they can
hide from thee.”
“The wise men that were in thee, O Tyrus, were they pilots?”
The magnetic needle has become so essential in the economy of the
world, that we can hardly imagine the consequences which would ensue,
were it suddenly to lose its power. It is not, however, difficult to
picture the sudden and gigantic growth of any one commercial state,
which, in such a contingency, should discover the means of restoring
its efficacy, and preserve the secret.
To what pitch of greatness must not any state have ascended, which,
from the beginning, had been favoured and distinguished by such a
possession? It would take tithes from the harvests of every land; the
produce of every zone would furnish its marts, the toil of every race
fill its coffers; and if by weakness, wisdom, or integrity it did
abstain from plotting and scheming, and contented itself with driving
its trade, and meriting by using its fortune, the other states of the
world, instead of hating it, and combining to destroy it, would favour
and cherish it as a common benefactor.
There is an ancient people whose history I have in the above
supposition described, whose growth and duration are in no ways to
be accounted for, as in the case of any other state; who had neither
number nor territory, yet who ascended to the loftiest pinnacle of
dominion, competed with Egypt in antiquity, and endured, more than
twice told, the career of Rome.
We are constrained to give credence to the facts; but the cause escapes
us. To admit is one thing--to comprehend another. To comprehend the
growth of Phœnicia, we must embody at least every known element of
prosperity, and, amongst these, at least _so much_ of the aids of
navigation as the polarity of the needle affords.
The proposition naturally arouses a host of contradictory suggestions.
“If the ancients had it,” it will be said, “we could not have failed to
have known it; we are acquainted with everything connected with their
seamanship, their voyages,[126] &c. It never could have been lost.
If any one people had it, it must have become known to the rest. Our
pre-eminence in navigation, discoveries, and commerce is essentially
associated with the compass. Why did they not reach America?[127] How
did it remain for us to make the discovery?”
These are all the objections I have been able to discover: they are all
preliminary, and are adjusted to a mark which I do not present, viz.,
the word “ancients.” Substitute the word “Phœnicians,” and they fall to
the ground.
The “ancients,” are to us Greeks and Romans. Very different men were
those traders, whose acute and vivid genius, flexible to all things,
could cover up, and conceal, what the brain had devised, or the hand
acquired. Those traders had no Penny Magazine, and published no Price
Current. Undenying at home, they were selfish abroad; they kept to
themselves what they knew, and did not overreach one another for the
profit or pleasure of strangers. Even in our own times, secrets are
kept by large bodies of men, about nothing, and for no end. The needle
would have been a talisman to the state exclusively possessing it; to a
few entrusted, not as an instrument, but as an oracle or a god.[128]
Of all factitious props, secretive habits are the most powerful. The
art of the Thaumaturgist, calculated in all other countries merely to
strike the vulgar with awe, became to them an element of political
greatness and commercial profit. They were ready to shed blood for
indiscretion or mischance. Patriotism, the mysteries, and natural
science formed, by their interlacing fibres, that strong yet flexible
tissue which enveloped and concealed the Phœnician polity, and remained
unchanged from the time when it served as swaddling-bands to an infant
community, to the hour when it wrapped as cerecloth the clay from which
fate, and not malady, had driven life. Reveal the polarity of the
needle! Tyrians suffer the secret of the compass to be extorted! He
who could conceive such a thing, may be learned in books, or perhaps
learned in history, but not in men. Yet this is the sole _argument_ of
the sceptics. “It could not have been concealed.” Who was to find it
out? Was curiosity of Greek or Roman to beat Punic astuteness? Were
stripes, or chains, or death, to conquer Punic endurance? and who had
the thought of exerting the one, or employing the other?
The sceptics are no less ignorant of seamanship: nothing was more
easy than concealment. We must not start by picturing a binnacle,
exposed by day, and lighted by night--a quartermaster conning by it,
and a steersman looking at it, second by second, in presence of ship’s
company, passengers, and strangers. We must bring before us habits of
navigation formed without this aid; mariners guiding themselves by
night by the stars, and lying to, when these could not be seen; or
perhaps with the instinct of the islanders of the Pacific, finding
their path through darkness, by watching the angle of incidence of
waves and wind, rating the effect of one on the direction of the
other, and thus by approximation holding on till the lights reappeared.
The heaven or the ocean was the binnacle. They would seek from the
needle what we seek from the Sextant,--conference and counsel. The
instrument so used by master or mate, is to our sailors as unknown as
the astrolabe or divining-rod. The navigator works out his place upon
the surface of the globe, and lays down the course; but the formulæ are
to him as much a secret as the instrument is a mystery to the crew.
The Phœnician skipper might refer to his magic _Cup_ in secret: an
approximation was all that, without the sextant and dead reckoning,
could be desired, and that only in case of doubt or difficulty arising
from bad weather.
Modern writers make a sad jumble whenever they touch ancient
navigation. They transfer--but not as a sailor would do--the ideas
derived from our practice, which in most things is changed, in some
reversed. Men-of-war now exceed merchantmen in dimensions, as much as
the merchantmen formerly exceeded the men-of-war. A Phœnician vessel
was able to stow 500 emigrants, with provisions for a long voyage, and
required for masts the cedars of Lebanon. They carried, in the earliest
period, heavy substances from the farthest points; the timber of India
is found amongst the tombs of Egypt. To apply to _their_ navigation,
the passages descriptive of the row-boats of the Greeks and Romans, is
a solecism and an anachronism:[129] they neither made their way by the
speed of oars, nor sheltered themselves by hauling up their vessels
upon the beach; their craft stood in the same relation to the μάκρη
ναυς the _longa navis_, as the trading vessels of Spezzia and Hydra
during the Greek war to the pirate _Mysticoes_: one of these darting
from under a low reef, would scatter a convoy of the largest vessels,
like a wolf among a flock of sheep. How could commerce have been
carried on in vessels that required oars to pull them, at the rate of
ten men to a ton, the crews of which had to land for their meals?
It is only by collecting the local traditions of distant regions, by
comparing the records of various nations, the writings of different
times, by analyzing the names of places,[130] and reasoning upon all
these various data at an interval of twenty centuries, that we are
discovering the extent of the settlements of the Phœnicians. They had
hidden their footsteps and concealed their ways from the wise[131]
alike and from the simple: who can tell how many secrets lie buried in
their tomb?
If I have shown that the ignorance of “classical writers” is neither
an argument nor an objection, the other objection that, “if known, it
could not have been lost,” falls to the ground, for if concealed, it
must have perished with the possessors. It is strange that, having
regained it, we do not detect its ancient vestiges, and are unable
to interpret the words, names, and phrases which, to the initiated,
unmistakably reveal it. After Galileo, we detected in antiquity, by
a passage of Pythagoras, the knowledge of the science of music. From
similar indications, we found out, after we possessed the knowledge
ourselves, that the whole scheme of the heavens was understood by
them.[132] After Franklin had drawn down lightning, we apprehended,
for the first time,[133] what chance had befallen Salmoneus, Servius
Tullius,[134] and Sylvius Alladus.[135] Yet, if any discovery might be
supposed to be notorious and incapable of concealment, and therefore
not liable to perish, it would be the calling down of thunder and
lightning, signalized, too, by the catastrophes of a prince of Greece,
a lucumon of Alba, a king of Rome, and an eastern legislator.[136]
Although the great ancient states did not pursue the sea trade, the
Phœnicians were not without competitors. The Pelasgi, the Etruscans,
the Greeks were their equals in _seamanship_. The two latter were far
more powerful. They reserved the long voyage by no navigation laws, and
must have been in possession of some exclusive knowledge. The compass,
however it might aid, is not absolutely required in many long voyages.
The Pacific was peopled without it. Within the Mediterranean the land
served to guide, weather shores to protect. These, and the tides,
aided the navigator all round Europe. The monsoons wafted him along on
the Indian Ocean. But there was one voyage, which, with none of these
aids, the Phœnicians, and they alone of all antiquity performed,--that
of Western Africa. It was upon that coast, and in sight of its
insurmountable natural difficulties, that the idea, here developed,
first occurred to me. I then turned to the records of antiquity,
and to those first and best pages of history, the myths, and found
confirmation, and what rocks and reefs, blasts and currents had taught
me.
Seated at the water-shed of the East and of the West--at the fountain
of the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf--the Phœnicians passed down
both, and issuing into the Indian and Atlantic oceans, visited the
furthest regions of the earth. It was their province to gather the
produce of every land; so must it have been their aim to collect the
inventions of every people. If anywhere the magnetic needle had been
discovered, they would have been sure to find it; and if applied only
to the land, most certainly would they adapt it to their own element.
This discovery required no high standard of science. It could not have
been reasoned to _a priori_; by accident alone could it have been found
out. There is in it, therefore, nothing to flatter the self-love of
any, or to militate against referring it to the very earliest ages or
the rudest people.
The discovery is claimed by modern civilization, and is one of those
upon which it most prides itself. The place, the inventor, the precise
date are all known; and though by one section of literary men the
honour is referred to China, and by another, indications of some sort
of compass are admitted elsewhere, and at anterior dates, still the
compass in its present shape, and in its practical use, is next to
universally attributed to Flavio de Gioja, of Amalphi, in the year 1302.
The perusal of the catalogue of the Escurial suggested to M. Villemain
the remark, that most of the modern discoveries of which the date and
the name of the inventor are set down as certain, were no more than
inventions of the Arabs, which he had appropriated. Such in this case
was the fact. Amalphi, the earliest of European commercial states,
arose under the Greeks and the Saracens. To the latter people it
owed the lead it took in instruction and navigation. Centuries and
generations before Flavio de Gioja, the needle was known at Amalphi.
The _magnet_,[137] in its attracting power, was well known to the
Arabs, from the Greeks, Persians, and Jews. But they gave a new name,
which shows that they had become acquainted with its polarity, which
indicated the use to which, by them, it was applied, _Kiblah Nameh_.
Finding the direction towards the _Kiblah_, of course it would serve
to direct the caravan through the desert, and the caravel at sea. If
additional proof be wanting, the name supplies it.
“Mariner’s compass,” “magnetic needle,” are paraphrases; but in the
countries surrounding the Mediterranean, it has a name--_Boussole_,
for which no European etymology can be found.[138] The Arabic afforded
none, for by no process could Kiblah Nameh be emended into the root
of _Boussole_. There is, however, an Arabic word, which has escaped
our lexicographers. The figure,[139] which designates the north is
MOUASSOLA.[140] When Europeans first saw the instrument, this point,
the leading one, was doubtless pointed to and named. From Mouassola to
Boussola the transition is easy; M. and B., being labials and cognate
letters, and in some dialects of the Arabic constantly transposed.
The Greeks, the intermediaries between the Arabs and Europe, still
possessed Amalfi, which became a maritime state; Arabic and Greek, not
Latin and Italian, were spoken there; and in modern Greek the word for
compass is written Μπουσσολα.
The Arabic affords another etymology, and while either may have served,
both may have concurred to give us our word. The abstract which has
been preserved of El Edressi’s “Geography of Spain,”[141] has this
sentence, “The outer ocean,” that in which the compass was necessary,
“is termed _El Bahar el Bossul_ (the violent), as distinguished from
the interior, or _El Bahar el Muit_.”
European writers derive the compass from the Arabs.[142] The Arabic
geographers absolutely decline this honour.[143] They refer the
invention to the Chinese. They quote a Chinese name, _Kya-poun_,
meaning, as they assert, a board marked with lines. The Chinese
claim the discovery, and have and use the instrument. It is of their
own make and fashion, divided according to a rule of their own, and
connected with various astronomical and geographic points which we are
unacquainted with.
The Jesuits, who have been such judicious observers and accurate
describers of China, unanimously support the same conclusion.[144]
Klaproth, in a letter to M. Humboldt “Sur l’Invention de Boussole,”
argues in the same sense.
Humboldt, in his recent work, “Cosmos,” answers as follows the letter
addressed to him by Klaproth.
“Although a knowledge of the attracting power of the loadstone, or of
naturally magnetic iron, appears to have existed from time immemorial
among the nations of the West, yet it is a well established and very
remarkable historical fact, that the knowledge of the directive power
of a magnetic needle, resulting from its relation to the magnetism of
the earth, was possessed exclusively by a people occupying the eastern
extremity of Asia. The Chinese for _more than a thousand years before
our era_, at the obscurely known epoch of Codrus and the return of the
Heraclidæ to the Peloponnesus, already employed magnetic cars, on which
the figure of a man, whose movable outstretched arm pointed always to
the south, guided them on their way across the vast grassy plains of
Tartary. In the third century of our era, at least 700 years before
the introduction of the compass in the European seas, Chinese vessels
navigated the Indian[145] ocean with needles pointing to the south.
I have shown in another work[146] what great advantages in respect
to topographical knowledge the magnetic needle gave to the Chinese
geographers over their _Greek_ and _Roman_ contemporaries, to whom for
example, the true direction of the mountain chains of the Apennines and
the Pyrenees always remained unknown.”[147]
These writers conceive that they have settled the question by tracing
the invention from the Chinese to the Arabs. This at least is
established, that the Chinese had the compass at the period of the
greatness of the Phœnicians, and if they did not use it on the ocean,
traversing Tartary with it, brought it within reach of the Phœnicians,
who, as I shall show, knew the stations through Tartary to China.
Now, our instrument offered intrinsic evidence of a parentage wholly
distinct from the Chinese.
The _north_ is the leading point. The axis of the globe cut at right
angles by the equator, gives the four points which we term _cardinal_,
which are then subdivided into eight, sixteen, and thirty-two (the
latter appears to be comparatively modern). These constitute the points
which serve the mariner, and are employed in directing the course of
the vessel and steering it. The circle is then divided, according to
the astronomic measurement of the globe, into 360 degrees.
These _Points_ and _Degrees_ are figured on a card affixed to the
needle, and revolving with it on a pivot, so that the helmsman has the
circle of the earth before him, and has to bring the vessel’s head
(marked by a line in the cup in which the card and needle float) to
that point of the circle towards which he is directed to steer.
In every respect, save the polarity of the needle, the Chinese compass
differs. The south, taking the negative for the positive polarity, is
made the leading point: it is not marked by any mouassola or figure,
but painted _red_. There is no cross, and consequently no _centre_.
The needle bisects merely the instrument. There are no _cardinal_
points.[148] The first subdivision is into eight, the second into
twenty-four; avoiding _sixteen_--that essential number of augury and
of the Hindoos,[149] &c. This is the nautical part of the instrument,
and occupies four of the concentric circles that are traced on the
broad plate which surrounds the instrument; then succeed ten other
circles, through which the radii of the first four are not continued,
and where figure a variety of words and divisions, which no one has
explained, and which the highest authorities confess their inability to
comprehend. The astronomic degrees on the outer circle are not equal
to one another, and amount to about three hundred and eighty. Although
the needle revolves, it is not on a pivot, but on a point which, like
the letter T, descends into the wood of the box, and there turns in a
_socket_. No card is affixed on it: it traverses as an index, pointing
to the scale of the circle traced on the box. That the Chinese knew
the variation of the needle, and had accurately fixed that of Canton,
expressing it by the converse signs, has been established by M.
Klaproth, and might have led him to doubt the theory he has so boldly
asserted, of ours being derived from theirs. Thus, the Chinese compass
differs from ours _toto cœlo_, there not being a single point in which,
even by accident, we have hit upon the same method. A junk and a
Phœnician galley, or an English collier, are not more dissimilar: both
sail the seas, and both direct the ship--there all resemblance begins
and ends.
The Chinese instrument had been used on land for many centuries before
the Christian era. It had been adopted in navigation at least in
the third century of our era. It existed, therefore, in the form in
which we now see it, long antecedent to its use in the West. It is as
serviceable as ours for every purpose of navigation. Why should we
have reversed the whole order? How could we have done so with that
uniformity which prevails in all the countries of the West?
But there is still, if possible, a stronger argument. The needle, when
first used by the Arabs, received only a _temporary polarity_; the
Chinese give to theirs a _permanent polarity_. The former process was,
therefore, a step in the discovery: had it been borrowed they would
have at once used the perfect method. The process is thus described in
1242 by _Boulak Kibdjaki_.
“They take a cup of water, which they shelter from the wind; they then
take a needle, which they fix in a peg of wood (reed), or a straw,
so as to form a cross. They then take the _magnes_ and turn round
for some time above the cup, moving from left to right, the needle
following. They then withdraw the _magnes_, after which the needle
stands still and points north and south.”[150]
This description, confirmed by the authorities cited below, can leave
no doubt that we have arrived at the same end as the Chinese by a
different road. The invention of Flavio di Gioja may have consisted
in giving to the needle permanent polarity: the next step would be of
course to fix it on a pivot, which again differs from the Chinese.
I beg particular attention to this manner of using the instrument by
the Arabs, as by it we shall be subsequently enabled to interpret the
Greek myths. Here we have the compass consisting of a _needle_, a
_cup_, and a _stone_, carried separately, and brought together when
consulted. The Arabs shut themselves out as the inventors--we have shut
out the Chinese. The distribution of the circle must have come to the
Arabs, together with the magnet and needle: it could only come from
ancient augury. The officer and priest, whose title has been given
to the science, marked out all bounds for consecration, building, or
other purposes, and commenced by drawing, on the spot where he stood,
the line of the axis of the globe, the _cardo_ crossing it by the
synatorial or decumonus. In the augurial operations the terrestrial
and celestial globes were made the counterparts of each other, and the
heavens were distributed into _sixteen parts_.[151]
Divination was rather _ars Etrusca_, and we are in the habit of
referring its source to that people; but the Etruscans had no
compass. Divination was no more original in Etruria than in Rome. It
was, indeed, the key-stone of their state, the link of science and
government, of astronomy and priesthood; but they came to Italy a
perfect state, and Tarchon’s genius, symbolized by the head of a man
and the body of a child, replaced the matured science of Canaan on the
young soil of Ausonia.
As in the West, those ceremonies in which religion was united with
science, and which therefore marked, not as they would with us,
ignorance and superstition, but learning and enlightenment, are traced
home to one particular people, and received their name, so also was it
in the East. Though dim the echoes (σκοτειναὶ ἀχοαὶ) that have been
handed down to us, we still recognise the voice and name of the masters
of whom Abraham was the disciple. In Europe, letters were Phœnician; in
the East, the learned were Sabeans. Rome got her ceremonies from Cere.
The Cerethims were Sabeans. From the Sabeans the Mussulman had his
Rekaat; the Polytheist his Incense; the Jew his Teraphim. Therefore the
Ars Etrusca was derived from the early seats of the Phœnicians.
After fruitless attempts to discover the etymology of _cardo_,[152] it
occurred to me that as the other names of winds, and, consequently, of
the points of the compass, had been derived from those of the countries
across which they blew,[153] so might this be a geographic term, and
might be found to the north of Sabea or Chaldæa. The mountain on which
the human race took refuge from the deluge is so placed, and bore this
very name.[154] Cardo was then the primitive geographic point for the
countries which were the cradle of the human race and the nurseries of
science, and the term could only be derivative in Italy. The north star
was the Kiblah of the Sabeans.[155]
Two people severally discovered the various branches of naval
architecture and navigation. The ends were attained by both; the
means they used were wholly different, both belonging to the earliest
constituted societies, both from periods antecedent to history,
navigating the Indian ocean. They alone constructing vessels of large
burthen, alone possessing that navigation.
The word “Phœnician,” is a great stumbling-block in these inquiries.
There was no people so called. It is a word of Greek invention[156]
and construction. As there were Carthaginians or inhabitants of
Carthage, so were there inhabitants of Tyre, and inhabitants of Sidon.
The Cerathians, who occupied the adjoining territory, were simply
“citizens,” as distinguished from the “Nomades,” or “Skenites,” and
Perizzites, the inhabitants of “unwalled villages.”[157] The word
Phœnix, or red, is identical with Adam, Edom, or Erythria. The Greeks
so called them as coming from the Red Sea. In the time of Alexander,
the Greeks found that they were also settled on the Persian Gulf, and
that there was the metropolis, of which the Sidon and the Tyre of Syria
were the daughters, as of these in subsequent times another progeny
was to be found in Leptis, Utica; Carthage, Carthagena; Troy on the
Scamander, and Tor in Devonshire.
For the word Phœnician we must then substitute, or by it we must
understand, “Sea-faring Arab.” The tribe which took to these
enterprises, had of course its early establishments on the Red Sea, the
southern shores of Arabia, the Persian Gulf, that is, on Arabian soil,
then it would reach to the Persian and Abyssinian coasts. The next
stage would be the shores of the Mediterranean. They would construct
on that sea such vessels as those with which they navigated the Indian
Ocean, and are thus celebrated by the Greeks as the inventors of ships.
There is therefore no difficulty in placing the Phœnicians, in so far
as antiquity is concerned, on a level with the Chinese, and in so
far as geography is in question, on the same field of navigation and
commerce. Yet the two systems are as opposite as it is possible for the
imagination of man to conceive.
Before the arrival of the Chinese junk, had any one said that he had
deciphered from the Eugubean tables that the discovery of America had
been made by a large vessel, which had neither stem nor stern, kelson
nor transom-beam, neither iron for its anchors, hemp for its cables,
canvass for its sails, pitch, oakum, standing-rigging, rudder pintles,
or pumps;--that with a taffrail standing forty feet above the water, it
was not caulked,--whoever believed the story would have been set down
as foolishly credulous and stupidly ignorant.
Men, after the original conception, are but blind practisers of what
they have been taught, and see only what they already know: with all
our travellers and sailors in China and in India, no one in Europe
could have imagined, that the Chinese had an original scheme of naval
architecture the very converse of ours, attaining the end in no
instance by the means which we employ, and standing in relation to ours
as a cetcaeous animal to one of the mammiferæ--as a turtle to a man.
The Chinese might have seen Phœnician vessels for 3,000 years before
ours came round the Cape. They have imitated them as little as they
have since copied ours. Vasco di Gama found the compass in these
seas, not in junks but in vessels constructed like ours: ours are the
continuation of those of the Phœnicians.[158] They left, doubtless, a
progeny in the Indian Ocean as well as the Mediterranean. As in naval
architecture neither of the styles could have been copied, and each
must have been original,--so is it with their compasses; neither could
have been copied from the other, and the invention must have been in
each case separately made.
A secret such as this could be preserved and transmitted only by
constant use. How then could it have come from Phœnicia to us? Augury
had been swept away from the face of the earth. A thousand years had
run their course between the fall of Tyre and the maritime enterprises
of the Saracens. Thirty generations had gone to the tomb.
The difficulty I fully admit and feel. I oppose to it the intrinsic
evidence offered by the instrument, and the impossibility of referring
it to any other race, Chinese, Mussulman, Arabs, Hindoos, or to the
systems of modern Europe. That it must have passed, I contend; how it
passed is another matter. The knowledge of the road is no point of my
argument:--nevertheless, I think I have found the clue.
From the close of the reign of the Ptolemies, to the Portuguese
discoveries in India, we have but a single record of eastern commerce,
given by a trader named Sopater, to Cosmas, and inserted in his
Typographia Christiana. Every country, from China to Ethiopia, is
mentioned, and the produce or merchandise which each sent or received,
enumerated. The centre of this traffic was Ceylon, by whose merchants
and shipping it was carried on. That island thus possessed commercial
prosperity of the first order, while the great empires were sinking
into that decrepitude which invited the northern invasion, and
facilitated the outbursts of Saracenic enthusiasm.
This commerce was not carried on by the Cingalese, but by _strangers_,
settled in the country, who had kings; occupied the maritime places;
were of a different religion, and had temples.--Who could those
strangers be?
Ceylon was never invaded by a foreign state, or overrun by a foreign
race. The struggle of Buddhism and Brahminism had not extended to that
island (at the time in question, Buddhism had been expelled from the
continent). These strangers could not have been from India--they were
not Greeks or Romans. Had they been Chinese, they would have been
mentioned as such, and have been, like the Cingalese, Buddhists. They
were not accidental rovers.
Sopater mentions various peculiarities--one, a hyacinth in one of the
temples, which, when illumined by the rays of the sun, radiated with
light. Does not this recall the emerald emitting light in the Temple
of Hercules at Tyre?[159] Another coincidence may be found in the name
of the cocoa-nut, as given by Cosmas (Argillia), with that of the
cocoa-nut tree (Argel), still used by the Arabs.
“There was,” he says, “a church of Christians.” These had therefore
temples and churches; their presbyter was ordained in Persia, whence
they had their deacons and ecclesiastical chiefs. In the mountains
above Mesopotamia, to this day there are Jews and Christians
intermingled, the Christians avowing themselves converted Jews, the
Jews declaring themselves apostate Hebrews. This recalls the old Jewish
and Phœnician association of the time of Solomon, and their common
expedition to Darohish.
The Phœnician settlements in Ceylon corresponded with those in Spain.
They had, moreover, been already established there for fifteen hundred
years. On all the western coasts of the Indian Ocean, dwelt cognate
tribes, with which they trafficked, and from whom they could be
sustained or recruited. They were in that Indian island exposed to none
of the conquests, invasions, or convulsions which have so often changed
the face of the West. If the story of Sopater had never been told, and
the work of Cosmas had, like so many others, perished, we might have
assumed that Phrygians continued to dwell and traffic in that central
yet secluded station of the Indian ocean. Neither Hindoos nor Persians
had taken to the sea; China had not engaged in conquest; no Carthage
had interfered with them, and no Rome swallowed them up.
Isolated not from Europe only, but from Asia also and Africa;
surviving the fall of Tyre and Carthage, and, without passing through
Christianity, they thus, down to Mussulman times, preserved the augury
of Paganism with the enterprise of Phœnicia.
Sopater did not describe them as Phœnicians, because, when he wrote,
Tyre was deserted; Carthage was a Vandal town, Cadiz and Carthagena
were Gothic cities. The Phœnicians had disappeared, and the name was
forgotten, and this people, who had never so called themselves even in
the West,[160] could not have told him in the East that such was the
name which European writers had given them.
If these conclusions are correct, we may expect to find remnants of
them still. In India proper, the Mussulman dominion, the invasion
of Tatar and Patan, and the settlement of Arab tribes would have
effaced the trace of such a colony: but Ceylon having remained
free from such disturbance, we may not unreasonably look for this
further confirmation--and we find it. There _does_ exist such an
Arab population[161] of 70,000 souls, where no Arabs ever entered
as invaders or mercenaries. The Arabs of the Continent are military
bodies--these are given to commerce; their own traditions carry them
back nearly to the period of Sopater. They report their forefathers to
have come by sea, flying from the persecutions of Andalmaleh.
No tribes were driven forth by these persecutions: compromised
individuals only escaped.[162] The times and events prior to their
conversion are held by the Mussulmans as those of ignominy; and,
consequently, this population, having been by those refugees converted,
dated from that period and forgot all that preceded it: they were
grafted and took no account of the original stock. The same thing
precisely has happened in Morocco.
On their conversion the secret, which neither Alexander could extort
from Tyre, nor Rome from Carthage, would be surrendered, like the
architecture of Mauritania, to Islam; and thus it was that Vasco di
Gama, when he reached the Indian ocean, found the compass in common
use. It provokes no remark: it was not then the Chinese compass, but
the same as that which, in the Mediterranean, had been derived from the
Saracens.[163]
The only objection which I have not disposed of, is that of
Voltaire,--that the Saracens, if they had had the compass, would not
have left to us the discovery of America. I will here remark, that it
does not apply, because they did not navigate the Atlantic. It is good
against the Phœnicians. But who can assert that they did not discover
America?--the tradition of the _Atlantic Island_ cannot be explained
away:--knowing the dimensions of the earth they would not, like
Columbus, mistake America for India.[164] Beyond the Atlantic are to
be found traces of their worship, of their manufacture,[165] of their
symbols,[166] and even of the instrument by which the way was found.
The temples are placed according to the cardinal points.
Having now set aside every objection that has been raised, I proceed
to the indications or proofs contained in classical writing. Homer
speaks of vessels finding their way without pilots, gliding through the
waters as if endowed with natural organs.[167] The passage, it is true,
has been accepted as a poetic image;[168] in Virgil’s hands it is no
more. He speaks of “_keels_ feeling their way.” Homer was describing
_particular ships_, and those Phœnician--the name is indeed Phæacean: a
Hebrew lexicon will show that these two names apply to one people. The
Phæacians were remarkable for industry, wealth, and refinement; they
were distinguished by their “baths, beds, and changes of raiment.” They
were εὐδαίμονας χαὶ ἰσοθέους, “happy and equal to the gods,” neither
molesting nor being molested.[169] The daughter of their prince,
Nausicaa, has been chosen as the type of industry and purity; they
were, therefore, preeminently _noble_ and surprisingly _tranquil_; such
is the interpretation in Hebrew of the names by which they and their
island were known--_Phaik_[170] and _Carcar_;[171] Phæacia,[172] and
Corcyra. As if to prevent any doubt, Homer gives to the island another
name, or epithet, Σχερίη, the Hebrew for “_Mart_.”[173] The three
words, _Phaik_, _Corkura_, and _Scheria_, are meaningless in Greek, but
descriptive in the Phæacian; and Homer’s lines, shadowing forth the
mariner’s compass,[174] apply to their vessels.
By his golden arrow, Abaris “traversed the winds,” by it he “steered.”
Pythagoras forced him to reveal his secret.[175] There was then a
secret in reference to steering, not as to dexterity in _conning_ a
vessel, but in finding the point to which her course lay.
Hercules,[176] the symbol of Phœnician enterprise, departs on his
expedition for opening navigation to the westward, with a cup. This cup
he gets from Apollo, and it was destined of course to aid him on his
way; here is the cup of water in which the needle was floated.[177]
The name of Hercules is given to a _stone_--that stone so called
_is_ the magnet. Why should the magnet have been called the stone of
Hercules? The explanations offered are,--that it is emblematic of
strength in its attraction; or that it was found at Heraclea.[178] Here
is the magnet to polarise, floated in the cup.
Fuller alone has attributed to the Phœnicians this invention,[179] and
he does so solely on account of the Heraclean stone. “It could have
had no other meaning,” says he, “than the compass; possessing it, the
Tyrians must have carefully concealed it, consequently there is nothing
surprising in its having been lost;
“Sol’s golden bowl he entered to pass o’er
The hoary _ocean’s_ stream, and reached the shore,
The sacred depths of venerable night.”--STESICHORUS.
many arts have been lost--amongst others, the purple dye for which Tyre
was celebrated.”[180] He supposes it to have been first communicated
by Solomon to the Jews. Bochart,[181] in confuting him, uses the
argument which I have already disposed of--the impossibility of the
Phœnician steersman concealing what he was about, from the crew and
the passengers, often Greeks or Romans--the impossibility, that once
discovered, it should be lost. Those arts alone he owns, had perished
which belonged to luxury, not those which were of universal use; and
he concludes, that this invention is to be considered a benefit of God
reserved for the old age of the human race, in order that the Gospel
might be promulgated throughout the world. He adopts as the explanation
of the name Herculean, its being found near the town of Heraclea,
noticing but not meeting the objection, that in that case it would have
been called Heraclean. Lastly, he asks, why should the name be referred
to a Phœnician and not to a Greek Hercules? These are the objections of
the most learned of modern antiquaries, and urged by the most devoted
partisan of the Phœnicians.
So far Greek mythology and poetry; and taken in conjunction with the
explanation I have given of the cup, the stone, I think they are
conclusive: for there can be but one explanation for vessels endowed
with instinct _to find their way_, for an arrow _to steer_ _by_, for
a stone called by the name of the Columbus of antiquity, from the
association of a _stone_ and a _cup_ with navigation, and of the sun
with Hercules. But Hellas does not bound our sight: there are beyond
higher springs and more sacred fountains, and to these I pass on. The
Greek tongue has preserved, though it may have disfigured, the oracular
accents of Palestine.
In the abstract of the Cosmogony of Sanchoniathon, translated
into Greek by Philo Byblius, and preserved by Eusebius, these
words appear;--Ἐπενόησε Θεὸς Οὐρανὸς, Βαιτύλια, λίθους ἐμψύχους
μηχανησάμενος. “Ouranos contrived Batylia, stones with life.”
This has been taken to be a metaphorical representation of creative
power; but the _thing_ made or contained is mentioned, a thing well
known by its name; and being so named, it is then _described_ as
being stones with life. Besides the words of Homer, describing the
Phæacian ships, I know of no other passage in writings of antiquity,
in which inanimate bodies are so spoken of. The λίθους ἐμψύχους of
Sanchoniathon, and the νοήματα καὶ φρένας ἀνδρῶν of Homer, apply to the
same thing, the one being descriptive of the instrument, the other of
its effects. These Batylia are often mentioned, not on board ship, but
in temples; they are described by travellers down as late as the fourth
century of our era. They were many in number in the same temple. They
were not in all temples; I find no mention of them in any Greek temple,
or consequently in Greece or Asia Minor; the stones endowed with life,
might be supposed to mean statues, but these were not images nor things
that could be classed in any known category of objects of worship or
ornament. The Greek writers do not know what to make of them: they
looked upon them not as a mystery, but as a piece of necromancy: a
thousand wonderful things were narrated of them, amongst which were the
upturning of walls, and the capturing of cities; they were said to move
in the air, and to have little demons inside.[182] We are not, however,
destitute of description of their figure. They were in size and shape
like cricket balls, of a dark indistinct colour, πόρφυροτίδης, or
black; of the substance nothing is said.
The name Batylia is spoken of as Greek, and is given as the translation
of another term used by the Phœnicians. The Greeks, however, could
find no more a meaning for the word than for the thing; but as Greeks
always have recourse to a fable when they are in want of an etymology,
they gave us the following. When Rhea gave a stone instead of Jupiter
to Saturn, to cover the deceit she wrapped it in a skin: the skin was
Βαίτη, hence Batylia, but unluckily, _the very_ stone swallowed for
Jupiter, and which, at his son’s request, Saturn afterwards vomited,
was itself preserved at the temple of Delphi.[183] This is all that
Greek ingenuity can effect in the way of explanation. In this shape
this “indigesta moles” descends to the learned hands of modern critics.
What do the critics do with it? They look at it, handle it, turn it
over and over, taste it, chew it, kick it, and do everything with it
but explain it; exerting all the while the extremest ingenuity to
avoid the simple explanation before their eyes. Some make them to be
pillars set up like those of Hercules,[184] some “votive offerings,”
some “rocking stones,”[185] some “amulets.” Of course there is not a
shadow of ground for any one of these interpretations, and they are
each directly at variance with the description which the ancients have
left us of the thing; their explanation, in every case, consisting in
making out the thing to be different from that which it is described.
Some indeed go further, and scoff and jeer; set Sanconiathon right,
and undertake the revision of all the writers, and of all the copyists
who have ever described Batylia, or transcribed the description.
We learn by a line in Priscian, the name or _a_ name, by which the
Phœnicians knew them. He says, “they call _Abadir_, the stone given
by Rhea to Saturn;” elsewhere the word Abadir occurs, as said to be
applied by the Phœnicians to “unknown gods.” Abadir is not Hebrew, and
an emendation has been suggested by Bochard, _aban-dir_, which means
_round stone_.
These round stones[186] supply the last link in the chain. The magnet
must have been consulted with ceremonies, and considered as an oracle
or a god. When the vessels returned into harbour it would be carried to
the Temple, and exposed, like the other mysteries, to the gaze of the
vulgar and uninitiated. Here, laid up in the Temples, are the compasses
of the Phœnician argosies, preserved as sacred to the latter days of
Paganism, although the secret would have died out centuries before.
The Batylia would be placed only on board the vessels destined for
Lybia, Southern Africa, Spain, or Britain; and they would not be
shipped like a bale of goods, or invoiced like a case of instruments.
But whatever ceremonies were employed in Tyre, the Straits themselves
must have been the scene of the initiation connected with their use.
We may assume, with perfect confidence, that, in passing the Straits,
every means were taken that craft could devise or superstition enforce,
to preserve secret _all the means_ through which this exterior commerce
was carried on; whether the knowledge of the currents, the winds, the
tides, the seas, the shores, the people, or the harbours. The traffic
of the Phœnicians and Carthaginians was a mystery, and that mystery
lay beyond the Straits. The Phœnician vessel running herself on the
rocks that the Roman might not find the passage, tells the whole
story; and this secrecy was enforced by the most sanguinary code:
death was the penalty of indiscretion. We know from the Greek writers
that particular ceremonies were performed in passing the Straits. They
approached the Groves of Hercules with votive offerings, and departed
in haste, oppressed by the sanctity of the spot. _Hercules_ is the
name associated with these mysteries, which seem to possess all the
character of initiation, although there is no Dimeter, Dionysius, or
Astarte.
Sailors are a primitive people: like children, they retain usages
and traditions long forgotten by the other classes of a community.
This spot is above all others on earth, fitted to imbibe such a
superstition, and to retain such a ceremony. The races have remained
undisturbed: I therefore hoped to find, even still, some remnants, and
diligently made inquiries amongst Spaniards and Moors, but was not
rewarded by any discovery.[187]
But in one of the accounts of the Missionary expeditions to Morocco,
for the redemption of slaves, I fell upon a description of the
ceremony, as practised here down to the close of the seventeenth
century. The vessel was proceeding from Ceuta to Cadiz: the ceremony
was not performed on crossing between Europe and Africa, but on passing
through the Straits and passing outwards.[188] It is a pantomime, of
which that performed by our sailors in crossing the line might be
given as a description: it is in fact the copy, the old Phœnician
initiation, preserved down to the time when navigation took her new
spring; and at the very spot, and amongst the mariners who first
reached and passed the Equator, was by them transferred to the ideal
line of the Equator, mingling in strange and inexplicable incongruity
ancient mythology with modern science; and then changing Hercules, who
had nothing to do with the sea, for Neptune. The duckings with water
mean the ablution; the shaving and fining recall the oaths and penalty;
the white wig, the veil of the priests of Hercules; and the cooking
utensils are paraded in memory of the victim[189] and altar.
I now come to the last point which I shall notice: it is the one which
first suggested to me the thought; and in it are involved debated
questions of history and undescribed and unnoted geographical features.
When Don Henry established himself upon the western limit of the
world, to plan adventures over the then unexplored waste of waters,
it was the shade of Necho that beckoned him down the African coast;
led him on from cape to cape, and invited him from cluster to cluster
of its islands. At length Africa was turned; there was the Indian as
well as the Pacific ocean opened, and that wonderful discovery and
dominion--the colonization and commerce of the Portuguese established,
which dotted with their settlements the line of coast from the Pillars
of Hercules to China.
In Herodotus he found the voyage round the cape ordered by the Egyptian
king, and the return likewise ordered _by the Pillars_ of Hercules:
these orders were obeyed. The father of history, it is told, was
treated as a dreamer by his Roman and Alexandrian successors; but
the recent extension of knowledge has in every point confirmed his
statements, and shown that, five centuries B.C., more was known of
geography than in the golden age of Augustus.[190] Whether it be in
fixing the points of the Lybian deserts, or in tracing the outlines
of the Caspian Sea,[191] it is the old Greek who appears the accurate
modern; and the geographer of the time of the Cæsars, who is the
reporter of fables and of tales.[192] Thus do we find in antiquity, a
counterpart to our modern disputes, and Pliny, Mela, and Strabo, are
the prototypes of Rennell, Gosselin, and Mannert.
The events which throw light on the circumnavigation of Africa are. 1.
The expedition of Necho, as hearsay. 2. The Periplus of Hanno, in a
fragment copied, by an unknown hand, from a Carthaginian monument. The
voyage does not so appear to have extended beyond the western coast;
but Pliny, who had other data, carries it round to the Erythræan sea.
3. The traffic of the Carthaginians on the Gold coast.
The expedition of Necho[193] is flatly contradicted by Strabo, after
an examination of all the evidence. The same opinion was pronounced by
the school of Alexandria, Pomponius Mela, and Pliny, who contending for
at least the possibility of the voyage, do not so much as mention the
narrative of Herodotus, considering it doubtless a fable, because of
the asserted change of shadow, which to us is evidence of its reality.
Gosselin, after writing a learned work to prove that the statement of
Herodotus was correct, wrote a still more learned work to prove the
reverse. The new idea which had turned the current of his conclusions
was, _the impossibility of such a voyage without the compass_. Major
Rennell presses him with objections, asserting the consistency of the
narrative, and authority of the evidence, and, arguing against the
objection, says, that “the barks of the ancients were adapted for
coasting navigation, could keep close in shore, and might be hauled
up on the beach. This voyage, immense as it was, did not therefore
necessitate any venturesome entrance into the open sea--they needed
not to have lost sight of the land even for a day.”
Heeren seats himself on the bench, and sums up, and without combating
M. Gosselin, decides against him. “This gentleman’s arguments,” he
says, “amount to nothing; for _are we_ in a situation to judge of the
perfection of Phœnician navigation? Nations accustomed to coasting
navigation are generally much better acquainted with its difficulties
than _great_ sea-faring nations. It has been recently ascertained
that the difficulties in reaching the Cape from the Red Sea, are not
so great as from the Mediterranean. All here combined to facilitate
the progress of the expedition.” Yet these favourable circumstances,
however, served only until the coast of Guinea was reached, and thence
“to the Straits of Gibraltar, was _the most difficult part of the
voyage_.”
Why does Heeren slur over the difficulty of which he is evidently
aware? Was it that, placed in a dilemma between the desire of deciding
a controversy, and the fear of risking his character for “critical
discrimination,” he had recourse to a little mystification?[194]
For those who have the compass, it is true that the difficulties are
less in coming from the Red Sea, but exactly the reverse for those who
have it not:--a vessel sailing from the Guinea coast to the Straits of
Gibraltar, must keep far out to sea.[195]
Gosselin was perfectly right in his second work, when he said that
the circumnavigation of Africa was impossible without the compass,
as he was right in his first, when he asserted that it had been
circumnavigated. There is no contradiction between the two propositions.
Such difficulties surround, and such dangers attend that navigation,
that I do not understand how we to-day could navigate that coast, were
the magnetic needle to lose its virtue. Impelled by the eddy from
America, the Atlantic draws down the African shore. There is below
Mogadore a night breeze from the sea; the land is low, and stretches in
a line of sand-banks or breakers. There are no inlets and no shelter,
and certain destruction awaits the mariner on a lee shore, on which a
current sits. Their vessels did not lie closer to the wind than seven
points, and could never get off. Is this a navigation to be performed
by creeping along the shores and dragging up vessels on the beach at
night? and for five hundred miles of the northern coast, there is
a continuous range of breakers without shelter of any kind, and no
port which can be entered except over a bar, and in fine weather, so
that there is a wholly inaccessible coast, equal in length to the
Mediterranean sea.
Major Rennell, in his work on the “currents of the Atlantic,” estimates
the daily easting of a vessel at _seventeen miles_, so that between
the Straits of Gibraltar, and the Madeira islands, a vessel is carried
out of her dead reckoning to the eastward, according to the length
of the voyage, _from eighty to two hundred miles_. It is thus, that
so frequently vessels with chronometer, quadrant, charts, and log,
besides compass, have been wrecked on the African coast, when believing
themselves to be in the longitude of Teneriffe, or even further to
the westward. One of the sufferers, Ryley, master of an American
vessel, has given us a lively description of such a scene, and of
the shore on which it occurred;[196] and has assigned as the cause
of his misfortune, the indraught both of current and wind, and the
impossibility of getting off the coast when once thus got upon it. Even
after his vessel had struck he could see no land.
And what is the fate of the survivors? Death by thirst or slavery.
The nature of the inhabitants has no more changed than that of the
shore:--what the one spares, the other will devour.
The land of Europe is high: its coasts are provided with harbours,
tides run along it, and vessels can tide their way; but the African
coast is unseen till you are upon it; there is no escape when
within reach of it. It lies all along the course of the voyage; it
presents certain destruction to the vessel, and if evitable death,
inevitable slavery to the crew. The coasters of the Mediterranean, the
circumnavigators of Europe, the monsoon traders of India, were not
matched with the difficulties of such a sea; they were unacquainted
with the terrors of such a land.[197]
After the Phœnician time every endeavour to navigate this coast failed,
and amongst the adventurers, one Eudoxus seems to have been a man of
extraordinary resources, energy, and perseverance. For nearly two
thousand years, the coast south of the Straits of Gibraltar remained
unvisited by the traders of the seas, who were constantly entering in
at, and issuing from, these straits, and thence pursuing voyages for
thousands of miles within and without. The passage--if I may so call
it--along the coast, was re-opened only after the compass had been
re-discovered, and then only after long and persevering efforts; but
as soon as the westernmost cape was doubled, all the world lay open,
and there was no further difficulty in reaching India on the East, and
the new continent on the West, the discovery of which was in reality
effected as a consequence.
The opinion which I had formed on the spot respecting the navigation
of the coast, is entirely confirmed by all naval authorities. I never
met an officer, knowing the coast, who, on the question being put to
him, did not answer of Africa, “without the compass it is impossible
to navigate the coast.” The statements of Herodotus, the Periplus
of Hanno, the sea traffick of the Carthaginians on the Gold Coast,
present no difficulty, if you admit the stone of Hercules, the cup of
Apollo, the arrow of Abaris, and the Batylia to have any meaning; and
you must reject several of the most authoritative statements of history
if you will not.
I must apologise for the space I have devoted to this antiquarian
subject. The matter is so incidental to the spot, and interwoven with
the patron of these volumes, that, however at variance my conclusions
may be with the host of the Olympus of history, I could not omit them.
Whatever be the verdict of the reader on other parts of the case,
it can only be favourable as to the objections which our highest
authorities have raised. I have proved its case to be compatible with
secresy;--and if it was secret it could be lost. I have shown in the
method first practised by the Arabs, the instrument to which the
otherwise meaningless myths of Greece refer. I have identified the
stone of Hercules, the cup of Apollo, the arrow of Abaris, the Batylia
of Sanchoniathon, the Abadir of the Temple of Hierapolis. That the
“Stone of Hercules” was the magnet no one contests. I have shown from
extrinsic evidence, that our instrument is not Chinese, and that it was
associated with ancient augury; and I have found a people stretching
through that chasm of years,--from pagan Rome to Christian science,--a
people of Phœnicians, who, away from Europe, preserved the faith and
industry of their sunk metropolis, and could transmit the magnet from
Hercules to Flavio de Gioja.
The polarity of the needle, the art of manufacturing gems, which did
not die with them,--were of the secrets not hidden from Tyre. Her
story, by their aid, ceases to be a vision, and becomes a state;--her
greatness descends from its cloud, and walks the earth.
FOOTNOTES:
[126] “Numberless passages of Greek and Latin authors prove that _the
ancients_, when they lost sight of land, had no other guide than the
stars.”--PUGENS, _Trésor des Origines_, p. 190.
[127] “Had the Saracens known the compass, it was for them to have
discovered America.”--VOLTAIRE, _Ep. sur les Mœurs_, c. cxlix.
[128] The Phœnician name for the compass was interpreted by the Greeks
“unknown gods.”
[129] This was written before the appearance of Mr. Smith’s interesting
work on the “Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul.” He has vindicated
ancient seamanship as to dimensions of vessels, length of voyage,
working, &c. One deficiency in that work has been supplied by Humboldt
in “Cosmos,” in reference to calculation of distances, or the “Log.”
[130] The original names of Greece and the Islands, of Asia Minor,
the Black Sea, Spain, France, Italy, and England, are indelible
monuments of the presence and wisdom of the Phœnicians. Plato refers
reverentially to the men who gave the first names. Bochart, in the
preface to “Pheleg,” enumerates about 400 names; for instance,
Parnassus, Ithaca, Malaga, Samos, Marathon, which are without meaning
in Greek. It is descriptive in Hebrew and Arabic,--that is, in
Phœnician.
[131]
Τὸ πόρσω
Δ’ ἔσι σοφοῖς ἄβατον
κᾀσόφοις, οὺ μὴν διὠξω κενὸς εἴην.
PIND. _Olymp._ 3.
He is speaking of the region beyond the Pillars.
[132] In the twelfth century, B.C., Thschen-li records a measurement of
the solstitial shadow, which La Place found accordant with the theory
of the alteration of the obliquity of the Ecliptic. _Cosmos_.
The Babylonian astronomical observations sent by Callisthenes to
Greece, have been calculated by Simplicius to extend back 1903 years
before Alexander the Great.
Mr. Colebrooke has settled the date of one of the Vedas to be the
fourteenth century B.C., by the place given to the solstitial points in
a calendar appended to it.
“That the planets and their courses, the comets and theirs, that
gravitation and repulsion were perfectly familiar to the priests of
Memphis, though unknown to, or rather repudiated by, the most learned
and philosophical of the Greeks, cannot to-day be questioned. They know
the milky way to be composed of fixed stars, and the sun to be a fixed
star.”--DRUMMOND’S _Origines_, b. iv. c. 6; b. vii. c. 8.
“Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the French astronomers
found with surprise that there existed in Siam a mode of calculating
eclipses by successive operations worked with numbers apparently
arbitrary. The key of this method has been long lost.”--_Occult
Sciences_, vol. i. p. 191.
[133] Unless the words of Rabelais are to stand for the precocious
discrimination of his age:--“Qu’est devenu l’art d’evoquer des cieux la
foudre et le feu céleste, jadis enseigné par le sage Prométhée?”
[134] “Guided by Numa’s books, Tullius used the same ceremonies,
but through inaccuracy (_parum ritè_) he perished, struck by the
lightning.”--LUCIUS PISO apud PLINY, _Hist. Nat._ 1. xxviii. cap. 11.
Livy uses the expression _pravâ religione_.
[135] “Fulmineo periit imitator fulminis ictu.”--OVID. _Metam_. 1. xiv.
v. 617.
[136] Suidas, verbo “Zoroaster.” See also Müller.
[137] This word is found in the _pharanks_ or dictionaries of the
Persians, and is described as the iron-attracting stone. It is
mentioned in the Talmud. It was known to the Hindoos, as it was to the
Greeks and Romans.
[138] Those assumed are “Buxus, Buxolus, Buxola, Bussola,
Boussole.”--MENAGE. “Buso, _Ital._ eye of a needle.”--COVARRUVIAS.
“Boxel, _English_.”--POUQENS. “Bruxa, _Spanish_, sorcerer.” “Boursole,
_French_, little purse.”--P. LABBE.
[139] This figure being now a _Fleur de Lis_, the French claim the
invention. The profound Germans surrender it to them as a national
property. Voltaire, however, remarks that the Fleur de Lis was the
cognizance of Naples at the time of Flavio de Gioja.
[140] The term “Mouassola” is preserved to this day among the
Mussulmans in connection with their religious edifices. It signifies
the square open space corresponding with the Fane of the Etruscans, in
which the two festivals of the Bairam are held, and where consequently
the Mussulman _sacrifice_ is performed. The connection is evident, but
how it is to be established I am not at present prepared to say. Cf.
Hariri. Chresth. Arabe, i. 191; iii. 167.
[141] I picked up this little work at a book-stall of Cadiz. A Spanish
translation is printed, page for page with the Arabic, and thus it was
that I fell upon the word. It so happened that I chanced on it midway
between the two seas. Consult Khabil Dhaheri. Apud Ch. Arabe, ii. 13
_et seq._
[142] Tiraboschi, iv. 1. xi. § 35; Andrea, _Orig. D’Ogni Letter_.;
Gueguenné, _Hist. de la lit. Italienne_, iv.
[143] Consult El Edrisi on the “Straits of Babel-Mandel,” the “Arabian
Book of Stones,” as quoted by Bailak Kibdjak, the “Treasury of
Wonders,” as quoted by El Edrisi; Ptolom. i. vi. 2; Palladius, de
Gentibus Indiæ; S. Ambrosius, de Moribus Brachmanorum; Anonymus, de
Bragmanibus: ed. Bissæus, Lond. 1665.
[144] P. Martini (Hist. p. 106), P. Amiot (Abrégé chronologique de
l’histoire de la Chine, contained in the collection of the Mémoires
sur les Chinois, tom. xiii.), Mailla (Hist. Gener. de la Chine, Paris,
1777, tom. i. p. 317), P. Gaubil (Astronomie Chinoise), Sir G. Staunton
(Embassy to China), M. Roding (Dict. Polyglotte de Marine), W. Josh.
Hager (Dissert. sur la Boussole), contend that from time immemorial
the Chinese were in possession of the magnet. That the compass came
from the Chinese to the Europeans, through the Arabs, is maintained by
Bergeron (Hist. des Sarrazins, p. 119). Riccioli (Geogr. et Hydrogr.
Ven. 1672.) Mention is made of the compass _afloat_ in the third and in
the fifth centuries of our era. “There were then (Tsin dynasty) ships
directed to the south by the needle.”--_Poi-wen-jeu-fou_, or Great
Encyclopedia.
[145] Arago, in the Annales de Chimie, t. xxxii. p. 214; Brewster,
Treatise on Magnetism, 1837, p. 111; Baumgarten, in the Zeitschrift für
Phys. und Mathem. bd. ii. s. 419.
[146] Humboldt, Examen critique de l’Histoire de la Géographie, t. iii.
p. 36.
[147] Cosmos, vol. i. p. 169.
[148] Klaproth speaks of the “cardinal” points, not apprehending the
value of the term. In Meredith the “four points” are given in Chinese,
so also _Cut-Leet_ (Cutlet).
[149] “Those who have not been in India cannot know how all-important
the division of everything into sixteen parts is, or some multiple or
sub-multiple of that number: not only is the money of the country so
divided, and all the weights and measures, but all property is divided
into annas (sixteenths): in conversation it is the usual expletive of
quantity.”--FERGUSON’S _Hindostan_, Intro., p. 12.
[150] The passage of Brunetto Latini (_Lib. du Tresor_, MSS. du
Roi, No. 7609), is too well known to quote; but I subjoin a curious
fragment of a letter, attributed to him, which was published in the
“Monthly Review” of June, 1802. It appears to me to be of indubitable
authenticity. He is describing the wonders shown him by Roger Bacon,
who was a disciple of the Arabs, and had studied at Cordova, like
Gerbert, Abelard, and all the distinguished men of the period:--“La
magnete pierre laide et noire, ob el fer volontiers se joint, lon
touche ob une aiguillet et en festue lon fischie (fix it on a piece of
reed); puis lon mette en laigue (float it on the water) et se tient
dessus, et la pointe se torne contre l’estoille: quand la nuit fut
tenebrous, et lon ne voie estoille ni lune, poet li mariner tenir
droite voie.”
“Acus ferrea, postquam adamantem contigerit, ad stellam
septentrionalem, quæ, velut axis firmamenti, aliis vergentibus, non
movetur, semper convertitur, unde valde necessarius est navigantibus in
mari.”--JAC. DE VIT. _Histor. Hyerosolymit._ c. 89, A.D. 1215.
[151] Univ. Hist. vol. xviii. p. 213. Müller’s Etrüsker, “On the
Temple,” vol. iii. Niebuhr’s Rome, app. to vol. ii. p. 624.
[152] The name _Cardaces_ among the Persians is said to be derived from
“courage,” “virtue.” Such words are generally derived from the names of
tribes whose qualities are thus conveyed.
[153] Thus, on the north coast of Africa, the south wind is called
_Giblu_, the north wind _Baharu_, because the one blows from the
mountains, the other from the sea.
[154] The Tasguments, Jonathan and Onkelos, say that the ark rested,
the former on _Kardon_, the latter on _Kardu_.--DRUMMOND’S Origines,
vol. i. p. 69.
[155] Four thousand years ago the polar star was apud Draconis. See
Herschell on the Entrance to the Pyramid of Gizeh, _apud_ Vyse.
[156] _P’hn_ does occur in the hieroglyphics as the name of a people,
but who they are is not known. _Sharu_ is the general name given to the
Phœnicians or “Celequins,” as the Turks say to-day _Shaerli_, otherwise
the name of the town is used. As Homer has it: “Speak of the fortress
in the waters, Taru of the Sea is its name. Water is carried to it in
boats. It has fishes for bread.” British Museum Papyrus, Pl. Lv.
[157] From תוזרפ _perazoth_, dwellers in unwalled villages.
[158] Our best vessels are on the lines of the old French, which in the
time of Louis XIV. were copied from the Turks, who had them from the
Byzantine Greeks, who originally derived them from the Phœnicians.
[159] Herodotus, l. ii. c. 44. President Goguet, Origines des Lois,
vol. ii. p. 114. Drummond’s Origines, vol. iii. p. 94.
[160] The word _P’hen_ occurs, though I believe only once, in our
Egyptian monuments as the name of a people: who the people were is
uncertain.
[161] These statements rest on the authority of Sir Alexander Johnson.
An account of these people is given in Pridhane’s Ceylon, p. 470-480.
The Cingalese call them _Marakkalaya_, which means boatmen; they are
_Sheas_, while the Mussulmans of the continent are _Souni_.
[162] Towards the end of his reign an insurrection took place, of which
the field lay principally at Bussorah; but in this case we know that
the defeated insurgents retreated northward to seek the protection of
the Turks.--See Ockley, vol. ii. p. 372.
[163] At the beginning of the eleventh century the western Arabs
were not in possession of the compass, for the astronomer Ebu Youni
constructed a table by which to find the Kibleh.
[164] Columbus, on reaching dry land westward, wrote, “The world is not
so large _as is supposed_.”
[165] Glass, for instance, not as a native product, but as an exotic.
[166] Such as “the Seal of Solomon.”
[167] “Homer, in the Odyssey, says that the Greeks used the needle in
the time of the siege of Troy: thus it is certain that the polarity of
the magnet and the mariner’s compass were discoveries which date back
3000 years.”--BUFFON, t. xii. p. 386. This passage is often quoted to
throw ridicule on the supposition. The only mistake of Buffon was in
reading as general the description which in Homer was particular and
restricted.
[168]
Οὔ γὰρ φαιήκεσσι κυβερνητῆρες ἔασιν,
Οὐδέ τι πεδαλι’ ὲστὶ, τά τ’ ἄλλαι νῆες ἔχουσιν,
Ἀλλ’ αὐταὶ ἴσασι νοήματα καὶ φρένας ἀνδρῶν.
_Od._ θ. 557.
[169]
Οὔ γὰρ φαιήκεσσι μέλει βιός, οὐδὲ φαρέτρην.
Ἀλλ’ ἴστοι καὶ ὲρετμὰ νεῶν, καὶ νηἔς ἐἴσαι,
Ηἴσιν ὰγενόμενοι, πολιτὴν περόωσι θαλάσσην.
_Od._ γ’. 370.
[170] ךיאפ φαἴακ
[171] “Carcar, inde רקרק carcar, quiescere et in tuto esse significat.
An inde dicta est Corcyra, in qua Phæaces per multa sæcula tuto et
pacate vixisse constat.”--Chonaan l. i. cxxiii. Whence also Carcer. The
name is preserved in Barhary and Spain in Carcer.
[172] The name of the Slaavs and that of the Shelloks (Ama-zirgeh) are
derived in the same manner, also the Etruscan states Ardea (noble); for
from it was taken by Rome the institution which made Rome noble and
great--the fecial vows and college, _i.e._ heraldry, or the laws of
war.--See Servius on Æn. vii. v. 412.
[173] ארחס, Shara. Isaiah (xxiii. 3) applies the same epithet to
Sidon, _Shar-goim_, “mart of nations.” This is the _Sharu_ of the
hieroglyphics.
[174] “We can discern why their good fortune ceased after this
separation, under the reign of Alcinous, if the Phocians (Phæacians)
renounced navigation. Was it not that the instruments (mariner’s
compass), obtained from their masters were lost, and they knew not how
to construct others?”--Salverte, _Occult Sciences_, f. ii. p. 251. See
also Cook’s “Inquiry into the Patriarchal and Druidical Religion,” p.
22.
[175] See Jamblicus, Vit. Pythagor. c. xxviii.; Diod. Sic. l. iii. c.
xi.; Herodot. l. iv. c. 36; Suidas _Verbo_ Abaris.
[176] One of the recent flippant writers on ancient things says, “The
most famous bowl of antiquity was that of Hercules, which served its
illustrious owner in the double capacity of drinking-cup and canoe;
for, when he had quenched his thirst, he could set it afloat, and,
leaping into it, steer to any part of the world he pleased. Some,
indeed, speak of it as a borrowed article, belonging originally to the
sun, and in which the god used nightly to traverse the ocean from west
to east.”--ST. JOHN’S _Ancient Greece_, vol. ii. p. 114.
[177] The statue of Hercules at Tarentum, enumerated by Pliny in his
list of Colossi, had a _key_ in one hand and a _cup_ in the other. On
the coins of Crotona Hercules bore a cup in his hand.
[178] Ἡράκλεια δὲ ἤ διὰ τὸν ἴσχυρὸν καὶ κρατερὸν τῆς ὁλκης, ἤ μᾶλλον
δίοτι περὶ Ἡράκλειαν τὸν πρῶτον ἐφάνη.--HESYCHIUS.
[179] Incidental suppositions are scattered through various works. See
Lavinius Lemnius, De Occult. Nat. Mir., 1. i. c. iii.; Buffon; J. de
Pineda, De Rege Salomone; Fortuesto, William Cook, Stukely, &c. I do
not include Sir William Bethune; the grounds of his supposition are so
preposterous. It is from the supposed resemblance of a vessel to the
compass actually in use that Sir W. Bethune starts. See the practical
exposure as given in Dennis’s Etruria, vol. ii. p. 105.
[180] Miscell. Sacra, 1. iv. c. 19.
[181] Canaan, 1. i. c. 98. See also H. Kepping, Antiq. Rom. 1. iii. c.
6.
[182] Εἴδον τὸν Βαίτυλον διὰ τοῦ δέρος κινούμενον.--DAMASCIUS. Εἴναι
τίνα Δαίμονα τὸν κινοῦντα αὐτόν.--ISIDORUS.
[183]
Τὸν μὲν Ζεὺς στήριξε κατὰ χθονὸς εὐρυοδείης
Πυθοὶ ἐν ὴγαθέη, γυάλοις ὑπο Παρνήσοιο,
Σἤμ’ ἔμεν ἐξοπίσω, θαῦμα θνητοἴσι βροτοἴσι.
HESIOD. _Theo._ 498.
[184] Drummond, after laughing at Bochart, says, “But, after all that
has been said, the _etymology_ of the word appears to me to be very
plain;” and then proceeds to show that “Baitulos” was no more than
Jacob’s “Beth-el,” forgetting that the word was Greek, not Hebrew, or,
if not forgetting, disposing of the objection as follows: “Those _who
would rather_ derive it from the Greek may consult,” &c.--_Origines_,
vol. iii. p. 215-435.
[185] The ancients have described rocking-stones, but never called them
“Baitula.”--See Apoll. Rhod. Argon. l. i.; Pliny, Nat. Hist. vol. ii.
c. 28. For some amusing learning on the subject, see Moore’s Hist. of
Ireland, vol. i. p. 39-59. See also Dissert. sur les Bætyles, Mém. de
l’Académie, vol. vi.; Rem. de l’Abbé Bautier, vol. vii. p. 241.
[186] During the Catalonian insurrection of 1834, the name _Patulea_
was given to the insurgents. Whence it has been derived, I have
been unable to discover. In Portugal it has recently been adopted.
The insurgents were called Patulea, the chiefs _Conocedos_, or “the
known.” This return to the “Unknown gods,” of the Greeks, if a mere
coincidence, is a curious one.
[187] In the course of them I came upon a singular instance of popular
memory. I was sitting with a Braber baker of Tangier, on the promontory
looking towards Spain, and asking him the names of places, to see if I
could identify in their recollections some of the old Iberian names: he
directed my attention to a white streak on the coast opposite, and then
said, “There is Belon.” The place has disappeared for 1500 years, and
no Spaniard knows the name.
[188] “Le lendemain matin on fit la cérémonie ordinaire quand on passe
le Detroit. Un homme de l’équipage tenant un livre à la main, la
commença par faire un serment sur ce livre pour tous ceux du vaisseau.
_Par ce serment il voulut distinguer ceux qui avoient déjà passé le
Detroit d’avec ceux qui ne l’avoient pas encore passé_, et en même
temps il faisoit promettre a tous ceux de l’équipage de faire la même
cérémonie toutes les fois qu’ils le passeroient. Après il parut sur le
pont une compagnie de jeunes matelots avec un tambour, chacun ayant
une moustache. Cette compagnie avoit pour armes tous les instrumens
de la cuisine. Ceux qui n’avoient pas encore passe le Detroit,
payerent pour n’etre point baptisé une seconde fois. Personne n’est
exempt--capitaine, officiers, matelots, passageurs, et _la vaisseau
même_ doivent si c’est la première fois qu’on a passé le Detroit; un
matelot, n’ayant jamais, voulut rien donner, fut mis le cul dans un
baquet, et on l’injetta sur le corps une quinzaine de séaux d’eau de
mer. Assurément il a du se souvenir de ce second baptême (permettez moi
cette comparaison) plus que du premier. Pour mieux prouver qu’on a déjà
passé le Detroit, il faut dire, le mois et l’année qu’on l’a passé, le
nom du capitaine et du vaisseau sur lequel on étoit.”--_Trois Voyages
au Maroc_, p. 179.
This is not the only nautical ceremony with a classical origin. A
former traveller in Greece thus describes a launch,--“A crown of
flowers is placed on the bow, then καραβοκήρι, or master, raises a
jar of wine to his lips, and then pours it on the deck. Nothing can
be more beautifully classical. It were to be wished that we could
trace the ceremony which takes place amongst us to this source, and
not consider it an imitation of one of the most sacred rites of our
religion.”--DOUGLAS, p. 65.
[189] No ancient or modern European language affords an etymology for
the nautical designation of a fire-place--_Cabouse_. It is Arabic, and
means “a thing consecrated to a mosque.” In Pagan times it would be
the temple or the sacrifice. The Phœnician vessels had their altars
and their gods, _Patacoi_. Nautical terms, of which the etymology is
unknown, are generally traceable to the Phœnicians--for instance,
_Davit_ in Arabic, a bent piece of wood. Cabouse and Davit have
disappeared from the Mediterranean, and must have been left amongst us
by the Phœnicians.
[190] See the chapter on the land trade of the Carthaginians in
Heeren’s Researches, the most valuable portion of his comprehensive
work.
[191] Strabo makes the Caspian Sea, a gulf of the Northern Ocean.
[192] “Geographical knowledge had existed and ceased before the classic
age of Greece arose.”--GROVER’S _Voice from Stonehenge_.
[193] “That Africa is clearly surrounded by the sea, except where
it borders on Asia, Necho, King of the Egyptians, was the first,
_we know_, to demonstrate. That prince, _having finished his
excavations for the canal leading out of the Nile into the Arabian
gulf_, despatched certain natives of Phœnicia on ship-board, _with
orders to sail back_ through the Pillars of Hercules into the north,
(Mediterranean) Sea, and so to return into Egypt. The Phœnicians
consequently, having departed out of the Erythræan sea, proceeded on
their voyage in the Southern Sea: when it was autumn, they would push
ashore, and, sowing the land, whatever might be the part of Lybia they
had reached, await there till the harvest time: having reaped their
corn they continued their voyage. Thus, after the lapse of two years,
and passing through the Pillars of Hercules in the third, they came
back into Egypt, and stated what is not credible to me, but may be so,
perhaps, to others,--namely, that in their circumnavigation of Libya,
_they had the sun upon the right hand_.”--HEEREN, ii. c. 44.
[194] The following passage from Heeren well illustrates, in the
incoherence of each sentence, the consciousness that the people
he described was too large for his grasp. “But, _leaving_ these
distinct voyages of _discovery_ out of the question, the extent to
which this enterprising people carried their _regular_ navigation is
truly wonderful. _Though_ voyages across the open seas have been the
_consequence_ of our _acquaintance with the new world_ beyond the
Atlantic; _yet_ their hardy and adventurous spirit led them to find
_a substitute_ for _it_, in stretching _from coast to coast_ into the
_most distant regions_. _The long series of centuries_ during which
they were exclusively the masters of the seas, gave them _sufficient
time_ to make this gradual progress, which perhaps was the more
_regular_ and _certain_ in proportion _to the time_ it occupied. The
Phœnicians carried the nautical art to the highest point of perfection
at _that time_ required, or of which it was _then_ capable.”
[195] A vessel proceeding from the Bight of Benin to any point of the
coast, northwards, has first to make and pass the equator, steering
south and west till she has done so. She then hauls up to the west and
north, and runs eastward only after she is to the northward of her port.
[196] In the north the coast is sufficiently dangerous. In my cruise
along it in 1845, I had in company, or saw only four vessels: two of
these went ashore, the other two were wrecked, the one an English
brigantine, the other a French steamer of war. Eighty souls perished.
[197] The supposed anterior discovery of the Canaries by a Norman
rover would be no argument, for these islands may be reached without
encountering the principal difficulties of the enterprise. And further
at the time of the alleged discovery, the compass may have been in
use in the north of Europe. The coins of the Baltic show the intimacy
there of the Saracens from the first century of the Hejira, and African
settlers in England are entered in Doomsday Book. The use of it in the
north, long before its employment by the Portuguese, has been asserted
by various writers, not only as derived from the Arabs, but also as
original, or derived from the Chinese.
“Il’ est certain que les marins des côtes de Normandie et de Bretagne
employaient dès le xiii siècle l’aiguille aimanée sous le nom de
_marinette_.”--_Esmenard._
“Raymondus Lullus in 1272 describes a compass used by the Basques and
Catalonians.”--_Cosmos_, vol. ii. p. 474.
“The Fins have a compass which possesses the peculiarity of indicating
the rising and setting of the sun--which must be in the figures round
it, as in the Chinese compass--in summer and winter, in a manner
that can only agree with the latitude 49° 20´.”--SALVERTE, _Occult
Sciences_, tom. ii. p. 252.
BOOK II.
THE COUNTRY OF THE ROVERS.
CHAPTER I.
OFF SALEE.
November 30.
A Heaven of pale blue is reflected in the Atlantic; there is not a
speck above nor a breath below; there is nothing that tells of Atlas
or of Africa--no cloud-capped and snow-clad peaks overshadowing the
ocean, or pillaring the sky. The land is low and tame; but on nearing
it along the water’s edge, a fast-set fence of breakers appears,
which would crush in an instant the _Baron Renfrew_, or _Ptolemy
Philopator’s_ fifty-decker: in memory of such incidents, no doubt,
Antæus honoured Neptune with a temple of human heads. These horrid
fangs, now covered with foam and now left bare, might well suggest the
idea of a dragon-guarded land. Calm as it is, at a distance of three or
four miles from the shore we hear the surf like distant thunder: the
spray, on the rolling in of every wave, shoots up as if a succession of
mines were fired by a train. In this merciless fence the gaps are few
and far between, hard to find, and, when found, harder still to enter
by. Along the distance we have run, there are but three openings where
small craft might find refuge, but then only when such refuge is not
wanted; that is to say, with calm weather, a leading wind, a tranquil
sea, and a full tide. A vessel caught in a westerly gale would have a
lee-shore (and what a lee-shore!) stretching in a right line for five
or six hundred miles, without a promontory behind which to shelter,
or a port for which to make, and (towards the south) with a current
incessantly setting upon the breakers.
It would seem strange that there should be this surf, not only with
a perfect calm, but with a glass-like sea. There was, however, where
we lay, a slight heaving of the water; and these heaves, as they bore
landwards, became, within a mile of the coast, billows, and then dashed
upon it with the extremest fury, as if the Atlantic, in contact with
Africa, required not the aid of wind, but shook it with the spontaneous
heaves of its majestic breast. We lay for hours with the same marks
on--as if we had been a rock. The tide rises and falls upon the shore,
but does not run along the land. The Atlantic merely heaves up and
down, but shifts not its place. It is met in front by a straight line;
and the tidal currents of the coast of Europe are stopped at the
great indraught of the Straits of Gibraltar; so that to the southward
there extends a region of some hundred miles of dead water. Hence the
violence of the action of the waves upon the shore. With our indented
and slanting coasts, there is always a current running in front of the
land, which serves as a breakwater against the effects of the rise and
fall of the tide: here there is no such protection. In like manner may
be explained the incessant disturbance of the Bay of Biscay: the horns
break the tides along the shore, and the Atlantic surges in upon the
congested waters. Below Rabat a current begins to be sensible; it runs
south. At Mogadore it reaches the speed of three knots an hour. There
are combined to produce it, the sweep of the back eddy of the Atlantic,
and the nightly gales which blow from the sea into the interior of
Africa to supply the rarification of the Great Desert. This nightly
indraught begins only at the province of Sus; to the north the ordinary
land and sea winds prevail. In these latitudes it is calm at sun-rise
and sun-set. The breeze freshens by night from the land, by day from
the sea--the former breathing a gentle gale, the second reaching to a
top-gallant breeze.
The sand is not blown up from the sea, as some have supposed, nor down
from the Desert. In travelling over it, you would suppose that you were
crossing a rocky country.
On the coast its structure is exposed, and there it appears to be a
bank of sand, with a coast of stone. Worn by the waves, the unsupported
rock comes tumbling down, and the fragments often sticking on the edge
form the breakwater. The “conformably overlying” rock, is an induration
of the sand by oxide of iron; sand, newly exposed, immediately begins
to crust.
This bank must have been left by the waters of the deluge, escaping
westward, charged with the sand of the interior. This idea was first
suggested to me by the deposits on both sides of the rock of Gibraltar.
The sand blocks up to its very roofs a cavern which opens to the
eastward.
Thus have been estranged the land and the water, and the approach to
each is closed from the other. Such is the defence of Morocco on the
ocean side: its iron-bound coast on the Mediterranean is scarcely a
less formidable bulwark. To the east, and to the south, it is encircled
by deserts and wildernesses. I had subsequently the satisfaction to
find that this fence of rocks had not failed to fix the attention of
the ancients. An old author, quoted by Suidas, says, that “rocks,
to which the name _Harmata_,[198] was given, were strewed along the
shore by Hercules to defend it from the approach of wild beasts.” The
beasts are ships, to which the names of animals were given--from the
figure-heads this fertile source of mythological personation has given
us Pegasus, the Ram of Phryxus, the Bull of Europa.
December 1st. We are still off our port ranging up and down, and unable
to enter, although we have the most beautiful weather and the calmest
sea! We cannot enter without a leading wind, that is, from the west,
and if it blows from the west, we must run one hundred and fifty miles
for shelter. A Portuguese on board, familiar with the coast, calls the
ports of Barbary “excommunicated.” Last year a schooner was detained
seven months before it could get away, and then had to sail with only
half its cargo.
[Illustration]
We have viewed at our leisure the city of Salee and Rabat, and their
environs. It is a strange place and country. The land is a series of
long, gentle, bare, sweeping drives, at the edge cut out into cliffs
and cones as if with a pastry cutter. About three miles north of Salee
we descried, through the mists of spray, a magnificent palace. It
changed to a gaunt ruin. A little further on there is a _kubbe_, or
saint’s tomb, surmounted by a dome, like the tombs of Judæa and India.
Next comes the point of Salee, and over it flutters the red flag of
the “Rovers.” Gardens surround the town, and a few palm trees are seen
among them. Between Salee and Rabat the river enters the sea over the
bar. Rabat is imposing with its fortresses. The great tower stands on
elevated ground at the bottom of the harbour. Rabat was built at the
close of the twelfth century to facilitate--though the Moors were in
possession of Ceuta and all the northern coast--the best expedition
then directed against Spain. Across this bar was launched a large part
of those hordes which followed Jacob Almanzor, and of that expedition
under his successor, of half a million of men, which have immortalised
the Navas de Tolosa.
The Moorish empire then extended in Africa above a thousand miles from
east to west; and five hundred and fifty, in its broadest part, from
north to south. It included also one half of Spain, and menaced the
remainder. It embellished Africa as well as Seville and Cordova, with
some of the noblest structures that any age has produced. It caused
arts and science to flourish amidst the ravages of war. Rabat outshone
the “court” of Morocco,--merchants gathered to share in its commerce,
and professors to teach in its schools.
A Roman-like aqueduct still strides along the plain, and from the
tower, raised to supply the want of mountains, the fleets of foes, or
the convoys of friends, could be descried for twenty leagues at sea.
This meteor capital of the “west” was seen, and then vanished. It was
laid low in the wars of the Almohadis and the Benemerines.
Further to the south, there are long lines of low white walls connected
with a small building, where the Sultan was residing. In the rear there
was a large encampment of cavalry in a square, as if it had been a
Roman legion. We calculated their force at ten thousand.
The last intelligence we had received before sailing from Gibraltar,
was that an insurrection had broken out at Morocco, and another on the
borders of Algiers, in favour of Abd-el-Kadir. The French steamer, that
was recently here, came to press an answer from the unfortunate monarch
to an _ultimatum_ from the French government, giving him the option of
war with France or Abd-el-Kadir.
It was painful to reflect how much the fortunes of Europe, and the
internal condition and ultimate government of France, were dependent
upon the weakness or caprice of the descendants of the “_Rovers of
Salee_.” For a step involving the entrance of French troops into
Morocco, by changing the position of Algeria into a basis of operation
against Africa, would have similarly changed France in respect to
Europe. It would have subjugated the policy of the metropolis to
the conduct of the colony. It was no object of the cabinet of the
Tuilleries to drive the Sultan into a false and untenable position at
home, or to compromise him with France. The Government of Algiers had
got the management of the negotiation, and had this purpose. My trip
had reference to this matter, and was not uninvited by the Moorish
Government, otherwise I should not have risked presenting myself at
so unfrequented an entrance to this inhospitable land. Adverse winds,
however, detained me in the Gut, whilst steam carried the French--that
is, the Algerine--emissary to his destination. Nothing could be more
tantalizing than thus to hover above the country, and in sight of its
assembled multitudes, in utter ignorance of what was passing, and with
the contingency before my eyes of being even yet unable to set foot on
it.
In pursuance of the importance of the resolves of the Council Chamber
of this African state, I reverted to the circumstances of the last war,
and the great struggle of England and France, of which another African
state, at the other extremity of the Mediterranean, had been the first
cause and the original field; and the question naturally arose, “Was
it possible that Napoleon,--who, after an attempt on, and a failure in
Egypt, planned the conquest of Spain,--should have neglected a country
identified with the language, manners, and institutions of the one, and
available for the injury or the protection of the other?” The opinion of
Lord Nelson as to the importance to England of the friendship of the
Moor, proves that Morocco was a piece in the great European game, and
one which even his antagonists understood. But Napoleon’s moves were
beyond their reach. His game was lost by his own faults; their merit
(I speak not of mere battles, or even of campaigns) consisted only in
turning to account the incidents of his fortunes.
The siege of Gibraltar was promised by him to the Spaniards, when the
French troops crossed the Pyrenees; and such a measure would have
powerfully contributed to the success of his project. Gibraltar, in
that case, would have been the point of the operations of the war. But
this course could scarcely be taken without some chance of success, and
that depended entirely on the dispositions of Morocco. Napoleon having
foregone all the political advantages to be secured by this siege, it
may not be too much to assume, that he made the mistake in respect to
Morocco which he did in respect to Spain, and perceived that the Moors
were beyond his power to secure, or his reach to coerce. At St. Helena
he recognised the identity of the position, and the similarity of
character of the two people.
I now recalled the incidents which, in early life, fixed my attention
first upon such subjects. Sir Sydney Smith had taken the trouble to
detail to me his plan for counteracting Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt.
It was to occupy Morocco. He described it as a country of inexhaustible
resources, once the granary of the world; it had lost nothing of its
fertility, and contained vast accumulated treasures. The people had
been long oppressed, and would gladly hail an invader. England with
ten thousand men, might make herself mistress of it, and gain in it
more than India, and save India by frustrating Napoleon in the rear.
We had begun a great mistake, by driving the French out of Egypt.
By Morocco we should have restored the balance in Europe, prevented
a great war, and have joined France in introducing civilization and
Christianity into Africa. Well do I recollect the perplexity into which
I was thrown by these ideas: fortunately, it was not to a European
that I had recourse to discriminate between right and wrong, but to an
African--Hassam d’ Ghieo. He told me to make the case my own, and see
what I should think of France invading England, because Russia had
invaded Turkey.
He showed me, that if England had so involved herself, it would have
been left open for France to establish herself in Egypt, and thence act
against India; that England had triumphed in that war, because France
had unjustly attacked other states, and England had espoused the just
side.
_Rabat, Dec. 2nd._--This morning the bar was comparatively quiet, and
seemed passable; there was also a light wind from the westward. The day
was lovely, the ledges of the rock and fortresses were crowded with
Moors in their haïks squatting down, and they looked like rows of large
gulls. A little after one P.M., it being high tide, a large row-boat
appeared behind the bar; presently it came dancing over the surf. We
had in company an English and a Portuguese schooner. The English took
the lead; we followed. It was like going into action, and in presence
of an audience: every horizontal piece of rock, wall, and ground,
was covered with the strange squatting figures assembled to witness
our prowess, or mischance. There was great outcry and confusion, and
we might have thought there was more noise than danger, had our two
companions fared as well as ourselves. They both got on shore inside,
but the wind falling, and the tide ebbing, they were cleared of their
cargoes, and got off at full tide during the night.
The English consular agent came off to give us _pratique_. It was the
first time he had performed his functions as quarantine master. His
commission was not from the Moorish Government, but from the consular
body at Tangier. After receiving in his hand the health patent, he
hastily transferred it to a pair of kitchen tongs, prepared for its
unexpected office by having the knobs painted red. On the shore we
saw a new building, with arches, in process of erection: it was a
_custom-house_.
Before the custom-house we found the governor of the town seated, and
received from him a most courteous welcome. The consular agent kindly
offered the shelter of his roof, the only one we could have got at
Rabat; and a messenger from the minister soon after came to invite me
to the royal abode.
This is the first Mussulman country in which I have had my baggage
opened at a custom-house. I was too indignant to be present. I was told
that the officer took care to show that it should be only a ceremony,
for he sat at a distance, and was earnestly engaged in conversation
when the packages were unloosed. I found, however, that designs
had been formed upon my wardrobe. The Sultan had sent an emissary,
Mustafa Ducaly, to France and England. On his return, amongst other
surprising things, he had to tell that on landing in England, at the
port of Southampton, duty had been charged on the clothes he wore. The
minister, Ben Edris, intimated to him that he might now make reprisals.
The travelled Moor proceeded, by way of _revanche_, to be far too
accurate and amusing on the subjects of English hotel hospitality,
strict morality, workhouse benevolence, and waiter manners, than I
liked at such a moment to commend, or had disposition to listen to.
_Dec. 3rd._--I spent the morning on the top of the consul’s house, from
which there is a good view of the town, and the ruins of the Alcazaba
on the one side, and the great town on the other: the river ran in
front--beyond it, the long white lines of the walls of the terrible
Salee, between which and the river the governor of El Garb had his
encampment in the form of the letter Q.
I received a visit on the roof from the father of Mustafa Ducaly, who
was a striking likeness of Sir Francis Palgrave, and as active and
merry. Every Arab is a living record.
A guard having been procured, we walked through the town, which
was thronged. We met, however, with no incivility. Our guards were
careful in keeping us out of the way of the troops encamped in the
neighbourhood. I returned from the excursion filled with two objects;
the gate of the Alcazaba, and the Caïd, or governor of the town.
This gate, or rather Barbican, is a massive structure of sand-stone.
The outer front (at right angles to the inner) is built against: the
inner stands in its beauty, neither disfigured nor concealed: it is
covered with the richest of those figures with which we are familiar,
under the name of Moresque, or Arabesque; not moulded in stucco, but
carved in stone. All is in ruins, or utterly effaced and levelled,
that this circuit of walls was raised to protect. From the platform
commanding the entrance of the river, we obtained a perfect idea of
the place; and after enjoying for a while the view landward, and the
lashing of the sea upon the bar, we proceeded towards the encampments,
which lay to the south, to visit the walls of the city. They might
seem the ruins of some unheard-of Carthage, rather than of an upstart
village on the extreme border of the world. Running in all directions,
it is puzzling to make out what they exclude or what they enclose--they
are now close--now far off--here intersecting a field--there skirting
the horizon. They are of Tapia; some parts are forty feet in height,
apparently of excessive thickness, and with square solid towers. At one
place they resembled the land wall of Constantinople. The space between
the first and second wall is filled with orange-groves or gardens; the
produce of some of them is 3,000 dollars (600_l._), which would be
doubled if the bar were passable. On our way back we were stopped in
one of the streets by some horsemen, galloping and discharging their
muskets. A little farther on I came suddenly upon Sir F. Palgraves’
likeness, leading a laden ass: a servant was walking behind him doing
nothing. The wealthiest disdain not to perform, like the patriarchs,
the humblest offices; and I was told that the late governor might have
been seen leading his own mules to water.
As we were passing through a narrow lane, the guard stopped and
muttered, “_El Caïd!_” I looked, expecting to see the great man’s
_cortège_, and it was some time before I distinguished the personage
pacing along alone, wrapped in his haïk. The soldiers inclined, and
saluted in a manner new to me. He stopped for a moment, uttered a
few words, and passed on. It seemed as if I had met the proconsul of
Mauritania Tangitana. The fasces only were wanting to the Roman toga
and the Roman port. On returning home I made inquiry concerning him.
The answer was, “He is a just man.” I asked, how then he came to be
governor? the answer was, “He was appointed by the Town.” Supposing
that my ears had deceived me, I repeated the question, and was answered
a second time, “He was appointed by the Town.” The story is as
follows:--
A REVOLUTION IN BARBARY.
The Caïd of Rabat, who had enjoyed his office for twelve years, was
one day surprised by the entrance of a “deputation,” to tell him that
the Town had despatched a messenger to the Sultan to solicit his (the
Caïd’s) removal; and that until they received an answer, their civility
could extend to no act of obedience. The Caïd retreated up stairs, put
his head out of a little top window, and seeing “who and how many”
there were, bowed to “public opinion.” The Caïd was deposed, and fined
40,000 dollars. It so happened that the new Caïd sent them, having been
before at Salee, was better known than trusted; he, therefore, on his
arrival, was informed by the people of Rabat, that they had already
despatched to the Sultan an envoy and this message:--“We do not want
a stranger to govern us, and particularly not this stranger; we have
plenty of our own people who can govern better both for the Sultan and
for us.” The complaisant Sultan on this revoked his second appointment,
and authorised them to choose a Caïd for themselves. Their first choice
fell on a rich merchant named Mike Brittel, who had taken the lead in
the revolt: he declined, and recommended the present Caïd, who was
thereupon chosen. This had happened within the last few weeks; and the
election had been confirmed by the Sultan only since his arrival.
Inquiring as to the security of life and property, I was informed that
at Rabat confiscation was not a penalty for treason. Here no real
property can be held by the Sultan. At Tangier there is confiscation:
the lands there are held of the Sultan, as he came into possession by
the evacuation of the English. At Arzela and Mazagan, the Sultan is
feudal superior, because these are conquered demesnes. This is our
ancient law of treason, based on fealty and homage--as depending upon
fief and benefice.
The following conversation occurred with my host:--
_Q._ Has there been any execution in Salee or Rabat since you have been
here?
_A._ No.
_Q._ Have there been any assassinations?
_A._ Four years ago there was a man killed at Rabat.
_Q._ Why was the murderer not executed?
_A._ Because the Emperor’s answer was, that he had done well: he killed
a man in his harem.
_Q._ Have there been, during these four years, any grave crimes, such
as breaking into houses, robbery, &c.?
_A._ No; not that I have heard of.
_Q._ What then are the crimes which are committed?
_A._ Vegetables and such things are often stolen in the market. Jews
are beaten going to Salee: they are required to give money; but then
that is when the wandering tribes are encamped here.
_Q._ Then you enjoy security and tranquillity?
_A._ Yes.
_Q._ Are the rich persecuted by the Government because of their wealth?
_A._ Yes, but only when they are in the Government service.
_Q._ During these four years, how often have irregular contributions
been raised in the town by the Government?
_A._ The only taxes are upon laden camels and merchandise.
_Q._ What are the exactions to which public servants are exposed?
_A._ They take everything from them.
_Q._ Does that often happen?
_A._ No, not very often.
_Q._ How many incidents of the kind do you recollect?
_A._ The late Caïd had been in office twelve years, and his father
twelve before him. The Emperor then fixed his demand at 40,000 dollars.
The Caïd said, he had not the money to pay. The present Caïd has shown
that he had as much in houses and gardens in Rabat alone.
_Q._ Since he could neither impose contributions on the town, nor
extort money from individuals, how did he accumulate wealth?
_A._ He was a very venal man, and you could do anything with him for
four dollars.
_Q._ His profits then consisted in the corrupt administration of
justice?
_A._ Yes.
_Q._ A Caïd in Rabat may then be guilty of corruption, but not of
violence?
_A._ Of corruption and violence too.
He then related to me the following story:--
“Four months ago, the boy now cooking in the _patio_ rushed in dressed
as a Moor, and throwing his cap on the ground called out, “I am a Jew.
I claim the protection of France and England.” Soldiers followed him,
but I would not let them take him from under my roof. His father was
a renegade. His property (3000 dollars) was placed, on his death, in
the hands of an executor, who--the children under nine years of age
being held to be of their father’s faith--forced him from his mother.
Refusing to profess Islamism, the mother and the boy were confined
apart, and she was beaten to induce her to influence her son. The boy
at last did pronounce the words “La Illah,” &c.; his head was shaved;
the Mussulman dress put on him, and he was about, as is the custom,
to be paraded on horseback through the town, but he recanted. This is
death by the Mussulman law. Those who were present describe the child’s
acts and words as wonderful. He said to the Caïd, “Mahomet has not had
power to convert me, and your acts make me hate his faith.” After this,
he made his escape to the consulate, and the door has been besieged by
persons seeking either to force, or to seduce him away. Frequently the
governor sent me messages about him. On one of these occasions, the
soldiers while sitting in the court, kept constantly calling to him by
the name of “Abdallah,” which they had given him. For some time he took
no notice, and returned no answer. At last he said, “Why do you call
Abdallah? The boy with that name is dead. There is only here Meshod.”
At my request the boy was sent for: he seemed dogged and stupid, and
made very light of his trials. It was with difficulty that I extracted
from him a bare corroboration of the story. On being repeatedly
urged by questions, he said he had answered the Caïd, “I won’t be a
Mussulman; for your religion has no strength. I forgive you my money
that I may be a Jew.” I said to him he ought to be very grateful to the
Consul for having befriended him: his answer was, “I am thankful to
God.”
This was one of the occasions on which the religious feelings of the
people were liable to the extremest excitement. In no Mussulman
country have the Jews been subjected, as in Europe, to processes
for compelling conversion; but, on the other hand, to relapse
after pronouncing the fatal words is a crime for which there is no
forgiveness in the Law, and no power of mercy in the State. The whole
case here rested upon the boy’s having uttered the profession of faith;
yet in the official correspondence which I have perused, this fact is
suppressed.
The persecution in this case arose from the guardian, who would have
been remunerated for the management of the funds by one-third of the
property, had the boy been a Mussulman; but, being a Jew, he could not
inherit from his Mussulman father, and the whole of the property would
go to the Sultan. The Caïd’s profit was out of the counter-bribery of
the guardian and the mother. The circumstances becoming known, general
indignation was aroused against the Caïd. Immediately afterward the
application was made to the Sultan for his removal; and this was one of
the charges preferred against him.
A parallel incident, which occurred five or six years ago, has been
introduced and falsified on the Spanish stage. I repeat it as it was
narrated to me by the Jew, who detailed it to the Spanish Dramatists:--
“A Jewish girl, the daughter of an ill-tempered mother, having been
beaten and in great sorrow, one day ran into the adjoining Moorish
house (at Tangiers the Jews have no separate quarters). The Moorish
women were charmed with her beauty, spoke to her kindly, and advised
her to be like them, and live with them, and she preferring them to
her own people, repeated ‘La Illah,’ &c. The women thereupon went to
the Caïd, and told him that a Jewish girl whose name was Skemish, and
whose face was like her name (Sun), had come to them, and that God had
enlightened her. The Caïd was glad, and sent for her. When she came,
she said that the Moorish women had lied; but they having testified as
before, she was shut in a prison with water only and black bread. The
Caïd then, not knowing what to do, sent to tell the Sultan. Word came
that she should be sent to Fez. The Caïd then sent for the father of
the girl, and said, ‘You must pay me forty dollars for the expenses of
your daughter’s journey.’ But he was poor, and could not pay the money;
and he went lamenting through the streets, and so met the Spanish
Consul, who gave him the forty dollars, and the girl was sent away
with eight soldiers. A traveller overtook them on the way, and joining
company with them inquired her story, and said she deserved death; but
pitying her, he said he would converse with her; so they suffered him.
This was no Moor, but a Jew and a neighbour, who had disguised himself
as a Moor, in order to encourage her to remain steadfast and support
her affliction. When they had come near the city, she was made to halt,
and great honour was prepared for her. Four hundred young men, chosen
from out of the servants of the Sultan, played before her the ‘powder
game.’ Preceded by these, and followed by a great concourse of people,
she was conducted to the palace. Next day the lady of the Harem came
to her. She kissed her between the eyes; made her sit down by her side;
told her maidens to bring rich clothes, and clothed her with them;
and then taking her by the hand, they walked in the palace and the
gardens, and the lady said, ‘All these things shall be yours, and you
shall have a prince for a bridegroom.’ The Jewess answered to the lady,
‘What matters it to the bird whether its cage be of ivory or of reed,
or whether it be hung in a palace or a hut?’ After several days, word
was brought to her, that she must get ready and come to the Sultan.
She came before the Sultan, and he called her, ‘My dear Skemish,’
and made her sit down beside him, and he was eating kusscousoo, and
he said to her ”Eat.“ But she said, ‘I am a Jewess, and cannot eat
kusscousoo prepared by your people.’ The Sultan said, ‘Islam is true.’
But she answered him boldly. Then three baskets were brought, one with
embroidered clothes, in another precious stones, and in another pearls:
‘These,’ said he, ‘are the marriage gifts I had prepared for you, and
you shall choose a bridegroom of the sons of the Caïd’s.’ But she
answered him as before. He then became very angry, and said, ‘Now your
blood shall run like water on the earth;’ and she answered, ‘I am ready
to die.’ She was then given over to the Caïd to be judged according
to the law as an apostate. The Caïd, when he found that his words did
not persuade, nor his threats move her, assembled the rabbis and the
elders of the Jews, and said to them, ‘If this maiden, once a Jewess,
remain thus perverse, the Sultan will assuredly slay not her only, but
every Jew in Fez. Advise then what you shall do.’ So the elders went
to her in the prison, offering to absolve her of the sin, and telling
her that it was better for one soul to perish than the whole people.
She answered, ‘Every man must bear his own burden: the blood of all
the people will not save me: I will not do this thing.’ And the Jews
went out wondering. The Caïd then sent word, that on the next morning
he would come with a _crown of laurel_ (such was the word) in one
hand, and the (paper, for her execution,) in the other. On the morrow,
when the prison door was opened, she was kneeling on the ground, and
remembering the words of the Sultan, she said, ‘Let my blood now run
on the earth like water.’ So the Caïd was sorrowful, closed the door,
and came again on the morrow, and found her kneeling in the same place,
and again she repeated the same words; so it was appointed that she
should die on the next market-day. And when the day came, four criers
were sent forth to proclaim that a Jewish woman was to die, for she
had reviled the prophet. When she was brought to the market-place, in
the midst of a great concourse from the town and neighbouring country
assembled for the market, she prayed to have a pair of trowsers;
‘lest,’ said she, ‘in the struggles of death, I should expose my
nakedness; and some water, that I may wash and pray.’ Whilst she was
washing and clothing herself, the executioner waved before her eyes
a long knife, but she would not look on it, and having finished her
prayer, she offered to him her neck; but he cut with the edge only,
‘for,’ said he, ‘when she sees the blood she will love life;’ but she
called out ‘Your law commands you to kill, but not to torture me.’ And
on that word he struck off her head and spat upon it.
“The Jews of Fez obtained the body on the payment of 3000 dollars,
and gathering it up with the blood in a linen sheet, interred it with
great lamentation, and they built over it a tomb like that of a saint,
and those who are afflicted with disorders go to pray there, and are
cured.”[199]
Compare with this, the story in Maccabees of the mother and seven sons,
who suffered death rather than eat forbidden meat.
FOOTNOTES:
[198] From םרע haram, to heap up; the term was applied to the banks of
tombs and the dams of rivers. Avienus considers these Harmata to be
relics of the causeway which Hercules constructed to bring over the
oxen of Geryon.
[199] The name given to the girl was “_Sol_,” as the story was told me
in Spanish. It is the habit of those who themselves give descriptive
names, to translate the names of other languages. I have therefore
restored the Hebrew word and name, in which language the sun is
feminine.
CHAPTER II.
RABAT.
I went to-day up the river in a barge belonging to one of the schooners
in the harbour. We landed at the bottom of the harbour to visit the
great tower. It is about seventy feet square, and under two hundred in
height, but was never finished. The facing of one of the angles has
been stripped off by lightning, showing the interior of the masonry,
which is composed throughout of stones exactly squared. The wall at
the upper part is between six and seven feet thick. It is ascended by
an inclined plane, up which a carriage might be driven. The centre
is an inner tower composed of five stories of square halls, with the
roofs in stucco, like the Alhambra. The outside is figured and carved.
In simplicity and grace, “Hassan” exceeds the Giralda no less than in
dimensions. Whoever has seen the Giralda, will know how much the name
enhances the charm of that structure. This personification, which to
us is an abnormal effort, and belongs to an ecstatic state, is part
of their daily life. We may be poetic; they are poetry. The sword of
Antor, the sword of Amra Ibn Maad,[200] the horn of Timour had each
its name; and I never hear a bugle without a thrill, having, as a
child, delighted in the history of the latter hero. Those who gave a
man’s name to a tower, would be horror-struck at a man’s name given to
a dog. The tower “Hassan” calls up the siege of Jerusalem and Lower
Antonia. There all the towers had names--Hippicus, Piphunis, Mariamne:
so the gates had names, as Genuath; but the gates, like those of Rabat,
were probably structures exceeding the towers in dimensions.
The staircase has been rendered impracticable both at the entrance and
near the top, but we clambered up by the aid of holes in the walls.
We could now take in the fortifications of Rabat. The whole forms a
triangle, the sides of which are the river and the sea-coast; the
apex is the Cazata on the point of Rabat. It covers a space of ground
considerably larger than Granada.
Adjoining the tower there is a large cistern with ten parallel walls
running half through it, and beyond this, the extensive area of
a mosque with many of the columns standing. They are of granite,
unpolished. A century ago a missionary mentions the mosque as unroofed,
with three hundred and sixty columns. This group of buildings is
surrounded by massive walls in _Tapia_ with turrets.
Wherever elsewhere are found monuments of past splendour, the race
has disappeared, or it lives in subjection to some other people. Here
the descendants of the people who reared these edifices, still dwell
unconquered around. They gaze upon them with stupid wonder, knowing not
whether they are the works of genii or their fathers.
The magnificent remains spread around were the creation of a single
reign, and had one date of maturity and desolation. What measure do
they not give of the power of Morocco, in the time of our Henry I.?
Like the pyramids, they were reared by captive hands; they were bedewed
with Gothic blood, and Christian sweat and tears. To forty thousand of
the Christian slaves employed in them, the Emperor had promised freedom
on their completion, and he gave them liberty to choose a district for
their habitation. His ministers represented that such a colony would
be dangerous. “My word,” said the Emir el Moslemin (Miramolin) “is
passed for freedom, and what is freedom without the means of protecting
it?” They were settled in the mountains to the east of Fez. Wives were
given to them, and they were called _Shabanets_, from Shaban, the name
of the month in which the removal took place. For some generations
they preserved their language and religion, and three hundred years
afterwards we find them a powerful tribe at war with the Moorish
sovereign. The Shabanets were at that time undistinguished from the
surrounding population in manners, languages, and _religion_. There
is no trace of persecution for religion, and their contests with the
princes of Morocco were for their civil rights.
That war of borders and of centuries between Moor and Goth, must have
been, in part, the image of the kidnapping of Africa as carried on
to-day. The common prisoner for us is an encumbrance, for them he was
the chief booty. The estimating of the value, and the distribution of
the shares amongst the captors, were defined and arranged by a peculiar
code. A captive, for instance, made from a fortress within cross-bow
range, belonged to the captor on payment of a fifth of the value to the
king. Beyond cross-bow range the captor received a third of the value
from the governor who got the slave.
This treatment of a captive shocks our sense of military honour, and so
the lesson which war ought to teach is lost--that each is answerable in
his person and fortune for his nation’s acts. The judicial and sacred
character of war remains so long only as the captive is treated as a
guilty man. Our civilization respects in the prisoner the professional
man, because it has converted war from the execution of a sentence into
a trade. Riley relates a conversation with some of the tribe on the
borders of the Timbuctoo desert. “We cannot,” said they, in answer to
his remonstrances, “give quarter, because they ought to die who give
us cause to use our weapons. We will not take quarter if vanquished,
because we will not be beholden for life to such men.” He describes the
tribe as peculiarly harmless.
From the tower we proceeded two or three miles up the river to orange
groves on the low ground, belonging to the late governor, which
appeared utterly deserted, and the fruit lay rotting under the trees.
Our European sailors loaded their boats with fruit, and decorated it
with branches bearing fruit and flowers. I fancied the companions of
Hercules must have done something of the same kind.
We found here a party of the Sultan’s troops, who were giving and
receiving a treat from each other. There were various little fires and
round trays of tea: they hailed us and made us land, and we had to
drink tea with them. There was a nephew of the Emperor amongst them, a
fine lad, almost black, with beautiful Greek features approaching to
that Abyssinian cast, some individuals of which have appeared to me to
be the most wonderful specimens of the human race. Homer was of the
same opinion.
Several Spanish renegades were pointed out to me: they were criminals
who had escaped from the Spanish presidio. The Moors spoke of them
without contempt; the Jews told me they were much esteemed. I had
been told at Ceuta that few attempted to escape, and that, when they
did, they came back again, in consequence of the bad treatment they
received. The Spaniards have an “extradition” treaty with the Moors,
but here that modern infamy meets its reward--the deserters become
Mussulmans. How different the present practice of converting the
fortresses on the frontier into depôts for culprits, from that ancient
practice of the Spanish kings, by which the frontier fortresses were
sanctuaries. When reading those old charters, I had imagined that the
object was to people them, and such is the explanation given by the
Spanish legal writers; but now I saw the real purpose,--which was
to afford the malefactor, who had already escaped from punishment,
relief from apostacy. The malefactor was sheltered for a year and a
day, and was then free. He would have been kept there for life, had
the object been to people the fortresses. This is further confirmed by
the singular privilege of these sanctuaries to receive women who had
run away from their husbands, and once within them they are freed from
the bonds of matrimony. These provisions will be found in the Charter
of Ferdinand IV., granted to Gibraltar, and afterwards confirmed by
Alonzo XI. From the benefits of the sanctuary were excepted only
traitors--those who had delivered up castles--those who had broken the
king’s peace, or seduced their lord’s wife.
Thus Moses separated three cities of refuge “on this side Jordan
towards the sun’s rising;”[201] that is, on the side of the enemy and
on his border. The period of sojourn was contingent on the life of the
high-priest.
Among the renegades are to be found the scourings from all regions of
the earth; Spain, France, Russia, Belgium, Prussia, Turkey, Tartary,
Egypt, and the whole coast of Africa. Nigritia and Central Africa may
be added to the list; as the slaves may rather be considered outcasts
who find a home, than free men reduced to servitude. Poles they have
here in Africa, it is true; but as “_condottieri_” only. There are
representatives of every race, and records of every conspiracy and
rebellion. They number four hundred in the camp, and two thousand
throughout Morocco. The police is so strict, that it is impossible
that one of them should ever return. Dante might here have got the
suggestion for his inscription over the gates of hell.
There were formerly a great many emigrants from Algiers. They have
died and wasted away: as the French colonization has advanced, they
have retreated before it: they have preferred abandoning the graves of
their fathers, their homes, their substance, their friends, to living
where the Fih ruled. Such an emigration must not be compared to that of
Poland, or to the victims of any European revolution. There was here
no dread of vengeance and no proscription. They departed in anguish of
heart, and Morocco for them was no land of promise. Of many who had
acknowledged themselves as Fih subjects, that have come to Gibraltar in
a state of destitution, not one has ever applied at the consulate for
pecuniary relief. The Consul has repeatedly proffered assistance; it
has in every case been declined. This getting out of the way of their
conquerors is strikingly pictured in the address of an old Moor to the
captor of Gibraltar:--
“SIRE,--What have I done to your race? I lived in Seville when your
great-grandfather, the King Don Fernando, besieged and took that
place, and I went to Xerez. Then came your grandfather, Don Alonzo,
and conquered Xerez, and I went to live at Tarifa. Then came your
father, Don Sancho, and took Tarifa. Finding that we could not live
in any city of Spain, I came to Gibraltar: now you have come by sea,
besieged and taken it. I beg that you will order a vessel for me, that
I may cross the sea, and not see so much sorrow before my eyes.”[202]
Christian slavery in Morocco, and the intercourse resulting from it
with the princes and religious orders of Europe, would form a very
interesting volume. It ought not, however, to be forgotten that
the Christians set the example.[203] In Morocco the Rovers were no
tractable subjects. Even when they were reduced to obedience, and one
of the Sultans applied to Charles XII. for aid in quelling those of
Tunis and Algiers,[204] who had supported the fraternity of Salee
against himself, these princes, who would not recognize the Sultans of
Constantinople, entered into friendly relations with the Roman Pontiff.
Even on religious matters, the following extract will show, and will
confirm, what I have elsewhere asserted, that the disappearance
of Christianity from the soil of Africa is not attributable to
persecution. While Henry, the first of European monarchs, was putting
himself in open opposition to the Church, and setting her highest
recognised authority at defiance, that authority received an unexpected
recognition and homage from a Saracen and semi-barbarian sovereign
in Africa. Annazir, the Mahometan ruler of Mauritania Sitifensis,
sent to Rome a Christian priest, Servandus by name, with the request
that he might be consecrated bishop of the church then existing at
Hippo. Gregory’s answer to this prince announced his compliance with
the Saracen’s desire, and the due consecration of the designated
prelate. He thanked Annazir for his liberation of many Christians in
his kingdom from slavery, and for his promised manumission of more.
“This goodness,” he said, “God the Creator of all things, without whom
we cannot do, or even think anything that is good, hath breathed into
thine heart. He that lighteth every man that cometh into the world,
hath in this thy purpose enlightened thy mind, for there is nothing
of which the Almighty God, who would have all men to be saved, and
who is not willing that any should perish, more highly approves than
that, next to the love of his Maker, a man should cultivate that of
his neighbour, and do nought to others which he would not that they
should do to him; and this charity, due from and to all men, is more
especially required between you and ourselves; who believe and confess,
though in a different way, one God; and who both daily praise and adore
Him, as the Creator of all ages, and the governor of the world.”[205]
If religious fanaticism was displayed in the acts which provoked the
retaliation of the Moors, never was Christian charity more fervently
exhibited than in the efforts made, and the suffering undergone, to
redeem the captives. For this work of redemption two monastic orders
were established. “The Trinitarians,” was founded by one Matta, and by
Felix de Valois, in 1198. Innocent III. confirmed and encouraged the
institution. It was a mendicant order. The friars wore a white habit,
with a red and blue cross on the breast. The rule was that of St.
Augustine, “to gather and carry alms into Barbary for the redemption
of slaves,” to which purpose one-third of the revenue of each house
was to be applied. They had thirty-nine houses in England, and nine in
Scotland.
The “Merced,” or more properly the military religious order of “Our
Lady of Mercy for the Redemption of Captives,” was founded in 1225 by
Peter of Nolasco, who had served under De Montfort. It consisted of
knights and friars. The friars were in holy orders, and therefore could
not shed blood. The knights guarded the coast against the Saracens,
but were obliged to keep choir when not on duty. The friars wore a
white habit: the knights were dressed like seculars, but wore a white
scapular on which, as on the habits of the friars, were embroidered
the royal arms of Arragon. To the three religious vows this order
added a fourth,--to devote their whole substance, and their liberty,
if necessary, to the ransoming of slaves; remaining in the place of a
slave if they could not otherwise obtain his release. This order being
relieved from certain domestic austerities, they were obliged to go
barefoot, and were called Das Calsos,[206] observing the strictest
poverty, solitude, and abstinence.
In former times there was in these regions a most extraordinary traffic
in Russian slaves of both sexes, and eunuchs. The Arabs called them
Siklah (Silaavo). Abderachman III. had a body guard of them, splendidly
accoutred. They rose to high offices in the State. One, named Wadha,
was vizier to Hisham II. of Cordova; another, Naga, to Ibn Edris,
Sultan of Ceuta, and Malaga. They even attained to sovereign power, and
founded dynasties, as Lahayr and Keyran, both of Valentia.
5th of December.
This being Friday, the Sultan went in state to the mosque at the
Alcazar. He passed between two lines of troops from his country box, a
distance of three miles. I had an opportunity of seeing him from the
roof of the consulate, as he passed along the brow of the hill to the
Alcazar gate. He rode a white horse. When he came in sight there was
a general exclamation from those on the roofs. “A white horse!” They
all turned round and smiled, and beckoned to each other, and general
joy seemed to be diffused. The Sultan rides a white horse! The colour
of the horse denotes the humour of the prince; white being, of course,
that of joy and gladness, and the other shades accordingly. Muley
Ismael distinguished thus:--when he rode a red horse, he had a lance or
sabre; when he rode a black one, a musket and gunpowder. In the Arabian
Nights there is something like this,[207] in commenting on which Mr.
Lane mentions (and I can also confirm), that the Turks signify anger
against any class of their tributaries by issuing the Harutch papers of
a red colour, and adds, “To exhibit the striking and dramatic spectacle
described by our author may, I conceive, be more effective than any
words could be.” In this way the black flag of the pirate has been
selected, and the red flag of the rover. Next to the flag the war-horse
is the shield for this blazon. Thus we have in the Revelation the pale
horse of death. The idea is beautifully paraphrased in a sentence of
the old Chevalier Fabian Phillips. “The pale horse of death, and the
red of destruction, rode up to their bridles in blood.”
The Sultan wore a green bournous with the hood up. A man on each side
fanned him. This hooded people had thrown back the capes of their
sulams and the folds of the haïk from off their heads, so that the
aspect of the crowd was suddenly changed, and the universal white was
now considerably mingled with red and blue.[208]
I was much gratified at seeing, even from a distance, the chief of
this singular empire, the manner of his march, and the greeting of
his people, which is by bending down and raising up the body, and
continuing to do so until he has passed.
I received a message to say, that orders had been given to conduct me
over every place, not excepting his own residence. This was a most
acceptable communication, as I found myself gradually falling into the
condition of a prisoner.
After the ceremony of the mosque was over, several of the chief men
came in. These visits were uninterrupted till night. I have seldom
passed so interesting a day.
The revolution in the town, I suspect, _is not yet completed_. The
Sultan has been now a month here. He never remained so long before, and
this is a season of the year when it has been the undeviating practice
of Moorish Sultans to be at the capital. The Baïram approaches; on the
day after which, the list of functionaries for the ensuing year is
published. The changes are then made. Then comes the reckoning between
the Sultan and his servants. The chiefs are assembled, with their
retainers, from all parts of the empire, so that he has the opportunity
and the means of taking vengeance. The forms of a _placitium_ prevail,
and there may be points of real, as well as traces of apparent,
resemblance between a divan of a Moorish Sultan, and the Wittenagemotte
of a Saxon King. The Sultan publicly alleges his charges against the
governors who are removed, and the people on their part have free
access, and can accuse and petition.
The holding of the Baïram here, and not at Fez or Morocco, seems to
be a case of Mahomet coming to the mountain. It is not a rebellious
governor, but a refractory town. Rabat has the reputation of
stubbornness. This perhaps renders it more difficult and dangerous for
the Sultan to overlook the recent events, while it imposes on him the
necessity of taking his measures with precaution. Without exciting
alarm, or at least justifying measures of resistance, or even of
precaution, he collects 50,000 men round the town.
One of my visitors this day was Mike Brittel. If I am to judge by his
words or his air, never was city in the enjoyment of profounder repose,
or man of more perfect felicity.
In the time of the late Emperor, Muley Mahomet, they killed and
quartered their Caïd, and made the Jew butchers hang up the flesh
in the shambles. It was so exposed for three days, ticketed at two
blanquillos a pound. Then they came in troops to cheapen it, and haggle
with the Jews who were instructed to maintain the two blanquillos.
The Sultan marched against the city, but the people withdrew into the
Alcazaba, and presented so imposing a front that he was content with an
accommodation.
Civilized and philosophical Germany can riddle the body of a minister;
but let us not compare such an act with the shambles of Rabat. The
one is the frenzy of a people which cannot help itself; the other is
vengeance--savage, if you like--but vengeance for crimes, applying a
salutary lesson to those who are to follow. Such is the difference
between the two conditions of existence. No reactions and no vengeance
can profit where social evil springs from theory and legislation. Where
the evil is the act of man, vengeance comes, like the storm, to clear
the atmosphere, thus compensating for the ruin it has wrought.
I met at a house where I was visiting to-day, the governor of El Garb,
whose encampment lies opposite our windows. I was told that he is
chief of two millions of souls. His rule extends from the river to the
neighbourhood of Tangier. There was nothing in his outward appearance
to distinguish him from any other Moor: he went away unceremoniously,
followed by a single attendant. The master of the house served me
with coffee himself, and fancying that I liked milk, went down to the
kitchen and brought up in his hands a basin of curds. Coffee is not in
use, but it was especially prepared for me as a Turkish compliment. The
coffee about which the French papers made so merry, as finding it all
ready at Isly, was no proof that Marshal Bugeaud was unexpected, but
the reverse.
The sellers of water use a little bell, which carries us back to
Canaan. The Jews had bells to their garments; bells are still used
in their synagogues, and ring every time the Bible is produced. The
bells of the Etruscans were not to the Roman taste. Bells did not
pass with Christianity from Judæa through Greece to Europe. In Greece
they are not in common use, and wherever they are found, are a modern
innovation. In all the primitive districts, a bar of metal, or a
sounding board, supplies their place; and a small one is beaten by the
hand through the streets, before matins and vespers. The Spaniards have
bells to their churches; but not, as the mode of ringing them shows,
derived from us. They strike them with the tongue, just as the Greeks
do their sounding board with the hammer, and a peal from the bells of
a Spanish town recalls a manufactory of steam-boilers, and a street of
coppersmiths. There is no indication of bells amongst the Arabs, nor in
any other ancient country: they belong to the Jews and Etruscans.
Barbary has furnished with caps the Western World. From the Atlantic
to the frontiers of Persia, a cap is known by no other name than
_Fez_. In Europe it goes by the name of _Tunis_ (_Bonnet de Tunis_),
in Morocco it is called _Shashia_. It is pointed like a sugar-loaf,
with a small blue tuft at the top. Throughout the East it is worn under
the turban. In Constantinople, now that they have dropped the turban,
they wear it large and full; but the Shashia of Barbary is precisely
that worn by the Flamens of Rome. With the slightest modification--and
a modification which is not at present unknown here--it becomes the
Phrygian cap. Phœnicia being the link between Phrygia[209] and Barbary,
the cap and its colour would seem to belong to Tyre. It is singular
that to the Easterns our head-dress should be the symbol of license,
while theirs to us is the emblem of liberty; and still more so to find
that both have come from a people who are the type of barbarism; for
Barbary has given hats to the women as well as caps to the men. These
hats are made of straw, like Leghorn bonnets, and with little tufts
of many-coloured silks: thence, probably, the metaphor of women being
crowns of glory to their husbands.
They have another usage which renders it more complete and distinct.
When I was first at Tetuan I met a brother of the Caïd, who
subsequently was ambassador at Paris. His haïk was over his head, but
he threw it off, and then came out a bald pate. Being the first time
that I had seen a shaved head in public,--I was very much astonished,
and inquired into the reason, and it was told me that _he was not
married_,[210] and in Barbary, is not permitted to put on a cap till
then. In the Sock at this place, I had subsequently seen men from the
interior with bald heads, and a rope of camel’s hair round them. It
is remarkable and picturesque, and suggests the idea of the crown of
thorns. It did not at the time occur to me, that the rope or band round
the head,--for I have afterwards seen it a band of platted palmetto
leaf--was the distinctive sign of the single, as the cap was of the
married, so that I cannot affirm it to be so: the usage may now,
indeed, have worn out. At all events, it is singular to find here the
fillet round the bare head, and the cap only worn after marriage, while
in the Highlands, there is the _snood_, or fillet, for the unmarried
girls, and the cap, or _much_ for the married woman. The Gaelic name
for the cap, is properly _carachd_ (cruch), but _much_ is common
north and south: now _much_ is a Hebrew word applying to some soft
and delicate but unknown substance.[211] It is supposed to mean silk;
the snood has always the epithet of “silken,” and a peculiar silken
kerchief completes the head-dress of the Jewesses of Barbary. The name
for the stuff has therefore been given to the dress when adopted by the
Galatean women in India, just as the name of the dress in the case of
cotton,[212] has been transferred to the substance.
In Solomon’s Song it appears that the practice of the Jews was for
the mother to crown the son on his marriage-day; but the word which
we translate crown, conveys also the idea of covering the head, or
putting a cap upon it. That some similar usage must have prevailed in
ancient Greece, or some rite been introduced amongst the Greeks with
Christianity, is shown in the expressions at present in use. Instead
of saying “He married such a one,” they say, “He _crowned_ such a one.”
In Servia the bride wears a crown, or rather, a cap of flowers, and she
preserves it--not the same flowers,--for a whole year.
The connection of the fillet and the snood, is rendered more probable
by that of the Shashia and the Highland bonnet. These are the two
kinds, the flat, (liena) and the point (viruch). The latter has been
nicknamed “Glengarry.” It owes its peculiarity to the slit; something
very like it may be seen in the tombs of Egypt. The flat one has now
generally got the addition of a chequered border, but that variation
was introduced by the Regent Murray. It is, however, still worn without
the border, and then it is a variety of the Shashia. It has preserved
the two original colours, though it has exchanged them, the bonnet
being blue, and the tassel red. Amongst the Basques it may be still
seen red with a tassel blue.
On my return home, I found the colonel of the regular troops, who
had come to pay me a visit. He was pacing the cancellaria; he was
smoking a cigar, and he was spitting on the floor:--I recoiled from
the triple abomination. I am perfectly aware that an Englishman will
see nothing extraordinary in the former two, as they would not be
so in himself, nor an American in the third. I supposed he must be
a renegade, but he was only an Algerian who had lived some time at
Gibraltar. Having served at Constantinople, he opened at once his
heart to me, and poured forth complaints against the Moors. No one
had shown him civility, and he could not even get a bath (there are
no public ones). This unburdening of his mind was followed by a flow
of spirits: he sent for his uniform, displayed it, dressed in it, and
then sate down to dinner. While seated on a chair at a table, with a
tumbler of wine in his raised hand, in walked two attendants of Mustafa
Ducaly, bearing the usual dish or tray of kuscoussoo. He was struck
mute and motionless; the untouched goblet was replaced on the table,
and presently he arose and withdrew.
The uniform which is to displace this ancient and magnificent costume,
is a caricature of us, as much as a scandal to the Moors; yet it is
paraded as a necessary condition of learning the use of arms. In the
last century, the Spanish army, indignant at the introduction of the
Prussian discipline, exclaimed, “With the old tactics we raised Charles
V. to the throne of Germany, and Philip V. to that of Spain; we put Don
Carlos on the throne of Naples, and conquered Parma and Oran:” no doubt
the argument was inconclusive. But to tell the Saracens that their
costume is unfit for military purposes, was reserved for the genius of
the nineteenth century. Shoe-strings at Versailles announced that the
revolution was accomplished; a neckcloth sealed the fate of the khans
of the Crimea; so button-holes at Rabat seem to presage, not that a
barrier is raised in Morocco to the French, but that the sceptre of
the Sheriffs is passing away.
Mehemet Ali’s uniform at least followed, while it disfigured, the dress
in use. This one is a complete change; the bare leg, the distinctive
mark of the Moor, has disappeared. The cap, their own original
shashia,--the peaked cap of liberty,--is, for “fashion’s sake,” changed
to the round shallow one of Egypt; cuffs and collars, the gracefulness
of which so struck Napoleon, when he saw Eastern clothing, are the
salient features of this tailoring invasion; which, after desolating
Spain, has now fallen upon Morocco. Tertullian, in his letter on the
“Toga and the Pallium,” ridicules the Africans of his day, for copying
from Italy a dress which the ancestors of those Italians had borrowed
from their own: what would he have said now?
The new uniform was of course of all sorts of tints and colours, from
chocolate to pink.
FOOTNOTES:
[200] Jamsamia.
[201] Deut. iv. 41-43.
[202] Ayala, p. 1333.
[203] Al Makbari, passing by Malta, exclaims, “That accursed island,
from the neighbourhood of which whoever escapes may well say, that he
has deserved favour;--that dreaded spot, which throws its deadly shade
on the pleasant waters of the Mediterranean--that den of iniquity and
treason, that place of ambush, which is like a net to circumvent the
Moslems that sail the seas!”
[204] “The regal power allotted to us makes us common servants to our
Creator; then of those persons whom we govern; so that, observing
the duties we owe to God, we distribute blessings to the world. In
providing for the public good of our states, we magnify the honour
of God, like the celestial bodies, which, though they have much
honour, yet only serve for the benefit of men. It is the excellence
of our office to be instruments whereby happiness is distributed to
the nations. Pardon me, sir, this is not to instruct; for I know I
speak to one of a more clear and quick sight than myself; but I speak
thus because God hath been pleased to grant me a happy victory over
some part of those rebellious pirates that have so long molested the
peaceful trade of Europe.”
[205] Bowden’s Life of Gregory VII., ii. 158.
[206] See Mahomedan Dynasties of Spain, pp. 74-381.
[207] “Now when the morning came, the Khaleefeh went into the saloon
(his sitting-room), and found the eunuchs stupified with _benj_. So he
awoke them, and, putting his hand upon the chair, he found not the suit
of apparel, nor the signet, nor the rosary, nor the dagger, nor the
handkerchief, nor the lamp; whereupon he was violently enraged, and put
on the apparel of anger, which was a suit of _Red_, and seated himself
in the council-chamber.”
[208] So in Spain, the men on entering the church drop the cloak from
the shoulder, and likewise when speaking to a superior. In Southern
Africa they bare the upper part of the body. The Abyssinian, as a sign
of respect, throws off his clothing to the waist.--_See the captives on
Egyptian monuments._
[209] The Phrygians were, I imagine, of the same race. They were
also called Brebers, and thence the Greek word _barbarians_, which
originally was no word of reproach, but designated that _other_ people
of Asia Minor (Phrygians, Mysians, Lydians, &c.), whom we are now
beginning to know in the marbles of Xanthus.
[210] “The young men,” says Marmol, writing in the middle of the
sixteenth century, “shave the head and beard until they are married,
when they allow the beard to grow, and the tuft of hair on the crown of
the head.”--_Africa_, vol. ii. p. 3.
“Men of all ranks and conditions,” says a writer at the beginning of
the last century, “are obliged to wear caps after they are married; and
till then all their youths, even the king’s sons themselves, commonly
go bareheaded. They wear no hair under their red caps (but are close
shaved), except a lock upon the top of their heads.”--_An Account of
Barbary_, p. 42.
[211] “Baal Aruc יצבנב ועלבו ךימ _Much Hebraice et vernaculo sermone
Bambace_. ךפ in materiâ vestium est mollior omnis lanæ “linique et
gossifii lanugo”.”--BOCHART, _Chan._ lib. i. ch. 45.
[212] תנתכ (Gen. xxxvii. 3), whence χιτών. Gaelic, _coot_, from which
the English _coat_, which never is of cotton.
CHAPTER III.
THE JEWS AND JEWRY IN RABAT.
December 7th.
The Cazaba, the fortress with the beautiful gate, has a separate
government, and is inhabited by a distinct people; a remnant of
a tribe, the Oudaïah, which, on the failure of the plans of the
Sultan against Clemcen, in 1832, was sacrificed to the public
indignation--against himself. They furnish an instance of the tenacity
with which these races, or rather families, cling to life. The shred
of the broken tribe settled in these ruins has still friends, as they
told me, but a long way off, in the desert beyond Timbuctoo. After the
revolution of Rabat, they were seized by the like fancy, when their
Caïd, apprehending mischief, took sanctuary in the tomb of a saint.
The Sultan, Spartan-like, would not violate it, but converted it into
a prison. Prisons, without doors or guards, were to be seen, in the
time of Muley Ismael; it being customary with him to order a culprit to
gaol, as with us an officer is put under arrest.
The beautiful quarter of the Cazaba had been offered to the Jews, but
refused, for fear of exposure in case of war. They selected the eastern
angle of the town nearest to the great tower, for the Jewry, and it
is impossible to imagine any thing more filthy. The narrow passages
between the houses are divided into heaps of dung, and holes of rats.
The first house I visited contained no less than fifty souls. It was
a hollow square with columns, and bright colours, and mosaics; with
fragments of Gothic fret-work and corridors; and so small and neat, and
so densely peopled with heads stuck out from every pigeon-hole above,
below, and around, that it was like a toy-shop or a piece of mechanism
brought on the stage, or a little gem theatre of itself. I defy the
most active and pains-taking imagination to picture to itself a Moorish
house; it is quite impossible to describe it, yet equally so to resist
making the attempt: I will, however, await a more fit occasion, or a
more congenial humour.
From the roof (for like that of Rahab at Jericho, it was built on the
city wall) we had a good view of the tower. On my expressing a desire
to go to it, they uttered exclamation on exclamation, and could not
have been more dismayed, had I proposed to them to wade to the dreaded
bar. They told me that a Jew, if he ventured into the grounds below,
would be shot like a duck or a dog, and that a Christian would fare no
better. There are nineteen places of, or rather rooms for, worship.
They do not use the word synagogue;--they say, Beth-el-Elim, House of
Knowledge. This carries these settlements to a period antecedent to the
Greek rule, when the term synagogue was introduced.
They are governed by a _Gistar_,[213] or council of twelve elders. The
sheikh collects the taxes; and for this purpose is aided by two Moorish
soldiers: he sends the refractory to the public prison. In every
Mussulman country which I have hitherto visited, the chiefs of tribes
are themselves responsible to the goab, and are imprisoned in case of
default: the people then pay to save them. Amongst the Brebers the Jews
wear arms, and dress like the rest: a Jew going there will not be able
to distinguish his co-religionists from the Mussulman. Each has his
patron, who resents an injury done to his Jew as if done to himself. So
recently as the beginning of the seventeenth century, there was a Jew
prince in the mountains of Ref.[214] An old Jew gravely assured me that
the river Sabation was near Tunis.
The difference of their treatment by the Moors may partly be the result
of their own manners: it could not be of ancient date. The Jews
invited the Moors over to Spain. On the growth of Gothic power, the
Jews and Moors were treated as one people: they were persecuted and
expelled together. They found refuge in Barbary, and preferred it to
any other country.
The Jewish ablutions consist in washing the hands and face. The water
is poured from a jug; the left hand performs the service to the right
as the most honourable, then the right does the same to the left. So
far it is the same as the Mussulman _abdest_, only it does not extend
to the feet, and is performed three times a day, while the Mussulman
repeats it five times. Soap is not used in the religious ablution of
either; but the Mussulman washes with soap, or gayule, in the morning,
and before and after each of his two meals. The Jew has to wash all his
body on Fridays, but without soap: this is no offset to the weekly bath
of the Mussulman, established by custom though not enjoined by law, and
repeated besides upon other occasions.
They have to take off their shoes in passing a mosque, which is not
without its influence on their apartments. No traveller in the East
can have failed to remark the establishments attached to the mosque
for purification, &c., or the cleanliness and peculiarities of the
corresponding parts of private houses. In washing, the Mussulmans
use only the left hand, and reserve the right pure for eating. The
Spaniard, Ali Bey, lost his life by breaking this rule: master as he
was of the language and the religious ceremonies, his _corns_ led to
suspicion of his origin. He was watched, and, being observed to use his
right hand in washing, when a Mussulman would not have used it, he was
at once proved to be an impostor feigning Islamism, and shot. I was
informed that the Jews are not more particular, and for the portions
of the house where water is constantly splashing about, they do not
use wooden pattens.[215] The relative position of two races living
intermixed, cannot fail to be influenced by their relative cleanliness;
and the contempt in which the Jews are held in the towns must, in part
at least, be owing to this cause.
The Jews of Barbary look down upon the Jews of Christendom,[216] whom
they call _Ers Edom_. A rabbi, referring to the conversion of the
rich, said, “We have only to undergo the temptations of poverty and
danger--they have to endure those of ease and wealth.”
They tax themselves for the Holy Land to the amount of one half their
tax to the Moorish Government. I saw one of the collectors from
Jerusalem, who told me that their people in Morocco amounted to one
million.[217]
The Jews are the only portion of the people not, therefore, subject
to the haratch, or poll-tax: _they do not pay it_. This fact entirely
confirms what I have said respecting the original conquest. The tax
now paid by the Jews is of modern introduction;[218] formerly, they
presented to the Sovereign a golden hen with twelve chickens in
enamelled work, and this was their quit-rent. At Tunis and Tripoli
they do so still. The vexations to which they are subject are of this
nature:--A son of the Sultan being resident here, and for a time really
the governor, sent to them a young lion to keep, directing that a
certain quantity of meat should be given him daily, and fixing four
hundred dollars as his weir geldt in case of death. The Jews supplied
him so plentifully, that he died of indigestion. The Prince then sent
a hyena, fixing six pounds of beef, “besides the bones,” as his daily
allowance, and settling his head-money at one thousand dollars: the
Jews began again by giving him ten pounds “besides the bones.” The
Prince was, however, soon after disgraced and imprisoned, and the Jews
since then have led a quiet life.
They are subject to blows from any one and every one, and the occasion
is afforded by every holy place, where the shoes have to be taken off.
Still, I have not remarked that they suffer much. Up to the present
time, I have not seen a Jew beaten or insulted, and I have witnessed
on several occasions their reception by Moors of the first rank, in
which it would have been impossible, but for the dress, to have known
the difference. Besides, the Moors are not proficients in the art of
“self-defence,” and could not plant a blow if they set about it.
At a Jewish marriage I was standing beside the bridegroom when the
bride entered: as she crossed the threshold, he stooped down and
slipped off his shoe, and struck her with the heel on the nape
of the neck. I at once saw the interpretation of the passage in
Scripture, respecting the transfer of the shoe to another, in case the
brother-in-law did not exercise his privilege.
The slipper in the East being taken off in-doors, or if not, left
outside the apartment, is placed at the edge of the small carpets upon
which you sit, and is at hand to administer correction, and is here
used in sign of the obedience of the wife, and of the supremacy of the
husband. The Highland custom is to strike, for “good luck,” as they
say, the bride with an old slipper. Little do they suspect the meaning
implied. The regalia of Morocco is enriched with a pair of embroidered
slippers, which are, or used to be, carried before the Sultan, as
amongst us the sceptre or sword of state.
This superstition of the old slipper reminds me of another. In the
Highlands the great festivity is the ushering in of the new year. The
moment is watched for with the utmost anxiety; every one then rushes
into the streets, with posset in hand, embracing whoever he meets,
and shouting “Huy meneh!” This word has puzzled the traveller and
antiquary; it was the very word which the Greeks repeated, no more
knowing its meaning than the Highlander: Hymenea or Hymeneu! and out of
which come, _Hymen_, Hymn, &c. _Meneh_ was Jesboal among the Sabeans,
from minah or minik, fortifications, the procession going round the
walls. _Men_ is habitation in Egyptian and Coptic--_minith_ contracted
to _met_, is the name for a village in Egypt; it is preserved in the
Highlands in _midden_. From this word come many names of places in
Spain, Italy, Africa, Greece, and Asia Minor. It gives the names to
founders, as Menes, Minos, Maon, &c.; thence are derived a multiplicity
of the terms in common use,--manes, ammunition, mansion; manitoni,
month, maniac, &c., and of course the words in Greek and Latin, through
which they have reached us. Minoïa Gaza meant the Walled Gaza.
The Sabbath commences on Friday evening, when the shadow ceases, or
when three stars can be seen, and lasts to the same period of Saturday.
During these hours the Jew cannot spread an umbrella; it would be
pitching a tent:--he cannot mount on horseback; it would be going a
journey:--he cannot smoke; it would be lighting a fire:--he cannot
put one out, even if it caught the house:--he cannot buy or bring any
thing, nor speak of any worldly concern, nor break the seal of a letter.
The most remarkable practices are the Phylacteries and the mystical
garments. As to the first, I had hoped here to find some traces of
an earlier origin than that which is assigned to it--the Babylonian
Captivity; but was disappointed. The Phylacteries are not as our
Guercinos and Rembrandts make them,--a scroll of parchment habitually
paraded on the forehead. They are small boxes covered with leather,
containing passages from Exodus and Deuteronomy,[219] bound by long
narrow straps, one upon the forehead, and another upon the left arm, at
the time of prayer. The box is placed on the forehead as the seat of
the senses, and upon the arm nearest the heart, as the seat of life.
The strap is twisted seven times round the arm, three times round the
hand, and three times round the second finger. Two peculiar knots are
used for tying them, one to represent Dalif, and the other Ud. The
Mazonza (Mystery of the Covenant) is a small roll of parchment with the
same passages put in a piece of cane and nailed to the door-post, on
the right side as you go out.
The Phylactery, and the Mazonza are to the Jews what amulets are to
the Moors; with, however, this difference, that they protect against
sin as well as against evil. One of the Talmudists writes:--“Whoever
has Phylacteries on his head, Mazonza on his door, and fringes on his
garment, is assured that he will not sin; for it is written, ‘And the
threefold cord is not easily rent.’”[220]
The mystical vestments have a very different interest, and are so
connected with the costume of this country that I shall reserve this
subject till I come to the Moorish haïk. The following passage from the
_Baal Haturim_, expresses the preservative influence of these usages
upon the Jewish people:--
“Israel is son of the Holy King, for they are all marked by Him, in
their bodies, with the sacred mark (circumcision); in their garments by
robes of merit (Taleth and fringes); on their heads, by the Phylactery
boxes with the name of the Lord; in their hands by the sacred straps;
in their houses by the Mazonza. They are marked in every thing that
they are the sons of the most High Being.”
The indifference of the Jews to apostacy may seem incompatible with the
instance I have quoted in a former chapter: age makes the difference.
The Moors are not doctrinal: they possess blandishments. The Jews do
not fear them as contending with age, but as seducing youth; and their
instinct appears, alike in yielding in the one case, and resisting in
the other. They are gainers in both, for in the one they would lose by
apostacy, in the other by martyrdom.
I have several times visited the wife of the renegade, and the mother
of the Jewish boy. Speaking the Spanish of the sixteenth century as
the Jews of Barbary do, she recalled the condition of the Jews in
Spain, as the fate of her husband and child did something of the cause
of their expulsion. The peninsula, which did not share in the frenzy
of the Crusaders, remained a stranger to the religious fanaticism
which resulted from them. At the time when the Jews were proscribed
throughout the rest of Europe, they were, in Spain, the favourites of
monarchs, princes, and rulers--they were possessors of land--they had
most of the wealth and commerce of the different kingdoms in their
hands, and appear to have been twice as numerous as their forefathers
when they entered the Holy Land.[221] Then did the persecutions here
assume a savage character unknown elsewhere.
No cause has been assigned for the sudden and bitter spirit of
persecution which, at so late a period, arose against them. It may
have taken its rise in their being the fiscal agents for king, bishop,
monastery, and proprietor. First assailed from social animosities,
their manner of screening themselves (which was afforded in no other
country) aroused the inextinguishable hatred of the Christians. That
part of their history, suggested by circumstances before me, is their
facility in receiving baptism, then, of course, relapsing; and there
can be no doubt that many of these nominally conforming Christians, and
their children and descendants, filled every grade of the priesthood,
and occupied the episcopal thrones of Spain. Out of this again grew the
Inquisition, the most artful instrument of despotic power, and which,
in Europe, has been mistaken for a religious institution. Finding
that conversions were worthless, the proof of apostacy was sought in
the traces of blood. The processes of the Inquisition were afterwards
imitated by Parliament in England, when, fabricating a church by-law,
it framed articles to catch consciences, as it now does resolutions to
catch votes. The two great events are the emancipation from bondage,
and the conquest of a territory. Promises, rights, obligations, and
commandments, are all understood with reference to these. The stranger
within their gates was to obey the commandments. He partook of
necessity in certain ceremonies: he might at his option be admitted to
all, unless excepted, like the Philistines, Amalekites, &c., because of
historical events. Hence the difference with Mussulmans and Christians,
whose bond is wholly religious, and who aim at extinguishing all
distinctions derived from birth and race. The Jews having no idea of
converting others, estimate differently from us an apparent conformity
with the creeds of the people among whom they sojourn.[222]
The Jews have in common with the Mussulmans everything like
doctrine--the unity of the Godhead--the attributes of God--the
inspiration of the Sacred Books, the Creation, the scheme of
Providence, the prophets on earth, the chosen people, the law of Sinai
and of Horeb, the ceremony--the abhorrence of idolatry. There is
nothing the Jew believes that the Mussulman does not believe; there
is no ceremony the Jew performs that the Mussulman does not respect,
or meat that he prepares, which the Mussulman cannot eat.[223] The
passage, therefore, from Judaism to Islamism appears easy. It was
amongst the Jews that Islamism first and most rapidly spread: fifty
thousand were converted in one day, yet in its subsequent stages it has
been by them most uncompromisingly resisted. Millions of Christians
have become Mussulmans; of the Jews, no influx has taken place. I
know but of two cases of apparent conformity: the one is a tribe at
Thessalonica, who are called the Changed (Dunmeh). The other a tribe
in Suz, also known by the name of the Changed.[224] In both cases they
live as a distinct race; do not intermarry with the Mussulmans; and,
though enjoying the privileges of Islamism, are not looked upon by the
Jews as renegades.
The father of the boy whose story I have told, professed Islamism to
escape popular vengeance, aroused by the extortions of a governor at
Dar el Baida, whose agent he was. He nevertheless continued to live in
the Jews’ quarter with his wife and child: instead of bringing up the
child in his new faith, he sedulously inculcated on him the observance
of the law. The Jews seem to have looked upon him as one who had
incurred a misfortune. His Islamism was rather a disease, for which he
had to be pitied, than an apostacy for which he was to be abhorred; and
as the Jews took no offence at his religious profession, so the Moors
took none at his domestic habits.
The Mussulmans accept the practices of the Jews, but not so the latter.
Both cut the throats of animals, and allow “the blood to run like
water on the earth;” but the Mussulman does not inspect the bowels of
the ox or the sheep to determine whether it be _kaser_ (imperfect)
or _tarefa_ (forbidden); he does not, before and after the operation,
observe whether there be a flaw or jag in the knife. He does not
examine whether the windpipe of the animal be completely severed--he
does not abstain from “seething the kid in its mother’s milk;” that is,
from mixing meat, or the juice of meat, in the same dish with butter,
or from eating the internal fat. The food, therefore, of the Mussulman,
is rejected by the Jews, even to the dishes from which they have eaten.
The great obstacle to their amalgamation with the Mussulmans is the
character of Christ. In the Mussulman system Christ is the Spirit of
God, and is to be the Judge of the world: this, and the recognition of
the Gospel by the Mussulmans, is the stumbling block in their path, and
hence the common expression, “A Jew must become a Christian before he
can be a Mussulman.”
The Jew in Barbary appears to me more Jewish than elsewhere. The burden
on him is greater, and religious support less. They are Sadducees,
if I am to judge by the conversations I have had with some; and have
no idea of believing anything. In proportion to the association of a
system of religion with domestic matters is it enduring. Those of Menu
and Confucius stand, while the more theoretic one of Zoroaster has
passed away. That of Menu presents not one, but a hundred different
examples; for as many castes as there are, so many systems may there
be said to be, and these are all based on injunctions respecting food
and ceremonial. Confucius’s system is the simplest form of natural
religion, and the purest rule of morals: it has no superstition, no
priesthood, no castes, no doctrines--whence then its durability? Its
basis is the ceremonial of society. It has minutely regulated the forms
of intercourse and the mode of salutation of the nearest relatives.
Judaism in Barbary is not propped up by belief, nor is it by etiquette;
but chiefly, I should say, by _cookery_. In this respect they are under
constant restraint; ever linked to the race, and disjoined from all
others. With what pleasure must they reach a Jewish house or quarter,
after travelling for days or weeks, unable to taste almost any food
that is to be got; to solace themselves with a cup of wine, or to
partake of their own much-loved and not despicable Dafina!
Who has not heard of the olla podrida--to what corner of the earth
has its fame not reached? The honour belongs, nevertheless, to the
Jews: the Spaniard has only copied and disfigured. The original is
a remarkable specimen of human ingenuity, which has constructed
a culinary go-cart for the Hebrew conscience, and reconciled the
Israelite’s predilections with his scruples. He is forbidden to make or
touch fire on the sabbath; he desires to have a hot breakfast, dinner,
and supper on that day; and he obtains these meals without infringing
that law. He has invented a fire, which, without mending or touching,
will last over the twenty-four hours, and a pot which will furnish
out of its single belly, a whole meal, and three meals in the day
perfectly cooked in the morning, and not overdone at night. This is the
_Dafina_,[225] and the day on which all cooking was forbidden, has, _in
consequence_ of the prohibition, become the feast-day of the Jews.
In these countries, kitchen-ranges and hot tables are unknown. It
is the practice to make as many fires as there are dishes to be
simultaneously cooked. Those who have served in India understand
how soon a few holes are made in the ground, and how speedily a
multiplicity of pans are simmering over them. This tent practice is
here preserved in doors, and little earthen pots, called _nafi_,
constructed so as to allow draught, contain the charcoal, and on these
the pots are set to boil. In preparing the Dafina, the first thing is
the build of the charcoal in this small fire-pan, to make it burn slow
and last long. This is managed by four layers of charcoal in lumps, and
charcoal pounded. It is lighted on the Friday about four hours before
sunset. The ingredients are successively put in: the last just before
the Sabbath commences. The whole is first made to boil, then the fire
is reduced by the stratification I have mentioned.
_Ingredients._--Grabangos, potatoes, (English and African), eggs, beef,
rice, marrow, rasped biscuit, parsley, marjoram, nutmeg, pepper, salt,
and sometimes neat’s feet and sweetbreads.
_Produce._--First course.--_Top._ Eggs in the shell. _Bottom_, stewed
potatoes, sweet and common.
Second course.--_Top._ Rice and marrow sausages. _Middle._ Boulli.
_Bottom._ Meat sausages.
Third course.--One large dish of stewed Grabangos.
_Recipe._--The grabangos are an excellent vegetable when well cooked,
but require great care. They must be first steeped several hours with
wood ashes. They are put in the pot first, as soon as the water has
boiled; next the eggs in the shell; next the meat sausages; then the
meat; after that the rice sausages, and last of all the potatoes: water
equal to one-third of the rest.
_Meat Sausage._--Beef chopped very fine, fat (not of the entrails, but
pared from the muscle), marrow, rasped biscuit, the seasonings above
enumerated, and eggs to bind.
_Rice Sausage._--The rice is parboiled. It is then mixed with the soft
fat from the muscle, the same seasoning but not so strong, and the
binding of white of egg.
In large families the dish contains sometimes thirty or forty pounds of
beef, four dozen eggs, and eight sausages made of the largest entrails
of the bullock. Potatoes are of modern introduction, but the sweet
potato is an ancient produce of the country. The English potato is
called _Roman_, as coming from Europe.
FOOTNOTES:
[213] At Tangier the body of elders is called Mahamad; the members
composing it, Yehedeems,
President, Parnaas,
Reader, Haezan,
Treasurer, Gisbar,
Sacristan, Saamus,
Deean (Judge).
[214] “Muley Arshid proceeded to a district called ‘The Mountain of
the Jew,’ because a Jew governed there, and because the Brebers, whom
he subjected to the law, respected him as their sovereign. After
spreading terror through the country, he massacred the Jew as unworthy
of commanding Mahometans, seized on his wealth, and rewarded his
troops.”--CHENIER, vol. ii p. 122.
[215] In the towns of Morocco a primitive mode of _trapping_ is in use,
to prevent the entrance of the effluvia from drains and cess-pools.
The orifice is small, and a stone is fitted to it, and slipped off
and on. It is the closest application in a city of the injunction of
Deuteronomy xxiii. 12, 13, which the Moors rigidly follow, when they
are in the country.
[216] Country of the _Erse_, that is, the Celts. _Erse_, however,
like _Scot_, is peculiar to the clans. I shall revert to this term in
tracing their wanderings.
[217] Rating by the taxes they pay, the town population is only 74,000.
DUCATS.
Rabat, population 4000 1000
Salee 500
Tangier 1000
Tetuan 3000
Fez 5000
Mequinez 3000
Mogadore 3000
Morocco 500
Arzila 500
Larache 1000
------
18,500
======
Numerous agricultural tribes of them are settled in the Atlas.
[218] It amounts to about half a dollar. At Tangier they were formerly
assessed 2000 ducats; the half was remitted when the dragomans of the
different consuls, who were the wealthiest men of the tribe, were
exempted from taxation.
[219] The passages are, Exodus xiii. 1, 10, 11, 16; Deut. vi. 4-9; and
Deut. xi. 13-21.
[220] Eccles. iv. 17.
[221] See calculation in Lindo’s “Jews of the Peninsula.”
[222] An Englishman at Gibraltar has recently become a Jew, and they
seem to have invented some strange process of admission, and subjected
him to a total abstinence from food during seven days. He gave up a
petty office he held in the police, which required him to work on
Saturday.
[223] The Mussulman is indeed enjoined by the Koran to eat without
asking questions whatever is offered to him by _a Christian_, as well
as a Jew, but this they do not always practise.
[224] “In Terjgient there is a people called the Medjehrahs, of Jewish
extraction, who, to escape death (?) embraced Islamism. They have the
peculiar Jewish features, and the Arabs say, their houses have the
Jewish smell. They live in quarters set apart for themselves, but they
do not intermarry: they are scribes and merchants, but are never raised
to the office of Caïd or Imaum. They do not observe Friday as the
Sabbath.”--DAVIDSON’S _Journal_.
[225] Whence the Greek Δεἴπνον.
CHAPTER IV.
THE BAÏRAM.
December 10th.
This morning Mustafa Ducaly sent me, by his man Selam, a “Dollond,”
and a ladder, telling me to run to Hassan to see the Baïram, which was
to be held on the downs to the south of the city, without the Caïd’s
permission, and a guard was enjoined not to cross the threshold.
Authorities and soldiers had all deserted the city. Selam sallied out
in search of some one who should pass for a guard, and found a soldier
belonging to Tangier who was familiar with Europeans. After passing
the gate, I found myself for the first time at liberty to roam, and
could not resist the temptation; so, instead of turning to the left
towards the tower, we turned through the gardens to the right, hoping
to get through the second wall, or to see the Baïram from it. We made
for a huge gate, but on reaching it found it barred. The wall was
about forty feet high, and in good repair: there were no staircases.
All chance of getting a glimpse of the ceremony was now lost, and we
rambled along through the gardens; but the ignorance of our elected
guards, strangers, like ourselves, as to what was or was not _taboo_,
was worse than the severity of our regular keepers. They were at
every turn, doubting, fearing, warning, objecting. Our course was like
that of a vessel feeling her way over sand-banks: one moment it was
“starboard,” the next “hard-a-port.” “There it is bad,” would our pilot
exclaim, and ever and anon we were laid all aback, with the “breakers
ahead” of “Saint’s Tomb.” We worked on till we came to a gate in the
wall facing the east, and issuing forth, beheld another city. This
could be no other than the Shallah, of which we had heard so often,
and from which spring-water was daily brought. Neither Christian nor
Jew is allowed so much as to approach it. Profiting by the occasion,
I hastened on before my companions’ fears could rally, or their
remonstrances be urged.
The gate, or rather barbican (for the Moorish word is required to
convey the Moorish thing), is peculiarly constructed and ornamented.
The arch is the horse-shoe, pointed like the Gothic. The vivid colours
and stuccos which elsewhere adorn the interiors here, as of Babylon and
Ecbatana, are displayed outside;--the style is quaint and rich.
This city was in ruins before those buildings arose, which are
considered the models of that style: the date of its fall is that of
the erection of Westminster Hall,--itself the work of a pupil of the
Saracens. The walls of the present city of Rabat, which signifies camp,
stand on the lines of the camp of Jacob when he was besieging it.
Whilst I was making a sketch of the gate, the Moors came up beseeching
me on their account not to enter; they proposed to go in and report:
they soon came out, exclaiming, “Holy Place;” “Saints’ Tombs.” I cut
the matter short by passing the portal and ascending a stair that led
to the top of the gate. The prospect thence was enchanting: the ground
broke away immediately in front as we looked eastward, the masses
of red ruin cresting the heights on both sides, and running down to
the river. Beyond spread the plain of emerald green, with the river
meandering through it, and the landscape closed with long waves of
sandhills of olive green on their summits and red and yellow on their
broken faces. I saw not a soul, and was making myself merry with the
fears of our conductors, when the alarm was sounded by the dogs, and
presently two old men rushed at us, frantic with rage;--fortunately
they had no arms.
Of our Moors, one only retained the faculty of speech. He endeavoured
to explain that I had the Sultan’s permission, on which one of the old
men (the other had gone to raise the hue and cry) became wilder than
before. He would shoot the Sultan; the Sultan dared not give an order
there, nor enter the place except with bare feet. The soldier threw
his cap on the ground, knelt down, and jumped up; tried to kiss his
head, his hands, his feet, his clothes. I left them so engaged, quietly
returning towards Rabat. At the gate Selam overtook me, calling out,
“Run, run! wild man gone for gun.” We had a fair start, but I could
not condescend to hurry beyond a steady pace: Selam relieved himself
by mumbling dismal sounds close to my ear, in his broken English: “You
bring me and other Moors into trouble; I do your bidding instead of
master’s and Sultan’s, and be at Baïram in my new clothes. I be shot
outside like a dog, or flogged inside like a Jew.” At every moment we
expected to meet a crowd returning, for the old fanatic, on reaching
the town, could raise the people upon us in an instant. However, the
distance was soon traversed, and before he hove in sight we had reached
the gate. It was locked! We then hastened along the wall to the right,
expecting to get in by the next gate--there was none! We came to the
steep edge of the river, and there we were completely hemmed in. At
that moment, our pursuers, now consisting of several armed men, came in
sight; when a boat with soldiers and horses shoved up close in shore,
to drop down the current to Salee.
Our Moors hailed them; they pushed in; we scrambled down, and leaping
on board, shoved off, and were out of hail--or at least speaking
distance--before our pursuers reached the bank. They durst not
fire, and there being no other boat, they ran back to get in by the
Baïram-gate, so as to intercept us before we could be re-shipped
back from Salee. In the meantime, we espied a boat belonging to a
Portuguese schooner: we hailed it, got on board of it, and were
speedily landed and housed at the consulate. The soldier made off to
Salee, vowing never to set eyes on Rabat again, and Selam, enjoining
profound secrecy, hastened to his master, whom he found with the Caïd.
Scarcely had he told his story when the people from Shallah appeared.
Fortunately, everybody was busy with his own affairs, and the Caïd
succeeded in appeasing all; but this evening there has been great
excitement in the city, and I am told that I shall have to be conveyed
privately out of Rabat. However, like the Russian expedition of 1833 to
the Bosphorus, to the satisfaction of having got into, I have to add
that of having got out of, Shallah.
What an extraordinary thing to see a people thus ignorant, and yet
thus devoted to the vestiges of their antiquity: sanctifying spots
untenanted for scores of generations--taking the shoes from off their
feet when they press them, and ready to sacrifice to the manes of the
departed the stranger who disturbs their long repose!
The Baïram has passed off most happily: the day was splendid; the
gathering and the presents satisfactory to the Emperor. He condescended
to tell the people of Rabat that they were wholly forgiven; that the
choice they had made, proved them to be wise and just in all their
ways; that he had not ratified their choice because they had made it,
but because it was the best that could be made; and that, though young
in years, their Caïd was old in wisdom. The Sultan has also released
a former governor of Salee, and sent a pardon to a son of the late
Sultan, his uncle, who has been four years in irons at Mequinez. The
disgrace yesterday of Hamuda has proved a golden opportunity for him.
The firing of his regiment with two pieces, was quicker than that of
the other with their ten. The Sultan went up to him and complimented
him, saying, “God prosper you;” upon which all the grandees did the
same. Mustafa has also come in for his share of good things. Eight
field-pieces which he had offered as a present, were refused as such,
in these words; “I want you to become fat and not lean, because you
are my friend, and now I make you the head and master of the merchants
of Morocco.” The ladies of the harem have not, however, been equally
scrupulous, and have made no difficulty in receiving the keepsakes
he has brought them from Europe, consisting, among other things, of
dresses of brocade at twenty guineas a yard.
The afternoon was spent in receiving visitors, among whom was the
admiral of Salee in a gorgeous Algerine costume. He is also captain
of the port and pilot, and the representative of the first family of
the empire, Muley Idris, its first founder, who is also one of the
chief _living saints_. Four of this family are bound to compliment the
Emperor on the Baïram; they had come for that purpose, carrying with
them the offerings of the capital. Two of these accompanied the saint,
and presented the strongest contrast that could be imagined with the
fanatics from whose balls and daggers we had just before escaped. They
were affable, curious, facile, and lively: they had never seen the
sea before, and admired it like children. They explained their visit
by saying they wanted to know what a Christian was like, never having
seen one. When I told them about Leo Africanus and El Edressi, the
geographers who on the fall of the dynasty had taken refuge in Sicily,
where his history was written, they were exceedingly delighted. They
invited me to Fez; and when I spoke of the difficulties of a Christian
going there, they declared they would answer for me with their heads.
They spend to-morrow in attendance on the Sultan; the day following
they are to repeat their visit here.
I must not omit another important personage, no less than the Sultan’s
buffoon: this, indeed, is the third visit I have received from him, and
each time he has carried away two or three bottles under his girdle,
besides one in his sack. He has a good voice, and a wonderful stock
of strange songs, and is an admirable mimic. I have heard him mingle
together the muezzin chant, from the minaret, with the cries of a
European vessel getting under weigh. He is a compound of the zany,
mimic, minion, bard, and bacchanal.
The strangeness of this people, instead of wearing off, increases with
acquaintance--so much ease and facility at one moment, is followed
by unexpected and unaccountable difficulties. The dramatic, not the
speculative, man is strong in them. What can be more surprising, at
this moment, than their total forgetfulness of the existence of France:
how would it shock the pride of the victor to find that the defeated
have already forgotten Isly and Mogadore! When I saw to-day the dense
mass of the tens of thousands tranquilly performing their Baïram, I
thought of the Greeks celebrating their Olympic games with the Persians
at Thermopylæ.
However primitive Morocco may be in its customs, it has to be borne
in mind that the convulsions which accompanied the rise, and more
particularly the fall, of the Beni Marinc dynasty, and the almost total
subjugation of the country by Portugal, and then the civil war (and
that ensued before the establishment of a Sheriffean dynasty), reduced
this region, in a period of two generations, to an almost chaotic
state. What shipwreck must there have been of old usages! A few traces
appear in the three or four meagre works written on Africa in the
sixteenth century.
The town of Salee, as described by Leo Africanus, would scarcely be
recognised in the city which lay before me, of which I could measure
the dimensions and observe the contents, though I could not pass the
gates.
“It is most pleasantly situate upon the sea-shore, within half a mile
of Rabat, both which town and the river Barugrag separateth in sunder.
The buildings of this town carry a show of antiquity on them, being
artificially carved and stately supported with marble pillars. Their
temples are most beautiful, and their shops are built under large
porches; and at the end of every row of shops is an arch, which (as
they say) is to divide one occupation from another. And to say all
in a word, here is nothing wanting which may be required, either in
a most honourable city, or in a flourishing commonwealth. Moreover,
here resort all kinds of merchants, Christians, and others. Here
the Genoese, Venetians, English, and Low Dutch used to traffic. The
inhabitants do weave most excellent cotton. Here, likewise, are made
very fine combs, which are sold in all the kingdom of Fez; for the
region thereabout yieldeth great plenty of box and of other wood fit
for the same purpose. Their Government is very orderly and discreet,
even until this day; for they have most learned judges, umpires, and
deciders of doubtful cases in law.
“This town is frequented by many rich merchants of Genoa, whom the king
hath always had in great regard, because he gaineth much yearly by
their traffic. The said merchants have their abode and diet partly here
at Salla, and partly at Fez, from both which towns they mutually help
the traffic, one of another.”
The change in the disposition of the people is not less marked than
that in the character of the city. Little would one suspect to-day,
that two centuries ago, Christians were thus hospitably received and
kindly treated in Salee. He continues:--“In the year of the Hegira,
670, it was surprised by a Castilian captain, the inhabitants being put
to flight, and the Christians enjoying the city. * * * And albeit this
town was in so few days recovered from the enemy, yet a world it was
to see what a wonderful alteration both of the houses and of the state
of government happened. Many houses of this town are left desolate,
especially near the town walls; which, albeit, they are most stately
and curiously built, yet no man there is that will inhabit them.”
Dec. 11th.
I have seen several of the renegades. The French are the only ones
who have any knowledge by which they may be useful. One came to talk
about a project of a wire suspension bridge over the Seboo. He remained
nearly the whole day, and detailed his life and adventures during the
dozen years he has been in this country. Several of them have been with
Abd-el Kadir. They spoke in high terms of the presumed succession of
the Sultan, and of some other leading men. With these few exceptions,
their discourse was most unfavourable to the Moors, whom they called
cowards and braggarts. In their battles the loss never exceeded twenty
men; and a single French regiment might march to Morocco. The Arabs,
they said, were divided amongst themselves; but the Brebers were still
more so; and the art of Government here consisted in setting one tribe
against another, and one chief against another. Their remedy was
disciplined troops. If the Emperor, said one of them, had had five
thousand disciplined men, he never would have received M. Roche.
I said, that if the Emperor had known how to transact a matter of
business, he never would have been insulted by the presence of that
person, and that one hundred thousand men would not give him that
knowledge. I instanced Spain and Algiers as evidence of the power of
resistance of a country destitute, not of regular troops only, but of
a Government. I added, that a regular army facilitated invasion, but
not defence, and generally proved the means of rendering a people an
easy prey. Certainly, to put an army at the disposal of the Emperor of
Morocco would be the means of doing so.
Abd-el-Kadir was rated very low, and spoken of very little. The
Europeans admired him for his valour, enterprise, generosity, and
humanity; but did not respect his military judgment. They said that he
uselessly exposed men and tribes, threw away great opportunities, and
afforded to the French the means of extending their authority.
If Abd-el-Kadir had not been playing a game, at all events a game was
played in his person. He was necessary to the French military system of
Algiers. He is known to have been three times in their hands, and to
have been suffered to escape.
From one who had been for seven years the companion of Abd-el-Kadir,
I give the following incidents. After the destruction of the Turkish
Government, the most powerful chief was Mahmud Ben Ismael, the
descendant of the man who had first entered Oran on its evacuation
by the Spaniards. Abd-el-Kadir came next by his family and religious
character: differences arising between them, the latter had to fly, and
took refuge in Oran, asking the assistance of the French. They did not
neglect the opportunity to sow divisions between the tribes, and gave
him arms, ammunition, and twenty thousand dollars. With these means he
defeated his rival, who, in like manner, came to the French, and said,
“You have strengthened my rival against me; deal fairly now by me.”
They required that he should acknowledge himself the vassal of France;
but this proposal he rejected. Abd-el-Kadir from that time continued
at war with the French, till the treaty of the Tafna, by which the
French appeared to gain some show of title, but in reality invested
Abd-el-Kadir with a _quasi_ sovereign character.
The rupture of this treaty was occasioned by the violation of the
Emir’s territory by the Duke d’Aumale, when returning from Constantine.
He led the troops through passes which exposed them to be cut off, had
not treachery been at work. A French renegade had insinuated himself
into the confidence and affections of Abd-el-Kadir. This man stole the
seal of the Emir, and wrote letters to the Chiefs, requiring them to
allow the French to pass. A Jew, who in the pillage of the treasury of
Algiers had secured a quantity of jewels, and had, therefore, to fly,
and was in the deira, discovered the fraud. High words ensued in the
tent of the renegade: the conversation was carried on in French, and M.
Lascases, a French advocate, who, compromised in the affairs of July,
had taken refuge with Abd-el-Kadir, entered the tent to implore them
not to speak so loud. He thus became acquainted with the transaction.
(He afterwards came to Morocco.) The Jew was quieted, and induced
to remain and sup with the renegade. Next morning the renegade had
left, and in the tent the Jew was found dead. At Mascara the renegade
took one of Abd-el-Kadir’s people to accompany him, as if proceeding
somewhere by his orders. On arriving at the French posts, he clapped a
pistol to his companion’s ear and blew out his brains. He rejoined his
countrymen, and was immediately appointed to an important post in the
army of Africa.
The renegade whose opinions I have been reporting, saw the absurdity of
the attempt to change the national costume. The haïk and other clothing
of the horsemen might appear an embarrassment, though, in fact, it
was not so to them; but the sulam or bornoos of the foot soldiers was
a costume rather to be adopted by other nations than changed by the
Moors. The most interesting part of the conversation was the anxious
inquiries they made respecting the successes of the Circassians, of
which vague rumours had reached them through Egypt. One of these men
had been with the Aï Fatu, one of the most powerful tribes, numbering
thirty thousand horse. The Sultan has built several fortresses round
them, but the most of these they have taken and destroyed.
Their mode of attack is this. They allot certain portions of the wall
to the different tribes or families; they then advance simultaneously
on all sides, with bags and hurdles to fill up the ditch, and make
a bridge to the rampart. Many fall, but those who follow march on.
If any hang back, their wives are taken from them, and they are not
allowed afterwards to marry. Here is the Roman testudo, or perhaps the
origin of it. Their cry is, “Shields to the wall.” They shave their
beards.
Speaking of the difference between the Arabs and the Turks, this
story was told by one of the former. When Mahomet left this world, he
delivered to the Turks a standard, and to the Arabs a standard, telling
them that he should return in forty years to require it of them. Then
the Arabs took their standard and cut it into many pieces, and each
man put his piece by in his breast; but the Turks took care of the
standard, and, making a chest of cypress-wood, they put upon it forty
locks, and they laid in it the standard, and gave a key to each of the
elders of the forty tribes. At the end of the years Mahomet came to the
Arabs, and said: “Where is your flag?” and they all called out, “Here
it is--here it is!” and each man put his hand into his breast, but the
pieces could not fit; so Mahomet said to them, “Unworthy servants, the
empire is departed from you.” And then he went to the Turks, and said
to them, “Where is your flag?” They answered, “We have laid it by;”
and he said, “Bring it forth.” So they called the elders together,
but one was wanting. So he said to them, “This is a pretence, for you
have lost the flag;” and they said, “The elder is gone to look after
his flocks--an elder of the people cannot be wanting. Come again
to-morrow.” So Mahomet came the next day, and there were the forty
elders with the forty keys; so they opened the chest and brought forth
the flag; and Mahomet said, “Good and faithful servants, the empire is
taken from the Arabs and given unto you!”
CHAPTER V.
THE SULTAN: HIS COMMERCIAL SYSTEM.
Rabat, Dec. 12th.
I find it was not the Sultan who went to the mosque last Friday, but
his son. To-day I saw the real potentate overshadowed by the Sheriffean
umbrella. He wore a green sulam, with a white sash or turban bound
over it, which had a most singular effect. The umbrella was carried
by a horseman on his left. The umbrella is of the ordinary size, but
the spokes are straight. It is covered with crimson velvet, and has
a depending fringe or border. Two men carried before him long lances
upright, to spear on the spot, as I was told, whomever he might point
out for that purpose. I could distinguish through my glass his broad
Mulatto features, as he inclined right and left to the saluting crowd.
As for two Fridays he has not been to mosque, his appearance to-day,
and his look of health, have occasioned great rejoicings. Selam said
to me, “Moors not like English--look much to king.--English king die;
no troubles Gibraltar, Malta--Moorish king die; all cut one another’s
throats.”
Muley Abderachman has reigned twenty-three years. He had been employed
both as governor and minister, and was assiduous and incorruptible.
He was originally a merchant of Larache, where the loss of a cargo
first made him known to the late Sultan, his uncle, and he gave him,
in consequence, the government of Mogadore. His conduct in that post
induced the Sultan to appoint him his successor, as being worthier to
reign than any of his own sons. He was not, however, seated on the
throne without bloodshed, and the commencement of his reign was marked
with severity. His authority once established, his previous mildness
reappeared. He is fond of money, and no one ever knew better how to
gratify that taste; but his word is inviolable, and he is no less
orderly than upright in his commercial dealings, which extend to every
portion of his kingdom. Wise in small matters, he is foolish in great
ones; and his merits render tolerable, or his astuteness sustains, the
false and ruinous commercial system he has introduced.
The mountain Breber tribes recognise the authority, but do not admit
the interference, of the Sultans of Morocco. His power over the
tribes of the plain, whether Breber or Arab, apparently severe and
sometimes terrible, is unequal and precarious: when he punishes, it
is by abandoning the tribe to the vengeance of some neighbouring and
rival clan. Such a state of things seems to be as befitting for the
exercise of his talents, as his talents for adjusting them to his own
satisfaction.
Morocco is isolated from the world: on the west an unapproachable
coast; on the east and south an impassable desert. It has no
neighbours except the Regency of Algiers. Its standing policy was to
be _at war_ with Europe. Muley Ismael, visiting Tetuan, addressed the
body of council who had come to compliment him, in these words, “It
is my pleasure to be at war with all Christendom, except England and
Raguza.” Yet they made treaties with the merchants of the states with
which they were not figuratively, but really at war. M. Chenier, who
was French consul fifty years ago at Tangier, has written the best
work upon Morocco. He confined its foreign relations to Algiers; it
is with reference to that Regency, that he calculated its military
force. He esteems Morocco the weaker of the two, and in danger from
Algiers. The Turks had invaded Morocco from Algiers, and they once
placed a sovereign on the throne of Fez, but that was long ago.
Foreign relations had been to them a novelty, which they ought not to
be, seeing that the princes of this land formerly assumed the lofty
title of Emir al Moslemin; that they have never ceased to claim the
chieftainship of the Arab race, and have never condescended to sign
a treaty with the Sultans of Constantinople. Holding the Turks as
usurpers of the Caliphat, and intruders in Africa,[226] they stand in
an anomalous position: they are Sunis who opposed the claims of Ali,
and their royal house derives, or pretends to derive, its origin from
Ali. Muley Abderachman has, however, shown no sign, in dealing with
the foreign difficulties that have befallen him, of that dexterity
which he has evinced in domestic matters. In listening to the details
of his weakness and pusillanimity, as shown on recent occasions, I have
been reminded of Louis Philippe.[227]
The feature in the administration of this country, or rather reign, is
the private dealing of the Emperor with the merchants. He remits to
them duties, and makes loans of money without interest. He allows them
to export and import without paying the duties in ready money,[228]
and they go on in the face of an accumulating debt, speculating on
credit. The goods are bought and sold at what would be a loss, if the
taxes were accounted for; and when any one of them is unable to meet
his engagements, he has only to go to the Emperor and borrow, and
thus again heap up the mass of engagements, he never can meet. He is
encouraged by the knowledge, that the Emperor never calls a creditor
to account;--the settlement comes only on his dying day. It is not
trifling sums that are at stake. The debt of the English agent at
Mogadore, is between forty and fifty thousand pounds.
These concessions of credit, the loans of money and the granting of
permits, and monopolies, are managed, not with a view to the pecuniary
interests of the sovereign, but for political ends. By these means
he paralyzes all resistance to his illegal taxes on trade in the
cities whose business these imposts are considered to be. This ledger
management of a nation is an effort of genius worthy of Mehemet Ali.
The _fons malorum_, here as elsewhere, is the customs duties. They have
everywhere been introduced by evasion and fraud; for, until a people
is familiarised with them, they are too monstrous and wicked to be
argued about. In Mussulman countries the task has been more difficult
than with us, as there is no church property with which to bribe public
assemblies, and taxes on commerce are expressly prohibited by the
code at once of religion and government. A people so tenacious of old
customs as the Moors, and so little disposed to imitate Europe, were
not easily brought under on such a point, and their recent history
affords two instances of revolts occasioned by illegal taxation. The
first revolt was in 1774, when the principal citizens of Fez (an
unprotected city) thus addressed the Sultan, Sidi Mahomet:--
“The city of Fez means not to disobey, nor ever could so mean; but the
taxes laid on provisions, and the increase of duty on merchants, and
which the Mussulmans” (the term is analogous to “the country” with us)
“regard as contrary to custom and religion, were considerations that to
so great and so religious a prince might excuse the general murmur and
discontent.”
No punishments followed the suppression of this rebellion, and the
taxes were abandoned. “Snuff was farmed, and an _octroi_ placed on
commodities per load, as they enter and go out of towns, or pass
ferries; a stamp was put on woollen stuffs, and on all the trinkets
made by goldsmiths. The governors of the towns farm these taxes at a
fixed sum, by which they very seldom are gainers. These new imposts are
considered among the Moors as innovations, contrary to the spirit of
the Koran. These taxes produced a revolt at Mequinez in 1778, but it
was put down by the black guard of the Emperor.”
Chenier, whom I quote, distinguishes the revenues into ancient and
modern, the ancient being the tenths, the capitation tax (tribute) of
the Jews, the profits of coining, arbitrary impositions; the modern
being the obnoxious duties and _octroi_. He highly commends the
ancient system: the tithes he considers profitable to the Government,
and not onerous to the people (of course, he is mentally instituting
the comparison with Europe, because paid in kind.) “He who grows ten
bushels of corn pays one, without any retrospect or inquiry concerning
a more abundant harvest, which presents an example of justice among
barbarous states well worthy the imitation of the more civilized.”
The collection was easy, because, being united in bodies, they watched
each other, and prevented fraud. Being paid in kind, the Sultan had
magazines in the great provincial towns to store these revenues, and
sent to market the residue, after maintaining his palaces, soldiers,
and dependants; consequently, there were no currency troubles. The
present Sultan, by making the merchants his debtors, has converted
the guardians of common rights into his satellites; and finding his
account in remitting the payment of the customs, and allowing himself
to be defrauded of what we should esteem a legitimate revenue, he
has so far succeeded. Customs are looked upon as the affairs of the
merchants, and the merchants are all foreigners and infidels. Taxes
are then arbitrarily imposed on trade--monopolies are granted, and the
whole production of the country is paralysed and subjected to a foreign
influence, which they cannot indeed unravel, but against which there is
a deep and universal sense of reprobation. It is not from Europe that
they will learn the secret of the ancient well-being of so many states
and empires, which were great without parliamentary votes and political
economists.
FOOTNOTES:
[226] At the time of the treaty of Kaniordgi the Moorish Sultan,
however, addressed Louis XIV. on the danger to Europe of so powerful a
combination directed against Turkey.
[227] In the terrors and alarms which followed the treaty of July
1840, one of his ministers thus describes the scene at the council:
“Nous étions dix, et nous n’en savons pas plus l’un que l’autre,
et il y avoit le roi, qui n’en savoit pas plus que nous, et _qui
sang-lottait_.” (The above was written while Louis Philippe was still
held to be the “ablest man in France,” and the “wiliest politician in
Europe.”)
[228] Those who pay ready money have 25 per cent. discount allowed
them. This is not the form, but the substance of the tariff
regulations.
CHAPTER VI.
THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE IN RABAT.
The civil government of Rabat is vested in the Caïd, whose functions
I have already described. The financial officers are the _Emirs_ of
the custom-house, the chief of whom is called the _Administrador_, and
which, from that title, seems to have supplanted the original municipal
Government; the _Mehatzib_, an officer appointed to fix the price of
provisions, and to stamp goods publicly sold; and the _Nadir_, or
administrator of the Sultan’s property, which consists in the houses
and gardens he comes into possession of on the demise of his debtors,
by which means he has extinguished in part, and is in process of
extinguishing, the ancient rights and privileges of the town. There is
no confiscation in Rabat for any crime; but by the custom-house system
he is becoming the proprietor of all the property. The Nadir has from
these funds to pay the poor _Talebs_, or learned men, which absorbs
a great portion of the profits. There is a _Beit ul Mal_, or public
treasury. The judicial power belongs of right to the Caïd, or to him
who is next in dignity to the Caïd. The office is well known in Turkey,
but here he belongs to no independent body, and exercises but slender
influence: it has not, however, been always so. Mr. Addison, a chaplain
of Charles II., and some time at Tangier during the English occupation,
thus speaks of what he calls “The Moors’ Church Government.”
“They have in every cavila (or county) an Alcalib or high-priest, in
whose nomination the secular power doth not at all interpose, for
he is chosen out of and by the Alfaques, and invested with power to
depose or otherwise chastise the offending clergy. Immediately upon
this arch-priest’s election, he is possessed of the Giamma Gheber,
or Great Church, wherein upon every Friday he expounds some text of
the Alchoran, unto which exercise he always goes accompanied with the
chief personages of the neighbourhood. This eminent churchman is seldom
seen in public but at this exercise. For, to make himself the more
reverenced, he affects retirement,[229] spending his hours in the study
of the Alchoran, and in resolving such cases as the laity present him,
who esteem his resolutions as infallible; and this, with a careful
inspection into the deportment of the inferior clergy, doth constitute
the office and government of the Alcalib. As for his revenues, they
are suitable to his condition; and as to his life, it is austere and
reserved, he affecting a peculiar gravity in all his carriage. Every
Alcalib has his distinct diocese, out of which he has no power, so that
the Alcalib of Beni Aros hath nothing to do in Minkél, for every one is
absolute in his own cavila.”
Mr. Addison gives the following interesting details respecting their
judicial proceedings:--
“Here’s no intriguing the plea with resolutions, cases, precedents,
reports, moth-eaten statutes, &c.; but everything is determined
according to the fresh circumstances of the fact, and the proof of
which is alleged. The testimony of two men, if they are of known
sobriety, is sufficient to make good the allegation, but there must be
_twelve_ to ratify it, if their conversation be suspected.
“In taking the testimony of a Moor upon oath, the servant of the
Alcaldee carries the deponent to the Giamma or Mosch, where, in the
presence of the Alcaldee, he swears by that holy place that he will
declare all that he knows concerning the matter to which he is to give
evidence; but oaths are never administered to any in another man’s case
but such as are suspected persons, and they are usually numbered among
the rogues and faithless, who have no credit without them. Besides, it
is never permitted for a man to swear in his own case but for want of
witnesses, or when the accusation is of that nature that the impeached
cannot otherwise receive purgation: as for the Christian and Jew, they
are suffered to give testimony according to the rites and customs of
their own religions, but the Moors are not forward to put them upon
this trial, as doubting that fear of punishment should tempt them
to perjury; and those who are thereunto accessory (according to the
Moresco principle), are involved in the guilt.
“In pleas of debt it is required that the reality of the debt be
first manifest, which being done before the Alcaldee, he signifies
it to the Almocadem of the cavila where the debtor lives, who, upon
his signification, commands a present payment to be made; but if the
debtor refuse, or be unable, to give the creditor satisfaction, the
Almocadem remits him to the alhabs or prison, which is always near the
Almocadem’s house, where he stays till bailed thence by sufficient
sureties, or personally pays the debt.”
The following on the same subject is from the ponderous records of the
Franciscan Friars:--
“It is customary for all the chief priests and doctors of law to
assemble with the other great people of the town, and for the Mufti or
Cadi to read aloud to the Emperor a short recapitulation of some of
the laws of the Koran, which direct that he shall preserve the empire,
administer speedy justice, protect the innocent, destroy the wicked;
and so far from countenancing and keeping near his sacred person any
adulterer, that he shall punish adultery, prevent the exportation of
corn and provisions to the prejudice of the people, tax provisions
according to their plenty or scarcity, and forbid usury to be exercised
towards the poor, which is an abomination before God. He is told that
if he breaks these articles, he shall be punished as he ought to
punish others.”
These extracts will show that Morocco is not now without some rule for
the present, and some respectable vestiges of the past. There are other
functionaries of the city, whose origin ascends to an earlier period
than the Mussulman times. They are public notaries, called Edules;
no doubt the Roman edile. Before them sales are effected, and deeds
executed.
The present practice I shall give as I have been able to collect it.
The initiatory steps are by documents drawn up by _Edules_--these have
the conjoint characters of petition, affidavit, and verdict (in the
old sense). The Plaintiff’s case is stated--he signs it. His witnesses
then sign, if they agree with his statement of facts, or state in what
they differ. Then follow signatures as vouching for the Plaintiff or
Defendant, as the case may be, the witnesses, or the other signees.
This act is then verified by the Edules, as to the genuineness of the
signatures. Furnished with this document, the petitioner proceeds
to the judge, the governor, or the Sultan. He is met by a counter
document. The Judge, after perusing these, proceeds to try the case
by oral testimony, and without intervention of legal practitioners.
The document is called _El Bra_, which is very near, _Brief_.[230]
This is evidently the origin of the Spanish mode of procedure by
_Escribanos_. Among the Spaniards the oral proceedings are suppressed,
and those which are the preliminary steps only in the Moorish courts,
constitute the whole proceeding. The Edules have become agents to the
parties, as well as public notaries; so that the case of each party is
placed in the hands of the agents of the other. Thus, notwithstanding
excellent laws, the Spanish Courts have been converted into labyrinths
of intrigue. The Moorish system, which exhibits the origin of the
Spanish aberrations, still retains the celerity of oral proceedings,
with the advantage of record, and combines the responsibility of a
Judge with the uses of a Jury. In fact, it differs little from the
ancient institution of the Jury in Britain, which gave their verdict
on the common repute of the parties, and not on the facts of the case;
though it does not leave to them the faculty either of condemnation
or expurgation. I look, of course, to the system, as what it would be
if duly executed; and it was, no doubt, the foundation of that prompt
justice which characterised the Mussulman government in Spain, and made
Algiers a model for quick, _gratuitous_, and impartial adjudication,
until its capture by the French.
When any one is assaulted or insulted in the streets, or in any way
injured in public, and he appeals to the Caïd: his appeal is rejected
unless he brings as witnesses those who were present; but he has the
power of compelling their presence--he has but to cry out, “I seek
justice,” and every one within hearing must quit whatever occupation
they are engaged in, and secure the offender. If they refuse or
neglect, they become immediately principals, and the injured person has
his remedy against each and all.
It is to this rule--an extended “view of frank pledge,”[231]--that
the tranquillity and security of the towns amongst so turbulent a
population is to be attributed; and whatever partiality there may be in
governors, there is no apprehension of false testimony among the people.
The office of king, in Morocco, is specially that of Grand Justiciary.
The king himself is the fountain of justice. There is the utmost
freedom of appeal to him from or against the Caïd;--he will stop in the
streets, and administer summary justice while sitting on horseback; and
when any supplicant appears at his gate, however humble, of whatever
race or faith, and pronounces the words, “The God of Justice,” he is
admitted to his presence; the order is given for the council to be
filled; the secretaries appear in their places, and the petitioner
states his or her case, and justice is immediately done. While he has
been here, two hours have been daily consecrated to this duty; and
this I imagine to be the secret of those constant peregrinations of
the Emperor of Morocco, and their extraordinary effect in quelling
insurrections and quieting the country; whilst, by the heavy exactions
with which they are accompanied, they might appear calculated to
produce the very contrary effect. A “progress of the king,” is
the constant specific in Morocco for disturbance--there is always
disturbance where he has not for a long time appeared; and he always
manages to subdue it.
The designation of the court of Morocco is El Haznee, or the treasury.
The title of the Minister of Finance in Spain to day is Haciendu.
Haznee is treasury or possessions--the two terms are synonymous, and
one is derived from the other: the one briefly explains in Morocco
the purposes of government, and in Spain its necessities. Our word
magazine comes from Mal Haznee, or treasury of wealth. How surprised
the legitimate owners of the terms would be, if they knew the contents
of the periodicals to which we apply it.
It is impossible to conclude this subject of government without mention
of the saints. What constitutes a saint no one can tell: they are of
both sexes and all ages, of every class and rank, from the madman
to the philosopher, from the fanatic to the infidel, and from the
mischievous and wicked to the humane and benevolent. I met a man with
wool on his head, and a long stave in his hand, chanting forth a ditty
at the top of his strained voice. This was a saint, and the soldiers
made me move aside, for fear he should make a rush at me. They took the
man for a madman; he was none. There was some time ago at Tangier, a
female saint, who went about entirely naked: every morning she took
from the market-people wood, and laying it in a circle made a fire and
seated herself in the middle. There are respectable families where
saintship is hereditary: these bury the saints when they die, in their
own houses. In these saints are to be found traces at once of the
asceticism of early Christianity, which had its birth in Africa, and
of those practices which, in the still earlier times of Polytheism,
rendered Africa a scandal and wonder to the rest of the world.[232]
Since the introduction of Islamism, the superstitions of a country,
in early times the most fertile in monsters and chimeras, have been
associated with that faith, and have produced that strange veneration
of dead saints and sanctification of living fools, which is without
parallel elsewhere; and weaving themselves into the religious forms of
a people whose civil government is derived from its sacred writings,
the distinction between the doctrines of the one, and revolutions
of the other is effaced, and thus do we find the names of dynasties
derived from the denomination of sects.
All the great dynasties, save one, have begun with saints or preachers.
Fez and Morocco were built by followers of teachers who settled
around their cells to listen to their words, and share in the repose
that resulted, if not from the justice they administered, at least
from the respect which they inspired. They died, as they had lived,
teachers and preachers. On the son of the one--on the posthumous child
of the other--the surviving gratitude of the people bestowed the
title and authority of prince. The title of the present emperor is
merely the designation of an officer of the law. That character alone
should give to a man control over the multitude and authority over the
monarch--make his house a sanctuary for the malefactor, and himself a
guarantee of safety to a caravan, is a wonderful thing. Their religious
establishment has served to repair wrongs and to avert calamities, and
even at the present moment it mitigates rudeness and restrains power.
One of the tribes of necromancers seems to possess some secret which
protects them against the bite of the most venomous serpent.[233]
An exhibition of this kind I have failed to see, this not being the
season of the year. They attribute diseases to the presence of evil
spirits--they fear the evil eye, and against these the remedy is
writing on pieces of paper and amulets, a practice derived from or
connected with the writing by the Jews of portions of Scripture on
paper, binding it on the foreheads and arms, and inserting them in
holes in the door-posts. Anybody performs this service of writing on
pieces of paper, and in the Dunus when I have refused to prescribe,
or had nothing to give, the patient has been taken to the Scheik,
who immediately furnished at once a prescription and dose with his
reed. The learned in the art are from Suz--they are called _Tolmas_,
and walk in secret, making an equal mystery of themselves and their
necromancies; poor and wandering, and refusing remuneration. They
generally exact a promise of secrecy before they exert their art.
By the account which I have heard, it is with them also the pen and
scraps of paper, but their mode of using them is different. As they
write they throw their prescriptions into a brazier, and go on thus
increasing the power of the incantation--but into the brazier is
first thrown incense. In the shops, incense, or plants, or leaves
producing sweet odours, occupy a considerable amount of space. The
Pharmacopolists exceed all conceivable proportion. The operation of
their drugs upon the human body appears chiefly to be through the nose,
and by means of the chafing-dish. The plants and gums are supposed to
possess distinct qualities and virtues. Thus, in ancient Polytheism,
different incense was offered to different divinities. Vervain had
magical power for Greeks, Romans, and Druids; it has so still for
cats. A plant is particularly mentioned--_Cynospastes_,[234]--by the
smoke of which epilepsy was cured, and demons were expelled. The plant
_Barras_, was similarly used by the Hebrews.[235] It is supposed, to
be one of the Algæ, which contains prussic acid. Amongst the Jews,
death was the penalty for compounding the incense that was used in the
Temple. In the story of Balaam, we find incantations mixed with the
worship of Jehovah.
The Tolmas are applied to in cases of disease; for the recovery of
stolen goods; that they “may not be seen when burying their money;
for gaining the affection of individuals, but chiefly for casting out
devils.” The consulting party states his case; the Tolman writes, and
throws the paper in the fire, and after a time tells him that the
disorder will or will not be cured, and in what time and manner, or
what he is to do--that the stolen property has been taken by a certain
individual, or by a man of such a form and appearance--that at a
certain time he will be moved by remorse to restore it--that in such a
day or place he will be found selling it, &c. Stories of the casting
out of devils take the place of our ghost stories;--I will give one as
a specimen.
A party of Jews were amusing themselves in a garden near Tangier; one
of them, a butcher, fell into a pond. When he was drawn out, he was
in violent contortions--he had been seized by a spirit. A Tolma was
sent for. Having cut a reed of the length a man could hold between the
palms of his hands with his arms stretched out, he made it to be so
held by one of the party; then addressing the devil, asked who he was.
The devil, speaking by the mouth of the man in convulsions, answered,
that he would tell him neither his name, nor that of his tribe, nor
that of his father, nor that of his mother, but only that he was a Jew.
The Tolma asked, why he had entered into this man? The devil answered,
that he was at the bottom of the lake with his wife and children, and
that the butcher had fallen in and killed one of his sons; and that
now he would not leave him until he had taken his life. While this
conversation was going on, the reed was shortened in the hands of the
man who held it, and the Tolma declared that power was given to the
spirit over the man. Incantations were vain, but he continued to write
on paper, and to throw the scraps into the brazier; and as he did so,
the reed shortened and shortened, and the man’s frenzy became wilder,
and then his strength decayed, and suddenly the hands of the man who
held the reed closed together, and, at the same moment, the possessed
expired.
When the incantation is powerful enough to subdue the spirit, he
implores liberty to be released, and to go into some other body, and
then the enchanter will not suffer him until he has bound himself by
an oath never to enter the same man again, nor to come near a certain
place, and then asks him whether he chooses to go out by fire or water.
A basin of the one and the other is accordingly brought, into one of
which the spirit is supposed to plunge, and then the patient speaks in
his own voice, and recovers as if from a trance.
The chaplain of Tangier, while it was held by the English, gives us the
following narrative:--
“One of my soldiers, an Issówi, was seized with the devil: it took four
men to hold him down, and prevent him jumping over the battlements.
He then broke away from us, and throwing himself on the ground began
tearing himself: I never saw anything so explanatory of the account
in Scripture. The cure is as curious as the disease. They burn some
benzoin under the nose of the patient, which quiets him for a time;
but as soon as the fumes cease, he breaks out again, and lays hold
of everything within his reach: in some cases he has been known to
destroy children. This poor creature ate several pieces of paper, and
bits of lime and dirt; but when the words ‘Sídí Benel Abbás, Sídí
Abd-el-Kádir,’ &c., were pronounced, his hands, which had been firmly
closed, were opened: his companions then called upon Abú to say the
Fátihah, in which all joined, when he came to himself, although he
appeared, and talked, like a child for some minutes; after which he
quite recovered.”
FOOTNOTES:
[229] El que hoy vive en Tetuan es un hombre en el exterior
modestissimo, muy mortificado en los ojos; humilde en las palabras,
curitativo con los pobres y nunca permiti a sus manos el contacto
physico de el dinero.--MESCON, _Historial de Marrueccos_, l. i. p. 25.
[230] No word has given rise to wilder speculation than _Carta_, paper.
The word here is _caret_.
[231] At Mequinez, a man having found something in the streets, caused
it to be proclaimed, in order that the owner might come and receive
his property. Muley Ismael sent for him, and thus addressed him. “You
do not deserve death, for you are not a robber; but as I wish all my
subjects to know that the proper way to have things returned to their
rightful owners is by leaving them where they are, I must make an
example of you.”
[232] I refer to the orgies practised among the polished Carthaginians,
and better known as belonging to the worship of the Cyprian Venus, and
which are reported by credible witnesses as of public occurrence at no
remote period in Barbary, on the part alike of male and female saints.
[233] These are the Psylli of the ancients. The same gift was enjoyed
by the Marses in Italy, and the Opheogines in Cyprus possessed it; the
former pretended to derive it from the enchantress Circe, the latter
from a virgin of Phrygia united to a Sacred Dragon.--See A. Gell. Noct.
Attic., l. ix. c. 13, et l. xvi. c. 2. Strabo, l. xiii.; Ælian De Nat.
Animal, l. i. c. 57, et l. xii. c. 39.
[234] Ælian de Nat. Animal, l. iv. c. 27. It was also called
Aglaophotis, and has a flame-coloured flower, supposed at night to emit
flashes. It is the Atropa Belladonna.
[235] Josephus, De Bello Jud. l. vii. c. 25.
CHAPTER VII.
CONNEXION BETWEEN MAURITANIA AND AMERICA.
Rabat, Dec. 17th.
The thermometer, in a room where the sun never shines, stands nearly
at temperate. During twenty days, we have only had two days of bad
weather: it is hot in the sun, and cold at night. The days and nights
are of resplendent beauty, with almost always a cloudless sky towards
evening. The landscape up the river has a delicacy of colouring as
peculiar as beautiful. At night the moon is so brilliant, that stars
only of the third magnitude are visible. Walking on the top of the
house, for here one leads a cat-like life--always on the roof--it is
like a mixture of summer and winter. The houses around seem in their
whiteness as if under a load of snow; above, there is a summer sky,
and around, verdant hills and fields. I gathered in a garden a branch
of a pear-tree in full blossom, though the rest of the tree was quite
dead; and flocks of swallows were disporting in the air, making, by our
proverb, a summer of December. Yet, during this time, there have been
disasters upon the coast: the schooner with which we were in company
has been entirely lost at Dar-el-Baída.[236]
A French steam-vessel of war has also been lost, and eighty men have
perished: this is the second.
The representative of Muley Idris has been here several times: the last
time he came alone, and said his servants and baggage were waiting
for him at Salee, where he was going to join them, but that he had
come first to bid me “good-bye.” I offered him a trifling present--a
microscope; he said he could neither eat it nor wear it, and rejected
it with disdain. I said I had nothing less unworthy of his acceptance;
on which he said, “Then, give me money.” I was aware that saints cannot
ask for coin. He next cast his eyes round the room, and said, “I will
take away with me that loaf of sugar.” I intimated to him that he
should do nothing of the sort: he instantly dropped the saint and the
madman, and we parted in the civilest manner.
I was consulted as to sending some children to be educated at Paris:
it was some time before I could believe they were in earnest. On
my dissuading them, I was answered, “We want physicians, chemists,
astronomers, mechanics, miners, makers of arms, and instructed men. We
had all these formerly, and gave these sciences to Europe: why should
we not take them back again?” I endeavoured to represent to them the
distinction between science and the manners of the people who might,
in any particular age, be scientific; that, if they could take the
science of Europe naked, and without the plague-garments in which it
was at present dressed, viz. our ideas, morals, and manners, it would
be well. But they were not men to discriminate, and, certainly, it was
not by children that the separation could be effected. They told me
that the Moorish envoy, who was recently at Paris, had seen an Algerine
boy highly commended by his French instructors, who, nevertheless,
nourished in his heart almost a detestation of the French; and said
that he was striving to acquire the knowledge they possessed to be able
to drive them out of Africa. I pointed out the difference between a
captive taken in war and children voluntarily sent for instruction, who
could not come back to their primitive life but to look with contempt
on their fathers.
Some remarks ensued, which showed that I was suspected of jealousy of
France, so I had to argue the point. I told them, that if I coveted
their land for a country, I should be glad to see France there, or even
conquering it, for it would fall out as in India and America. France
doing everything _by her Government_, as they said in Algiers, she
always had awakened and ever must arouse such an amount of animosity
against her, as to render untenable every conquest effected by her
arms. In India, France had opened the way; had established a system of
native government, and created the whole of those implements through
which we obtained possession of India, and at this moment retain
it. The English Government itself had nothing to do with India. A
company of merchants managed it, and thereby succeeded the French.
In America, the same thing had happened twice over. We had lost our
colonies, which France could not take, and got hers, which she could
not keep. The New World presented the great warnings, which I turned to
account, instancing the numerous population, the magnificent cities,
the industrious and polished races, the highly cultivated lands, the
works of irrigation, and, in some cases, the admirable laws which
existed until the European came with his light, and science, and
philanthropy--and decay followed his steps: his rule was a curse, and
race after race has been exterminated.
To primitive races, national genealogy is above all things attractive;
and the question was raised as to the possible blood relationship
between themselves and the Mexicans, through the Phœnicians. I will not
rehearse the conversation, but cannot at once dismiss the subject.
That Western world may have had its beginning, its progress, its
multifarious phases, its great existencies, its long life, and its
decay in the same way that we have had ours, without there being a
necessary connexion, although there be infinite points of resemblance
with the numerous forms and accidents of Egypt and Etruria, of India
and Chaldea. Still, the objection to intercourse, on the score of
insuperable obstacles in the navigation of the oceans on either
side, appears to me to be, in a philosophic age, the most strange of
hallucinations. Every dot upon the surface of the water has been found
occupied by the human race, and there have been indubitable crossings,
both of the Pacific and Atlantic, by large vessels and junks, and by
small boats and canoes. The tradition of the Atlantic Islands seems
an indubitable, though indistinct trace, amongst the Greeks, of a
Phœnician discovery. If, as I believe, I have almost succeeded in
showing the magnetic needle was possessed by that people, the obstacles
to the crossing the Atlantic, and to continuous intercourse, are still
further removed. It was not, however, until I entered the room which
I here occupy, that I perceived direct proof of this connexion. There
hangs up an ornamented Table of the Law, such as is common in the
houses of the Jews--that mysterious open hand on the one side; on the
other, a diagram, which occupies a prominent place in the symbols of
Masonry, the double triangle. It is also a cabalistic and astrological
figure. It forms five points, and is, I believe (not the six-pointed
one), the proper “Solomon’s seal.” They could give no explanation of
its meaning or origin, and only said, “It has been always so.” I find
this same sign is on the signet of the Sultan, and on his coin. The
Moors have adopted it as their arms. They, no more than the Jews, can
tell what it means. It is lost in the mists of their common antiquity.
The very same symbol is found in Mexico.
Roads, worthy of being compared to, and alone rivalling (by the
confession of Humboldt) those of the Romans; pottery, equalling, and
resembling, that of the Etruscans; resemblances of costume, as with the
head-dress of the Etruscans; instruments of music, the double flute of
the Curians--do not go so far to indicate a connexion, as the adoption
of a symbol such as this; but when you have an exact correspondence
in a peculiar and arbitrary figure, then other resemblances may be
admitted, as furnishing corroborative proof of a common matrix, if not
for the races, at least for their arts.
There are, however, other resemblances, which it would require a
vigorous imagination to explain by the doctrine of coincidence.
Gladiators contending with the Retiarius, derived by the Latins from
the Etruscans;--tombs, like the Etruscan, constructed of enormous heaps
of earth, upon a basement of masonry; mortar, that most remarkable
discovery of the Phœnicians; tapia, or the mixture of mortar and
clay;--papyrus, prepared crosswise, like that of Egypt; and tesselated
pavements. Again, the Mexican year, coinciding with the Etruscan, the
Mexican being three hundred and sixty-five days, five hours, and fifty
minutes; the Etruscan, three hundred and sixty-five days, five hours,
and forty minutes. There are traces of unknown characters reported,
so that some people who used letters must have set foot upon that
continent. The buildings are almost all turned to the cardinal points.
Mention, in two instances, is made of glass and of enamel.
The Mexicans had baths. However magnificent their public monuments,
these were not on that scale which corresponded with the Roman and the
Greek Thermæ, but such as are found in almost every house in Morocco--a
small apartment, seven feet square, with a cupola roof, five to six
feet, and a slightly convex floor, under one side of which there is a
fire, and a small, low door to creep in by.
If Phœnicians found their way across the Atlantic, they would have
taught, amongst the first things, the bath and the points of the
compass, trinkets of glass, the art of dyeing, &c.; and these things
are there, with that peculiar mark and stamp of the people who have
specially preserved the usages of the ancient world. Putting together
these things, with the fact that the Phœnicians were the navigators
exclusively to the West and to the East, I cannot help looking upon
America as within the range of their enterprise, and many of its works
as the record of their passage.
Dec. 18th.
In this country, as I should think must happen in China, the attention
is fixed on the most trivial things; or, rather, the importance
appears of things held to be trivial. One feels in contact with the
world in its infancy; as if, by stretching forth the hand, you could
reach the source of the earliest inventions for supplying our wants,
or gratifying our desires. I can only compare it to a museum of
antiquities, whether in what they wear; what they do; the houses they
inhabit; the names they bear; or the words they speak;--all is as it
was of old. Here, too, are the rudiments of what we find in other forms
elsewhere. What can be more striking than to be called, as I was myself
to-day, a Nazarene! the first title applied to the Apostles by the Jews.
By the exclusion of atmospheric air, the most delicate flower may be
handed down to future ages. Here a similar process seems to have been
applied to man: the cause of change is excluded in the one case--change
itself in the other: elsewhere, letters graven upon brass and marble,
are our guides through the evolution of ages; but here man himself is
the undying and unchangeable record of himself.
This morning I was watching a Negress who rejoiced in the Punic name of
Barca, washing and cooking in the court below. Her extreme and minute
cleanliness suggested the question: “In what could cleanliness have
consisted before the discovery of soap?” Soap comes next to absolute
necessaries. What must have been the condition of nations without
either soap or the bath? What a benefit to the human race the discovery
of either;--where neither was known, filth would be as habitual as
clothing: there could be nothing clean or unclean. The use of the bath
must then have made that difference between one people and another,
that exists between filthy and cleanly animals, altering their very
nature. Yet I could not tell when it was discovered, or who were the
inventors. Why should it alone be without honour, or parentage?
Whence its name?[237] Our word is from the Latin, but soap has no
Latin etymon. The name is not derived from the Greek; it has, in that
language, no corresponding term. The modern Greeks use the same--either
their soap has travelled eastward since the decline of the Roman
Empire, or it belongs to the East at an earlier time. In this dilemma
I apply to Barca, and at once obtain the solution. Soap, in Arabic, is
_Saboon_. They have the verb, _Sabeïn_, which does not mean to ‘soap,’
but, to ‘wash.’ The Arabs did not adopt the name from Rome, and coin
out of it a verb for so primitive a usage as washing.
The Moors possessed soap made to their hands, measured by mountains,
and cheaper than manure. This substance is decomposed flints, or
soap-stone: it is called Gazule, or Razule; it polishes the skin, makes
it soft, and gives it lustre. It abounds on the river Seboo, and may,
when exported, have got that name abroad. It is not fit for washing
clothes, for which purpose they have a primitive soft soap like that
of the ancient Celts--this is what they call Saboun. The first mention
made of it is amongst the Gauls. The Romans had so little acquaintance
with it in Pliny’s time, that he thought it was used for the purpose
of turning the hair red. It is no trifling honour to the Gaulish race,
looked upon as barbarous, that the Romans should have taken from them
beds and mattresses, jewellery, and soap. “Soap,” says Pliny, “is an
invention of the Gauls to colour the head yellow: it is made of tallow
and ashes. The best which they make is of beech wood ashes and goat’s
suet, and it is made in two ways, either thick and hard, or liquid and
soft; but the one, as well as the other, is very much used in Germany;
and a great deal more indeed by men than women.”[238]
Great ingenuity was exerted in discovering and applying various kinds
of earths and solvents to clean the body and the clothes, as may
be followed at length in Pliny; but yet the best mixture at which
they seem to have arrived, is that which was used in Greece, of
which the preparation is described by Aristophanes in the Frogs--a
composition[239] of ashes, nitre and crinoline earth. The Romans, like
the French at present, _lessieved_ their dirty linen.[240]
FOOTNOTES:
[236] Another vessel was also off the port twice, and twice driven back
to Gibraltar.
[237] Beckman derives it from an old German word _sepe_. The German
word is at present _seife_, evidently the same as the French _suif_,
and the English _suet_.
[238] Nat. Hist. b. 28.
[239] Bochart imagines that the Phœnicians had given the name to
the island, Gum-ohal, signifying “fossa smegmatis.” It was found in
Thessaly, Lycia, Sardis and Umbria. Avicenna calls it Al Siraph, from
a town on the Persian gulf. Dioscorides says, gall prepared with nitre
and earth of Cineola, is the best detergent. The ancients knew the
saponaceous root with which in India shawls and muslins are washed,
and which the Persians, Turks, and Arabs, use for the hair, and
otherwise where great delicacy is required. It was from a Persian word
called _Asleg_, by the Arabs _Condus_, by the Greeks στρούθιον, whence
στρουθιζειν. Pliny calls it (Nat. His. l. xix. c. 3), “radiculam et
herbam lanariam.” The detersives used by the ancients were various,
but were nearly the same as those in present use among the Mahometans.
They were called by the general name of _smegmata_. A common detersive
was bean meal, which the Romans called _lomentum_, and a paste from
lupine flour. Galen (De Aliment. Facul. i.) says, “Cutis sordes fabacea
farina manifestè deterget,” (bean flour certainly takes off filth from
the skin), on which account procuresses and dainty women anciently made
great use of it: they smeared it on the face, and it was said to remove
freckles and pimples. Dioscorides goes so far as to assert that it
will render cicatrices of a uniform colour with the rest of the skin.
It stops the blackness arising from blows. Lomentum will take away
wrinkles, if we are to believe Martial (l. iv.)
Lumento rugas ventris quod condere tentas.
Pliny says (l. xxviii. c. 25), that lupine flour made into a paste with
vinegar, will, if smeared on in the bath, remove pimples and itching,
and dry up running sores; that a decoction of lupines will cure
freckles and brace the skin.
[240] Pliny, xxviii. 51.
CHAPTER VIII.
DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE OF THE MOORS.
The domestic arrangements differ here from other Mussulman countries.
The house is not divided into _Harem_ and _Salambu_. In fact, there
is no harem, for there are neither its rights nor privileges: the
separation of the women, which in Arabia could not be extended to the
habitation, adapted itself to the gynæceum of the houses among the
Greeks, and the Zanana of the followers of Zoroaster. In Morocco, there
having been no such anterior practice, the injunction has had no effect
on those who live under the tent, and has converted the domiciles of
the inhabitants of the cities into inhospitable abodes. I went to-day
to Mike Brettel’s, on invitation, expressly for the purpose of seeing
his house, which is just finished. I can see nothing more remarkable at
Fez or Morocco, so I shall endeavour to describe it.
We approached by a narrow lane of blind walls about twelve feet high.
The door was in the corner, the arch above it, and the lintels were
painted in broad bars, and stripes of deep colours like an Egyptian
tomb: there was a knocker--nay, two--one for the folding doors, and
another for the wicket; the upper one might have been made in London.
We knocked: the knock is neither a single tap, nor a postman’s double
rap, but a double knock, though neither quite so loud or long as those
with which the squares of London were wont to resound. The door not
being immediately opened, we heard within a bell rung sharply, (in
Eastern countries the bell is unknown), and the door was opened by a
young girl, a slave, small, yet apparently full grown. She wore a
tunic of blue and white, striped, which left her neck, arms, and half
her legs bare. Her colour was chocolate, her features perfect, her form
a model. Her sparkling eyes and white teeth announced that the visit
was expected; and, waving her hands as a signal to follow, she tripped
up a narrow staircase by the door. The steps and passages were inlaid
with hexagonal red tiles and small triangles of green tiles: there was
no flooring about the house richer than this, which is very modest:
the houses and courtyard of the Jews are in Mosaic. At the top of the
stairs we found ourselves in a small vestibule, the light let in from
above, through the ornamented portions of the ceiling. Everything was
in proportion: all palace-like, but microscopic;--I might have taken
it for the abode of the pigmies of Herodotus, had my guide not rather
suggested fairies or sylphs.
The vestibule led to an apartment, where the master of the house was
seated in the middle of the floor with a tea-tray before him. Seeing
me busied in taking off my shoes, he came forward entreating me to
enter with them on; for it is common to imagine that Europeans make it
a point of honour to disregard the feelings of their Eastern hosts,
and to soil their carpets. This room was the gem of the house, but it
was some time before I could venture to examine it, being shamed by
the officious zeal of the Jews who accompanied me, and who began at
once to point out this and that, as if we had entered a shop,--I mean a
European one,--for in an Oriental shop the decencies are not neglected.
Mike Brettel commenced making tea;--they use fine green tea--they put
it into the pot with sundry sweet herbs and large lumps of sugar. The
teapot was Britannia metal, the cups and saucers the small delicate
Chinese. The tray was of a manufacture for which Rabat is celebrated.
It is brass chased in arabesques and inlaid in colours. At Mecca they
work in the same way. He _rang the bell_ for hot water and sugar, which
were brought, the one by the olive maiden already mentioned, the other
by one whom I might have taken for her, had her tunic not been white
and red. The hot water was brought in a common tin kettle, the sugar in
a japanned epaulette box. The two little slaves having discharged their
office, returned and stood with crossed arms against the white wall,
which cast forth as from the field of a phantasmagoria, their plump,
symmetrical and dark limbs. They seemed to have been sent on the part
of the female household to do all the work of gazing on the strangers;
and if I had to judge by them of those we did not see, Mike Brettel’s
Harem, for beauty, originality, and sprightliness, had little to fear
from competition, far or near.
I was accompanied by the consular agent, his soldier, and a common Jew.
After Mr. Leraza and I were seated, the soldier was invited to sit
down, and then the Jew: he did so quite familiarly, close to the master
of the house, who, with his own hand served him, after the rest, with
tea.
The room was a cube of fifteen feet; there was one small window, a
simple aperture in the white wall in the form of a niche struck through
the thickness of the wall, levelled inside; this feature took the
apartment out of the common-place. On the floor was spread one of their
beautiful mats; on the three sides were mattresses covered with Turkey
carpets, and cushions at each end resembling a low Turkish divan. The
walls were dead white, broken by richly-ornamented arm-racks. Three
long guns on each in their red cloth cases, daggers in massive chased
silver scabbards, swords and pouches, were suspended by silk cords with
large tassels, blue, red and yellow. The crown of the room was the
ceiling: an octagon dome was fitted on to the cube by means of arches
in the angles, which will be understood by reference to the Hall of
the Ambassadors, in Owen Jones’s Alhambra; but the roof, instead of
being in coloured stucco, was in carved and painted wood. There was no
gilding or silvering--the effect was worked out entirely from dead
colour. I looked at it till my neck was sore and stiff, and I can only
describe it by the word arabesque, just as I might say kaleidoscope,
and in like manner, interminable: the same elements re-appear in
never-ending forms, ever pleasing, ever new, yet always, in so far as
description can go, the same. The roof was the statue, the apartment
the pedestal: each required the other. The solitary light, the pure
white walls, the cubic form, were required to set off the placid beauty
of the dome. The window was minute; the door (if one might say so in
reference to so small a body,) grand. Its horse-shoe arch expanded to
the sides and reached the vault, displaying the little vestibule, all
variegated in colours, all ornamented in form like the ceiling. It was
a thing not to live in, but to gaze at.
We next got our host to permit us to examine the arms. One was of
Tetuan manufacture, one of Fez; the first spirally fluted on the
outside: both barrels were inlaid with gold, were four feet and a half
long, and ornamented at the muzzle like old pieces of ordnance. The
mounting was silver, ornamented with the black figures which in the
East are called _Sabat_. The locks were cumbersome, the work intricate,
and all outside. There is a covering to the powder in the pan like the
old pieces of the French Gardes du Corps. The price was twenty-five and
thirty-five dollars: I should have guessed them at double. The daggers
were in no way remarkable; but the cases, handles, and cords were very
rich: one sword rang like a Damascus blade. Their swords are long and
straight, slightly bent towards the point, and have a heavy thick
handle with a peculiar guard.[241]
The only other piece of furniture was a Turkish _sofra_, or small
hexagonal stool inlaid in tortoiseshell and mother of pearl, on which
is placed the _tepsi_, or round tray for dinner. The carving of the
_sofra_ is peculiar, and might be taken for the model of some portion
of a Gothic building. I now saw that this was no Turkish piece of
furniture: the Turks, like the Romans, have borrowed from every other
people what was most elegant or useful. Augustus introduced a stool
from Spain to Rome--why should not one have been carried from Morocco
to Constantinople?
As this Moor was reaching down one of the guns, his haïk fell off,
displaying a rich blue and red vesture, while the volumes of the
white toga cast their majestic folds around. Close by stood the
Numidians--two antique bronzes. _We_ cultivate the arts: _we_ raise
to the rank of sages and princes the men who excel in conceiving and
portraying beautiful forms. _Their_ works are the embellishments of
temples and palaces, the glory of empires and the worth of millions.
_They_ have no schools of design; no science of colours; no artist--no,
nor even tailors; and yet there was his costume--there was mine. I
attempted to convey this to him: he said, “Our fathers have left us
many good things, and we are content with them.”
Proceeding on our inspection, we passed through a succession of small
courts and corridors, as if we were in the under-story of a palace.
There were four houses joined together by doors broken through the
wall: these houses are fitted one against the other like so many boxes,
the lights coming from the court in the centre of each. In the kitchens
there was a great assortment of wood dishes, like low corn measures,
scrubbed white, as in Switzerland; rows of round pots, in which the
fires are made, called _nafé_; and kuskoussoo dishes of pottery called
Keskas, the covers in thick close basket-work, ornamented with colours.
Every place, thing, corner, was most perfectly sweet and clean. On
entering the store rooms it seemed as if we had penetrated into a
chamber at Pompeii. (The whole establishment recalled Pompeii.) Jars
of the shape and dimensions of amphoræ, only transversed at the point,
stood in rows containing, not, indeed, Falernian wine, but kuskoussoo,
pease, butter, rice, and even fresh meat. After it is packed, butter
is kneaded hard into the orifice, and water is poured over it. Homer
says, that in Lybia neither prince nor peasant wants for food, and this
was confirmed by the large scale on which the arrangements were here
made to meet the demands of hospitality. One of the court-yards, with
an adjoining kitchen and store, was appropriated to cooking food, to be
sent out to friends and strangers.
We now entered a court which rivalled the first apartment--all white,
light and airy. At each of the angles there was a group of three
columns, and from them sprang a lofty fretted arch, which occupied the
centre of each of the faces. A narrow cornice in coloured stucco under
the projecting eaves ran all round; so the stuccoes of Spain are not a
lost art.
From this truly barbaresque hall, open to the heavens, we passed into
the women’s principal apartment. It was a long and very narrow room,
entered in the centre by lofty folding doors: the wicket only was open.
At each extremity was a bed filling the width of the apartment, raised
high and concealed by brocade curtains. In two successive stages were
mattresses piled and covered with rich stuffs, and cushions, serving
for divans by day and beds by night. The open space in the centre was
covered with a mat, and there were low narrow seats around of folded
carpets and coverlids. On each side of the door were wardrobe chests.
The room, to the height of four and a half feet, was hung with red
velvet, inlaid to imitate mosaics; but perhaps the mosaics may be the
imitation with velvet of other colours.
The embroidery on the cushions, &c., is unlike anything else. There
are patches of colour as though formed by a succession of the palms of
an Indian shawl, one row blue, another red, and so on: the stitches
are long and the work looks like satin with bindings, each long stitch
being followed by a short one. There were fastened to the wall, and
projecting from it, those many-coloured racks or brackets of which I
have spoken, on which stood fine china-ware and ornaments. The rafters
of the roof were ornamented in like manner, vermilion predominating.
The sleeping apartment had portals like a church,[242] their hinges and
sockets were on the outside; the large slabs were of arbor-vitæ, soft
as velvet to the touch, and rubbed over with red ochre.
We were treated to a sight of the contents of the chests. The dresses
were principally in brocade of Lyons; but otherwise, they were inferior
to those of the Jewesses of Tangier and Tetuan, and had not the merit
of native taste and work. Not so the jewellery. One necklace was
peculiar: it was formed of large gold pieces, some of them cufic and
coral balls, divided by bunches of pearls, in the centre of each of
which there was a pierced amethyst. For the negresses, the necklaces
were large coral beads and silver coins alternately, the coins being
strung through the centre. The necklace does not go round the neck,
but from shoulder to shoulder. At the shoulder it is fastened to a
brooch of a very singular construction, and is in various ways a most
interesting ornament. It is circular, and serves also to secure the
haïk and in it the most precious stones they have are placed. One was
an emerald an inch and a quarter in diameter. Such were Aaron’s ouches
on the[243] shoulders to which the chains were attached.
This brooch is called _kefkiat_, and has a moveable tongue which
traverses round a circle, in which there is a slip, so that after
passing the tongue through the folds that are to be secured, you
turn the circle and thereby the tongue fits on upon it as if it were
a buckle. When I saw it, I was immediately reminded of the Highland
brooch for the plaid, to which they have adopted the stones which their
Hyperborean country affords; and I recollected having seen an ancient
one which seemed to be like these. On visiting Dublin, subsequently to
my return from Barbary, I saw in the museum numerous kefkiats, and on
recognizing them as old friends, I was assured by the learned that I
must be mistaken, for that these ornaments were peculiar to the Irish
Celts. However, there they are--alone found in Ireland--alone worn in
Barbary.
In an unfinished corner of the Tower Hassan, I found the wall as it had
been prepared for the stucco: it was divided off in lines, crossing
at right angles, like the frame-work that artists sometimes use, to
verify the exactness of a copy. Over these were drawn a succession
of intersecting segments of circles. By these they could work with
certainty and celerity, and the mere intersection of the plain and
curved lines formed the suggested patterns. This may account for the
interminable variety of these, and the uniformity of their character.
The stuccoes were of plaster of Paris, and on getting one of the
workmen to describe the process of making it, I found that near Fez
there is a large supply of arrowheaded selenite, corresponding with
that of Montmartre, near Paris.[244] The colour is laid on with white
of egg. The great instrument of the Moorish artist is the compass.
The Moorish compass is not composed of two limbs of metal jointed. It
is a fixed measure and tied by a string; so that for each different
dimension there is a separate compass, and its name is _davit_, which
we retain for the bent stanchions used in vessels to hoist up boats.
Arabs have no buildings: their tent was their habitation. No traces
of their architecture are to be found in the two ancient cities of
Mecca and Medina. The Caaba itself was a square building, as if the
two poles of the transverse one of the flying tent had been doubled
for the stationary one, and the Caaba, in sign and memory thereof, is
hung with drapery to this day.[245] The Arabs, however, appear to have
spread architecture over Europe, Asia, and Africa;--they who possess
neither ancient ruins nor modern dwellings. These, with the materials
and models, are found in Morocco, preserved in the midst of ignorance,
unobscured and unchanged.
Architecture is the peculiar feeling and passion of this people. The
figures which we find in our cathedrals and ancient churches, are
scattered about their domestic establishments, are to be seen in their
trays, on their stools, and in endless variety upon their tombstones.
They have not, like us, a domestic and a public, a religious and a
civil architecture. Alone have they combined delicacy and strength. In
their edifices there is the durability of the rock and the delicacy of
the flower. It would seem as if they at once thought only of to-day
and only of eternity. Nor have there been with them different ages and
styles--one of strong and busy war, another of idle elegance: their
strongest and rudest military works preserve the choicest specimen
of arts, which elsewhere have required, that they might spring and
blossom, times of peace and ages of refinement.
I cannot resist the temptation of quoting from the “Quarterly Review,”
a glowing description of Moorish dwellings.
“The exterior of Moorish edifices in general was plain and forbidding;
the object was to keep out heat and enemies, foreign and domestic,
and to keep in women and to disarm the evil eye--the great bugbear of
antiquity, the East, Andalusia, and Naples. The interior, all light,
air, colour, and luxury, glittered like a spar enclosed in a rough
pebble, and the door once opened, ushered the Moor into a houri-peopled
palace which realised those gorgeous descriptions that seem to our good
folks, who live in bricks and mortar, to be the fictions of oriental
poetry, or the fabric of Aladdin’s genii; yet such were the palatial
fortresses--the Abazares, the Alhambras of the Spanish Moors; and
such, on a minor scale, were their private dwellings, many of which
still exist in Seville, though dimmed by ages and neglect. The generic
features are, a court hidden from public gaze, but open to the blue
sky, and surrounded with horse-shoe-arched corridors, which rest on
palm-like pillars of marble, whose spandrils are pierced in gossamer
lace-work; in the centre plays a fountain, gladdening the air with
freshness, the ear with music, the eye with dropping diamonds. On the
walls around, was lavished a surface of mosaic decoration, richer than
shawls of cashmere, wrought in porcelain and delicate plaster, and
painted with variegated tints; above hung a roof of Phœnician-like
carpentry, gilded and starred as a heaven; while the doors and
windows admitted vistas of gardens of myrtles, roses, oranges, and
pomegranates, where fruit mingled with flower and colour vied with
fragrance.”
FOOTNOTES:
[241] There is in Meyrick’s collection an old Highland sword with the
same guard.
[242] “The first consuls of Rome, L. V. Publicola and L. Brutus, as
also the brother of the latter, had in their patents for the few lands
granted them, the distinction of having their gates to open outward
instead of inward.”--Pliny, l. xxxvi. c. 15.
[243] It is the three-fourths of a circle with a Job at each extremity,
and a moveable tongue lying upon it. The necklaces do not pass round
the neck, but are worn in front, only each end being fastened to the
brooch. With this coincides the description in Exodus of Aaron’s ephod
in c. xxviii. and xxxix. The two onyx stones engraved with the names of
the tribes were to be borne upon the two shoulders, and there were to
be two ouches of gold to fasten the stones, from which a chain should
depend, fastened to the breastplate.
[244] The houses here are better than any in Morocco, and look like
casts in plaster, being built piece by piece in moulds.--DAVIDSON’S
Journal in Fez, p. 86.
[245] The Carthaginians hang drapery on their walls. In the Peninsula,
for ceremonies, the streets are sometimes entirely lined with drapery,
and the interior of the churches in Spain have drapery fitted for
them like clothes. The cathedral of Seville may be seen in Holy Week
undergoing changes like the decorations of a theatre.
BOOK III.
THE ARAB TENT.
CHAPTER I.
HUNTING EXPEDITION TO SHAVOYA.
I have already stated my object in visiting Barbary, and its
frustration. I thought it best, therefore, to abstain from any
intercourse with the Moorish government on political matters, and to
take advantage of the entrance I had obtained to see the country. I
soon, however, found myself the object of suspicion. If I spoke of
visiting Fez or Morocco, I was mysteriously motioned to be silent. The
guards assigned to me watched me as a prisoner. I was not suffered to
cross the threshold without a written order from the Caïd. The prospect
before me was close confinement until I could get over the bar as I
had entered, and for that deliverance I might have to wait six months.
In this dilemma, I bethought myself of an expedient. Geology, in these
countries, is a delicate subject. There are the jealousy of avarice and
the fear of consequences. They associate with their mines the former
invasion, and almost conquest by Portugal; and indeed the Portuguese
seem to have drawn considerable stores of gold from this country. They
opened many mines; in every case, as soon as the Moors got possession,
_the mines were filled up_. A promising sulphur manufactory had been
recently set up at Fez, by a renegade Frenchman: it was, by order of
the government, levelled with the ground, and all the instruments
destroyed, lest it should furnish a new attraction to the French; yet
it was to geology and mines that I had recourse to unbolt the gates of
Rabat. I raised the question _ex abrupto_--spoke of mines to everybody,
and exposed the folly of denying to themselves resources, &c. These
discussions reached the Sultan; curiosity was excited, and the matter
debated; the ludicrous exhibition they had made by ruining the sulphur
works, partly admitted mineral investigation, and had its partizans,
and at last I received the acceptable intimation that I might go and
“hunt wild boars” in the province of Shavoya, whence an inquisitive
chief had brought a specimen of “madein,”--a magnificent crystal, or
spiculated mass of cromate of iron.
On the forenoon of the 23rd of December, the permission reached me,
and the Sheik, with geological cravings, the chief of the provincial
tribe, was to be my companion, together with three of the Sultan’s own
body-guard, and a guard from the Caïd of Rabat. The consul, Mr. Leraza,
volunteered his services as interpreter, and in the scarcity of horses,
I was obliged to leave behind my English scribe.
The consulate was immediately like a disturbed ant-hill, and the sun
was still some fathoms above his western bed, when we found ourselves
beyond the walls, and fairly plunged into the living desert--for
desert it was as soon as the town was shut out. We shortly turned
down to the right and threaded our way along the margin, where Africa
and the Atlantic meet. The one bore no house, the other no sail--not
a vestige of man’s toil on the earth, nor on the ocean a sign of his
daring:--they were alone in their immensity. Again striking inward we
lost sight of the sea, and under the reigning solitude could fancy
ourselves approaching the Zahara.
The waste was not, however, dry sand or parched deserts; the land wore
a rich vesture, and its tissue was of flowers. The wild growth of the
fan-like palmetto, that most useful of comparatively useless plants,
predominated. Its services to man were presently made known to me. I
had on board a package of saddles and bridles used years ago while
travelling in the East. Three sets had been put in requisition without
undergoing the requisite repairs and revisions; girths, buckles,
straps, gave way one after the other in a manner which in any other
country would soon have brought us to a stand still; but on each
mischance a man would slip off, make a grasp at a doum branch, and
commence plaiting: between the ductility of the leaf and the dexterity
of their fingers, girths and bands were miraculously restored, buckles
and ties supplied.
Around the doum were scattered the narcissus, and the plant of the
“gardens of the blessed,” the asphodel. Here we were on the very verge
of that sacred west, towards which the living looked where the dead
should dwell, within those granitic arms which extend to receive the
departed spirit.[246] The fourth plant was the _festouk_. This is
honoured by the name of Esculapius: it resembles fennel, but is much
longer, the shoots standing eight or ten feet. The gum ammoniac is
collected from it in the south. A fly with a horn in the head pierces
the trunk, and causes the gum to flow. The stem serves in Spain and
Morocco as a razor strop. Great as is our proficiency in cutlery, we
cannot put an edge on a razor like the Moors, or shave as they do. They
lay the instrument to the very root and make, so to speak, an excision
of its growth. Barbers get their name, no doubt, from Breber; that was
the early mode of supplying names to professions. The shaving of the
head was unknown to the Greeks, Romans or Egyptians, and the hair was
always left untouched till the age of manhood, when it was cut short
and consecrated. The tombs of Lycia exhibit to us boys with shaved
heads and a little tuft, as at present worn by the Mussulmans. This
practice of the “Barbarians” of Asia Minor may well have suggested
the word, though we do not apply it as it was originally applied, in
a geographical sense. The usages of Morocco are so far Mussulman only
as the Mussulmans have adopted them. The shaved head and chin are
Philistine, and, therefore, perhaps the Jews were forbidden to shave
the corners of their beards, and the lock on the temple remains their
distinctive mark. The first man who shaved the chin daily at Rome was
Scipio Africanus. The pith of the festouk serves as a slow match. It
was in it (νάσθηξ) that Prometheus concealed the fire he filched from
Heaven.
These four plants seemed equally distributed over every patch of
ground, and extended over the whole face of the country. The flowers
of the asphodel stood higher than a man. The soil is mere sand; but
between the clumps of flowers a little grass might be seen.
About seven o’clock, it having been some time dark, we came suddenly
upon fires and crowds of squatters, and bales heaped around them: the
herds of crouching camels had a strange appearance among the people
and the smoke. It was a small caravan settled round a Douar. We were
preparing to pitch outside, but in the hurry of our departure, or
rather flight, the tent pins had been forgotten. The sheik immediately
removed his family out of his own tent to accommodate us.
At length I beheld an Arab camp--at length I entered an Arab tent! I
would not have exchanged that sight for the possession of a palace.
That first hour must remain associated with every effort to picture the
ancient world--with every judgment of its present condition.
When we were comfortably arranged, the sheik brought a flat bowl with
a pile of _hot scous_. As he set them down he said, “scou!” The two
Scotchmen of the party had been surprised at the sight of the dish,
but they were electrified when they heard the word: their astonishment
burst forth in a way that puzzled and amazed the sheik. In his turn he
was delighted with the explanation. The Douar, the Buled, the Cabaile,
are mere extensions of the family and multiplications of the tent: the
blood relationship runs through all; the parentage, therefore, of a
race is of as much interest to them as that of an individual. “Every
Arab of the present day,” says Burckhardt, “can tell back his fathers
and their collateral relatives to the ninth generation.” In the last
generation a Highlander would do the same.[247] But memory, like man,
has lost its early longevity. At the time of Mahomet every Arab could
trace back twenty generations.[248] through ages; whose people had
remained almost to our
This Arab was delighted to hear of a race in England with patriarchal
chiefs whose line ascended unbroken times unchanged; who had their
own language,[249] who had a diet, part of which was “scous,”[250] and
a dress, part of which was a haïk. He came and embraced me, when I
told him that my forefathers had dwelt amongst them, and had left the
_usted_ as their memorial. The sympathy for which I was here indebted
to my Highland blood, did not, as in Europe, spring from antipathy to
England. At this moment, in Morocco, England is the idol. To her every
eye is turned: they make inquiries, and hang upon your answer. One
Englishman is peculiarly the object of their regard. There is not one
of them who is not familiar with the name of “Palmerston.” Seldom did a
day pass that I was not asked respecting the chances of his return to
office, and many a kindly pat on the back did I receive.
Though our journey had not exceeded a dozen miles, we were completely
exhausted by our day of preparations, and had not yet tasted food;
so, making our supper upon this _hors d’œuvre_, the scous, we laid
ourselves down. My companions soon resigned themselves to the empire
of fatigue, and I, mesmerized by the waves of the Numidian folds,
seemed to see the sides of the tent open on dim vistas of long years,
through which great shadows flitted. Tacferinas rose, and, beyond,
Jugurtha; there were mingled, like ghosts upon the shore of Styx,
Hunerick and Hannibal, Nebuchadnezzar and Cervantes, Don Sebastian and
St. Louis. Pictured scenes danced on the textile cloud--Moosa on the
cliff of the Atlantic; Marius amidst Byrsa’s shattered battlements;
Juba in his purple; Lot in his sackcloth; Rachel at the well; and,
walking from the canvas, Abraham stood in the door. How many more from
Atlas to Nelson--how many deeds from the battle of the gods to that
of Trafalgar--what thrones and sceptred hands from the old Muley of
Carteïa,[251] to the present one of Fez! At length the phantoms were
cleared away, though not by light, and the vision was broken, because
I fell from trance to slumber; and sense then let in what fancy had
before kept out--the noises of an Arab camp by night.
To each tent there is at least one dog. The sheep ten per tent, expert
in imitating old men’s cough. There are asses and horses secured with
chains, and cattle (the _mugitus bovum_) mingle with the brayings
of the one and the clanking of the other. The steeds are peculiarly
quarrelsome, and their differences provoke the otherwise tranquil
camels, who, when aroused, give it to one another in their own Xantippe
fashion. Through all these pierced the infantine cry of the kid and
goat. Lastly, there is chanticleer, reared from Jebusite eggs,--not
like our sober cock, contented with a morning crow or two--but
repeating hour by hour, and all night long, the warning notes which
startled Peter. Take then the sum--eighty cocks, forty camels, forty
asses, forty horses, eight hundred sheep, four hundred goats, one
hundred dogs--or fifteen hundred animals, called “dumb,” pent up in a
circle of three hundred yards’ diameter, in the middle of which your
tent is pitched! Speak, then, of “Nature’s soft nurse.”
A watch was appointed. They came, bringing their dogs to sleep round
the tent, and, of course, to sup with our guards and attendants. It
was near eleven o’clock before they “sat down.” Arabs speak loud and
long, and all together. They were long at their supper--longer at their
talk. When they had done, the dogs fought for the bones, and continued
after they were picked. As soon as they had concluded, the children
in the school commenced, all at once, every one a different lesson,
as loud as their throats could shriek, and as fast as their tongues
could clatter. One sense was not, however, to be racked alone:--the
process of acupuncture soon commenced with such vigour and method that,
when daylight appeared, not one square line of my whole body remained
unsuffused with a roseate hue. Hitherto, I had secured myself against
this Egyptian plague, by a musquito curtain sewed to a sheet,[252]
but had neglected to have one when needed most. When I stirred up the
party, as I did betimes, the consolation I received was, “You are lucky
that it is winter, or you must have had musquitoes into the bargain!”
Each night it was the same. I recognized my old acquaintance among
sheep, kids, dogs, camels--the same school-boys followed us everywhere,
and we had over and over again the Lancasterian method in the morning.
Not till the fourth night--after all expedients--cotton-stuffing,
bandages, &c., had failed--did exhausted Nature close her ears and mine.
We started next morning under a Scotch mist, and were soon wet to the
skin. After four or five hours’ toiling, yet advancing little, we
turned restiff from cold and hunger, and desired to be housed, dried,
or, at all events, fed. I insisted, as the direction we travelled in
mattered little, on going in search of a Douar. For two hours more we
continued to stray. Having missed the one we had sought, and avoiding
others which were in sight, our course became to me at last utterly
incomprehensible. I thought that wherever there was a tent there was a
welcome, and wherever a roof, a shelter. I now discovered my mistake.
I insisted on approaching a very small Douar of about fifteen tents,
to which some old men and boys of most forbidding appearance, were
driving in the cattle. The soldiers went to them, and standing long
conversing, I advanced towards the Douar; they rushed at me with
violent gestures. M. Seruya offered them money, but they derided him,
and signed to us to be off.
It was strange: we had offended in nothing; we demanded nothing; we
only begged for shelter, and we were willing to pay for it. They were
Arabs: we were strangers. Our party was calculated to command respect
or enforce obedience, being composed of officers from the city, the
sheik of a neighbouring tribe, emissaries of the Sultan: we outnumbered
them, and were armed and mounted. Yet the sense of hospitality, money,
authority, strength availed us nothing; I asked for an explanation but
gained none. Then came the question--the Homeric question, “Who are
you?--of what race, of what land?”
Εἴπὲ δέ μοι γαῖαν τε τεὴν δῆμον τε πόλιν τέ.
Now light broke in. I had to ask the name, not of a village but a
tribe.[253] A tribe might be trodden down, not the individuals; these
were not a dozen shepherds:--they were _Saba_, who muster two thousand
five hundred firelocks. This tribe had travelled from Arabia: they
could go back to-morrow if they liked. They might have come yesterday,
or a thousand, or two, or three thousand years ago. To such as they
are, time brings no change, distance presents no obstacle. But this
name was not heard now for the first time. Was it they, perchance, who
stole Job’s cattle? Did any of them accompany their queen to Jerusalem?
How do these bear the patronymic of that mysterious stock? Sheba was
the firstborn of Cush and elder to Phut and Canaan and Mizram. Yet I
could not call them with Isaiah “men of stature.” These Saba have seen
arise and pass away the great empires of the earth. They will live when
that one to which the wanderer belongs, whom they would not receive, is
gone to be addressed by the shades of Nineveh and Babylon, “Art thou
too become as one of us?” Well, they did not choose that we should
enter, and we had neither right to question nor complain. My escort
were Moors, not Frenchmen.
The Saba were, however, civil enough to direct us to one of the Douars
of our sheik’s tribe,--the _Zieïda_. We reached it about nightfall, and
without halt or parley, rode right in. Like the change of a theatre
by the scene-shifter’s whistle, a couple of tents all standing, the
poles, cords, &c., being manned, were lifted from their place and
advanced into the centre: matting was spread upon the deep, wet
verdure: blazing wood was brought from neighbouring fires, piled into
a fire, and in the twinkling of an eye we were roofed, sheltered,
settled about our hearth, and in our home, where a moment before
the earth lay bare, wet, cold, dark, and comfortless. Then came the
elders. The owner of the tent brought a sheep to present at the door:
another eggs; another a jar of butter. It was painful and strange
to me not to be able to converse with them, and to my instant and
repeated inquiries, I could get from my interpreter nothing more than
“compliments,”--“compliments.” They soon retired to leave us to get
dried, and then was repeated to me their request, which was, that we
should think favourably of them now, and speak well of them hereafter.
I said, “the proverb runs through the world, ‘hospitable as an Arab,’
now I know it is a truth.” They presently returned with demonstrations
of gratitude, my words having been repeated from tent to tent round the
Douar.
Often during this second sleepless night did those words recur to
me--“_We are Saba_.” Suppose that one of Job’s descendants had been of
the party, we might have set up a claim for the cattle. The Egyptians
demanded from the colony of Jews introduced into Egypt by Alexander,
repayment for the jewels which the Jewish women had carried away. The
claim was admitted, but they pleaded value given in “brick-making.”
Alexander held the defendants entitled to a verdict. Eight centuries
did not give amongst them the strength to Time which with us is
acquired from seven years.
Sheba signified oath;[254] thus Beersheba, the well of the oath. They
were the words of the mystery of objurgation, the basis of religions
and governments.
The inventions of a people have in antiquity received their name; thus
have many vocables been formed. It is in this manner that language
becomes history. We have centre courts (atrea), from the manner of
building of Atrea. _Gauze_ from Gaza; _calico_ from Calient; _muslin_
from Masulipatam; _embroiderers_ (_Phrygiones_) from Phrygia. _Towers_
from the Tyrians; _ceremonies_ from Cere. In Spain to-day a waggon
is called _Elheudi_ (the Jew). These single words, as clearly as if
written on tables of brass, as surely as if sworn to by myriads of
witnesses, prove their etymon to be fact. The Jews introduced chariots
into Spain; the Etruscans religious forms into Rome, and so for oath,
the Saba use the inventions of the ritual of ancient superstition.
Above one thousand years ago, the answer given to me was given to a
Calif El Mamrou, who while on his march to attack the Roman empire,
meeting a tribe with narrow tunics like the Persians, and long hair,
called them to him, and asked them who they were. They answered, “We
are Harrane.” He then said, “Are you Christians?” which they denied. He
then asked, “Are you Jews?” That they denied also. Then he said, “Have
you got no book, and do you follow no prophet?” And as they returned
an uncertain answer, he said to them, “Ye are idolaters, and deserve
death!” They then alleged that they paid tribute and had contracted
with the Mussulmans; but he tells them that they are not of the number
of those who can make contracts, and threatens to extirpate them to
the last child unless, on his return, they had professed Islam, or one
of the religions mentioned in the book (Judaism or Christianity). They
then changed their clothes and cut off their hair; and some became
Christians and some Mussulmans; but many would not; and being in great
fear of the Calif’s return, they applied to an old man to know what
they should do. He said to them, “When Mamrou returns, answer him, ‘WE
ARE SABA,’ which is the name of the religion which the Great God has
named in the Koran; and thus let us be freed from him!”[255]
Mahomet makes Abraham, when passing from Irak into Syria, fall in with
Saba, “versed in old books, and who believed what they contained.”
Then Abraham says to God: “It does not appear that in the world there
are any but I and those who are with me, who are faithful and believe
in thee alone. So God ordered him to preach to them; and he called to
them, but they would not obey him. ‘How should we,’ said they, ‘believe
thee who canst not read?’ So God sent upon them forgetfulness of those
sciences and books which they knew.”
And this, then, is the last remnant of the people who first fixed
the hours of the day--the points of the compass,--who taught the
courses of the stars[256]--who were the teachers of letters, and the
first law-givers.[257] Small in numbers, scattered without being
disconnected, they had their settlements in Arabia Felix; on the Red
Sea; on the Persian Gulf; in Syria; in Asia Minor, and in the far
regions of the West; and linked with their camels the sea-borne traffic
of their twin race with the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. Yet of them the
stock remains--not one orphan of Tyre subsists.
The next morning was beautiful; and turning to the eastward, we
proceeded on our journey, expecting early in the day to reach sheik
Tibi’s own Douar. We came upon patches or outliers of the cork forests.
In ten miles I counted sixteen Douars, averaging seventy tents; and
the furthest from us on each side was not more than two miles. Thence
for fifteen miles, though the land was cultivated, there was neither
tent nor tree to be seen. The soil, almost sand, is thinly spread
over a face of rock. The festouks and asphodels had disappeared, and
lilies supplied their place; but not a fly, nor a bird, nor a spider,
nor insect, save ants. The hollows were marshes or little lakes; but
nowhere was the mould shaped by the action of water,--nowhere did the
soil imbibe the rain to hold and discharge it,--no trace of a rivulet.
This tract extends along the whole coast, averaging twenty miles in
width and five hundred feet in height. Schist, slate, and quartz-rock
protrude through it in some places, the line of bearing being at right
angles to the coast. I have already explained this formation, the
peculiarity of which consists in the surface being converted into
stone. At one place the road crossed what looked like a rivulet; but
the extent of its course was 250 yards, that is to say, this was the
whole distance from the first indenting of the ground till it had
opened into a deep chasm. Wherever water filters through, the sand is
removed and the rock falls in; and then the rent goes on like a crack
in a plate of glass, widening and deepening to the sea.
This is a landscape requiring a new name. I now could understand that
strange term, “Rolling Prairies:”--it must be a similar formation,
swelling, but not hill-like; tame, but not valley-like; expanse not
like that of the sea; undulations not like those of the land; and over
the whole a preadamite vastness, unbroken till you come abruptly to the
edge of the gulfs. Were the elevation thousands instead of hundreds of
feet, and the distance from the sea thousands instead of tens of miles,
then it would require but snake-grass and buffaloes to witness an
estampado without crossing the Atlantic. It was quite delightful to get
upon the hills again: they were rugged aluminous schist, well clothed
with trees of extreme beauty, but moderate size, principally the cork
oak. I here first saw the Arar, the Thuya articulata, a tree between a
cypress in the leaf, and a pine in the figure. The wood is invaluable;
no worm touches it, and it endures for ever; it does not split; and
though hard is easily wrought. They use it for the beams of the houses
which are near the ceilings of apartments: those ceilings of “cedar and
vermilion,” that we read of in the Prophets and the “Arabian Nights.”
It has the odour of the cedar, and yields pitch and turpentine. There
is also an evergreen like the thorn, bearing a berry like the haw:
they call it _Berri_, and make oil from it. This is the Eliodendron of
the Greeks. Further to the south there is the _Argan_, from the nut
of which a much esteemed oil is made. The oak furnishes the Bellotis,
which, without ceasing to be an Arcadian, is here a real food.
Habits still draw very closely on the Arcadian. Water is their drink;
their food milk and wheat not fermented, and subjected to scarcely any
cooking. To their grain and milk they add dried fruits, fresh acorns,
palmetto root, truffles, the lotus berry, and the like. The country
produces the plants which yield sago and arrow-root.
Hunting was not the primitive state of man, nor flesh his original
diet. If all the literature of the world were destroyed except that
of the Hudson’s Bay Company, such a belief might be pardonable in
future times. We put ourselves in a similar predicament when we take
the pictures of early Greece as the first steps of the human race.
The names of the first slayers of animals and eaters of flesh have
been recorded, and yet we treat as a fable all that is enumerated of
these times, because they talk of living upon acorns. A garden was the
residence of our first parents.
I had made one step backward towards the reality of early fable, when
I wandered in the indubitable Hesperides and plucked their golden
fruit; but now, amongst the cork forests, and seeing acorns and glands
plucked and fed upon, I made a second, and reached the golden age
itself.
A man may thus travel and find food wherever he stretches out his
hand, or lays him down to rest. I do not say it is a very agreeable
diet, perhaps not a very nutritious one; but still here are roots,
and plants, and glands, which will sustain life without the aid of
cookery; and populations might spread and multiply, sustained by the
spontaneous gifts of the earth. The first peopling of the globe remains
the greatest of wonders; for what can be to us more unaccountable than
the ease of their travels, the order of their society, the distinctness
of their character, the rapidity of their growth?
The Douar for which we were bound was beyond the hills. We had,
therefore, to cross them, and from the summit the view opened to the
eastward a totally different scene. From this height the country behind
looked like a swelling sea--before us it was all in heaps. No vacant
space and no rocky side, but as if earth had been carted to the spot by
tunnelling giants, and shot out there.
We found the Douar perched on the summit of a knoll;--the circle of
tents looked like a diadem upon its brow. Our tent was pitched in the
centre, that is, at the top. As soon as it was in order, our Tibi came
to bid us welcome: he was a simple, sedulous man, and from the first to
the last moment was just the same. They paraded us round the circle,
and we were passed from group to group to be examined, patted, and
discussed. The round of visits ended at the Sheik, and I was ushered
in among his three wives;--and here was a busy scene. The tent, though
I speak from recollection, was little short of forty feet in length
and twenty in width; the cross-bar supporting it in the middle might
be ten or twelve feet high; the covering swept down, so that towards
the extremities you had to crouch or creep. In the centre and around
were piled up stores of provisions, clothing, and the like, arranged
for the convenience of sitting or sleeping. There were three or four
small fires, chiefly of embers, on which were boiling large brown jars
with long necks, as if preparing for some great feast. The principal
wife would soon by her appearance have arrested my attention, had
she allowed me or any one else to be ignorant of her presence and
authority. She was comely, bold, haughty, supple in body, dexterous of
hand. Seated within reach of the two or three fires, she was proceeding
to dispose of the cooking viands, which, with a huge ladle, she
heaped up in corresponding dishes. She was giving her orders without
intermitting her work, and all the work of the tent--culinary, at
least,--seemed to pass through her hands.
The dish was kuscoussoo, so I was not to lose such an opportunity. What
had been despatched was for the supply of guests who had arrived before
us: she now had to recommence for us. When I had succeeded in conveying
to her my desire to be instructed in the process of its manufacture,
she gazed at me, and asked what I had eaten all my life, and what
the women in my country did? After briefly satisfying her curiosity,
she made a place for me beside herself, and though her hands never
ceased to flutter about and skim over the contents of her tray, like a
bird’s wings, nor her tongue to run on; when any part of the operation
required attention, she did not fail to awaken mine.
FOOTNOTES:
[246] These arms are represented by the verge of the papyri of the
mummies. The bodies were buried with the face turned to the west. In
sacrificing to the manes they turned to the west.--_Schol. Apoll.
Rhod._ vol. i. p. 580. In sacrificing on Mount Moriah Abraham turned to
the west.
[247] The last bard of Clanronald, in making an affidavit before a
magistrate, enumerated his ancestors to the ninth generation.
[248] Fresnal, Hist. des Arabes avant l’Islomism--_Introduction_.
[249] At Tangier the idea of an affinity between the Brebers and the
Celts is commonly entertained. Mr. Hay and others mentioned to me,
that Highland soldiers coming over from Gibraltar, could understand
the natives. He points out in his work the coincidence of Breber and
Gaelic words; but when these resemblances are found, they are of words
borrowed, and not from any affinity between the languages.
[250] _Scou_ in Arabic means _hot_, as they ought to be eaten, and the
expression “hot scous” is a pleonasm.
[251] Melcarth, from Mel and Cardt, Prince of the City (Carteia), was
the title of Hercules. The Jewish word was Malik. The title proper of
the Sultan of Morocco is Muley; thence Molla of the Turks.
[252] One side is gored out like the mouth of a sack: by this you
enter, dropping all clothes outside, and the sack’s mouth is then tied
round with a cord.
[253] A remarkable conversation is given in Wilson’s “Lands of the
Bible,” vol. i. p. 330, with the sheik of a tribe which he found among
the ruins of Petra, and who recounted the story of his lineage and the
place.
[254] Also “perfect” and “seven,” the perfect number completing the
“planets” and the “week.” The nasal sound gave _zebon_, whence some
derive our word _seven_, also the σέζας of the Greeks.
[255] Hottinger, De Reb. Sab. l. i. c. 8.
[256] Landseer, Sabæan Res.
[257] “Perhaps the most perfect, and certainly the most widely extended
religious system which was ever invented by the unassisted reason of
man.”--DRUMMOND’S _Origines_, iii. 431.
CHAPTER II.
KUSCOUSSOO.
Two women sat in front grinding, and as they proceeded filled the
flour into a basket. My hostess, seated on the ground, had in her lap
a round wooden tray three feet in diameter, the edge resting on the
round. The flour-basket was on the right hand, a jar of water on the
left. She first took a handful of flour, and dusted it into the tray,
then, dipping both hands in the water, passed them through it, and so
continued dusting and dipping and then making sweeps right and left
through the growing mass, which gradually shaped itself into small
grains. The fingers passing quickly and lightly, through and over it,
the little moistened particles were augmented from the dry flour, and
new ones formed. The art consists in causing it to granulate, and in
preventing it from clotting. Each grain receives with its several
coatings pressure and manipulation. We are all familiar with the change
of substance produced by working crumbs of bread between the fingers;
and in some analogous change appears to consist the secret of this dish.
The fact that the tray was sufficiently full, was notified to me by a
smart nudge of the elbow. It was then brought upon an even keel, and
she dashed away amongst it with both hands in a fine style: it was then
thrown into a sieve of pierced sheepskin; and, shaken and tossed, the
smaller grains passed through below, the larger were brushed away from
the top: the size, which varies, was, in this case, about that of a
large pin’s head. The operation was now completed, and it came forth a
grain reconstructed from the flour by a process which rendered it fit
for food, without fermentation, and almost without firing. From the
sieve it is turned into a conical basket of palmetto leaves and placed
on the top of one of the long-necked jars boiling on the fire. In a
quarter of an hour it is cooked, or rather heated. It is curious to
find steam employed, in probably the most ancient of made-dishes.
In this simple form, or with buttermilk, kuscoussoo constitutes the
common food of the people. Fowls or meat, when used, are stewed in the
pot over which it is steamed: the gravy is poured over it, and the meat
or fowl perched on the top. In these cases, it is turned of course out
of the basket into an earthen dish. Gideon in his cookery used a basket
and a dish.
A still more remarkable operation is that of eating it. The Moor gets
his kuscoussoo into his mouth without the aid of a spoon; yet neither
does he drop it, nor does he poke in the plate to catch greasy grains,
nor smear one hair of his moustache. He beats the chopsticks with the
knowing jerk of the South Sea islanders. A monkey only spills his
kuscoussoo. With the points of the fingers of the right hand a portion
of the grains is drawn towards the side of the dish. It is fingered as
the keys of a pianoforte till it gathers together; it is then taken up
into the hand, shaken, pressed till it adheres, moulded till it becomes
a ball; tossed up and worked till it is perfect, and then shot by the
thumb, like a marble, into the open mouth.[258] Eaten otherwise it is
no longer kuscoussoo, and the spoon-feeding Frank may live upon it for
twenty years, and never know what it is that he is eating.[259]
Dr. Shaw, who lived so long at Algiers and travelled all over Barbary,
has remarked--but not accurately--these peculiarities. He calls
the ball _Hamsa_, mistaking cause for effect. The name of the ball
is _cora_. Hamsa is a slang term for hand, corresponding with our
word _fives_, and its dexterity being peculiarly exhibited in this
operation, they may have jocularly answered his questions about it with
that word.
Marmol, a Christian captive, entertains great respect for kuscoussoo,
but Leo Africanus, a Moor of Grenada, a Mussulman and Prince of the
Land, thus reviles it. “In winter they have sodden flesh with a kind of
meat called Cuscusu, which being made of a lump of dough, is set upon
the fire in certain vessels full of holes, and afterwards is tempered
with butter and pottage. The said cuscusu is set before them all in
one platter only, whereon gentlemen as well as others take it not with
spoons, but with their claws five (Hamsa.) The meat and pottage is put
all in one dish, out of which every one raketh with his greasy fists
what he thinks good. You shall never see knife upon the table, but they
tear and greedily devour their meat like hungry dogs. Neither doth any
of them desire to drink before he hath well stuffed his paunch: another
will sup of a cup of cold water as big as a milk bowl.”
M. Roche, who had the advantage of Leo by a double apostacy, used his
proficiency in the opposite sense, and won the day in his late _coup
de main_, by his dexterity in making and projecting coras. Kuscoussoo
with other food was put upon a table for him; knives, forks, and
spoons were laid out; but he seized the kuskas or kuscoussoo dish,
squatted down with it on the floor, and turned up the sleeve of his
uniform, observing, “This is the way we eat kuscoussoo.” That other
extraordinary adventurer, Ali Bey, who was sent by the Prince of
Peace with the scheme of revolutionizing Morocco, until the Spanish
forces should be ready to land to take possession of it, was equally
expert--in fact, it was a _sine quâ non_ of admission into society.
Vermicelli and macaroni are derived from kuscoussoo. They are both
in use in Morocco. Vermicelli is simply the grains of the kuscoussoo
rolled long; it is then called _spauria_. The macaroni is served as a
long roll, coiled like a rope, on a large plate. It is called Fidaoush.
The Spanish name for macaroni is _fidaos_, _Fideh_, the Greek φιδή.
But the Moors are not ignorant of the art of making bread. On the
contrary, they abound in varieties, and have particular kinds for
particular seasons. The Spaniards have evidently derived from them
their manner of baking, in which the dough is most severely handled,
and then, but very slightly, raised or baked. Their bread is something
between biscuit and bread: those who have not eaten it in Andalusia,
and particularly at Seville, do not know what bread is.
Fortunate are the people who possess a dish like kuscoussoo. Any
comparison between them and the bread-eating nations is very
difficult, for they have economy and comforts which are too subtle for
calculation. The Indian has his rice and curry.[260] The inhabitants
of the Eastern and Southern portions of Europe have their dishes (not
bread) of Indian corn. The Turks, the Persians, the Tartars, the Arabs,
have their _pilaf_, which spreads from the Adriatic to the Yellow
Sea--from the Yrtish to the Indian Ocean. The domain of kuscoussoo
extends from the Red Sea to the Atlantic. It does not appear to have
been original amongst the Arabs, as indeed no farinaceous food could
be; yet it has the unmistakable impress of antiquity. Wheat is one
of those inventions or introductions which in Greece, in Egypt, in
Etruria, has a date. We know of it nowhere as original. Its modern
use is imagined to be restricted to the Northern and Western portions
of Europe. It is, however, universal in Northern Africa, and would
appear to have been original among its inhabitants; and I infer that
we are indebted for it to the Holy Land. If we have borrowed from the
Philistines the grain; we have neglected--just as with Indian corn and
rice--to borrow the proper way of cooking it. In these other grains
we cannot be brought to institute any comparison; but kuscoussoo _is_
wheat.
Bread alone will not serve as a people’s diet, and is, moreover,
expensive. We separate the parts of the flour which are adapted to one
another--and so best fitted for food--and thus the coarse bread and the
fine are equally deteriorated. By fermentation the nature of the grain
is changed;[261] and by the baking, while in that state, considerable
loss is incurred by the evaporation of alcohol, which our Excise laws
now forbid us to collect. The difference in point of economy cannot
be less than a quarter in favour of kuscoussoo; and taking it as
furnishing forth the meal without the adjuncts which our labouring
classes require, it will not be too much to say that, bushel for
bushel, the grain is worth to them the double of what it is to us.[262]
A new discovery in baking has been made in New Holland, in consequence
of the ignorance of common arts produced by the subdivision of
labour. We do not know baking afloat; and in the first settlement of
that colony, the women were from the cities, and did not know how to
bake. The bakers appear to be a moral class, for the men were equally
ignorant. The colony lived for years on biscuits, and even at the
governor’s table the guests were in the habit of bringing their own
biscuits. The convicts could not be so daintily treated: their weekly
allowance of flour was served out to them, and they were allowed to do
with it what they liked, when accident or genius led them to treat it
in this manner. Each slaked his fourteen pounds with water, and having
made it into dough, proceeded to heat and pummel it by the hour: this
huge mass of dough was then tumbled into the fire, the ashes having
been raked out to heap over it when laid in. The bread so made, is
pronounced by those familiar with it, excellent: it is called “damper,”
from damping the fire. It is not wet and sodden as might be supposed,
the manipulation, as in the kuscoussoo, rendering it palatable, and
being perhaps slightly raised by the expansion of the air driven in by
the beating which it receives with the fist.
I cannot return from this dissertation without a word on the cooking
of the two other grains from which national dishes are made--Indian
corn and rice. The uncertainties attending the condition of our own
island, increase the importance of the knowledge of the best methods of
dressing the substances that might be substituted for potatoes; and in
the art of cookery, England is behind every other people.[263]
Indian corn does not do when eaten cold. As bread, it is kneaded with
water and fired upon the griddle, and then eaten hot: as polenta it
is cooked like Scotch porridge, or eaten with milk, or it is turned
out and left to cool, and then, when wanted, is sliced and cooked on
the gridiron or fried. In these forms it is an agreeable and wholesome
food.[264]
Pilaf is a dish, which, like kuscoussoo, has its secret. I never tasted
it eatable when made by a Christian. It is rice and butter, and the
art depends in the manner of introducing the butter. Boiled with the
rice, or added in the dish, it would be no pilaf. It is only a person
deserving the name of cook, who, after several failures, might succeed.
Such a person will find all that is requisite in what follows:--
The salt must be put in the water; the pan must be thick; the quantity
of water must be adapted to the rice, which varies, so that when the
rice is cooked, the whole water be absorbed. It must never be touched
or stirred while cooking. Butter is then put in a frying-pan; the
proportions experience will teach. When it boils up, it is poured over
the rice, which sputters and swells; then one turn with a spoon is
given, and it is put on the fire for a moment, and must be served up
hot in the pan. The Mussulmans with this, end their dinner, to show
that they have not eaten to gratify appetite, but to supply want; and
they have a saying, that every pilaf a man does not eat, will rise up
against him at the day of judgment.
My attention was first turned to their diet by this people’s splendid
teeth. Nothing can better exhibit the quality of the food they
masticate. Amongst us clean teeth, except by being cleaned, is a thing
unknown. Without dentifrices, and without brushes, their teeth are pure
and clean--the sure sign that they are free from those acids, which in
us produce the greater portion of our diseases; while by the continual
strain upon the sources of vitality, they shorten life and diminish its
contentment while it lasts.
The first of blessings to an individual is health; and the next,
supposing it not the cause, sobriety. If these be of such value to the
individuals, of what value must they not be to a nation? Yet these are
points at which no constitution has ever aimed; they are beyond the
reach of legislator, philosopher, or schoolmaster; they can come only
from habit, and of this habit the cook is the original and source. It
is not without cause that man has been defined a cooking animal. It is
in the cooking of the race, that its sense is first tested, oftenest
exercised, and longest enjoyed. Rigid Lacedæmon honoured cooks as she
did victors at the Olympic games; and although no professional artist
might breathe her air, still to unbought excellence in the culinary art
she reared statues.[265]
How rational to distinguish nations, as formerly, by their food.
In ancient times the listener was not sickened with hearing about
Sclavonic or German or Anglo-Saxon “race;” neither was he distracted
with “aristocratic,” “monarchical.” When they wanted to show what
a man was, they said, “he is a fish-eater,” or a “lotus-eater.” So
the oracular response to the Spartans, “Beware of them, they live on
acorns.”
Within the last few years an immense amount of talent and science
has been brought to bear upon diet; and contrasting the works that
have been produced with anything that has gone before, one remains
in astonishment at the advantages which in this respect we possess.
Yet what is the profit? A few persons may read these speculations in
their library chairs; but what are the advantages even to these at
the dinner-tables? Come here and you will see economic food and the
healthiest people, who have no “animal chemistry,” and yet illustrate
in their practice that which we reason about in books.
One of the weightiest utensils to transport is the handmill, and one of
the heaviest occupations of the tent is grinding. How large a share it
occupied in the domestic life of Judæa, the repeated allusions to it
in the Sacred Writings bear testimony. Travellers are always struck by
the amount of labour thus thrown away. A learned commentator selects
the long continuance of this practice to illustrate the stupidity of
the human race. This is to suppose an Arab tent in the same row with
a baker’s shop, or with a farm-yard and a granary attached to it. If
they used a windmill they would have to carry it about with them; and
if a water-mill, they would require the rivulet’s attendance in their
peregrinations. The only variety in the landscape of the _Zakel_, is
here and there the tomb of a saint: the only houses are those appointed
for all living. Have they then no stores of grain?
On the spot where it is harvested it is thrashed, winnowed, and
treasured up. Holes are dug in the earth and lined with straw;
these are called _Matmores_: there the grain may be kept a hundred
or a thousand years, protected from rot, mildew, and man. By this
practice they are secured against the uncertainties of the seasons
and fluctuation in price. These reservoirs, when forgotten, may be
discovered by examining the verdure in spring, when it begins to lose
its freshness. Over the matmore the change is first perceptible,
as it is dryer beneath. Twenty years ago, four or five successive
harvests were destroyed by drought and locusts; famine and pestilence
ensued; and but for these stores the country must have been
depopulated.[266] There is an exportation of corn making at present to
Dublin;--permission has been granted for 50,000 fanegas, or little more
than a bushel;--it would cost 6_s._ 6_d._ landed at Dublin, or under
40_s._ a quarter. The last exportation of grain was ten years ago,
when Spain being in great need, permission was granted; and from the
roadstead of Dar el Baida alone, 45,000 quarters were exported without
sensibly augmenting the price.
To effect the change from the handmill to the water or windmill, the
matmores would have to be replaced by standing granaries: standing
granaries would require fixed habitations; fixed habitations would
require walled cities. In the country where I am writing, the land
would not suffice to support these, and, consequently, the extinction
of the population would be the consequence. Elsewhere, where the
land is more fertile, it would place the tribes at the mercy of the
governor, and the whole fabric would fall to pieces.
The aim of the political economist is to accumulate profit--to make
money; to turn, every way, soil and toil into the banker’s books. The
end of the legislator is exactly the reverse. He knows that the danger
to society is from the accumulations of profit. He knows that wealth
draws wealth, and engenders power, and brings the fall of states.
By legislators I mean those who have proved themselves such by their
works--the states which they have built up.
In early times we always find the chiefs possessing the greatest
ascendancy over their people. How is it they lose this authority? Is
it not when, to the influence of blood and station, _they have added_
the influence of wealth? Institutions, therefore, calculated to make
a people happy, and preserve it long, must effect the very reverse
of modern science, and must prevent the accumulation of capital, and
equalize the distribution of food.
This end is obtained amongst the Arabs, not by laws or institutions,
but simply through hospitality. No human creature enters an Arab douar
and goes without a bellyful, and of this the charge falls upon the
chief. When I obtained a new method of preparing wheat, of cooking
a dish and eating it; I also observed a new method and manner of
distributing it. The tent was like a tavern without bells. Half of
Sheik Tibi’s substance goes in kuscoussoo. It is an extraordinary thing
to see; it is slowly that the mind takes it in; it is difficult to
convey it to another--and testimony is requisite. In Mr. Davidson’s
Journal there is a corroboratory passage, which is all the more
valuable as coming from one who had no conception of the value of the
fact he recorded. Speaking of the great Sheik of Suz, he says, “The
Sheik, rich and powerful as he is, dares not shut his door against the
dirtiest beast who thinks proper to enter. The kuscoussoo, or teapot,
is a general invitation, and all may come in and feed.” This is the
interpretation of those words of Isaiah, “Thou hast clothing--be thou
our ruler,” as of the reply, “In mine home there is neither bread nor
clothing--make me not a ruler.” Of the patriarchal period in our own
state, we have a record in the title, _Lord_, which meant the giver of
bread. The word “government” is itself derived from the same source,
and to-day in the streets of Athens a beggar will approach you with
these words, “χηβερνισὲ μου--_govern_ me, _i.e._ give me food.” Amongst
the Turks, where ceremonial is the bond, _rank_ is given to bread. If
a Mussulman sees a bit of bread on the ground, he reverentially picks
it up, kisses it, and then places it in some position where it may
be seen and used, if requisite, by man or beast.[267] If the Sultan
were to come into a room where the humblest were sitting at food, they
would not rise to receive him--his dignity is effaced in presence of
the “gift of God;” thus, a mendicant may place himself at the table
of the Vizir. A person who could not be asked to partake of coffee,
who could not presume to be seen with a pipe, may be invited to sit
down to dinner. The breaking of bread, the most solemn mystery of our
faith, has, in this respect, a meaning which we cannot read. In the
East, the injunction of Christ to turn not away from him who asketh,
is universally observed.[268] We cannot observe that rule, because
we have produced such an amount of pauperism that no private charity
can suffice, and we have destroyed the practice of charity, so that
it _shall_ not suffice; then we reconcile faith and disobedience by
treating the injunction as a metaphor.
In the Moorish government, the practice of the tribes is now
reversed,[269] but still the traces are not all lost. “The Kings of
Fez,” says Marmol, “have a custom to have their food brought publicly
to the Hall of Audience, where, every morning, they receive the
compliments of the princes and the great men. After the king has eaten
two or three mouthfuls--for he never eats more in public--the dish
(of kuscoussoo) is turned from before him, and his children, or his
brothers, if they are present, approach, and each take a mouthful and
return to their places. Then the great personages and the common come
by order of their degrees, till, at last, the very porters and the
guards; for all those who are in the hall, great or little, must taste
much or little, because they believe that it is a sin to eat alone,
without offering to those who look at you. The princes and governors
in the province do each the same thing. Every one eats once a day of
kuscoussoo, because it costs little and nourishes much.”[270]
“Fill not thy belly in presence of the longing eye.” What are all our
homilies on charity to this? What all our constitutions? This is not a
proposition; it is a maxim, a rule of conduct; it is a habit--that is,
a self-enforcing law.
What is the evil eye? How should such a fancy have taken root? I once
commended a child’s beauty: the nurse immediately spat in its face.
I asked the reason; she answered, “Against your evil eye.” Pride was
there the spell, humiliation the _fascinum_. The figure of a hand is
the ordinary talisman.[271] The open hand denotes generosity, the
closed one firmness. The hand so used is neither closed nor open, two
fingers being doubled, two extended. What can this signify, if not a
measured participation of what you enjoy to prevent the longing, from
becoming the “evil,” eye? Associated as the hand is with kuscoussoo,
the emblem is appropriate. That _superstition_ has cheered many a heavy
spirit and relaxed many a girded heart, and is cheaper than a poor-law.
Thus, by the maxims, habits, and domestic practices and superstitions
which centre in and support hospitality--not the hospitality that
invites a compeer, but which confers food and raiment upon the
destitute--are the inequalities of the human condition moderated;
alike prevented from being greatly diverse, the balance is maintained
between wealth and numbers, and the classes cemented to each other. As
on the one side there can be none absolutely destitute, so can there be
none excessively rich; and in all cases riches must flow in benefits
around. It is a melancholy fact, that hospitality has disappeared in
Christendom--not in practice only, but in every thought--and therefore
are our minds a chaos, as well as our condition. Nor is there remedy.
Science may be taught, but not simplicity; and duties which we have
superseded by legislation, we shall presently prohibit by law.
FOOTNOTES:
[258] When eaten with buttermilk they use spoons, the place of which
is here supplied by enormous mussel shells--true _cochlearia_. The
savoury accompaniments are thus absorbed, and the ball acquires that
consistency which gives to the dish its zest.
[259] “When he (the Sultan) is intent upon a piece of work, or eager to
have it finished, he won’t allow himself to go to his meals, but orders
some of his eunuchs or negroes to bring him a dish of kuscoussoo, which
he sits down and eats after a brutish manner; for as soon as he has
rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, he thrusts his arms into the dish
up to his elbows, and bringing a handful from the bottom he fills his
mouth, and then throws the rest into the dish again, and so on till he
is satisfied.”--_Account of Barbary_, p. 92, 1713.
[260] They use flour, but not as bread. It is made like porridge, and
eaten with milk.
[261] The effect of fermentation on food was not overlooked by the
ancients. “Panis azymus, ou sans levain, Celse dit facile à dégirer:
les modernes _ne sont pas de cet avis_.”--Note by Pankoucke to Pliny,
l. xviii. c. 27.
[262] “Keep a man on brown bread and water, and he will live and enjoy
good health; give him white bread and water only, and he will gradually
sicken and die. The brown contains all the ingredients essential
to the composition or nourishment of our bodies. Some of these are
removed by the miller in his efforts to please the public. The loss
by fermentation and refining taken together, is under-estimated at
twenty-five per cent. 18,000,000 quarters of wheat are made into bread
annually in England and Wales: the waste is, therefore, 4,500,000
quarters, or 3,357,000,000lbs. of bread, or eight ounces per day per
man. This is nearly double the quantity of wheat usually imported; and
amounts, at 50s. the quarter, to 11,250,000_l._ sterling.”--_Pamphlet
on Unfermented Bread._
[263] “Some of our readers may, perhaps, smile at the idea that the
poor require much instruction in this art. The first and greatest
difficulty with them, they say, is, that they can get very little food
to cook. This is too true; but it is equally true that the little food
a poor family obtains is not made the best of; and that a greater
variety of wholesome, better-flavoured, and more nourishing food may be
procured by an improved system of cookery, and without any additional
expense. In many cases indeed, the cost would be less than by the
present defective method.”--_The Family Economist_, p. 10.
[264] Humboldt has decided that for maize (Zea maize) the old continent
is indebted to the new. If so, it would carry its own name, or receive
a descriptive one. Tobacco we can trace as tobacco, or as “smoke”
καχνὸς (_Tutun_). Potatoes by that name, or as “root apples:” not
so maize. The Greeks call it Arabic Ἀραποσιτι. The Turks, Egyptian
(_Missir Bogda_). On the Black Sea, it is _Cucuruzzi_. The Arabs of
Egypt call it Doura Shamee, or Grain of Damascus. The Bulgarians call
it _Callamboki_. Throughout the Indian archipelago it is known as
_Sagung_. In one of the Egyptian tombs there is a figure holding a head
of Indian corn; but this a learned writer will not admit, “because
that grain was introduced into Europe from Virginia.” Is it the _ksob_
of Negroland? the _Droueu_ and _Beshna_ of various parts of north
Africa?--See Egyptian Antiquities, Lib. Ent. Knowledge, vol. ii. p. 30;
Wilkinson, vol. i. p. 397; Crawford’s Indian Archipelago, vol. i. p.
366; Bradford’s American Antiquities, p. 418; Carette’s Algeria, vol.
ii.
[265] Formerly every private soldier cooked in turn for his mess. In
this respect, at all events, they preserved the temper and the tone of
the heroic ages, where the chiefs did not disdain to use the spit. The
revolution of February--the Labour Revolution--comes, and is followed
by a new subdivision, the appointment of forty-nine cooks to every
regiment.
[266] The Lydians had the same practice. It may account for their
enduring the long famine, which led to the emigration of the Tyrseni,
and for the provisioning of their ships.--See DRUMMOND’S _Origines_, b.
vi. c. 7.
[267] Lord Clarendon relates, that in the fire of London, a servant
of the Portuguese Ambassador was seized and roughly handled, on the
accusation of a citizen, who swore that he saw him throw a fireball
into a house, which immediately burst into flames. The foreigner, so
soon as the charge was translated to him, explained that he saw a
piece of bread lying on the ground, and according to the custom of his
country, picked it up and laid it on a shelf in the nearest house. The
house was searched: the bread was found upon a board just within the
door.
[268] “We had quarters assigned us; I with one peasant, and my comrade
with another. We had free board, and the peasants (Turkish) exercised
hospitality as though it was a matter of course.”--_Wanderings of a
Journeyman Tailor_, p. 97.
[269] One of the charges against Koulayh Wail, the first tyrant of
Southern Arabia, was, that he “monopolised hospitality.”--See _Lamgal
Alareb_.
[270] Africa, vol. ii. p. 193.
[271] “If I have witheld the poor from his _desire_, or caused the
_eyes_ of the widow to fail, or have _eaten my morsel alone_, and
the fatherless hath not eaten with me. If I have seen any perish
for want of clothing, or any poor without covering. If his loins
have not blessed me, and if he were not warmed with the fleece of my
sheep.”--JOB xxxi.
“Many, of course, were the Telzemi used against the evil eye. I have
selected the hand only as affording the key. The Bulla were worn by
the Etruscans, from whom the Romans copied them, as protection against
it. The Bulla (_five_ in number) were likewise in use among the Arabs,
but abolished by Islam. Most of them still wear on their necks the
ornaments of infancy.”--_Motenabbi._ These ornaments were berries of
plants, سخاب--CHREATH, _Arabe_, t. iii. p. 41.
The Phallus was also used for the same purpose.--PLINY. Three together
are sculptured on polygonal walls, in the Sabine territory at Zerui;
and in the Etruscan land at Todi in Umbria, &c.--DENNIS, vol. ii. p.
122. Also in Lydia. See Fellows’ Lydia.
CHAPTER III.
THE HAÏK.
However extensive the culinary operations in the chieftain’s tent,
they did not absorb the whole care of his household. Simultaneously
were going on the plaiting of baskets, the weaving of stuffs, the
churning of butter, the preparing of skins, and the casting of bullets.
The mould is two pieces of slate for half-a-dozen bullets at a time.
The bow and arrow of the Numidian hunter having given way to the
musket, this might be considered, at least, a modern invention. But
no, they were slingers as well as bowmen, and in the manufacture of
leaden pellets, they were so expert, that, as Ælian tells us, Cæsar
had supplies from hence. The dwarf palm presents them with materials
for tents, ropes, baskets, dishes, &c. The plant is called _Doum_ or
_Jumard_; the fan-like leaf, _Lyzaf_, serves for baskets, and their
dishes are baskets. From the fibrous substance round the stalk or root,
_Liff_, they spin thread, which they weave for the tent-covering, and
spread out upon the ground, passing the thread with the hand. The haïks
are, of course, home-made: those for the women and children have sprigs
or lines of bright and lively colour. The weaving is more ancient[272]
than the “flying shuttle” of Job, and is done by hand, as the Cashmere
shawls, or Arras tapestry. The warp, which is very slender, is
suspended; the woof, thick and slightly twisted, is passed by the hand;
when there are colours, there is a ball for each; every colour in the
pattern, is one thread. After the thread is passed, a flat heavy iron
with short spikes, protruding like a comb, is used to beat it down,
when it gains the character of felt.
But this vestment is of too great importance in a domestic,
manufacturing, political, hygeian, and picturesque point of view, to
dispose of thus. We travel thousands of miles to see an old ruin.
Adventurer after adventurer staked his life against a glimpse of the
interior sands of Africa. Here is the swaddling bands of a race. Is it
not worth turning over and handling, and seeing what it is made of, and
how it fits?
THE HAÏK.
If Prometheus had set himself down to consider, not how many things he
could invent for man, but what single invention would serve him most,
he might have fixed on the haïk. It is not known in Arabia, Judæa, or
any part of the East. It is mentioned by no ancient writer; yet on
its intrinsic characters, I claim for it the rank of first parent of
costume. It is found in Barbary. Who then shall assign to it a date?
The region is a nook in the ocean of time, where the wrecks of all ages
are cast up, and here, like the moon, these things are found, which are
lost elsewhere.
A shuttle and loom to weave, pins to knit, scissors to cut, or needles
and thread to sew, are requisite for every other dress; the haïk
dispenses with them all. It is a web, but not wove (in the modern sense
of the word); it is a covering, but neither cut nor stitched. When Eve
had to bethink herself of a durable substitute for innocence, this is
what she must have hit upon. The name it bears is such as Adam might
have given, had he required it in Paradise, “_that which is wove_,”
i.e. _web_.
It is only a web, yet is it coat, great-coat, trousers, petticoat,
under and over garment, enough for all and everything in one. Being
but the simplest of primitive inventions, it outvies in beauty, and
overmatches in convenience the succeeding centuries of contrivance and
art: it completes the circle, the last step being not to return to,
but merely to perceive the beauty of the first conception, and yield a
barren and æsthetic applause to the perfection of the primitive design.
It is the only costume to which the language of the Bible is adapted,
or by which its metaphors are intelligible. When I had seen it, I
understood “rending the garments;” “Justice as a garment;” “girding
with power;” “robing with light,” “_clothing with a cloud_.”
Adam’s names were given, not only as a description but with perfect
knowledge of objects, which seem removed from the ken of man, until
long labour and accumulated experience had found the order and the
purpose of nature. What can be more exact as a logical definition, or
more striking as a poetic image than the “day,” (םוי)--an “agitator;”
the earth, (ץרא from צד) a “runner.” The heart derives its name from
its action, בבל; the lever, דבכ, from its weight.
The objection will doubtless be urged, that the Easterns do not change
their fashions, or lose their habits, and if the haïk ever was in
Palestine, it would still be there. I answer, two successive races have
been driven forth from the Holy Land. The first three thousand years
ago, the second nearly two thousand. Both of these, at present, wear it
in Morocco. The Jews, when expatriated, adopted elsewhere the costume
of the country wherein they settled, their own being proscribed; and
those at present found in the Holy Land have returned thither with
foreign usages, the very language being the Castilian. Thus, all that
belonged to the Philistine and the Hebrew, has been swept away, and the
original features of that most interesting of all countries have been,
by Chaldean or Egyptian, Persian or Parthian, Greek or Roman, Pagan or
Christian, utterly effaced.
The Jew under his common clothing wears a mystic garment. Why he wears
it, or when the practice arose, neither wise nor simple can tell. In
vain is the Rabbi appealed to, the Talmudist consulted to explain the
_Tisit_, which from Archangel to Suz, every Israelite puts on in the
morning and takes off at night; or of the _Talith_ which he wears in
the synagogue when he prays.[273] Yet the meaning is as plain as if
printed in an Encyclopædia.
These names do not occur in the Old Testament, and no mention is made
of them in the “Six hundred and thirteen Fundamental precepts of
Judaism,” promulgated after the return from the Babylonish captivity
to enforce and maintain the ceremonial law, and which continue to
be their code of life and manners. No mention of them is made in
the New Testament, or in Josephus, or Hecateus, or any writer who
treats of the Jews. Yet as this practice is universal, its date must
have been antecedent to their dispersion: what more clear than that,
when forbidden to appear in their costume, they preserved it in the
sanctuary, and in secret bound an image of it to their hearts? What
more touching record of the sorrows of an exiled people?[274] Linked
together by oppression, they have since clung to a practice which they
have ceased to comprehend, and the token handed down by their fathers
they respect as a religious observance or cabalistic sign, and venerate
the stuff for its fringes,[275] not for its former memory or future
promise.[276] The Tisit is a small Talith, the Talith a miniature
haïk.[277] The only difference is in the distribution of the fringes,
and in the borders: the haïk has the fringe at the ends and no border.
A blue border was enjoined by the ceremonial law. The Abyssinians wear
it still.[278]
I do not think that I need say one word more on this point; nor can
I imagine, under the circumstances, any proof more conclusive that
the haïk was the clothing of the people of Judæa. If this be not
admitted, it will have to be shown, or supposed--the one as difficult
as the other--that the successive emigrants, when they collected
here, invented a new costume, and abandoned that which they had
previously worn. I have already referred to the metaphorical language
of Scripture, applying to loose drapery, and not to fitted clothes;
such must have been the dress then worn: there is no Eastern dress
of the present day to which it will apply. It is only by forgetting
our own costume that any grave thought can be associated with the
expression, “baring the arm:” tucking up the sleeves, or appearing in
shirt-sleeves, would be a metaphor amongst us suited to a scullery or a
slaughter-house. “Girding of the loins” is nonsensical, not only with
our costume but with every other: the person is already dressed. If
the girdle be part of the dress, it is already on; a supplementary one
is not carried about. This absurdity has been felt by the translators;
for when they make Christ “gird”[279] himself to wash the feet of the
Apostles, they add, “with a towel.” The terms in Greek, περιζώννυμι,
ὰναζώννυμι, are appropriate, and describe what a Moor would do, viz.,
draw the fold of the haïk, which hangs over the left shoulder, and
passing it round the waist, _bind the whole tight_, and leave the
arms free. In like manner the expression, “the sin that most easily
besetteth us,” implies, “the fold most closely drawn around us.”
On the night of the flight from Egypt, the Jews were ordered (Exodus
xii. 34,) to bind up their kneading-troughs in their clothes upon their
shoulders. What clothes are requisite for carrying on the shoulders a
kneading trough? The haïk.
Why kneading-troughs? The Jews did not carry ovens with them. Cakes
are kneaded, one by one, on a board or stone, and then laid upon the
hot stones or embers, or griddle.[280] Such is the practice of every
nomade tribe: a kneading-trough would be of no use. It must then be
something of the same description; of course the kuscoussoo tray. Not a
tribe moves here that the women do not carry _it_ “on their shoulders,”
“in their clothes.” When that diet is used, that dish is of primary
necessity; and on that account, as likewise by its dimensions, is
worthy of being mentioned in this manner on the occasion of a sudden
flight.
The haïk and the kuscoussoo are here united. If you heard of any other
people having the one, you would inquire whether they had not also
the other. Here in one sentence is it shown that the Jews, when they
entered the Wilderness, had both.
If they wore the haïk in the Wilderness, they had it when they entered
the Holy Land; for as they did not want new clothes, so would they not
change old habits.[281] The people they drove forth were the Brebers,
who wear it to-day. The Jews went to Egypt from the Holy Land; Abraham
therefore wore the haïk; and having seen him in that dress, I can
imagine him in no other.
It belongs but to a small portion of the human family to have a change
of raiment for the night;--a striking peculiarity of this dress is its
adaptation to both purposes. It is the costume for people who live in
tents, and who cannot carry about with them bed and bedding; who must
sleep in their clothes, and who prepare for their night’s repose as
we do for a journey. Thus, the Jews were commanded, if any had taken
the raiment of another in pledge, to restore it “By that the sun goeth
down; for that is his covering only--his raiment for his skin, wherein
he shall sleep.” Leaving free circulation of air, and not suffocating
the body with its own breath, it is at once subservient to convenience
and conducive to health.
The Hebrew terms of the Old Testament, the Greek translation of them,
and the Greek terms of the New, are quite in accordance with the
inferences I have drawn from the scriptural imagery and incidents. The
words, “garment,” “raiment,” “clothes,” “coat,” are used at hap-hazard,
and we can attach to the costume of the Bible only the most vague and
confused ideas. In the Hebrew, however, there is no such disorder:
none of the names now used are indeed to be found there, but those
used, perfectly suit the Moorish costume, and by it they can alone be
understood.
Morocco presents an infinite variety of pieces of dress. These are
at first bewildering,[282] but may be reduced to the three vestures
already mentioned--a tunic, a pair of drawers, and a haïk; to which
is added as accessory, a girdle, a cap, and a pair of slippers. The
drawers, _shewal_, are put on first. Then the sleeveless tunic,
_Inshwarwan_, reaching over the hips; over this the richly embossed
and embroidered belt, _Indum_,[283] and over all the haïk: the drawers
and girdle exactly correspond with those mentioned in the Bible. For
all other garments, two words only are employed, תנתכ, _kitonet_,
whence the word “cotton,” and also “coat,” this is the χιτωὺ of the
Greeks--the sleeveless tunic of the Moors, and הלמש, _shemlah_; this
is the ἱμάτιον of the Greeks, the toga of the Romans, and the haïk of
the Moors. It was woven among the Jews by men and women. It was in
this that the Jewish women were to bind their kneading-troughs: it
was in this the poor man slept, and therefore it had to be returned
when taken in pledge “by that the sun went down.” The kitonet might be
retained.[284]
The haïk was the dress, not of the Jews only, but of the Canaanites,
including among these the Phœnicians; it was wholly different from
the costume of the Egyptians, and--as we have now the opportunity of
minutely knowing--from that of the great Assyrian empire, which lay to
the east, and had spread over the north and west of Asia. Neither does
it appear to belong to the Arabs. They wear it indeed now in Barbary,
but not in their own country, and it is not likely that the change was
there.[285]
The Greek robe was white.[286] It was put on as a clothing, and was
at the same time a covering such as might be used to sleep in at
night.[287] It was not put on to fit as a dress.[288] It was ample
in its folds, and fell to the feet.[289] It covered them all over.
But citation of authorities is superfluous. Look at the statue of
Demosthenes.
But the Greeks may have invented it. The Greeks were copiers or copies;
they improved what they received, but in the beginning they were wild
and rude. This dress belongs to early simplicity, and to the people
who from the first were pre-eminent in poetry.
But, taking it as if it were no more than letters or science, then
if we find it both in Greece and Judæa, must we not hold it to be
derivative in that country which in other respects has been the pupil,
and primitive in that country which in other respects has been the
mistress? Greece, when visited by the adventurers from the Holy Land,
was in the rudest condition in which man could have existed, in regard
to everything except the bright spirit of that race, the first light
of which shone in aptitude for such teaching. Bloodshed was not the
vehicle of “civilization,” nor lances the heralds of a faith. The
fugitives and strangers who taught them how to sow and to weave, they
made, while living, princes and chiefs, and worshipped when dead, as
heroes. The Phœnicians introduced the costume of Greece, as they did
her letters and her religion.
The resemblance is so evident between the toga and haïk, that the only
question is, “Was it original or borrowed?” and if borrowed, “whence
did it come?” As the Greeks stood to the Phœnicians, so did the Romans
to the Etruscans. Critical inquiries had already traced that people
to Canaan: recent discoveries have made us familiar with them. Their
tombs, into which a lady has conducted us, transport us to the life and
manners of the Old Testament. A traveller in Barbary might take them
for the ancient sepulchres of this country. In the tombs you have over
and over again the haïk.
The Etruscans were merely a colony: they recorded the date of their
arrival, and kept the birth-day of their city. It has been a question
recently raised--whence they did come. Müller brings them from the
Alps: Mrs. Hamilton Grey, from Africa.[290] The toga must have been, of
necessity, in the country from which they came, for they did not come
naked. Had the haïk been then as now restricted to Barbary, I should
at once admit the African derivation. But it is traced to Lydia.[291]
A cast of one of the rock tombs in the British Museum, exhibits
sculptured groups the size of life, with the colours still remaining,
which shows us, as in a mirror, this ancient Phrygian people. There
is the toga: it is worn over the head; men and women wear it alike.
It is a group of Moors. Two boys appear; the head is shaved, with the
exception of a tuft of hair on the crown! one of them carrying the
oil-bottle and strigil. No other ancient people shaved the head; we
only hear of it among the people of Mauritania, and that in respect
to the children. The Moors, as I shall show, had the bottle from the
earliest times. These boys are perfectly naked, while all the others
are dressed. To-day, among Easterns and Mussulmans, and, to their
infinite disgust, the Moors alone preserve the ancient practice of
bathing naked.
The same peculiarity is observed in the Etruscan tombs: the noble
youths served naked at their entertainments. Thus, with the strigil,
the toga would serve to suggest Lydia or Lycia as the source of
the Etruscans, if Herodotus had not recorded the tradition, or the
Etruscans themselves had not claimed this ancestry. This tomb enables
me to say that the manners of ancient Phrygia (I use as a general name
that of the chief of the states of Asia Minor) are, at the distance
of three thousand years, preserved with a fidelity of imitation, or
an identity of character, in modern Barbary, such as at the interval
of thirty years can scarcely be reckoned on in Europe. The toga and
the strigil are indeed common among other people; but the shaving
is a peculiarity, the value of which I will show elsewhere; and the
preservation, singly in Morocco, of the whole of those features which
this tomb presents, must go far to identify the ancient inhabitants
of the western districts of Asia and Africa, or the Phrygians and the
Brebers, and supports my derivation of the name Africa from Phrygia,
which I imagine was given to the latter country, while Breber was given
to the Phrygians; that is, that the names, severally preserved in Asia
and Africa, were then common to the two countries and people.
Toga, from tego, to cover: ancient as is the epithet, it could not be
original, for it was the coat of peace, and they commenced as banditti.
They were not a nation, but a city of aliens and refugees. I know
not what the Romans could call their own, save the master-spirit of
selection and retention, as the Greeks had of curiosity (περιεργία) and
embellishments.[292]
We have traced the course of the haïk along the shores of the
Mediterranean; found it clothing Solomon, Hannibal, Pericles, Amalek,
and Porsenna. We have carried it back to Hercules, to Abraham, and
his fathers before him. Here is a monument of antiquity, to which the
Propylæa of Memnon and Palaces of Ninus are modern structures. If in
Pheleg’s time we know the earth was divided, when were the costumes?
When the division took place, the original was reserved to the elder
stock. If the clothes were varied with the tongues, then again must
this one have kept its Edom dialect. Through Babel over the Flood, and
dropping there all its associates from amongst the devices of man, or
the works of his hands, it strides backwards alone till it reaches
the first family’s solitary cot, where it grew between Eve’s soft
fingers. We find it still the chief work in the far West of Eve’s fair
daughters;--no pauper child has sighed over its fibres, nor have the
spindles begun their turning to the dismal tinkling of the factory bell.
Haïks are like leaves of trees--you never see two alike:--as sentences
are interminable, yet the syntax one, so have haïks their grammar. They
are of all textures--of many substances--plain, striped, yet uniform.
Silk and cotton are mixed together; both are mingled with wool; they
are alternated in stripes. The texture varies from felt to sarcenet,
from coarse blanketting to gauze; there is the massive fold defying
the tempest--the gossamer wing trembling with a breath; colours are
not excluded, gold is not forbidden. The most beautiful specimen of
workmanship and taste I ever saw, was a white haïk with a deep border
of gold.
The haïk of the men is absolutely and undeviatingly white. Colours
are reserved for children, sometimes also for women, but they are
associated always with the idea of indulgence and distinction. Thus was
distinguished the daughter of David, Tamar, and this was what aroused
the jealousy of Benjamin’s brothers, and when the last of the Ptolemies
was saluted king of the Romans, he too received from the senate a coat
of many colours.
To put on the haïk, it is dropped on the ground; one corner is lifted
and brought over the left shoulder, and held upon the breast by the
right hand. Then, by stepping backwards, the fold passes behind, and
is brought under the right arm round in front. Another step across it,
and it is behind again; then taken by both hands outstretched, it is
brought over the head, measured so as to be left hanging low enough on
both sides for the play of the arms. The end is then thrown over the
left shoulder and hangs down the back. There are no ties, no buttons,
no separate parts: the drapery is wrapped round with the sole fastening
of its own folds. Dispensing with so many adjuncts, it supersedes all
intermediaries. It is made under the tent; there is no tailor wanted;
no shopman, no dealer, required; this is the link between a national
costume and a people’s well-being. The Spaniard’s cloak, of which the
style consists in the lap thrown over the left shoulder, is a mixture
of the haïk and the bornoos: to this day the Spaniard looks upon the
want of a cloak as the want of decent covering;--to be without a cloak
is, as it were, to be naked.
Great as is the distance between the attire of Europe and that of
the East, not greater is the distance between its magnificence and
the dignity of that of Numidia. The excellence of all other costumes
resides in their own composition. There is not one which does not
strain or coerce the human frame into its own design. The excellence
of this is, that it follows nature, neither designing to embellish nor
endeavouring to conceal; it reveals, but does not expose; it covers,
but does not disguise.
The antique is, however, only present where all the subsidiary garments
disappear, and the haïk remains the sole clothing: there protrudes
an arm and part of a leg, or the breast is heaved, or sometimes the
whole outline of one side is visible; for the drapery is shifted in
all conceivable ways, and according to their occupations; so that
there are passing before you, and called up, as you look around, all
the celebrated statues or groups of antiquity. One of these, which
has remained most strongly in my eye, occurred in a boar hunt. While
watching in my cover, a rustling called my attention to a neighbouring
clump, and there stood an Arab; his gun resting on an edge of rock,
his haïk unwound from both shoulders, and secured by a cord of plaited
palmetto over the shoulder, as is often seen in the ancient statues;
the drapery falling behind and extending over the ground; the left limb
advanced, slightly bent, and exposed to mid-thigh, where the drapery
swept to the ground. Here was a statue, and yet a man; not a model set
up in a studio, and the form of the antique adapted to a modern musket!
We admire the mechanism of a joint, and then invent clothing which
shall deprive it of its play, and ourselves of its use! Here nothing
interferes with the freedom of the limbs, or disturbs the mechanism of
the frame and its action. It is plastic to the hand, to relax or gird,
as the occasion may require. Each figure as he stands before you is a
statue, and each change of attitude, a study.
When we raise a statue to a hero, we eschew our own dress--the dress
he wore. Our fancy weaves for him a haik: we borrow the majesty of its
large folds, although we have never beheld the splendid simplicity of
its dead colour. It is the dress for kings and patriarchs.[293]
The exposure of the body to the air does not give the impression of
cold in the way that those whose clothing has a similar character or
integuments will suppose; whoever has worn the kilt will know this.
The fact is, that the air supplies warmth, and when freely circulating
round the body, a sort of respiration takes place through the skin,
which, while conducive to strength and health, supplies that light and
agreeable sensation which belongs to a costume, where there is clothing
enough to secure warmth, and freedom enough to admit air. Of the value
of this freedom we have a striking illustration at home, and to which
no other country in Europe affords a parallel. The butcher-boys and the
Blue-coat school boys go about without that covering to, or protection
for, the head, which for all other degrees, and in all other countries,
is deemed essential to health and comfort. Do they suffer from being
bare-headed? No. What then is the value of our prophylactics, and what
do we know about the management of ourselves? Nay, children suffering
from all sorts of diseases and weakness are cured, and they cease to
complain when their heads cease to be covered. As to comfort, they all
prefer it, as every one does prefer the simplest things, when, by some
accident, the chain is broken of that servitude of manners which we
have forged for ourselves.
Now that we have our portraits taken by the sun’s rays, and numberless
scientific men are tracing the effects of light on the functions of
animals and the growth of plants, separating the parts of rays, and
finding in them agencies of so many, so powerful, and such distinct
kinds--it may not be absurd to speak of the merit of a costume that
admits to the body light, as well as air. We are always in the dark. On
light and heat a series of experiments have been reported to scientific
societies by fifty philosophers; but none of them has ever thought of
letting his own toes see the sun. Modern science always overpowers me
with melancholy--so much light in the focus, and such darkness in the
hemisphere! Contrast the majestic ignorance of primeval times; then,
grand with so much ease; now, with so much toiling, mean.
Those members which have to support the weight of the rest, deserve
peculiar care, and might even claim exclusive favour, but they are
more wretched than the rest. Our poor feet are doomed to a dark
dungeon, from the cradle to the tomb. Never are they suffered to look
upon the sun, never allowed for a moment to touch the earth; once a
day, perhaps for a few moments, they get a glimpse of the subdued
light of a closed chamber, or perceive round corners of a table,
the artificial glare of a wax taper; that respite over, they are
straight again, rammed down into their cases. After this, they are
vilified; their very name is mentioned with repugnance, and their sight
associated with indecency. No revolution is to set them free, no change
of fashion to break their chains: hopeless drudgery, unrequited toil,
supercilious scorn are their fate, and the care which is bestowed upon
them is to pervert their nature, to disfigure and deform them, and
make them even to themselves a shame. The man is no gainer, who treats
his feet with such injustice; and the costume no slight benefit which
prevents him from doing so.
If the standard of taste sink, we expect from the gifted spirit an
effort to raise it. Alas! it is they who weigh upon and degrade it.
The workshop of the artist:--does one recall the figures which adorn a
Moorish encampment.
But the heaping up of drapery, and the loading of gold “for effect,”
which the royal academician steps back to admire, leaves the end of
costume out of view. That end must be attained in all perfection. It
must be a clothing for the figure, as well as a drapery for the eye;
and of this no artist--and indeed no master--has had the thought. As to
colour, it is the same, with the exception of the appropriation of blue
and white in the Spanish school to the vesture of the Virgin. There is
no more discrimination exhibited in a gallery of master-pieces, than in
a tailor’s or a milliner’s shop, and, in fact, the cant of the virtuoso
has passed to the showman in the shop.
How different the Greeks! Their draped statues still exist: their
paintings have disappeared, but a Roman critic bewailing the same
confusion, points out to his compatriots, the primitive[294] colours of
the master-pieces of Apelles, Protogenes, Zeuxis, and Theron.
But the sensitiveness of the poet may have supplied the blank left by
the artist, or virtuoso. I take one as a specimen. “The Greek,” says
Schiller, “is to the greatest degree accurate, true, and circumstantial
in his descriptions; but he shows no more heartfelt interest in the
beauties of Nature, than in the account of a dress, a shield, or a
preparation for war.” No more! If he felt for the beauties of nature,
as he did for his costume, his armour, and the great event of war, how
immeasurably would he have left behind the modern German’s whining
sentimentalism about rainbows and groundsel. To this the German and the
modern are reduced, because war has become a secret and a trade; our
weapons a matter of commissariat and costume--a covering fit for apes.
FOOTNOTES:
[272] Much akin to this is the weaving among the Red Indians. “The hair
of the buffalo and other animals is twisted by hand, and made into
balls. The warp is then laid, of a length, crossed by three small,
smooth rods, alternately beneath the threads, suspended on forks at
a short distance above the ground. The woof is filled in, thread by
thread, and pressed closely down. The ends of the warp are tied into
knots, and the blanket is ready for use.”--HUNTER’S _Captivity_, p. 289.
[273] “When the Jews come to receive the king, none but the person who
carries the Book of the Law shall wear Talith, or the cloth over their
clothes; nor in carrying a corpse for interment are they to wear it, or
chant in the streets.”--_Cortes of Toledo_, 1480, Sect. 117.
[274] The Emperor of Russia has published a ukase in favour of the
Jews, to put an end to the invidious distinctions in dress. The Jews,
though wearing no longer that of Judæa, look on the boon as the hardest
of their trials.
[275] If two threads of the fringe were worn, it was worthless.
[276] There is a Jewish prayer for the restoration, beginning, “Bring
us in peace from the four corners of the earth, and lead us safely to
our land.” As they repeat it, _they hold the four corners of the Talith
to the heart_.
[277] Plates of the Talith are given in “Modern Judaism,” pp. 69, 70,
80. The small Talith, which among the European Jews is worn like the
scapula, over breast and back, has in Morocco no aperture, and is worn
crosswise, exactly as the haïk is put on.
[278] In Prisse’s “Egypt and Abyssinia” there are figures which might
be taken for Roman senators, only that the border is blue instead of
red.
[279] Commentators are misled by the sword-belt, and the inner girdle
over the tunic. Thus; there is mention of the girdle of Elijah and of
John the Baptist, remarkable because of leather (2 Kings i. 7, 8; Mark
iii. 4), and because they wore no haïk. The Moors, though they do not
“gird” themselves with girdles, wear one, but it is under the haïk and
over the tunic, and has a remarkable buckle. A buckle, as the sign of
royalty, was sent to Antiochus by Jonathan Maccabees. No other Eastern
people has a girdle and buckle. Drawers, such as the Levites were
enjoined to wear, complete the Moorish dress.
[280] “Ephraim is as a cake not turned.”--HOSEA, vii. 8. Niebuhr
(_Arabia_, vol. ii. p. 132) draws the distinction. In the towns, he
says, they use ovens, like us; in the tents, a hot plate of iron.
[281] Abulpheda says, “that he (Abdallah, the calif, the son of Sobeir)
wore a suit of clothes for _forty years_, without pulling them off
his back, but doth not inform us what they were made of.”--_History of
the Saracens_, vol. ii. p. 349. This he believes to be incredible;
of course it is so with teased wool, machinery-spun thread, and
tailored clothes. I have seen a home-made Highland plaid, in excellent
condition, after nearly twenty years’ constant wear.
[282] The _sulam_, or _bournoos_, is a cloak with a hood. The _gelab_
(from an ancient Persian word for _scales_) is the sulam sewed in
front, and with short sleeves, through which the arms can be put at
pleasure. It was the dress of the Essenians; is the monkish dress, and
as such is respected by the Mussulmans. It varies according to the
district, and is in colours--narrow stripes of brown and yellow, of
blue and white, of blue and black, with here and there lines of white.
In the winter these garments are doubled or trebled, and the haïk is
worn over all. The sulam is the dress of the soldiers.
[283] This is sometimes replaced by the very beautiful Moorish sash,
_huzam_.
[284] Gen. xxxvii. 3; Judges v. 30; Sam. xiii. 18; Exod. xxii. 26, 7;
Deut. xxiv. 13; Job xxii. 6; Matt. v. 40.
[285] In one of the poems of Shanfara, the Cid of the Arabians, this
passage occurs:--“I will not rest till I have raised the dust on
every one who wears _kissa_ or _bourd_, of the tribe of Salaman.”
This is interpreted to mean that he would lay low the men of note.
The word _bourd_ occurs in various places. St. Augustine, speaking
of a presbyter, vain and worldly-minded, describes him as “_burda
vestitum_.” In Genesis xxxi. 12, the word is used to designate the
variegated lambs; and in the Gaelic is translated by the word which
they use for “tartan.” It would thus appear to convey rather the idea
of colour than of form. Shanfara might have said, if speaking of the
Highlands, “Every man who wears _tartan_,” as distinguished from the
shepherd plaid. _Kissa_ may have a similar meaning--black and white.
It is nowhere mentioned as a dress. _Kisson_, the name of the “ancient
brook,” is supposed to be connected with κίσσα of the Greeks, or
magpie, (black and white). _Kissa_ may also be _fringe_; for _tzetzith_
(fringe), is cabalistically equal to _kisee_ (throne).
[286] Vestes candidæ. Lutatius Ann. on the Thebaid.
[287] ἔνδυναί τε καὶ ἐπιβάλλεσθαι.--POLLUX., 1. vii. c. 13.
[288] οὐκ ἐνεδύοντο ἀλλ ἐπερονῶντο.
[289] πέπλοι ποδήρεις, EURIP.; ἔλκεσιπέτλους--τανύπεπλον--ἄμφι δε
πέπλοι πίπτανται. HOMER.
“Omnis vestis apud Græcos aut ἐπίβλημα aut ἔνδυμα est; aut amictui,
aut indutui. Ἑνδύματα sunt quæ ad corpus prepali hærent, atque indutio
corpus comprehendiens. Ἑπιβλήματα vero, quæ et περιβλήματα palliorum
omne genus quod cæteris vestimentis circumjecta et superjecta vago et
libero discursu eas ambirent.”--SALMASIUS _ad Tertull. de Pall._
Livy, 1. 8; Flor. 1. 5; Plin. viii. 74. ix. 63; Diod. v.; Macrob. Sat.
1. 6; Testus _Verbo_ Sardi, Serv. ad Æn. ii. 781; Isidori Origines, 1.
xix. c. 20.
[290] Mrs. Hamilton Grey’s object has been to make their affiliation
coincide with their character; but identifying the inhabitants of Lydia
with those of the Holy Land, their derivation from Lydia presents no
difficulty.
[291] Dennis, Etruria, Intr. p. xlii.
[292] The pallium and the toga were two distinct dresses, but worn
together, as the haik and the sulam, by the Moors, the one is put on
for the other, or the one with the other. The paludamentum was a small
haïk, worn over the armour and fastened on _either_ shoulder with a
brooch, like the Scotch plaid: it was not so long as the plaid, and
hung down.
[293] The finery of a modern Moorish grandee is thus described by Mr.
Hay: “The Basha was reclining on a rich carpet, supported by round
velvet cushions, embroidered in gold. He was dressed in a pale green
caftan, over which was a fine muslin robe. He had wide trousers, of a
light-coloured yellow cloth. His girdle was of red leather, embroidered
in silk, with a silver clasp. He wore on his head the common Fez cap,
circled by a white turban, and over all fell a transparent haïk of the
finest texture. In his hand he held a rosary. His manners were graceful
and gentlemanly, and a pleasant smile gave an agreeable expression to
his features. The father of this potentate was Basha over half the
empire, and proved a good friend to the English during the war on the
Peninsula, when we depended much on West Barbary for the supply of our
armies, and also of our fleets in the neighbouring seas.”--_Western
Barbary_, p. 110.
[294] The rule laid down by Pliny may be observed in the two groups
in the Alhambra. Selection of colour, and _representation_ of colour
are different things, which if Fuseli had perceived, he would not have
given himself the trouble to show that Pliny did not understand what he
spoke about.
CHAPTER IV.
A BOAR-HUNT.
We thought we might now dispense with the precautions to secure
our property before going to rest, to which we had been hitherto
constrained; but were surprised, while making our beds, at the sheik’s
entering with a heavy chain to secure our fowling-pieces round the
tent-pole. Intending to convey a compliment, we resisted; but he got
angry. He did not understand suspicion of his Turks, and understood
nothing else of any other people. The chain for picketing our horses
would have served for the anchor of a boat of ten tons. Every horse is
secured with iron: there is either a shackle to two feet or a chain
to one leg; the end under the master’s pillow, although in the inside
of a circle, which no one can enter without passing through a tent or
between two, in each of which there is at least one dog. One lives
thus in constant extremes. The same person is at one moment the object
of affection and confidence, at another of fear and suspicion. The
Arab lives in the full glare of the light of the passions; as he is a
statue in his figure, so is he an epic in his mind. It is not only not
base to rob, but, as one of them expressed it, “to carry off a horse
is a sign of being a man;” yet this man was trusty as a sword, and
faithful as a dog. So the basis of all law resides in contract--not the
“contract social,” of Jean Jacques, but the real word of man, surely
known and truly pledged--in a word, the third commandment.
This contract is contained in the salutation. The “salem alillum” is a
preliminary and a question. “Is there peace?”--on the affirmative, the
salutation follows.[295] The Turk has converted into a distinction
between creeds that which was the parley on the approach of two
disciplined bodies.
Our word _greeting_ comes from the mutual hailing of the sea-kings’
ships. “I greet with grith;” we translate “I greet with peace.” Greet
has still preserved in the North its original meaning--of crying or
hailing.
Two Greek lines have preserved to us a distinction between the forms
of the Arabs and the Phœnicians, which throw light on their respective
character. The latter had dropt the “Salam” as not requisite for their
avocations and mode of life--
Ἀλλ’ εὶ μὲν Σύρος ἔσσὶ Σαλὰμ, εὶ δ’ οὔν σύγε Φοῖνιξ
Αὔδονες, εὶ δ’ Ἐλλην χαῖρε, τὸ δ’ αὐτὸ φράσον.[296]
Nothing is more dignified than the dumb show of a Mussulman in
salutation. The right arm is raised and the open hand is laid upon
the breast. Such a habit would make any people graceful and courtly.
This is the common form; the more refined is called “Gemenas,”[297]
and consists in carrying the hand to the mouth, touching the lips with
the points of the fingers and then the forehead with a simultaneous
inclination of the head and body--the meaning is vulgarly interpreted,
“I kiss your words and treasure them up in my brain This is the salute
to a superior. To an inferior, the hand is carried to the lips and
then to the breast, or it is raised to the breast only--the shades are
infinite.”
The visit ended by a discussion upon government. It was always the same
question--does the sultan of the Christians seize the property of a
man because he is rich? When answered in the negative, they smiled and
remained satisfied (because they themselves know no other evil) that we
enjoy the most perfect felicity. Then, after a pause the inquiry will
come--if there be any chance of the English occupying their country?
Such things are apt to lead Europeans into the mistake of fancying such
a country easily conquered.
In the morning we started in a southerly direction to visit a spot from
which the sheik had formerly brought a remarkable specimen. We found
the block from which he had taken it lying in a field. I was giving
directions to dig around that I might ascertain whether it was _in
situ_; when they, fancying I desired to move it, despatched a messenger
for a couple of camels. While I was at work, a sulam fell over me,
and on clearing myself and looking up, I saw a stranger on horseback,
and found myself bound to refuse no favour he should ask. Elisha and
Elijah immediately came before me. Elisha, when the mantle is thrown
on him, asks no questions, but leaves his twelve pair of oxen. The
stranger said, “Cure me.” I answered, “God alone can cure.” He then
took his sulam, and, throwing it over my shoulders, brought the collar
part of it close round my neck, and kissed my head. If a criminal can
throw a sulam on the Sultan, or on the ground before him, he has taken
sanctuary and cannot be put to death.
Soon afterwards I observed some singular black rocks, which proved to
be masses of iron: close by there was a hard limestone containing very
fine and beautiful madrepores. Two thick layers of the metal stood up
in fragments some feet above the ground. We traced it in one direction
for about three miles, when it was again covered by the horizontal
sand-stone. They told us that in the other direction the same black
stone was found in great quantities; in fact, in the cultivated fields
the stones were iron, realizing to the letter the description of the
Promised Land--a land flowing with milk and honey where the stones
are iron, and from the hills of which copper[298] is melted. We found
a good deal of slag, but the working had been merely superficial. I
afterwards obtained a specimen of lead from the same neighbourhood.
We returned to our home in another place. We had left the camp crowning
a knoll. We found it in the evening settled on a plain. Two other
douars along our route had also moved, and in the same direction, and
we passed one of the migrating bodies. There were neither men nor
horses, nor any cattle used in tillage. These were, as usual, employed
in the fields. This business belonged to the women and children. The
tents and utensils were laden on the spare cows and camels. Every
creature that could carry, from the camel to the goat, was put in
requisition, and you might see, as when flying before Pharaoh, “their
kneading troughs in their clothes upon their backs.” The men returned
from their work in the field, without the loss of an hour, to their new
abode. By these removals the country for five miles was like a fair.
The pasturing flocks, too, were falling in; and at our new pitching
ground we had five douars within two miles. We counted them, as if they
had been so many vessels that had taken shelter in the same creek with
ourselves.
We diversified our geological pursuits by dragging a valley for boars,
but were unsuccessful: they were, however, round us in thousands;
their digging and rooting equalled the ploughing of the natives. We
could not take ten steps in any direction without walking on the earth
they had recently turned up, and their industry was prosecuted to
within a hundred paces of the douar. It was with some difficulty that
we regained our geological specimens, for the Arabs had entered into
the spirit of the science, which consists in making collections. The
expedition reminded me of Dr. Buckland’s equestrian lecture at Oxford.
Hitherto a scrutinizing look at a stone had been supposed to endanger a
man’s head.
I feel some compunction in obliterating what to my fellow-travellers
are absurd prejudices; to me they are valuable records, like the
disregarded fragments of some antediluvian creature, by which at
the opposite sides of the globe the parts of a common stratum may
be identified. This same prejudice guarded against Phœnician and
Carthaginian the mineral wealth of Mauritania, while they were ravaging
that of Spain. In the settlement of Mauritania made by Augustus, which
was followed by four centuries of repose and prosperity, no traces
of its mineral wealth appear, whilst the Roman world was supplied
periodically with wheat from its fields. An ancient law forbade the
working of gold and silver mines within the confines of Italy. There
was reason in this. The facilities we have devised for centrating
wealth have rendered of easy accomplishment things which men, had
they been wise, would have surrounded with every obstruction. Until
the funding system commenced, wars of aggression could be carried on
only by a government which possessed a store of gold.[299] It was not,
therefore, merely the depopulation of a district which was associated
with the working of mines, but the loss of liberty; for the conqueror
abroad became inevitably the tyrant at home.
For the purposes of commerce Africa required no gold. Throughout
that region there is to be found a process for adjusting exchange, at
once the most simple and the most perfect; such as the plainest man
would have first hit upon, such as the profoundest mathematician would
have at last devised. It is a “standard of value.” I mean not that
perversion to which we give the name, but an ideal standard in which
all objects are alike rated, be they money, be they merchandise.
In my anxiety to entertain my geological companions, I was nearly
involving the community in war. I had given directions for sheep to be
bought for the party for supper. They came to me presently to say that
the sheep were ready, but that the people would take no money. I then
sent a Jew servant of Mr. Seraya, to one of the other douars to buy
them. Soon after there was a great commotion. Seeing him return with
the sheep, and suspecting the intention, several of our tribe had run
for their muskets, and sallied forth to drive the other people back who
presumed to sell food to their guests.
A boar-hunt was settled for next morning. The plough was abandoned, and
every man mustered with his gun. Preceded by a tamborine, we marched
along the front of the other douars, and each poured forth its troop,
amidst great and fierce excitement. There was yelling, running, and
firing. My course was impeded by the sick and maimed who were brought
and laid down before me. I could do nothing for them; and they were
only jostled by the crowd. After we had cleared the douars, we were
summoned to the top of a tumulus. A circle was cleared, and a man
of another tribe came forward; they all held up their hands in the
attitude in which the Tyrian Hercules is represented, and following
the chief or priest, pronounced these words, “In the name of God, we,
this day, are brothers; if any man’s hand be on his neighbour, may the
hand of the Most Merciful be on him; if no man has evil thoughts, may
our work be prospered.” The beaters, of whom there were about a hundred
boys and old men, were told off, and we set forward, with nearly four
hundred guns, dropping parties to crown the winding heights. The
station assigned to us was the brow of a hill! I started without parley
for the gorge below, but as soon as the soldiers divined my intention,
they (having come mounted) gave me chase as if I had been an escaped
felon. There was no want of boars; we saw them hopping out of our way,
and they all, of course, got off. Not often has a pig kept so much good
company waiting without disappointing any one of his supper; for if we
had killed a score not one of the party would have cooked a morsel.
Mr. Seraya having early withdrawn, I remained amongst this concourse
the whole day without the means of understanding or uttering a single
word, and yet, though I was not aware of it at the time, this was the
wildest people in the whole of Morocco. There was nothing here of
the fanaticism or hatred of Europeans which characterizes those of
the north. They did not so much as know the common terms of abuse
which in Mussulman countries are applied to Christians. They gave us
and received from us the salutation of peace. As we were returning,
they were all picking up flat stones about the size of a man’s hand,
and one after the other came to me with his stone. I had no means of
comprehending what they said, and imagined that this was an effect of
the expedition of the day before, and that they had all been bitten
by the geological mania. We presently assembled in a little dell, and
they went and threw their stones on the opposite side. One of these
was set up on an old stump, and I saw what we were to be about. We sat
down in a semicircle, in front of which each in succession, taking off
his shoes, advanced, and after saluting the company, fired, and then
again saluted and withdrew. There was no avoiding the trial. They set
for us the very smallest stones, and we fired without advancing from
our places. M. L. and myself hit the mark in succession, and were
vociferously commended, but we declined a second trial. Their muskets
might be called rampart pieces. To cock one of their guns (there is no
half-cock) is like arming an arbalette, or stringing a bow. In taking
aim, they stretch out the left arm as far as they can reach, and hold
out the right elbow higher than the ear, and in this awkward attitude
are a long time levelling.
After a good deal of powder had been expended, a great many stones
shattered, and a great many jokes cracked on those who missed them, we
wended our way back to the douar from which, with all the marching,
running, scaling of steep sides, and plunging into deep dells, we had
not been five miles distant during the whole day.
On our return a dance was proposed, and carried by acclamation. An
old woman set about pulling up the lilies, and clearing from other
incumbrances, a piece of sward outside the circle. Two girls rushed
up with kuscoussoo sieves to beat as tambourines;--these are sheep’s
skin, pierced with holes, and called sonag.[300] A woman seizing
one of the cooking jars drew off her slipper, and striking the open
mouth with it, we had at once a tum-tum. The girls and women danced
to the sieves and the jar, but beating time, as well as all the
company, with their hands and uttering a cadenced cry. The shuffling
of feet was most extraordinary, all pressing into the centre round
the chief performer, who sang and rattled a tambourine. The dance was
interrupted whilst he sang, and then they kept marking time by their
hands meeting alternately at the height of the face and breast. The
whole party joined in beating time and singing the choruses.[301] The
singer commenced each stanza with that peculiar and indescribable,
though never-to-be-forgotten, bird-like jerk of the head, with which
the Spanish dancers throw off. Here in the germ was all the Spanish
castanet dance, song, &c.
It being proposed to stop, the girls exclaimed “Not till the cows come
home.” So off they went again until the sun dipped under the horizon.
The crowd dispersed in an instant, not, however, before we had thrown
some coins into the tambourine. The minstrel gallantly distributed
them to the girls who had distinguished themselves. Some one brought
him a skirt full of raisins and walnuts, which were heaped into his
sieve. This he distributed amongst the younger portion of the audience.
There was then a good deal of kissing of his head and hands, and so
we dispersed. I afterwards learnt that the castanet is in use amongst
the tribes of the interior.[302] They have also a castanet of metal,
and double. The striking of the hands is not, as in other parts of the
East, the hollow of the fingers of the right hand upon the palm of the
left; it is the two palms that are brought to make a sharp clack. They
produce a variety of sounds and exhibit a variety of evolutions.
Living in a circle engenders peculiar habits. When a man is wanted, (as
was often the case in arranging hunting parties,) his name is called
quietly, as you sit within your canvass walls, thus: “Eh! Hamed!” If
there is no answer, the call is repeated; then some one in the next
tent takes it up, and right and left you hear “Eh! Hamed,” and round it
goes till the man is found. If you want to buy anything, you go into
the middle of the circle, and call out, “Who has milk to sell?--let him
come.” “Who has eggs?”[303]
In the centre of each douar, there is a tent set apart as a mosque,
with a fire burning before it, and there we were without difficulty
admitted while our tent was getting ready. It is also used as a school
as--late and early--we could testify. If Arabs are not taught foreign
tongues, they do learn to use their own. Each douar besides its sheik
has its Cadi and priest or schoolmaster. The tents of the persons of
distinction are black, the others brown; there are white marks upon
them, to distinguish respective ranks; _seven_ for the principal.
The tent covering is in the longest forty feet, and somewhat less than
twenty in width. It is in stripes lengthways, for the convenience of
carriage. This cover is stretched over a transverse bar, supported
by two upright poles in the form of the Greek letter Π, under which
generally hangs a curtain which divides the tent into two parts, each
about fifteen feet square. The poles are ten or twelve feet high,
the extremities of the covering coming to within two feet of the
ground, where sometimes bundles of rushes are placed. The tent may be
easily enlarged by adding a stripe or more to the covering, and then
stretching out the hanging parts, but that would require the uprights
and the pins to be strengthened. Thus, Isaiah (chap. liv. 2), “Enlarge
_the place of thy tent_, and let them stretch forth the curtains of
thine habitations: spare not; lengthen thy cords and strengthen thy
stakes.”
The stripes are unlaced when they remove their encampment and rolled
up. The length of the tent is facing the centre of the circle. The form
seems to have undergone a change. The gable, which is now transversely
placed, must have formerly run through the length. At least so alone
could the description of Sallust be correct, “Oblonga incurvis
lateribus tecta, quasi navium carinæ.”--The tents were formerly
transported on waggons.
FOOTNOTES:
[295] “Their manner of saluting the stranger is the same as that of
the Jewish patriarchs, and of the people amongst whom they lived, as
described in the Old Testament. When a stranger approaches the tent
of an Arab, he begins by examining to which side it is turned, then
bringing himself opposite the entrance, he approaches with slow steps,
until he has come within a hundred passes; then he stops, with his
arm in his hand ready for defence. He turns his back to the tent, and
waits till he is seen, and some one approaches him; he then prostrates
himself twice to the earth, and adores. On this a man of the tent takes
water in a wooden vase, and advances towards him;--it is generally the
chief of the family who does so, or his eldest son; and if there are
no men, it is one of the women advances with the vase or something
else, to eat or drink, if they have it; if not, they bring a skin or a
piece of wove stuff, to accommodate the stranger. When they have come
within a few paces of him they say, ‘Is it peace?’ and he answers, ‘It
is peace;’ and then they say each to the other, ‘May peace be with you
and your family, and all that you possess.’ Then touching each with his
right hand the hand of the other, they carry it to their lips, which
is as much as if they kissed each other’s hand. I presume it is from
this custom that has come the complimenting use amongst the Spaniards,
who on meeting say, ‘I kiss your hand;’ and if to a lady, ‘I kiss your
feet.’”--RILEY.
[296] Meleag. Anthol. 1. 3, c. 25.
[297] There may be some connexion with the jemmas of the Greeks, as
designating the salutation with which such holy places were entered.
To ‘adore’ is to carry the hand to the lips. The Indians adore the sun
by standing up, not as we do by kissing the hand.--PLINY. The modern
Greek uses προσκύνω for the Turkish jemmas. In any modern language a
periphrase would be requisite.
[298] In Sus they run copper by lighting fires.
[299]
“Blest paper credit! last and best supply!
That lends corruption lighter wings to fly!
Gold, imp’d by thee, can compass hardest things,
Can pocket states, can fetch and carry kings.
A single leaf shall waft an army o’er,
Or carry statesmen to some distant shore;
A leaf like --’s scatter to and fro
Our fates and fortunes as the wind shall blow.”--POPE.
[300] Pennant saw in the island of Rum (1769) the _Quern_ or _Bra_
in use, and “instead of a hair sieve to sift the meal, they have an
ingenious substitute, a sheep’s skin stretched on a hoop, and bored
with small holes, made with a hot iron.” “Singing at the quern” was
then out of date, the lairds compelling them to grind at his mill, and
the miller being empowered to break the querns wherever he found them.
[301] “As soon as the evening breeze begins to blow, the song resounds
throughout all the land. It cheers the despondency of the wanderer
through the desert; it enlivens the social meeting; it inspires the
dance, and even the lamentations of the mourner are poured forth in
measured accents. Their poetry does not consist in studied and regular
pieces, such as, after previous study, are recited in our schools and
theatres: they are extemporary and spontaneous effusions, in which
the speaker gives utterance to his hopes and fears, his joys and
sorrows. Specimens are wanting of the African verse; yet, considering
that its effusions are numerous, inspired by Nature, and animated by
national enthusiasm, they seem not unlikely to reward the care of the
collector. The few examples actually given favour this conclusion. How
small a number among our peasantry could have produced the pathetic
and affecting lamentation, which was uttered in the little Bambarra
cottage over the distresses of Park! These effusions, handed down
from father to son, contain all that exists among them of traditional
history. From the songs of the Jellemen of Soolimani, Major Laing was
enabled to compile the annals of this small kingdom for more than a
century.”--_Discovery and Adventure in Africa_, p. 350.
[302] Castanets.--Crotola are found in Egyptian tombs.--DENNIS, vol.
ii. p. 45.
[303] Compare this with Rev. xxii. 17: “And let him _that heareth_ say,
Come,” &c.
CHAPTER V.
THE TENT AND “HOME.”
Few sounds awaken more pleasing associations than the tent of the
Arab. Palace, castle, tower call up visions of events; but “tent”
drives the imagination back upon itself to discover in its own nature
the resemblances and the method of the noblest men and the simplest
manners. The tent, not the camel, is the ship of the desert; the
moveable home that makes the strangest spot familiar, the wildest
habitable. One other word alone can be placed beside it--our English
“_Home_.”
Engaged in this reflection I inquired the Arabic name, and was
answered, _Heyme_! Home is in English an exotic. It is used adverbially
as well as substantively. It applies in a manner inconsistent with a
fixed abode, and evidently pertains to the system of Celtic ministry
and nomade habits, rather than to feudalism. It belongs to a family
with a moveable habitation.
Home stands by itself as the name of a place--“Ham House,” “the Ham
Town,” as in Nort_ham_pton, Notting_ham_, Bucking_ham_, _Ham_pstead.
I had observed that such names generally applied to a low, or a
protected site. In the Highlands of Scotland, within the memory of
man, the pasturage was distributed between the two seasons; the cattle
being taken to the higher regions in the summer, the lower portions
being reserved for their support during the winter. The _shieling_ was
erected for the farm service in the summer; the homestead, or _hame_,
was the winter abode; I had, therefore, concluded that home or hame
was derived from _hyems_. I had been struck by a similar analogy in
the Turkish word for castle, _kishla_, from _kish_. Winter was first
applied to the solid buildings of the winter farm as contrasted with
the _yazin_, or light shielings erected on the summer pasturage.
This word, so peculiarly English, is not confined to England. It is
used nearly in our adverbial sense throughout the north of Europe, and
in our topographic sense in France. There is _Ham_, _de Ham_, as the
names of places, and every village is their _hameau_.
In Africa we have the same thing. _El Ham_, the name of a place
(Algeria). _Hamma_ (Breber) for village, or quarter of a town. In
Judæa, _hammoth_, _hamma_, Laga.[304] The home of Arab independence is
_Tihama_.[305]
There could not be in French, English, German, Latin, Greek, Hebrew,
Arabic, and Breber, a word implying both a state of weather and a
habitation, by accident. In the early times there was no difficulty in
transferring usages and names. Each region was not replenished, nor
each tongue complete.
_Hayme_ may come either from heat or cold; it may mean “the hot” or
the “shady” place. Chem or Ham, also, is hot. Ham was the name given
to Egypt from its black soil. In northern India, Hima is cold.[306]
Home serves as protection against cold and snow--against sun and
heat. The tent may appear to us, with our city habits, the most
primitive of dwellings; but in considering the matter I should, I
think, have arrived at an opposite conclusion, even if we had not
had another distribution laid down in the oldest of books. There is
first the emblem of a garden--a refuge under its bowers; next, in the
person of Cain, comes the planting of seeds; then follows close, Abel
tending the most peaceable of milk-giving animals--sheep. A third
generation arrives, who make dwellings: they build a city. A period of
multiplication elapses, and then Adah bears unto Lamech, Jabal, the
“father _of such as dwell in tents and have cattle_.” The nomade life
was, therefore, a variety; and the subjecting of cattle to the plough
was the second agricultural state, where wandering and shepherd tribes
settled themselves down on pleasant lands which they had discovered,
or in territories they had overrun. Jabal’s brother was Jubal, the
inventor of the harp and minstrelsy. Joyousness then followed the tent;
and immediately after comes industry with its forges and its cares, its
sweats and profits; and Tubal Cain taught men to smelt and puddle, and
presented them with brass and steel.
The Moorish tent is quite different from the Arab. It is of white
cotton, and of the ordinary form of the officers’ tent in all European
armies. The curtain is more upright, and the roof slants up. The
mechanism is different. The cover and the curtain are in separate
parts. The roof spreads out with a fringe hanging round it; if shade
only is required the curtains are not added. It stands as a large
umbrella; the stem nine or ten feet high, and the top thirty feet in
circumference. Against high winds they have guys or stays, which,
like our cables of a ship, they lay out to windward. The operation
of pitching commences with securing those stays, which are three in
number; then the cords of the umbrella are spread, and then the curtain
is fitted round. It is between five and six feet deep, of double cloth,
strengthened by thin rods like the bones of ladies’ stays, and one to
each cord of the roof. This curtain is in one piece--is carried in a
roll, and when fitted, the roll is set upright, and the right side of
the place left for the door, and so unwound and laced all round till
it is brought to the door on the other side; it is then fastened below
by small pegs. There is a strong binding round the top, and this, with
the rods, gives solidity to the edifice, without in any perceptible
degree increasing the weight or cumbersomeness for carriage. It is
much more easily managed from being in two parts, and the superior and
moveable stays are of the greatest advantage. Having cut out tents,
and having more than once had to repair the loss of them by the work
of my own servants, I am, perhaps, qualified beyond most dwellers in
houses to speak on the subject. Putting aside magnificence or grandeur,
and having in view use and adaptation, I may say I never knew what
a tent was until I had seen those of Morocco.[307] It is ornamented
with a golden ball; the flaming sword on the cloths of the roof and
the valance imitates the crenulated top of a battlement. The colour of
these devices is blue.
In the description of the Jewish Tabernacle we have exactly the Moorish
manner of pitching. Blue is the first colour mentioned; purple and red
follow. But these may have been added as distinctive to the sacred
tent, as they were to the priestly garments; and as blue distinguished
the common clothing of the Israelites, so might it be expected to be
the mark of his tent. The manner of lacing the curtain to the roof is
precisely that described in Exodus, xxv. 45: “Thou shalt make loops of
blue upon the edge of the one curtain from the selvage in the coupling,
and also on the other curtain. Fifty loops shalt thou make in the one
curtain, and fifty loops shalt thou make in the other, so that the
loops shall take hold of one another.” These fifty loops were to be of
the length of twenty-eight cubits, so that they would be ten inches
apart. This is precisely the manner in which the curtain of the Moorish
tent is fitted to the roof, loop through loop all the way round, and
the loops are not far from the above distance; and, probably, in the
larger fittings of the Sultan’s establishment, they coincide with the
dimensions laid down by Moses.
While at Rabat I had failed in every endeavour to see the Shereffean
encampment. I at last was gratified, as on quitting the city we passed
through it. I, however, neglected to take note of it in these nightly
memoranda, having been too absorbed by the new life that was presented
to me.
Ten thousand cavalry--the horses picketed close down, or rather packed,
in front and rear of the line of tents--were encamped in one enormous
and unbroken figure. It was an oblong, lengthways stretching east and
west. The centre was kept clear and unencumbered, and there stood the
Sultan’s tents, though untenanted by him: the appearance presented was
that of a miniature fortress, in the centre of a clear esplanade--the
wall or curtain about nine feet, the turrets at the corners a little
more; the cornices pointed to represent the crenulated battlements.
Over this the tops of seven or eight turrets appeared, their golden
balls glittering in the sun.
After the description I have given of the curtains or wall of my
own tent, stiffened with lath and pointed to imitate a battlement,
this enclosure of the Sultan’s will be easily understood, and it
corresponds, even to the dimensions, with that which surrounded the
tabernacle of the Jews in the wilderness, which was an hundred cubits
long, fifty broad, and five high; the length was also from east to west.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
LONDON:
Printed by S. & J. BENTLEY and HENRY FLEY,
Bangor House, Shoe Lane.
FOOTNOTES:
[304] The Jews, even after their sojourn of centuries in the Holy
Land, did not lose the habit of dwelling in tents, and probably, as
here, there was a city and a nomade population; as, for instance, “The
dwellers in tents,” Psa. lxxxiii. 6. “The tents of Israel,” Zech. xii.
7. “The tents of Kedar,” Song i. 5.
[305] “Tihama, the abode of the sons of Maad. There they came for the
winter.”--_Song on the death of Koulayb_. Tihama is derived from تهم
Taham. See Edressi, _Georg._; Drummond’s _Origines_, vol. iii. p. 260.
Ham’am--bath--is derived from the same word.
[306] An equally near approach is _caldo_, cold. In the Greek,
_Phrygia_, “burnt up”--the Latin, _frigus_.
[307] I find that this is much the plan used in India, even to the
ornaments.
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Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious errors and inconsistencies in punctuation have been corrected.
Page 14: “none of the lascivousness” changed to “none of the typo for
lasciviousness”
Page 272: The author used the wide version of final-mem in םרע. This
has been replaced with the regular version.
Page 422: “Without dentrifices” changed to “Without dentifrices”
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