In The Tail Of The Peacock Part 22

There was colour running riot indeed. Several of the stately figures, all in white, walked up to the saint-house to pray: one great man waddled down to the stream (to be great is to be fat, in Morocco), and a few began to groom their horses. The guns were piled: the sun glinted on them and on the silver-chased stirrups, and blazed on the snowy garments, on the poppies, and the saddles, one of which was blue, another yellow. We were in the land of Arabs: the Berbers were left behind at Mogador, and these tall lean hors.e.m.e.n, burnt coffee-coloured, were all descendants of the sons of the desert.

By this time the camp was scattered: the camel had risen from its knees and paced off under its medley load some time before, attended by Mulai Ombach, Mohammed, and the donkey.

The Ain-el-Hadger guard had each received a trifle for his night's services; Sad had groomed and brought up our mules; we mounted, and, followed by himself and Omar, perched on the top of the two packs, their guns sticking out at one side, rode away. The first few miles were not marked by anything of particular interest: the collections of huts and bare walls which sometimes adorned the hillsides were far away; the curious piles of stones in the fields, almost like scarecrows, were only landmarks. But after a time we rode into the country of the argan-tree, that most interesting and unique specimen, which flourishes in this corner of Morocco, covering an area about two hundred miles long and forty wide, and growing nowhere else in the known world. Southern Morocco would be lost indeed without argan oil, which is used for cooking purposes as a subst.i.tute for b.u.t.ter, and of which we had with us a large supply. The oil is extracted from the fruit of the tree: at the end of March it should be fit to gather, looking much like a large olive, and possessed of a green fleshy husk, greedily eaten by camels, goats, sheep, and oxen. Thus, as well as gathering the nuts themselves off the ground, the country people allow their flocks to feed upon the fruit: having driven them home, the animals chew the cud, disgorging the argan nuts, which are collected, and eventually cracked by women and children in order to obtain oil.

The average height of the tree is twenty-five feet, but its rugged side branches will cover a s.p.a.ce of seventy feet. Gnarled and twisted, the bark is a little like crocodile-skin, and forms in squares: the trunk has a way of folding upon itself, too, as it grows--slowly; for a large tree may be three hundred years old, and in consequence its wood is immensely hard. The argan is more or less tropical: though a tree has been known to live against a south wall in England, it was killed by the first severe winter.

Among the argans, little oxen were ploughing the red rich soil of the vale through which we rode; it was watered by a brook, and real hedges of pomegranate, out in brilliant flower, divided the fields. In one of these some Arabs were digging carrots; in another homely potatoes, the first we had seen, were doing remarkably well.

By this time the camel and attendants had been overtaken and left far behind, and since we had pa.s.sed our heavy baggage no other forms of life seemed to be travelling along the same trail as our own: certainly a countryman joined himself to us, partly to point out our direction, partly for the sake of company; he held his stick behind his shoulders and stepped out well, but not for long. And after he had left we only saw a few women in the distance. These were often on donkeys, and some carried water-pots on their heads; but not one of them was "a beast of burden" in the sense of the women round Tetuan--not one crouched under an overpowering load of f.a.ggots or charcoal.

As we jogged on, the great barley-fields, all in ear, though still green, might have led us to believe we were in England, except that in the next sheltered spot a white saint-house would be found, with its dome and its palm-tree, perhaps a shady olive grove, allowed to flourish for the sake of the holy place. Yes, it was Africa.

Farther on, an Arab village lay close to the track, no windows in its yellowish flat walls, apparently no roofs: a stoned arched entrance was filled up with thorn-bushes, and the tops of the walls piled with the same to prevent outsiders from molesting the inmates. This warlike tendency was again shown in another watch-tower, built, like the last, at the conjunction of two valleys.

Meanwhile, the bare and uninteresting-looking Iron Mountains were disappearing from view: another ridge, which met them at right angles, spotted with argan-trees, looked in the distance like a tea or coffee plantation on Eastern hills--that too faded from sight; and we rode on--now through a blaze of flowers, for every hedge flamed pink and yellow, and even the dry thorns were blotted with colour--now past fields of mauve poppies and scarlet poppies and stretches of stainless blue. A white saint-house stood out against the colour, its dome like dazzling chalk, it shadows blue: we looked back at it from under an argan-tree, in the shade of which we rested for ten minutes, picking up a few nuts, and drinking long and deep out of Omar's stone water-jar.

Not far from this spot we came upon _Sok-el-Had_ (the Sunday Market)--that is, a place where every Sunday a country market is held, and to which the whole countryside flocks to do its marketing. This was Tuesday, and therefore Sok-el-Had was forlorn and deserted, its rows of little mud huts and its meat-hangers empty, not a soul within miles. They are as old as Morocco, these places known by the name of the week-day on which the market is held--places so strangely deserted upon any other day.

Still we rode on for several hours, past Sheikh Boujiman Ben Hamed's white house, while the sun blazed on the bare path, and the argans stood too far apart to cast consecutive shade. It was with much satisfaction that we saw our next camping-ground in the distance about one o'clock: we had started early, and a long lazy afternoon was a good prospect.

_Sok-el-Tleta_ is named once more after its market--Tuesday Market. Even as Sok-el-Had was forlorn, so Sok-el-Tleta in proportion teemed with life. Held on the open hillside, upon a great bare s.p.a.ce worn brown by cycles of Tuesday markets, the prevailing colour brown and white, hundreds of mules, hundreds of Arabs, the sight was one not to be forgotten.

We dismounted, and followed Omar into the thick of the fray, surrounded at once by a staring and interested crowd. It was an extraordinary scene.

Streets were formed by rows upon rows of little mud cubicles, thatched over, inside which, on a mud shelf, the vendor sat, with his goods spread out for sale round him. Slippers were being mended; blacksmith's work was being done; cottons and stuffs were selling, sugar, groceries of all sorts, brand-new slippers and new clothes, vegetables and meat. Meat was the centre of the whirlpool, and round the carcases and shapeless joints the largest crowd: it hung on upright stakes and branches stuck in the ground, and the effect was that of a nightmare wood, in which the weird trees were bearing gory and dreadful fruit. It was all life and stir, that bare hillside; and by half-past one o'clock the whole thing had melted away, and there was no sign of a human being moving.

Mulai Omar was well known in Sok-el-Tleta, his wife's relatives living there: because he was a saint his clothes and slippers were kissed by every one who met us as we rode along to our camp beyond the Tuesday Market. We pa.s.sed women and children digging for ayerna root: the corn not being yet ripe, they were short of food. The root of this weed, though eatable, is most unwholesome, and unless carefully prepared, people grow thinner and more yellow upon it daily.

But all our interest in a few moments was focussed upon a most imposing ruin, a real Windsor Castle of a rudimentary type, which commanded a hilltop on a table-land on the right, great walls rearing themselves up to the sky, towers defending every corner, a turreted gate-house the entrance, and the whole loop-holed, grim-looking enough. Obviously the kaid who built such a kasbah was a great man: his garden, a beautiful overgrown wilderness, gone like his castle to rack and ruin, lay below at Sok-el-Tleta, wisely situated, for vegetation would have been badly exposed upon the hilltop.

About twenty-seven years ago the kaid who built the kasbah--chiefly by forced labour on the part of all the country people for miles round, though skilled workmen came from Mogador and were paid--was attacked by the Arab tribes from end to end of his province of Shedma, and after a six-months' siege was forced to fly to Marrakesh, where he died in prison, the tribesmen demolishing the castle for hidden treasure, till every wall had yielded its secret. Probably he oppressed his province like every other kaid, and was well hated. We went inside, and it was a foregone conclusion that we should camp there upon the gra.s.s. The governor's own halls were in a block in the centre, room after room, most intricate. Our tents were pitched in the vast sunny courtyard. We wandered about, exploring the odd corners, all the afternoon: not a vestige of timber or decoration remained. Handsome little red-brown kestrels with grey heads hovered over us and sat on the old walls, uttering their querulous cry: a beautiful blue jay, with cinnamon back and black-tipped wings and tail, was nesting in a hole among the bricks, and let us come close to him. A _sib-sib_ scampered along an old window-ledge, a little animal like a squirrel, grey with striped back, the stripes running from head to tail: it ruffled out its tail at will.

The camel turned up at five, having been nine hours on the road. Later on a _mona_ (a present) was brought us, consisting of b.u.t.ter, in a lordly dish set round with pink roses. So in the deserted walls of the kasbah we pa.s.sed the night. Ghosts ought to have haunted those horrible death-traps, the _matamors_, of which there are said to be a hundred. The ground seemed riddled with these "wells," intended for the storage of grain, but used by sheikhs and kaids as their private prisons, whence at their will they draft on luckless captives to the public gaols: an old enemy is quite harmless in a matamor, with a square stone over the top, for the rest of his life.

The wonderful cisterns were another feature of the kasbah, immense tanks underground, concreted and still water-tight--at the end of every dry season cleaned out and whitewashed, now half full of stinking rain-water and decay.

We got off at seven the next morning, struck the main road from Mogador, left it, and found ourselves in quite an agricultural country, green barley-fields, planted all over at intervals with figs and pomegranates, even hedges of a sort. Then again we were in the argan forest--the last of it, and the best: beautiful trees, with their knarled, twisted branches. I thought of yews on the Surrey hills. Here coa.r.s.e gra.s.s grew between, something like a park at home: goats clambered up into the forks, feasting on the green fruit. But all too soon the argans came to an end, and we saw this phenomenon of Morocco no more.

Nor was the exchange of the argan forest for the everlasting _r'tam_ (white broom) and a sun-baked, arid wilderness, a welcome one. It always meant stones and sand and a general grilling, the r'tam, as it waved like pampas-gra.s.s to the far horizon. By-and-by palmetto cropped up, the fan-shaped dwarf palm, which makes ropes and twine, baskets, mats, dish-covers, leggings, hats, and girths. Here it grew in the middle of wretched little attempts at corn-fields--a drawback to farming, though from want of water farming might well have been let alone. Topping a rise, the whole undulating country was r'tam and palmetto: occasionally a flock of goats moved on its face, tended by thin mahogany-coloured Arab boys in dirty woollen tunics.

When a single olive-tree appeared, we hailed its shade for lunch. The mules, hobbled together, grazed: Omar and Sad lay at a short distance, drinking green tea and smoking near the little fire they had lit.

Botanical specimens had to be dried.

That night we camped outside the kasbah belonging to the most powerful kaid in the whole district: an immense reddish-yellow pile it was, built of _tapia_--that is, of mud, gravel, and water princ.i.p.ally, poured into bottomless cases on the wall itself, and left to set. The kasbah had lived through a siege or two, and looked as if it would "ruin" quickly.

From the arched gateway a crowd of squalid retainers emerged to stare at sun-helmets and Englishwomen: living like mediaeval times within the castle's protecting walls, the "feudal system" practically obtains in Morocco in the present day.

Alas! the governor, Kaid Mohammed, was at Fez: his _khaylifa_ (lieutenant) received us inside the filthy and squalid kasbah, seated on a doorstep--a better-dressed man than his retainers, curtailed perhaps in intellectual allowance, who gave us leave to camp outside.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A BLINDFOLDED CAMEL WORKING A WATER-WHEEL.

[_To face p. 298._]

That evening we watched a blindfolded camel turning a water-wheel, and some wretched prisoners, with irons on their feet, who shuffled out of the gate and drew water. A black slave brought Kaid Mohammed's horses to water one by one; then made each roll on a sandy patch of ground, off which he first carefully picked every stone.

The sun streamed in at our tent door next morning, but we were at breakfast before it had more than left the horizon, and soon on our way through a rough country of scrub and olives--a capital country for pig (which are shot in numbers), and practicable for spearing them, one would think. Jogging along little paths, with a cool breeze in our faces, which invariably went round with the sun, we came by-and-by to a valley, green and wooded with olives, where barley was growing, looking as if it had been kept under gla.s.s, it was such an even crop, and rooted in the richest soil. Crack--crack--ping! and a stone whistled over our heads: this meant Arab boys scaring birds with slings, made of dried gra.s.s, and probably after David's pattern.

From out of an Arab village a little black child ran with a bowl of very sour milk, which, however, Omar and Sad appreciated: the child wore one filthy whitish garment and a bead necklace, a little inky-black pigtail completing it.

This was a day of all days, in that we had our first view of the Atlas Mountains--those mountains which we had come so far to see. There they were, first seen from a certain ridge, mighty peaks, snow-covered, filling one with an intense desire to travel into their fastnesses: a haze, however, hid the greater part of the range.

A countryman joined us for a short distance, to whom Omar gave a cigarette-paper and a pinch of tobacco. Again all cultivation was exchanged for uncompromising plain, stones, stones, and a soil like iron, on which nothing grew except the th.o.r.n.y zizyphus lotus, with the double row of thorns, one pointing forward, the other back, out of which the Soudanese make their zarebas. A colony of bottle-shaped nests, made of dried gra.s.s, in these thorn-bushes, tempted me to try for some eggs.

The attempt proved what a barrier the th.o.r.n.y lotus can be. I was extricated with difficulty by means of Omar's gun-barrels and Sad's hands; but not without one nest and eggs--they apparently belonged to a variety of sparrow.

A well with one tree, a spot of shade in the arid plain, intervened farther on. The mules drank. An Arab rode up, lean, walnut-coloured; slipped off his high-peaked red saddle, hobbled his mule, and lay down under the tree. Hot as it was, we pushed on. This plain is said to remind travellers of the stony part of the Sahara. In the air was a scent of burnt gra.s.s and flowers--a _honey_ smell: every time a breeze came we were duly grateful. The mules clattered on over the stones until Sidi Moktar came in sight--a saint-house of the deepest sanct.i.ty, near which a country market is held one day a week. Up to this cl.u.s.ter of what Omar dignified by the name of _shops_ we rode, and, dismounting, stooped our heads, and took possession of one of the minute mud-booths, the servants going into another next door. We could sit upright, though not stand, and there was shade in the shape of a thatched covering, while after the glare and flare of the sun outside it was as cool as a cellar.

From one to three we rested there, drank green tea after lunch, studied maps, took notes. But the sun was as hot as ever when we took to the open road again, plain before us, the Atlas dimly to be seen. Some oddly formed hills, from four to five hundred feet high, flat-topped, presently appeared: one, from its contour, is called _Hank-el-Jemmel_ (Camel's Back). We rode past them. A layer of coa.r.s.e chalcedony covers the flat summits, which would offer resistance when, ages ago, the Atlas wall was scooped into ridge and ravine, and the plain below washed bare, except for isolated remnants, such as these table-hills. We picked up fragments of chalcedony and small blocks of volcanic rock, or basalt.

About five o'clock we reached an Arab _douar_, or village, and decided to camp near it for the night. Twenty or thirty conical huts, made of branches and gra.s.s and anything which keeps out the sun, black camel's hair or a worn-out garment; the whole surrounded by a great hedge, or _zareba_, of the th.o.r.n.y lotus, not growing, but piled up, one hole left in the fence for exit, and closed at night by simply piling extra thorns in the s.p.a.ce; a company of howling dogs,--such is an Arab douar, and it is probably unequalled for filth, though when the parasites become too many, even the thick-skinned Bedouin moves out, and a new douar is put up somewhere else. There was no choice as regards camping near such a spot: it may have been unsafe in the open--at any rate no servants could ever be induced to sleep except under the protection of a village or a kasbah.

It was five o'clock. An old sheikh or headman came out from between the thorn-barrier, welcomed us, and led the way inside to a perfectly impossible open s.p.a.ce, a dunghill, amongst the huts, where we might camp; it was overrun with fowls, and covered with filth of every description.

Therefore, though a.s.sured that we should be much safer within the zareba, and deeply against the wishes of the servants, we insisted upon leading the way outside, and choosing a spot as far removed from the fence as possible, though only too near for our own comfort. As soon as the tents were pitched and the sun had set, such a noise of goats (which had just been driven inside the douar) bleating, and donkeys braying, and dogs barking, and children crying, arose, as we prayed it might not be our lot often to hear at the end of a hard day.

An admiring throng had gathered round us while the tent was in course of erection, and we were sitting on the gra.s.s. One old woman squatted before us, cross-legged, not a yard from our feet, and _gazed_; she wore nothing but one woollen garment, apparently a square held together on the shoulders by steel pins: her skinny arms, legs, and feet were bare, of course. We did not encourage "the ma.s.ses," but kept them at arm's-length with sticks.

That was a noisy night: half the douar was apparently being entertained in the servants' tent, which for safety was pitched all too close to our own, and they talked far on into the small hours in mumbling undertones, to the sound of which we finally slept, nor waked till a glorious dawn in a cloudless sky roused us at five o'clock. The herds were then wending their way out of the douar, filing across the plain, the mysterious delicate light of sunrise on the backs of the sheep and goats. By seven o'clock the sun was too hot to sit in for choice. We had already breakfasted in the conical shadow cast by the tent, a group of children watching every operation, some of them wearing the quaintest necklaces, of argan nuts strung together, and lumps of yellow sulphur sewn into perforated squares of leather: these were eagerly untied and handed over to us for a _bellune_ (2d.).

At eight o'clock we had left the douar behind, and were heading for Sheshaoua, south of the Camel's Back, along a trail more stony and desert-like than any before: even the few thorn-bushes did not flourish; perhaps the white snails, with which they were so thickly covered that the branches looked all in blossom, did not agree with them--snails which are beloved of partridges. We met no man nor animal, till at last a _reka.s.s_ pa.s.sed us, a runner carrying the mail to Mogador, jogging along the two hundred and seventy miles' journey, for which he would be paid, there and back again, thirteen shillings. His stick was tucked under his clothes, down his back, for the sake of ventilation; his waistband was tightened; his palm-leaf wallet was on his back, with letters, possibly some bread, a match or two, and some hemp, inside. He was a long-limbed fellow, bronzed and bearded, with the vacant, gla.s.sy eyes of a kif-smoker; for kif kept him going often instead of food, and helped him to swing along day after day, untiring, like a camel, sleeping little, praying occasionally at a saint's tomb, fording the streams, trotting over the plains, his eyes fixed on the horizon--"eating the miles," as Arabs say. This particular reka.s.s left Marrakesh on Monday morning at ten, and reached Mogador on Wednesday afternoon at three, doing his two hundred and seventy miles in forty-nine hours.

When Sir William Kirby Green died suddenly on an emba.s.sy in Marrakesh, a reka.s.s carried the news to Mazagan, a hundred and sixty miles, in thirty-two hours; but the Vice-Consul told me that upon reaching his office the man fell down--he could not stand to tell the news.

We rode on, praying for a breeze which never came: the sun literally sizzled on the baked desert, the rocks gave out an oven-like heat, and the rarefied air oscillated over the wastes. It was too hazy for more than glimpses of the Atlas and their snows: as far as we could see stretched only illimitable drab-coloured plain, broken by the flat-topped hills. At last we stumbled along to the top of a ridge; and there, strange and delightful sight, away in the distance lay a green basin, trees, no mirage, but the valley of Sheshaoua.

Sheshaoua is a district ruled by a powerful governor, whose great kasbah lies somewhere about the centre, dominating a large village. The district is watered by a stream from the Atlas Mountains, which accounts for its fertility; for, except where irrigation is possible, there can be no cultivation in this sahara: wide ditches conduct the stream across the length and breadth of the province, resulting in a green ribbon upon the face of the plain, the fields being edged with little hard mud-banks, keeping the water evenly distributed over the surface when the crops need flooding.

To have lived upon sun-burn is to appreciate the colour green: the march lost its monotony and some of its heat, when green lay in front and came nearer with every stride. Two hours and a half were short: the end of that time found us riding between corn-fields, crossing streamlet after streamlet watering the vegetation, and at last jogging over real turf, instead of clattering on stones, which had made talking difficult for the last day or two; now the path was actually soft and earthy. A long string of camels kept pace with us for a time on a parallel trail; then a douar came into sight, afterwards two saint-houses and a ruined kasbah. That half of these castles are ruined is not to be wondered at, considering that they are mud-built, and that tribal disputes and invasions are interminable. Some of those same crumbling tapia walls which we pa.s.sed supported immense earthen jars, standing out against the sky--jars which are stored with corn or b.u.t.ter, and sealed up: nine months' old b.u.t.ter has the reputation of an old wine.

Shady trees, standing for the most part by the stream, hung over our path, but would have made damp camping-grounds, and we rode on through a marsh, up one ridge, down the opposite side, and at last into the princ.i.p.al village of Sheshaoua, not far from which, on a hillside to the north-east, lay one of the familiar country market-places, with its collection of little shelters for the sellers, its upright branches on which to hang meat--Thursday's market this. A ruined, red-walled kasbah faced it, apparently inhabited by storks alone, busy building their great rough nests: some were in the village.

Sheshaoua was no douar, but a high-walled collection of houses, overlooked by the modern kasbah on the hill. Thither we rode, up the steep slope, to call on the kaid, Seka.s.sam Belcady, and ask permission to pitch the tents in one of the gardens which fringed the stream below.

This the khaylifa granted at once (the kaid himself being at Fez with the Sultan), pressing on us the alternative of putting up inside the kasbah itself; but the open air had stronger attractions, and we wound our way downhill to the stream, on the other side of which the kaid's own garden lay. There being no bridge, the stream deep, and the banks steep, the mules were driven over by themselves, and R. and I followed one by one on Omar's back--on and into a natural garden fit for the G.o.ds, one of Nature's own parterres, and a paradise at that.

On dry ground, underneath orange-trees covered with blossom, we lunched and lay down: of flowers, except wild ones, there were none, nor any attempt at cultivation; the terraces were dense in greenery and shade, interlaced with branches, intersected by streamlets, perfumed with orange flowers; water murmured; nightingales answered each other from every corner; wood-pigeons cooed content; most musical of all, the bulbul's throbbing, pa.s.sionate note--not loud--was heard for the first time. Yes; we might have said: "If there is a heaven upon earth, it is this, it is this, it is this."

The snake creeps into most paradises: suddenly a thunder-storm invaded ours; heavy rain began even to penetrate the thick lace of leaves and branches over our heads, and, walking to the opening at the edge of the wood, it was clear that heavy storms were working up from the north-east; nor did the day improve. Having sat through two downpours, with every sign of more to follow, when another pressing invitation came from the khaylifa to spend the night in the kasbah, it seemed foolish to do other than accept; for bad weather under tents, which like ours did not claim to be waterproof, has no attractions. Further, the khaylifa had stated that the guest-house was new, and had never been occupied.

Thither we hurried through the rain. The inside of the "castle" was blocked by a collection of filthy-looking sheds or rooms, which seemed to be full of Arabs and negroes and women--wives of the khaylifa--all of them squalid and mannerless: the paths between were littered with refuse.

A country kaid, judging from the state of his kasbah, is possessed of no refinement, and has less sense of decency and comfort, as European ideas go, than many members of the labouring cla.s.s at home.

The appearance of the guest-house was, however, rea.s.suring: the long lofty room into which we were shown had been newly whitewashed, the ceiling painted red and green; its double doors and two windows opened into a little courtyard, and rooms beyond housed the servants. A sheep was being skinned in an adjoining shed: we were to be feasted.