The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Pillars of Hercules; vol. 1, by David Urquhart

Title: The Pillars of Hercules; vol. 1

A Narrative of Travels in Spain and Morocco in 1848

Author: David Urquhart

Release Date: April 22, 2022 [eBook #67903]

Language: English

Produced by: Sonya Schermann and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

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[Pg iv] 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[Pg v] 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[Pg vi] 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?

[Pg vii]

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?”

[Pg viii]

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.

[Pg 1]

“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[Pg 2] 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[Pg 3] 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;[Pg 4] 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[Pg 5] 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[Pg 6] 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[Pg 7] 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[Pg 8] 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[Pg 9] 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.[Pg 10] 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[Pg 11] 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]

[Pg 12]

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,
[Pg 13]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[Pg 14] 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[Pg 15] 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[Pg 16] 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[Pg 17] 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[Pg 18] 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[Pg 19] 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[Pg 20] 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.

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[Pg 22] 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,[Pg 23] 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[Pg 24] 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[Pg 25] 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[Pg 26] 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.

[Pg 27]

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[Pg 28] 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[Pg 29] 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[Pg 30] 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[Pg 31] 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?

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,[Pg 33] 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[Pg 34] 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.

[Pg 35]

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[Pg 36] 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[Pg 37] 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.

[Pg 38]

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[Pg 39] 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[Pg 40] 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[Pg 41] 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[Pg 42] 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[Pg 43] 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[Pg 44] 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, 50,000,000l.[34] If[Pg 45] any one were to do us the favour of taking it off our hands, we should save 30,000,000l. 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.

[Pg 46]

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[Pg 47] 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[Pg 48] 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[Pg 49] 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.

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;[Pg 52] 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,[Pg 53] 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[Pg 54] 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;[Pg 55] 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,[Pg 56] 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[Pg 57] 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[Pg 58] 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[Pg 59] 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?

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[Pg 61] 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,[Pg 62] “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[Pg 63] 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.

[Pg 64]

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]

[Pg 65]

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]

[Pg 66]

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.[Pg 67] 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[Pg 68] 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[Pg 69] 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[Pg 70] 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.

[Pg 71]

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[Pg 72] 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[Pg 73] 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[Pg 74] 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[Pg 75] 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[Pg 76] 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,[Pg 77] 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[Pg 78] 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[Pg 79] 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[Pg 80] 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[Pg 81] 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[Pg 82] 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[Pg 83] 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[Pg 84] 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.

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[Pg 86] 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[Pg 87] 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[Pg 88] 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[Pg 89] 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?

[Pg 90]

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[Pg 91] 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[Pg 92] 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[Pg 93] 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[Pg 94] 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,[Pg 95] 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,[Pg 96] 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[Pg 97] 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.

[Pg 98]

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[Pg 99] 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[Pg 100] 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[Pg 101] 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[Pg 102] 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[Pg 103] 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.

[Pg 104]

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,[Pg 105] 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;[Pg 106] 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[Pg 107] 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.

[Pg 108]

“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.[Pg 109] 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[Pg 110] 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[Pg 111] 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.[Pg 112] 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[Pg 113] 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.

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.

[Pg 115]

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[Pg 116] 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[Pg 117] 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.[Pg 118] 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[Pg 119] 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[Pg 120] 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[Pg 121] 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[Pg 122] 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.[Pg 123] 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[Pg 124] 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[Pg 125] 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]

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,[Pg 127] 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[Pg 128] 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[Pg 129] 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[Pg 130] 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[Pg 131] 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[Pg 132] 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[Pg 133] 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[Pg 134] 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[Pg 135] 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[Pg 136] 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[Pg 137] 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.

[Pg 138]

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,[Pg 139] 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,[Pg 140] 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.

[Pg 141]

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[Pg 142] 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[Pg 143] 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[Pg 144] 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.

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[Pg 146] 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[Pg 147] 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[Pg 148] 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[Pg 149] 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]

[Pg 150]

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,[Pg 151] 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.

[Pg 152]

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[Pg 153] 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]

[Pg 154]

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[Pg 155] 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[Pg 156] 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.

[Pg 157]

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[Pg 158] 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[Pg 159] 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[Pg 160] 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[Pg 161] 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[Pg 162] 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[Pg 163] 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.[Pg 164] 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[Pg 165] 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.

[Pg 166]

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[Pg 167] 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[Pg 168] 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,[Pg 169] 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[Pg 170] 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[Pg 171] 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.

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[Pg 173] 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[Pg 174] 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[Pg 175] 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[Pg 176] 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[Pg 177] 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[Pg 178] 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[Pg 179] 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[Pg 180] 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[Pg 181] 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[Pg 182] 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 300,000l., 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[Pg 183] 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[Pg 184] 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[Pg 185] 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[Pg 186] 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[Pg 187] 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.

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[Pg 189] 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[Pg 190] 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[Pg 191] 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.

[Pg 192]

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.

[Pg 193]

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[Pg 194] 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[Pg 195] 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,[Pg 196] 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]

[Pg 197]

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[Pg 198] 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,[Pg 199] 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.

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.[Pg 200] 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[Pg 201] 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[Pg 202] 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[Pg 203] 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.

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[Pg 205] 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[Pg 206] 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[Pg 207] 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,[Pg 208] 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[Pg 209] 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.[Pg 210] 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[Pg 211] 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[Pg 212] 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.[Pg 213] 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[Pg 214] 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,[Pg 215] 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.[Pg 216] 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[Pg 217] 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[Pg 218] 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[Pg 219] 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[Pg 220] 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[Pg 221] 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.[Pg 222] 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,[Pg 223] 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[Pg 224] 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[Pg 225] 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[Pg 226] 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[Pg 227] 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[Pg 228] 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.

[Pg 229]

“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,[Pg 230] 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[Pg 231] 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[Pg 232] 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[Pg 233] 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[Pg 234] 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[Pg 235] 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.

[Pg 236]

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[Pg 237] 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,[Pg 238] 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.[Pg 239][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[Pg 240] 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.[Pg 241] 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[Pg 242] 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[Pg 243] 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.

[Pg 244]

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[Pg 245] 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[Pg 246] 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[Pg 247] 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]

[Pg 248]

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[Pg 249] 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[Pg 250] 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[Pg 251] 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[Pg 252] 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.

[Pg 253]

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.

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[Pg 255] 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.[Pg 256] 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[Pg 257] 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[Pg 258] 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.

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[Pg 259] 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[Pg 260] 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,[Pg 261] 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.[Pg 262] 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[Pg 263] 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[Pg 264] 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[Pg 265] 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[Pg 266] 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 (600l.), 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[Pg 267] 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[Pg 268] 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?

[Pg 269]

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,[Pg 270] 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 [Pg 271]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[Pg 272] 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[Pg 273] 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[Pg 274] 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,[Pg 275] ‘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,[Pg 276] 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.

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[Pg 278] 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,[Pg 279] 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[Pg 280] 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[Pg 281] 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[Pg 282] 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,[Pg 283] 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:—

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,[Pg 285][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[Pg 286] 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[Pg 287] 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.

[Pg 288]

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[Pg 289] 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.

[Pg 290]

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[Pg 291] 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.

[Pg 292]

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[Pg 293] 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[Pg 294] 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[Pg 295] 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[Pg 296] 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,[Pg 297] 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[Pg 298] 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.

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[Pg 300] 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.

[Pg 301]

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[Pg 302] 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[Pg 303] 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,[Pg 304] 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[Pg 305] 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[Pg 306] 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,[Pg 307] 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[Pg 308] 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.”

[Pg 309]

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,[Pg 310] 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[Pg 311] 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[Pg 312] 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[Pg 313] 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[Pg 314] 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[Pg 315] 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.

[Pg 316]

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.

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[Pg 318] 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[Pg 319] 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[Pg 320] 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[Pg 321] 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[Pg 322] 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.[Pg 323] 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[Pg 324] 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[Pg 325] 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[Pg 326] 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[Pg 327] 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[Pg 328] 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[Pg 329] 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[Pg 330] 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[Pg 331] 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!”

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,[Pg 333] 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[Pg 334] 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[Pg 335] 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[Pg 336] 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[Pg 337] 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[Pg 338] 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.

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[Pg 340] 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[Pg 341] 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[Pg 342] 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[Pg 343] 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[Pg 344] 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[Pg 345] 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[Pg 346] 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[Pg 347] 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[Pg 348] 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,[Pg 349] 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[Pg 350] 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[Pg 351] 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[Pg 352] 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.”

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[Pg 354] 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[Pg 355] 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,[Pg 356] 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[Pg 357] 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[Pg 358] 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.

[Pg 359]

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;[Pg 360] 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?[Pg 361] 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,[Pg 362] 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[Pg 363] earth. The Romans, like the French at present, lessieved their dirty linen.[240]

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[Pg 365] 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[Pg 366] 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[Pg 367] 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[Pg 368] 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[Pg 369] 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,[Pg 370] “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.

[Pg 371]

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[Pg 372] 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.[Pg 373] 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,[Pg 374] 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[Pg 375] 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.

[Pg 376]

“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.”

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[Pg 378] 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.

[Pg 379]

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.

[Pg 380]

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[Pg 381] 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[Pg 382] 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[Pg 383] 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[Pg 384] 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[Pg 385] 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[Pg 386] 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[Pg 387] 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[Pg 388] 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[Pg 389] 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.

[Pg 390]

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[Pg 391] 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.[Pg 392][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[Pg 393] 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[Pg 394] 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,[Pg 395] 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[Pg 396] 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[Pg 397] 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.

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[Pg 399] 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.[Pg 400] 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.

[Pg 401]

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[Pg 402] 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.[Pg 403] 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[Pg 404] 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[Pg 405] 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[Pg 406] 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[Pg 407] 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[Pg 408] 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.

[Pg 409]

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[Pg 410] 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 6s. 6d. landed at Dublin, or under 40s. 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[Pg 411] 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[Pg 412] 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[Pg 413] 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[Pg 414] 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[Pg 415] 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.

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[Pg 417] 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[Pg 418] 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.

[Pg 419]

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[Pg 420] 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[Pg 421] 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[Pg 422] 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[Pg 423] 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.

[Pg 424]

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[Pg 425] 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[Pg 426] 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]

[Pg 427]

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[Pg 428] 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[Pg 429] 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.[Pg 430] 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,[Pg 431] 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[Pg 432] 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[Pg 433] 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[Pg 434] 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[Pg 435] 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[Pg 436] 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[Pg 437] 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[Pg 438] 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[Pg 439] 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.

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[Pg 441] 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[Pg 442] 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,[Pg 443] “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[Pg 444] 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[Pg 445] 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[Pg 446] 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[Pg 447] 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[Pg 448] 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.[Pg 449] 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[Pg 450] 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.[Pg 451][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[Pg 452] 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.[Pg 453] 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.

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 Northampton, Nottingham, Buckingham, Hampstead. I had observed[Pg 455] 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]

[Pg 456]

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 [Pg 457] 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[Pg 458] 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:[Pg 459] “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[Pg 460] 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.