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THE PILLARS OF HERCULES.
THE
PILLARS OF HERCULES;
A NARRATIVE OF TRAVELS
SPAIN AND MOR () () () ()
IN 1848,
BY DAVID URQUHART, ESQ., M.P.
*UTHoR of “TURKEY AND ITS REsources,” “THE SPIRIT of THE EAST,” ETo
IN T W O W, O L U MES.
VOL. I.
N E W Y O R K :
H A R P E R & B R O T II E R s, PUBL IS HE R S,
! R I, I N S Q U A R E
1 Sł 5 5.
CONTENT'S OF WOL. I.
B00 K I.
CHAPTER. I.
PAGE
THE STRAITS OF GIBRALTAR. tº { } © ſº ſº o $º . 13
§
CHAPTER II.
THE CURRENTS OF THE STRAITS iº º & tº º {º , 26
CHAPTER III.
GIBRALTAR OF THE MOORS * g g e e © * , 32
CHAPTER IV.
EXOURSION ROUND THE STRAITS ſº e * & tº º . 43
CHAPTER V.
ALGECIRAS-TARIFA . tº e tº * tº * § & . 48
CHAPTER VI.
CEUTA ſº ſº tº e e e º e * º º . 63
CHAPTER VII.
EUTA—BOMBARDMENT OF TANGIER, , § & sº & & , 80
*
vi CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VIII.
PAGE
CADIZ, e e & & ge tº e tº {º & e . 88
CHAPTER IX. .*
FXCURSION ROUND THE STRAITS g & & * • . . . 99
CHAPTER X.
EXCURSION IN THE STRAITS-CADIZ POLITENESS e g e , 115
CHAPTER, XI.
CARTEIA-TYRE AND HER, WARES-GLASS . tº tº ſe © . 124
CHAPTER, XII.
THE STONE OF HERCULES . e * tº © © & gº . 134
B00K II. 3. * {
THE COUNTRY OF THE ROWERS.
sº
CHAPTER. I.
OFF SALEE & te & tº º & & ſº § in 1 6 3
CHAPTER II.
RABAT • tº tº & ſº ſº & * & e ſº . 177
CHAPTER. III.
THE JEWS AND JEWRY IN RABAT * © † & iº g . 190
CHAPTER IV.
THE BAIRAM . *e * ſº gº * & e º s . 201
CONTENTS. vii
CHAPTER. V.
PAGE
THE SULTAN : HIS COMMERCIAL SYSTEM . tº ſº º © . 210
CHAPTER VI.
THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE IN RAIBAT * • . 214
CHAPTER VII.
CONNECTION BETWEEN MAURITANIA AND AMERICA ſº sº s . 223
CHAPTER VIII.
DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE OF THE MOORS - e { } tº * . 230
B00 K III.
THE ARAB TENT.
CHAPTER. I.
HUNTING EXPEDITION TO SHAVOYA . tº tº g e * . 238
* CHAPTER II.
KUSCOUSSOO e tº & © tº & g o © & . 250
CHAPTER III.
THE HAIK & ſº g gº te e º 9 º º , 261
*
CHAPTER IV.
A BOAR-HUNT e g 3 tº º tº g go ſº dº . 275
I N T R 0 D U C T I 0 N.
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 Judaea, effaced
in Asia, doubly survives. Here must we seek the living inter-
pretation of the Scriptures; here may we find insight into early
things.
The connection of the Scotch clans with Barbary depends on
no ethnographic affinity, but their passage through, and sojourn
in, this land, reveal the history of their wanderings, and explain
the peculiarities of their race. Here are to be found to-day the
people who made Spain a garden, taught it at once the arts of
war and peace; and thence spread that knowledge to the rest
of Europe. That stream which then overflowed, has retired to
its fountain, where it lies deep, but not changed.
Spain and Morocco present treasures unknown, in those re-
gions 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 tradi-
tion is broken, the antique gºalogy of words that have sur-
1%
X INTRODUCTION.
vived 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 his-
tory is nearly mute. The same monumental character, however,
belongs to manners, costume, and tradition. I have not, there-
fore, 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
3,0'éS. -
g 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 endeavored, as a native, to explain matters from which
we might derive benefits in health, comfort, happiness, or taste,
from their old experience. Wherever I have drawn compari-
Sons, it has been for our advantage, not for theirs. It has,
therefore, been their merits, not ours, that I have placed in evi-
dence.
I have no expectation that my suggestions will modify the
lappet of a coat, or the leavening of a loaf; but there is one sub-
ject in which I am not without hope of having placed a profita-
ble 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 among 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 char-
ity 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 under-
stood in its uses, enjoyments, and construction.
We have recently been imitating barbarous times in church
architecture. These times offer to our admiration usages as well
as forms. Shall we have eyes for a Gothic spire, and none for a
Roman bath? Nations may have refinement, and yet be desti-
tute of common sense; they may be possessed of sense, and yet
INTRODUCTION. xi
©
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 poli-
tics. 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 bal-
ances 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
ascendency, 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 dis-
tracted condition. - - -
Author.—I am rejoiced to find her in one so flourishing.
Sp.—I wish it were so. Surely you are not in earnest ?
A.—I wish my country were in the same condition as yours.
Sp.—But your country is rich, powerful, united. We are
poor, weak, and distracted. - -
A.—I am thinking of the contrast between your people and
Oll]'S.
Sp.–In what does that contrast consist Ž -
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 differ-
ences 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. º
A.—Have you two great organized interests, commercial and
agricultural?
Sp.—From these too we are free.
xii INTRODUCTION.
A.—Have you two powerful opinions, monarchical and repub-
lican, as those which divide France?
Sp.—We have not. -
A.—Have you been brought to within an hour of revolution
and bankruptcy by an “ideal standard?”
Sp.—Spain has no financial difficulties of an abstract kind.
A.—Do you suffer from the despotic power of a sovereign :
Sp.—No. -
A.—Have you to fear the turbulence of a mob Ž
Sp.—No ; the people of Spain are docile, when left alone.
A.—Are there oppressive privileges belonging to the aris-
tocracy?
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 2
Sp.—No −nevertheless we are distracted.
A.—Itºis, 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 con-
clusions, by remaining unmoved amid the storm of opinion
which has swept over Europe.

THE PILL AR S () F HE R C U L E S,
B00K I.
C H A P T E R I.
THE STRAITS OF GIBRALTAR.
“Nullus amor populi nec foedera sunto:
Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor,
Qui face Dardanios ferroque sequare colonos;
Nunc, olim, quocumque 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 commonplace.
This sea has, at each extremity, a narrow entrance; through
both the water rushes in : each forms the point of junction of
two quarters of the globe, Europe there meeting Asia—here,
Africa. The first is acknowledged to be the most important
position of the globe. The land and sea there reciprocally com-
mand each other. A capital, an emporium, and a fortress, com-
bined in one, are placed at the meeting of two continents and
two seas, “like a diamond,” to use the words of a Turkish an-
malist, “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 com-
14 MOROCCO.
mand, 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 Em-
pire 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
neighborhood, the whole Atlantic might as well roll between
them. As to intercourse, they might as well belong to distinct
Orders of creation. They hold each other like to those unsightly
and malignant monsters to which ancient mythology consigned
the western portions of the world. ..If intercourse is rendered
necessary, there is a preliminary parley and a flag of truce, and
even the ceremonial of a friendly meeting records the accom-
plishment 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 barren-
ness 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 enterprise, 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 Con-
stantinople, 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 valor of her sons,
the wildness of her tribes, have not alone done this. Threatened
now by a new enemy and a new danger, the past is worth
sifting, in order to anticipate whether or not she will hold her
own; or if she fall, whether she will rot away, or sink brightly
and bravely, preserving -
Genio y figura
Hasta la Sepultura.
It is an old story, and we have forgotten it, that on Morocco
our first and greatest essays of conquest were made. England
- ATTEMPTS TO SUBJU GATE MOROCCO. I5
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 enterprises, here combined, and expended more lives,
ships, and treasure in their fruitless attempts than in the subjuga-
tion of the East Indies and the West. Neighborhood, 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 Euro-
pean assailant. Morocco numbered among her assailants every
European power. She holds the bones of English peers, of
Turkish beys, of Portuguese princes, Andalusian kings. She
has foiled an Emperor of Austria, and discomfited in succession
the warlike operations, or the political plans, of Cardinal Ximenes,
of Philip II, Don Sebastian, and Barbarossa. Spain has some
fortified points upon the coast, but they are blockaded ; and this
Smothered warfare is a living record of our aggressions, and
her delivery.
That event is one of the most remarkable of revolutions.”
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
& Ferdinand of Castile, after the death of Isabella, and the conclusion
of the Neapolitan war, joined the Portuguese in the conquest of Morocco,
on which they were then engaged, and settled the distribution of future
conquests. The Spaniards were to have all eastward of Tetuan, the
Portuguese all westward of Ceuta. Ferdinand himself led a great ex-
pedition of a hundred thousand men; and a second, equally powerful,
sailed under Cardinal Ximenes, Millella, Penon de Velez, Oran, Trem-
cen, Fidelitz, Mostagan, Algiers, Bugia, Tunis, and finally Tripoli, were
captured, or occupied on the flight of the inhabitants; so that the Kings
of Spain were in possession of the whole coast of Africa, from Egypt to
the Straits of Gibraltar; while the distracted Moorish State was vigor-
ously attacked by the Portuguese on the other side, where they had
obtained either permanent or temporary possession of Ceuta, Tangier,
Arzilla, Larache, Salee, Azymore, Mogadore; and their conquests ex-
tended beyond the Ha Ha spur of the Atlas into Suz.
16 THE MOORS.
various courts rivaled each other in pusillanimity and corruption,
exhibiting every symptom of dissolution, from the disorders
within and the power that threatened from abroad. It was
then that a family of mendicants and fanatics issued like lions
from the desert, upset the ruling dynasties, rekindled 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 stran-
gers to each other; and so Morocco has maintained the indepen-
dence so strangely won.
What renders this non-intercourse surprising is neighborhood;
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 endeavor 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 Tyrtaeus might have inspired. From the beginning
the African has been preyed upon by the other quarters of the
globe. His wrongs have been stored up in his retentive breast.*
Thence that hate which is his life; by it he has anticipated the
* “ExTRAORDINARY OCCURRENCE IN AFRICA.—A letter from Gerli
(Gerba), regency of Tunis, recounts a strange scene of recent occurrence.
There exists at Gerli a sort of pyramid, constructed of the heads of de-
capitated Christians, principally Maltese, Sicilians, and Spaniards, who
fell or were taken prisoners at the battle of the 29th of July, 1560. At
the request of Sir T. Reade, the British Consul, and the Vicar Apostolic
of Terrara, the Bey sent orders to the governor for the demolition of
this lugubrious monument. Saturday, the 7th of August, was the day
fixed for the ceremony. All the authorities were assembled. No sooner,
However, had the masons commenced operations, than some Zouavian
soldiers and other armed individuals rushed into the arena, and with
yells of rage shouted that the time was come for substituting the skulls
of the Christians present on the spot for those of which the pyramid
was constructed. The governor attempted in vain to appease these
fanatics. He was so ill treated as to be compelled to retire. It is hoped
that Sir T. Reade will be called upon to obtain satisfaction for this out.
rage.”—Paris paper. ---
HISTORIC INTEREST OF THE STRAITS. 17
lessons of wisdom, and by it he is a match for science and
power.” -
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 rival-
ry and contention. Now she is brought again within the vortex
of European politics, and identified in interest with Spain by
having the same neighbor, and that neighbor the rival of Eng-
land. We may again see rehearsed on the same arena, the
drama of Rome and Carthage. -
As I floated down this river, of which the Atlantic is the
fountain, and the Mediterranean the sea, remembering the Dar-
danelles, 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 Lybiamdue rapax ubi dividit unda.”
And that Atlas, sustaining the heavens on his shoulders,f 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 borne 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 Gaz-
etteer, nor were its laws a school-boy lesson learned by rote.
These Straits, then the peculiar domain of mythology, were
approached with natural wonder and religious awe. The doubt-
ful inquirer came hither to see if the sky met and rested upon
the earth—if Atlas did indeed bear a starry burden—to dis-
cover what the world was—whether an interminable plain, or a
* “Africa, in its interior, is the least known quarter of the globe, and,
perhaps fortunately for its inhabitants will long remain so.”—HEEREN,
Carthag. c. iv. g .
+ 'Emcí pic X' ai kaguyvárov ráxot
Tsipova’’ATXavros, Šs trpås $oirépovs róirovs
£armke, kiov’otpavoij re kai X0000s
3y 3. 2 39 s º a
diplow Épsíðov, Šx60s oikeiôāykaAov. EscH. Prom.
# The Straits were the pivot of Cicero's cosmography. In the Tus-
culan Disputations, 80mmemorating the wonders of nature, he speaks of
“the globe of the Earth standing forth out of the Sea, fixed in the mid-
dle space of the universal World, habitable and cultivated in two distant
regions; that which we inhabit being placed under the axis towards the
seven stars; the other region, the Australian, unknown to us; the re-
mainder uncultivated, stiffened with cold, or burnt up with heat.”
18 - THE MEDITERRANEAN.
ball lanched in space or floating on the water—whether the
ocean was a portion of it or supported it—whether beyond the
“Pillars” 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 al-
though 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 * -
To the dwellers on the skirt of Palestine she was a hand-
maid for a thousand years, affording a liquid way for the wares
which they scattered over half the globe: From her bosom rose
on all sides those sea-kings of the south, the Pelasgi. She bore
the Etruscans to their Ausonian homes. She furnished to the
African daughter of Tyre, the elements of the power by which
she was enabled to compete for the dominion of the world.
Transferred by the struggle of a few hours, and by the sinking
of a few craft—she carried with her that dominion to Rome, and
fixed it there for centuries. -
When the course of that Empire was run, and barbarism had
spread over the land, she fitted up new and beautiful things
upon her shores; nurtured Amalphi and Venice and Pisa, and
built up Genoa and Barcelona. Then opened a new order.
Seamanship, by magnetic touch endowed with wings, dared to
lose sight of earth : issuing from these portals, it gave to the
princes of the Peninsula the knowledge of a new world, and the
title of lords of the eastern and western hemispheres.
Maritime power, now no longer pent up within the land, was
successively competed for and attained by Holland and by Eng-
land: it conferred upon the one independence at home—upon
the other, dominion in the remotest regions of the earth. Here
are connected the first enterprises of man and his last struggles.
Hence was the path sought to Britain. Here now floats Brit-
º: ‘Yuets 6', & poſſgat, okoxia; Švérotre kexei'60ws
'Apšáueval grouxmööv àp’ $girépov 'S2ksavoig.
& *Ev6á re kai grº at Tepi réppaolv ‘HpakAños
‘Earāow, uéya 0aijua trap' to Yardevra Táðelpa,
Makpāv Štrö rpmóva troXvoirépeov 'ATAávrov,
*HXt re kai XáXketos és of pavów $6pape ktov
'HAíðaros, rvkivotal Kaxvirrápévos veſpéegat. -
DIONYSIUS AFRICANUS.
PROGRESS OF MARITIME DISCOVERY. 19
ain's standard. The ruins of the Temple of Hercules saw Tra-
falgar's fight. Here the hero of the Phoenix, prince, navigator,
trader, conqueror of monsters, fertilizer of lands, found again the
tides of his early home in the Indian ocean,” and set up his
Pillars. His mighty shade has its resting-place on the spot
which is honored with his name.
The next stage of discovery brings us to Columbus and
Gama: this was the goal of the enterprise of the Phoenician—
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”f showed the way to the regions toward which the
One had traveled, and where the other set. But the modern
adventurers had the problem solved for them, not in the reason-
ings only, but in the poetry of the ancients. 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.&
* Philostratus, in the life of Apollonius, mentions that he himself had
seen the ebb and flow, which he ascribes to the true cause. “All the
phases of the moon during the increase, fulness, and wane, are to be ob-
served in the sea. Hence it comes to pass that the ocean follows the
changes of the moon by increasing and decreasing with it.”
+ By the rédiscovery of the mariner's compass, the voyage along the
western coast of Africa became practicable, and to this is owing the
passage by the cape to India, as well as the discovery of America.
Without Columbus that discovery would have been made. The Portu-
guese, in their second expedition to India, fell on the Brazils just as the
Chinese junk on its way to England was forced to America.
f 'Qkeavós re répt: śv Ščagi yatav
Eixtogov.
‘Os Tepukupuaívet yaing treptréopova kūkāov.
Song of Orpheus.
§ Eratosthenes of Cyrene measured the terrestrial meridian by the
problem worked out from the well of Syene. To predict eclipses the
mechanism of the heavens must be known. They were predicted by
the ancients, e.g. Thales in the seventh century before Christ, Eparcus
of Mycea, in the second; Hellico of Cyzycus, and Eudemus. Anaxago-
ras of Clasomene narrowly escaped death for explaining their cause.
Among the Romans, Sulpicius Gallus predicted an eclipse during the
war against Perseus; and Drusus, by doing so, quelled an insurrection
(Tacit. Annals. I. 28). Pythagoras taught publicly that the earth was a
sphere, and the centre of the universe; but he communicated to the in-
itiated its double motion round its axis and the sun. Cicero was the
friend of the man who calculated the exact distance of the moon, and
approached to that of the sun.

20 PROPHECY OF AN ITALIAN POET.
But while Don Henry was dailygazing 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 un-
known, 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 mimico,
Ma perchè il globo cala de la terra
Chi va più oltre, e non trova poi fondo,
Tanto che cade giu nel basso mondo.
“ Rinaldo allor riconosciuto il loco,
Perche altra volta l'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'Ercolle colonne, a
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,
Eenchè 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 que 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;
THE TEMPLE OF HERCULES. . 21
Antipodi appellata è quella gente;
Adora il sole e Juppiterra e Marte
B. piante e animal come voi hanno,
Espesso insieme gran battaglie fanno.”
This remarkable passage has been esteemed a prognostication
of the discovery of America; it should rather be called direc-
tions to find it outf
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; 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; none
of the child-sacrifices of Baal; none of the lasciviousness of Bae-
tica, and of the worship of Astaraoth. They worshiped, in-
deed, deities unknown, or consecrated thoughts, and services con-
temned 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 worshiped without hav-
ing 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 labors 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 color.
They were more than a cubit high, of a quadrangular form, like
anvils, whose capitals were inscribed with characters neither


* “Morgante Maggiore,” Canto xxv. stanza 205-9.
# The proposition of Columbus was, “Buscar el levante por el po-
mente.” To find the east by the west. This was precisely the mistake
made by the Greeks, who had gained the idea of the spherical form of
the east without the knowledge of its dimensions. It was, in fact, the
repetition of the words of Aristotle—Xuvárretv rôv, Tspi rās 'Hoak\etov;
grfixas, Tórov repi Tô rāv 'Ivölkiv:
: In the Highlands the church is still called clachan, or the stones.
“Sed nulla effigiºs simulacrave nota deorum.”—SIL, ITAL.
“Castumque cubile.”—Id.
22 CALPE AND ABYLA.
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 Parcae, to prevent discord arising among the ele-
ments, and that friendship being interrupted which they have for
each other.” -
There was no Hercules, but the Tyrian worshiped here.
The temple was Tyrian, the rites were Tyrian, and the Tyrians
did not borrow from the Greeks. What I say is but the repe-
tition of what Appian, Arriant and others have said. In fact,
there was but one Hercules. The writing could only be Phoe-
nician. By the testimony of Greek travelers, 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.j.
To call Calpe and Abyla. “The Pillars of Hercules” was a li-
cense, and might be a poetic one; but to assume these moun-
tains to be so geographically, was to withdraw the license by
destroying the poetry. This solecism modern philosophy has
adopted $ se
Out of this error arose the dull plagiarism of the Boeotian
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 al-
tars and the figurative hills. The motto was “plus ultra,”
taken from “ne plus ultra,” both equally meaningless after the
discovery of America. The dropping of the particle ne an-
nounced the unlimited ambition of his nature, and the narrow
limits of his mind and scholarship." -
* Phil. in Apoll. V. 5.
+ Kai Tà (powikov väpºp 6tt veð; reiroinrat rā ‘Hpakxei rá Šket kai 6votal
660.yro.—L. 2.
+ 'Arró ‘Hpak\eta v armāāv Tóv év tá Eóptºrm Špiropta troXAğ, K.T.A.—
SCYLAx. w
Cadiz has still retained them as her arms:–
“The Tyrian islanders,
On whose proud ensigns floating to the wind,
Alcides' Pillars towered.”—The JLusiad, b. iv.
§ There is a dispute between Mannert and Gosselin about Hanno's
measurements, because they will not take his point of departure, viz.,
“the pillars of Hercules,” but will take Mounts Abyla and Calpe, Hee-
ren, as usual, interferes, and settles the matter s: “The pillars of
Hercules did not so much mean Abyla and Calpe as the whole Straits "
| Bacon has adorned his first edition of his “Novum Organum” with
THE PASSAGE OF THE STRATTS. 23
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 succes-
sors, and is known by the name of Colomato. Strange vicissi-
tude 1 The Phoenician 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
~ º 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 pro-
duce 80 millions of cart-loads, or 50,000 times the quantity of
earth displaced in constructing the London and Birmingham
Railway. Supposing then this evaporation to have gone on
since the deluge, the result would be, a field of 750,000 square
miles of Salt, fifty fathoms thick—that is, the Mediterranean
would be a tank of brine, and perhaps we should have a fresh-
water ocean outside in lieu of a salt one.* This has been pre-
vented 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 ani-
mal organization. . *
Going a step further, let us suppose the ocean shut out alto-
gether. What sights should we then have seen A Since the
a frontispiece, where a vessel is seen sailing forth between the two col-
|UII]]]].S.
* I am here venturing to anticipate a future conclusion of science,
viz. that the sea is salt only to a certain depth. - -
+ “How different would have been the present state of temperature,
of vegetation, of agriculture, and even of human society, if the major
axes of the old and new continents had been given the same direction;
if the chain of the &ndes, instead of following a meridian, had been
directed from east to west; if no heat-radiating mass of tropical land
extended to the south of Europe; or if the Mediterranean, which was
24 GEOLOGICAL SPECULATION
Deluge the evaporation, at the present rate, would have reduced
by this time the level 8000 or 10,000 feet; but in proportion
as it sunk, and the shallow borders became dry land, the tem-
perature would rise, and the moisture of the atmosphere dimin-
ish. 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.”
It is singular that the Tartarus of Virgil and Dante is cast in
this very region; but it would then have been no fabled terrors:
natural objects would have outstripped their fancies. The breath
of this furnace would not have been pent up in its caverns, but
have spread its blight over the finest regions of Africa, Europe,
and Asia, blasting in their bud the glories of the Capitol, the
eloquence of the Bema, the sculptures of the Parthenon, the
trophies of the Memnonium, the enterprise of Tyre, and the
wealth of Carthage; and these fair and fertile shores would
have been a wilderness, overhanging an abyss of death. The
Chinese, the Hindoo, or, perchance, the Seminole philosopher,
would have been journeying here to visit the bowels of the earth
laid open to the Sun.
What observations and experiments to make on the converse
phenomena to ours—on the increase of intensity of heat and
pressure on the powers of men or animals! What speculations
on the old orders of the animal and vegetable kingdoms under
new conditions ! What new ones called into existence | What
magnetic and electric phenomena to reward the Empedocles
who ventured into this crater of 4000 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 his-
torian—the exuviae 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 unmodi-
fied by a retiring deluge, and feasted his eyes on the reality of
chaos, and an earth fitted for salamanders, megalosauri, chei-
once in connection both with the Caspian and Red Seas, and which has
so powerfully favored the social establishment of nations, were not in
existence; that is to say, if its bed had been raised to the level of thes
plains of Lombardy and of the ancient Cyrene.”—Cosmos, vol. i. p. 205.
* “The levels of the sea of Tiberias and the Dead Sea are respect-
ively 666 and 1311 English feet below the level of the Mediterranean.”
—Cosmos, vol. i. p. 288
ON THE STRATTS. 25
rotheria, and mastodons. The Simoom would have extended its
empire from the Sahara to the plains of Languedoc, and, cher-
ished 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 pur-
ple 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 deny-
ing his scrutiny, and a barrier defying his adventure.
2
0 HAPTER II.
THE CURRENTS OF THE STRAITS.
THE Mediterranean is like a bag with two necks filling at
both ends. The current through the Dardanelles presents
exciting varieties, but no perplexing mysteries. It is the dis-
charge 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 ratard 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 endeavoring to float substances at various levels,
and after great trouble in procuring lines, and having machines
of various kinds made, I found that without a frigate's tackle
and crew no results could be obtained. I was thus reduced
to mere scrutiny of the alleged facts, and of the alleged theory.
. The facts amount to this: a vessel, in 1754,” 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

* See James's History of Gibraltar.
THEORY OF AN UNDERCURRENT. 27
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 reckoned 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.*
Having thus disposed of the only, but incessantly quoted fact,
I proceed to the theory. Reasoning, however, there is none, for
it amounts to nothing more than this: “What becomes of
all this water? It cannot go to the Black Sea, from which the
Mediterranean receives water; it cannot escape by a subterranean
passage into the Red Sea, for the level of the Red Sea is higher
by thirty feet. Then there is an undercurrent 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 inertia 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 favorable winds, nor
even retarded by adverse storms. The idea of an overcurrent
running against an undercurrent is so opposed to all experience,
that to be admissible, proofs would be required, and it could
never be received as an hypothesis to account for an unexplained
phenomenon.
Thus, the theoretical explanations utterly fail; yet there
is action without agent, momentum without motor, currents
without winds or declivity, and a vessel constantly filling without
escape or overflow. A mighty river rushes over its bed; but
this river is not moved by its weight; it runs on a dead levelt
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 undercurrent, or had
* This happened to the Phantome.
# The excellent geodesic operations of Coraboeuf and Deleros have
shown, that at the two extremities of the Pyrenaean chain, as well as at
Marseilles and the northern coast of Holland, there is no sensible differ-
ence between the level of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.—Cosmos,
vol. i. p. 297.
28 HUMBOLDT ON CURERNTS.
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 evapo-
rate, 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 3 But salt is not deposited; how then is the Medi-
terranean 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
undercurrent produced by a difference of specific gravity between
the water of the Mediterranean and the ocean.
If you take two vessels, and fill one with fresh water, and the
other with salt, or the one with sea-water at its ordinary charge
of 1030, and the other with sea-water of higher specific gravity,
such as would result from evaporating a portion of it, say 1100,
and color 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 in
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, while a counter-current prevails beneath, and
prevents the influx from the ocean of the cold current from the
Pole.’” If there was nothing to determine the currents at the
entrance of the Mediterranean, save the relative degrees of cold
at great depths between it and the ocean, the cold water would
run in at the lowest depths, and the warm water would run out
on the surface, which is precisely the reverse of what it does.
Here is a body of water 740,000 square miles in extent, sub-
ject hourly to the increase of its specific gravity. Upon the sur-
face, 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
* Cosmos, vol. i. p. 296.
THE WATER IN THE STRAITS. 29
O
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 de-
mand 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 outward. These experiments will present great practical
difficulties from the tides at the sides, which will mingle the
streams; and, from the shallowness toward 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 cur-
rents. But it may be inferred that the currents will have the
greatest speed at the top and the bottom, that their velocity will
diminish toward the centre, and that a neutral space of dead
water will remain, not only in consequence of the counter-impetus
of the currents, but because of the nearer approach of specific
gravity, and the mingling of the two waters, which would destroy
the moving power. -
With this solution we can at once understand the powerless-
ness 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 im-
mediate 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 succes-
sive modifications of the channel. This is singularly borne out
by the traditions of the neighboring 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),
30 THE FABLE OF ALEXANDER.
the waters of which have no communication with any other seas.
So that the inhabitants of the extreme west invaded the people
of Andalusia, doing them much injury, which they, in like
manner, did to the others, living always in war, until the time
of Alexander,” 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 (Tan-
gier), and one on the side of Andeluz. When this was done,
he caused the mound to be broken, and the water rushed in
from the great sea with violence, raising the waters of the Sea
of Cham, so that many cities perished, and their inhabitants
were drowned, and the waters rose above the dikes, and carried
them away, and did not rest until they had reached the moun-
tains on both sides.” º
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
* In Eastern tradition there are two Alexanders: the first is Dualker-
nein, whom the Bretons claim as their leader from the Holy Land, and
the opponent of Joshua. According to the authorities cited in Price's
Arabia (p. 54), the first Alexander was also a Macedonian, and built a
city in Egypt, on the site of the city afterwards raised by the Macedo-
nian. The ramparts of brass at the Caspian gate were attributed to both
Alexanders—they are by the Koran given to the first. (Sale's Koran,
ch. xvii. p. 120; Merkhond's Early Kings of Persia, p. 368.) Al Makkari
says, the same Alexander built towns of brass in the Canary Islands.
Macarius, patriarch of Antioch, speaks of the Dardanelles being opened
by Alexander, and that he placed his own statue on the top of one of
the hills (Travels, vol. i. p. 33–40). Thus confounding together the
deluge of Ogyges—the cutting the canal of Athos—the opening the
Straits of Gibraltar. Alexander seems to have adopted the title of the
two former to favor the analogy (see Merkhond, 384; Price, 49; Temple
of Jerusalem, p. 119). Alexander Dualkernein is still a hero of the
Spanish nurseries.

THE MEDITERRANEAN IN EARLY AGES. 31
point out the change which the coasts and channel have under-
OIl€.
g The description of the Straits by Greek and Roman writers is
so unlike their present appearance, that, but for the impossibility
of doubting the identity of the objects, we must have supposed
their words to apply to some undiscovered region. Who could
recognize the deep sea and the iron-bound coasts of these narrows,
in a plain of sand furrowed by rivers running in from the ocean,
which it was difficult to reach, not from the strength of the
stream, but the intricacies of the passage—who would imagine
the necessity of constructing flat-bottomed boats to get across
from Gibraltar to Ceuta, where now there is above one thousand
fathoms, or of transferring the ferry to the Atlantic side of the
Straits, where at present the depth is not one sixth of what it is
in the other, in order to get more water ? Yet there is no doubt
that these details apply to these spots, nor can we question the
known accuracy of the writers, or escape from the concurrence
of their testimony. We are reduced, then, to the necessity of
admitting some great revolution in the features of the country,
and a total change in the nature of the current.
The explanation is easy: the bank of sand, left by the retiring
waters of the Deluge, which covers the western border of Africa,
reached to the coast of Andalusia, and the remnants of it still
lie on the eastern side of Gibraltar, and fill the caverns exposed
to that side; on the depression of the Mediterranean by evapora-
tion, 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 center 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: Ist. That the process of removal was likely to
be accompanied by sudden inbursts, which would submerge
the borders. 2d. 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 ?
0 HAPTER III.
GIBRALTAR, OF THE MOORS.
THERE is no place of which it is more difficult to form an idea
without seeing it, than Gibraltar. One naturally expects to find
a fortress closing the Mediterranean with its celebrated galleries
and enormous guns facing the Straits. It is nothing of the
kind. -
The Straits are, at the narrowest part, seven miles and a
quarter wide; but that part is fifteen miles from Gibraltar. It
is only after you have passed the Narrows that you see the
“Rock” away to the left. Ceuta, in like manner, recedes to the
right; the width being here twelve miles. The current runs in
the center, 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
ſalue in other respects, it is quite a mistake to suppose that it
commands the Straits, or has ever had a gun mounted for that
purpose.
Gibraltar is a tongue three miles long and one broad, running
out into the sea, pointing to Africa, and joined to Spain at the
northern extremity by a low isthmus of Sand: it presents an
almost perpendicular face to the Spanish coast. Seen from the
“Queen of Spain's Chair,” it resembles a lion couching on the
point, its head toward Spain, its tail toward 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 crystaline.
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 toward the Mediterranean is now made inaccessible
FORTIFICATIONS OF GIBRALTAR. 33
by scarping, but it was nearly so before. Toward the point at
the south, the rock lowers and breaks down till, on the Bay
side, it shelves into the sea; thence along the Bay, which in its
natural state was an open beach of sand, gently sloping up until
shouldered by the steep sides or precipices of the Rock. This
level ground affords the site for the present town. The southern
and larger portion has been converted into the beautiful
pleasure-ground called the Almeida, or is occupied by barracks
and private residences. Half of this bristling tongue was
formed unapproachable, man has fenced in the other. This
sea-wall from end to end is the work of the Moors. Antiquari-
ans have endeavored to find here Roman and Phoenician
remains. I should just as soon expect to find a Roman fortress
at John O'Groat's, or a Phoenician emporium on Salisbury
Blain. It was reserved for a shrewder people than Carthagin-
ians, Romans, Greeks, or Goths, to discover Gibraltar's worth.
There are three elevations on the ridge, one in the center, and
one at each extremity. That in the center 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
zigzag wall. Below this stony thatching there is a story or
two of precipices; the line of defense 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 zigzag) there are the remains of a still more ancient one.
A great amount of labor has been expended upon this almost
inaccessible height. These zigzag, or flanking lines, are natural-
ly assumed to be modern, and the wall goes by the name of
Charles V., who restored the fortification below; but the loop-
holes are for cross-bows. The diagonal steps at the landing-
places, the materials and the coating, as well as the whole
aspect, show them to be Moorish. Heterodox as this opinion
was held when I first broached it, it was not impugned after
two inspections by the officers best qualified to pronounce on
such a matter. • * @ -
On the north, too, all our defenses are restorations of the
Moorish works: even in the galleries they have been our fore-
runners. 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 defense, the Moors had rendered Gib-
raltar what it is to-day. They have even left us structures of
the greatest service, as resisting the effects of gunpowder, and
.# 2% * * *.
34 THE OLD TowR.R.
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, exam-
ine 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 col-
umned terraces exert their fascination, nor is it ruin and dilapi-
dation that speak to the heart. The building is plain in its as-
pect, mathematical in its forms, clean in its outlines, with a stur-
dy and stubborn middle-aged air, without a shade of fancy or
of wildness. Nevertheless, the eye is drawn to it, and then
your thoughts are fixed on it—and they are so, precisely because
you cannot tell why.
It constitutes the apex of a triangular fort, and, massy and
lofty itself, it thus assumes a station of dignity and command.
The annals of time are traced on it—here by the arrow-head
still sticking,” 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 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 mosk; the former has a figured aperture slanting
through ten or twelve feet of wall, to admit the light, as in the
domes of Eastern baths. The other parts of the building are
as much unknown as those of the unopened Pyramids. If these
* The last one disappeared while I was at Gibraltar.
T. This Vandalism was gazetted, and the turret termed “Stanley
OWer.” -
8.
• THE MOORISH FoRT AND TOWER. 35
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 por-
tion of the fort is at present used as a prison. The lower inclo-
sure is of greater extent, and in the line of the wall is a remark-
able Egyptian-looking building, square with buttresses at the
angles and a pyramidal roof–roof and walls one mass of Moor-
ish 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 sto-
ries. 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 defense for, a capital; it was raised in time of trouble on a
remote promontory as a protection for insurgents. It was ante-
cedent to art in Europe, the people who raised it did not imi-
tate Rome; they must have brought this art with them. It
stands a match for man and time, defying at once the inventions
of the One and the ravages of the other.
Here is an original in design and substance, a work surpass-
ing those of the Romans in strength, and equaling those of the
Egyptians in durability.
As the zigzag lines have been attributed to the Spaniards, so
on high authority is a much more recent date” 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 an-
tiquity. !
They are now busy in demolishing the works that connected
- * Afterward, at Madrid, Don P. Gayangoš referred me to Ibn Batuta
, as fixing the date in the fourteenth century. On consulting that travel-
er, I find that he spoke of repairs under Abn El Haran, who ascended
the throne of Fez in 1330. An inscription which existed in the last cen-
tury, and of which a facsimile is given in Col. James's History of Gib-
raltar, seems to fix the date at A.D. 750. The following is the passage
from Ibn Batuta:—“A despicable foe had had possession of it for twenty
years, until our lord the Sultan Abn El Haran reduced him ; he then re-
built and strengthened its fortifications and walls, and stored it with
cavalry, treasure, and warlike machines.”
36 DEFENSES OF THE ROCK. {}
the Moorish fort with the harbor. While tracing the old wall
from the former to the latter, I came upon a large arch, and sat-
isfied myself that this had been an entrance to an inner harbor.
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 oth-
ers. I often attempted to look into books, but was always con-
strained 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 dissen-
sions 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 defense to the Moorish Tower.
Thence the cliffs sweep away round to the left, parallel to
the causeway, along which you are advancing. The Rock is
shaved into lines for musketry, or pierced with port-holes, which
stretch away in rows far and high. On the crest of the first
precipice, batteries and guns are scattered. You see them again
on the loftiest summit of the Rock, so that as you approach, you .
pass over ground swept with metal, and through successive
centres of converging fire. This is by the Spaniards called
“Bocca del Fuego.” At each step, from all around, above,
below, from Merlon, rock, and cavern, mouths of iron—some of
them caverns themselves—open upon you.
This is the only portion of the contour of the place that
an assailant could approach or batter. With a sufficient gar-
rison, and superiority at sea, so as to throw in provisions, the
THE GUNS OF ST. BARBARA. 37
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 defense, 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 harbor. The Bay and anchor-
age are commanded by the Spanish forts, St. Barbara and St.
Philip. These are leveled 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 govern-
ment, 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 harbor; the shells from it and St. Philip pass clean over the
Rock, lengthways, and can be dropped into every Creek where a
shoulder of rock might shelter a vessel from the direct fire.
During the siege by France and Spain the post was of no use.
Unless when superior at sea, we had to sink our vessels to save
them. *
In Gibraltar, there is little trade except contraband; the
natural commerce having been systematically discouraged, that
the martial departments might not be troubled, and with the
view of reducing it to a mere military establishment. The fiscal
regulations of Spain, which sustain this traffic, would long since
have fallen but for its retention by England. We, therefore, lose
the legitimate trade of all Spain for the Smuggling profits
(which go to the Spaniards) at this port. -
Gibraltar does not command the Straits. It does not present
means of repairs for the navy. It does not afford shelter for
shipping in case of war. It does not advantage, but seriously
incommodes our trade. It does not afford the means of invad-
ing or of overawing, or even in any way annoying Spain,
38 CESSION OF GIBRALTAR TO THE ENGLISH.
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, stipula-
ted 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 insure 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.”
We take it for granted that Gibraltar has been honorably,
some will even say chivalrously, won in fair fight; that it has
been secured by treaty and is retained on duly observed condi-
tions; or, perhaps, we never trouble ourselves about such mat-
ters, and imagine, therefore, that other nations are equally indif.
ferent; but if any one of us would take the trouble to imagine
the fortress of Dover in the possession of France, or Austria, or
Russia, he would then comprehend why Napoleon said that
# When this was told to M. Thiers, he would not believe it, till he
went out and watched the balls and flags, and had the use explained to
him by a boatman of the port.
COST OF MAINTAINING GIBRALTAR. 39
“Gibraltar was a pledge which England had given to France by
securing to herself the undying hatred of Spain.”
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 Bour-
bons 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, how-
ever, is enormous. Gibraltar must have cost at least, 50,000,000l.f
If any one were to do us the favor 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 valor.
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. $º
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 never acted
from it; we have never invaded Spain by it; we have never
* Napoleon, in captivity, being asked if he really had the intention of
attacking Gibraltar, or the hope of getting possession of it, answered,
“It was not my business to relieve England from such a possession. It
shuts nothing, it opens nothing, it leads to nothing, it is a pledge given
by England to France, because it insures to England the undying hatred
of Spain.”
# The following is only suggested as a rough guess:–
Ordinary expenditure during ninety years of peace, . £18,000,000
Extraordinary expenditure during fifty-five years of war, 22,000,000
Sieges, including expenses of fleets for its defense, vessels
for its supply, loss of ships to the enemy, &c., . e 10,000,000
Fortifications, g § g g g & º 5,000,000
#55,000,000
40 VALUE OF GIBRALTAR TO SPAIN.
supported Spain through it; we have never refitted at it. It
has figured in war solely in consequence of operations against it,
or by the necessity of accumulating and locking up there our
resources for its protection.
The question of its value for England can only arise in the
case of Spain being against us. Spain being with England,
Gibraltar would be at our disposal as Ceuta was during the last
war. In the hands of Spain no sane man would ever think of
attacking it. When William III. fixed upon it, it was because
he was seeking for something to cover his real purpose, which
was to involve the nation in foreign wars.
Gibraltar is the very point where it would be desirable for
Spain that an invader should land. It is the apex of a rocky
province, well defended and destitute of towns and subsistences.
Without the command of the sea, you cannot attack Spain from
the sea; and having that command it is the plains of the Gua-
dalquiver you would seek, the open entrances into Grenada and
Valencia. It would be the towns of Malaga, Cadiz, and Barce-
lona—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 spe-
cial value; for the contest for Spain, and through Spain, for the
world, was not so much between Rome and Carthage, as be-
tween two families, the Scipios and the Barcas. The passage I
refer to, is in Scipio's speech to the soldiers before the walls of
Carthagena, the spot where Spain was most vulnerable from
Africa, and where Africa might be most heavily struck from
Spain.”
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 tete 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 Algésiras,
* “Potiemur praeterea cum pulcherima opulentissima que urbe tumºr
opportunissima, portu egregio unde terra marique quae belli usus poscunt
suppeditentur. * * Haecillis arx, hoc horreum, aerarium, armamentarium,
hoc omnium rerum receptaculum est. Huc rectus ex Africa cursus est.
Haec una inter Pyrenaeum et Gades statio. Hinc omnis Hispania im-
minet Africa.”—LIVY.
SPAIN, FRANCE, AND ENGLAND; 41
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.*
We are now men learned in facts. Gibraltar being a place of
great strength, it is assumed to be a place of great value, and
we are perfectly content with having for the sake of it disturbed
Europe, endured the abomination and the load of public debt,
Sullied our name, and squandered our treasure. And yet this
cost would not be wholly vain, if the word “Gibraltar,” could
but bring some of that blood to the cheek of the Englishman,
which it causes to rush to the heart of the Spaniard. No doubt
there is for the Spaniard a conflict of disgusts, and he has sev-
erally 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
neighbors, 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 en-
gaged in intrigues among 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 innumer-
able lives, what can he feel toward them but hatred and dis-
gust? 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 strug-
gle between England and France will be certainly at the cost
of both, and assuredly will terminate in the Supremacy of neither,
and out of Spain that contest may yet come, unless there be
sense enough in one country or the other to know what its
agents are about, and to stop them.
* He did his best to restore it to its rightful owner.
42 GIBRALTAR AND MURRAY'S HAND-Book.
GIBRALTAR AS EXHIBITED IN MURRAY'S HAND-BOOK.
“It was captured during the War of the Succession by Sir
George Rooke, July 24th, 1704, who attacked it suddenly, and
found it garrisoned by only one hundred and fifty men, who
immediately had recourse to relics and Saints. It was taken by
us in the name of the Archduke Charles ; this was the first
stone which fell from the vast but ruinous edifice of the Spanish
monarchy, and George I. would have given it up at the peace of
Utrecht, so little did he estimate its worth, and the nation
thought it “a barren rock, an insignificant fort, and a useless
charge.” What its real value is as regards Spain, will be under-
stood by supposing Portland Island to be in the hands of the
French. It is a bridle in the mouth of Spain and Barbary. It
speaks a language of power which alone is understood and
obeyed by those cognate nations. The Spaniards never knew
the value of this barren rock until its loss, which now so wounds
their national pride. Yet Gibraltar in the hands of England is
a safeguard that Spain never can become a French province, or
the Mediterranean a French lake. Hence the Bourbons north
of the Pyrenees have urged their poor kinsmen-tools to make
gigantic efforts to pluck out this thorn in their path. The siege
by France and Spain lasted four years. Then the very ingenious
M. d’Arcon's invincible floating batteries, that could neither
be burnt, sunk, nor taken—were burnt, sunk, and taken, by plain
Englishmen, who stood to their guns on the 13th of September,
1783.”—(p. 341.)
“Gibraltar, from having been made the hotbed of revolution-
ists of all kinds, from Torrijos downward, has rendered every
Spanish garrison near it singularly sensitive; thus the Phoeni-
cians welcomed every stranger who pryed about the Straits, by
throwing him into the sea.”—(p. 226.)
“There is very little intercommunication between Algeciras
and Gibraltar: the former is the naval and military position
from whence the latter is watched, and the foreigner's posses-
sion of Gibraltar rankles deeply, as well it may. Here are the
headquarters of Spanish preventive cutters, which prowl about
the bay, and often cut out those smugglers who have not bribed
them, even from under the guns of our batteries: some are now
and then just sunk for the intrusion, but "all this breeds bad
blood, and mars, on the Spaniards' part, the entente cordiale.”
—(p. 227.) -
CHAPTER IV.
EXCURSION ROUND THE STRAITS.
- Tetuan, June 15th.
I HAVE been a week in Barbary. I landed at Tangier, and
crossed the country to this place, but I have been too busy
taking in and digesting, to put pen to paper. If I could abstract
my eastern self, the task of description would be comparatively
easy. Yet Morocco is as different from the East, as the East is
from Europe; nor has it only the interest of diversity. This
land seems the common parent of both : things come suddenly
upon you, which carry you back to the earliest times, or afford
the key to the commonest present customs. The idle curiosity
first awakened, is soon changed to a sense of the importance of
every trifle.
I will begin with the last thing I have seen. I have just
returned from the gardens called Kitan, about three miles from
this place: they are in a wooded valley at the beginning of the
fore-foot of the lesser Atlas, which towers above. We passed
through lanes of tall reeds, partitioning off other gardens, and
entered by a gate a lofty apartment, composed of split reeds
woven together in various trellis patterns: over the higher
parts, the vine was trained; the sides, windows, and doors were
festooned with jasmine. Here our horses were left; but the
gardens in Morocco are adjusted for equitation, and the covered
alleys are high enough to be ridden through. The ornamental
buildings were ruined, and the garden is let out as an orchard
for its fruit. A broad terrace supported a reservoir on a level
with the tops of the trees, and on it stood a pavilion. The
whole exhibited a stamp and character of its own, and one
could quite imagine it to belong to the people who had intro-
duced gardening into Spain; or rather, who had converted
Spain into a garden. I was no less surprised to find realized 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

44 - IMMUTABILITY OF MOORISH MANNERS.
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,
trellises of cane. Before Mirza crossed the Straits, or the Sara-
cens issued from the desert, the Arabs came not to teach, but
to learn the culture of flowers, and the irrigation of fields; they
came to pluck the fruit, not to plant the seed of the golden tree.
So, in like manner came the Greeks. 'I want no books to tell
me where were the Hesperides. I tried to forget the taste,
figure, and perfumes of the orange and lemon, and the trees
that bear them, that I might, with the Greeks who first saw
these bowers, enjoy the surprise of their dark perpetual green,
of the white untiring flowers, of the freshness, ever ready for the
thirsty, stinted by no season, and throughout the year lavishing
on all the bounty and the fragrance of their golden fruit.
I have never seen men so wild and savage; yet they are of a
noble nature. The costume of the East is grand, rich, pictu-
resque: 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 foun-
tain 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 preci-
pice to precipice of years, spanning gulfs of centuries, and count-
ing thousands of revolutions of the Sun to arrive only at forget-
fulness. 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 sythe no edge, his
arm no swing. -
At last I have met a janizary | Here only that proscribed
race could find a resting-place for their foot. The persecuted,
the tracked and hunted of all times, creeds, and systems, have
found here their last home. The ocean here stopped the
wanderer and the fugitive; the desert afforded them cover.
His delight was unbounded : he has been following me about
all day. The old janizary was of the Oda “FISH.” He showed
me the fatal mark upon his arm. He took me to visit some
A TEA-PARTY OF MOORS. 45
Algerines who were employed in spinning silk, and in embroid-
ery. They unbosomed themselves, and I discovered, although
I might have known it before, that the Moors and the Alge-
rines 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 center court,
made too much clatter. One night I was invited to tea by a
party of Moors, from Fez, who were occupying an apartment in
the same house. This happened to be my first meeting with
the gentlemen of the country—and I shall not forget it. They
wore large white turbans; were very portly, with sallow coun-
tenances, broad faces and foreheads. The haik 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 Ž" 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 defense 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 repeat-
ing in Algiers her former game in Egypt; and England doing
the reverse of what she had done; and that France, stretching
to Tunis on the one side, and to Morocco on the other, would
involve Europe in war. I was often stopped in the streets with
questions about the fortifications of Gibraltar.
“May I See,” said one, “a war ‘between England' and France,
and I shall die content.” “All the Mussulmans,” said another,
“look to you. We have God in Heaven, and only England on
earth.” An old Algerine captain told me that, at the time of
the Spanish War, the Spanish consul had explained to him as
follows, why England had succored Spain. “The founder of
46 THE KINGDOM OF MOROCCO,
their race had left to them a paper on which was written, ‘I
leave you ships and men, and this commandment—when a rob-
ber 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 Brebers. 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; Ma-
zueccos, 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 Mussul-
man dominion in Spain has been subdivided; then the African
power predominating in Spain, and then the Spanish in Africa.
Then there have been different dynasties and systems. A tribe
has established its supremacy over the rest. A religious sect
has done the same, whence the term Benimarines al Mahadehs
and al Moravides. In the impossibility of fixing any term which
should apply to the whole system, its races, faiths, and circum-
stances, 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 un-
able 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.
DR. HUGHES AND PROSELYTISM. . 47
The matter at present of most immediate interest in this quar-
ter, is the imposition of heavy duties on British Trade, of which
I heard a good deal at Gibraltar. I objected to a merchant
who was complaining of it, that the Sultan of Morocco was only
conforming to European science and practice. Yielding to this
argument, he declared it to be ungrateful, as we had stood their
friends against the French—so ignorant were they at Gibraltar
of what people thought and said at Tangier. I observed, that
if the French did as he said, it was very ungrateful in them, yet
only a consequence of our own acts. He said, “Oh we have
treaties with Morocco, and our government will take care to
have them enforced.” I asked him what confidence he could
have in treaties with any power, since at Algiers, where we had
a right to trade on paying five per cent, we have submitted to
the French tariff. “Oh,” said he, “the Moors are not sharp
enough to see, or strong enough to take advantage of that.”
There is nothing more amusing than to hear a merchant of
Gibraltar speaking about “right” and “treaties.” It is the only
place where you hear such words. Yet their commerce is smug-
gling, 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 en-
deavors—and I am glad to say successful endeavors—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 in-
tended to go to Rome, and that I should be acquainted with
leading persons of his church, and interested in it, without being
about to join it: our conversation was constantly interrupted by
his returning, with a view to proselytism, to dogmatic points.
It occurred to me to repeat to him what the captain of a Tunisian
man-of-war, lying in the Bay, had said to me just before. “What
the Muscovites have long been in the East, the French are now
becoming in the West: the world is changed; all (meaning
Christians) have become robbers.” The subject of proselytism
was then dropped. Yet the Turk had put the case very mildly.
Sir Charles Napier wrote after the bottle 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? *
GHAPTER W.
ALGECIRAS–TARIFA.
TowARD 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 neighborhood perplexing;
so I first sailed to Algeciras to get letters of introduction, and
such papers as would admit me at Ceuta, and the other Spanish
Presidios on the African coast.
The governor anticipated my request; the letters were folded,
and the address put, in the Turkish fashion, across. The
Spaniards use this form for official letters only; it is of course a
remnant of the Moors.
I observed also at Algeciras, that a black cord tied to a
walking-stick, is the mark of judicial authority, whether civil
or military, and is said to be a practice of the Goths.
As we were landing, the cargo of a smuggler, just brought
.in, was being conveyed on men's shoulders to the royal stores.
In coming across, we were enlivened with the chase of a little
punt, by two scampanas. The Terrible, celebrated as a smuggler,
and subsequently as a catcher of smugglers, lay at anchor beside
us. Other vessels have been constructed on her lines, but none
have equaled 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 diverg-
ing from centers. 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.
CONVERSATION WITH GENERAL LARA. 49
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. F 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 7" He expressed his astonishment at hearing
such a maxim quoted by an Englishman. “For two hundred
years,” said he, “Spain has injured no one, and has been
unceasingly injured by England and France, without benefit to
themselves.” On parting, he made me a present of Cornejo's
“Law Dictionary,” a rare work.
The following morning, accompanied by Mr. D. and Mr. B., I
paid a visit to the general, who bore the old Iberian name.
of Lara ; when a very interesting conversation took place. He
was much excited by a reference to some discussions with the
Governor of Gibraltar, about rebuilding the forts of St. Barbara
and St. Philip, and took occasion to expatiate on the mistake of
the English on the subject of Gibraltar. “By it,” he said, “you
may irritate Spain, but you cannot injure her or benefit your-
Selves. 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 dishonorable nature of the capture of the place, and
on the injury they suffered by our retention of it, and thé 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
deferred to Ceuta.
Though I had been at Algeciras on several occasions, I now,
for the first time, visited the walls. I commenced on the
Southern side, and I could trace them around the crest of a low
flat hill. The towers are close to each other, and about twenty
feet square, of solid Moorish tapia. To the north they are more
remarkable. A large tower projects into the sea, and is still
forty feet in height. I had to scramble over solid pieces of
masonry, lying about like fragments of dislocated strata! . It is
not the carefully-chiseled and mathematically-adjusted blocks of
&T
50 SIEGE OF ALGECIRAs.
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 razed 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 gun-
powder. Was this art, then, learned at Algeciras' There were
English auxiliaries in the ranks of the besiegers.
Looking on these remains, I tried to put myself in the place
of our forefathers beleaguering this fortress, when, for the first
time, they saw, heard, and felt this terrestrial lightning. It was
not Neptune with his trident upturning the walls, but Jupiter
with his bolts defending them. Algeciras, Troy-like, is memo-
rable 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 mi-
nority 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.” 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 centuriese
before that:
* From Kabyle (tribe) came cabala, which signified both corporation
and market-place. This tax was levied in the market-place, and was a
repetition of the tenth, which by the Mussulman law was levied on the
spot of production. w *
+ “The battle of Cressy furnished the earliest instance on record of
the use of artillery by the European Christians. The history of the
Spanish Arabs carries it to a much earlier period. It was employed by
the Moorish king of Granada, at the siege of Baza, in 1312. It is dis;
tinctly noticed in an Arabian treatise as ancient as 1249, and Casiri
---
THE INVENTION OF GUNPOWDER. 51
The Chinese, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, used
not merely gunpowder, but bombs, against the Moguls. Noth-
ing 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 estab-
lished between Pekin and the Amoor, the Amoor and the Oxus,
the Oxus and Bagdad, Bagdad and Cordova. But indisputa-
bly the Saracens were working their way toward 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.”
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 imme-
diately filled and sank, but locked in her deadly grasp, her an-
tagonist sank with her. They now lie side by side “full fathom
five.” At that time, the armament of our heaviest vessels con-
quotes a passage from a Spanish author at the close of the eleventh cen-
tury, which describes the use of artillery in a naval engagement of that
period between the Moors of Tunis and Seville.”—PRESCOTT.
* See “The Merchant and Friar.” It has been imagined that explo-
sive powder was known to the ancients. It is singular that the priests
of Delphi could always protect their Temple against barbarians (who
were uninitiated) by thunder and lightning; but never against Greeks
(who were initiated.)
Pliny speaks of the art of bringing down lightning being made com-
mon after the siege of Troy.—Lib. ii. ch. 53. Philostratus, Lib. ii. Life
of Apoll. l. iii. ch, 3, says that Hercules was repelled by the Indians,
who lanched lightnings. The Gentoo code forbids the use of fire-arms.
Coming down to modern times, Langlès supposes it to have been used
by the Saracens against St. Louis. In the work of Marcus Graecus,
“Liber ignium ad Comb. hostes,” it is said to be referred to, and exactly
described in, Julius Africanus, ch. 44; and about the time that Roger
Bacon was amusing himself with crackers, an Arab poet was describing
the granulation of gunpowder in verse, Langlès “Apud Salverte,” t. ii.
c. 8. If the Arabs had had it from us, they would have taken our word,
or given to it a constructive name. Their term is original—Barut.
52 MOORISH FORTIFICATIONS,
sisted 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 un-
scathed its brunt. At the Gibelfar of Malaga, Tarifa, Alcala,
&c., are to be found rudiments of advanced works, of glacis and
counterscarp, with a regular system of flanking walls. At Este-
pona, I observed angular fortification, the link between the old
system and the new. There are walls for the purpose of resist-
ing artillery, twenty-five feet high and as many thick, on which
the guns must have been mounted en barbette. Their Spanish
pupils anticipated Vauban.”
This region has been fertile in destructive inventions. Gun-
powder 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.f
It was in the Straits of Gibraltar, before Ceuta, that artillery
was first introduced afloat, in 1518, by Don Gonzalo Zarto, in
the service of Don John of Portugal.
It was at the last siege of Gibraltar that shells were thrown
horizontally, and that red-hot shot were first used. But an-
tiquity also furnishes her share of discoveries. It is not travel-
ing too far to set down as belonging to the same list, the sling
of the Balearic Islands, and the leaden bullets which, as AElian
tells us, the Romans obtained from Morocco. The battering-
ram was first used at Cadiz, during the short struggle between
the Phoenician colonists and their unnatural brothers of Car-
thage. The Iberian sword borrowed by Rome, may also be
recorded in presence of the first Roman colony—Carteia.
* |
* Bastions à Oréillons were constructed by a canon of Barcelona, 1514.
Vauban was born one hundred and twenty years later.—See LABORDE,
vol. i. p. 58. The bastion is accidentally noticed, and not as then a new
construction.
+ This practice was also known in Spain. “In 1445 a report was
spread that the Jews had undermined the streets of Toledo—through
which, on the festival of Corpus Christi, the procession of the Host was
to pass—with the intention of setting fire to it at the time. The mob
would have fallen on them had not the authorities proyed the report to
be false, and prevented the massacre.”—LINDo's Jews of Spain, p. 226.
+ The bas-reliefs from the Palace of Ninus, lately brought home, ex-
hibit battering-rams in full play, and archers:—so there is nothing new
under the sun. -
IMPRESSIVE SCENERY. * 53
We were under weigh at daylight with a light wind; but
were baffled all day by the currents. There was no room to com-
plain of detention with such a panorama—so many monuments
of man to recall, and such a phenomenon of Nature as the cur-
rents 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 splendor, Ceuta.
On the western coast of the African strait, the Bay of Tingis,
the country of Danaus and Antaeus, 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 worshiper 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
Phoenicia, 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.
landed on Pigeon's Island to fish, but was soon lost in the
problem, what becomes of the water which pours in But I
have already bestowed upon the reader my thoughts on this
subject. Suddenly the wind veered round to the north-east, so
we were immediately on board, and dashing away for Ceuta;
but the wind dropping as suddenly, we again made for the
European coast, and, aided by the tide, about midnight reached
the rocky island of Tarifa, which projects into the Straits at
nearly the narrowest part, and is joined by a causeway to the
land. Scarcely had we come to an anchor under the rock,
when it began to blow heavily from the east, the current run-
ning strongly from the west. We were entirely sheltered from
54 - A. STORM.
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 break-
water 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 landward, and had hitherto been concealed from
us. We struck once or twice on a bar, and the very moment
that we cleared the jetty, a sudden gust from the north laid us
on our beam-ends, and swinging inside instead of out, we were
not dashed to pieces. .
During three months, I had seen nothing but clear skies and
smooth seas. I could now feelingly revert to the words of a
Spaniard, who, when Philip V. asked which were the principal
harbors of Spain, answered, “June, July, and Cadiz.”
We had to stand nearly two hours, dripping and shivering,
till the necessary sanatary 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 Gusman the Good.
I found myself at the posada for the first time, under a gipsy
roof. The author of “The Gipsys 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 unºer
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 per-
son in a nameless street—the names are all given. Little did I
expect, at the time of reading the story, to have the opportunity
of verifying it. .
Mr. Borrow says that the innkeeper's sister and cousin (as he
* It is singular how sentences like this descend and adapt themselves
to the times. A Carthaginian being asked the same question above two
thousand years ago, answered, “June, July, and Mago.”—Port Mahon
was named after its founder.
THE GIPSY STORY OF MR. BoFROw. 55
severally makes her) had had a Spanish child to nurse, and in
sheer spite had injured it, with the purpose and effect of depriv-
ing 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 laugh-
ing long and quietly. As a last resource, I applied to the peo-
ple 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 neighbors, 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 lan-
guage. I, consequently, inquired about him as the English
Gipsy. They did not comprehend me; but recollected a tall
man who was always writing: holding up their hands, they ex-
claimed, “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 gipsys. 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 be-
tween 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 descrip-
tion of Spain. As well might England be studied in “Dr.
sº
56 WRITERS ON SPAIN.
Syntax.” Those peculiarities which it is intended to ridicule,
and those extravagances which are exaggerated in order that
they may be exposed, are to the stranger the instructive portion
of the work.
“Gil Blas” is a romance by a Paris bookmaker. It owes its
celebrity to an admirable sketch of a great minister, another of
his successor, and an episode portraying Spanish manners. The
Barber, Olivarez, the Count-Duke, the Barber, and the story of
the adventurer himself, in his retirement, are all taken from the
Spanish, and give to the work its value. It is then dressed up
with Spanish peculiarities, and Madrid or Paris morals, and passes
from hand to hand as a mirror of the Spanish mind.
In reviewing the catalogue of recent works, I can point, as
really influencing opinion or as referred to by travelers, only to
Blanco White's letters, and the work out of which these remarks
Originated.
Blanco White” 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 3 In some parts, by keeping dis-
tinct 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 de-
grade the Spaniard.
To Mr. Ford's book, however disagreeable the task, I had in-
tended to devote a special chapter; but understanding that the
two volumes are, in the second edition, reduced to Qme, 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
* I have only seen this book while revising these sheets for the press.
THE CLUB AND CARDS. 57
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 any thing 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 burden of its own management and the conduct of its own
business; he said, that indeed would be putting an end to
theories of “liberty” or “despotism,” and that the plan would
be most popular if any leading man brought it forward. He
then asked me how I came to devise such a scheme ; I told
him it was as old as the hills—that it was, in fact, the law
of the Peninsula, encroached upon, but not destroyed by
Austrian or Bourbon—that these ancient customs were looked to
with veneration by the profoundest men of those countries,
which the Spaniards fancied they were imitating while they
were destroying them. -
Notwithstanding the war which the Spanish government has
for centuries waged against every vestige of the race who made
Spain the strongest, most learned, chivalrous, and polished
country in Europe, the women of Tarifa appear in the streets
muffled up as Mussulman women, and expose but one eye.
I was invited in the evening to what I was told was a
club. The place was an apothecary’s shop. I was introduced
into a sort of vault, and I found myself in a gambling establish-
ment. Their cards were like those used by the Greeks; the
club being represented, not by the French trefoil, but by a
club; the spade by a sword; the heart by a cup; and the
diamond by a gold coin. The names being Bastones, Espadas,
Copas, Oros. The conversation having turned upon cards,
I mentioned its supposed astronomical origin: the four seasons
represented by the four suits; the fifty-two weeks by the number
of the cards; and the thirteen lunar months by the thirteen .
tricks, proving whist to be. the original game. I was here
stopped. They had only twelve tricks and forty-eight cards;
and “Of course,” said a Spanish major (a Mr. Kennedy), “our
game is more scientific, because adapted to the Julian Calendar !”
Conversation having been thus substituted for gambling,
I asked what they thought of the abolition of the Tithes and
confiscation of Church property ? They all shrugged their
shoulders. I repeated my question, saying that as a stranger I .
wanted to know if the nation had been benefited by the measures
which its wisdom had devised for it. own relief. This elicited a
3%
58 SPANISH NOTIONS OF
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.” They at first thought I
was in jest, but I explained to them something about the
legislation of these advanced nations. The increased burden 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 burdens: 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 astonish-
ment at perceiving that there existed a human being who could
question the wisdom, far less the sanity, of their imitating
England and France. I was called upon to declare my senti-
ments on the great question which I was told constituted the
essential difference between England and France, viz., the prin-
ciple 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 par-
ticular,” 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 º'
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
* Miraflores.
ENGLISH AND SPANISH INSTITUTIONS. 59
laws, and so on, and I endeavored 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 endeavoring 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 morn-
ing: 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 su-
perfluity.” I replied that there was no connection between in-
dividual dexterity and collective wisdom. They made the
mistake of attributing our prosperity—the result of private
industry—to our political institutions: and we, in like manner,
attributed their disorders—the results of the political theories
which they had copied from us—to their individual character.
The general Cortes of Spain has been constructed theoretically
without the consent or the presence of the separate kingdoms
They are thus figuratively merged, not in one of the kingdoms
more powerful than the rest, but in an abstraction which the
call “constitution.” Lamentable would be the fate of human-
ity 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
60 CARDS AND CHESS.
of naipes, from the Basque word mapa, 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 3 If we go back to the once-famed
game of Ombre, we shall find the terms of the game all Span-
ish, such as spadillo, matador, &c. If we go to Hindostan, we
find the manner of playing to correspond with the game of
ombre. Here is the link established between the Hindoos and
Modern Europe through the Spaniards—that is, the Arabs.
This latter point the name naipe confirms—Naib or Nawab,
whence Nabob, being the equivalent to king. “The Four
Kings” was the original name of cards in Europe. An old
writer quoted in Bursi's “Istoria della città di Viterbo,” has
these words, “Cards were introduced into Viterbo in 1379,
from the country of the Saracens, where they are called Waib.
In Italy, they were formerly known by the name Naibi. 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 Pe-
pin, which the moderns have followed. Islamism has driven
cards out of use among the Arabs, and has thus left us to dis-
pute 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 chan-
nel was covered with vessels: they had been all the morning
sweeping away to the westward, with studding-sails on both
sides, low and aloft; now they were fast measuring back their
distance, and dashing past us under close-reefed top-sails. 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.”
ºut one o'clock, it suddenly cleared up, and the sun burst
forth in brightness over the cooled and watered earth. The
DEPARTURE FROM TARIFA. 61
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 meas-
ured. 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
colors and to make them blow out well, to save them the trouble
of hulling us, as they did an American in the morning, because
his stripes and stars had not been flashing to windward of the
spanker, with as much coolness as if they had been firing at a
partridge. That sort of thing is all very well at Gibraltar, with
a thousand guns in battery, and four thousand men behind
them; but four artillery-men with three mounted field-pieces, to
be buzy with rammer, sponge, cartridge, and ball, ready to blaze
away at all the nations of the world, should any luckluss 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 statis-
tical information they seek with so much ardor. They have
no toll to receive, as at the Sound; no sovereignty to assert,
as at the Dardanelles; no neighbor to browbeat, and no smug-
gling 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” pilot, and cook, we skimmed along the edge of the
stream, and shaved every headland, until we reached the last
point of the Straits, to which we had to give a wide berth, on
account of the “race.” Inquiring the name, the answer was,
“Punta Leone.” The man may paint the lion as he likes, but
he has but one name to call him by.
But why call the point that looks toward 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
* The name given to those born on the Rock.
62 PUNTA. LEONE.
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 grouching 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.
CHAPTER VI.
CEUTA,
Oct. 10th.
I CONSIDERED it quite a feat to get at this Spanish key to the
Straits, having been foiled in two attempts, the one by land, the
other by Sea: Once the Spaniards stopped me, once the Moors.
Like its vis-à-vis, to which it stands at right angles, it is a rocky
tongue, joined to the mainland 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 defenses dis-
plays 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.* The fortifications, like
those of Gibraltar, are directed, not to command the sea, but to
defend it against the land. It has no level ground in front,
swept by its galleries and batteries; but, instead, a hill ap-
proaches 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 inclosure 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 land-
scape, and it might have been taken for a panorama, but for the
Roman vevillum fluttering from the tower, which showed that
a Saracen eye watched the keep of the Goth. *
* Septem. g
# This flag is small and square, and hangs from a rod which is hoisted
64 HISTORICAL DESCRIPTION OF CEUTA.
Two thousand years before Gibraltar was heard of Ceuta was
an important place. It is enumerated as one of the three ear-
liest 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 honorable 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 doorpost
of the Straits, and seize the post of their neighbors; 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 ex-
pended, in the belief that England would never give it up; but
the immorality of the government had not then overtaken the
baseness of the people. The Moorish government, however,
thought this an opportunity of recovering its own, and having
furnished supplies to Gibraltar, and to our fleet, and corn for
our army in Spain, conceiving itself entitled to some favor,
claimed the restitution of the place. The appeal proved inef.
fectual, although it was backed by the offer of a million of dol-
lars. The English government could not, as may be supposed,
well urge on the Spanish government the claims of its Moorish
to an iron Crane, to give it play and spread it out in calm weather, like
the weavillum. I do not suppose it to be a relic of the Romans, but rath-
er, that when the Romans landed, it had already fluttered for a thousand
years on the leafy sides of Atlas. It is called Alem, and is hoisted at
the hours of prayer. On Friday it is white, on other days blue.
BUILDINGS AND GARDENS OF CEUTA. 65
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 upward through the straggling town,
and a terrace along the sea-wall stretched eastward to the ex-
tremity 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 Por-
tuguese, running two or three feet as a skirting round the court-
yards, and along the streets: every thing was dazzlingly bright,
exquisitely clean, and elaborately ornamented.*
The streets are one continuation of tesselated pavement, green,
white, and red. The white is marble, the black a very dark ser-
pentine, and the red ancient tiles, which are used as outlines for
the figures: the gutter is in the center, 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 insure the luxuries of the
clime—that is, shade and air—and to afford protection against
its inclemency—the sun with his heat and light?
But the Spaniards here are as little in Africa, as if they were
in garrison at St. Juan d’Ulloa. There is not a man who knows
* I am told that where there are in Barbary Christian houses, they
are colored yellow by means of copperas water over the lime.
66 THE ARAB CHARACTER.
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 offense. When the Christians venture
within reach of the Moors, they are shot like dogs 2 they meet
only after dispatching a flag of truce. What a ludicrous dispro-
portion 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 ac-
complished, 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 for
tress. The young man, who had scarcely spoken before, seemed
absorbed in grief; started to his feet, his eyes glowing and his
fists clenched, and roared out: “That no Christian, that Moor
land.” - -
The government of Algiers recently projected sending steam-
ers to touch regularly at the Spanish Presidios to gain intelli-
gence 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 inter-
course 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 FORTIFICATIONS. 67
The next morning I started early to visit the works on the
lines, accompanied by a merchant of the place whom the
governor sent to me, as the person best qualified to act as
cicerone. Issuing from the first gate, we came on a drawbridge:
below ran the sea over yellow sand, there being a clear passage
by the ditch from one side to the other. Fishing-boats were
splashing round the sharp angles. The old lofty Portuguese
battlements rose above us; these masses of building are enor-
mous, 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 corre-
sponding 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 pas-
Sages, the roofs of which project above the soil with loop-holes.
The vidette on the hill pointed out to us on a brow opposite, at
a short distance—but divided by a chasm—the Moorish post, a
low shed of reeds: we saw no one. Some fig-trees in the
gulley between, we were forbidden to pass; and he warned us
to keep always in his sight. I came suddenly on a mass of ruins,
clustering round eminences, or running in long straight lines,
castellated and turreted: the angles were fresh and sharp.
The holes left in the walls by the fastenings of the planks, into
which the compost is beaten, gave them the appearance of
enormous pigeon-houses. There were no Roman blocks; yet
the style was Roman. There was none of the massiveness of
the Moorish, but their materials. There was more of the palm-
like lightness of Fars than of the troglodyte of ancient or modern
Africa. I hoped that these might belong to some remnants of
the earlier and untraced races; but a nearer inspection soon
decided that question. A gate on the western face is still
almost perfect, and is Moorish; yet who can find the date of
68 THE OLD MOOR OF SPAIN AND
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
endeavored 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 ſ” I had, however, for some
time seen the figure in a clear space on the opposite brow, wrapped
in its haik, and motionless.
How pleasing would it not be to find the original of some
dubiously-figured chimera! What then to discover a living
representative of a race that has left behind it an undying name
and immortal ruins? Such was to me that solitary figure.
The Assyrian bowed his back to the burden 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 bonds-
men at Rome. The Roman was a hewer of wood and a drawer
of water, at the door of the Gothic hut and the Wandal tent.
In all times, in all climes, the conquered have dwelt as Helot
bondsman or slave with the conqueror. This wild man, this
Moor, alone has followed no conqueror's car, and served no
master's bidding. Vanquished, he has departed—disappearing
from the land which ceased to own him lord. He has not by
familiarity worn out the terrors of his name, nor the indignation
of his heart; and there he stands to-day, not yielding to facts his
reason, nor to fortune his fate. -
But to compare the old Moor of Spain with the African
Moor of to-day, might appear like comparing the British of to-
day with their (assumed) naked ancestors. It, however, seems
to me doubtful whether the old light be all extinct. Look at
the Moor "Is there not dignity in his deportment—grandeur
in his costume? The produce of the looms of Morocco to-day
equals in beauty and taste, if it does not surpass, that of any
other 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 honor; 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 in-
THE MODERN AFRICAN MOOR. 69
tercourse with strangers. When they come to Europe they
make themselves at home. They are seen at Gibraltar, in the
streets, on the battlements, Santering 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 com-
munity 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 in-
structed classes of the Spaniards, be assimilated to Europe }
There precisely is the difference. A Moor, after spending
twenty years in Europe, goes back and demeans himself as if he
had never left home. They carry their habits with them, and at
Gibraltar live much in the same way as to the south of the
Straits. As a people, they avoid us more than any other, ex-
cepting, perhaps, the Japanese: yet, individually they have
greater intercourse with us, and in a more familiar manneſſ; be-
cause from the distance and the difficulties of the land journey, ,
the pilgrims almost always go and return from Egypt in Euro-
pean 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, dispatched 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 harbor 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 re-
quires that it should be placed at the head in respect to the
members. We expect to find all this in vigor under so rigorous
70 CoMPARISON BETWEEN THE
a government as that of Rome. But Rome gave herself no
such trouble; introduced neither principles, nor laws, nor lan-
guage, nor costume. These spread, because not forced. The
field of administration, down to her latter days, was kept suffi-
ciently clear for each individual to embrace the whole : the sub-
divisions of modern statesmanship and government were un-
known.* -
Her judicatories were solely appellant: the people were every-
where 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 pro-
voke 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 labor, but abstinence and
simplicity. - - -
The idea of the Romans in garrison at Ceuta was incessantly
returning on me, and prompting pictures of the consequences.
The Romans to-day at Ceuta would be masters of Africa, from
the Atlantic to the Red Sea, as rapidly as the Saracens were of
Spain, after showing themselves at Gibraltar. When the French
first attacked Algiers, the Moors, having heard that Europe was
governed by justice (the justice that every one understands),
were ready to invite them; but the French were soon found not
to be Romans: they had not the bath, not the toga, not the
salutation of the Roman or Eastern; they could in their persons
command no respect. In ablutions, tone of voice, gesture, man-
ner of eating, disregard of religious observances, they could
only excite the disgust of a Mussulman. Very subordinate
matters are principles of administration and forms of govern-
* “Aristote en donnant des éloges à ce gouvernement lui fait des re-
proches qui paraissent mal fondés. Le premier porte sur la cumulation
des emplois. Il est certain qui cette coutume forma de grands hommes
dans la Grèce, à Carthage, et à Rome, en obligeant les citoyens à étudier
également Part de la guerre, la science de l'administration et celle des
lois, parties differentes mais qui se touchent plus qu'on ne pense. Leur
séparation dans 'les temps modernes a fait maitre de dangereux esprits
de corps et de funestes rivalités.”—SEGUR, Hist. Univ. Carthage, p. 83.
# Marshal Bugeaud published an order on attendance at worship—
ºns as a reason that it was requisite to secure the respect of the
rabs.
FRIENCH AND ROMANS IN AFRICA. 71
ment, compared to the cleanliness of the bath, dignity of de-
portment, ceremony, and etiquette. But to the elegance of cos-
tume the Roman did, however, add forms of administration
equally adapted, as his warlike discipline and personal habits, to
enable him to gain and secure ground as a conqueror, he would
have left the Moor or the Algerine to the jurisdiction of his own
code—he would have left in their hands the administration of
their own laws: he would have given to their senate the power
of impeaching a Bugeaud or a Vallée before the Senate of
Rome.
When the Romans possessed that country, it was four or five
times as populous and not less warlike or stubborn in spirit.
For four hundred years their dominion endured with almost un-
broken 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 in-
formation 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,”
sacrificing to Mars and Bellona for successful raids and butcheries.
Rome held Africa with two legions; France began with a half
more than that number; she has now ten times as many: it
costs her as much in outlay as the imperial expenses of the
whole empire under Augustus; and notwithstanding all the
unfortunate French can do, the people will not be civilized;—
* See circular of the Bishop of Chalons, in 1843, for prayers of
thanksgiving. -
+ “A great fact is written at full length at p. 9 of the report:-"In
1831, the effective of the French troops amounted to 18,000 men of all
arms; in 1834, to 30,000; in 1838, to 48,000; in 1841, to 70,000; in
1843, to 76,000; in 1845, to 83,000; in 1846, to 101,000? Is it not the
contrary which would appear simple? We could understand having
commenced with 101,000 men in Africa, and now having only 18,000;
but that we should have commenced with 18,000 men, to arrive after fif-
teen years, at 101,000—is not this the most severe condemnation that
could be pronounced against the absurd and false system which has been
followed ?”—Da Presse.
+ “De tous les fléaux que la France doit combattre en Algérie, lig-
norance est sans contredit le plus terrible. Vis-à-vis d'un peuple éclairé,
un raisonnement juste et droit produit toujours un résultat avantageux,
mais vis-à-vis d'une nation barbare, les paroles sont vaines et les legons
stériles. Nous sommes obligés de recourir sans cesse à la force pour
contraindre lès indigènes à suivre nos avis et se pénetrer du bien que
72 PRETEXTS OF FRANCE FOR

and run away.” 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 tran-
quillity. Instead of the public debt of a “civilized” government,
they left behind a large treasure; yet their troops would have
raised the contempt of any European officer, and their govern-
ment that of every European politician.
I have met some Frenchmen who believed that the French
went to put down piracy: I know no Englishman who doubts
it. England attacked Algiers with the view of putting an end
to Christian slavery, and relieving the smaller powers from the
disturbance of their Mediterranean trade, she having no quarrel
of her own with that State. She succeeded, 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 Depu-
ties, 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 fish-
eries. The French consul, having, according to instructions,
made a quarrel, § and excited the anger of the pacha, he flung
toward him his fan. The consul was not touched. France
got the pretext she wanted for not paying the money, and pil-
laged the treasury of Algiers of £5,000,000. England and
Holland, who, at their own cost twenty years before, had put
an end to rowing and to Christian slavery, nevertheless believe
that France went to Algiers to put down piracy and to spread
nous voulons leur faire.”—Des Khouan Ordres Religieuw chez les Musul.
mans de l'Algérie, p. 109.
* “This great movement of emigration, 5000 cavalry, 30,000 foot, and
more than 30,000 tents, changes the character of the struggle. Abd-el-
Kadir carries off the population that we have been unable to organize,
administer, or govern.”—L'Algérie.
+ Taking the average according to the population for England to be
financially in as flourishing a condition as Algiers at the time of its cap-
ture, the Treasury (not the Bank) should contain £50,000,000.
+ “L’Angleterre n'avait elle pas Échoué devant Alger peu d’années,
avant notre succès.”—La France en Afrique—Published under the aus-
pices of M. Guizot. -
§ Avowed by the Duc de Rovigo, at once Minister of War and Com-
mander of the expedition, in the letter he published after the fall of
Charles X.
THE OCCUPATION OF ALGIERS. 73
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 unequaled unity, subjugates a lit-
tle state of pirates—or at least so called pirates—without num-
bers, 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 barri-
cades 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,” emperor: pro-consul
or emperor, he could have become Roman. But it is a modern
government: it is France which conquers Algiers; then the
Frenchman becomes an Algerine, and order has to be restored
in a constitutional state, by Algerine practices.
France, in putting down the Algiers of Africa, was preparing
herself to become the Algiers of Europe.
With the same certainty that Pyrrhus foretold the destruction
of Carthage or Rome, by the bone of contention which Sicily
afforded, may the destruction of England or France, or both, be
prognosticated from the French occupation of Africa. France
by her mismanagement has only retarded the explosion, and she
has not the courage to withdraw. Her invasion of Africa was
as little her own purpose or will, as the invasion of Spain in
I823. A ſoreign hand planned and prompted it in mystery at
Versailles, and publicly hailed and encouraged it from beyond
the English Channel, whence alone was to be apprehended
censure or dissatisfaction. -

* His sister could not speak Latin, and he was ashamed of her Breber
tongue.
f “Some of our cotemporaries have described in vivid language, the
danger to the balance of power, of the French possessions extended
along the northern coast of Africa in such a manner as to give France
the command of that important part of the shores of the Mediterranean;
but we hope that the alarm which exists on this subject will not cause
the advantages which the civilized world might reap from the Algerine
expedition to be altogether abandoned. It will be a common disgrace
to Christendom, if the splendid expedition which has now sailed for Af.
rica is obliged, after giving a temporary check to the insolence of the
pirates, to leave that quarter of the world to barbarism, because the
powers of Europe are all envious of the prosperity of one another. * * *
If the French expedition succeeds, the formation of establishments on
the coast of Africa, under the guaranty of the great Powers, to which
74 TREATMENT OF CRIMINALS BY SPAIN.
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 Castile to work on some canals.
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 them-
selyes 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 repurchase their liberty, and when they
have done so, admit them to perfect equality of consideration
with the white men. #
The governor was no less interesting than the presidio. He
seemed like an exile of ancient times, and with a melancholy
dignity dwelt on the thought of his country. He had been
several years an emigrant in Europe, without knowing or choos-
ing to know any language save his own. He labored 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
all Europeans should have a right to resort, but with such privileges se-
cured to France as would repay her the expense of the conquest, might
not be impossible. At any rate, we are convinced that the present
French government, whatever its defects may be, is not grasping or dis-
honest, and that a just arrangement for securing to Europe collectively
the benefit of the civilization of the north of Africa, if not rendered im-
practicable by the jealousies of other governments, will not be obstructed
by the ambition of France. -
“We confess that, considering the length of time, &c., we had rather
see such a colony established in Africa, without any precaution on the
part of the other European powers, than to see Algiers, if once conquer-
ed, again abandoned to its barbarous rulers.”—Globe, May 20th, 1830.
CoNVERSATION WITH THE GovKRNOR OF CEUTA. 75
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
i. :—my answer was, as one and a half to ninety-eight and a
alf. - - - 3. -
“Whoever says that Spain is poor or weak, lies. Where do
you see a people that work so little, and possess so much
Where in Europe is there a government so extravagant, or such
a horde of public functionaries The ‘administrators' in Spain
would supply France, Germany, and England put together;
and what is all the political agitation, except a scramble for
these posts? We want no new laws or constitutions; but only
to cadminister 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 vigor,
'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 defense: heroic defenses 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 o
her independence; unlike a first-rate one, she was engaged in no
schemes against the independence of other people: that an
army in Spain was consequently as needless as it was noxious.
\
76 • UARDINAL ALBERONI on
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 stand-
ing armies for theinternal interests of the great and preponderating
states, as he could be, because of the facilities which it gave them
of interfering with and oppressing the others. I pointed to this,
as the master-disease of our times, and as signalized as such even
in the last century, by some of the greatest men; that it feeds, as
Montesquieu says, upon itself, growing by-competition; and that,
independently of their misuse, standing armies by their pressure
must ultimately bring every one of the existing European states
to the ground. - * * -
Spain, separated by the Pyrenees from the rest of Europe, as
she is distinct from them in ideas, could easily relieve herself; she
had fewer obstacles to contend with than any other state, except
England. Our whole parliamentary history had been a struggle
of patriotic men against standing armies and funded debt. He
himself had admitted, that one honest man might restore Spain;
and how so, unless there were great abuses in practice which had
not degenerated into principle : He had particularized the
armies of functionaries; let him add to these this horde of two
hundred thousand regulars.
“Where is the man,” he said, “to do it?” I observed, that
it could only be by seeing and showing what was wrong, that
the man could ever be made or found to put it right.
This conversation was strikingly recalled to me by a book,
entitled “Political Testament of Cardinal Alberoni,” which, on
my return, I found at a stall. I turned over the pages with ex-
treme 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 disheart-
gned 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 de-

THE TRUE DEFENSE OF A NATION. 77
fending their country, they reckoned as many soldiers as subjects:
the whole state was a frontier against the enemy, who were sure
to meet with opposition so long as they fought to conquer.
Every inch of ground was disputed. When a city or town sur-
rendered, after repeated assaults, it did not capitulate for the
other towns within its jurisdiction. Every borough, every vil-
lage 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 pos-
sessed, 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 neighbors. They were sure
that time would impair his strength, like a body worn out by
too frequent attrition.
“The difference between the reigns of Charles VI. and Louis
XIV., in France, shows this contrast in its full light. The king
of England was then master of the finest provinces in France,
quiet possessor of its principal cities, and crowned at Paris; while
his adversary, though reduced to the single lordship of Bourges,
was able to hold out against him. Louis XIV. sees a frontier
province invaded by two of the enemy's generals; he offers, at
St. Gertrudenberg, the fruit of twenty victories, to persuade
them to retire. His kingdom is still untouched: millions of his
subjects have not so much as heard the sound of the enemy's
cannon, and yet he does not think himself able to make a stand
against seventy or eighty thousand men. He has not as yet lost
one battle on his ancient territories; nevertheless, he thinks that
nothing more remains for him than to die gloriously, pushed on
by temerity and despair. The enemy is still two days’ journey
from the frontier, which this kingdom had at the time when
Philip Augustus withstood and triumphed over the joint efforts
of all Europe; and Louis the Great believes it impossible to hin-
der 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 honorable retreat. Jandrecy and
Quenoy determine the fate of France. Valenciennes and Dum-
querque, Arras, Amiens, Cambrai, Maubeuge and so many other
strongholds, which his predecessors either never possessed, or, if
they did, afterward 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
78 RRESCIENCE OF
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 pow-
ers, to oblige her to submit to the treaty of partition.”
It was quite intelligible to me now, that three great rival
nations should concert to banish Alberoni from the counsels of
the grandson of Louis XIV. He had penetrated to the Gothic
foundations of the society of the peninsula, and had ascended
to those Gothic pinnacles, from which he could survey the little-
ness of his cotemporaries. He foresaw in the event of a gen-
eral military despotism, the possibility of Europe's being recov-
ered by the latent energy of the Spanish people, and the ultimate
range of his prevision 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 acquisi-.
.tions as a source of splendor 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 ſragments 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 endeavors of the Bourbon courts to restore the Pretender.
He warned them that their fleets would fail against England,
told them that” “cruisers” were the only effectual arm with
which to assail her commercial greatness, laughed at their pro-
jects of a hundred thousand men in arms in the Highlands, or
in Ireland, and recommended as a surer recipe for ruining Eng-
land, the securing “Ten members of the House of Commons,
with a few Peers of note.” He pointed to the sagacity of Wil-
liam III., who had established his throne by the then bold but
* This idea has presented itself within the last few years, and prompt-
ed our present precautionary measures. -
CARDINAL AIBERONI. 79 •
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; * but all Europe feared the
Cardinal of Parma, Russia alone feared the ex-bishop of Autun.
Spain, in the selection of public servants, to a certain degree
imitated Rome, and resembled Russia. She did not think, that,
to insure fidelity and authority, it was necessary that they
should be her own nobles and chief men, as In the case of all
modern European governments. Spain owed perhaps to the ,
caprice of her monarchs, a facility which Rome possessed by the
comprehensive nature of her institutions. Rome, however, so
dignified the nations only that she had already incorporated;
Russia, the subjects of the state she purposes to acquire.
* The Allies remitted to France 100,000,000 as the price of the re-
moval of Talleyrand from-the Foreign Office, he having been the origi-
nator of the Quadruple Treaty, secret but defensive, of England, France,
Austria, and Sweden, against the two aggressive and military govern-
ments of the North. Napoleon, on his return from Elba, found the treaty
and sent it to St. Petersburg. Genz subsequently published it. It is
the epitome of Europe in the 19th century.
CHAPTER WII.
CEUTA.—BOMBARDMENT OF TANGIER.
TURNING the corner of a street, I saw a Moor walking famil-
iarly along, as if he were quite at home. I was just as much
surprised as if I had seen a wolf santering in the midst of a
sheep-fold, or a sheep in the midst of a flock of wolves. Isa-
luted him, and he replied in pure Castilian. I found it was the
imaum of a community of—I suppose I must call them—Sara-
cens, 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 inclosure, which may be described either as the center
of one house or as a court common to several. This was the
quarter of the Moors, who amounted to five families. They
have all a small pension from the government, and the men are
in the military service. He led me into his own house, which
was a strange mixture of Africa and Europe, but orderly and
clean to fastidiousness. The women were in Spanish dresses,
with head and neck bare.
This was the first time I had seen a Mussulman community
resident for a period of time in the midst of a Christian people;
so that, of course, I was soon engaged in a minute investigation
of their social, religious, and domestic habits. Under this scru-
tiny 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 sus-
pected the cause,_-they took me for a Mussulman in disguise,
who had come to pry into the nakedness of the land. They do
practice the Abdest. They profess to keep the Ramazan (it is
at this moment Ramazan). They have no bath and no mosk;
but maintained that the mosk at the Moorish headquarters,
to which they sometimes go, is within the prescribed distance.
MR. HAY, THE BRITISH CONSUL. . 81
One native practice they had preserved in its pristine vigor, and
that was kouskouson, with which they presented me, and to
which we all did justice. When I had succeeded in convincing
them that I was no Mussulman, their hilarity returned, and they
were much amused at the description of my surprise at finding
in Europe, Christian women muffled up, and meeting in Africa,
Mussulman women with naked shoulders.
The imaum then gave me the detail of a dispute about the
neutral ground, which raged at the very moment of the French
bombardment of Tangier, and which had been adjusted through
the intervention of England—by leaving things exactly where
they were ! An act of greater insanity there could not be than .
our interference in any such matter. It is impossible to pre-
serve Gibraltar without the good-will either of Spain or of Mo-
rocco, 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 oppo-
site 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 rea-
son—proficiency in the Arabic—for appointing one of their crea-
tures as consul at Tangier: a member of the home government
answered that that was the very reason why he was the person
least qualified. But Algiers has triumphed over Paris.
The wind seemed settled from the westward, so I determined
to return to Gibraltar to catch the steamer from England, and
on the following morning bade adieu to this fancy warehouse of
guns and convicts—this military toy-shop and Utopian penal
settlement.
Just as we were getting into the current, we sprung our gaff
and were fortunately yet near enough to the African shore to *
- 4. - -
82 SIR, ROBERT WILSON AS
*
regain it. We anchored and repaired-the damage out of mus-
ket-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 hot-
bed 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.” -
. 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 ex-
asperation produced in Spain by the sinking of their cruiser, and
the subsequent discussion respecting the rebuilding of the forts
of St. Philip and St. Barbara. I had learned 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 car-
ried on in Secret, the acting hand will be the one which is not
SGGI).
Former governors of this place have managed their own gar-
rison and fort without distracting Spain or Morocco; this gov-
ernor, then, must have been selected for the work he has per-
formed. The qualifications and antecedents required are those
of a soldier. Out of all the army, one only could be selected on
whom had been inflicted the penalty of professional disgrace for
heading a mob against his sovereign's troops:–that one was
selected. The selection was the subject of astonishment, and it
was felt by the service to be an insult. It was indeed inconceiv-
**Western Barbary,” p. 165.
GOVERNOR OF GIBRALTAR. 83
able 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 honors, 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 Napo-
leon.”
The author of this pamphlet had henceforth to be classed
among the men peculiarly deserving the attention of the Rus-
sian cabinet. He is that governor, selected, in defiance of all
decency, to send to Gibraltar, and there overstepping the limits
of his functions, he nearly embroils England and France.
A Russian steam-vessel of war was admitted to the quay of
her Majesty's vessels to get coal, which was furnished her from
the royal stores, while French men-of-war were allowed no such
indulgence; on departing she was saluted by the fortress, with
twenty-one guns /* 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.”?
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.
* In answer to the comments to which the circumstance gave rise, it
was stated, “from the Convent,” that the reason why the Russian was
saluted first, was that as it was near sunset, the fort would not have had
time to return the salute, if it had waited till she had saluted first.
+ Since the above was written, Sir R. Wilson has disappeared from
this scene. I do not on that account suppress what I have written, as I
have not brought any charge against him; and his acts here commented
upon, are viewed merely as illustrative of the system of government by
secrecy and intrigue. * *
84 . IBOMBARDMENT OF TANGIER.
*
Qº
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 dispatch dated
that day, reached Paris on the 11th, and the peace with Morocco
was officially announced. But five days before—that is, on the
6th–Tangier had been bombarded !
So far the dates. The change of dispositions between the 5th
and 6th, was brought about by the arrival of letters from Paris
after the intelligence from Tangier had been dispatched. 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 dispatches. 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.” The Prince de Joinville, irritated by the
interference of the English authorities (the ambassador from .
Madrid, and the governor from ãº. 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 dispatches, 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 ad
ministration (Anglicë, detail of service); but there was a post
Script in these terms:–
“I suppose, if you have not been satisfied with the answer,
3you 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
.* The days of Mr. Hay are said to have been shortened by the vexa-
tion to which these transactions exposed him.
THE BATTLE OF ISLY. 85
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.;
THE BATTLE OF ISLY.
The son of the emperor had exchanged letters with Marshal
Bugeaud during the first days of August: both spoke of peace,
and only of peace. Letters from the emperor of a prior date to
the 2d—afterward taken—breathe nothing but peace: they an-
nounce that peace is about to be made, and he enjoins his son not
to leave till all is finally settled, and to do every thing that could
be agreeable to the French. On the 11th, the intelligence
arrived that peace had been concluded: then arrived an aid-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 aid-de-camp by the
arm, said “M. de W. 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 in-
stead of drinking, spilt it. The loss of the Moors was eight
hundred men by Saffocation.
While the emperor had every wish to make peace, and
every dread of war, the troops had no disposition to fight. The
* I afterward ascertained at Paris that the prince had paid the Jew
nterpreter for these provisions ! -
86 PEACE BETWEEN
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 prosecu-
ted 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 disposi-
tion 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
ower of the cabinet, and threatened the institutions of the
country. . Consequently, after intelligence received of the victory
of Isly, of the bombardment of Tangier,” and with the certainty
that Mogadore was at the time also bombarded, the instructions
were dispatched for the treaty signed at Tangier on the 10th
* These events are recorded in a composition which itself is worthy
of a place in history. . -
“The Governor of all the French lands in the Pacific Sea, gran
Speaker of the King of the French near the King-Lady of the Isles of
the Society. . .
“To all the chiefs and all the men of all the lands of the Society.
“FRIENDS, -
“Health to you all! Here is the word which I say to all. Two
grand battles were gained by the arms of the King Louis Philippe, the
protector of you all and the sovereign of us; the one on land and the
other below on sea. In the battle on land forty thousand soldiers of the
kingdom of Morocco were beaten by ten thousand French soldiers; the
son of the king of this land of Morocco was the grand chief of all his
soldiers. -
“At the other battle two cities were ravaged by the cannonade of the
French vessels of war commanded by the son of the King Louis Philippe,
Prince Henry de Joinville, French Admiral. And in the great conster-
nation of the enemy, peace was asked for by him. Eight hundred men
of Morocco were killed, and two thousand and above that, wounded, and
the enemy lost all their land-guns (cannons) which were taken. And a
flºw treaty for the French was concluded immediately after on this
land. . -
“Here is another word.
“The King Lady of Britain came to France some moons ago.
“And after that our King, the Protector of you all, went into Britain
to visit Victoria.
“There were great honors done to those Kings in France and in Britain;
and the two governments breathe well—the one for the other. -
“That is the true word which I make known to you all, that you may
not be deceived by lying words.
- “BRUAT.
“Papaeta, 11th March, 1845.”
FRANCE AND MOROCCO. 87
September, by which nothing was demanded more than had
been settled before.*
* A very singular dénouement well nigh occurred;—that of referring
the whole matter to the Emperor of Russia; this was prevented by an
accident. When I asked who had suggested this idea, I was answered,
“It came from Gibraltar.” -
CHAPTER W III.
CADIZ.
Oct. 22d.
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 sur-
mounted by square towers, sometimes three stories high. These
roofs are the basse cour. There the poultry is kept, the wash-
ing, and all dirty work done, and the linen hung out to dry.*
Here the inmates ascend, in the summer evenings, to enjoy the
breeze, and in the winter days to bask in the sun. Above the
sounds and bustle of the city, amid airy terraces, which, but for
the want of water, might rival the hanging gardens of Babylon,
looking out on the bright sea, and down and around on the
shining city, the Gadifanas walk, converse, and observe their
neighbors similarly employed on the neighboring battlements.
. As the houses adjoin, they are cut off from each other by para-
pets. 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, in the still night, and under the moon.
* It is hung up wet for two reasons;–not to strain it by wringing,
and to bleach it better. -
+ Such were the outlooks, or distegia, which were placed on the ter-
races of the Greeks; from such a one (usXá0pov is 6tſipes éayarov) Antigone,
in that beautiful episode which has been imitated in “Ivanhoe,” viewed
the Pelasgian host, drawn up near the fountain of Dirce. These wére,
and are, distinguished from the terraces roofed with tiles. The Tuille-
ries of Athens were not for the common roofs, but for the distegia, or

HOUSES IN CADIZ. 89
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 (rejā) 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 re-
lieved by the gayest colors—bright sea-green, red, and yellow.
The iron-work is green. The houses are separated, as also the
floors, by lines of red : a narrow border of yellow runs round
the base of each balcony, and of the houses. There is no more
charming, urban sight, than that presented in looking down the
narrow streets. The verandas approach from the opposite sides,
with their lively colors, their shrubs, and flowers. Every thing
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 column-
ed patios, neat, bright, and shiny, embellished with plants,
flowers, and fountains.” -
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 recep-
tacle of hats and walking-canes. We cannot imagine comfort
in a court open to the heavens, or elegance in a room with no
windows in the walls. New experience awaits us here: when
marble is, exchanged for brick, and the sun takes the place of
fog, shade is comfort, and damp luxury.
The Spanish portal acquired a dignity rather Chinese than
Moorish, from the escutcheon. At Valez Malaga I was shown
the built-up door in the mansion of a noble, who, being ordered
double roofs, and for the temples. In Morocco also the mosks are tiled,
and with gable roofs, while the houses are flat.
* Prescott, speaking of Cordova, says—“The streets are represented .
to have been narrow; many of the houses lofty, with turrets of curiously-
wrought larch or marble, and with cornices of shining metal that glit-
tered like stars through the dark foliage of the orange groves, and the
whole is compared to an enameled vase sparkling with hyacinths and
emeralds.” O
&
90 * THE CATHEDRAL.
to take down his arms from his door, built up the entrance, leav-
ing 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 recognizing this relic, will be intelligible only
to those among Eastern travelers, who have conformed to the
manners of the country, and known the secret of washing with
running water; and the disgust and aversion that are inspired
by our dabbling in a basin full of dirty water. Yet the practice
can only have disappeared within two generations.” The Rus-
sians 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 center of the
tower.
At Porta St. Maria, opposite Cadiz, I found a similar Moorish
ruin. This is the point of embarkation of Xeres, or the Port
of Sherry. It is the place for tasting wines, the Pacharete,
Montillado, and most noble Mansanilla. The cellars are worth
seeing—if spacious and lofty edifices can be so called.
* In a picture by Holbein, a girl is represented washing her hands;
an attendant pours the water as in the East.
º
SCHOOLS.—CHURCH OF ST. PHILIPPO NEGRI. 9] .
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 forever 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 coſa; and
large flaps; gold buttons and lace; white trowsers most mathe-
matically 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 per-
son 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 poorhouse, a house of industry, a
school, a foundling hospital, a hospital, and a madhouse;—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 at-
tributes and effects, as any thing can be, to the edifices consecra-
ted 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 outpost 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 coun-
tries of Europe, had still in Spain been unknown.
92 SALT-PANS ON THE ISLA ST, LEON.
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 calasa, to the mainland,
or rather, to the Isla St. Leon, which adjoins it. After traveling
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 pyra-
mids; sºme, twenty feet high. I expected to obtain data re-
specting the evaporation of the Mediterranean, but was disap-
pointed: neither is the water allowed to deposit. in one place,
nor are there successive fillings of water into the same basin be-
fore 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 crystalization is ulti-
mately effected—a process even then attended with difficulty.”
There are, in the Isla, twelve government and seventy-two pri-
vate 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 expor-
tation, and is faken 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 obser-
vatories; and, being built to look at the heavens, affords a good
view of the earth. From the top of it I inspected this labyrinth.
There was, in front, Cadiz, hanging by its narrow isthmus. The
Isla de Leon is a low marsh, which forms the bottom of the
bay. In the island is St. Fernando, situated on broken ground.
I could trace the salt river from its source, or mouth, in the sea,
to its other source, or mouth, in the bay. At the sea-entrance,
I could distinguish the small island or knoll of St. Petri. Here
stood the ALTARS OF HERCULEs. It was to visit this spot that
I had started from Cadiz; and finding it impracticable, from the
time of day and the roughness of the weather, I had, with
great reluctance, given up the project. It was some compensa-
tion to see, at least, the spot. An antique bridge joins the Isla
* In England a bit of butter is used,
THE TEMPLE.-ITS FOUNDERS. 93
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 Phoenician.
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 Phoenician and the Moor. The salt marshes could
be transmuted to the ancient groves and gardens, by the aid of
some palm-trees scattered over the broken ground.
But that islet, now shrouded by the spray from an easterly
storm, with its temple, where Hannibal offered sacrifice before
departing to live on Italy for fourteen years—where Caesar 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 Phoenicians,—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 Phoenicia
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.” Among the dwellers in
Canaan, there were those who had preserved primeval light, and
are called in scripture “worshipers 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 valor with which that field was contested forbids that con-
clusion. The factions, and the contests for the crown among
the Goths, differed little from those among the Saracens; the
people were not divided, and had lost nothing of their valor and
their warlike spirit. The Arabs triumphed in Spain in like
* >

* Herodotus (ii. 46, 145) mentions one tribe of the Pelasgi who had
no images, and worshiped one supreme God, whose name they never
pronounced. - -
+ Muza, when questioned by the calif as to the character of the differ
94 THE GOTHS IN SPAIN.
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 Transfretama. To these
the Saracens were deliverers, not invaders. They were invited'
over by the Jews, a numerous, and then a warlike people, pre-
serving 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 Mauri-
tania, 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 con-
quest. It was from Africa that Spain receivet, Christianity.
But modern Spanish writers would be careful to conceal or dis-
guise the early.association of Spain with the people and 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 valor 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 ardor. The uncertain victory was decided
in favor of the Mussulmans by a horrible treason. Opas, Arch-
bishop of Seville, collecting his vassals, joined the ranks of the
ent people of the West, says of the Goths, “They are champions who do
not turn the back on the foe.”
THE BATTLE OF THE GUADALETE. 95
Mussulmans and attacked the Christians. The Spaniards were
immediately broken,” &c.
How could there be a struggle in an open country by 12,000
against 100,000, where arms and courage were equal—where
both were warlike : The Goths were engaged in continual
warfare between themselves; they were making incursions into
France; they were at the very time masters, by recent triumphs,
of the sea, and possessors until that very year, of strong places
in Africa, whence they were carrying on aggressive war against
the Moors | We have therefore to look for some other cause
than the effeminacy of the one, and the valor of the other.
Count Julian could put the Moors in possession of Ceuta, and
in joining them draw all his adherents with him, the Arch-
bishop 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 Gib-
bon. 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 mag-
nanimity to which history offers nothing to be compared, did
500 men consent to shut themselves up in a hostile land, cow-
ered with nations numerous and unknown, and after destroying
their means of retreat, remained with no other resource than
their valor and their perseverance.” He forgot horses, gun-
powder, and artillery. But the Spaniards in the New World
only repeated the lesson they had learned 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 7000, or—as Gib-
bon 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 burned 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-
96 THE SARACENS IN SPAIN.
fortified place; the whole population perished in the defense, or
after the capture: another upon Corduba; it was surrendered
by the inhabitants; the governor of the garrison, however, pre-
ferred 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 ex-
ercise of their religion: they were to pay only such taxes as
were paid to their kings; they were to preserve their laws, and
their magistrates. The churches were generally divided be-
tween 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.”
The valor 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 pre-
pared, their triumph. The Goths were originally but an army
that entered Spain, to protect its inhabitants. When Spain
afterward recovered herself from the Saracens, she was, alto-
gether 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 Mus-
Sulmans.
Here was exposed the imbecility of the supposition that Is-
lamism 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 Moor-
ish troops had passed beyond the Pyrenees, and were encamped
at Carcassone. There the tide of victory was arrested, not by
the hammer of Märtel, but by orders from Damascus. It was
* “Thing incomprehensible! History shows us the Arabs as the least
exacting, the least cruel of all conquerors. They have shown the ex-
ample of those peaceful conquests which we recommend to the govern-
ments of the nineteenth century. By the capitulations which the earliest
Arab chiefs granted to the Christians of Spain, these last retained the
free exercise of their religion. This toleration, scrupulously respected,
facilitated and rendered more prompt the reconciliation of the two people.
Ocba, Gehrarben-Muhamad, Youzef, have left, in the Spanish chronicles,
written even by the Christians, the most touching instances of tolerance,
justice, and magnanimity.”—La France en Afrique, p. 17.
ALFONSO THE SAGE. 97
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 Califate. .
The empire established by this victory is the most remarkable
instance of prosperity that the world has ever seen. The town
of Corduba contained 200,000 houses; in its public library there
were 600,000 volumes. It had 900 public baths. On the
banks of the Guadalquivir there were 12,000 villages; and such
were the fruits they drew from the soil, such the profits of their
{ industry, which furnished to the East luxuries and arms, that
the public revenue of Spain in the tenth century was equal to
the collective revenues of all the other kings of Europe. Twelve
millions of dinars—a sum of gold which, calculating the dinar
at 103, 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
theater of great events: the Christian principalities had again
regained strength, the Mussulmans expending themselves in in-
ternal wars in Spain, and between the Peninsula and Morocco.
The battle of Las Navas de Tolosa had taken place. St. Ferdi-
nand had entered their capital and taken Seville, when the ele-
vation of his son Alfonso the Sage—but in his early years des-
ignated 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 sur-
rounding towns; but, very soon absorbed in the vain expectation
of becoming Emperor of Germany, and less successful than his
Successor, Charles W., 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 occa-
sion of following up his successes, and brought upon Spain new
dangers from Africa. This was the first time that Spain ap-
peared influencing the relations of Europe, and mingling in its
councils. Squandering her treasures to sway the elections of
Frankfort, and moving Africa by his intrigues in Germany, the
successful competitor was Rudolph, the founder of the imperial
house of Austria. . *
Xeres was soon retaken by the Moors; and on that occasion,
a Spanish commander distinguished himself by a trait of hero-

5
98 REVOLT OF THE ISLA DE LEON.
ism not less signal than that, the memory of which is preserved
at Tarifa. The soldiers on the wall having all fallen, the gov-
ernor, 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 dis-
tinguished for his scientific acquirements; and I received from
him and from others some most unexpected information respect-
ing 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 Jan-
uary, 1820. It appears that the plot was undisguisedly con-
ducted by Russia; that the Bailiff de Tatischefſ,”—then the rep-
resentative of Russia at Madrid, came down himself to watch
over the conspiracy, and openly used his predominating influence
at court to sacrifice those superior officers who endeavored 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 af-
forded 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.
* This diplomatist was subsequently removed, on the application of
Ferdinand to the Emperor Alexander, through Capo D'Istrias. The king
wrote these words: “I, who appear to be King of Spain, am only the
servant (oriado) of the Bailé de Tatischeff” Capo D'Istrias, to whom the
scrap of paper was brought, and who was then passing through Italy,
promised that, fifteen days after his arrival at St. Petersburg, the obnox-
ious ambassador should be removed. He kept his word. Russia, lost
nothing. The work had been accomplished, and Ugarte was left behind,
The Bailé having proved himself so successful with a king, was sent to
try his hand on an emperor. -
This fact I have had from the agent employed by Ferdinand. It is
curious that Spain should have got rid of a Russian ambassador, and
kicked out an English one. It is curious that it should have been for the
same cause. In the first case, however, the evil was already done.
What service might not Spain render to Europe, if, moved by the tor-
tures she has undergone, and by the happy consequences which she has
experienced from having one intriguer the less at Madrid, she should
withdraw her own from foreign courts, and thus be herself relieved from
the others'
CHAPTER IX.
EXCURSION ROUND THE STRAITS,
Cadiz, Oct. 24th.
IN the land of the Hindoos, far away from the ocean, there is
a building called the Pearl Mosk. 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 luster 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, gleam-
ing—and all is black. I had passed from the Ommiades to the
Abassides. In that monumental uniformity there are a fascina-
tion 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 reattempt the
description of things so often described, yet never conveyed, my
excuse is, that I have adjusted my eye and observation to a
more distant point, and have looked to making what I saw,
intelligible to a future time. To this I have been led by the fact
that changes are in progress. The day may come when, having
exhausted variety without finding contentment, this people may
try to go back, and endeavor 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 accom-
plished” what the arms of Napoleon were unable to achieve,
* A lady, writing from the north of Scotland, thus speaks of the
double invasion there of bonnets and poor ——“Bonnets have been the de-
struction of the Caithness servants: what they spend on these, and flowers
and ribbons (instead of the linsey-woolsey petticoat, linen jacket, and
Snood), would keep their parents in meals for months; but, of course,
i00 COSTUME OF THE WOMEN OF CADIZ.
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 remainded that
you are in a country which is itself only when you see the
WOIT1611.
The crown of this costume is the mantilla. It belongs to the
class of vestures intended to screen, not to parade : it neverthe-
less 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 men-
tioned it.
The manta” 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 upward, it is an admirable protection against
wind, rain, and sun. One eye only—generally the left one—is
exposed. Thus Solomon sings:
“With thy one eye thou hast bewitched me.”
Backed by such authority, I may venture to say that it is not
without its Ostensible beauties as well as its revelations of grace
and attractions of concealment. The Turkish yashmac conceals
the face; the farigee shrouds the person : the manta serves at
once for both purposes. The faldett of the women of Malta is
of the same description. The petticoat being also black, the
now that there is a ‘legal assessment,’ what need they care or ‘scrimp’
themselves, only to spare the parish.”—“She (an old woman of ninety-
two) told me, that formerly there was more love among neighbors, than
now among brothers.”
* The name of the cloak worn by the gentlemen, and of the plaid used
by the peasants.
THE MANTILLA DE TIRA AND DE BLONDA. 101
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.” The mantilla
de têro 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
ºnantilla 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 rotºnd. The blondeis 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 colors. The port of a
Spanish lady is, indeed, like the bearing of a ship. The mantillas,
reversing the effect of our costume—which is to impress the
wearer with the feelings of a block—gives at once freedom and
dexterity. The mantilla, fan, castanet, guitar and dance—which
last is not here the business of the legs alone—keep the arms
always busy. The head is disencumbered of bonnet, cap, ribbons
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 traveled in other countries, was the want of cleanli-
ness 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
* I have heard of another mantilla—de Cacherula—longer than the
others, and like a Scarf. -
102 HAIR-DRESSING.--THE SARRANO AND MONO.
the word Sarrano mean mountain: there is, indeed, no such
word in Spanish.*
Sar and Sarrano were Phoenician forms of Tyre f and Tyrian.
The Tyrian, not the Greek qº Roman, pronunciation would pre-
wail in Spain and Africa. Columella, a Spaniard, says, “Sar-
'ranam violam :” Silvius Italicus has “Sarranum muricem ;”
.7%
Ennius, “Sarranum ostrum ;” consequently, “Sarrano head-
dress” means neither more nor less than “Tyrian head-dress.”f
Such an etymology is in no way 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 neigh-
borhood 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; more than double that interval of years.
In the “Tyrian” (Sarrano) style, the hair is divided over the
forehead, turned back with an ample fold, the ends fastened
behind: the back hair is divided and plaited, and hangs down
the back; and no doubt formerly, as in the East and in Barbary,
silk of the color 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 ex-
posed. 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 moſſo j-and has also a foreign associa-
tion, not, however, with Jerusalem, but with Paris, for it has
* The word Sarra is given in Aldevete: he renders it princess; also
Sarria, Valencian for net. He derives both from the Hebrew.
+ “Quod nunc Tyrus dicitur olim Sarra vocabatur.”—Scholiast on
Virgil.
“Poenos Sarra oriundos.”—ENNIUS.
+ “Mantilla de Tºro” may be from the same word. '.
§ The dance Sarrabanda, the saraband of our old writers, is, of course,
nothing else but “Tyrian bounding.” :
ſ
THE SPANISH Gown AND PETTICOAT. 103
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 ribbon. It is then divided into
two parts and plaited; these are turned up like a bow, and
secured by the same ribbon. 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 moſo, which is a
large rose of variously-colored ribbon, which is sometimes used
to set it off. It is placed on the crown of the head: from it
hang two tassels of gold or silver, lace or embroidery.
There is no gown of a piece; the costume is in separate parts:-
the sleeves and body may be of any color. They are, out of .
doors, covered by the mantilla; like it, the petticoat is black:
formerly it was not above two yards in width, aud fell to the
nijambe 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 astonishm&ht 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 apostrophized the artiste
thus:—“Go out into the streets with mantilla and long petti-
coats!” Her astonishment equaled 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 woolen stuff, and bordered with red, the
two colors which the Spanish women most affect—the colors of
their gorgeous standard, those of gold and blood. -
A Spanish woman is no less attentive to her foot and shoe”
* “In-doors they wear mules, or shoes very low, the rest of the leg
being naked; out of doors, and especially in Andalusia, they wear
drawers, long and very neatly folded, to exhibit a fine leg, for their gar-
ments only come down to half the leg. They are very particular about
their feet, and they have shoes of thin Morocco, very soft, embroidered in
silk of different colors. They have for bracelets large manacles of gold
104 THE BASQUENA, SAGA, AND MANGAS.
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-be-
dizened 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 ribbon that held the sole on,
but the sole itself. Spain is still the country of the Śandal: you
may see it every day, and there is nothing that more recalls an-
tiquity than the bands (stone-blue) by which it is secured round
the ankle and foot.* - *
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 mod-
els, 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 Tuaregs: 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 East-
ern manner, with loops. The buttons are gold filigree, which
we call Maltese: they are used in large numbers for ornament-
ing the maja dress. The body is low round the shoulders, as
the present evening-dress of Europe; but they do not sin against
and silver, so weighty that those of gold are worth a hundred ducats.
They have similar ones above the ankle, which are round, and thicker
than the wrist.”—MARMOL's Africa, vol. ii. p. 192. -
* The alpargata is not strictly the sandal, for the sole is of untanned
leather, or a thick texture of hemp. The sandal proper has been seen
on Jews from the Atlas: it is still in use in Arabia and Ethiopia.
. SPANISH MANAGEMENT OF THE FAN, 105
mechanics and modesty by bringing the edge of the dress to the
angle of the shoulder. A Scarf is fastened above the dress,
which comes up behind, is secured upon the shoulders by clasps,
and then brought down in front. There is something approach-
ing 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 color 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 colors.
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 outward while letting go one side of the fan; then
turning the hand inward 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 con-
structive slang imparted to the initiated. The Spanish fan is
no more the arm of a telegraph than the leaf of a winnowing
machine. A fan is to a Spanish woman what feathers are to a
bird. Is she content and happy?—there is its gentle fluttering
—in its vivacious and rapid catch—in its long-drawn motion—
in its short pulse. There is all that is conveyed to us by the
brow when it lowers the eye; when it flushes the cheek—when
it glows. She wants not the frown to dismiss, nor the Smile to
invite: it is an additional and mute voice:—I might compare
it to the rod of a magician, or to the passes of a mesmerist.
Once seen, you feel that it is what was required to complete—
woman. The ideal was always in the mind, guessed only be-
fore, but recognized the moment it is seen.”
# An artiste thus advertises in the Times:—“THE FAN.—The most
graceful mode of using this elegant companion, so indispensable to the
distinguished, will be imparted by a lady who is well skilled in an exer-
cise so charming and fascinating in the brilliant society of the continent,
particularly of the Court of Spain. A fortnight's practice would remove
that impression of inaptitude and want of grace, hitherto so apparent in
its use in the most fashionable circles in this country. The lady will be
at home from 12 till 4 on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of each
week, commencing the 10th of January. The lessons are for the select
- 5%
106 SPANISH SKILL ON THE GUITAR.
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 famil-
iar 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 practicing; it is an unceasing amusement, an
inseparable companion. -
That which would strike the stranger as most extraordinary,
is our having one costume in the morning and one in the even-
ing; 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 Kamtschatkale, 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, escap-
ing 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 work-
ing in flax. The texture in silk and cotton must have been car-
ried thither by the Spaniards. In the beginning of the fifteenth
century, the word blonda is found in a Castilian law,” it is re-
ferred to as a manufacture in general use, and consequently long
established. It was not known in Europe for at least a century
later.} -
few, at five guineas the course. For cards of address apply to Mde. Ra-
mazzoti, French Room, Soho Bazaar.” --
* Furthermore, I ordain and command that no Jewesses of our king-
doms shall wear mantillas with lace or trimmings.”—Ord. John II., Cifu-
entes, July, 1412.
# The Magasin des Demoiselles, (October, 1847), which ought on such
a subject to be a good authority, says that coarse lace was first used by
the priests and women in the time of Francis I., soon after two varieties
appeared called Visette, and Gueuse : next appeared, from the manufac-
turers of Brussels, &c., Mignonette, La Compour, and lastly La Guypure,
LACE IN SPAIN. 107
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 Guipoğr. 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.” - - .
The word dentellef is explained as meaning the teethlike points
of the serrated border lace, as distinguished from the Guipoor,
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. Such would be 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
sometimes embellished with gold and silver thread. The original pat-
terns of the guypure resemble those of the lace which at present is
known by that name. These, strongly meshed, run and entwine, capri-
ciously imitating the forms of the architecture of the “rénaissance,” which
evidently suggested it. The guypures in narrow strips are called “téte
de more.”
* At Jerusalem the fringes 7%etzes were sometimes so long that car-
pets were carried about #. them on.
+ Nicod, Monnet, Henri, Etienne, dictionaries of the eighteenth century,
do not contain the word Dentelle. In the Encyclopédie Méthodique is
mentioned a work published in 1587, being a translation and a third edition
of Frederick de Vinciolo Venilaeri, of which the title is “Le Réseau pre-
mier et la point coupé et locis de plusieurs beaux et differens pour traicts
de reseaux de point de côté avec le nombre de mailles, chose non encore
Vue ni inventée.” The engravings seem to represent two kinds of lace,
figures forming a toilé without field, i. e. guypure ; the other figures
on a square thick-set ground or net-work, as in Valenciennes appliquées.
Of the same period, a set of engravings representing the avocations of
men (by Dubruyn and A. W. Londerseel) shows a girl at work on lace
with the cushion now in common use on her knee. Colbert protected it
in 1629.
f “They (the Moors) have Festival days instituted of old by the
Christians, whereupon they use certain ceremonies which themselves un-
derstand not. . . . When their children's teeth begin to grow, they
make another feast called, according to the Latins, Dentilia.”—LEO
AFRICANUs, Book iii. Description of Fez. . .
I08 COSTUMIE OF SPAIN.
in those of the Highland shepherd. The Barbary caps were
originally so made, and indeed are so still. In the same way,
may yet be seen Highland hose, and formerly the trews. The
Shetland shawl still bears testimony to the recorded beauty of
the manufactures of the Hebrides, in early times; and in Bar-
bary—although. I know not that the art is still preserved—mag-
nificent pieces of Guypoër 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 af.
fections, 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
color, that these countries should lie opposite each other—that
in the one it should be black, and in the other white; that the
one should be the derivative of which the other is the original;
that the wearers of black should be the offspring of the people
of white, and that the white country should have the title of
Mauritania - Q
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 color 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 Šćv6oz.” They were uxvgoq,690t, or clad in black, and hence,
* The Tuaregs are divided into two bodies, the black and the white.
These denominations do not correspond, as might be supposed, with a
difference of color, but only of costume. The white are clothed like the
Arabs, the black have a costume of their own. A large blouse falls to
the feet: the sleeves are not less than two metres in with. It is called
Tob or Sayi, and is in cotton from the country of the blacks. When they
travel, a piece of cloth, deep blue, fifteen centimetres wide, called tynala,
ORIGIN OF THE MANTILLA.—THE HAK. 109
no doubt, their name. The two Mauritanias equally wore black,
and no doubt the adoption of white by the Mussulmans of the
West was the result of the establishment there of the dynasty
of the Ommiades. - -
But beyond the zone of white, there is another zone of black,
or of mixed black and white. A portion of the Tuarisks, who
occupy the vast tract of Africa between the equator and the
habitable portions upon the eoast, wear the black Sulam with
black cowl,” 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 kept 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
easing the limbs, rather than for clothing the body. The veil
can not, therefore, be known where the original vesture remains
IIl UISé.
The haik, as worn by the Jewesses, is the saya manta. It is
of enormous dimensions; from one and a half to two yards
wide, and from six to eight long. 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 wrap-
ped 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 wrapped round the whole body, from the middle upward, enveloping
the neck, mouth, and nose, and covering the head; and through the small
interval that is left between the folds of this mask, they can see by
throwing back their head.”—Eagloration de l'Algérie, vol. ii. p. 164.
* May not this be the mantle introduced by Caracalla into Rome, and
from which he derived the soubriquet by which posterity has known him,
Cara Cowl, or black hood 3
# As known to the Greeks, it was of the same dimensions. The ex-
quisite beauty of that of Alcisthenis the Sybarite has preserved its de-
Scription. It was fifteen cubits long, and was sold for one hundred and
twenty talents, or nearly £30,000. The dye is Tyrian, the border of ani-
mals; the gods are in the center, and Alcisthenis himself is at each end,
and all this wrought in the loom-Arist, de Mirab. xvi. 199; Athen.
xii. 58, -
110 IDENTITY OF THE MOORISH
is then taken with the whole haik round the waist, and the re-
mainder is brought from behind over the head and shoulders.
They of course wore it so in Spain.”
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 High-
land garb ; yet that it does come from the same stock is indu-
bitable. It is no accidental coincidence here and there; the
whole build and purpose are identical—every variation can be
traced and accounted for. There is nothing that militates against
this conclusion, which there is so much directly and collaterally
to establish.
If the costume were an original one in its present form, we
should have primitive names for kilt and plaid, its distinguishing
features. Kilt is not a Gaelic word: there is no word in Gaelic
for kilt. It is called “The short plaits” (fillibeg), as distinguished
from the “long plaits” (fillimore), now fallen into disuse.
Plaid is not a Gaelic word, and for plaid there is in Gaelic
no other name than brechan, or “colors.” 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 haik. 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 haik would put it on. The kilt and
plaid alone are in tartan, being alike composed of the “flag
mantle :”f the jacket, like the tunic of the Moor, or the body and
sleeves of the Spanish lady, was of any color. To the Saya
manta and the haik the peculiarity of color is in like manner
reserved: brechan feil is the name of the Highland garb, and
identical with saya manta. Thus, in the haik 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
* “That all Jewesses and Moriscos of our kingdoms and dominions,
shall, within ten days of this date, wear long mantles reaching to their
feet, and cover their heads with the same. Those who act contrary, for
so doing are to forfeit all the clothes they have on, to their under-gar-
ment.”—Don John II. Walladolid, January, 1412.
+ One of the oldest Celtic figures in stone, is at Carn Serai in Argyle-
shire; it exhibits the fillimore, as the Jewish women wear the haik; one
selvage is a few inches lower than the other, as the haik is not folded
exactly in the middle, The name of the place is curious.
+ This monstrous solecism of the jacket, in tartan, may be observed in
Wilkie's picture of George IV., at Holyrood House.
AND HIGHLAND GARB. I 11
the covering of the shoulders (brechan,” 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 haik worn by
the Arab women in the tents, which are sometimes striped in
colors: the colors in like manner being pure, and of course rich
and brilliant, are dyed at ‘home. Sometimes the stripes are
crossed, which is not the practice in Barbary. The first I saw
was so like a Scotch plaid, that, until I examined it, I took it for
a piece of English manufacture.
The manta or plaid of the shepherd is doubled, and stitched
at one end to serve as a hood, just as our Highlanders do, to put
the feet in at night, or to use as a hood or as a bag. In this
part of Spain the men wear large white drawers, which leave the
knee bare, and appear like a white kilt. The medias, like the
Scotch hose, are bound below the knee, and are sometimes
of leather like those the Moors use for riding. To the plaid and
tartan, to the facsimile 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
* Tartan is the English for Brechan. It is generally supposed to be
Gaelic; but it is not so : it seems originally to have signified shot colors,
which always appear in the tartan from the crossings of the colors. It
has by some been derived from Tyre tint. The Brechan or Tartan is the
set of each clan. The English confound Tartan and plaid, and speak
barbarously of a “plaid waistcoat,” when they mean a tartan waistcoat.
The plaid is in Gaelic a shepherd's mantle, but is never used for the
Brechan mantle, or “battle colors.” It may be derived from 6traotºtov
(Pollux vii. 49), a name given by Greeks to a mantle which was supposed
to be worn double. wº
112. THE MANTILLA. AT. CHURCH.
cultured the Celtic spirit, and have held the trappings of our race
but as pagan emblems, disloyal badges, or mundane toys.
Among European countries, Spain is distinguished for the
splendor 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 Se-
ville, and when religious fervor 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 pallia-
tion. Yet this is so far from being a singular instance, that
what sumptuary laws would never be able to accomplish, the
rude and insolent zeal of a few priests has fully obtained in
every part of Spain. Our females, especially those of the
better classes, never venture to church in any dress but such as
habit has made familiar to the eyes of the zealots.”
I was present at the festival of the patron Saints of the place,
and, throughout the whole population, saw not one colored
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 cas-
tanet—nothing but the unmeaning quadrille, the shuffling heed-
less step, the Paris millinery, the false tints and kaleidoscope
patterns:–every thing commonplace and vulgar, or rather the
bad imitation of vulgarity and commonplace. The conversa-
tion wanted even the compensation you meet with in Europe—
stored memories, clever flippancy, and gladiatorial faculties.
SPANISH DEGENERACY IN COSTUME. T 13
Thus a people who, had they remained themselves,” 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 3 A flag is an emblem, a costume is a
property. A flag designates and defies, a costume ennobles and
preserves. A flag has come by accident, costume is the produce
of a people's taste. The Medes had a dress; the Persians, the
Romans, the Egyptians had each a dress. To say, then, a dress,
is to say a people. A costume is to a people like its mountains,
its floods, and its lakes. The costume of its land and its fathers
has been to every noble people like their tongue, their fame,
their precepts, and their laws; in independence, giving dignity;
in chains, none. The tyrant and the patriot alike know its
worth. The wandering Israelite for two thousand years, has
worn, concealed on his person, the proscribed garb of Judaea—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 cos-
tume. He is in the act of surrendering it, yet no foreign
hordes cover the Peninsula and hunt down its inhabitants.
Itself, with unnatural hands, tears it off and casts it away, and
adopts in lieu of it a foreign garb—which, indeed, is no garb—
for it belongs to no people, furnished forth not by a combination
of the tastes of all the people of Europe, but by a concentration
of their vulgarism. Have they changed with a purpose? Ask
them : they can give you no reason for what it means. “It is
the fashion.”
I have a curious illustration before me, where I am correcting
these pages. On the side of Benledi there is a vale, now, with
the exception of a few fields, uncultivated below, and bare of
.trees above. In the wilderness, a burial-ground may be traced,
the record of an eactinct 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 dis-
appeared—forests, deer, culture, and men are all gone. There
* Addison, commenting in his time on the vulgarizing influence of the
capital, says, “If you want to know a man who has seen the world, you
will know him by his deficiency in those characters which seem to belong
to good Society.”
114 FASHION AS OFPOSED TO CUSTOM.
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”—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 3 Do you
not know how to spend your money?” “No! no ſ” At last
out came—“It is the fashion.” -
If the Stuarts of Glenfinlass had said, “It is the custom,”
instead of “It is the fashion,” the families would not have fallen
from twelve to six within one generation; the sheep would not
have eaten up the deer and the forest.
A people with a phrase, “It is the custom,” can never be
destroyed. A people with the phrase, “It is the fashion,”
can not 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 among 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
Jºspaña. - -
* They were resigning their diet of milk and honey, and taking to
sloe-leaves and toast. The reason brought back on me Spain, Greece,
and all the changelings. Ask a Turk why he does anything? he answers
Adet-dur—“It is the custom.” -
CHAPTER X.
Excursion IN THE STRAITS.–CADIZ POLITENESS,
THE demeanor of men toward women could not fail to en-
gage attention in the birthplace of chivalry, as among the orien-
tals men and women salute in the same manner. It was some
time before I could have said, “The women in Spain do not
courtesy;” 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 un-
certain 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 courtesying ? A bobbing up and down of the
body, a salutation with the legs, and no inclination of the head?
Surely it was invented for quadrupeds. It has only a foreign
name in English, and that too absurd to have been applied to
the antic in its native tongue. A courtesy, (courtoisie) is a
thing courteous; and a curtsey was a step in a French dance.
The ladies of Spain can dance, but can not courtesy.” 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. Courtesy-
ing 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 con-
duct, but manners alone touch the heart.” It is by manners
that the teaching of the child begins before he has learned his
* A lady at a masquerade dressed in maga, and astonishing, some
Spaniards with her avonica and mialilto, courtesied; they immediately
detected the false sister.
116 SPANISH MANNERs.
letters. . Manners are the curb on the passions. They are the
guide of life from the cradle to the tomb, and by them you
judge of the nation as well as of the man. A people's history
is written in a salutation. Alwakide, in the early days of Islam,
records as an event, that a man receiving sentence of death, had
not saluted the judge. -
In the secluded places of Spain, even yet, on the bell tolling
at “oration,” whoever is walking, stops; whoever is seated,
rises; the prayer concluded, each turns round and salutes those
around him. What can be more impressive than this sudden
and simultaneous act of adoration of a whole people, followed
by a mutual expression of good-will 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 compli-
ments.” It would be asked, “What compliments º' The
Spaniard, like the Eastern, says, “I kiss such a one's hand, or T
lay myself at such a lady's feet.” Our word compliment is
equal to their word ceremony; and our compliments they ren-
der espressiones. These matters are, however, abridged. The
espressiones are run up in an unintelligible articulation when
spoken, and when written are reduced to a cipher. You may
receive a letter ending S. S. S. Q. S. M. B.,” 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 ad-
dress each other with the forms of the highest. Two human
beings do not require an introduction to know each other; they
never pass without salutation. No one breaks bread in the
presence of another, whatever the difference of rank, without an
invitation to partake. The title of the pastry-cook 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 re-
fused by a prince, it is with the words, “Pardon me, brother.”
“To the honor of Spain,” says even Borrow, “be if spoken, it
* Su Seguro Servidor que su Mano besa.
f
AND COURTESY. - 117
is one of the few countries in Europe where poverty is never in-
sulted, 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 coun-
tries 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 inter-
change which these habits have established, their circumstances
are influenced no less than their minds, and the extremes of for-
tune are modified and equalized.
The earth may not be scientifically compressed into the ren-
dering of its fatness. Man's muscle may not be condensed into
minted gain; but what is gathered from nature's bounty is not
refused to man's wants. If Spain produces less from her soil
than any other country of Europe, the Spaniard enjoys a larger
share, and more equable distribution of the produce than any
other people. *
It may not be uninteresting to place beside this a passage de-
scriptive 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 toward every
one who claims it,” 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 him-
self; and, when families fall into distress, they are supported
with a generosity that is only outdone by the delicacy with
which it is applied:—those who sink in the world, instead of
losing caste, are the more tenderly considered. -
* “I quitted this mosk after having left a considerable sum to the beg-
gars who besiege the door. These people are not, indeed, very trouble-
some, for they are all registered, and their chief is the only person who
asks for and receives the gifts of the faithful, which he divides among the
others”—ALI BEY, ii. 337.
118 POLITICAL IMPORTANCE OF POLITENESS.
The mere habit of politeness is a possession greater than all a
people has besides, and for the want of which there is no com-
pensation; 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 his-
tory an original character: the stagnation of manners may yet
save her; and when the people of Europe are exhausted by cor-
ruption, she alone may reappear with splendor on the scene of
the world, because the foundation of manners is still undis-
turbed.”
Spain has been called a “fragment of Africa;” the Spaniards
have been called the “Arabs of Europe.” They have proved
alike inscrutable and indomitable to all who have attempted to
study or subdue them ; and so completely has that peninsula
swayed in the events of our world, that you may calculate the
ascent or the decline of great enterprises according to the estima-
tion of her by its conductors. Marius, Pompey, Napoleon, failed
through their misjudgment of Spain: by apprehending her,
Caesar 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 suf-
fered. Madrid presents the features of European governments:
Spain preserves the character of the Moorish people—the char-
acter that enabled them to expel the Moors, in after times the
English, and more recently the French; and the capital is actu-
ally 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 ele-
ment, 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 fol-
lies alone until she be wise, so can “o not leave her affairs alone
till we be honest. &
SPANISH HOSPITALITY. J 19
It requires little to secure the good-will of a Spaniard: in fact,
it is secured when he is not offended. A question addressed
with deference will always meet a courteous answer, and a ready
offer of service and assistance. If you ask a Spaniard your
way, he will not be content with pointing it out to you: he will
generally accompany you. If you exceed the strict bounds of
civility, you lay him under an obligation; if you do "less, you
have done him a wrong, which as surely he will remember. A
little kindness goes a great way; and the worst of injuries is
mistrust. -
An English merchant in this neighborhood, 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 afterward, 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 Eng-
lishman, 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 re-
minded that the offer of the house is nothing more than an evi-
dence of Spanish hollowness and insincerity. The offer of the
house is a sign of civility, just as much as the words, “Your obe-
dient humble servant,” and these words are just as much an
evidence of our insincerity as the “offer of the house.”
It is the same thing with the offer of pot-luck. When first
made, it is declined. But when the answer is, “No se meta
usted in eso,” “Do not trouble yourself in that matter,” by
which is implied that no engagement stands in the way, the
offer is then again repeated and accepted. That there should
be three questions put and answered, in reference to an invita-
tion 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 traveled 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 incom-
patible with invitations to dinner. Where every one is welcome,
120 HOSPITALITY ENJOINED BY SCRIPTURE.
it is impossible that you should invite. You may invite a per-
son 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 favor. Is
not this the interpretation of the contempt of the Romans for
the Parasites or the Dinner-hunters ? In one of the Dialogues
of Xenophon the difference is illustrated. Socrates being invited
to supper, at first refuses, and only accepts after a due reluctance
on his part, and as due a persistence on the part of Amphytria,
—Xenophon taking care to point out that he had acted in this
respect properly.
It is acknowledged, that the facility of intercourse in France,
as contrasted with England, and the ease with which people may
congregate and visit each other at the time of day when such
meetings are most appropriate—the evening—arises from the
absence of formal invitation; in other words, restriction on inter- .
course 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 Judaea. The man-
ners of Judaea 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 recep-
tion of the Gospel: shall it be needless for, or incompatible
with, its maintenance 3 Those who, in Jewish Canaan or Judaea,
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 Savior would be sent
to the workhouse or put upon the treadmill.
I was here interrupted by a visit from a French merchant.
The conversation.turned upon the Spanish mercantile character.
He said, there is no public credit in our sense, but there is real
credit, for man trusts man. A great traffic had been carried on
through the Basque provinces, during the Continental blockade:
no books were kept; the recovery of debts by legal process was
impossible; yet was it distinguished by the most perfect confi-
dence, 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 FRENCH MERCHANT AND THE SPANIARD. 12]:
The goods were disembarked and put in warehouses. He could
keep no regular accounts. The muleteers came themselves to
get the bales, and all he could do was, to tell them what the
bales contained, and to receive their own note of what they had
taken in an amount of £300,000, and there was but one parcel
missing. Several years afterward, a priest brought him fifty
dollars, which was the value of the missing bale of goods, say-
ing, “Take that and ask no questions.” tº:
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 embar-
rassed in his affairs; he was therefore unwilling to receive the
money, and yet fearful to refuse it, lest his credit should be
shaken. Shortly afterward, he failed and absconded. His
creditor traced him to Gibraltar and thence to Cadiz. There
he found him lying sick, without attendants, in a garret. On
entering the room, the Spaniard sternly demanded his debtor's
books. Receiving them, he sat himself down and spent several
hours examining them, referring to the Frenchman merely upon
points where he wanted information. When he had completed
his investigation he returned the books without comment, and
departed. Shortly afterward he returned, accompanied by a
physician, and had his debtor removed to a comfortable apart-
ment, 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 recommence business.” The sum
being specified, he said, “Well, you shall have it upon the con-
dition that you pledge me your word of honor 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, add-
ing, “One of these was for myself.” My informant concluded:
“I am the man, and it happened under this roof.”
Those who come to Spain to see something that belongs to
her, would not wish her peculiarities to be diminished; those
who wish to find in Spain what they can have in Paris or in
London, had better stay away. In travel, profit and enjoyment
always coincide, for none can profitably travel who do not go to
seek out for things different from what they are accustomed to,
and none can agreeably travel but those for whom it is an en-
6
122 - TRAVELING IN SPAIN.
joyment 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 multi-
ply 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
among the people of Europe, on the one hand from their
close resemblance, and on the other from the extinction of hab-
its and traditional thoughts; but when you get into Spain,
there it does present itself to whoever will discriminate it; the
word of every peasant is not a reverberation of a proposition,
but a record of centuries. To one who feels this, Spain will
present the most interesting field of travel in Europe; to one
who does not, the most gratifying. An English resident at
Gibraltar told me that, by following a certain rule, he found
traveling 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 honored whenever a Spanish peasant conde-
scends to speak to me.”
There is, however, a rule not only by which to make travel-
ing 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 use-
less 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 Eng-
land will complain of the misery of hard beds. The English,
but twenty years ago, would have made the same complaint:
COMPARISONS UNPROFITABLE TO A TRAVELER. I23
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 suffer-
ings of the Spanish nuns, is their having to go about barefoot.
Tell this in Scotland. To myself there can not be a greater
source of annoyance and vexation—there is nothing in which I
have a greater sense of astonishment and surprise—than at na-
tions wearing shoes and boots. The whole economy of the feet
in Europe is something as disgusting as it is marvelous. We
see the poorer Orders clogging themselves with heavy shoes out
of doors,” 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 traveler 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 endeavoring
to feel like them, which he never can do, if he presume for a
moment to reason about them.
Imlac's description of a poet had not proceeded to its close
when the captive Prince of Abyssinia told him he had already
said enough to convince him that no man on earth could be a
poet; but Imlac's catalogue of the qualifications of a poet ex-
tended no further than to acquirements and talents. The quali-
fications of a traveler 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 im-
aginative qualities in which lives the poet's very essence, he
should also have the scrutinizing eye of a philosopher, the ana-
lytical 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.
* A peasant in the New Forest once said to me, “Shoe-leather drives
us to the workhouse: it costs more than all our clothes.”
{} HAPTER XI.
CARTEIA.—TYRE AND HER, WA.R.E.S.–GLASS.
EvERy time I left the “Rock,” or returned to it, I had to pass
round or through the ruins of Carteia, always deferring an exam-
.ination of them to a special day. At last that day was fixed,
and I went with three friends, who more or less indulged in
Phoenician predilections—the French consul, M. Bero, Mr. Corn-
well, and Dr. T)unbreck. We talked over its old fortunes and
great names, until it seemed that we were paying a visit to Bal-
bus, 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 colors, 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 amphorae standing on
end. The only building which can be made out is Roman,—
the amphitheater, 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 col-
ony, 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 Car-
thaginian 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 rel-
ish 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
*
RELICS OF PHOENICTAN GLASS. 125
the assimilation with the dry and rootless stumps of men” 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 in-
mates deal in relics, and the stock was principally composed of
flattened drops of blue glass, in shape and size resembling pep-
permint lozenges. They must have been in enormous quanti-
ties, for they are even yet picked up along the beach at Cadiz
and other places. Some suppose that the Phoenicians circulated
them as money—they made money out of them by disposing
of them. The ancients did not cut stones in facets; their cups,
arms, horse-trappings, even their ships, were studded with
gems: these drops were adapted to this purpose. These were
gems (glass in the East still goes by that name):$ 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
Phoenician 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 mod-
erns 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 un-
dersold one another. -
Observing at the bottom of a large chest, in which their cu-
riosities were kept, a quantity of rubbish, I had it turned out.
There were all sorts of strange things, from glass luster drops to
blacking labels. I selected some fragments of what seemed then
earthen jars: when wetted they proved to be glass of brillant
and variegated colors; some opaque, some translucent. - On one
there was a flower with yellow leaves and a red center; 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
* A late Queen of Spain, speaking of colonization, said, “Spaniards
now-a-days have no roots.” .
+ Stellatus cuspide fulva ensis erat. Lºn.
# The antique Turkish galleys, some of which still continued to navi-
gate the Black Sea fifteen years ago, had their stems and sterns largely
ornamented in Venetian glass. *
§ In Turkish, jam is applied generally to glass: the Arabs restrict it
to the bowl when empty. - ---
£’
126 GLASS INVENTED BY PHOENICIANs,
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.* Nevertheless, I think I shall
very easily show that this art, so far as the Egyptians are con-
cerned, was the peculiar property of the Phoenicians.
The inventions 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 Egyp-
tians at the period when it figures on their walls, it may have
been for many previous centuries the exclusive possession of
Tyre, for the Phoenicians were of equal date with the Egyp-
tians. The monuments of Egypt were not pictures of com-
mon things, but records of extraordinary ones. They were de-
signed 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 inven-
tions and incidents of their time. We have in them a few rep-
etitions: 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

* The Egyptians “were not only acquainted with glass, but excelled
in staining it of diverse hues, and their ingenuity had pointed out to them
the method of carrying devices of various colors directly through the
fused substance.”—WILKINSON. Abulfaragus says, it was known to the
Egyptians soon after the flood; and Diodorus says the Ethiopians used it.
+ Josephus, Scouting the arrogance of the Greeks, who might be said
“to be of yesterday,” in presuming to speak of Jewish history, refers
them to the “Phoenicians and Egyptians.”
NOT BY EGYPTIANS. 127
blowing glass only, they must have imported the raw ma-
terial. -
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 dexter-
ous in preparing mineral compounds for coloring: had they un-
derstood the manufacture they would not have imported it; and
had the manufacture been known, we should havéseen it figured
with the blowing. But the Egyptians, having learned the art
of blowing, would desire to have the unmanufactured material in
order to adapt it to their own fashions. This is entirely con-
firmed 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),
Atôovo zötc., fused stones.
This tribute came from “Maharama,” or Mesopotamia, in the
first cities of which the Phoenicians had establishments.
Having set aside the claims put in for Egypt, no other peo-
ple making any, I have, I think, restored the invention to the
Phoenicians. *
A new claim has now been set up for the Assyrians, accord-
ing 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.” But,
strange to say, in the very spot where he came upon the first
glass vase he found pottery, with letters which he supposed to
be Phoenician. .
The Greeks knew nothing of the art, though they possessed
the substance. Prometheus, in Eschylus, claims the honor 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.f
From the Scholiast we learn, that these were sold at the apoth-
ecaries. - 4. *
This burner may now seem of another substance, of which
the Phoenicians 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
* Ninevah, vol. ii. p. 421. -
+ Servius in commenting on AEneid, xii. 200, says, “The first inhabi-
tants of the earth never carried fire to their altars, but by their prayers
brought it down from heaven.” The Parsees of India, when by any ac-
cident their fire is extinguished, use burning-glasses.
128 ANTIQUITY OF GLASS.
was supposed to attract the sun's rays, as it did various sub-
stances, whence its name, škéxtgov. The word was also applied
to glass,” 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 in-
flicted torture, and carried dismay and agonies against which no
defensive armor could avail. The Venetians, following in their
steps, likewise made glass their artillery. The first shells, and
perhaps the most effectual, were of glass; they are still to be
seen used as ink-bottles,
But the art seems to have extended from burning-glasses to
microscopes and telescopes, or they must have had eyes differ-
ently constituted from ours; for without such aid we could not
make out valleys and mountains in the Moon; the milky-way?
to be composed of stars; or count, as there is reason to believe
they had done, the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn : and, sup-
posing reflectors, and not lenses, were employed to survey the
heavens, we can hardly escape from acknowledging their claim
to microscopes and magic lanterns. Their gems could not
have been engraved without such aid ; indeed, we require glass
to make out the figures of some of them.S. Eye-glasses we
know they had, from Nero, who, being short-sighted, used one
in the amphitheater : it is called an emerald. One of the per-
sonages on the Greek stage had eyes of different colors, which
was represented in his mask, and of course by colored 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 Phoenicians must have
* See Scholiast to the Clouds of Aristophanes.
# Salanti, vol. i. p. 283. Aboulala (4th century) says, “The stars which
form the milky-way.” Aristotle speaks of the mirrors for surveying the
heavens. Those of Memphis and Pharos are often mentioned. Strabo
speaks of tubes for magnifying objects; such tubes are mentioned in old
Arabic writers.
f Damascius (apud Photium. Biblioth, cap. 242) describes the figure
of a head thrown upon the wall of the temple in this manner, which could
only be done by a magic lantern.
§ Theodorus, who constructed the labyrinth of Samos, placed a chariot
and four horses on the finger of a statue of himself; the chariot, horses,
and charioteer could all be covered by the wings of a fly, which he also
devised. The same is related of Myrmecedes. Callicrates cut insects,
the limbs of which could not be discovered by the naked eye. See Pliny,
Nat. Hist., b. xxxiv. c. 5; b. xxxvi, c. 5.
THE WAREs of TYRE. 129
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” 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 Phoenicia there were no
manufactories; and she is herself represented as importing man-
ufactured 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.}
The great nations of antiquity eschewed commerce and naviga-
tion: 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 Phoenicians, one only, the Arabs, were
a transporting people; the two monopolized the trade of early
times, the Arab carrying on the traffic of the desert by his
camels, the Phoenician that of the sea by his ships.
The great nations I have referred to were not anti-commercial:
they received the stranger who came among 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 favor which attend-
ed 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 com-
* Müß &yovres à0öppara vnt pe)aivn.
'Ayopégovres rôv àpyvpov utkpós Tivos durióóres àAAov pogríov.—STRABO.
f “We neither inhabit a maritime country,” says Josephus, “nor do
We delight in merchandise, nor in the mixture with other men that
arises from it. Our cities are remote from the sea, and having a fruitful
country, we take care in cultivating that only.”
In the expeditions under Solomon it is expressly stated that the men of
Tyre went to navigate their ships.
130 DISPUTED ORIGIN OF THE PHOENICIANS.
munity and of the individual—a union of traffic and govern-
ment.* This endured for not less than one thousand, and may
have extended to nearly two thousand, years.
The Phoenicians, 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. Phoenicia 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 chiseled
stOne.
We see in this society dominion without conquest; greatness
without ambition ; permanency without numbers; freedom
without turbulence; commerce without legislation; and riches
without pauperism. Neither arrogant in their strength, nor
servile in their weakness, they could abstain from encroachments
on the Lybian or Iberian populations, who afforded them a set-
tlement, 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 Judaea; of the ivory and ebony of Lybia and Hindostan; 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
* I have described a similar state of things as existing in our own times
at Ambelakia in Thessaly, and the Mademo Choria in Macedonia. See
“The Spirit of the East.”
+ “Nothing was known of the balance of trade, and consequently all
the violent measures resulting from it were unknown to the Greeks". .
as every thing was decided by examinations and not by theories, there
may have been exceptions, where the state for a time usurped a monop-
oly. But how far was this from the mercantile and restrictive system of
the moderns.”—HEEREN, Pol. Hist. Ancient Greece, c. x. 163. -
*
GROTESQUE REPRESENTATION OF AN ANCIENT COIN. 131
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.*
This told the whole story of the glass-houses
and the tin. I wonder if the coin was censured
as indiscreet at Tyre. How is it that by putting
the hand in this fashion to the nose the fancy º:
should be tickled? Whence did the custom Sº Yº
come 3 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 Phoenician 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 rhinoce-
ros 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 coal-
heaver, when he has made a hit, puts his thumb to his nose.
This gesture in its grotesque form was known not long ago
in Spain, although at present it appears to have died out.
Cervantes unmistakably describes it, and in the person of Sancho
Panza; the English have, therefore, the sole honor and distinc-
tion of preserving this peculiarity of the Phoenicians and Etrus-
cans.# .
I might be inclined to place beside this, the groups of lions
and unicorns at Persepolis, which so closely resemble the sup-
porters of the English arms, as scarcely to be referable to coinci-
dence. They are, indeed, of recent adoption as the arms of
England, but of ancient date in those of Scotland. The emble-
* The coin is in one of the addenda to Flores;–it is not in the copy at
the British Museum. The coin is, however, known in the medal room.
# It is figured on a vase in the Museo Borbonico. .

I 32 EXTINCTION OF
matic plants of England were, however, those of Phoenicia—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 sympa-
thetic deed, which shall link us to the Phoenicians; and Spain
lies between, and is bound therewith : she too at length prides
herself on her Moorish blood, and exalts herself (or at least did
so till we robbed her fortress) on her British friendship recorded
in the proverb:-
Guerra con toda la tierra,
Pero par con Ynglaterra.
The extinction of written records has given importance in
these countries to every trifling usage or tradition, as will be
best felt by reviewing the catalogue of mischances which have
befallen the literature of Africa, and of the great people, who in
the West have given to it its celebrity.
Alexander destroyed the libraries of Tyre : those of Sidon
perished in the flames with their wealth and themselves. The
whole mass of the literature of Carthage was destroyed by the
Romans, except a small portion given to Massinissa.
The Alexandrian library was burned by the troops of Julius
Caesar. The various collections made at Rome by Asinius
Pollio, Augustus, and Tiberius, were lost in the fires under Nero
and Titus. Domitian endeavored 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 Mus-
Sulman 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 collec-
tions of the learned cities of the Moors, perished by Christian
and Gothic hands. The library of Tunis was destroyed by
Charles W.; Muley Hassan lamented it more than his city.
After the ravages of War had ceased, Cardinal Ximenes, the
munificent patron of literature, consigned to the flames 88,000
African manuscripts. Lastly came the capture of the library
of the King of Morocco, a portion of which constitutes the col-
lection of the Escurial, and this again has suffered by fire.
Thus have been swept away the literary records of this quar-
AFRICAN LITERATURE. 133
ter of the globe, as completely as devouring sands and the hu-
man ravages of more recent times havé effaced all local signs.
The curiosity of the traveler 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.
CHAPTER XII.
THE STONE OF HERCULES.
“Behold thou art wiser than Daniel; there is no secret. that they can
hide from thee.”
“The wise men that were in thee, O Tyrus, were they pilots #"
THE magnetic needle has become so essential in the economy
of the world, that we can hardly imagine the consequences
which would ensue, were it suddenly to lose its power. It is
not, however, difficult to picture the sudden and gigantic growth
of any one commercial state, which, in such a contingency,
should discover the means of restoring its efficacy, and preserve
the secret.
To what pitch of greatness must not any state have ascended,
which, from the beginning, had been favored and distinguished
by such a possession ? It would take tithes from the harvests
of every land; the produce of every zone would furnish its
marts, the toil of every race fill its coffers; and if by weakness,
wisdom, or integrity, it did abstain from plotting and scheming,
and contented itself with driving its trade, and meriting by
using its fortune, the other states of the world, instead of hating
it and combining to destroy it, would favor 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
way to be accounted for, as in the case of any other state; who
had neither number nor territory, yet who ascended to the lofti-
est 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 com-
prehend the growth of Phoenicia, we must embody at least every
known element of prosperity, and, among these, at least so
much of the aids of navigation as the polarity of the needle
affords.
DISCOVERY OF THE MAGNETIC NEEDLE. 135
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,” &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 naviga-
tion, discoveries, and commerce, is essentially associated with the
compass. Why did they not reach America? How did it re-
main 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 “Phoe-
nicians,” and they fall to the ground.
The “ancients,” are to us Greeks and Romans. Very differ-
ent men were those traders, whose acute and vivid genius, flexi-
ble to all things, could cover up, and conceal, what the brain
had devised, or the hand acquired. Those traders had no Pen-
ny 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 pos-
sessing it; to a few intrusted, not as an instrument, but as an
Oracle or a god.[ * -
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 ele-
ment of political greatness and commercial profit. They were
ready to shed blood for indiscretion or mischance. Patriotism,
the mysteries, and natural science formed, by their interlacing
fibers, that strong yet flexible tissue which enveloped and con-
cealed the Phoenician 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 ex-
* “Numberless passages of Greek and Latin authors prove that the
ancients, when they lost sight of land, had no other guide than the stars.”
—PUGENs, Trésor des Origines, p. 190. -
+ “Had the Saracens known the compass, it was for them to have dis-
covered America.”—VoITAIRE, Ep. Sur les Moeurs, c. cxlix.
f The Phoenician name for the compass was interpreted by the Greeks
“unknown gods.”
136 PHOENICIAN NAVIGATION.
torted! 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 skeptics. “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 3 and who had
the thought of exerting the one, or employing the other?
The skeptics 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 quarter-
master conning by it, and a steersman looking at it, second by
second, in presence of ship's company, passengers, and strangers.
We must bring before us habits of navigation formed without
this aid; mariners guiding themselves by night by the stars,
and lying to, when these could not be seen; or perhaps with
the instinct of the islanders of the Pacific, finding their path
through darkness, by watching the angle of incidence of waves
and wind, rating the effect of one on the direction of the other,
and thus by approximation holding on till the lights reappeared.
The heaven or the ocean was the binnacle. They would seek
from the needle what we seek from the sextant, conference and
counsel. The instrument so used by master or mate, is to our
sailors as unknown as the astrolabe or divining-rod. The navi-
gator works out his place upon the surface of the globe, and
lays down the course; but the formulae are to him as much a
secret as the instrument is a mystery to the crew. The Phoeni-
cian skipper might refer to his magic Cup in secret: an approx-
imation 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 an-
cient 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 merchant-
men in dimensions, as much as the merchantmen formerly ex-
ceeded the men-of-war. A Phoenician 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 among the tombs of Egypt. To apply to
their navigation, the passages descriptive of the row-boats of the
Greeks and Romans, is a solecism and an anachronism:* they
* This was written before the appearance of Mr. Smith's interesting
work on the “Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul.” He has vindicated
DISCOVERIES OF THE PHOENICIANS. 137
neither made their way by the speed of oars, nor sheltered them-
selves by hauling up their vessels upon the beach; their craft
stood in the same relation to the uángm woug, 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 car-
ried 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 : a
It is only by collecting the local traditions of distant regions,
by comparing the records of various nations, the writings of differ
ent times, by analizing the names of places,” and reasoning upon
all these various data at an interval of twenty centuries, that we
are discovering the extent of the settlements of the Phoenicians.
They had hidden their footsteps and concealed their ways from
the wise alike and from the simple: who can tell how many
Secrets lie buried in their tomb 3
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 indica-
tions, we found out, after we possessed the knowledge ourselves,
that the whole scheme of the heavens was understood by them.
ancient seamanship as to dimensions of vessels, length of voyage, work-
ing, &c. One deficiency in that work has been supplied by Humboldt
in “Cosmos,” in reference to calculation of distances, or the “Log.”
* The original names of Greece and the Islands, of Asia Minor, the
Black Sea, Spain, France, Italy, and England, are indelible monuments
of the presence and wisdom of the Phoenicians. Plato refers revereil-
tially to the men who gave the first names. Bochart, in the preface to
“Pheleg,” enumerates about 400 names; for instance, Parnassus, Ithaca,
Malaga, Samos, Marathon, which are without meaning in Greek. It is
descriptive in Hebrew and Arahic, that is, in Phoenician,
+ Tô irápoto
A §ot goſpots à3arov
Kłodpots, où piv 616éo kevös eimv.
- PIND. Olymp, 3.
He is speaking of the region beyond the Pillars. -
.# In the twelfth century, B.C., Thschen-li records a measurement of the
138 ANCIENT MARITIME ENTERPRISE.
After Franklin had drawn down lightning, we apprehended, for
the first time,” what chance had befallen Salmoneus, Servius
Tullius, and Sylvius Alladus. 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.S - -
Although the great ancient states did not pursue the sea-
trade, the Phoenicians were not without competitors. The
Pelasgi, the Etruscans, the Greeks were their equals in seaman-
ship. The two latter were far more powerful. They reserved
the long voyage by no-navigation laws, and must have been in
possession of some exclusive knowledge. The compass, how-
ever it might aid, is not absolutely required in many long voy-
ages. The Pacific was peopled without it. Within the Medi-
terranean 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
solstitial shadow, which La Place found accordant with the theory of the
alteration of the obliquity of the Ecliptic.—Cosmos. . .
The Babylonian astronomical observations sent by Callisthenes to
Greece, have been calculated by Simplicius to extend back 1903 years
before Alexander the Great.
Mr. Colebrooke has settled the date of one of the Vedas to be the
fourteenth century, B.C., by the place given to the solstitial points in a
calendar appended to it.
“That the planets and their courses, the comets and theirs, that gravi-
tation and repulsion were perfectly familiar to the priests of Memphis,
though unknown to, or rather repudiated by, the most learned and phil-
osophical of the Greeks, can not to-day be questioned. They knew the
milky-way to be composed of fixed stars, and the sun to be a fixed star.”
—DRUMMOND's Origines, b. iv. c. 6; b. vii. c. 8.
“Toward the end of the seventeenth century, the French astronomers
found with surprise that there existed in Siam a mode of calculating
eclipses by successive operations worked with numbers apparently arbi-
trary. The key of this method has been long lost.”—Occult Sciences,
vol. i. p. 191. +
* Unless the words of Rabelais are to stand for the precocious dis-
crimination of his age:– “Qu'est devenu l'art d'evoquer des cieux la
foudre et le feu céleste, jadis enseigné par le sage Prométhée º'
+ “Guided by Numa's books, Tullius used the same ceremonies, but
through inaccuracy (parum rité) he perished, struck by the lightning”—
LUCIUs Piso apud PLINY, Hist, Nat, l. xxviii, cap. 11. Livy uses the ex-
pression pravá religione.
f “Fulmineo periit imitator fulminis ictu.”—OvID. Metam. l. xiv. v.
. 61'7. -
§ Suidas, verbo “Zoroaster.” See also Müller.
THE MODERN COMPASS. -- 139
there was one voyage, which, with none of these aids, the Phoe-
nicians, 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 returned 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 cur-
rents 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
Bhoenicians passed down both, and issuing into the Indian and
Atlantic oceans, visited the furthest regions of the earth. It
was their province to gather the produce of every land; so must
it have been their aim to collect the inventions of every people.
If anywhere the magnetic needle had been discovered, they
would have been sure to find it; and if applied only to the
land, most certainly would they adapt it to their own element.
This discovery required no high standard of science. It
could not have been reasoned to d 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 of the rudest people. *
The discovery is claimed by modern civilization, and is one
of those upon which it most prides itself. The place, the in-
ventor, the precise date are all known ; and though by one sec-
tion of literary men the honor is referred to China, and by an-
other, 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 genera-
tions before Flavio de Gioja, the needle was known at Amalphi.
The magnet,” in its attracting power, was well known to the
* This word is found in the pharanks or dictionaries of the Persians,
and is described as the iron-attracting stóme. It is mentioned in the
Talmud. It was known to the Hindoos, as it was to the Greeks and
Romans.
140 THE MAGNET KNowN To THE ARABS.
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 toward the
Aºiblah, of course it would serve to direct the caravan through
the desert, and the caravel at sea. If additional proof be want-
ing, 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.* The Arabic afforded, none, for by no process could
Riblah Nameh be emended into the root of Boussole. There
is, however, an Arabic word, which has escaped our lexicogra-
phers. The figure, which designates the north is MoUAsso.A.:
When Europeans first saw the instrument, this point, the lead-
ing 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 ºbetween 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
Mºtovo.o.o.o. * -
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,” $ has this sentence, “The outer ocean,” that in which
* Those assumed are “Buxus, Buxolus, Buxola, Bussola, Boussole.”—
MENAGE. “Buso, Ital eye of a needle.”—CovARRUVIAs. “Boxel, Eng-
lish.”—PougeNs. “Bruxa, Spanish, sorcerer.” “Boursole, French, little
purse.”—P. LABBE. -
# This figure being now a Fleur de Lis, the French claim the inven-
tion. The profound Germans surrender it to them as a national proper-
ty. Voltaire, however, remarks that the Fleur de Lis was the cognizance
of Naples at the time of Flavio de Gioja. . -
f The term “Mouassola” is preserved to this day among the Mussul-
mans in connection with their religious edifices. It signifies the square
open space corresponding with the Fane of the Etruscans, in which the
two festivals of the Bairam are held, and where consequently the Mus-
sulman sacrifice is performed. The connection is evident, but how it is.
to be established I am not at present prepared to say. Cf. Hariri,
Chresth. Arabe, i. 191; iii. 167. -
§ I picked up this little work at a book-stall of Cadiz. A Spanish
translation is printed, page, for page with the Arabic, and thus it was
that I fell upon the word. It so happened that I chanced on it midway
between the two seas. Consult Khabil Dhaheri. Apud Ch. Arabe, ii.
13 et seq. • . - -
HUMBOLDT ON THE MAGNET. 141
the compass was necessary, “is termed El Bahar el Bossul (the
violent), as distinguished from the interior, or El Bahar el
Mºt.”
European writers derive the compass from the Arabs.” The
Arabic geographers absolutely decline this honor:# They refer
the invention to the Chinese. They quote a Chinese name,
Rya-poun, meaning, as they assert, a board marked with lines.
The Chinese claim the discovery, and have and use the instru-
ment. 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 ac-
curate describers of China, unanimously support the same con-
clusion. Klaproth, in a letter to M. Humboldt “Sur l’Inven-
tion 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 load-
stone, or of naturally magnetic iron, appears to have existed
from time immemorial among the nations of the West, yet it is
a well-established and very remarkable historical fact, that the
knowledge of the directive power of a magnetic needle, resulting
from its relation to the magnetism of the earth, was possessed
exclusively by a people occupying the eastern extremity of Asia.
The Chinese for more than a thousand years before our era, at
the obscurely known epoch of Codrus and the return of the
Heraclidae to the Peloponnesus, already employed magnetic
cars, on which the figure of a man, whose movable outstretched
* Tiraboschi, iv. 1, xi. § 35; Andrea, Orig. D'Ogni Letter. ; Gueguenné,
Hist. de la lit. Italienne, iv. -
# Consult El Edrisi on the “Straits of Babel-Mandel,” the “Arabian
Book of Stones,” as quoted by Bailak Kibdjak, the “Treasury of Won-
ders,” as quoted by El Edrisi; Ptolom. i. vi. 2; Palladius, de Gentibus
Indiae; S. Ambrosius, de Moribus Brachmanorum ; Anonymus, de Brag-
manibus: ed. Bissaeus, Lond. 1665.
† P. Martini (Hist. p. 106), P. Amiot (Abrégé chronologique de l'his-
toire de la Chine, contained in the collection of the Memoires sur les Chi-
nois, tom. xiii.), Mailla (Hist. Gener. de la Chine, Paris, 1777, tom. i. p.
317), P. Gaubil (Astronomie Chinoise), Sir G. Staunton (Embassy to
China), M. Roding (Dict. Polyglotte de Marine), W. Josh. Hager (Dissert.
sur la Boussole), contend that from time immemorial the Chinese were in
possession of the magnet. That the compass came from the Chinese to
the Europeans, through the Arabs, is maintained by Bergeron (Hist, des
Sarrazins, p. 119), Riccioli (Geogr. et Hydrogr. Ven. 1672). Mention is
made of the compass afloat in the third and in the fifth centuries of our
era. “There were then (Tsin dynasty) ships directed to the south by
the needle.”—Poi-wenjeufou, or Great Encyclopedia.
142 CLAIMS OF THE CHINESE. To
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” Ocean with needles pointing to the south. I have shown
in another work! what great advantages in respect to topograph-
ical knowledge the magnetic needle gave to the Chinese ge-
ographers over their Greek and Roman cotemporaries, to whom
for example, the true direction of the mountain chains of the
Apennines and the Pyrenees always remained unknown.”f
These writers conceive that they have settled the question by
tracing the invention from the Chinese to the Arabs. This at
least is established, that the Chinese had the compass at the
period of the greatness of the Phoenicians, and if they did not
use it on the ocean, traversing Tartary with it, brought it within
reach of the Phoenicians, 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 measure-
ment 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 helms-
man 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 toward which he is
directed to steer.
In every respect, save the polarity of the needle, the Chinese
compass differs. The south, taking the negative for the positive
polarity, is made the leading point : it is not marked by any
mouassola or figure, but painted red. There is no cross, and
consequently no center. The needle bisects merely the instru-
* Arago, in the Annales de Chimie, t. xxxii. p. 214; Brewster, Treatise
on Magnetism, 1837, p. 111 ; Baumgarten, in the Zeitschrift für Phys.
und Mathem, bd. ii. S. 419.
# Humboldt, Examen critique de l’Histoire de la Géographie, t. iii,
p. 36.
+ Cosmos, vol. i. p. 169.
THE INVENTION OF THE COMPASS. 143
ment. There are no cardinal points.” The first subdivision is
into eight, the second into twenty-four ; avoiding sixteen—that
essential number of augury and of the Hindoos, &c. This is
the nautical part of the instrument, and occupies four of the
concentric circles that are traced on the broad plate which sur-
rounds 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 ex-
plained, and which the highest authorities confess their inability
to comprehend. The astronomic degrees on the outer circle are
not equal to one another, and amount to about three hundred
and eighty. Although the needle revolves, it is not on a pivot,
but on a point which, like the letter T, descends into the wood
of the box, and there turns in a socket. No card is affixed on
it : it traverses as an index, pointing to the scale of the circle
traced on the box. That the Chinese knew the variation of the
needle, and had accurately fixed that of Canton, expressing it
by the converse signs, has been established by M. Klaproth, and
might have led him to doubt the theory he has so boldly
asserted, of ours being derived from theirs. Thus, the Chinese
compass differs from ours toto coelo, there not being a single
point in which, even by accident, we have hit upon the same
method. A junk and a Phoenician 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 pur-
pose 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
* Klaproth speaks of the “cardinal” points, not apprehending the value
of the term. In Meredith the “four points” are given in Chinese, so also
Cut-Leet (Cutlet).
+ “Those who have not been in India can not know how all-important
the division of every thing into sixteen parts is, or some multiple or sub-
multiple of that number; not only is the money of the country so di-
vided, and all the weights and measures, but all property is divided into'
annas (sixteenths): in conversation it is the usual expletive of quantity.”
—FERGUSON's Hindostan, Intro. p. 12.
144 CHINESE AND ARAB MANNER OF USING THE NEEDLE.
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
Aïbdjaki :—
“They take a cup of water, which they shelter from the
wind; they then take a needle, which they fix in a peg of
wood (reed), or a straw, so as to form a cross. They then take
the magnes and turn round for some time above the Cup, moving
from the left to right, the needle following. They then with-
draw the magnes, after which the needle stands still and points
north and south.” .
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 instru-
ment by the Arabs, as by it we shall be subsequently enabled to
interpret the Greek myths. Here we have the compass consist-
ing 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 pur-
poses, 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 terres-
* The passage of Brunetto Latini (Lib. du Tresor, MSS. du Roi, No.
7609), is too well known to quote ; but I subjoin a curious fragment of a
letter, attributed to him, which was published in the “Monthly Review”
of June, 1802. It appears to me to be of indubitable authenticity. He
is describing the wonders shown him by Roger Bacon, who was a disciple
of the Arabs, and had studied at Cordova, like Gerbert, Abelard, and all
the distinguished men of the period —“JLa magnete pierre laide et noire,
ob el fer volontiers se joint, lon touche ob une aiguillet et en festue lon
fischie (fix it on a piece of reed); puis lon mette en laigue (float it on the
water) et se tient dessus, et la pointe se torne contre l'estoille: quand la
nuit fut tenebrous, et lon ne voie estoille ni lune, poet li mariner tenir
droite voie.” .
“Acus ferrea, postguam admantem contigerit, ad stellam Septentriona-
lem, quae, velut axis firmamenti, aliis vergentibus, non movetur, semper
convertitur, unde Valde necessarius est navigantibus in mari.”—JAC, DE
VIT. Histor. Iſycrosolymit. c. 89. A.D. 1215.
DERIVATION OF THE ARS ETRUSC A. 145
trial and celestial globes were made the counterparts of each
other, and the heavens were distributed into sixteen parts.”
Divination was rather ars Etrusca, and we are in the habit of
referring its source to that people; but the Etruscans had no
compass. Divination was no more Original in Etruria than in
Rome. It was, indeed, the key-stone of their state, the link of
science and government, of astronomy and priesthood; but they
came to Italy a perfect state, and Tarchon's genius, symbolized
by the head of a man and the body of a child, replaced the
matured science of Canaan on the young soil of Ausonia.
As in the West, those ceremonies in which religion was
united with science, and which therefore marked, not as they
would with us, ignorance and superstition, but learning and
enlightenment, are traced home to one particular people, and
received their name, so also was it in the East. Though dim the
echoes (0xotstvol &xogi) that have been handed down to us, we
still recognize the voice and name of the masters of whom Abra
ham was the disciple. In Europe, letters were Phoenician; 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 Phoenicians. -
After fruitless attempts to discover the etymology of cardo,
it occurred to me that as the other names of winds, and, conse-
quently, of the points of the compass, had been derived from
those of the countries across which they blew, so might this be
a geographic term, and might be found to the north of Sabea
or Chaldaea. The mountain on which the human race took
refuge from the deluge is so placed, and bore this very name.8
Cardo was then the primitive geographic point for the coun-
tries 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.
* Univ. Hist, vol. xviii. p. 213. Müller's Etrösker, “On the Temple,”
vol. iii. Niebuhr's Rome, app. to vol. ii. p. 624.
# The name Cardaces among the Persians is said to be derived from
“courage,” “virtue.” Such words are generally derived from the names
of tribes whose qualities are thus conveyed.
# Thus, on the north coast of Africa, the south wind is called Gölu,
the north wind Baharu, because the one blows from the mountains, the
other from the sea. -
§ The Tasguments, Jonathan and Onkelos, say that the ark rested, the
former on Kardon, the latter on Kardu—DRUMMOND's Origines, vol. i. p. 69.
| Four thousand years ago the polar star was a Draconis. See Her-
Schell on the Entrance to the rº of Gizeh, apud Wyse.
146 THE WORD “PHOENICIAN.”
Two people severally discovered the various branches of navaí
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 construct-
ing vessels of large burden, alone possessing that navigation.
The word “Phoenician,” is a great stumbling-block in these
inquiries. There was no people so called. It is a word of
Greek invention* and construction. As there were Carthagin-
ians or inhabitants of Carthage, so were there inhabitants of
Tyre, and inhabitants of Sidon. The Cerathians, who occupied
the adjoining territory, were simply “citizens,” as distinguished
from the “Nomades,” or “Skenites,” and Perizzites, the inhabi-
tants of “unwalled villages.” The word Phoenix, 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; Car-
thage, Carthagena; Troy on the Scamander, and Tor in Devon-
shire. - -
For the word Phoenician 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 Phoenicians, in
so far as antiquity is concerned, on a level with the Chinese,
and in so far as geography is in question, on the same field of
navigation and commerce. Yet the two systems are as opposite -
as it is possible for the imagination of man to conceive.
Before the arrival of the Chinese junk, had any one said that
he had deciphered from the Eugubean tables that the discovery
* Phn does occur in the hieroglyphics as the name of a people, but
who they are is not known. Sharu is the general name given to the
Phoenicians or “Celequins,” as the Turks say to-day Shaerli, otherwise
the name of the town is used. As Homer has it: “Speak of the fortress
in the waters, Taru of the Séa is its name. Water is carried to it in
boats. It has fishes for bread.” British Museum Papyrus, Pl, Lv.
# From nine perazoth, dwellers in unwalled villages.
TRANSMISSION OF THE PHOENIGIAN COMPASS. 147
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, canvas for its sails, pitch, oakum,
standing-rigging, rudder pintles, or pumps;–that with a taffrail
standing forty feet above the water, it was not calked, who-
ever believed the story would have been set down as foolishly
credulous and stupidly ignorant.
Men, after the original conception, are but blind practicers of
what they have been taught, and see only what they already
know : with all our travelers 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 cetaceous animal to one of .
the mammiferae—as a turtle to a man.
The Chinese might have seen Phoenician 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
Phoenicians.” They left, doubtless, a progeny in the Indian
Ocean as well as the Mediterranean. As in naval architecture
neither of the styles could have been copied, and each must
have been original,—so is it with their compasses; neither could
have been copied from the other, and the invention must have
been in each case separately made.
A secret such as this could be preserved and transmitted only
by constant use. How then could it have come from Phoenicia
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 in-
trinsic 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:—neverthe-
less, I think I have found the clew.
From the close of the reign of the Ptolemies, to the Portu-
gºese discoveries in India, we have but a single record of east-
* Our best vessels are on the lines of the old French, which, in the
time of Louis XIV. were copied from the Turks, who had them from the
Byzanting Greeks, who originally derived them from the Phoenicians.
148 PHOENIGIAN SETTLEMENTS IN CEYLoN.
ern 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
center of this traffic was Ceylon, by whose merchants and ship-
ping it was carried on. That island thus possessed commercial
prosperity of the first order, while the great empires were sink-
ing 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. r
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?” Another coinci-
dence may be found in the name of the cocoa-nut, as given by
Cosmas (Argillia), with that of the cocoa-nut tree (Argel), still
used by the Arabs. . .
“There was,” he says, “a church of Christians.” These had
therefore temples and churches; their presbyter was ordained
in Persia, whence they had their deacons and ecclesiastical chiefs.
In the mountains above Mesopotamia, to this day there are Jews
and Christians intermingled, the Christians avowing themselves
converted Jews, the Jews declaring themselves apostate Hebrews.
This recalls the old Jewish and Phoenician association of the
time of Solomon, and their common expedition to Darohish.
The Phoenician 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 In-
dian 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, in-
* Herodotus, l. ii, c. 44. President Goguet, Origines des Lois, vol. ii.
p. 114. Drummond's Origines, vol. iii. p. 94.
AN ARAB POPULATION NOW IN CEYLON. 149
vasions, or convulsions which have so often changed the face of
the West. If the story of Sopater had never been told, and
the work of Cosmas had, like so many others, perished, we
might have assumed that Phrygians continued to dwell and
traffic in that central yet secluded station of the Indian Ocean.
Neither Hindoos nor Persians had taken to the sea; China had
not engaged in conquest; no Carthage had interfered with
them, and no Rome swallowed them up.
Isolated not from Europe only, but from Asia also and Africa;
surviving the fall of Tyre and Carthage, and, without passing
through Christianity, they thus, down to Mussulman times, pre-
served the augury of Paganism with the enterprise of Phoenicia.
Sopater did not describe them as Phoenicians, because, when
he wrote, Tyre was deserted; Carthage was a Vandal town,
Cadiz and Carthagena were Gothic cities. The Phoenicians had
disappeared, and the name was forgotten, and this people, who
had never so called themselves even in the West,” could not
have told him in the East that such was the name which Euro-
pean writers had given them.
If these conclusions are correct, we may expect to find rem-
nants 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 Cey-
lon 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 populationſ of 70,000 souls,
where no Arabs ever entered as invaders or mercenaries. The
Arabs of the continent are military bodies—these are given to
commerce; their own traditions carry them back nearly to the
period of Sopater. They report their forefathers to have come
by sea, flying from the persecutions of Andalmaleh.
No tribes were driven forth by these persecutions: compro-
mised individuals only escaped. The thes and events prior
to their conversion are held by the Mussulmans as those of ig-
nominy; and, consequently, this population, having been by
* The word Phen occurs, though I believe only once, in our Egyptian
monuments, as the name of a people: who the people were is uncertain.
# These statements rest on the authority of Sir Alexander Johnson.
An account of these people is given in Pridhane's Ceylon, p. 470-480.
The Cingalese call them Marakkalaya, which means boatmen; they are
Sheas, while the Mussulmans of the continent are Sown?. * . .
† Toward the end of his reign an insurrection took place, of which the
field lay principally at Bussorah; but in this case we know that the de-
feated insurgents retreated northward to seek the protection of the Turks,
—See Ockley, vol. ii. p. 372.
150 CLASSICAL PRO OFS THAT THE
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 Mo-
I’OCCO.
On their conversion the secret, which neither Alexander could
extort from Tyre, nor Rome from Carthage, would be surren-
dered, 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.”
The only objection which I have not disposed of, is that of
Voltaire, that the Saracens, if they had had the compass,
would not have left to us the discovery of America. I will here
remark, that it does not apply, because they did not navigate
the Atlantic. It is good against the Phoenicians. But who can
assert that they did not discover America?—the tradition of the
Atlantic Island cannot be explained away :—knowing the di-
mensions of the earth, they would not, like Columbus, mistake
America for India. Beyond the Atlantic are to be found traces
of their worship, of their manufacture, of their symbols, Š 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, glid-
ing through the waters as if endowed with natural organs.
The passage, it is true, has been accepted as a poetic image:" in
* At the beginning of the eleventh century the western Arabs were
not in possession of the compass, for the astronomer Ebu Youni construct-
ed a table by which to find the Kibleh.
+ Columbus, on reaching dry land westward, wrote, “The world is not
So large as is supposed.”
† Glass, for instance, not as a native product, but as an exotic.
§ Such as “the Seal of Solomon.”
| “Homer, in the Odyssey, says that the Greeks used the needle in
the time of the siege of Troy: thus it is certain that the polarity of the
magnet and the mariner's compass were discoveries which date back
3000 years.”—BUFFON, t. xii. p. 386. This passage is often quoted to
throw ridicule on the supposition. The only mistake of Buffon was in
reading as general the description which in Homer was particular and
restricted, *,
T O) 'yūp ‘Batákegot Kv3epunripes éaow,
- 0ööé ri rejáAt’ &rri, Tá T' &\\at vijeg #xovatv,
AAA’ attai to act voňpara kai poévas divöpóv.
Od, 0'. 557.
*
PHOENICIANS INVENTED THE COMPASS. 151
Virgil's hands it is no more. He speaks of “keels feeling their
way.” Homer was describing particular ships, and those Phoe-
nician—the name is indeed Phaeacean: a Hebrew lexicon will
show that these two names apply to one people. The Phaeacians
were remarkable for industry, wealth, and refinement; they
were distinguished by their “baths, beds, and changes of rai-
ment.” They were 850&luovo's zoºi io offéovg, “happy and equal
to the gods,” neither molesting nor being molested.* The
daughter of their prince, Nausicaa, has been chosen as the type
of industry and purity; they were, therefore, pre-eminently no-
ble and surprisingly tranquil, such is the interpretation in He-
brew of the names by which they and their island were known
—Phaikh and Carcar; Phaeacia,S and Corcyra. As if to pre-
vent any doubt, Homer gives to the island another name, or
epithet, 2xegin, the Hebrew for “Mart.” The three words,
Phaik, Corkura, and Scheria, are meaningless in Greek, but
descriptive in the Phaeacian; and Homer's lines, shadowing
forth the mariner's compass," apply to their vessels.
By his golden arrow, Abaris “traversed the winds,” by it he
“steered.” Pythagoras forced him to reveal his secret.** 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, ºf the symbol of Phoenician enterprise, departs on
* O$ yā9 ‘patákegot péAct 616s, odóē papéronv.
'AAA' to rot kai épérpä vsöv, kai vnés $foat,
Hiaw dyevduevot, woxvriiv repôoat 6axáoany.
Od, y'. 370.
*No patak.
f “Carcar, inde -pºp, carcar, quiescere et in tuto esse significat. An
inde dicta est Corcyra, in qua Phaeaces per multa saecula tuto et pacate
vixisse constat.”—Chonaan l. i. cxxiii. Whence also Carcer. The name
is preserved in Barbary and Spain in Carcer.
§ The name of the Slaavs and that of the Shelloks (Amazirgeh) are
derived in the same manner, also the Etruscan states Ardea (noble); for
from it was taken by Rome the institution which made Rome noble and
great—the fecial vows and college, i.e. heraldry, or the laws of war—
See Servius on AEn. vii. v. 412. -
| Nºrto, Shara. Isaiah (xxiii. 3) applies the same epithet to Sidon,
Shar-goim, “mart of nations.” This is the Sharu of the hieroglyphics.
* “We can discern why their good fortune ceased after this separation,
under the reign of Alcinous, if the Phocians (Phaeacians) renounced navi-
gation. Was it not that the instruments (mariner's compass) obtained
from their masters were lost, and they knew not how to construct others?”
—Salverte, Occult Sciences, f. ii. p. 251. See also Cook’s “Inquiry into
the Patriarchal and Druidical Religion,” p. 22. -
** See Jamblicus, Vit. Pythagor. c. xxviii.; Diod. Sic. l. iii, c. xi.; He-
rodot. l. iv. c. 36 ; Suidas Verbo Abaris. --
++ One of the recent flippant writers on ancient things says, “The most
152 THE CUP AND STONE OF HERCULES.
his expedition for opening navigation to the westward, with a
cup. This cup he gets from Apollo, and it was destined of
course to aid him on his way; here is the cup of water in which
the needle was floated.*
The name of Hercules is given to a stone—that stone so called
às the magnet. Why should the magnet have been called the
stone of Hercules 2 The explanations offered are, that it is
emblematic of strength in its attraction; or that it was found
at Heracleaf Here is the magnet to polarize, floated in the
CUITO. *
Fuller alone has attributed to the Phoenicians this invention,
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, con-
sequently there is nothing surprising in its having been lost,
many arts have been lost—among others, the purple dye for
which Tyre was celebrated.”$ He supposes it to have been
first communicated by Solomon to the Jews. Bochart, in con-
futing him, uses the argument which I have already disposed of
—the impossibility of the Phoenician 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
famous bowl of antiquity was that of Hercules, which served its illustri-
ous owner in the double capacity of drinking-cup and canoe; for, when
he had quenched his thirst, he could set it afloat, and, leaping into it,
steer to any part of the world he pleased. Some, indeed, speak of it as
a borrowed article, belonging originally to the sun, and in which the god
used nightly to traverse the ocean from west to east.”—ST. JoHN's An-
cient Greece, vol. ii. p. 114.
“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.
* The statue of Hercules at Tarentum, enumerated by Pliny in his list
of Colossi, had a key in one hand and a cup in the other. On the coins
of Crotona, Hercules bore a cup in his hand. - -
# ‘Hpák\eta 6: ) 60 Tów toxupov kai kpa repôv Tſis 6\kis, 3) pāX\ov číort Tspi,
‘Hoák\etav Töv rpárov čhávn.—HESYCHIUS. -
† Incidental suppositions are scattered through various works. See
Lavinius Lemnius, De Occult. Nat. Mir. l. i. c. iii.; Buffon ; J. de Pineda,
De Rege Salomone; Fortuesto, William Cook, Stukely, &c. I do not in-
clude Sir William Bethune; the grounds of his supposition are so pre-
posterous. It is from the supposed resemblance of a vessel to the com-
pass actually in use, that Sir W. Bethune starts. See the practical ex-
posure as given in Dennis's Etruria, vol. ii. p. 105.
§ Miscell. Sacra, l. iv. c. 19.
| Canaan, l. i. c. 98. See also H. Kepping, Antiq. Rom. l. iii, c. 6.
THE BATYLIA. - 153
to luxury, not those which were of universal use; and he con-
cludes, 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 Phoenician 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 Phoenicians.
So far Greek mythology and poetry; and taken in conjunc-
tion with the explanation I have given of the cup, the stone, I
think they are conclusive: for there can be but one explanation
for vessels endowed with instinct to find their way, for an arrow
to steer by, for a stone called by the name of the Columbus of
antiquity, from the association of a stone and a cup with naviga-
tion, and of the sun with Hercules. But Hellas does not bound
• - º - &
our sight: there are beyond higher springs and more sacred
fountains, and to these I pass on. The Greek tongue has pre-
served, 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:- Eſtévông's 680s Ośgovös, Bourélio, Widows Śu-
'pëzovg unzøvnaðuevog. “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 Phaeacian ships, I know of no other pas-
Sage in writings of antiquity, in which inanimate bodies are so
spoken of The Atôovg Šuipúzovg of Sanchoniathon, and the
voſuoto, zal (pgévºs &vögów of Horner, 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 travelers 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 men-
tion of them in any Greek temple, or consequently in Greece or
Asia Minor; the stones endowed with life, might be supposed
to mean statues, but these were not images nor things that could
be classed in any known º of objects of worship or orna-
154 MEANING OF “BATYLIA.”
ment. 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, among which were the upturning of walls, and the cap-
turing of cities; they were said to move in the air, and to have
little demons inside.* We are not, however, destitute of de-
scription of their figure. They were in size and shape like
cricket balls, of a dark indistinct color, Trógqvgottòng, 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 Phoenicians. 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 Sat-
urn, to cover the deceit she wrapped it in a skin; the skin was
Bottm, hence Batylia, but unluckily, the very stone swallowed
for Jupiter, and which, at his son's request, Saturn afterward
vomited, was itself preserved at the temple of Delphi. 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 every thing
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,
some “votive offerings,” some “rocking stones,”; some “amulets.”
* Eiðov rôv BaírvXov Ště roi; dépos ktvojaevov.–DAMASCIUS. Eºval riva
Aaiuova röv kuvoivra aúróv.—ISIDORUS. -
+ Töv påv Zeds othptée karā Yôov6; cºpwojsing
TIv00i ºv #ya%p, yuáXots ind TIapvigoto,
Xiu' à nev Šotrío'o 0aipa 0unroigt 8porotot.
HESTOD. Theo. 498.
i. Drummond, after laughing at Bochart, says, “But, after all that has
been said, the etymology of the word appears to me to be very plain;”
and then proceeds to show that “Baitulos” was no more than Jacob's
“Beth-el,” forgetting that the word was Greek and not Hebrew, or, if
not forgetting, disposing of the objection as follows: “Those who would
rather derive it from the Greek, may consult,” &c.—Origines, vol. iii. p.
215-435.
§ The ancients have described rocking-stones, but never called them
“Baitula.”—See Apoll. Rhod. Argon, l, i.; Pliny, Nat. Hist, vol. ii. c. 28.
For some amusing learning on the subject, see Moore's Hist. of Ireland,
vol. i. p. 39–59. See also Dissert. Sur les Baetyles, Mém. de l'Académie,
vol. vi.; Rem. de l’Abbé Bautier, vol. vii. p. 241. -
CEREMCNIES ON CONSULTING THE MAGNET. 155
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 Sanchoniathon right, and under-
take 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 Phoenicians 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 Phoenicians to “unknown
gods.” Abadir is not Hebrew, and an emendation has been
suggested by Bochard, aban-dir, which means round stone.
These round stones” supply the last link in the chain. The
magnet must have been consulted with ceremonies, and con-
sidered as an Oracle or a god. When the vessels returned into
harbor 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 Phoenician
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 des-
tined for Lybia, Southern Africa, Spain, or Britain ; and they
would not be shipped like a bale of goods, or invoiced like a case
of instruments. But whatever ceremonies were employed in
Tyre, the Straits themselves must have been the scene of the ini-
tiation 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 harbors. The traffic of
the Phoenicians and Carthaginians was a mystery, and that
mystery lay beyond the Straits. The Phoenician 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
* During the Catalonian insurrection of 1834, the name Patulea was
given to the insurgents. Whence it has been derived, I have been unable
to discover. In Portugal it has recently been adopted. The insurgents
were called Patulea, the chiefs Conocedos, or “the known.” This return to
the “unknown gods,” of the Greeks, if a mere coincidence, is a curious
OIlê.
156 THE ANCIENT PIHOENICIAN INITIATION.
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 commu-
nity. 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 among Spaniards
and Moors, but was not rewarded by any discovery.*
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 practiced 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 outward. It is a pantomime, of which that performed
* In the course of them. I came upon a singular instance of popular
memory. I was sitting with a Breber baker of Tangier, on the promon-
tory looking towards Spain, and asking him the names of places, to see
if I could identify in their recollections some of the old Iberian names;
he directed my attention to a white streak on the coast opposite, and
then said, “There is Belon.” The place has disappeared for 1500 years,
and no Spaniard knows the name.
+ le lendemain matin on fit la cérémonie ordinaire quand on passe le
Detroit. Un homme de l'équipage tenant un livre à la main, Ia com-
mença par faire un serment sur ce livre pour tous ceux du vaisseau.
Parce serment il woulut distinguer cewa, qui avoient déjà passé le Detroit
d’avec cewa, qui ne l’avoient pas encore passé, et en même temps il faisoit
promettre a tous ceux de l'équipage de faire la méme cérémonie toutes
les fois qu'ils le passeroient. Après il parut sur le pont une compagnie
de jeunes matelots avec un tambour, chacun ayant une moustache. Cette
compagnie avoit pour armes tous les instrumens de la cuisine. Ceux qui
n'ayoient pas encore passe le Detroit, payerent pour n'etre point baptisé
uné seconde fois. Personne n'est exempt—capitaine, officiers, matelots,
passageurs, et la vaisseau méme doivent si c'est la première fois qu'on a
passé le Detroit; un matelot, n'ayant jamais, woulut rien donner, fut mis
le cul dans un baquet, et On Tinjetta sur le corps une quinzaine de séaux
d'eau de mer. Assurément il a du se souvenir de ce second baptème
(permettez moi cette Comparaison) plus que du premier. Pour mieux
prouver qu'on a déjà passé le Detroit, il faut dire, le mois et l'année
qu'on l’a passé, le nom du capitaine et duvaisseau sur leguel on étoit.”—
Trois Voyages au Maroc, p. 179. - -
This is not the only nautical ceremony with a classical origin. A for-
mer traveler in Greece thus describes a lanch,--" A crown of flowers is
NECHO AND DON HENRY. 157
by our sailors in crossing the line might be given as a descrip-
tion: it is in fact the copy, the old Phoenician initiation, preserved
down to the time when navigation took her new spring; and at
the very spot, and among 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 Vail of
the priests of Hercules: and the cooking utensils are paraded in
memory of the victim” and altar.
I now come to the last point which I shall notice: it is the
one which first suggested to me the thought; and in it are in-
volved debated questions of history, and undescribed and unno-
ted 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 Pil-
lars of Hercules: these orders were obeyed. The father of his-
tory, it is told, was treated as a dreamer by his Roman and
Alexandrian successors; but the recent extension of knowledge
has in every point confirmed his statements, and shown that, five
centuries B.C., more was known of geography than in the golden
placed on the bow, then kapaéokńpt, or master, raises a jar of wine to his
lips, and then pours it on the deck. Nothing can be more beautifully
classical. It were to be wished that we could trace the ceremony which
takes place among us to this source, and not consider it an imitation of
One of the most sacred rites of our religion.”—Douglas, p. 65.
* No ancient or modern European language affords an etymology for
the nautical designation of a fire-place—Caboose. It is Arabic, and
means “a thing consecrated to a mosk.” In pagan times it would be
the temple or the sacrifice. The Phoenician vessels had their altars and
their gods, Patacoi. Nautical terms, of which the etymology is unknown,
are generally traceable to the Phoenicians—for instance, Davit in Arabic,
a bent piece of wood. Caboose and Davit have disappeared from the
Mediterranean, and must have been left among us by the Phoenicians.
158 THE CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF AFRICA.
age of Augustus.* Whether it be in fixing the points of the
Tybian deserts, or in tracing the outlines of the Caspian Sea; it
is the old Greek who appears the accurate modern; and the
geographer of the time of the Caesars, who is the reporter of fables
and of tales. Thus do we find in antiquity, a counterpart to
our modern disputes, and Pliny, Mela, and Strabo, are the pro-
totypes 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 ap-
pear to have extended beyond the western coast; but Pliny,
who had other data, carries it round to the Erythraean Sea.
3. The traffic of the Carthaginians on the Gold Coast.
The expedition of NechoS is flatly contradicted by Strabo,
after an examination of all the evidence. The same opinion was
pronounced by the school of Alexandria, Pomponius Mela, and
Pliny, who, contending for at least the possibility of the voyage,
do not so much as mention the narrative of Herodotus, consid:
ering 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 Gonclusions
was, the impossibility of Such a voyage without the compass.
Major Rennell presses him with objections, asserting the consist-
ency of the narrative, and authority of the evidence, and, argu-
* See the chapter on the land trade of the Carthaginians in Heeren's
Researches, the most valuable portion of his comprehensive work.
+ Strabo makes the Caspian Sea a gulf of the Northern Ocean.
f “Geographical knowledge had existed and ceased before the classic
age of Greece arose.”—GROVER's Voice from Stonehenge. -
§ “That Africa is clearly surrounded by the sea, except where it bor-
ders on Asia, Necho, King of the Egyptians, was the first, we know, to
demonstrate. That prince, having finished his eaccavations for the canal
leading out of the Nile into the Arabian gulf, dispatched certain natives
of Phoenicia on shipboard, with orders to sail back through the Pillars of
Hercules into the north (Mediterranean) Sea, and so to return into Egypt.
The Phoenicians consequently, having departed out of the Erythraean Sea,
proceeded on their voyage in the Southern Sea: when it was autumn,
they would push ashore, and, sowing the land, whatever might be the
part of Lybia they had reached, await there till the harvest came : hav-
ing reaped their corn, they continued their voyage. Thus, after the lapse
of two years, and passing through the Pillars of Hercules in the third,
they came back into Egypt, and stated what is not credible to me, but
may be so, perhaps, to others, namely, that in their circumnagivation of
Lybia, they had the sum upon the right hand.”—HEEREN, ii. c. 44.
THE OPINIONS OF HEEREN. 1.59
ing against the objection, says, that “the barks of the ancients
were adapted for coasting navigation, could keep close in shore,
and might be hauled up on the beach. This voyage, immense
as it was, did not therefore necessitate any venturesome entrance
into the open sea—they needed not to have lost sight of the
land even for a day.” *
Heeren seats himself on the bench, and sums up, and without
combating M. Gosselin, decides against him. “This gentle-
man's arguments,” he says, “amount to nothing ; for are we in
a situation to judge of the perfection of Phoenician navigation ?
Nations accustomed to coasting navigation are generally much
better acquainted with its difficulties than great sea-faring na-
tions. 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 favorable 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 evi-
dently aware ? Was it that, placed in a dilemma between the
desire of deciding a controversy, and the fear of risking his char-
acter for “critical discrimination,” he had recourse to a little
mystification ºf -
For those who have the compass, it is true that the difficul-
ties are less in coming from the Red Sea, but exactly the re-
verse for those who have it not :—a vessel sailing from the
Guinea coast, to the Straits of Gibraltar must keep far out to
sea.f
* The following passage from Heeren well illustrates, in the incohe-
rence of each sentence, the consciousness that the people he described
was too large for his grasp. “But leaving these distinct voyages of dis-
covery out of the question, the extent to which this enterprising people
carried their regular navigation is truly wonderful. • Though voyages
across the open seas have been the consequence of our acquaintance with
the new world beyond the Atlantic; yet their hardy and adventurous
spirit led them to find a substitute for it, in stretching from coast to coast
into the most distant regions. The long series of centuries during which
they were exclusively masters of the sea, gave them sufficient time to
make this gradual progress, which perhaps was the more regular and
certain in proportion to the time it occupied. The Phoenicians carried the
nautical art to the highest point of perfection at that time required, or of
which it was then capable.”
# A vessel proceeding from the Bight of Benin to any point of the
coast, northward, has first to make and pass the Equator, steering south
and west till she has done so. She then hauls up to the west and north,
and runs eastward only after she is to the northward of her port.
160 DIFFICULTIES ATTENDING THE
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 navi-
gation, that I do not understand how we to-day could navigate
that coast, were the magnetic needle to lose its virtue. Im-
pelled by the eddy from America, the Atlantic draws down the
African shore. There is below Mogadore a night breeze from
the Sea; the land is low, and stretches in a line of sand-banks
or breakers. There are no inlets and no shelter; and certain
destruction awaits the mariner, on a lee-shore, on which a cur.
rent sits. Their vessels did not lie closer to the wind than seven
points, and could never get off. Is this a navigation to be per-
formed 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 vesseſ at seventeen miles, so that
between the Straits of Gibraltar, and the Madeira Islands, a ves-
sel is carried out of the dead reckoning to the eastward, accord-
ing to the length of the voyage, from eighty to two hundred
niles. 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;” and has assigned as the cause of his misfortune,
the indraught both of current and wind, and the impossibility
of getting off the coast when once thus got upon it. Even after
his vessel had struck, he could see no land.
And what is the fate of the survivors ? Death by thirst or
slavery. The nature of the inhabitants has no more changed
than that of the shore :—what the one spares, the other will
devour.
* In the north the coast is sufficiently dangerous. In my cruise along
it in 1845, I had in company, or saw only four vessels: two of these
went ashore, the other two were wrecked, the one an English brigantine,
the other a French steamer of war. Eighty souls perished.
NAVIGATION OF THE AFRICAN COAST. I61 ;
The land of Europe is high : its coasts are provided with har-
bors, 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 evit-
able 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.”
After the Phoenician time every endeavor to navigate this
coast failed, and among the adventurers, One Eudoxus seems to
have been a man of extraordinary resources, energy, and per-
severance. 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 reopened only after the compass had been rediscov-
ered, 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 au-
thorities. I never met an officer, knowing the coast, who, on
the question being put to him, did not answer of Africa, “with-
* The supposed anterior discovery of the Canaries by a Norman rover
would be no argument, for these islands may be reached without encoun-
tering the principal difficulties of the enterprise. And further, at the
time of the alledged discovery, the compass may have been in use in the
north of Europe. The coins of the Baltic show the intimacy there of the
Saracens from the first century of the Hejira, and African settlers in Eng-
land are entered in the Doomsday Book. The use of it in the north, long
before its employment by the Portuguese, has been asserted by various
writers, not only as derived from the Arabs, but also as original, or de-
rived from the Chinesé.
“IP est certain que les marins des cétes de Normandie et de Bretagne
employaient dês le xiii siècle l'aiguille aimanée Sous le nom de mari-
nette.”— Esmenard. -
“Raymondus Lullus in 1272 describes a compass used by the Basques
and Catalonians.”—Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 474.
“The Fins have a compass which possesses the peculiarity of indicating
the rising and setting of the sun–which must be in the figures around it,
as in the Chinese compass—in summer and winter, in a manner that can
only agree with the latitude 49° 20'.”—SALVERTE, Occult Sciences, tom.ii.
p. 252. - -
162 SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT.
out the compass it is impossible to navigate the coast.” The
statements of Herodotus, the Periplus of Hanno, the sea traffic
of the Carthaginians on the Gold Coast, present no difficulty, if
you admit the stone of Hercules, the cup of Apollo, the arrow
of Abaris, and the Batylia to have any meaning; and you must
reject several of the most authoritative statements of history if
you will not.
I must apologize for the space I have devoted to this antiqua-
rian subject. The matter is so incidental to the spot, and inter-
woven with the patron of these volumes, that, however at vari-
ance 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 favorable as to the objections which our
highest authorities have raised. I have proved its case to be
compatible with secrecy;-and if it was secret it could be lost.
I have shown in the method first practiced by the Arabs, the in-
strument 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 as-
sociated with ancient augury; and I have found a people
stretching through that chasm of years, from pagan Rome
to Christian science,—a people of Phoenicians, who, away from
Europe, preserved the faith and industry of their sunk metropo-
lis, and could transmit the magnet from Hercules to Flavio de
Gioia.
#. 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.
B00 K II,
THE COUNTRY OF THE ROWERS.
CHAPTER I.
OFF SALEE.
November 30th.
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 in-
stant the Baron Renfrew, or Ptolemy Philopator's fifty-decker:
in memory of such incidents, no doubt, Antaeus honored Neptune
with a temple of human heads. These horrid fangs, now cov-
ered 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 thun-
der: the spray, on the rolling in of every wave, shoots up as if
a succession of mines were fired by a train. In this merciless
fence the gaps are few and far-between, hard to find, and, when
found, harder still to enter by. Along the distance we have run,
there are but three openings where small craft might find refuge,
but then only when such refuge is not wanted; that is to say,
with calm weather, a leading wind, a tranquil sea, and a full
tide. A vessel caught in a westerly gale would have a lee-
shore (and what a lee-shore 1) 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 (toward 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, how-
ever, where we lay, a slight heaving of the water; and these
164 THE TIDAT, CTURRENTS.
heaves, as they bore landward, 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 majes-
tic breast. We lay for hours with the same marks on—as if we
had been a rock. The tide rises and falls upon the shore, but
does not run along the land. The Atlantic merely heaves up
and down, but shifts not its place. It is met in front by a
straight line: and the tidal currents of the coast of Europe are
stopped at the great indraught of the Straits of Gibraltar; so
that to the southward there extends a region of some hundred
miles of dead water. Hence the violence of the action of the
waves upon the shore. With our indented and slanting coasts,
there is always a current running in front of the land, which
serves as a breakwater against the effects of the rise and fall of
the tide: here there is no such protection. In like manner may
be explained the incessant disturbance of the Bay of Biscay:
the horns break the tides along the shore, and the Atlantic
surges in upon the congested waters. Below Rabat a current
begins to be sensible ; it runs south. At Mogadore it reaches
the speed of three knots an hour. There are combined to pro-
duce 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 sunrise and sunset. 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 sup-
posed, nor down from the Desert. In traveling 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 “con-
formably overlying” rock, is an induration of the sand by oxide
of iron; sand, newly exposed, immediately begins to crust.
This bank must have been left by the waters of the deluge,
escaping westward, charged with the sand of the interior. This
idea was first suggested to me by the deposits on both sides of
the rock of Gibraltar. The sand blocks up to its very roofs a
cavern which opens to the eastward.
Thus have been estranged the land and the water, and the
SALEE AND RABAT. 165
approach to each is closed from the other. Such is the defense
of Morocco on the ocean side: its iron-bound coast on the Med-
iterranean 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
Aſarmata,” was given, were strewed along the shore by Hercu-
les to defend it from the approach of wild beasts.” The beasts
are ships, to which the names of animals were given—from the
figure-heads this fertile source of mythological personation has
given us Pegasus, the Ram of Phryxus, the Bull of Europa.
December 1st. We are still off our port ranging up and
down, and unable to enter, although we have the most beautiful
weather and the calmest seal We can not 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 had 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, sur-
*.
mounted by a dome, like the tombs of Judaea 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 for-
* From Eny haram, to heap up; the term was applied to the banks
of tombs and the dams of rivers. Avienus considers these Harmata to
be relics of the causeway which Hercules constructed to bring over the
oxen of Geryon. -

166 IMPORTANCE OF KEEPING p:
tresses. The great tower stands on elevated ground at the
bottom of the harbor. Rabat was built at the close of the
twelfth century to facilitate—though the Moors were in posses-
sion of Ceuta and all the northern coast—the best expedition
then directed against Spain. Across this bar was lanched 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 immortalized the Navas de Tolosa. .
The Moorish empire then extended in Africa above a thou-
sand 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 struc-
tures that any age has produced. It caused arts and science to
flotirish amid 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. . g -
The last intelligence we had received before sailing from Gib-
raltar, was that an insurrection had broken out at Morocco, and
another on the borders of Algiers, in favor 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 subju-
gated the policy of the metropolis to the conduct of the colony.
It was no object of the cabinet of the Tuilleries to drive the sul-
MOROCCO A FRIENDLY STATE. 16'ſ
tan into a false and untenable position at home, or to compro
mise 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 present-
ing myself at so unfrequented an entrance to this inhospitable
land. Adverse winds, however, detained me in the Gut, while
steam carried the French—that is, the Algerime—emissary to
his destination. Nothing could be more tantalizing than thus
to hover above the country, and in sight-of its assembled multi-
tudes, in utter ignorance of what was passing, and with the
contingency before my eyes of being even yet unable to set foot
On it.
In pursuance of the importance of the resolves of the council
chamber of this African state, I reverted to the circumstances of.
the last war, and the great struggle of England and France, of
which another African state, at the other extremity of the Medi-
terranean, 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 un-
derstood. 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 meas-
ure would have powerfully contributed to the success of his pro-
ject. 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
disposition of Morocco. Napoleon having foregone all the politi-
cal 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 recognized the identity of the position, and the simi-
larity of character of the two people. t
I now recalled the incidents which, in early life, fixed my at-
168 PASSAGE OF THE BAR.
tention 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, pre-
vented a great war, and have joined France in introducing civil-
ization and Christianity into Africa. Well do I recollect the
perplexity into which I was thrown by these ideas; fortunately,
it was not to a European that I had recourse to discriminate
between right and wrong, but to an African–Hassam d’ Ghieo.
He told me to make the case my own, and see what I should
think of France invading England, because Russia had invaded
Turkey.
He showed me, that if England had so involved herself, it
would have been left open for France to establish herself in
Egypt, and thence act against India: that England had tri-
umphed in that war, because France had unjustly attacked other
states, and England had espoused the just side.
Rabat, Dec. 2d.—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 haiks squatting
down, and they looked like rows of large gulls. A little after
one P.M., it being high tide, a large row-boat appeared behind
the bar; presently it came dancing over the surf. We had in
company an English and a Portuguese schooner. The English
took the lead; we followed. It was like going into action, and
in presence of an audience: every horizontal piece of rock, wall,
and ground, was covered with the strange squatting figures
assembled to witness our prowess, or mischance. There was
great outcry and confusion, and we might have thought there
was more noise than danger, had our two companions fared
as well as ourselves. They both got on shore inside, but the
wind falling, and the tide ebbing, they were cleared of their
cargoes, and got off at full tide during the night. -
The English consular agent came off to give us pratique. It
was the first time he had performed his functions as quarantine
master. His commission was not from the Moorish government,
custom-Hous. At RABAT. 169
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, among 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 traveled Moor proceeded, by
way of revanche, to be far too accurate and amusing on the sub-
jects 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. 3d-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. w
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 neighborhood. I returned from the ex-
cursion filled with two objects; the gate of the Alcazaba, and the
caid, 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
- 8
170 THE BARBIC A.N.—THE EN CAMPMENTS.
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 Ara-
besque; not molded in stucco, but carved in stone. All is in
ruins, or utterly effaced and leveled, 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 toward 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. Run-
ning in all directions, it is puzzling to make out what they
exclude or what they inclose—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. Palgrave's likeness, leading a laden
ass: a servant was walking behind him doing nothing. The
wealthiest disdain not to perform, like the patriarchs, the hum-
blest 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 Caid " I looked, expecting to see the
great man's cortège, and it was some time before I distinguished
the personage pacing along alone, wrapped in his haik. 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 3 the answer was, “He was appointed by
the Town.” Supposing that my ears had deceived me, I repeat-
ed the question, and was answered a second time, “He was
appointed by the Town.” The story is as follows:—
THE CAID OF R.A.B.A.T. I'71
A REVOLUTION IN BARBARY.
The Caid 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 dispatched a messenger to the
Sultan to solicit his (the caid's) removal; and that until they
received an answer, their civility could extend to no act of obe-
dience. 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 caid sent them,
having been before at Salee, was better known than trusted; he,
therefore, on his arrival, was informed by the people of Rabat,
that they had already dispatched 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 peo-
ple who can govern better both for the sultan and for us.”
The complaisant Sultan on this revoked his second appointment,
and authorized them to choose a caid 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 caid, 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 in-
formed 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
Arzéla 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 ben-
efice.
The following conversation occurred with my host:-
Q. Has there been any execution in Salee or Rabat since you
have been here ?
A. No.
Q. Have there been any assassinations?
A. Four years ago there was a man killed at Rabat.
Q. Why was the murderer not executed?
A. Because the emperor's answer was, that he had done
well: he killed a man in his harem. -
I72 convKRSATION ON THE GOVERNMENT OF RABAT.
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 en-
camped 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 ser-
VlC6.
Q. Turing these four years, how often have irregular contri-
butions been raised in the town by the Governmentº -
4. The only taxes are upon laden camels and merchandise.
Q: What are the exactions to which public servants are ex-
posed ?
A. They take every thing from them.
Q. Does that often happen?
A. No, not very often.
Q. How many, incidents of the kind do you recollect 3
A. The late caid had been in office twelve years, and his
father twelve before him. The emperor then fixed his demand
at 40,000 dollars. The caïd said he had not the money to
pay. The present caïd has shown that he had as much in
houses and gardens in Rabat alone.
Q. Since he could neither impose contributions on the town,
nor extort money from individuals, how did he accumulate
wealth ?
A. He was a very venal man, and you could do any thing
with him for four dollars.
9. His profits then consisted in the corrupt administration
of justice?
A. Yes.
Q. A caid in Rabat may then be guilty of corruption, but
anot 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 Eng-
land.’ Soldiers followed him, but I would not let them take
&
STORY OF A JEWISH BOY. 173
him from under my roof. His father was a renegade. His
property (3000 dollars) was placed, on his death, in the hands
of an executór, who—the children under nine years of age
being held to be of their father's faith—forced him from his
mother. Refusing to profess Islamism, the mother and the
boy were confined apart, and she was beaten to induce her to
influence her son. The boy at last did pronounce the words
‘La Illah,’ &c.; his head was shaved; the Mussulman dress put
on him, and he was about, as is the custom, to be paraded on
horseback through the town, but he recanted. This is death by
the Mussulman law. Those who were present describé 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 gover-
nor 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 an-
swered the caid, “I won't be a Mussulman; for your religion
has no strength. I forgive you my money that I may be a
Jew.” I said to him he ought to be very grateful to the consul
for having befriended him: his answer was, “I am thankful to
God.”
This was one of the occasions on which the religious feelings
of the people were liable to the extremest excitement. In 110
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
174 STORY OF
father, and the whole of the property would go to the sultan.
The caid's profit was out of the counter-bribery of the guardian
and the mother. The circumstances becoming known, general
indignation was aroused against the caid. Immediately after-
ward 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, hav-
ing been beaten and in great sorrow, one day ran into the ad-
joining Moorish house (at Tangiers the Jews have no separate
quarters). The Moorish women were charmed with her beauty,
spoke to her kindly, and advised her to be like them, and live
with them, and she preferring them to her own people, repeated
‘La Illah,’ &c. The women thereupon went to the caid, 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 caid 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 caid 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 traveler 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 neighbor, 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 honor was prepared for her. Four hun-
dred young men, chosen from out of the servants of the Sultan,
played before her the ‘powder game.’ Preceded by these, and
followed by a great concourse of people, she was conducted to
the palace. Next day the lady of the harem came to her.
She kissed her between the eyes; made her sit down by her
side; told her maidens to bring rich clothes, and clothed her
with them; and then taking her by the hand, they walked in
A JEWISH GIRL. 175
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 pcarls: ‘These,” said he,
“are the marriage gifts I had prepared for you, and you shall
choose a bridegroom of the sons of the caïds.' But she an-
swered 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
caid to be judged according to the law as an apostate. The
caid, when he found that his words did not persuade, nor his
threats move her, assembled the rabbis and the elders of the
Jews, and said to them, “If this maiden, once a Jewess, remain
thus perverse, the Sultan will assuredly slay not her only, but
every Jew in Fez. Advise then what you shall do.’ So the
elders went to her in the prison, offering to absolve her of the
sin, and telling her that it was better for one soul to perish than
the whole people. She answered, “Every man must bear his
own burden: the blood of all the people will not save me: I
will not do this thing.” And the Jews went out wondering.
The caid 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 mar-
ket-place, in the midst of a great concourse from the town and
neighboring country assembled for the market, she prayed to
have a pair of trowsers; “lest,” said she, “in the struggles of
176 STORY OF A JEWISH GIRL.
death, I should expose my nakedness; and some water, that I
may wash and pray.’ While she was washing and clothing her-
self, 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 dis-
orders go to pray there, and are cured.” -
Compare with this, the story in Maccabees of the mother and
seven sons, who suffered death rather than eat forbidden meat.
* The name given to the girl was “Sol,” as the story was told me in
Spanish. It is the habit of those who themselves give descriptive names,
to translate the names of other languages. I have therefore restored the
Hebrew word and name, in which language the sun is feminine.
0 HAPTER II.
RABAT.
I WENT to-day up the river in a barge belonging to one
the schooners in the harbor. We landed at the bottom of the
harbor 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 through-
out 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 center 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 struc-
ture. 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,” the horn of Timour, had each its
name; and I never hear a bugle without a thrill, having, as a
child, delighted in the history of the latter hero. Those who
gave a man's name to a tower, would be horror-struck at a
man's name given to a dog. The tower “Hassan” calls up the
siege of Jerusalem and Lower Antonia. There all the towers
had names—Hippicus, Piphunis, Mariamne: so the gates had
names, as Genuath; but the gates, like those of Rabat, were
probably structures exceeding the towers in dimensions.
The staircase has been rendered impracticable both at the
entrance and near the top ºut 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
* Jamsamia.
8%
178 BUILDINGs ERECTED BY CHRISTIAN SLAVES.
Rabat. It covers a space of ground considerably larger than
Granada. r
Adjoining the tower there is a large cistern with..ten parallel
walls running half through it, and beyond this, the extensive
area of a mosk with many of the columns standing. They
are of granite, unpolished. A century ago a missionary men-
tions the mosk 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 splendor,
the race has disappeared, or it lives in subjection to some other
people. Here the descendants of the people who reared these,
edifices, still dwell unconquered around. They gaze upon them
with stupid wonder, knowing not whether they are the works
of genii or their fathers.
The magnificent remains spread around were the creation of a
single reign, and had one date of maturity and desolation.
What measure do they not give of the power of Morocco, in the
time of our Henry I. : Like the pyramids, they were reared by
captive hands; they were bedeved 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 col-
ony would be dangerous. “My word,” said the Emir el Mos-
lemin (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 genera-
tions they preserved their language and religion, and three hun-
dred years afterwards we find them a powerful tribe at war
with the Moorish sovereign. The Shabanets were at that time
undistinguished from the surrounding population in manners,
languages, and religion. There is no trace of persecution for
religion, and their contests with the princes of Morocco were for
their civil rights.
That war of borders and of centuries between Moor and Goth,
must have been, in part, the image of the kidnapping of Africa
as carried on to-day. The common prisoner for us is an encum-
brance, for them he was the chief booty. The estimating of the
value, and the distribution of the shares among the captors,
were defined and arranged by a peculiar code. The captive, for
instance, made from a fortress within cross-bow range, belonged
SPANISH RENEGADES. 1'79
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
honor, 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 con-
verted 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 can not,” 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 quar-
ter if vanquished, because we will not be beholden for life to
such men.” He describes the tribe as peculiarly harmless.
From the tower we proceeded two or three miles up the
river to Orange groves on the low ground, belonging to the late
governor, which appeared utterly deserted, and the fruit lay
rotting under the trees. Our European sailors loaded their
boats with fruit, and decorated it with branches bearing fruit
and flowers. I fancied the companions of Hercules must have
done something of the same kind. -
We found here a party of the sultan's troops, who were giv-
ing 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 among 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 al. Ceuta that few at-
tempted 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 dépôts for culprits, from that
ancient practice of the Spanish kings, by which the frontier for-
tresses were sanctuaries. When reading those old charters, I
180 RENEGADES IN MOROCCO.
had imagined that the object was to people them, and such is
the explanation given by the Spanish legal writers; but now I
saw the real purpose, which was to afford the malefactor, who
had already escaped from punishment, relief from apostasy.
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 free from the bonds of matrimony. These provisions will
be found in the Charter of Ferdinand IV., granted to Gibraltar,
and afterward 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 toward the sun's rising;” that is, on the side of the
enemy and on his border. The period of sojourn was contin-
gent 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. Ni-
gritia 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. I’oles they have here in Africa, it
is true; but as “condottieri” only. There are representatives
of every race, and records of every conspiracy and rebellion.
They number four hundred in the camp, and two thousand
throughout Morocco. The police is so strict, that it is impossi-
ble that one of them should ever return. Dante might here
* got the suggestion for his inscription over the gates of
lell.
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 pre-
ferred abandoming 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
* Deut. iv. 41–43.
CHRISTIAN SLAVERY IN MOROCCO. 181
ever applied at the consulate for pecuniary relief. The consul
has repeatedly proffered assistance; it has in every case been
declined. This getting out of the way of their conquerors is
strikingly pictured in the address of an old Moor to the captor
of Gibraltar:-
“SIRE,-What have I done to your race? I lived in Seville
when your great-grandfather, the King Don Fernando, besieged
and took that place, and I went to Xerez. Then came your
grandfather, Don Alonzo, and conquered Xerez, and I went to
live at Tarifa. Then came your father, Don Sancho, and took
Tarifa. Finding that we could not live in any city of Spain, I
came to Gibraltar: now you have come by sea, and besieged
and taken it. I beg that you will order a vessel for me, that I
may cross the Sea, and not see so much sorrow before my
eyes.” -
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. In Morocco the
Rovers were no tractable subjects. Even when they were re-
duced to obedience, and one of the sultans applied to Charles
XII. for aid in quelling those of Tunis and Algiers, 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 re-
ligious matters, the following extract will show, and will confirm,
what I have elsewhere asserted, that the disappearance of Chris-
tianity from the soil of Africa is not attributable to persecution.
* Ayala, p. 1333.
+ Al Makbari, passing by Malta, exclaims, “That accursed island, from
the neighborhood of which whoever escapes may well say, that he has
deserved favor –that dreaded spot, which throws its deadly shade on
the pleasant waters of the Mediterranean—that den of iniquity and trea-
son, that place of ambush, which is like a net to circumvent the Moslems
that sail the seas l’ -
f “The regal power allotted to us makes us common servants to our
Creator; then of those persons whom we govern; so that, observing the
duties we owe to God, we distribute blessings to the world. In provid-
ing for the public good of our states, we magnify the honor of God, like
the celestial bodies, which, though they have much honor, yet only serve
for the benefit of men. It is the excellence of our office to be instruments
whereby happiness is distributed to the nations. Pardon me, sir, this is
not to instruct; for I know I speak to one of a more clear and quick
sight than myself; but I speak thus because God hath been pleased to
grant me a happy victory over some part of those rebellious pirates that
have so long molested the peaceful trade of Europe.”
182 REDEMI’TION OF CHRISTIAN CAPTIVES.
While Henry, the first of European monarchs, was putting him-
self in open opposition to the Church, and setting her highest
recognized authority at defiance, that authority received an un-
expected recognition and homage from a Saracen and semi-bar-
barian sovereign in Africa. Annazir, the Mohammedan 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, with-
out whom we can not do, or even think any thing that is good,
hath breathed into thine heart. He that lighteth every man
that cometh into the world, hath in this thy purpose enlightened
thy mind, for there is nothing of which the Almighty God, who
would have all men to be saved, and who is not willing that
any should perish, more highly approves than that, next to the
love of his Maker, a man should cultivate that of his neighbor,
and do naught 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.”
If religious fanaticism was displayed in the acts which pro-
voked the retaliation of the Moors, never was Christian charity
more fervently exhibited than in the efforts made, and the suf.
fering undergone, to redeem the captives. For this work of re-
demption two monastic orders were established. “The Trini-
tarians,” was founded by one Mata, 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 re-
demption of slaves,” to which purpose one third of the revenue
of each house was to be applied. They had thirty-nine houses
in England, and nine in Scotland.
The “Merced,” or more properly the military religious order
of “Our Lady of Mercy for the Redemption of Captives,” was
founded in 1225 by Peter of Nolasco, who had served under
De Montfort. It consisted of knights and friars. The friars
* Bowden's Life of Gregory VII., ii. 158.
PROCESSION OF THE SULTAN TO THE MOSK. 183
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 scapu-
lar 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 re-
lease. This order being relieved from certain domestic austeri-
ties, they were obliged to go barefoot, and were called Das Cal-
SOs,” observing the strictest poverty, solitude, and abstinence.
In former times there was in these regions a most extraord-
inary traffic in Russian slaves of both sexes, and eunuchs. The
Arabs called them Siklah (Silaavo). Abderachman III. had a
body-guard of them, splendidly accoutered. They rose to high
offices in the state. One, named Wadha, was vizier to Hisham
II. of Cordova; another, Naga, to Ibn Edris, Sultan of Ceuta,
and Malaga. They even attained to sovereign power, and
founded dynasties, as Lahayr and Keyran, both of Valentia.
5th of December.
This being Friday, the Sultan went in state to the mosk 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 exclama-
tion from those on the roofs. “A white horse!” They all
turned round and smiled, and beckoned to each other, and gen-
eral joy seemed to be diffused. The Sultan rides a white horse!
The color of the horse denotes the humor 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, in commenting on which Mr. Lane men-
* See Mohammedan Dynasties of Spain, pp. 74–381.
+ “Now when the morning came, the Khaleefeh went into the saloon
(his sitting-room), and found the eunuchs stupefied with benj. So he
awoke them, and putting his hand upon the chair, he found not the suit of
apparel, nor the signet, nor the rosary, nor the dagger, nor the handker-
chief, nor the lamp ; whereupon he was violently enraged, and put on
the apparel of anger, which was Red, and seated himself in the council-
chamber.” - -
4;
184 THE BAIRAM.
tions (and I can also affirm), that the Turks signify anger against
any class of their tributaries by issuing the Harutch papers of a
red color, and adds, “To exhibit the striking and dramatic spec-
tacle described by our author may, I conceive, be more effective
than any words could be.” In this way the black flag of the
pirate has been selected, and the red flag of the rover. Next to
the flag the war-horse is the shield for this blazon. Thus we
have in the Revelation the pale horse of death. The idea is
beautifully paraphrased in a sentence of the old Chevalier Fabian
Phillips. “The pale horse of death, and the red of destruction,
rode up to their bridles in blood.”
The Sultan wore a green bournous with the hood up. A
man on each side fanned him. This hooded people had thrown
back the capes of their Sulams and the folds of the haïk from
off their heads, so that the aspect of the crowd was suddenly
changed, and the universal white was now considerably mingled
with red and blue.*
I was much gratified at seeing, even from a distance, the
chief of this singular empire, the manner of his march, and the
greeting of his people, which is by bending down and raising
up the body, and continuing to do so until he has passed.
I received a message to say, that orders had been given to
conduct me over every place, not excepting his own residence.
This was a most acceptable communication, as I found myself
gradually falling into the condition of a prisoner.
After the ceremony of the mosk 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 Bairam 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 pre-
vail, and there may be points of real, as well as traces of appar-
* So in Spain, the men on entering the church drop the cloak from the
shoulder, and likewise when speaking to a Superior. In Southern Africa
they bare the upper part of the body. The Abyssinian, as a sign of re-
spect, throws off his clothing to the waist—See the captives on Egyptian
7??0722/72672&S. - -
4×
MASSACRE OF A. CAID. w 185
ent, resemblance between a divan of a Moorish sultan, and the
Wittenagemotte of a Saxon king. The sultan publicly alledges
his charges against the governors who are removed, and the
people on their part have free access, and can accuse and pe-
tition. • - - - .
The holding of the Bairam here, and not at Fez or Morocco
seems to be a case of Mohammed 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 diffi-
cult and dangerous for the Sultan to overlook the recent events,
while it imposes on him the necessity of taking his measures
with precaution. Without exciting alarm, or at least justifying
measures of resistance, or even of precaution, he collects 50,000
meſſ 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 caid, 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 can not help
itself; the other is vengeance—savage, if you like—but ven-
geance 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 so-
cial evil springs from theory and legislation. Where the evil is
the act of man, vengeance comes, like the storm, to clear the
atmosphere, thus compensating for the ruin it has wrought.
I met at a house where I was visiting to-day, the governor
of El Garb, whose encampment lies opposite our windows. I
was told that he is chief of two millions of souls. His rule ex-
tends from the river to the neighborhood 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 cof-
fee himself, and fancying that I liked milk, went down to the
kitchen and brought up in his hand a basin of curds. Coffee is
186 BELLS AND BARBARY CAPS.
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 Mar-
shal 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 pro-
duced. The bells of the Etruscans were not to the Roman taste.
Bells did not pass with Christianity from Judaea through Greece
to Europe. In Greece they are not in common use, and where-
ever they are found, are a modern innovation. In all the primi-
tive districts, a bar of metal, or a sounding board, supplies their
place; and a small one is beaten by the hand through the
streets, before matins and vespers. The Spaniards have bells
to their churches; but not, as the mode of ringing them shows,
derived from us. They strike them with the tongue, just as the
Greeks do their sounding-board with the hammer, and a peal
from the bells of a Spanish town recalls a manufactory of steam-
boilers, and a street of coppersmiths. There is no indication of
bells among 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 Constan-
tinople, 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 Imodifica-
tion—and a modification which is not at present unknown here
—it becomes the Phrygian cap. Phoenicia being the link be-
tween Phrygia” and Barbary, the cap and its color would seem
to belong to Tyre. It is singular that to the Easterns our head-
dress should be the symbol of license, while theirs to us is the
emblem of liberty; and still more so to find that both have
come from a people who are the type of barbarism; for Barbary
has given hats to the women as well as caps to the men. These
hats are made of straw, like Leghorn bonnets, and with little

Ҽ
* The Phrygians were, I imagine, of the same race. They were also .
called Brebers, and thence the Greek word barbarians, which originally
was no word of reproach, but designated that other people of Asia Minor
(Phrygians, Mysians, Lydians, &c.), whom we are now beginning to know
in the marble of Xanthus. -
BARBARY CUSTOM For THE UNMARRIED. 187
tufts of many-colored 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
caid, who subsequently was ambassador at Paris. His haik
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,” 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 inte-
rior 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 afterward seen it a
band of platted palmetto leaf-was the distinctive sign of the
single, as the cap was of the married, so that I can not 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. 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 Bar-
bary. 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, has been transferred
to the substance.
In Solomon's Song it appears that the practice of the Jews
* “The young men,” says Marmol, writing in the middle of the six-
teenth century, “shave the head and beard until they are married, when
they allow the beard to grow, and the tuft of hair on the crown of the
head.”—Africa, vol. ii. p. 3.
“Men of all ranks and conditions,” says a writer at the beginning of
the last century, “are obliged to wear caps after they are married; and till
then all their youths, even the king's sons themselves, commonly go bare-
headed. They wear no hair under their red caps (but are close shaved),
except a lock upon the top of their heads.”—An Account of Barbary, p. 42.
f “Baal Aruc ºn hypºn Tºp Much Herbaice et vernaculo sermone
Bambace. Tº in materia vestium est mollior omnis lanae “linique et gos-
sifii lanugo.”—BocIIART, Chan. lib. i. ch. 45. -
+ ºne (Gen. xxxvii. 3), hence Xtróv. Gaelic, coot, from which the
English coat, which never is of cotton. -
188 CONNECTION OF THE FILLET AND THE SNO OD,
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 among the Greeks with Christianity, is shown in the
expressions at present in use. Instead of saying “He married
such a one,” they say, “He crowned such a one.” -
In Servia the bride wears a crown, or rather, a cap of flowers,
and she preserves it—not the same flowers—for a whole year.
The connection of the fillet and the snood, is rendered more
probable by that of the Shashia and the Highland bonnet.
These are the two kinds, the flat (liena), and the point (viruch).
The latter has been nicknamed “Glengarry.” It owes its pecu-
liarity to the slit; something very like it may be seen in the
tombs of Egypt. The flat one has now generally got the addi-
tion of a checkered border, but that variation was introduced by
the Regent Murray. It is, however, still worn without the bor-
der, and then it is a variety of the Shashia. It has preserved
the two original colors, though it has exchanged them, the bon-
net being blue, and the tassel red. Among 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 cancel-
laria; he was smoking a cigar, and he was spitting on the floor:
—I recoiled from the triple abomination. I am perfectly aware
that an Englishman will see nothing extraordinary in the former
two, as they would not be so in himself, nor an American in the
third. I supposed he must be a renegade, but he was only an
Algerian who had lived some time at Gibraltar. Having served
at Constantinople, he opened at once his heart to me, and poured
forth complaints against the Moors. No one had shown him
civility, and he could not even get a bath (there are no public
ones). This unburdening of his mind was followed by a flow
of spirits: he sent for his uniform, displayed it, dressed in it,
and then sat down to dinner. While seated on a chair at ta-
ble, with a tumbler of wine in his raised hand, in walked two
attendants of Mustafa Ducaly, bearing the usual dish or tray of
kusscousoo. He was struck mute and motionless; the un-
touched 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, indigº
CHANGE of THE MOORISH UNIFORM, 189
nant 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 Ver-
sailles announced that the revolution was accomplished; a neck-
cloth sealed the fate of the khans of the Crimea; so button-
holes at Rabat seem to presage, not that a barrier is raised in
Morocco to the French, but that the scepter 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 It-
aly a dress which the ancestors of those Italians had borrowed
from their own : what would he have said now 3
The new uniform was of course of all sorts of tints and colors,
from chocolate to pink. -
0 HAPTER III.
THE JEWS AND JEWRY IN RABAT.
December 7th.
THE Cazaba, the fortress with the beautiful gate, has a sepa-
rate government, and is inhabited by a distinct people; a rem-
nant of a tribe, the Oudaiah, 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 caid, apprehending mischief,
took sanctuary in the tomb of a saint. The Sultan, Spartan-
like, would not violate it, but converted it into a prison. Pris-
ons, without doors or guards, were to be seen, in the time of
Muley Ismael; it being customary with him to order a culprit
to jail, 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 se-
lected the eastern angle of the town nearest to the great tower,
for the Jewry, and it is impossible to imagine any thing more
filthy. The narrow passages between the houses are divided
into heaps of dung, and holes of rats. The first house I visited
contained no less than fifty souls. It was a hollow square with
columns, and bright colors, 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 theater of
itself. I defy the most active and pains-taking imagination to
picture to itself a Moorish house; it is quite impossible to de-
scribe it, yet equally so to resist making the attempt: I will,
however, await a more fit occasion, or a more congenial humor.
From the roof (for like that of Rahab at Jericho, it was built
t
º GOVERNMENT OF THE JEWS. I91
on the city wall) we had a good view of the tower. On my ex-
pressing a desire to go to it, they uttered exclamation on excla-
mation, 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 ante-
cedent to the Greek rule, when the term synagogue was intro-
duced.
They are governed by a Gistar,” 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 vis-
ited, the chiefs of tribes are themselves responsible to the goab,
and are imprisoned in case of default: the people then pay to
save them. Among the Brebers the Jews wear arms, and
dress like the rest: a Jew going there will not be able to dis-
tinguish his co-religionists from the Mussulman. Each has his
patron, who resents an injury done to his Jew as if done to him-
self. So recently as the beginning of the seventeenth century,
there was a Jew prince in the mountains of Ref# An old Jew
gravely assured me that the river Sabation was near Tunis.
The difference of their treatment by the Moors may partly be
the result of their own manners: it could not be of ancient
date. The Jews invited the Moors over to Spain. On the
growth of Gothic power, the Jews and Moors were treated as
one people: they were persecuted and expelled together. They
found refuge in Barbary, and preferred it to any other country.
The Jewish ablutions consist in washing the hands and face.
The water is poured from a jug; the left hand performs the
* At Tangier the body of elders is called Mahamad; the members .
composing it, Yehedeems,
- President, Parnaas,
Reader, Haezan,
Treasurer, Gisbar,
Sacristan, Saamus,
Deean (Judge).
+ “Muley Arshid proceeded to a district called ‘The Mountain of the
Jew, because a Jew governed there, and because the Brebers, whom he
subjected to the law, respected him as their sovereign. After spreading
terror through the country, he massacred the Jew as unworthy of com-
manding Mohammedans, seized on his wealth, and rewarded his troops.”
--CHENIER, vol. ii. p. 112.
Å
192 JEWISH COMPARED WITH MUSSULMAN ABLUTIONS.
service to the right as the most honorable, 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 mosk, which
is not without its influence on their apartments. No traveler in
the East can have failed to remark the establishments attached
to the mosk for purification, &c., or the cleanliness and pecul-
iarities of the corresponding parts of private houses. In wash-
ing, the Mussulmans use only the left hand, and reserve the
right pure for eating. The Spaniard, Ali Bey, lost his life by
breaking this rule; master as he was of the language and the
religious ceremonies, his corns led to suspicion of his origin. He
was watched, and, being observed to use his right hand in
washing, when a Mussulman would not have used it, he was at
once proved to be an impostor feigning Islamism, and shot. I
was informed that the Jews are not more particular, and for the
portions of the house where water is constantly splashing about,
they do not use wooden pattens.” The relative position of
two races living intermixed, can not 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
C8,ULS63. -
The Jews of Barbary look down upon the Jews of Christen-
dom, 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
* In the towns of Morocco a primitive mode of trapping is in use, to
prevent the entrance of effluvia from drains and cess-pools. The orifice
is small, and a stone is fitted to it, and slipped off and on. It is the
closest application in a city of the injunction of Deuteronomyxxiii. 12, 13,
which the Moors rigidly follow, when they are in the country.
+ Country of the Erse, that is, the Celts. Erse, however, like Scot,
peculiar to the clans. I shall revert to this term in tracing their wan.
Crings.
TAXATION OF JEWS IN MORocco. 193
half their tax to the Moorish government. I saw one of the
collectors from Jerusalem, who told me that their people in
Morocco amounted to one million.*
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 intro-
duction; formerly, they presented to the sovereign a golden
hen with twelve chickens in enameled 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 sul-
tan being resident here, and for a time really the governor, sent
to them a young lion to keep, directing that a certain quantity
of meat should be given him daily, and fixing four hundred
dollars as his weir geldt in case of death. The Jews supplied
him so plentifully, that he died of indigestion. The prince then
sent a hyena, fixing six pounds of beef, “besides the bones,” as
his daily allowance, and settling his head-money at one thousand
dollars: the Jews began again by giving him ten pounds “be-
sides 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 suf.
fer 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
* Rating by the taxes they pay, the town population is only 74,000.
DUCATS,
Rabat, population 4000 . . . . . . 1000
Salee . e & - e e e º . 500
Tangier . e g -> º e * e ... 1000
Tetuan . • º º e º º e . 3000
Fez g * º • º sº & g . 5000
Mequiuez d s • • º • * . 3000
Mogadore º e º e o e e . 3000
Morocco . e & -> º º • e . 500
Arzila . & e © e e- o * . 500
Larache . & © º g º º º ... 1000
18,500
Numerous agricultural tribes of them are settled in the Atlas.
# It amounts to about half a dollar. At Tangier they were formerly
assessed 2000 ducats; the half was remitted when the dragomans of the
different consuls, who were the wealthiest men of the tribe, were ex-
empted from taxation. -
9
194 ANALO GOUS HIGHLAND AND JEWISH CUSTOMS,
been impossible, but for the dress, to have known the difference.
Besides, the Moors are not proficients in the art of “self-defense,”
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 an-
other, in case the brother-in-law did not exercise his privilege.
The slipper in the East being taken off in-doors, or if not, left
outside the apartment, is placed at the edge of the small carpets
upon which you sit, and is at hand to administer correction, and
is here used in sign of the obedience of the wife, and of the su-
premacy 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 among us the scepter
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, em
bracing whoever he meets, and shouting “Huy meneh " This
word has puzzled the traveler 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 folsiders, as Menes,
Minos, Maon, &c.; thence are derived a multiplicity of the
terms in common use,_manes, ammunition, mansion; manitoni,
month, maniac, &c., and of course the words in Greek and Latin,
through which they have reached us. Minola 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 can not spread
an umbrella; it would be pitching a tent:—he can not mount
on horseback; it would be going a journey :-he can not Smoke :
THE PHYLACTERY AND MYSTICAL VESTMENTS. 195
it would be lighting a fire :—he can not put one out, even if it
caught the house —he can not buy or bring any thing, nor speak
of any worldly concern, nor break the seal of a letter. w
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 Phy-
lacteries 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,” bound by long narrow straps,
one upon the forehead, and another upon the left arm, at the
time of prayer. The box is placed on the forehead as the seat
of the senses, and upon the arm nearest the heart, as the seat
of life. The strap is twisted seven times round the arm, three
times round the hand, and three times round the second finger.
Two peculiar knots are used for tying them, one to represent
Dalif, and the other Ud. The Mazonza (Mystery of the Cove-
nant) 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 amu-
lets are to the Moors; with, however, this difference, that they
protect against sin as well as against evil. One of the Talmud-
ists 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.’”
The º vestments have a very different interest, and are
so connected with the costume of this country that I shall re-
serve this subject till I come to the Moorish haik. The follow-
ing 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 Mazon:
Za. They are marked in every thing that they are the sons of
the most High Being.”
The indifference of the Jews to apostasy may seem incompat-
* The passages are, Exodus xiii. 1, 10, 11, 16; Deut. vi. 4–9 ; and
T)eut. xi. 13–21. -
# Eccles. iv. 17.
196 TREATMENT OF JEWS IN SPAIN.
ible with the instânce I have quoted in a former chapter: age
makes the difference. The Moors are not doctrinal: they pos-
sess 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
apostasy, 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 six-
teenth century as the Jews of Barbary do, she recalled the con-
dition 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 favor-
ites of monarchs, princes, and rulers—they were possessors of
land—they had most of the wealth and commerce of the differ-
ent kingdoms in their hands, and appear to have been twice as
numerous as their forefathers when they entered the Holy
Land.* Then did the persecutions here assume a Savage char-
acter unknown elsewhere. -
No cause has been assigned for the sudden and bitter spirit of
persecution which, at so late a period, arose against them. It
may have taken its rise in their being the fiscal agents for king,
bishop, monastery, and proprietor. First assailed from social
animosities, their manner of screening themselves (which was
afforded in no other country) aroused the inextinguishable hatred
of the Christians. That part of their history, suggested by
circumstances before me, is their facility in receiving baptism,
then, of course, relapsing; and there can be no doubt that many
of these nominally conforming Christians, and their children and
descendants, filled every grade of the priesthood, and occupied
the episcopal thrones of Spain. Out of this again grew the In-
quisition, 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 apostasy
was sought in the traces of blood. The processes of the Inqui-
sition were afterward imitated by parliament in England, when,
fabricating a church by law, it framed articles to catch con-
Sciences, as it now does resolutions to catch votes. The two
great events are the emancipation from bondage, and the con-
quest of a territory. Promises, rights, obligations, and com-
* See calculation in Lindo’s “Jews of the Peninsula.”
THE JEWISH AND MOHAMMEDAN RELIGIONS. 197
mandments, 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 differ-
ence with Mussulmans and Christians, whose bond is wholly re-
ligious, 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.”
The Jews have in common with the Mussulmans every thing
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 idol-
atry. 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 can not eat. The passage, therefore, from Ju-
daism to Islamism appears easy. It was among the Jews that
Islamism first and most rapidly spread: fifty thousand were
converted in one day, yet in its subsequent stages it has been by
them most uncompromisingly resisted. Millions of Christians
have become Mussulmans; of the Jews, no influx has taken
place. I know but of two cases of apparent conformity: the
one is a tribe at Thessalonica, who are called the Changed (Dun-
meh); the other a tribe in Suz, also known by the name of the
Changed. 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 ren-
egades.
* An Englishman at Gibraltar has recently become a Jew, and they
seem to have invented some strange process of admission, and subjected
him to a total abstinence from food during seven days. He gave up a
petty office he held in the police, which required him to work on Satur
day.
# The Mussulman is indeed enjoined by the Koran to eat without ask-
ing questions whatever is offered to him by a Christian, as well as a
Jew, but this they do not always practice.
+ “In Terjgient there is a people called the Medjehrahs, of Jewish ex-
traction, who, to escape death (?) embraced Islamism. They have the
peculiar Jewish features, and the Arabs say, their houses have the Jew-
ish smell. They live in quarters set apart for themselves, but they do
not intermarry : they are scribes and merchants, but are never raised to
the office of Caid or Imaum. They do not observe Friday as the Sab-
bath.”—DAVIDSON's Journal.
198 THE JEWS OF BARBARY.
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 never-
theless continued to live in the Jews' quarter with his wife and
child: instead of bringing up the child in his new faith, he sed-
ulously inculcated on him the observance of the law. The Jews
seemed 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 apostasy for which he was to be ab-
horred; and as the Jews took no offense at his religious profes-
sion, so the Moors took none at his domestic habits.
The Mussulmans accept the practices of the Jews, but not so
the latter. Both cut the throats of animals, and allow “the
blood to run like water on the earth;” but the Mussulman does
not inspect the bowels of the ox or the sheep to determine
whether it be kaser (imperfect) or tareſa (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 ab-
stain 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 amalgama-
tion 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 else-
where. The burden on him is greater, and religious support
less. They are Sadducees, if I am to judge by the conversations
I have i. with some ; and have no idea of believing anything.
In proportion to the association of a system of religion with
domestic matters is it enduring. Those of Menu and Confucius
stand, while the more theoretic one of Zoroaster has passed
away. That of Menu presents not one, but a hundred different
examples; for as many castes as there are, so many systems
may there be said to be, and these are all based on injunctions
respecting food and ceremonial. Confucius's system is the sim-
plest 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
CULINARY CONTRIVANCE OF THE JEWS. 199
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
etiquet; 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 traveling 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 honor belongs, never-
theless, 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 con-
science, and reconciled the Israelite's predilections with his
scruples. He is forbidden to make or touch fire on the sabbath;
he desires to have a hot breakfast, dinner, and supper on that
day; and he obtains these meals without infringing that law.
He has invented a fire, which, without mending or touching,
will last over the twenty-four hours, and a pot which will furnish
out of its single belly, a whole meal, and three meals in the day,
perfectly cooked in the morning, and not overdone at night.
This is the Dafina,” 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 Indiá under-
stand 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 naft, 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),
* Whence the Greek Act rvov.
200 - JEWISH DISHES.
eggs, beef, rice, marrow, rasped biscuit, parsley, marjoram, nut-
meg, pepper, salt, and sometimes neat's feet and sweetbreads.
Produce—First course.—Top. Eggs in the shell. Bottom,
stewed potatoes, sweet and common. -
Second course.—Top. Rice and marrow sausages. Middle,
Boulli. Bottom. Meat sausages.
Third course.—One large dish of stewed grabangos. -
Jºecipe.—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 introduc-
tion, but the sweet potato is an ancient produce of the country.
The English potato is called Roman, as coming from Europe.

CHAPTER IV.
THE BAIRAM.
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
Bajram, 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 de-
serted the city. Selam Sallied out in search of some one who
should pass for a guard, aud found a soldier belonging to Tan-
gier 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
toward the tower, we turned through the gardens to the right,
hoping to get through the second wall, or to see the Bairam
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 re-
pair : there were no staircases. All chance of getting a glimpse
of the ceremony was now lost, and we rambled along through
the gardens; but the ignorance of our elected guards, strangers,
like ourselves, as to what was or was not taboo, was worse than
the severity of our regular keepers. They were at every turn,
doubting, fearing, warning, objecting. Our course was like that
of a vessel feeling her way over sand-banks: One moment it was
“starboard,” the next “hard-a-port.” “There it is bad,” would
Our pilot exclaim, and ever and anon we were laid all aback,
with the “breakers ahead” of “Saint's Tomb.” We worked on
till we came to a gate in the wall facing the east, and issuing
forth, beheld another city. This could be no other than the
Shallah, of which we had heard so often, and from which spring-
water was daily brought. Neither Christian nor Jew is allowed
so much as to approach it. Profiting by the occasion, I hast-
ened on before my companions’ fears could rally, or their remon-
strances be urged.
The gate, or rather barbican (for the Moorish word is required
--. 9%
302 - A SURPRISE.
to convey the Moorish thing), is peculiarly constructed and orna-
mented. The arch is the horse-shoe, pointed like the Gothic.
The vivid colors 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
5f 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.
While I was making a sketch of the gate, the Moors came
up beseeching me on their account not to enter; they proposed
to go in and report: they soon came out, exclaiming, “Holy
Place;” “Saints' Tombs.” I cut the matter short by passing
the portal and ascending a stair that led to the top of the gate.
The prospect thence was enchanting: the ground broke away
Immediately in front as we looked eastward, the masses of red
ruin cresting the heights on both sides, and running down to
the river. Beyond spread the plain of emerald green, with the
river meandering through it, and the landscape closed with long
waves of sand-hills 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
endeavored 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 sul-
tan; 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 re-
turning toward Rabat. At the gate Selam overtook me, calling
out, “Run, run wild man gone for gun.” We had a fair start,
but I could not condescend to hurry beyond a steady pace:
Selam relieved himself by mumbling dismal sounds close to my
ear, in his broken English: “You bring me and other Moors
into trouble; I do your bidding instead of master's and sultan's,
and be at Bairam in my new clothes. I be shot outside like a
dog, or flogged inside like a Jew.” At every moment we ex-
pected to meet a crowd returning, for the old fanatic, on reach-
ing the town, could raise the people upon us in an instant.
AN ESCAPE. 203
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 mo-
ment, 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 Bairam-gate, so as to intercept us before
we could be reshipped back from Salee. In the mean time, we
espied a boat belonging to a Portuguese schooner: we hailed
it, got on board of it, and were speedily landed and houséd at
the consulate. The soldier made off to Salee, vowing never to
set eyes on Rabat again, and Selam, enjoining profound secrecy,
hastened to his master, whom he found with the caïd. Scarcely
had he told his story when the people from Shallah appeared.
Fortunately, every body was busy with his own affairs, and the
caid 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: sancti-
fying 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 Bajram has passed off most happily : the day was splen- .
did; thesgathering 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
caid 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
204 THE SULTAN AT THE BAIRAM.
for him. The firing of his regiment with two pieces, was quicker
than that of the other with their ten. The Sultan went up to
him and complimented him, saying, “God prosper you;” upon
which all the grandees did the same. Mustafa has also come
in for his share of good things. Eight field-pieces which he had
offered as a present, were refused as such, in these words: “I
want you to become fat and not lean, because you are my friend,
and now I make you the head and master of the merchants in
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 Bairam; they had
come for that purpose, carrying with them the offerings of the
capital. Two of these accompanied the saint, and presented the
strongest contrast that could be imagined with the fanatics from
whose balls and daggers we had just before escaped. They were
affable, curious, facile, and lively: they had never seen the sea
before, and admired it like children. They explained their visit
by saying they wanted to know what a Christian was like, never
having seen one. When I told them about Leo Africanus and
El Edressi, the geographers who on the fall of the dynasty had
taken refuge in Sicily, where his history was written, they were
exceedingly delighted. They invited me to Fez; and when I
spoke of the difficulties of a Christian going there, they declared
they would answer for me with their heads. They spend to-
morrow in attendance on the sultan ; the day following they are
to repeat their visit here. .
I must not omit another important personage, no less than
the Sultan's buffoon : this, indeed, is the third visit I..have re-
ceived 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 muez-
zin 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. º
.The strangeness of this people, instead of wearing off, increases
with acquaintance—so much ease and facility at one moment, is
ACCOUNT BY LEO AFRICANUS. 205
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 forget-
fulness of the existence of France: how would it shock the pride
of the victor to find that the defeated have already forgotten Isly
and Mogadore When I saw to-day the dense mass of the tens
of thousands tranquilly performing their Bairam, I thought of
the Greeks celebrating their Olympic games with the Persians
at Thermopylae. - -
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 Marine 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 meager works written on Africa in the sixteenth
century. - - -
The town of Salee, as described by Leo Africanus, would
scarcely be recognized 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 situated upon the sea-shore, within half
a mile of Rabat, both which town and the river Barugrag Sepa-
rateth 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 largeporches; and at the end of every
row of shops is an arch which (as they say) is to divide one oc-
cupation from another. And to say all in a word, here is noth-
ing wanting which may be required, either in a most honorable
city, or in a flourishing commonwealth. Moreover, here resort
all kinds of merchants, Christians, and others. Here the Geno-
ese, Venetians, English, and Low Dutch used to traffic. The in-
habitants 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
206 ESTIMATE BY THE RENEGADES
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 recov-
ered from the enemy, yet a world it was to see what a wonder-
ful alteration both of the houses and of the state of government
happened. Many houses of this town are left désolate, 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 use-
ful. 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 unfavorable 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
among 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 dis-
ciplined troops. If the emperor, said one of them, had had
five thousand disciplined men, he never would have received M.
Roche.
I said, that if the emperor had known how to transact a
matter of business, he never would have been insulted by the
presence of that person, and that one hundred thousand men
would not give him that knowledge. I instanced Spain and
Algiers as evidence of the power of resistance of a country des-
titute, not of regular troops only, but of a government. I add:
ed, that a regular army facilitated invasion, but not defense, and
generally proved the means of rendering a people an easy prey.
OF ABD-EL-KAIDIR. 207
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 valor, 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 es-
C2,062.
ºom one who had been for seven years the companion of
Abd-el-Kadir, I give the following incidents. After the destruc-
tion 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 neg-
lect the opportunity to sow divisions between the tribes, and
gave him arms; ammunition, and twenty thousand dollars.
With these means he defeated his rival, who, in like manner,
came to the French, and said, “You have strengthened my rival
against me; deal fairly now by me.” They required that he
should acknowledge himself the vassal of France; but this pro-
posal 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 in-
vested 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 ex-
posed 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 car-
ried on in French, and M. Lascases, a French advocate, who,
compromised in the affairs of July, had taken refuge with Abd-
208 MOORISH INTEREST FOR, CIRC ASSIA.
el-Kadir, entered the tent to implore them not to speak so loud.
He thus became acquainted with the transaction. (He after-
ward came to Morocco.) The Jew was quieted, and induced
to remain and sup with the renegade. Next morning the rene-
gade had left, and in the tent the Jew was found dead. At
Mascara the renegade took one of Abd-el-Kadir's people to ac-
company him, as if proceeding somewhere by his orders. On
arriving at the French posts, he clapped a pistol to his compan-
ion'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 em-
barrassment, 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 in-
quiries they made respecting the successes of the Circassians, of
which vague rumors had reached them through Egypt. One
of these men had been with the Ai Fatu, one of the most pow-
erful 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 different tribes or families; they then advance sim-
ultaneously on all sides, with bags and hurdles to fill up the
ditch, and make a bridge to the rampart. Many fall, but those
who follow march on. If any hang back, their wives are taken
from them, and they are not allowed afterward 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 Mohammed left
this world, he delivered to the Turks a standard, and to the
Arabs a standard, telling them 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 Mohammed came to
the Arabs, and said: “Where is your flag º' and they all
called out, “Here it is—here it is ſ” and each man put his

AN ARAB STORY. - 209
hand in his breast, but the pieces would not fit: so Mohammed
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 º". They answered, “We have laid it by ;"
and he said, “Bring it forth.” So they called the elders to-
gether, but one was wanting. So he said to them, “This is a
pretense, for you have lost the flag;” and they said, “The elder
is gone to look after his flocks—an elder of the people can not
be wanting. Come again to-morrow.” So Mohammed came the
next day, and there were the forty elders with the forty keys;
so they opened the chest and brought forth the flag; and Mo-
hammed said, “Good and faithful servants, the empire is taken.
from the Arabs and given unto you!”
tº CHAPTER V.
THE SULTAN : HIS COMMERCIAL SYSTEM.
- - Babat, Dec. 12th.
I FIND it was not the Sultan who went to the mosk last
Friday, but his son. To-day I saw the real potentate over-
shadowed 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 depend-
ing 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
mosk, his appearance to-day, and his look of health, have oc-
casioned great rejoicings. Selam said to me, “Moors not like
English—look much to king.—English king die; no troubles
Gibraltar, Malta—Moorish king die; all cut one another's
throats.”
Muley Abderachman has reigned twenty-three years. He
had been employed both as governor and minister, and was as-
siduous 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 gov-
ernment 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 estab-
lished, 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 king-
dom. Wise in small matters, he is foolish in great ones; and
M. CHIENIER ON MOROCCO. 211
his merits render tolerable, or his astuteness sustains, the false
and ruinous commercial system he has introduced.
The mountain Breber tribes recognize 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 pre-
carious: when he punishes, it is by abandoning the tribe to the
vengeance of some neighboring 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 unap-
proachable coast; on the east and south an impassable desert.
. It has no neighbors except the Regency of Algiers. Its stand-
ing policy was to be at war with Europe. Muley Ismael, visit-
ing 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
3rinces of this land formerly assumed the lofty title of Emiral
Moslemin ; that they have never ceased to claim the chieftain-
ship of the Arab race, and have never condescended to sign a
treaty with the Sultans of Constantinople. Holding the Turks
as usurpers of the Califate, and intruders in Africa,” they stand
in an anomalous position: they are Sunis who opposed the
claims of Ali, and their royal house derives, or pretends to
derive, its origin from Ali. Muley Abderachman has, however,
shown no sign, in dealing with the foreign difficulties that have
befallen him, of that dexterity which he has evinced in domestic
matters. In listening to the details of his weakness and pusil-
lanimity, as shown on recent occasions, I have been reminded
of Louis Philippe.}
* At the time of the treaty of Kaniordgi the Moorish Sultan, however
addressed Louis XIV. on the danger of Europe to so powerful a combi-
nation directed against Turkey. & - .
+ In the terrors and alarms which followed the treaty of July 1840,
212 ADMINISTRATION OF MOROCCO.
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,” 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 engage-
ments, he has only to go to the emperor and borrow, and thus
again heap up the mass of engagements, he never can meet.
He is encouraged by the knowledge, that the emperor never
calls a creditor to account;-the settlement comes only on his
dying day. It is not trifling sums that are at stake. The debt
of the English, agent at Mogadore, is between forty and fifty
thousand pounds.
These concessions of credit, the loans of money and the grant-
ing 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 paralizes 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 Mchcmct 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 familiarized with them, they are too mon-
strous 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 cus-
toms as the Moors, and so little disposed to imitate Europe, were
not easily brought under on such a point, and their recent his-
tory 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
one of his ministers thus describes the scene at the council:—“Nous
étions dix, et mous n'en Savons pas plus l'un que l'autre, et il y avoit le
roi, qui n'en savoit pas plus que nous, et qui sanglottait.” . (The above
was written while Louis Philippe was still held to be the “ablest man in
France,” and the “wiliest politician in Europe”) -
* Those who pay ready money have 25 per cent. discount allowed
them. This is not the form, but the substance of the tariff regulations.
ge
POLICY OF THE SULTA.N. 213
on merchants, and which the Mussulmans” (the term is analo-
gous to “the country” with us) “regard as contrary to custom
and religion, were considerations that to so great and so reli-
gious 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
octrol placed on commodities per load, as they enter and go
out of towns, or pass ferries; a stamp was put on woolen 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 an-
cient and modern, the ancient being the tenths, the capitation
tax (tribute) of the Jews, the profits of coining, arbitrary impo-
sitions; the modern being the obnoxious duties and octroi. He
highly commends the ancient system : the tithes he considers
profitable to the government, and not onerous to the people (of
course, he is mentally instituting the comparison with Europe,
because paid in kind. “He who grows ten bushels of corn pays
one, without any retrospect or inquiry concerning a more
abundant harvest, which presents an example of justice among
barbarous states well worthy the imitation of the more civilized.”
The collection was easy, because, being united in bodies, they
watched each other, and prevented fraud. Being paid in kind,
the Sultan had magazines in the great provincial towns to store
these revenues, and sent to market the residue, after maintain-
ing his palaces, soldiers, and dependents; 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 mer-
chants, 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 paralized and sub-
jected to a foreign influence, which they can not 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 an-
cient well-being of so many states and empires, which were
great without parliamentary votes and political economists.
C HAPTER WI.
THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE IN RABAT.
THE civil government of Rabat is vested in the caid, 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 sup-
planted the original municipal government; the Mehatzib, an
officer appointed to fix the price of provisions, and to stamp
goods publicly sold; and the Wadir 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 extin-
guishing, 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 caid. The office is well known in Turkey, but here he
belongs to no independent body, and exercises but slender influ-
ence; 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 country) 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 in-
vested with power to depose or otherwise chastise the offending
clergy. Immediately upon this arch-priest's election, he is pos-
sessed 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 per-
Sonages of the neighborhood. This eminent churchman is
seldom seen in public but at this exercise. For, to make him-
JUDICIAL PROCEEDINGS of THE ALCALIBs, 215
self the more reverenced, he affects retirement,” spending his
hours in the study of the Alchoran, and in resolving such cases
as the laity present him, who esteem his resolutions as infallible;
and this, with a careful inspection into the deportment of the
inferior clergy, doth constitute the office and government of the
Alcalib. As for his revenues, they are suitable to his condition;
and as to his life, it is austere and reserved, he affecting a pecul-
iar 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, prece-
dents, reports, moth-eaten statutes, &c.; but everything is deter-
mined according to the fresh circumstances of the fact, and the
proof of which is alledged. 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 sus-
pected 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 can not otherwise receive purgation: as for the
Christian and Jew, they are suffered to give testimony according
to the rites and customs of their own religions, but the Moors are
not forward to put them upon this trial, as doubting that fear of
punishment should tempt them to perjury; and those who are
thereunto accessory (according to the Moresco principle), are
involved in the guilt.
“In pleas of debt it is required that the reality of the debt be
first manifest, which being done before the Alcaldee, he signifies
it to the Almocadem of the cavila where the débtor lives, who,
* Elque hoy vive en Tetuan es un hombre en el exterior modestissimo,
muy mortificado en los ojos ; humilde en las palabras, curitativo con los
* y nunca permiti a sus manos el contacto physico de el dinero–
ESCON, Historical de Marrueccos, l. i. p. 25.
216 ADMINISTRATION OF
upon his signification, commands a present payment to be made;
but if the debtor refuse, or be unable, to give the creditor satisfac-
tion, the Almocadem remits him to the albabs 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 recapitula-
tion of some of the laws of the Koran, which direct that he shall
preserve the empire, administer speedy justice, protect the inno-
cent, destroy the wicked ; and so far from countenancing and
keeping near his sacred person any adulterer, that he shall pun-
ish 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 toward the
poor, which is an abomination before God. He is told that if he
breaks these articles, he shall be punished as he ought to punish
others.” -
These extracts will show that Morocco is not now without
some rule for the present, and some respectable vestiges of the
past. There are other functionaries of the city, whose origin
ascends to an earlier period than the Mussulman times. They
are public notaries, called Edules; no doubt the Roman edile.
Before them sºles 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 state-
ment of facts, or state in what they differ. Then fellow signa-
tures 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. Fur-
nished 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.” This is
evidently the origin of the Spanish mode of procedure by Escri-
banos. Among the Spaniards the oral proceedings are sup-
* No word has given rise to wilder speculation than Carta, paper
The word here is caret. -
JUSTICE IN MoRocco. 217
pressed, 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 aberra-
tions, 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 condemna-
tion 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 characterized the Mussulman gov-
ernment in Spain, and made Algiers a model for quick, gratui-
tous, 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 caid : his
appeal is rejected unless he brings as witnesses those who were
present; but he has the power of compelling their presence—he
has but to cry out, “I seek justice,” and every one within hearing
must quit whatever occupation they are engaged in, and secure
the offender. If they refuse or neglect, they become immediately
principals, and the injured person has his remedy against each
and all. - -
It is to this rule—an extended “view of frank pledge,”—
that the tranquillity and security of the towns among so tur-
bulent a population is to be attributed; and whatever partiality
there may be in governors, there is no apprehension of false tes-
timony among the people. 4.
The office of king, in Morocco, is specially that of Grand Jus-
ticiary. The king himself is the fountain of justice. There is
the utmost ſreedom 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

* At Mequinez, a man having found something in the streets, caused it
to be proclaimed, in order that the owner might come and receive his
property. Muley Ismael sent for him and thus addressed him, “You
do not deserve death, for you are not a robber; but as I wish all my sub-
jects to know that the proper way to have things returned to their right-
ful owners is by leaving them where they are, I must make an example
of you.”
you 10
218 MOORISH SAINTS.
his gate, however humble, of whatever race or faith, and pro-
nounces the words, “The God of Justice,” he is admitted to his
presence; the Order is given for the council to be filled; the sec-
retaries appear in their places, and the petitioner states his or
her case, and justice is immediately done. While he has been
here, two hours have been daily consecrated to this duty; and
this I imagine to be the secret of those constant peregrinations
of the Emperor of Morocco, and their extraordinary effect in
quelling insurrections and quieting the country; while, by the
heavy exactions with which they are accompauied, they might
appear calculated to produce the very contrary effect. A “pro-
gress of the king,” is the constant specific in Morocco for dis-
turbance—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 with-
out mention of the saints. What constitutes a Saint no one can
tell: they are of both sexes and all ages, of every class and
rank, from the madman to the philosopher, from the fanatic to
the infidel, and from the mischievous and wicked to the humane
and benevolent. I met a man with wool on his head, and a
long stave in his hand, chanting forth a ditty at the top of his
strained voice. This was a saint, and the soldiers made me
move aside, for fear he should make a rush at me. They took
the man for a madman; he was none. There was some time
ago at Tangier, a female saint, who went about entirely naked;
every morning she took from the market-people wood, and lay-
ing 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.*
* I refer to the orgies practiced among the polished Carthaginians, and
better known as belonging to the worship of the Cyprian Venus, and
MOORISH SUPERSTITIONS. 219
Since the introduction of Islamism, the superstitions of a
country, in early times the most fertile in monsters and chime-
ras, 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 them-
selves into the religious forms of a people, whose civil govern-
ment is derived from its sacred writings, the distinction between
the doctrines of the one, and revolutions of the other, is effaced,
and thus do we find the names of dynasties derived from the
denomination of sects.
All the great dynasties, Save one, have begun with Saints or
preachers. Fez and Morocco were built by followers of teachers
who settled around their cells to listen to their words, and share
in the repose that resulted, if not from the justice they adminis-
tered, 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 designa-
tion 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 guaranty 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 se-
cret which protects them against the bite of the most venomous
serpent.” An exhibition of this kind I have failed to see, this
not being the season of the year. They attribute diseases to
the presence of evil spirits—they fear the evil eye, and against
these the remedy is writing on pieces of paper and amulets, a
practice derived from or connected with the writing by the Jews
of portions of Scripture on paper, binding it on the foreheads
and arms, and inserting them in holes in the door-posts. Any
body performs this service of writing on pieces of paper, and in
which are reported by credible witnesses as of public occurrence at no
remote period in Barbary, on the part alike of male and female Saints.
* These are the Psylli of the ancients. The same gift was enjoyed by
the Marses in Italy, and the Opheogines in Cyprus possessed it; the for-
mer pretended to derive it from the enchantress Circe, the latter from a
virgin of Phrygia united to a Sacred Dragon—See A. Gell. Noct. Attic,
l. ix. c. 13, et l. xvi. c. 2; Strabo, l. xiii.; AElian De Nat. Animal. i. 1. c.
57, et l. xii. c. 39.
220 MODE OF OPERATION BY THE NECROMANCERS,
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 differ-
ent. 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 odors, 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, dif-
ferent incense was offered to different divinities. Wervain had
magical power for Greeks, Romans, and Druids; it has so still
for cats. A plant is particularly mentioned—Cynospastes,”—by
the smoke of which epilepsy was cured, and demons were ex-
pelled. The plant Barras, was similarly used by the Hebrews.f
It is supposed to be one of the Algae, which contains prussic
acid. Among 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 recov-
ery 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
Tolma 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.

* AElian de Nat. Animal. 1. iv. c. 27. It was also called Aglaophotis,
and has a flame-colored flower, supposed at night to emit flashes. It is
the Atropa Belladonna.
f Josephus, De Bello Jud. I. vii. c. 25.
THE TOLMA AND THE POSSESSED JEW. 221
A party of Jews were amusing themselves in a garden near
Tangier; one of them, a butcher, fell into a pond. When he
was drawn out, he was in violent contortions—he had been seized
by a spirit. A Tolma was sent for. Having cut a reed of the
length a man could hold between the palms of his hands with
his arms stretched out, he made it to be so held by one of the
party; then addressing the devil, asked who he was. The devil,
speaking by the mouth of the man in convulsions, answered,
that he would tell him neither his name, nor that of his tribe,
nor that of his father, nor that of his mother, but only that he
was a Jew. The Tolma asked, why he had entered into this
man 3 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 Sud-
denly the hands of the man who held the reed closed together,
and, at the same moment, the possessed expired.
When the incantation is powerful enough to subdue the spirit,
he implores liberty to be released, and to go into some other
body, and then the enchanter will not suffer him until he has
bound himself by an oath never to enter the same man again,
nor to come near a certain place, and then asks him whether he
chooses to go out by fire or water. A basin of the one and the
other is accordingly brought, into one of which the spirit is sup-
posed 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 — - º
“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 any
thing so explanatory of the accountin 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 every thing
within his reach: in some cases he has been known to destroy
children. This poor creature ate several pieces of paper, and
222 CURE OF ONE POSSESSED.
bits of lime and dirt ; but when the words ‘Sidi Benel Abbás,
Sidi Abd-el-Kádir,’ &c., were pronounced, his hands, which had
been firmly closed, were opened: his companions then called
upon Abū 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.”
CHAPTER WII.
CONNECTION BETWEEN MAURITANIA AND AMERICA. &
. Rabat, Dec. 17th.
THE thermometer, in a room where the sun never shines,
stands nearly at temperate. During twenty days, we have only
had two days of bad weather : it is hot in the sun and cold at
night. The days and nights are of resplendent beauty, with al-
most always a cloudless sky toward evening. The landscape
up the river has a delicacy of coloring 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 mix-
ture 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 gar-
den a branch of a pear-tree in full blossom, though the rest of the
tree was quite dead; and flocks of swallows were disporting in
the air, making, by our proverb, a summer of December. Yet,
during this time, there have been disasters upon the coast : the
schooner with which we were in company has been entirely lost
at Dar-el-Baïda.”
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 can not 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
* Another vessel was off the port twice, and twice driven back to Gib-
raltar. * * :
224 EUROPEAN EDUCATION FOR MOORS.
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 endeavored to represent to them the distinc-
tion between sciences and the manners of the people who might,
in any particular age, be scientific; that, if they could take the
science of Europe naked, and without the plague-garments in
which it was at present dressed, viz. our ideas, morals, and man-
ners, 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 instruc-
tion, 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 every thing by her govern-
ºnent, 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 imple-
ments through which we obtained possession of India, and at
this moment retain it. The English government itself had noth-
ing 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
THE MEXICANS AND PHOENICIANS. 225
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 extermi-
nated. -
To primitive races, national genealogy is above all things at-
tractive; and the question was raised as to the possible blood
relationship between themselves and the Mexicans, through the
Phoenicians. I will not rehearse the conversation, but can not at
once dismiss the subject.
That Western world may have had its beginning, its progress,
its multifarious phases, its great existences, its long life, and its
decay in the same way that we have had ours, without there be-
ing a necessary connection, 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 inter-
course, on the score of insuperable obstacles in the navigation
of the oceans on either side, appears to me to be, in a philo-
sophic 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 Pa-
cific 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, among the Greeks, of a
Phoenician 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 in-
tercourse, are still further removed. It was not, however, until
I entered the room which I here occupy, that I perceived direct
proof of this connection. 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 rivaling (by
the confession of Humboldt) those of the Romans; pottery,
equaling, and resembling, that of the Etruscans; resemblances
10% - -
226 RESEMBLANCES BETWEEN MEXICANS AND PHOENICIANS.
of costume, as with the head-dress of the Etruscans; instru-
ments of music, the double flute of the Curians—do not go so
far to indicate a connection, 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 re-
quire a vigorous imagination to explain by the doctrine of coin-
cidence. Gladiators contending with the Retiarius, derived by
the Latins from the Etruscans;–tombs, like the Etruscan, con-
structed of enormous heaps of earth, upon a basement of ma-
sonry; mortar, that most remarkable discovery of the Phoenicians;
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 char-
acters reported, so that some people who used letters must have
set foot upon that continent. The buildings are almost all
turned to the cardinal points. Mention, in two instances, is
made of glass and of enamel. -
The Mexicans had baths. However magnificent their public
monuments, these were not on that scale which correspond with
the Roman and the Greek Thermae, 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. & *z -
If Phoenicians found their way across the Atlantic, they
would have taught, among 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 especially preserved the usages of the
ancient world. Putting together these things, with the fact that
the Phoenicians were the navigators exclusively to the West and
to the East, I can not 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 im-
OLEANLINESS WITHOUT SOAP. 227
portance appears of things held to be trivial. One feels in con-
tact 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 com-
pare it to a museum of antiquities, whether in what they wear;
what they do; the houses they inhabit; the names they bear;
or the words they speak;-all is as it was of old. Here, too,
are the rudiments of what we find in other forms elsewhere.
What can be more striking than to be called, as I was myself
to-day, a Nazarene ! the first title applied to the Apostles by
the Jews.
By the exclusion of atmospheric air, the most delicate flower
may be handed down to future ages. Here a similar process
seems to have been applied to man: the cause of change is ex-
cluded 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 3 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 ani-.
mals, altering their very nature. Yet I could not tell when it
was discovered, or who were the inventors. Why should it
alone be without honor, or parentage % Whence its name?”
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—
cither their soap has traveled castward 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, Sabein,
which does not mean to “soap, but, to ‘wash.' The Arabs did
* Beckman derives it from an old German Word sepe. The German
word is at present Seife, evidently the same as the French swif, and the
English Suet.
228 GAZULE, OR SOAP-STONE.
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 decom-
posed flints or soap-stone: it is called Gazule, or Razule; it pol-
ishes the skin, makes it soft, and gives it luster. It abounds on
the river Saboo, 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 among
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 honor to the Gaulish race,
looked upon as barbarous, that the Romans should have taken
from them beds and matresses, jewelry, and soap. “Soap.”
says Pliny, “is an invention of the Gauls to color the head yel-
low: 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.” &
Greatingenuity 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 mix-
ture 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 of ashes, niter and crinoline earth.
* Nat. Hist, b. 28.
+ Bochart imagines that the Phoenicians had given the name to the
island, Gum-ohal, signifying “fossa Smegmatis.” It was found in Thes-
saly, Lycia, Sardis and Umbria. Avicenna calls it Al Siraph, from a
town on the Persian gulf. Dioscorides says, gall prepared with miter and
earth of Cineola, is the best detergent. The ancients knew the sapona-
ceous root with which in India shawls and muslins are washed, and which
the Persians, Turks, and Arabs use for the hair, and otherwise, where
great delicacy is required. It was from a Persian word called Asleg, by
the Arabs Condus, by the Greeks orpoã0tov, whence groov0íšstv. Pliny
călls it (Nat. Hist. l. xix. c. 3), “radiculam et herbam lanariam.” The
detersives used by the ancients were various, but were nearly the same
as those in present use among the Mohammedans. They were called by
the general name of Smegmata. A common detersive was bean meal,
which the Romans called lomentum, and a paste from lupine flour. Galen
(De Aliment. Facul. i.) says, “Cutis sordes fabacea farina manifestè de-
terget” (bean flour certainly takes off filth from the skin), on which ac-
count procuresses and dainty women anciently made great use of it: they
Smeared it on the face, and it was said to remove freckles and pimples,
Dioscorides goes so far as to assert that it will render cicatrices of a uniform
ANCIENT SUBSTITUTES FOR SOAP. 229
The Romans, like the French at present, lessieved their dirty
linen.” * -
color with the rest of the skin. It stops the blackness arising from blows.
Lomentum will take away wrinkles, if we are to believe Martial (l, iv.)
Tumento rugas ventris quod condere tentas.
Pliny says (l. xxviii. c. 25), that lupine flour made into a paste with win-
egar, will, if smeared on in the bath, remove pimples and itching, and
dry up running sores; that a decoction of lupines will cure freckles and
brace the skin.
* Pliny, xxviii. 51.
CHAPTER VIII.
D OMESTIC ARCHITECTURE OF THE MOORS.
THE domestic arrangements differ here from other Mussulman
countries. The house is not divided into Harem and Salambw.
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 gynae-
ceum 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 domicils of the in-
habitants of the cities into inhospitable abodes. I went to-day
to Mike Brettel's, on invitation, expressly for the purpose of see-
ing his house, which is just finished. I can see nothing more
remarkable at Fez or Morocco, so I shall endeavor 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 colors
like an Egyptian tomb: there was a knocker—nay, two—one for
the folding-doors, and another for the wicket; the upper one
might have been made in London. We knocked : the knock is
neither a single tap, nor a postman's double rap, but a double
knock, though neither quite so loud or long as those with which
the squares of London were wont to resound. The door not be-
ing 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 color 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
dº
A TEA-PARTY IN RABAT. 231
houses and court-yard 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 be-
fore him. Seeing me busied in taking off my shoes, he came
forward entreating me to enter with them on ; for it is common
to imagine that Europeans make it a point of honor 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 manufac-
ture for which Rabatis celebrated. It is brass chased in arabesques
and inlaid in colors. At Mecca they work in the same way.
He rang the bell for hot water and sugar, which were brought,
the one by the olive maiden already mentioned, the other by
one whom I might have taken for her, had her tunic not been
white and red. The hot water was brought in a common tin
kettle, the sugar in a japanned epaulette box. The two little
slaves having discharged their office, returned and stood with
crossed arms against the white wall, which cast forth as from the
field of a phantasmagoria, their plump, symmetrical and dark
limbs. They seemed to have been sent on the part of the female
household to do all the work of gazing on the strangers; and if
I had to judge by them of those we did not see, Mike Brettel's
harem, for beauty, originality, and sprightliness, had lille to
fear from competition, far or near. e -
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
232 A MOORISH ROOM.–MOORISH ARMS.
niche struck through the thickness of the wall leveled inside;
this feature took the apartment out of the commonplace. On
the floor was spread one of their beautiful mats; on the three
sides were matresses covered with Turkey carpets, and cush-
ions 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 yel-
low. 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 Am-
bassadors, in Owen Jones's Alhambra; but the roof, instead of
being in colored stucco, was in carved and painted wood.
There was no gilding or silvering—the effect was worked out
entirely from dead color. 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 reappear in never-ending forms, ever pleas-
ing, 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 colors, all ornamented in form
like the ceiling. It was a thing not to live in, but to gaze at.
We next got our host to permit us to examine the arms.
One was of Tetuan manufacture, one of Fez; the first spirally
fluted on the outside: both barrels were inlaid with gold, were
four feet and a half long, and ornamented at the muzzle like
old pieces of ordnance. The mounting was silver, ornamented
with the black figures which in the East are called Sabat. The
locks were cumbersome, the work intricate, and all outside.
There is a covering to the powder in the pan like the old pieces
of the French Gardes du Corps. The price was twenty-five and
thirty-five dollars: I should have guessed them at double. The
daggers were in no way remarkable; but the cases, handles, and
cords were very rich : one sword rang like a Damascus blade.
Their swords are long and straight, slightly bent toward the point,
and have a heavy, thick handle with a peculiar guard.”
* There is in Meyrick's collection an old Highland sword with the
Same guard.
ECONOMY OF A MooRISH KITCHEN. 233
The only other piece of furniture was a Turkish sofra, or
small hexagonal stool inlaid in tortoise-shell 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 Ro-
mans, 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 haik
fell off, displaying a rich blue and red vesture, while the vol-
umes 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 colors; no artist—no, nor even tailors;
and yet there was his costume—there was mine. I attempted
to convey this to him: he said, “Our fathers have left us many
good things, and we are content with them.”
Proceeding on our inspection, we passed through a succession
of small courts and corridors, as if we were in the under story
of a palace. There were four houses joined together by doors
broken through the wall: these houses are fitted one against
the other like so many boxes, the lights coming from the court
in the center 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, ornament-
ed with colors. 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 dimen-
sions of amphorae, 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 hospital-
ity. One of the court-yards, with an adjoining kitchen and
234 DESCRIPTION OF THE WOMEN's APARTMENT.
store, was appropriated to cooking food, to be sent out to
friends and strangers.
We now entered a court which rivaled 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 center of each of the faces. A narrow
cornice in colored 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 center 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 matresses piled and
covered with rich stuffs, and cushions, serving for divans by day
and beds by night. The open space in the center 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 colors.
The embroidery on the cushions, &c., is unlike any thing else.
There are patches of color as though formed by a succession of
the palms of an Indian shawl, one row blue, another red, and so
On : the stitches are long, and the work looks like satin with
bindings, each long stitch being followed by a short one. There
were fastened to the wall, and projecting from it, those many-
colored 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 sleep-
ing apartment had portals like a church,” their hinges and
sockets were on the outside ; the large slabs were of arbor-vitae,
soft as velvet to the touch, and rubbed over with red ocher.
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
jewelry. 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 center of each of which there was a
* “The first consuls of Rome, L. V. Publicola and L. Brutus, as also
the brother of the latter, had in their patents for the few lands granted
them, the distinction of having their gates to open outward instead of
inward.”—Pliny, l. xxxvi, c. 15. -
STUCCOES OF THE HASSAN TOWER, 235
pierced amethyst. For the negresses, the necklaces were large
coral beads and silver coins alternately, the coins being strung
through the center. 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 haik, and in it the most precious stones they have are
placed. One was an emerald an inch and a quarter in diameter.
Such were Aaron's ouches on the” shoulders to which the chains
were attached.
This brooch is called kefkiat, and has a movable 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 adapt-
ed 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 rec-
ognizing them as old friends, I was assured by the learned that
I must be mistaken, for that these ornaments were peculiar to the
Irish Celts. However, there they are—alone found in Ireland—
alone worn in Barbary. - .
In an unfinished corner of the Tower Hassan, I found the
wall as it had been prepared for the stucco: it was divided off
in lines, crossing at right angles, like the frame-work that artists
sometimes use, to verify the exactness of a copy. Over these
were drawn a succession of intersecting segments of circles. By
these they could work with certainty and celerity, and the mere
intersection of the plain and curved lines formed the suggested
patterns. This may account for the interminable variety of
these, and the uniformity of their character. The stuccoes were
of plaster of Paris, and on getting one of the workmen to de-
scribe the process of making it, I found that near Fez there is a
large supply of arrow-headed selenite, corresponding with that of
* It is the three-fourths of a circle with a Job at each extremity, and a
movable tongue lying upon it. The necklaces do not pass round the
neck, but are worn in front, only each end being fastened to the brooch.
With this coincides the description in Exodus of Aaron's ephod in c.
xxviii. and xxxix. The two onyx stones engraved with the names of the
tribes were to be borne upon the two shoulders, and there were to be
two ouches of gold to fasten the stones, from which a chain should de-
pend, fastened to the breastplate,
236 MOORISH ARCHITECTURE.
Montmartre, near Paris.” The color is laid on with white of
egg. The great instrument of the Moorish artist is the compass.
The Moorish compass is not composed of two limbs of metal
jointed. It is a fixed measure and tied by a string; so that for
each different dimension there is a separate compass, and its
name is davit, which we retain for the bent stanchions used
in vessels to hoist up boats. -
Arabs have no buildings: their tent was their habitation.
No traces of their architecture are to be found in the two ancient
cities of Mecca and Medina. The Caaba itself was a square
building, as if the two poles of the transverse one of the flying
tent had been doubled for the stationary one, and the Caaba, in
sign and memory thereof, is hung with drapery to this day.f
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 igno-
rance, 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 else-
where have required, that they might spring and blossom, times
of peace and ages of refinement.
I cannot resist the temptation of quoting from the “Quarterly
Review,” a glowing description of Moorish dwellings.
“The exterior of Moorish edifices in general was plain and
forbidding; the object was to keep out heat and enemies, foreign
and domestic, and to keep in women and to disarm the evil
* The houses here are better than any in Morocco, and look like casts
in plaster, being built piece by piece in molds—DAVIDSON's Journal in
Fez, p. 86.
+ #. Carthaginians hang drapery on their walls. In the Peninsula,
for ceremonies, the streets are sometimes entirely lined with drapery, and
the interior of the churches in Spain have drapery fitted for them like
clothes. The cathedral, of Seville may be seen in Holy Week undergoing
changes like the decorations of a theater.
DESCRIPTION OF MooRISH BUILDINGS. 237
eye—the great bugbear of antiquity, the East, Andalusia, and
Naples. The interior, all light, air, color, and luxury, glittered
like a spar inclosed in a rough pebble, and the door once opened,
ushered the Moor into a houri-peopled palace which realized
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 for-
tresses—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 neg-
lect. 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 span-
drils are pierced in gossamer lace-work; in the center 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 Phoenician-like car-
pentry, 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 color
vied with fragrance.”
B00K III
T H E A R A B T E N T. *… .
CHAPTER I.
HUNTING EXPEDITION TO SHAVOY A.
I HAVE already stated my object inevisiting 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 mo-
tioned 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 caid. 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, Ibethought myself of an expedient. Geology, in these
countries, is a delicate subject. There are the jealousy of avarice
and the fear of consequences. They associate with their mines
the former invasion, and almost conquest by Portugal; and in-
deed 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
wp. A promising sulphur manufactory had been recently set
up at Fez, by a renegade Frenchman : it was, by order of the
government, leveled 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 ea abrupto–spoke of
mines to every body, and exposed the folly of denying to them-
selves 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
AN EXCURSION BEGUN. 239
admitted mineral investigation, and had its partisans, 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 23d 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 Caid
of Rabat. The consul, Mr. Leraza, volunteered his services as
interpreter, and in the scarcity of horses, I was obliged to leave
behind my English scribe.
The consulate was immediately like a disturbed ant-hill, and
the sun was still some fathoms above his western bed, when we
found ourselves beyond the walls, and fairly plunged into the
living desert—for desert it was as soon as the town was shut out.
We shortly turned down to the right and threaded our way
along the margin, where Africa and the Atlantic meet. The
One bore no house, the other no sail—not a vestige of man's
toil on the earth, nor on the ocean a sign of his daring:—they
were alone in their immensity. Again striking inward we lost
sight of the sea, and under the reigning solitude could fancy our-
selves 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 com-
paratively 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 traveling in the
East. Three sets had been put in requisition without undergo-
ing the requisite repairs and revisions; girths, buckles, straps,
gave way one after the other in a manner which in any other
country would soon have brought us to a stand-still ; but on
each mischance a man would slip off, make a grasp at a doum
branch, and commence plaiting: between the ductility of the
leaf and the dexterity of their fingers, girths and bands were
miraculously restored, buckles and ties supplied.
Around the doum were scattered the narcissus, and the plant
of the “gardens of the blessed,” the asphodel. Here we were .
on the very verge of that sacred west, toward which the living
looked where the dead should dwell, within those granitic arms
which extend to receive the departed spirit.” The fourth plant
* These arms are represented by the verge of the papyri of the mum-
mies. The bodies were buried with the face turned to the west. In
240 PLANTS OF MOROCC ().
was the festouk. This is honored 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 can not 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 exci-
sion of its growth. Barbers get their name, no doubt, from
Breber; that was the early mode of supplying names to profes-
sions. 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 prac-
tice of the “Barbarians” of Asia Minor may well have suggested
the word, though we do not apply it as it was originally ap-
plied, 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 Afri-
canus. The pith of the festouk serves as a slow match. It was
in it (v0.967%) 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 ap-
pearance among the people and the smoke. It was a small car-
avan settled round a Douar. We were preparing to pitch out-
side, 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 1 I would not have exchanged that sight for the pos-

Sacrificing to the manes they turned to the west.—Schol. Apoll. Rhod.
vol. i. p. 580. In sacrificing on Mount Moriah Abraham turned to the
Wost.
ARABS AND HIGHLANDERS. 241
session 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, there-
fore, of a race is of as much interest to them as that of an indi-
vidual. “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.” But memory, like man, has lost its early lon-
gevity. At the time of Mohammed every Arab could trace back
twenty generations.# - - tº-
This Arab was delighted to hear of a race in England with
patriarchal chiefs whose line ascended unbroken through ages;
whose people had remained almost to our times unchanged;
who had their own language, who had a diet, part of which
was “scous,” $ and a dress, part of which was a haik. He came
and embraced me, when I told him that my forefathers had
dwelt among 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 an-
swer. 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 re-
* The last bard of Clanronald, in making an affidavit before a magis-
trate, enumerated his ancestors to the ninth generation.
† Fresnal, Hist, des Arabes avant l'Islomism—Introduction.
† At Tangier the idea of an affinity between the Brebers and the Celts
is commonly entertained. Mr. Hay, and others mentioned to me, that
Highland soldiers coming over from Gibraltar, could understand the na-
tives. He points out in his work the coincidence of Breber and Gaelic
words; but when these resemblances are found, they are of words bor-
rowed, and not from any affinity between the languages.
§ Scou in Arabic means hot, as they ought to be eaten, and the expres-
sion “hout Scous” is a pleomasm. .
11
242 - A VISION AND ITS DISSOLUTION.
specting 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'oeuvre,
the scous, we laid ourselves down. My companions soon re-
signed themselves to the empire of fatigue, and I, mesmerized
by the waves of the Numidian folds, seemed to see the sides of
the tent open on dim vistas of long years, through which great
shadows flitted. Tacferinas rose, and, beyond, Jugurtha; there
were mingled, like ghosts upon the shore of Styx, Hunerick and
Hannibal, Nebuchadnezzar and Cervantes, Don Sebastian and
St. Louis. Pictured scenes danced on the textile cloud—Moosa
on the cliff of the Atlantic; Marius amid 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 sceptered hands from the old Muley of Carteia,”
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 differ-
ences provoke the otherwise tranquil camels, who, when aroused,
give it to one another in their own Xantippe fashion. Through
all these pierced the infantine cry of the kid and goat. Lastly,
there is chanticleer, reared from Jebusite eggs, not like our so-
ber 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 mid-
dle of which your tent is pitched Speak, then, of “Nature's
soft nurse.” *
* Melcarth, from Mel and Cardt, Prince of the City (Carteia), was the
title of Hercules. The Jewish word was Malik. The title proper of the
Sultan of Morocco is Muley; thence Molla of the Turks.
ARAB SOCIAL LIFE. - 243
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 vigor
and method that, when daylight appeared, not one square line
of my whole body remained unsuffused with a roseate hue.
Hitherto, I had secured myself against this Egyptian plague, by
a mosquito curtain sowed to a sheet,” 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 mosquitoes into the bargain ſ”
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 ex-
hausted nature close her ears and mine.
Westarted 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 traveled in mat-
tered little, on going in search of a Douar. For two hours more we
continued to stray. Having missed the one we had sought, and
avoiding others which were in sight, our course became to me
at last utterly incomprehensible. I thought that wherever there
was a tent there was a welcome, and wherever a roof, a shelter.
I now discovered my mistake. I insisted on approaching a very
small Douar of about fifteen tents, to which some old men and
boys of most forbidding appearance, were driving in the cattle.
The soldiers went to them, and standing long conversing, I ad-
vanced toward the Douar; they rushed at me with violent ges-
tures. 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
* One side is gored out like the mouth of a sack; by this you enter,
dropping all clothes outside, and the sack's mouth is then tied round with
a cord.
244 THE TRIBE OF SABA's
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 neighboring
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 explana-
tion, but gained none. Then came the question—the Homeric
question, “Who are you?—of what race, of what land?”
Eirē dà plot yatav Te Teijv Óñpov re TóAlv rá.
Now light broke in. I had to ask the name, not of a village
but a tribe.* A tribe might be trodden down, not the individ-
uals; these were not a dozen shepherds:–they were Saba, who
muster two thousand five hundred firelocks. This tribe had
traveled from Arabia: they could go back to-morrow if they
liked. They might have come yesterday, or a thousand, or two,
or three thousand years ago. To such as they are, time brings
no change, distance presents no obstacle. But this name was
not heard now for the first time. Was it they, perchance, who
stole Job's cattle? Did any of them accompany their queen
to Jerusalem How do these bear the patronymic of that mys-
terious stock! Sheba was the first-born 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 French-
II].62]]. - -
The Saba were, however, civil enough to direct us to one of
the Douars of our sheik's tribe, the Zieida. We reached it
about nightfall, and without halt or parley, rode right in. Like
the change of a theater by the scene-shifter's whistle, a couple
of tents all standing, the poles, cords, &c., being manned, were
Hfted from their place and advanced into the center: matting
was spread upon the deep, wet verdure: blazing wood was
brought from neighboring fires, piled into a fire, and in the
* A remarkable conversation is given in Wilson’s “Lands of the Bible,”
Vol. i. p. 830, with the sheik of a tribe which he found among the ruins
of Petra, and who recounted the story of his lineage and the place.
HISTORICAL VALUE OF NAMES. 245
twinkling of an eye we were roofed, sheltered, settled about
our hearth, and in our home, where a moment before the earth
lay bare, wet, cold, dark, and comfortless. Then came the
elders. The owner of the tent brought a sheep to present at
the door: another eggs; another a jar of butter. It was pain-
ful and strange to me not to be able to converse with them, and
to my instant and repeated inquiries, I could get from my inter-
preter 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 favorably
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 demonstra-
tions 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 descend-
ants 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 ad-
mitted, but they pleaded value given in “brick-making.” Al-
exander held the defendants entitled to a verdict. Eight cen-
turies did not give among them the strength to Time which
with us is acquired from seven years.
Sheba signified oath;” thus Beersheba, the well of the oath.
They were the words of the mystery of objurgation, the basis
of religions and governments.
The inventions of a people have in antiquity received their
name; thus have many vocables been formed. It is in this
manner that language becomes history. We have center courts
(atrea), from the manner of building of Atrea. Gauze from
Gaza; calico from Calient; muslim from Masulipatam : embroi-
derers (Phrygiones) from Phrygia. Towers from the Tyrians;
ceremonies from Cere. In Spain to day a wagon 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 wit-
nesses, 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 an-
cient superstition.
* Also “perfect” and “seven,” the perfect number completing the
* planets” and the “week.” The nasal sound gave zebon, whence some
derive our word seven, also the gé8as of the Greeks.
*
246 THE CALIF AND THE SABA.
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
IPersians, 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 alledged that
they paid tribute and had contracted with the Mussulmans; but
he tells them that they are not of the number of those who can
make contracts, and threatens to extirpate them to the last child
unless, on his return, they had professed Islam, or one of the
religions mentioned in the book (Judaism or. Christianity).
They then changed their clothes and cut off their hair; and some
became Christians and some Mussulmans; but many would not;
and being in great fear of the calif's return, they applied to an
old man to know what they should do. He said to them,
“When Mamrou returns, answer him “WE ARE SABA, which is
the name of the religion which the Great God has named in
the Koran; and thus let us be freed from him P”
Mohammed makes Abraham, when passing from Trak 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?—who were the teachers of
letters, and the first lawgivers. 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
* Hottinger, De Reb. Sab. L. i. c. 8.
+ Landseer, Sabaean Res. -
f “Perhaps the most perfect, and certainly the most widely extended
religious system which was ever invented by the unassisted reason of
man.”—DRUMMOND's Origines, iii. 431.
DESCRIPTION OF SCENERY. 247
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, aver-
aging 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 mold 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 ex-
plained this formation, the peculiarity of which consists in the
surface being converted into stone. At one place the road
Crossed what looked like a rivulet; but the extent of its coast
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 vast-
ness, 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 delight-
ful 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 forever; it does not split; and though hard is easily
248 THE FOOD OF ARABS.
wrought. They use it for the beams of the houses which are
near the ceilings of apartments: those ceilings of “cedar and
vermilion,” that we read of in the Prophets and the “Arabian
Nights.” It has the odor 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 sub-
jected 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
xcept 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 toward the reality of early
fable, when I wandered in the indubitable Hesperides and plucked
their golden fruit; but now, among 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 3
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
THE SHEIR's WIFE. 249
this height the country behind looked like a swelling sea—be-
fore us it was all in heaps. No vacant space and no rocky
side, but as if earth had been carted to the spot by tunneling
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 center, that is, at the top. As soon as it was
in order, our tibi came to bid us welcome : he was a simple, sedu-
lous man, and from the first to the last moment was just the same.
They paraded us round the circle, and we were passed from
group to group to be examined, patted, and discussed. The
round of visits ended at the sheik, and I was ushered in among
his three wives:—and here was a busy scene. The tent, though
I speak from recollection, was little short of forty feet in length
and twenty in width; the cross-bar supporting it in the middle
might be ten or twelve feet high ; the covering swept down, so
that toward the extremities you had to crouch or creep. In
the center and around were piled up stores of provisions, cloth-
ing, and the like, arranged for the convenience of sitting or
sleeping. There were three or four small fires, chiefly of em-
bers, 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 her tent—culinary, at least,-seemed to pass through
her hands.
The dish was kuscoussoo, so I was not to lose such an oppor-
tunity. What had been dispatched was for the supply of
guests who had arrived before us: she now had to recommence
for us. When I had succeeded in conveying to her my desire
to be instructed in the process of its manufacture, she gazed at
me, and asked what I had eaten all my life, and what the
women in my country did? After briefly satisfying her curi
Osity, she made a place for may 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. -
11%
0 HAPTER II.
ECUS COUSSOO.
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 into
the water, passed them through it, and so continued dusting
and - dipping and then making sweeps right and left through
the growing mass, which gradually shaped itself into small
grains. The fingers passing quickly and lightly, through and
over it, the little moistened particles were augmented from the
dry flour, and new ones formed. The art consists in causing it
to granulate, and in preventing it from clotting. Each grain
receives with its several coatings pressure and manipulation.
We are all familiar with the change of substance produced by
working crumbs of bread between the fingers; and in some
analogous change appears to consist the secret of this dish.
The fact that the tray was sufficiently full, was notified to me
by a smart nudge of the elbow. It was then brought upon an
even keel, and she dashed away among it with both hands in
a fine style: it was then thrown into a sieve of pierced sheep-
skin; 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 copical 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 an-
cient of made-dishes.
In this simple form, or with buttermilk, kuscoussoo constitutes
MANNER, . OF EATING KUSCOUSSOO. 251
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 it in the
plate to catch greasy grains, nor smear one hair of his mustache.
He beats the chopsticks with the knowing jerk of the South Sea
islanders. A monkey only spills his kuscoussoo. With the
points of the fingers of the right hand a portion of the grains is
drawn toward 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, molded 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.* Eaten other-
wise 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: -
Dr. Shaw, who lived so long at Algiers and traveled 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, correspond-
ing with our word fives, and its dexterity being peculiarly ex-
hibited in this operation, they may have jocularly answered his
questions about it with that word.
Marmol, a Christian captive, entertains great respect for kus-
coussoo, 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 afterward is tempered with butter and pot-
* When eaten with buttermilk they use spoons, the place of which is
here supplied by enormous muscle-shells—true cochlearia. The savory
accompaniments are thus absorbed, and the ball acquires that consistency
which gives to the dish its zest.
+ “When he (the sultan) is intent upon a piece of work, or eager to
have it finished, he won’t allow himself to go to his meals, but orders some
of his eunuchs or negroes to bring him a dish of kuscoussoo, which he sits
down and eats after a brutish manner; for as soon as he has rolled up
the sleeves of his shirt, he thrusts his arms into the dish up to his elbows,
and bringing a handful from the bottom he fills his mouth, and then
throws the rest into the dish again, and so on till he is satisfied.”—Ac-
count of Barbary, p. 92, 1713. - - -
252 MOORISH BREAD.
tage. 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 apos-
tasy, used his proficiency in the opposite sense, and won the day
in his late coup de main, by his dexterity in making and pro-
jecting coras. Kuscoussoo with other food was put upon a
table for him ; knives, forks, and spoons were laid out; but he
seized the kuskas or kuscoussoo dish, squatted down with it on
the floor, and turned up the sleeve of his uniform, observing,
“This is the way we eat kuscoussoo.” That other extraordinary
adventurer, Ali Bey, who was sent by the Prince of Peace with
the scheme of revolutionizing Morocco, until the Spanish forces
should be ready to land to take possession of it, was equally ex-
pert—in fact, it was a sine guá 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 quêſ. -
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 de-
rived 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
subtile for calculation. The Indian has his rice and curry.* The
inhabitants of the eastern and southern portions of Europe have
their dishes (not bread) of Indian corn. The Turks, the Per-
sians, the Tartars, the Arabs, have their pilaf, which spreads
* They use flour, but not as bread. It is made like porridge, and eaten
with milk. *
BREAD AS MADE IN ENGLAND. 253
from the Adriatic to the Yellow Sea—from the Yrtish to the
Indian Ocean. The domain of kuscoussoo extends from the Red
Sea to the Atlantic. It does not appear to have been original
among 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 North-
ern 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 can not
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;” 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 can not be less than a quarter in
favor of kuscoussoo; and taking it as furnishing forth the meal
without the adjuncts which our laboring 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:
A new discovery in baking has been made in New Holland,
in consequence of the ignorance of common arts produced by
the subdivision of labor. We do not know baking afloat; and
in the first settlement of that colony, the women were from the
* The effect of fermentation on food was not overlooked by the an-
cients. “Panis azymus, ou sans levain, Celse dit facile à dégirer; les
modernes me sont pas de cet avis.”—Note by Pankoucke to Pliny, l. xviii.
c. 27. - .
+ “Keep a man on brown bread and water, and he will live and enjoy
good health; give him white bread and water only, and he will gradually
sicken and die. The brown contains all the ingredients essential to the
composition or nourishment of our bodies. Some of these are removed
by the miller in his efforts to please the public. The loss by fermentation
and refining taken together, is under-estimated at twenty-five per cent.
18,000,000 quarters of wheat are made into bread annually in England and
Wales: the waste is, therefore, 4,500,000 quarters, or 3,357,000,000 lbs.
of bread, or eight ounces per day per man. This is nearly double the
quantity of wheat usually imported; and amounts, at 50s, the quarter, to
11,250,000l. Sterling”—Pamphlet on Unfermented Bread.
254 DAMPER.—INDIAN CORN.
cities, and did not know how to bake. The bakers appear to be .
a moral class, for the men were equally ignorant. The colon
lived for years on biscuits, and even at the governor's table the
guests were in the habit of bringing their own biscuits. The
convicts could not be so daintily treated: their weekly allowance
of flour was served out to them, and they were allowed to do
with it what they liked, when accident or genius led them to
treat it in this manner. Each slaked his fourteen pounds with
water, and having made it into dough, proceeded to beat 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 sup-
posed, the manipulation, as in the kuscoussoo, rendering it pala-
table, and being perhaps slightly raised by the expansion of the
air driven in by the beating which it receives with the fist.
I can not 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.* g
Indian corn does not do when eaten cold. As bread, it is
kneaded with water and fired upon the griddle, and then eaten
hot: as polenta it is cooked like Scotch porridge, or eaten with
milk, or it is turned out and left to cool, and then, when wanted,
is sliced and cooked on the gridiron or fried. In these forms il,
is an agreeable and wholesome food:
* “Some of our readers may, perhaps, smile at the idea that the poor
require much instruction in this art. The first and greatest difficulty
with them, they say, is, that they can get very little food to cook. This
is too true; but it is equally true that the little food a poor family ob-
tains is not made the best of; and that a greater variety of wholesome,
better-flavored, and more nourishing food may be procured by an im-
proved system of cookery, and without any additional expense. In many
cases indeed, the cost will be less than by the present defective method.”
—The Family Economist, p. 10.
# Humboldt has decided that for maize (Zea maize) the old continent
is indebted to the new. If so, it would carry its own name, or receive a
descriptive one. Tobacco we can trace as Tobacco, or as “Smoke” Kairyūg
(Tutun). Potatoes by that name, or as “root-applés:” not so maize.
The Greeks call it Arabic 'Aparrogirt. The Turks, Egyptian (Missir
Bogda). On the Black Sea it is Cucuruzzi. The Arabs of Egypt call it
Doura Shamee, or grain of Damascus. The Bulgarians callit Callamboki.

MODE OF COOKING PILAF. - 255
Pilaf is a dish, which, like kuscoussoo, has its secret. I never
tasted it eatable when made by a Christian. It is rice and but-
ter, and the art depends in the manner of introducing the but-
ter. Boiled with the rice, or added in the dish, it would be no
pilaf. It is only a person deserving the name of cook, who,
after several failures, might succeed. Such a person will find all
that is requisite in what follows:–
The salt must be put in the water; the pan must be thick;
the quantity of water must be adapted to the rice, which varies,
so that when the rice is cooked, the whole water be absorbed.
It must never be touched or stirred while cooking. Butter is
then put in a frying-pan; the proportions experience will teach.
When it boils up, it is poured over the rice, which sputters and
swells; then one turn with a spoon is given, and it is put on the
fire for a moment, and must be served up hot in the pan. The
Mussulmans with this, end their dinner, to show that they have
not eaten to gratify appetite, but to supply want; and they have
a saying, that every pilaf, a man does not eat, will rise up
against him at the day of judgment.
My attention was first turned to their diet by this people's
splendid teeth. Nothing can better exhibit the quality of the
food they masticate. Among 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 por-
tion 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 school-
master; they can come only from habit, and of this habit the
cook is the original and source. It is not without cause that
man has been defined a cooking animal. It is in the cooking
of the race, that its sense is first tested, oftenest exercised, and
Throughout the Tndian Archipelago it is known as Sagung. In one of
the Egyptian tombs there is a figure holding a head of Indian corn; but
this a learned writer will not admit, “because that grain was intro-
duced into Europe from Virginia.” Is it the ksob of Negroland the
JDroueu and Beshma of various parts of North Africa. ?—See Egyptian An-
tiquities, Lib. Ent. Knowledge, vol. ii. p. 30; Wilkinson, vol. i. p. 397 ;
Crawford's Indian Archipelago, vol. i. p. 336; Bradford's American An-
tiquities, p. 418; Carette's Algeria, vol. ii.
256 REFLECTIONS ON DIET.
longest enjoyed. Rigid Lacedæmon honored 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.”
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 dis-
tracted 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, “Be-
ware 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 any thing that has
gone before, one remains in astonishment at the advantages
which in this respect we possess. Yet what is the profit A
few persons may read these speculations in their library chairs;
but what are the advantages even to these at the dinner-tables?
Come here and you will see economic food and the healthiest
people, who have no “animal chemistry,” and yet illustrate in
their practice that which we reason about in books.
One of the weightiest utensils to tränsport is the hand-mill,
and one of the heaviest occupations of the tent is grinding. How
large a share it occupied in the domestic life of Judaea, the re-
peated allusions to it in the sacred writings bear testimony.
Travelers are always struck by the amount of labor 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 wind-mill 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
orain }
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
* Formerly every private soldier cooked in turn for his mess. In this
respect, at all events, they preserved the temper and the tone of the he-
roic ages, where the chiefs did not disdain to use the spit. The revolu-
tion of February—the Labor Revolution—comes, and is followed by a
new subdivision, the appointment of forty-nine cooks to every regiment
ARAB MANNER OF STORING GRAIN. 257
a hundred or a thousand years, protected from rot, mildew, and
man. By this practice they are secured against the uncertain-
ties 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 drier beneath. Twenty
years ago, four or five successive harvests were destroyed by
drought and locusts; famine and pestilence ensued; and but
for these stores the country must have been depopulated.* There
is an exportation of corn making at present to Dublin;–permis-
sion 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 a change from the hand-mill to the water or wind-
mill, the matmores would have to be replaced by standing gran-
aries: 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 con-
sequence. Elsewhere, where the land is more fertile, it would
place the tribes at the mercy of the governor, and the whole
fabric would fall to pieces.
The aim of the political economist is to accumulate profit—to
make money; to turn, every way, soil and toil into the banker's
books. The end of the legislator is exactly the reverse. He
knows that the danger to society is from the accumulations of
profit. He knows that wealth draws wealth, and engenders
power, and brings the fall of states. By legislators I mean
those who have proved themselves such by their works—the
states which they have built up.
In early times we always find the chiefs possessing the greatest.
ascendency over their people. How is it they lose this author-
ity ? 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 among the Arabs, not by laws or
* The Lydians had the same practice. It may account for their en-
during the long famine which led to the emigration of the Tyrseni, and
for the provisioning of their ships.-See DRUMMOND's Origines, b. vi. c. 7
258 MUSSULMAN REVERENCE FOR BREAD.
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 sub-
stance goes in kuscoussoo. It is an extraordinary thing to see;
it is slowly that the mind takes it in ; it is difficult to convey it
to another—and testimony is requisite. In Mr. Davidson's
Journal there is a corroboratory passage, which is all the more
valuable as coming from one who had no conception of the
value of the fact he recorded. Speaking of the great Sheik of
Suz, he says, “The sheik, rich and powerful as he is, dares not
shut his door against the dirtiest beast who thinks proper to
enter. The kuscoussoo, or teapot, is a general invitation, and all
may come in and feed.” This is the interpretation of those
words of Isaiah, “Thou hast clothing—be thou our ruler,” as of
the reply, “In mine home there is neither bread nor clothing—
make me not a ruler.” Of the patriarchal period in our own
state, we have a record in the title, Lord, which meant the giver
of bread. The word “government” is itself derived from the
same source, and to-day in the streets of Athens a beggar will
approach you with these words, “x7689 v10.8 uov—govern me, i. e.
give me food.” Among 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.* 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 vizier. A person who could not be asked to partake of
coffee, who could not presume to be seen with a pipe, may be
invited to sit down to dinner. The breaking of bread, the most
solemn mystery of our faith, has, in this respect, a meaning
which we can not read. In the East, the injunction of Christ to
• * Lord Clarendon relates, that in the fire of London, a servant of the
Portuguese ambassador was seized and roughly handled, on the accusa-
tion of a citizen, who swore that he saw him throw a fireball into a
house, which immediately burst into flames. The foreigner, so soon as
the charge was translated to him, explained that he saw a piece of bread
lying on the ground, and according to the custom of his country, picked
it up and laid it on a shelf in the nearest house. The house was searched:
the bread was found upon a board just within the door.
s
HospitaLITY AS PRACTICED IN MOROCCO. . 259
turn not away from him who asketh, is universally observed.*
We can not 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, 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, ap-
proach, and each take a mouthful and return to their places.
Then the great personages and the common come by order of
their degrees, till, at last, the very porters and the guards; for
all those who are in the hall, great or little, must taste much or
little, because they believe that it is a sin to eat alone, without
offering to those who look at you. The princes and governors in
the province do each the same thing. Every one eats once a
day of kuscoussoo, because it costs little and nourishes much.”
“Fill not thy belly in presence of the longing eye.” What
are all our homilies on charity to this ? What all our constitu-
tions? This is not a proposition; it is a maxim, a rule of con-
duct; 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 immedi-
ately spat in its face. I asked the reason; she answered,
“Against your evil eye.” Pride was there the spell, humiliation
"he fascinum. The figure of a hand is the ordinary talisman.S
* “We had quarters assigned us; I with one peasant, and my comrade
with another. We had free board, and the peasants (Turkish) exercised
hospitality as though it was a matter of course.”—Wanderings of a Jour-
neyman Tailor, § 97. - .
+ One of the charges against Koulayh Wail, the first tyrant of Southern
Arabia, was, that he “monopolized hospitality.”—See Lamgal Alareb.
# Africa, vol. ii. p. 193. -
§ “If I have withheld the poor from his desire, or caused the eyes of
the widow to fail, or have eaten my morsel alone, and the fatherless hath
not eaten with me. If I have seen any perish for want of clothing, or
any poor without covering. If his loins have not blessed me, and if he
were not warmed with the fleece of my sheep.”—JoB Xxxi.
“Many, of course, were the Telzemi used against the evil eye. I have
selected the hand only as affording the key. The Bulla were worn by
the Etruscans, from whom the Romans copied them, as protection against
260 HOSPITALITY DISAPPEARED FROM CHRISTENDOM.
The open hand denotes generosity, the closed one firmness.
The hand so used is neither closed nor open, two fingers being
doubled, two extended. What can this signify, if not a measured
participation of what you enjoy to prevent the longing, from
becoming the “evil,” eye? Associated as the hand is with
kuscoussoo, the emblem is appropriate. That Superstition has
cheered many a heavy spirit and relaxed many a girded heart.
and is cheaper than a poor-law.
Thus, by the maxims, habits, and domestic practices and
superstitions which center 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 Christen-
dom—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 pro-
hibit by law.
it. The Bulla (five in number) were likewise in use among the Arabs,
but abolished by Islam.” “Most of them still wear on their necks the
ornaments of infancy.”—Motenabbi. These ornaments were berries of
plants, GU2&—CHREATH, Arabe, t. iii. p. 41.
The Phallus was also used for the same purpose—PLINY. Three to-
gether are sculptured on polygonal walls, in the Sabine territory at Ze-
rui; and in the Etruscan land at Todi in Umbria, &c.—DENNIs, vol. ii.
p. 122. Also in Lydia. See Fellows Lydia.
CHAPTER III.
THE war.
HowevKR extensive the culinary operations in the chieftain's
tent, they did not absorb the whole care of his household. Sim-
ultaneously 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 mold 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 AElian tells us, Caesar 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, Liza.f, 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 haiks are, of course, home-made: those for the
women and children have sprigs or lines of bright and lively
color. The weaving is more ancient” 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 colors, there is a ball for each; every color in the pat-
term 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.
* Much akin to this is the weaving among the Red Indians. “The
hair of the buffalo and other animals is twisted by hand, and made into
balls. The warp is then laid, of a length, crossed by three small, smooth
rods, alternately beneath the threads, suspended on forks at a short dis-
tance above the ground. The woof is filled in, thread by thread, and
pressed closely down. The ends of the warp are tied into knots, and the
blanket is ready for use.”—HUNTER's Captivity, p. 289.
262 CONVENIENCE OF THE HAIK.
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
band of a race. Is it not worth turning over and handling,
and seeing what it is made of, and how it fits”
THE HAIK.
If Prometheus had set himself down to consider, not how
many things he could invent for man, but what single invention
would serve him most, he might have fixed on the haik. It is
not known in Arabia, Judaea, 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 haik 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 dura-
ble 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, trowsers, petticoat,
under and over garment, enough for all and every thing in one.
Being but the simplest of primitive inventions, it outvies in
beauty, and overmatches in convenience, the succeeding centu-
ries 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 aesthetic applause to the
perfection of the primitive design.
It is the only costume to which the language of the Bible is
adapted, or by which its metaphors are intelligible. When I
had seen it, I understood “rending the garments;” “justice as a
garment;” “girding with power;” “robing with light,” “cloth-
£ng 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
MYSTIC GARMENT OF THE JEWS. 263
of man, until long labor 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,” ºn-an “agitator;” the earth, (y-s from gºi) a “run-
ner.” The heart derives its name from its action, 555 ; the lever,
T-5, from its weight. -
The objection will doubtless be urged, that the Easterns do
not change their fashions, or lose their habits, and if the haik
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 thou-
sand. 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 for-
eign usages, the very language being the Castilian. Thus, all
that belonged to the Philistine and the Hebrew has been swept
away, and the original features of that most interesting of all
countries have been, by Chaldean or Egyptian, Persian or Par-
thian, 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, neitherwise nor
simple can tell. In vain is the Rabbi appealed to, the Talmu-
dist 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.”
Yet the meaning is as plain as if printed in an encyclopédia.
These names do not occur in the Old Testament, and no men-
tion is made of them in the “Six hundred and thirteen funda-
mental 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 Jose-
phus, or Hecateus, or any writer who treats of the Jews. Yet
as this practice is universal, its date must have been antecedent
to their dispersion: what more clear than that, when forbidden
to appear in their costume, they preserved it in the sanctuary,
and in secret bound an image of it to their hearts? What more
touching record of the sorrows of an exiled people * Linked
* “When the Jews come to receive the king, none but the person who
carries the Book of the Law shall wear Talith, or the cloth over their
clothes; nor in carrying a corpse for interment are they to wear it, or
chant in the streets.”—Cortes of Toledo, 1480, Sect. 117. -
+ The Emperor of Russia has published a ukase in favor of the Jews,
264 THE HAIK. A JEWISH G ARMENT.
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 cabalis-
tic sign, and venerate the stuff for its fringes,” not for its former
memory or future promise. The tisit is a small talith, the ta-
lith a miniature haik. The only difference is in the distribution
of the fringes, and in the borders: the haik has the fringe at
the ends and no border. A blue border was enjoined by the
ceremonial law. The Abyssinians wear it still.$
I do not think that I need say one word more on this point;
nor can I imagine, under the circumstances, any proof more con-
clusive that the haik was the clothing of the people of Judaea.
If this be not admitted, it will have to be shown, or supposed—
the one as difficult as the other—that the successive emigrants,
when they collected here, invented a new costume, and aban-
doned that which they had previously worn. I have already re-
ferred 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 ex-
pression, “baring the arm :” tucking up the sleeves, or appear-
ing in shirt-sleeves, would be a metaphor among us suited to a
scullery or a slaughter-house. “Girding of the loins” is nonsen-
sical, not only with our costume but with every other: the per-
son 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” himself to wash the feet of the Apostles, they
to put an end to the invidious distinctions in dress. The Jews, though
wearing no longer that of Judaea, look on the boon as the hardest of their
trials. r f
* If two threads of the fringe were worn, it was worthless.
+ There is a Jewish prayer for the restoration, beginning, “Bring us in
peace from the four corners of the earth, and lead us safely to our land.”
As they repeat it, they hold the four corners of the talith to the heart.
† Plates of the talith are given in “Modern Judaism,” pp. 69, 70, 80.
The small talith, which among the European Jews is worn like the scap-
ula, over breast and back, has in Morocco no aperture, and is worn cross-
wise, exactly as the haik is put on. - -
§ In Prisse’s “Egypt and Abyssinia” there are figures which might be
taken for Roman senators, only that the border is blue instead of red.
| Commentators are misled by the sword-belt, and the inner girdle
over the tunic. Thus; there is mention of the girdle of Elijah, and of *
John the Baptist, remarkable because of leather (2 Kings i. 7, 8; Mark
iii. 4), and because they wore no haik. The Moors, though they do not
THE HAIK AND THE KUSCOUSSOO UNITED. 265
add, “with a towel.” the terms in Greek, 7tégtúvyvut, &vo-
Góvvvut, are appropriate, and describe what a Moor would do,
viz., draw the fold of the haik, which hangs over the left shoul-
der, 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 or-
dered (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 3 The haik.
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.” Such is
the practice of every nomade tribe: a kneading-trough would
be of no use. It must then be something of the same descrip-
tion; 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 ne-
cessity; 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 haik and the kuscoussoo are here united. If you heard
of any other people having the one, you would inquire whether
they had not also the other. Here in one sentence is it shown
that the Jews, when they entered the wilderness, had both.
If they wore the haik 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. 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
“gird” themselves with girdles, wear one, but it is under the haik and
over the tunic, and has a remarkable buckle. A buckle, as the sign of
royalty, was sent to Antiochus by Jonathan Maccabees. No other East-
ern people has a girdle and buckle. Drawers, such as the Levites were
enjoined to wear, complete the Moorish dress. -
* “Ephraim is as a cake not turned.”—HospA vii. 8. Niebuhr (Arabia,
vol. ii. p. 132) draws the distinction. In the towns, he says, they use
ovens, like us; in the tents, a hot plate of iron.
+ Abulpheda says, “that he (Abdallah, the calif, the son of Sobeir)
wore a suit of clothes for forty years, without pulling them off his back,
but doth not inform us what they were made of"—History of the Sara-
cens, vol. ii. p. 349. This he believes to be incredible; of course it is so
with teased wool, machinery-spun thread, and tailored clothes. I have
seen a home-made Highland plaid, in excellent condition, after nearly
twenty years' constant wear. - -
I 2
266 ARGUMENT TO PROVE *
the haik; 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 can not 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
shallsleep.” 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 trans-
lation of them, and the Greek terms of the New, are quite in
accordance with the inferences I have drawn from the scrip-
tural 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,” but may be reduced to the three ves-
tures alredy mentioned—a tunic, a pair of drawers, and a haik;
to which is added, as accessory, a girdle, a cap, and a pair of slip-
pers. The drawers, Shewal, are put on first. Then the sleeve-
less tunic, Inshwarwan, reaching over the hips; over this the
richly-embossed and embroidered belt, Indum, and over all the
haïk: the drawers and girdle exactly correspond with those men-
tioned in the Bible. For all other garments, two words only are
employed nºn-, kitonet, whence the word “cotton,” and also
* The Sulam, or bournoos, is a cloak with a hood. The gelab (from an'
ancient Persian word for scales, is the Sulam sewed in front, and with
short sleeves, through which the arms can be put at pleasure. It was
the dress of the Essenians; is the monkish dress, and as such is respected
by the Mussulmans. It varies according to the district, and is in colors
—narrow, stripes of brown and yellow, of blue and white, of blue and
black, with here and there lines of white. In the winter these garments .
are doubled or trebled, and the haik is worn over all. The Sulam is the
dress of the soldiers.
# This is sometimes replaced by the very beautiful Moorish Sash,
huzain. .”
THE HAIK WORN IN JUDAEA. 267
“coat,” this is the Xutów of the Greeks—the sleeveless tunic of
the Moors, and nºw, shemlah; this is the iuſtion of the Greeks,
the toga of the Romans, and the haik 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.* e
The haik was the dress, not of the Jews only, but of the
Canaanites, including among these the Phoenicians; 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.}
The Greek robe was white. 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.S. It was not put on to fit as a dress. It was
ample in its folds, and fell to the feet.* It covered them all
* Gen. xxxvii. 3; Judges v. 30; Sam. xiii. 18; Exod. xxii. 26, 7; Deut.
Xxiv. 13; Job xxii. 6; Matt. v. 40. -
† In one of the poems of Shanfara, the Cid of the Arabians, this pas-
Sage occurs:–“I will not rest till I have raised the dust on every one
who wears kissa or bourd, of the tribe of Salaman.” This is interpreted
to mean that he would lay low the men of note. The word bourd oc-
curs in various places. St. Augustine, speaking of a presbyter, vain and
Worldly-minded, describes him as “burda vestitum.” In Genesis xxxi.
12, the word is used to designate the variegated lambs; and in the Gaelic
is translated by the word which they use for “tartan.” It would thus
appear to convey rather, the idea of color than of form. Shanfara
might have said, if speaking of the Highlands, “Every man who wears
tarian,” as distinguished from the shepherd plaid. Kissa may have a
similar meaning—black and white. It is nowhere mentioned as a dress.
Kisson, the name of the “ancient brook,” is supposed to be connected
with kirga of the Greeks, or magpie (black and white). Kissa may also
befringe; for tzetzith (fringe), is cabalistically equal to kisee (throne). .
† Westes candidae. Lutatius Ann. on the Thebaid.
Š £vövvai Te kai éméâ\\to 0at.—PoELUX. 1. vii. c. 13.
| otº ºvečāovto (iXX &repovčvro.
* T &rAot tročípers, EURIP.; $Xksguiráràovs—ravörer) ov—dupi Ös Tét}\ot titrav-
Tat. HoMER.
“Omnis vestis apud Graecos aut Tiffanpa aut £vöupa est; amictui, aut
indutui. 'Evépara sunt quae ad corpus prepali harent, atque indutio
corpus comprehendiens. ErºğAñuara vero, quae et reptóAñpara palliorum
omne genus quod caeteris vestimentis circumjecta et Superjecta vago et
libero-discursu eas ambirent.”—SALMASIUs ad Tertull. de Pall.
Livy, 1.8; Flor. 1. 5; Plin. viii. 74, ix. 63; Diod. v.; Macrob, Sat.1.
6; Testus Vérbo Sardi, Serv, ad AEn.ii. 781; isidori Origines, lxix.c. 20,
•
268 THE GREEK AND PHOENICIAN COSTUME.
over. But citation of authorities is superfluous. Look at the
statue of Demosthenes.
But the Greeks may have invented it. The Greeks were
copiers or copies: they improved what they received, but in
the beginning they were wild and rude. This dress belongs to
early simplicity, and to the people who from the first were pre-
eminent in poetry. -
..But, taking it as if it were no more than letters or science,
then if we find it both in Greece and Judaea, 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 every thing 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 worshiped, when
dead, as heroes. The Phoenicians introduced the costume of
Greece, as they did her letters and her religion.
The resemblance is so evident between the toga and haik,
that the only question is, “Was it original or borrowed ?” and
if borrowed, “whence did it come 3" As the Greeks stood to
the Phoenicians, so did the Romans to the Etruscans. Critical
inquiries had already traced that people to Canaan : recent dis-
coveries 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 traveler in Barbary might
take them for the ancient sepulchers of this country. In the .
tombs you have over and over again the haik. 4.
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.”
The toga must have been, of necessity, in the country from
which they came, for they did not come naked. Had the haik
been then as now restricted to Barbary, I should at once admit
the African derivation. But it is traced to Lydia. A cast of
one of the rock tombs in the British Museum, exhibits sculptur-
* Mrs. Hamilton Grey's object has been to make the affiliation coincide
with their character; but identifying the inhabitants of Lydia with those
of the Holy Land, their derivation from Lydia presents no difficulty.
+ Dennis, Etruria, Intr. p. xlii.
THE ETRUSCAN AND ROMAN COSTUME. 269
ed groups the size of life, with the colors still remaining, which
shows us, as in a mirror, this ancient Phrygian people. There
is the toga : it is worn over the head : men and women wear
it alike. . It is a group of Moors. Two boys appear; the head
is shaved, with the exception of a tuft of hair on the crown one
of them carrying the oil bottle and strigil. No other ancient
people shaved the head; we only hear of it among the people
of Mauritania, and that in respect to the children. The Moors,
as I shall show, had the bottle from the earliest times. These
boys are perfectly naked, while all the others are dressed. To-
day, among Easterns and Mussulmans, and, to their infinite dis-
gust, the Moors alone preserve the ancient practice of bathing
naked. - - - te
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 an-
cestry. This tomb enables me to say that the manners of an-
cient 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 else-
where; 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 Afri-
ca, or the Phrygians and the Brebers, and supports my deriva-
tion of the name Africa from Phrygia, which I imagine was
given to the latter country, while Breber was given to the
Phrygians; that is, that the names, severally preserved in Asia
and Africa, were then common to the two countries and people.
Toga, from tego, to cover: ancient as is the epithet, it could
not be original, for it was the coat of piece, 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 (téguégyto) and embellishments.”
* The pallium and the toga were two distinct dresses, but worn to-
gether, as the haik and the Sulam, by the Moors, the one is put on for
the other, or the one with the other. The paludamentum was a small
270 THE MODERN HAIK.
We have traced the course of the haik along the shores of
the Mediterranean; found it clothing Solomon, Hannibal, Peri-
cles, Amalek, and Porsenna, We have carried it back to Her-
cules, to Abraham, and his fathers before him. Here is a mon-
ument of antiquity, to which the Propylaea 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 among the
devices of man, or the works of his hands, it strides backward
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 fibers, nor have the spindles begun their turning
to the dismal tinkling of the factory bell.
Haiks are like leaves of trees—you never see two alike:–as
sentences are interminable, yet the syntax one, so have haiks
their grammar. They are of all textures—of many substances
—plain, striped, yet uniform. Silk and cotton are mixed to-
gether; both are mingled with wool; they are alternated in
stripes. The texture varies from felt to sarcenet, from coarse
blanketing to gauze ; there is the massive fold defying the tem-
pest—the gossamer wing trembling with a breath; colors are
not excluded, gold is not forbidden. The most beautiful speci-
men of workmanship and taste I ever saw, was a white haik
with a deep border of gold. w
The haik of the men is absolutely and undeviatingly white.
Colors are reserved for children, sometimes also for women, but
they are associated always with the idea of indulgence and dis-
tinction. 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 Ro-
mans, he too received from the senate a coat of many colors.
To put on the haik, 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 backward, the
fold passes behind, and is brought under the right arm round in
front. Another step across it, and it is behind again; then ta-
ken by both hands outstretched, it is brought over the head,
measured so as to be left hanging low enough on both sides for
haik, worn ovor the armor and fastened on either shoulder with a brooch,
like the Scotch plaid; it was not so long as the plaid, and hung down.
IELEGANCE AND CONVENIENCE OF THE HAIK. 271
the play of the arms. The end is then thrown over the left
shoulder and hangs down the back. There are no ties, no but-
tons, no separate parts: the drapery is wrapped round with the
sole fastening of its own folds. Dispensing with so many ad-
juncts, 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 haik and
the bournoos: 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 magnifi-
cence 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 endeavoring 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 haik remains the sole clothing:
there protrudes an arm and part of a leg, or the breast is heaved,
or sometimes the whole outline of one side is visible; for the
drapery is shifted in all conceivable ways, and according to their
Occupations; so that there are passing before you, and called up,
as you look around, all the celebrated statues or groups of an-
tiquity. 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 neighboring clump, and there
stood an Arab ; his gun resting on an edge of rock, his haik
unwound from both shoulders, and secured by a cord of plaited
palmetto over the shoulder, as is often seen in the ancient stat-
ues; 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 dis-
turbs the mechanism of the frame and its action. It is plastic
to the hand, to relax or gird, as the occasion may require,
272 - PRAISE OF THE HAIK.
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 bor-
row the majesty of its large folds, although we have never be-
held the splendid simplicity of its dead color. It is the dress
for kings and patriarchs.” . .
The exposure of the body to the air does not give the impres-
sion of cold in the way that those whose clothing has a similar
character or integuments will suppose; whoever has worn the
kilt will know this. The fact is, that the air supplies warmth,
and when freely circulating round the body, a sort of respiration
takes place through the skin, which, while conducive to strength
and health, supplies that light and agreeable sensation which
belongs to a costume, where there is clothing enough to secure
warmth, and freedom enough to admit air. Of the value of this
freedom we have a striking illustration at home, and to which
no other country in Europe affords a parallel. The butcher-
boys and the Blue-coat school-boys go about without that cover-
ing to, or protection for, the head, which for all other degrees,
and in all other countries, is deemed essential to health and com-
fort. Do they suffer from being bareheaded? 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 com-
fort, 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

* The finery of a modern Moorish grandee is thus described by Mr.
Hay: “The bashaw was reclining on a rich carpet, supported by round
velvet cushions, embroidered in gold. He was dressed in a pale green
caftan, over which was a fine muslin robe. He had wide trowsers, of a
kight-colored yellow cloth. His girdle was of red, leather, embroidered
in silk, with a silver clasp. He wore on his head the common Fez cap,
circled by a white turban, and over all fell a transparent haik of the
finest texture. In his hand he held a rosary. His manners were grace-
ful and gentlemanly, and a pleasant smile gave an agreeable expression
to his features. The father of this potentate was bashaw over half the
empire, and proved a good friend to the English during the war on the
Peninsula, when we depended much on West Barbary for the supply of
our armies, and also of our fleets in the neighboring seas.”— Western
Barbary, p. 110. -
OUR TREATMENT OF FEET. 273
parts of rays, and finding in them agencies of so many, so pow-
erful, 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 toil-
Ing, mean.
Those members which have to support the weight of the rest,
deserve peculiar care, and might even claim exclusive favor, 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 be-
stowed 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 de-
grade it. The workshop of the artist:-does one recall the fig-
ures which adorn a Moorish encampment?
But the heaping up of drapery, and the loading of gold “for .
effect,” which the royal academician steps back to admire, leaves
the end of costume out of view. That end must be attained in
all perfection. It must be a clothing for the figure, as well as a
drapery for the eye; and of this no artist—and indeed no mas-
ter—has had the thought. As to color, 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 discrim-
ination 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.
12*
274 REMARKS ON GOSTUME,
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”
colors 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
armor, and the great event of war, how immeasurably would he
have left behind the modern German's whining sentimentalism
about rainbows and groundsel. To this the German and the
modern are reduced, because war has become a setret and a
trade; our weapons a matter of commissariat, and costume—a
covering fit for apes.
* The rule laid down by Pliny may be observed in the two groups
in the Alhambra. Selection of color, and representation of color are
different things, which if Fuseli had perceived, he would net have given
lººr the trouble to show that Pliny did not understand what he spoke
about.
CHAPTER IV.
A BOAR-HUNT.
WE thought we might now dispense with the precautions to
Secure our property before going to rest, to which we had been
hitherto constrained; but were surprised, while making our beds,
at the sheik's entering with a heavy chain to secure our fowling-
pieces round the tent-pole. Intending to convey a compliment,
we resisted; but he got angry. He did not understand suspi-
cion 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 tuns. 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 figure, so is he an epic in
his mind. It is not only not base to rob, but, as one of them
expressed it, “to carry off a horse is a sign of being a man;” yet
this man was trusty as a sword, and faithful as a dog. So the
basis of all law resides in contract—not the “contract social” of
Jean Jacques, but the real word of man, surely known and truly
pledged—in a word, the third commandment.
This contract is contained in the salutation. The “salem
alillum” is a preliminary and a question. “Is there peace {"—
on the affirmative, the salutation follows.” The Turk has con-
* “Their manner of saluting the stranger is the same as that of the
Jewish patriarchs, and of the people among whom they lived, as de-
scribed in the Old Testament. When a stranger approaches the tent of
an Arab, he begins by examining to which side it is turned, then bringing
himself opposite the entrance, he approaches with slow steps, until he
has come within a hundred paces; then he stops, with his arm in his
hand, ready for defense. He turns his back to the tent, and waits till
276 MUSSULMAN SALUTATIONS.
verted into a distinction between creeds, that which was the par-
ley on the approach of two disciplined bodies.
Our word greeting comes from the mutual hailing of the sea-
king's ships. “I greet with grith ;” we translate “Igreet with
peace.” Greet has still preserved in the North its original mean-
ing—of crying or hailing.
Two Greek lines have preserved to us a distinction between
the forms of the Arabs and the Phoenicians, which throw light
on their respective character. The latter had dropped the
“Salam” as not requisite for their avocations and mode of life—
‘AAA’ et pºv 2000s &roi XaXáp, et 6' oivojys poivt;
Aüdoves, et d’"EA\my xaſpe, rö 6’ adró ‘ppágov.*
Nothing is more dignified than the dumb show of a Mussul
man 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 re-
fined is called “Gemenas,” and consists in carrying the hand
to the mouth, touching the lips with the points of the fingers
and then the forehead with a simultaneous inclination of the
head and body—the meaning is vulgarly interpreted, “I kiss
your words and treasure them up in my brain.” This is the
salute to a superior. To an inferior, the hand is carried to the
lips and then to the breast, or it is raised to the breast only—
the shades are infinite.
The visit ended by a discussion upon government. It was
he is seen, and some one approaches him; he then prostrates himself
twice to the earth, and adores. On this a man of the tent takes water
in a wooden vase, and advances toward him;--it is generally the chief
of the family who does so, or his eldest son; and if there are no men, it
is one of the women advances with the vase, or something else, to eat or
drink, if they have it ; if not, they bring a skin or a piece of wove stuff,
to accommodate the stranger. When they have come within a few paces
of him they say, ‘Is it peace P and he answers, ‘It is peace; and then
they say each to the other, ‘May peace be with you and your family,
and all that you possess.’ Then touching each with his right hand the
hand of the other, they carry it to their lips, which is as much as if they
kissed each other's hand. I presume it is from this custom that has come
the complimenting use among the Spaniards, who on meeting say, ‘I
kiss your hand; and if to a lady, ‘I kiss your feet.”—RILEY.
* Meleag. Anthol. l. 3, c. 25. -
# There may be some connection with the jemmas of the Greeks, as
designating the salutation with which such holy places were entered. To
“adore” is to carry the hand to the lips. The Indians adore the sun by
standing up, not as we do by kissing the hand—PLINY. The modern
Greek uses irporkövo for the Turkish jemmas. In any modern language a
periphrase would be requisite, -
GEOI, OGICAL RESEARCHES. * 277
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, dispatched a messenger for a couple of camels.
While I was at work, a Sulam fell over me, and on clearing my-
self and looking up, I saw a stranger on horseback, and found
myself bound to refuse no favor he should ask. Elisha and
Elijah immediately came before me. Elisha, when the mantle
is thrown on him, asks no questions, but leaves his twelve pair
of oxen. The stranger said, “Cure me.” I answered, “God
alone can cure.” He then took his Sulam, and, throwing it over
my shoulders, brought the collar part of it close round my neck,
and kissed my head. If a criminal can throw a Sulam on the
Sultan, or on the ground before him, he has taken Sanctuary and
can not be put to death.
Soon afterward I observed some singular black rocks, which
proved to be masses of iron : close by there was a hard lime-
stone 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 latter 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* is melted.
We found a good deal of slag, but the working had been merely
superficial. I afterward obtained a specimen of lead from the
same neighborhood.
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
* In Sus they run copper by lighting fires.
278 MOORISH FEELING AS TO MINES.
bodies. There were neither men nor horses, nor any cattle used
in tillage. These were, as usual, employed in the fields. This
business belonged to the women and children. The tents and
utensils were laden on the spare cows and camels. Every crea-
ture 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 our-
selves. -
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 equaled the plowing
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 geolo-
gical 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-
travelers are absurd prejudices; to me they are valuable records,
like the disregarded fragments of some antediluvian creature,
by which at the opposite sides of the globe the parts of a com-
mon stratum may be identified. This same prejudice guarded
against Phoenician and Carthaginian the mineral wealth of Mall-
ritania, while they were ravaging that of Spain. In the settle-
ment of Mauritania made by Augustus, which was followed by
four centuries of repose and prosperity, no traces of its mineral
wealth appear, while 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 obstruc-
tion. Until the funding system commenced, wars of aggression
could be carried on only by a government which possessed a
ARAB HOSPITALITY. 279
store of gold.* . 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 in-
evitably the tyrant at home.
For the purposes of commerce Africa required no gold.
Throughout that region there is to be found a process for ad-
justing 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 peo-
ple 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 plow was aban-
doned, 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, amid great and fierce excitement.
There was yelling, running, and firing. My course was im-
peded by the sick and maimed who were brought and laid
down before me. I could do nothing for them; and they were
only jostled by the crowd. After we had cleared the douars,
we were summoned to the top of a tumulus. A circle was
cleared, and a man of another tribe came forward; they all
held up their hands in the attitude in which the Tyrian Hercules
is represented, and following the chief or priest, pronounced
these words, “In the name of God, we, this day, are brothers;
if any man's hand be on his neighbor, may the hand of the
Most Merciful be on him; if no man has evil thoughts, may
* , “Blest paper credit ! last and best supply
That lends corruption lighter wings to fly
Gold, imp'd by thee, can compass hardest things,
Can pocket states, can fetch and carry kings,
A single leaf shall waft an army o'er,
Or carry statesmen to some distant shore;
A leaf like —'s scatter to and fro
Our fates and fortunes as the wind shall blow.”—POPI.
280 THE BOAR-HUNT.
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 among this
concourse the whole day withdut 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 Euro-
peans which characterizes those of the north. They did not so
much as know the common terms of abuse which in Mussul-
man countries are applied to Christians. They gave us and re-
ceived 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 pres-
ently 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 leveling.
After a good deal of powder had been expended, a great
many stones shattered, and a great many jokes cracked on those
who missed them, we wended our way back to the douar, from
ARAB SINGING AND DANCING. 281
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 acclama-
tion. An old woman set about pulling up the lilies, and clearing
from other encumbrances, a piece of sward outside the circle,
Two girls rushed up with kuscoussoo sieves to beat as tambo-
rines;–these are sheep's skin, pierced with holes, and called
Sonag.” 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 center round the chief
performer, who sang and rattled a tamborine. The dance was
interrupted while 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. The singer commenced each stanza with that pe—
culiar 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
* Pennant saw in the island of Rum (1769) the Quern or Bra in use,
and “instead of a hair sieve to sift the meal, they have an ingenious sub-
stitute, a sheep's skin stretched on a hoop, and bored with small holes,
made with a hot iron.” “Singing at the quern” was then out of date,
the laird compelling them to grind at his mill, and the miller being em-
powered to break the querns wherever he found them.
+ “As soon as the evening breeze begins to blow, the song resounds
throughout all the land. It cheers the despondency of the wanderer
through the desert; it enlivens the social meeting; it inspires the dance,
and even the lamentations of the mourner are poured forth in measured
accents. Their poetry does not consist in studied and regular pieces,
such as, after previous study, are recited in our schools and theaters:
they are extemporary and spontaneous effusions, in which the speaker
gives utterance to his hopes and fears, his joys and sorrows. Specimens
are wanting of the African verse; yet, considering that its effusions are
numerous, inspired by Nature, and animated by national enthusiasm,
they seem not unlikely to reward the care of the collector. The few
examples actually given favor this conclusion. How small a number
among our peasantry could have produced the pathetic and affecting
Iamentation, which was uttered in the little Bambarra cottage over the
distresses of Park! These effusions, handed down from father to son,
contain all that exists among them of traditional history. From the
songs of the Jellemen of Soolimani, Major Laing was enabled to compile
the annals of this small kingdom for more than a century.”—Discovery
and Adventure in Africa, p. 350.
282 TENT HABITS.
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 tamborine
The ministrel 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 among the younger portion of the audience. There
was then a good deal of kissing of his head and hands, and so
we dispersed. I afterward learned that the castanet is in use
among the tribes of the interior.” 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 canvas walls,
thus: “Eh! Hamed !” If there is no answer, the call is repeat-
ed; 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?”f
In the center of each douar, there is a tent set apart as a
mosk, 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 school-
master. 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 II, 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
* Castamets—Crotona are found in Egyptian tombs,-DENNIs, vol. ii.
. 45.
+ Compare this with Rev. xxii. 17: “And let him that heareth say,
Come,” &c.
DESCRIPTION OF AN ARAB TENT, 283
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 center 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 carinae.” The tents were formerly transported on wag-
ChS.
CHAPTE R. W.
THE TENT AND “HomE.”
FEw Sounds awaken more pleasing associations than the tent
of the Arab. Palace, castle, tower, call up visions of events;
but “tent” drives the imagination back upon itself to discover in
its own nature the resemblances and the method of the noblest
men and the simplest manners. The tent, not the camel, is the
ship of the desert; the movable 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 movable habitation.
Home stands by itself as the name of a place—“Ham House,”
“the Ham Town,” as in Northampton, Nottingham, Buckingham,
Flampstead. I had observed that such names generally applied
to a low, or a protected site. In the Highlands of Scotland,
within the memory of man, the pasturage was distributed
between the two seasons; the cattle being taken to the higher
regions in the summer, the lower portions being reserved for
their support during the winter. The Shieling was erected for
the farm service in the summer; the homestead, or hame, was
the winter abode: I had, therefore, concluded that home or
hame was derived from hyems. I had been struck by a similar
analogy in the Turkish word for castle, kishla, from kish.
Winter was first applied to the solid buildings of the winter
farm as contrasted with the yazin, or light shielings erected on
the summer pasturage.
This word, so peculiarly English, is not confined to England.
It is used nearly in our adverbial sense throughout the north of
Europe, and in our topographic sense in France. There is Ham,
THE WORD “Home.” 285
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). Hammâ (Breber) for village, or quarter of a
town. In Judaea, hammoth, hamma, Laga.” The home of
Arab independence is Tihama.f . -
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 timestº
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. 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 dwell-
ings; but in considering the matter I should, I think, have
arrived at an opposite conclusion, even if we had not had another
distribution laid down in the oldest of books. There is first the
emblem of a garden—a refuge under its bowers; next, in the
person of Cain, comes the planting of seeds; then follows close,
Abel tending the most peaceable of milk-giving animals—sheep.
A third generation arrives, who make dwellings: they build a
city. A period of multiplication elapses, and then Adah bears
unto Lamech, Jabal, the “father of such as dwell in tents and
have cattle.” The nomade life was, therefore, a variety; and
the subjecting of cattle to the plow, was the second agricul-
tural state, where wandering and shepherd tribes settled them-
selves 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
* The Jews, even after their sojourn of centuries in the Holy Land
did not lose the habit of dwelling in tents, and probably, as here, there
was a city and a nomade population; as, for instance, “The dwellers in
tents,” Psa. lxxxiii. 6. “The tents of Israel,” Zech. xii. 7. “The tents
of Kedar,” Song i. 5. . .
+ “Tihama, the abode of the sons of Maad. There they came for the
winter.”—Song on the death of Koulayb. Tihama is derived from ſº • 4
Taham. See Edressi, Georg. , Drummond's Origines, vol. iii. p.'260.
Ham'am—bath—is derived from the same word.
# An equally near approach is caldo, cold. In the Greek, Phrygia,
“burnt up”—the Latin, frigus.
286 THE MOORISH TENT.
men to smelt and puddle, afid 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 cur-
tain 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 num-
ber; 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 up-
right, and the right side of the place left for the door, and so
unwound and laced all round till it is brought to the door on
the other side; it is then fastened below by small pegs. There
is a strong binding round the top, and this with the rods give
solidity to the edifice, without in any perceptible degree increas-
ing the weight or cumbersomeness for carriage. It is much
more easily managed from being in two parts, and the superior
and movable 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. Put-
ing 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.” It is ornamented with a golden ball;
the flaming sword on the cloths of the roof and the valance imi-
tates the crenelated top of a battlement. The color of these
devices is blue.
In the description of the Jewish Tabernacle we have exactly
the Moorish manner of pitching. Blue is the first color men-
tioned: 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 cloth-
ing 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
* I find that this is much the plan used in India, even to the orna
ments. *
TENTs of THE SULTAN. 287
that described in Exodus, xxv. 45: “Thou shalt make loops of
blue upon the edge of the one curtain from the Selvage in the
coupling, and also on the other curtain. Fifty loops shalt thou
make in the one curtain, and fifty loops shalt thou make in the
other, so that the loops shall takehold 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 endeavor to see the
Sheriffean 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 ab-
sorbed 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 en-
camped in one enormous and unbroken figure. It was an ob-
long, lengthways stretching east and west. The center 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 center 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 crenelated battle-
ments. 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 battle-
ment, this inclosure of the sultan's will be easily understood,
and it corresponds, even to the dimensions, with that which sur-
rounded the tabernacle of the Jews in the wilderness, which was
a hundred cubits long, fifty broad, and five high; the length
was also from east to west. .
END OF WOL. I.
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