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 -".-oa nmiiiiJMMm ioo^ - 
 
IN THE DESERT 
 
Olu Algiers. 
 
IN THE DESERT 
 
 THE HINTERLAND OF ALGIERS 
 
 BY 
 
 L. MARCH PHILLIPPS 
 
 AUTHOR OF "WITH RIMINGTON" 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 NEW EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 EDWARD ARNOLD 
 
 1909 
 
 [A/l rights reserved^ 
 
*. : : •: •*: ■•.*•: • • • •*% 
 
 • • • ••••••'o".* 
 
TO 
 
 MY FRIEND 
 
 HUGH HOARE 
 
 IN MEMORY OF OUR 
 
 DESERT TRAVELS 
 
 IN 1S99 
 
 ?(o 
 
 19(99 
 
 253272 
 
Preface to the First Edition 
 
 THE form this book has taken needs perhaps a 
 word of explanation. Descriptions of Arab art 
 and poetry may seem out of place among travelling 
 notes ; but it has always seemed to me that the Arab 
 is so much a child of the desert, and all he has ever 
 done is so impregnated with the character of his own 
 curious and peculiar birthplace, that to understand 
 him in any particular it is always necessary to realise 
 the desert first. Whether you consider Arab archi- 
 tecture, or Arab religion, or Arab poetry, or Arab 
 philosophy, it seems that a description of the desert 
 forms the indispensable preface to them all. Accord- 
 ingly I think that, if I can succeed in giving the 
 reader a true impression of desert scenery, he will 
 not object to tracing the effects of that scenery in 
 desert poetry and art. In short, I have hoped that 
 the reader's interest would follow my own. It was 
 the desert that aroused my own curiosity in Arab life 
 and art, and seemed the clue to so m.uch of Arab 
 history, and perhaps this, to some extent, may be 
 the case with other people. 
 
 Some of the matter in this book has appeared 
 
viii PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 
 
 already in two articles in the Edinburgh Review and 
 in a few shorter ones in the Speaker. I thank the 
 editors of those publications for their kindness in allow- 
 ing me to use this material again ; and Mr. John 
 Murray for permission to reproduce four plans from 
 Fergusson's " History of Architecture." 
 
 NOTE TO NEW EDITION 
 
 In the present edition I have made some slight alter- 
 ations and corrections, and have added a few final pages 
 which might give, I thought, a summary of the Arab 
 influence, as far as I understood it. From some kind 
 expressions which have reached me from travellers, 
 I am not without hope that the book, in its present 
 form, may prove useful to visitors to Algeria. 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Arab Instability . . . . • i 
 
 Old and new Algiers— The gap betwixt past and prese nt^^The 
 Arab town a reflection of Arab character — Incoherence of Arab 
 history — Incidents of the death of Okba— His energ>' and lack of 
 system — Similar traits in Arab civilisation — Fancifulness in all 
 the Arab did — His show and splendour — Lack of a solid founda- 
 tion — His history and romance — His personal heroism — Algiers 
 the Arab's chance— What he made of it— Piracy, its extent — 
 Fall of the town — ^Justification of French interference. 
 
 CHAPTER n 
 French Discipline . . . • -19 
 
 The cafes of Algiers — Cosmopolitan character of the people — 
 Moor and Arab — Arab dependence on the desert — His virtues 
 desert virtues — The Jew in Algeria — His place in society — His 
 poli tical impor ^nce.— French sociabiUty — Its influenceln colon- 
 liation — France's peaceable intentions — Pacific penetration — 
 The slowness of French colonisation— Striking likeness between 
 Algeria and Cape Colony — French and English methods — The 
 French excel in collective work, the English in individual 
 initiative — French instinct for organisation — The Latin race in 
 Africa — Part played by the Government — French progress. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The French Occupation . . . -45 
 
 African scenery, its clearness and regularity — Divisions of 
 Algeria — Line of the French advance — A distracted colonial 
 policy — The anti-colonial party — Indifference of the French 
 people — France makes up her mind — Interest awakened in 
 colonisation — Increase of immigration — Character of Arab war- 
 fare — The North African problem — Impossibility of dividing 
 state from state — The pacification of any part of the country 
 involves the pacification of the whole— France forced to advance 
 — The Arab the leading African race — Gives its own character to 
 the politics of the countrj'. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 The French in the Sahara . . . -59 
 
 Early exploration of the desert — The French make a beginning 
 — Unlucky ending to many of their expeditions — De Brazza and 
 the Congo — Advance from the south and west — The idea of a 
 united Colonial Empire — The convention of 1890 — Monteil's 
 expedition — Fernand Foureau — The Touareg tribes oppose the 
 French advance — Occupation of the desert — Consistency of the 
 French scheme — French rights in North Africa. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 Biskra . . . . . . -72 
 
 A desert port— The Atlas mountains—" The door of the desert " 
 — El Kantara — Importance of Biskra — French officers — Part 
 played by the army — The oasis — Irrigation — Arab isolation — His 
 individual charm — His sentimentality — Arab manners — His 
 chivalrous impulses — Arab horse-dealers — We fit out our caravan 
 — What to take and what to leave behind— We leave Biskra. 
 
CONTENTS xi 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 PAGE 
 
 In the Desert . . . . . -94 
 
 Some first impressions — Absence of detail — Sense of space — Its 
 natural features— The feeling of isolation — Invigorating effect 
 of great light— Bedouin gipsies — The attraction of the desert — 
 Influence of primitive scenery — Escape from custom and routine 
 — Burton on the desert — The senses sharpened and stimulated — 
 Power of noticing things. 
 
 CHAPTER VH 
 
 The Arab and the Desert .... 104 
 
 Excitement of the desert — Its stimulus of the nerves, not of 
 the mind — Corresponding excitability in Arab temperament and 
 character— Their campaigns — Non-intellectual nature of desert 
 scenery — Its deadness — Effects on the Arab —Lack of coherence 
 in Arab character — Destructiveness of the desert — Its object to 
 blot out all life and all form — Similar aim of all Arab activity — 
 Ilis history a history of destruction. 
 
 CHAPTER Vni 
 
 Where the "Argo" Sailed . . . • "S 
 
 Ahmeda's horse and horsemanship — The Shott Melrir — The old 
 river system — The drying-up of the desert — Arab metaphors — 
 The tradition of the sea — Greek corroboration — Yarns of the 
 Argonauts — Modern science contemptuous — Evidence of the 
 inland sea — Arab and Greek tradition confirmed. 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Well-sinking in the Desert . . . .127 
 
 The underground water supply — Importance of the artesian 
 process — Arab legends about water — Their notions of well-boring 
 
xii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 — Their fight with the desert— Invasion of their oases—" Dying " 
 of their wells— Arab engineers— Their failure— The French in- 
 tervene—Their success— Gratitude of the Arabs — Renovation of 
 oases — Apparent happiness and content — The rising of 1870— 
 Re-establishment of order— What the French have done in the 
 Oued Rir. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 TUGGURT . . . . . . .151 
 
 Arab love of display— Entering the town — A visit to the Mara - 
 bout — Arab silence — An Arab cafe — Oriental colour — Colour 
 "emotional and belonging to the East — Form intellectual and 
 belonging to the West— Incompatibility of the two ideals — 
 Oriental colour an expression of Oriental life and character — St. 
 Mark's the great artistic example— Its colour-effect obtained by 
 banishing structural forms. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 The Oued Souf and its Oases . . .162 
 
 The region of dunes — Aspect of the scenery — Difficulty of judg- 
 ing size and distance — The several kinds of oases — The hope of 
 well-sinking — The "cup " oases — Our stay in an Arab village — 
 The Souf dates — The census of palm-trees — The date harvest — 
 The cares of desert husbandry — The source of desert life — The 
 attack of the sand. " " ~ 
 
 CHAPTER Xn 
 A Haven of Refuge . . . . '175 
 
 The desert in a rage — A rough ride — Arrival at Nefta — Fertility 
 of the oasis — Composure of camels — Death of one of our camels 
 — Their adaptability to the desert — Their beauty amidst this 
 scenery — Our camp in the oasis — A night scene — Sensuousness 
 of Oriental scenery — A scrap of poetry. 
 
CONTENTS xiii 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Scenes by the Way . . . . .184 
 
 The evening camp — Birds — A moonlight start — Cold nights — 
 Instincts wakened by desert scener)' — Sunrise — The sound of it 
 — A desert landscape — Arab poetry — Its insistence on shade and 
 water — Arab society — The spring grazings — Their poetic treat- 
 m.ent — A scene in Devonshire — Tendency of the imagination to 
 recall such scenes in the desert — The mirage — The desert's sense 
 of humour. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Arab Poetry ...... 200 
 
 Its portraiture of Arab life and character — Its genuineness and 
 vigour — The type it describes — The death of Rabiah — The traits 
 it dwells on — Limitations of the type — Arab love-poetry — Its 
 contrast with modern — Lack of depth in the Arab — The type 
 common among Moslems — The Afghan — The Turk — The Alba- 
 nian — The Moslem stage in civilisation. 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 Mohammedanism . . . . .220 
 
 The desert religion an incentive and a bond — The Arab as 
 propagandist — The sects of Islam — Conservatism of the orthodox 
 faith — The Shiites — Their efforts to infuse emotional depths and 
 warmth into the religion — Fruitlessness of the attempt — WTiat 
 backs up the orthodox party — The influence of the desert — The 
 standard of life it maintains — Mecca the Mohammedan Rome. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 Kairwan ....... 233 
 
 Approach to the town — An ideal bathe — Arab roads — Aspect of 
 Kairwan — Loneliness and desolation of its surroundings — The 
 
xiv CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 beginnings of the city — Choice of a site — Early miracles — War- 
 like character of the town — Its luxury and culture — Fanaticism 
 of the town — Early visits and reports — Violation of the sanc- 
 tuary — French occupation — A broken spell. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 Arab Architecture ..... 245 
 
 The romance of the Arabs — Quality of their architecture — The 
 early mosques — Difference between Moorish and Arab archi- 
 tecture — The Great Mosque — Fine effect of the whole — Sloven- 
 liness of detail — Indistinct arches — Arab and Gothic architecture 
 compared — The Arab lack of purpose — Quality of his masonry 
 — Decorative design — Corresponding mannerisms in life — Arab 
 crowds and streets compared to English — Fickleness of the 
 desert. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 The Moslem Sphere of Influence . . .270 
 
 Arab society, its nebulous and incoherent character — Arab 
 thought, its lack of depth and solidity — Immobility of Arab 
 civilisation — The same true of all Moslem races — The orthodox 
 faith responsible for this — Parallel between Islam and Chris- 
 tianity — Influence of Christianity on Western thought and 
 society — Moslem liberalism anxious to attain the same results — 
 It adopts principles similar to the Christian — The Wahhabi 
 reaction — The Babis — Prospects of Moslem liberalism — Real 
 strength of Islam in the orthodox party — The life of the desert 
 the source of its strength. 
 
 Appendix . ... . . . 289 
 
List of Illustrations 
 
 OLD ALGIERS ..... Frontispiece 
 
 EL KANTARA ..... Facing p. 76 
 
 THE LAST TUFT OF PALMS . . . „ 98 
 
 A BEDOUIN CAMP 
 
 A DEAD LANDSCAPE 
 
 SKETCH MAP SHOWING THE FLOW OF THE 
 GREAT NORTH SAHARAN RIVERS TOWARDS 
 
 THE SHOTTS .... Page 119 
 
 THE IMMEMORIAL SHADOOF 
 
 A R/iVER OASIS 
 
 IN AN ARAB VILLAGE 
 
 CAMP IN AN OASIS 
 
 THE ATTRACTION OF MECCA 
 
 PLAN OF GREAT MOSQUE OF KAIRWAN 
 
 XV 
 
 Facing p. 
 
 138 
 
 »> 
 
 166 
 
 » 
 
 170 
 
 <) 
 
 178 
 
 )> 
 
 228 
 
 Page 
 
 249 
 
xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 CORNER OF THE GREAT MOSQUE. . Facing p. 250 
 
 PLAN OF MOSQUE OF AMRU . . . Page 252 
 
 THE INDEFINITE ARAB ARCH . . Facing p. 252 
 
 PLAN OF MOSQUE OF SULTAN BARKOOK . Page 255 
 
 PLAN OF MOSQUE OF SULTAN HASSAN . . ,,257 
 
 GOTHIC SURENESS OF PURPOSE 
 ARAB LACK OF PURPOSE . 
 STREET ARCHITECTURE IN KAIRWAN , 
 ARAB DECORATIVE DESIGN 
 
 Facing p. 
 
 258 
 
 )i 
 
 262 
 
 » 
 
 266 
 
 19 
 
 268 
 
IN THE DESERT 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 ARAB INSTABILITY 
 
 Old and new Algiers — The gap betwixt past and present — The 
 Arab town a reflection of Arab character — Incoherence of 
 Arab history — Incidents of the death of Okba — His energy 
 and lack of system — Similar traits in Arab civilisation — 
 Fancifulness in all the Arab did — His show and splendour — 
 Lack of a solid foundation — His history and romance — His 
 personal heroism — Algiers the Arab's chance — What he 
 made of it — Piracy, its extent — Fall of the town — Justifica- 
 tion of French interference. 
 
 TWO hills look at each other by the bay of Algiers. 
 One is crusted over with white and yellow 
 houses, sunbleached, roofless, and so close packed, and 
 probed by passages and tunnels so narrow and intricate, 
 that they look like a piece of honeycomb, or bit of old 
 ivory carved into illegible design by the ingenuity of 
 some Indian artist. Figures in white gowns pass in 
 and out of the mouths of passages, or flit like white 
 moths across the open space by the sea. The white 
 domes of a mosque swell up at its base ; the walls of 
 an antique fortress crumble at its summit. 
 
 The other is laid out in beautiful gardens, with rose- 
 
• « 
 
 / IN- THE DESERT 
 
 .,• • 
 
 covered villas at frequent intervals, a comfortable club, 
 and many luxurious hotels. Paths run under shady 
 avenues, and groves of pines and blossoming shrubs 
 vary the view and scent the air. Smart carriages and 
 electric trams roll up and down the smooth roads, and 
 men and women in summer clothes, with straw hats 
 on and parasols up, saunter under the trees or pause to 
 admire the view over the sea far below. 
 
 Of these two hills, the first is the old Arab town, the 
 second the modern French suburb. Here among the 
 villas and hotels presides modern civilisation with all 
 its comforts and conveniences. Yonder in the Arab 
 city still survives the semi-barbaric orientalism of the 
 Moorish dominions. 
 
 How many centuries would you guess must separate 
 the two hills? Certainly not less than five or six. 
 Now let your eyes drop to the space between, and 
 you will see what really separates them. This space 
 is occupied by the quays and shipping, the shops and 
 streets and warehouses of the French port. The 
 steamers hoot and whistle, the drays thunder, the 
 great cranes swing their bales out and in, the hum of 
 industry and commerce fills the air. The whole scene 
 throbs and echoes to the pulse of modern progress, 
 and across it, with a fixed and curious attention, the 
 two hills, Arab and French, stare at each other as 
 across a gulf there is no spanning. 
 
 This, not five centuries, is what divides them. 
 Indeed, it is a curiosity of Algiers that its barbaric past, 
 which already seems so remote, treads so closely on 
 the heels of the civilised present. All this structure 
 of European luxury and prosperity has been built up 
 within living memory. Old men must creep about 
 
ARAB INSTABILITY 3 
 
 these alleys still whose cradle-slumbers were disturbed 
 by the guns that ended the adventures of Old Algiers. 
 
 Taking one morning the tram that runs down the 
 French hill, the hill of Mustapha Superieur, as it is 
 called, to the town below, I found myself sitting next 
 to an aged Moor, with beady black eyes and parchment 
 skin, the countless wrinkles in which seemed traced 
 with the point of a needle. His memory, it struck me, 
 might conceivably go back to the days before Algiers 
 closed for ever her career of mischief. The Exmouth 
 bombardment took place in 18 16, and the release of 
 1,200 Christian slaves followed it. But this was not the 
 end. Algiers was used to these interruptions. The 
 damage done by the British was repaired, a new fleet 
 built, and the buccaneering business was carried on 
 down to the time of the blockade which ended in the 
 fall of the town in 1830. So that the man whose 
 memory could go back a stretch of about three-quarters 
 of a century might recall something of that extinct 
 industry, and, as a child, might actually have seen the 
 corsair fleets ruffling the waters of the bay on their 
 outward and homeward voyages. 
 
 Perhaps, I amused myself with speculating, the old 
 Moor in the corner, who looked ninety if a day, might 
 have been equal to such a retrospect. We turned a 
 corner and the bay lay beneath us. A Messageries 
 mail boat was slowly pulsing seaward, attended by the 
 usual retinue of small craft that tossed in her wake or 
 clung to her skirts as though loth to let her go. The 
 dark eyes of the old man dwelt on the scene with 
 imperturbable composure. Just opposite him sat an 
 English girl, tennis-racquet in hand, to whom, I suppose, 
 he was merely one of those local curiosities which had 
 
4 IN THE DESERT 
 
 outgrown the interest of novelty and were no longer 
 worth the snap-shot of a kodak, but who, to him, was 
 the representative of a race his fathers had bought and 
 sold like pigs in the slave-market below. I would have 
 given much to have been able for a moment to look 
 at the view through his eyes and clothe it in his 
 memories and associations. 
 
 When I walk among the shrubberies and hotel 
 gardens of Mustapha Superieur I find it difficult to 
 believe in the Arab town at all. I know it is built of 
 solid plaster and brick ; but I should not be much 
 surprised, so incongruous does it look, to see it melt 
 away like a cloud at sunset, and vanish out of the 
 picture. On the other hand, when I lose myself in its 
 dim passages, it is the hill of modern progress that 
 seems unreal, and I am ready to expect when I come 
 out that that will have disappeared, and the hotels, and 
 hooting steamers, and girls with tennis-racquets be all 
 vanished like a dream. 
 
 To pass into this crumbling mass of masonry is to 
 pass into all the intricacies of Arab life. Winding, 
 tortuous alleys meander aimlessly in all directions, 
 drilled along their bases with deep holes, out of which 
 protrude piles of merchandise, richly coloured, making 
 deep blots of purple and crimson in the shadowed way. 
 At the mouths of their burrows the owners squat, 
 conning the passers-by with an air of serious indif- 
 ference. Overhead the zigzag cliffs of white walls, 
 latticed with faded shutters, rise irregularly, and totter- 
 ing towards each other for support, block out all but 
 a crooked chink of blue above, and shroud the dim 
 creeks beneath in an unnaturally cold twilight. 
 
 And through the gloom mysterious figures move 
 
ARAB INSTABILITY 5 
 
 with noiseless footsteps, in white flowing garments, 
 with twisted turbans or veiled faces, who, as you tell 
 yourself, are leading a life just as real and matter-of- 
 fact as your own, with the usual everyday duties and 
 worries, but whom no effort of your imagination can 
 make to seem other than curious and fantastic, and 
 outside the natural order of things, and who look at 
 you with eyes in which all you can read is the depth 
 of the abyss that lies between you. Like all Oriental 
 towns. Old Algiers leaves on the memory an impression 
 of a haunt of animals or insects rather than of men, 
 a mass of crumbling masonry, honeycombed, corroded, 
 and eaten through and into, as by ants or bees, in a 
 network of minute passages and tunnels. 
 
 I have exactly the same feeling when I stand or 
 wander in this picturesque labyrinth as when I turn 
 the pages of an Arab history. There are the same 
 striking individual figures and incidents, the same 
 brilliant glimpses and vivid little scenes ; and behind 
 and around all there is the same inextricable confusion, 
 the same lack of all coherence and definite plan. The 
 details of Arab history, however full of romantic and 
 exciting adventures, are to the Western mind inevitably 
 tedious. Of what causes are these events the effects ? 
 of what effects are they the causes ? are questions which 
 repeatedly recur while you study the thrilling but 
 inconsequent narrative. One receives an impression 
 as of the wrong side of a tapestry. The brilliant 
 colours are there in every stitch, but they are woven 
 into no intelligible design. 
 
 This incoherence is the Arab's mark in history. It 
 is worth dwelling on a moment, for it is this which led 
 to the downfall of Algiers, which introduced the French 
 
6 IN THE DESERT 
 
 into the country, and which Hes at the root of the 
 whole question of a North African settlement. 
 
 It seems scarcely to matter what incident we turn 
 to as an illustration of the characteristic, for the Arab 
 is so much of a piece that his least acts betray him ; 
 but I will take the following one : — 
 
 The most revered of names in North Africa is Okba 
 ibn Nefi, the soldier-saint of Islam, whose tomb is in 
 the desert near Biskra. Okba carried on the conquest 
 of the country begun by Abdallah. Whatever the 
 Arab does he does in a hurry, and Okba's furious 
 advance was only stopped by the Atlantic Ocean. His 
 remarks on reaching this unexpected obstacle have 
 been recorded by Gibbon. " He spurred his horse into 
 the waves, and, raising his eyes to heaven, exclaimed 
 with the tones of a fanatic, ' Great God, if my course 
 were not stopped by that sea I would still go on to the 
 unknown kingdoms of the West, preaching the unity 
 of Thy holy name and putting to the sword the 
 rebellious nations who worship any other God than 
 Thee.'" This is the temper that underlies all Arab 
 achievement, and it is a temper more adapted to rapid 
 conquest than stable settlement. While Okba was 
 occupied with the Atlantic and a vague idea of riding 
 to America, the conquests he had won were already 
 slipping from him. The Arabs in their advance were 
 innocent of an established base or lines of communica- 
 tion. They had no plan of campaign, and were far too 
 intent on what was in front to have any thought to 
 spare for what had been left behind. When Okba 
 recalled his attention to what was happening round 
 him, he found that the Berber tribes, dispersed rather 
 than conquered by his impetuous advance, had risen 
 in his rear, and hopelessly surrounded him. 
 
ARAB INSTABILITY 7 
 
 The last act is signalised by one of those chivalrous 
 touches so common in Arab chronicles. A chief who 
 had tried to raise a mutiny in the army was a prisoner 
 in the Arab camp. With his own hands Okba released 
 him, and advised him to fly while there was time. His 
 answer was that he would die by his rival's side. 
 " Embracing as friends and martyrs, they unsheathed 
 their scymetars, broke their scabbards, and maintained 
 an obstinate combat, till they fell by each other's side 
 on the last of their slaughtered countrymen." 
 
 How characteristic all that is ! The enthusiasm, 
 heroism, fancifulness of it ; the show of conquest, the 
 swift march, the mighty appearance of vigour and 
 energy ; and under it all no substantial basis, no plan, 
 no permanence, no stability : these are traits common 
 to Arab civilisation. An Arab renaissance as early as 
 the eighth century had revived something of classic 
 knowledge. The poetry and philosophy of Greece were 
 studied, and the taste for learning was cultivated with 
 the enthusiasm which the Arabs infused into all their 
 undertakings. Every one knows the fascinating 
 account of these things in the pages of Gibbon. How 
 the tide of progress flowed from Samarcand and 
 Bokhara to Fez and Cordova. How a visir conse- 
 crated 200,000 pieces of gold to the foundation of a 
 college. How the transport of a doctor's books 
 required four hundred camels. How a single library in 
 Spain contained 600,000 volumes, while seventy public 
 libraries were open in Andalusia alone. How the 
 Arabian schools of Spain and Italy were resorted 
 to by scholars from every country in Europe. 
 
 The palaces and gardens of Zehra, near Cordova, 
 testified to the magnificence of the Ommiades. Twenty- 
 
8 IN THE DESERT 
 
 five years and over three million sterling were spent 
 on the work. Architects from Constantinople super- 
 intended the building. "The Hall of Audience was 
 encrusted with gold and pearls, and a great basin in 
 the centre was surrounded with the curious and costly 
 figures of birds and quadrupeds. In a lofty pavilion 
 of the gardens one of these basins and fountains — so 
 delightful in a sultry climate — was replenished, not with 
 water, but with the purest quicksilver. The seraglio 
 of Abdalrahman, his wives, concubines, and black 
 eunuchs, amounted to 6,300 persons ; and he was 
 attended to the field by a guard of 1,200 horse, whose 
 belts and scymetars were studded with gold." 
 
 Here was a state of luxury and learning which con- 
 trasted strongly enough with the barbarism of the age. 
 But under all this show where was the substantial 
 basis ? How much of all this was real ? Arab archi- 
 tecture, in so far as it was Arab, and not built for them 
 by the Greeks, was a concoction of whim and fantasy. 
 In those nervous hands every strong and simple feature 
 was distorted into endless complications, and, as always 
 happens, lost in stability what it gained in eccentricity. 
 Their learning was of the same character. Though 
 they disputed interminably on the rival merits of the 
 Greek philosophers, they were content to receive 
 all their knowledge of them through indifferent trans- 
 lations. When the real revival of learning came, and 
 a genuine Renaissance set in, the six or seven centuries 
 of Arab civilisation were simply ignored and passed 
 over. There was nothing, or almost nothing, of any 
 value in all that fanciful structure ; nothing that could 
 be used as permanent building material. 
 
 An incurable fancifulness infected the whole of ft. 
 
ARAB INSTABILITY 9 
 
 The Arab mind seems to turn by a sort of instinct 
 to the occult, the mystical, the fantastic. It is always 
 sighing for new worlds to conquer before it has made 
 good the ground it stands on. It has the curious gift 
 of turning everything it touches from substance to 
 shadow. Astronomy changes into astrology, and the 
 main business of the science becomes the casting of 
 horoscopes. The study of medicine changes into the 
 composition of philtres and talismans and the reciting 
 of incantations. Chemistry changes into a search for 
 the secret of the transmutation of metals and the elixir 
 of immortal health. In short, the tendency always 
 was to shift the appeal from the intellect and reason 
 to the fancy and imagination ; and their zeal, instead 
 of being devoted to laying firm foundations, evaporated 
 in vague aspirations after the unintelligible or the 
 unobtainable. Okba's cry, " O God, I would still go on 
 to unknown kingdoms," seems the spirit of all their 
 undertakings; and underneath them all there is the 
 same deficiency that brought Okba himself to ruin, 
 the want of a coherent plan, tested and made good at 
 every step of its development.^ 
 
 And the consequence is that not only has the Arab 
 left us little or nothing, but his whole history seems 
 already more legendary than real. Other civilisations 
 abide our question. Not the Greek and Roman only, 
 but the remote Assyrian and Egyptian are definite 
 and real in comparison with the Arabian. This seems 
 of another texture. It is such stuff as dreams are made 
 of. Sober historians hardly know how to handle a 
 tissue of circumstances which falls to pieces in their 
 hands, and cold narrative seems out of place in dealing 
 ' See Appendix, Note A. 
 
10 IN THE DESERT 
 
 with such romantic situations. Even the style of a 
 Gibbon, woven out of solid circumstance and panoplied 
 in fact, feels the contagion of a warmer sentiment, 
 and glows and flushes, half wondering at itself, as it 
 recounts the wild deeds of romance and valour, of 
 incredible cruelty and incredible chivalry, which in 
 their inextricable confusion do duty for Arab history. 
 Ballads and romances are the proper Arab histories. 
 The Arab has nothing to give us of intellectual, nothing 
 that can help us in the work of civilisation we have 
 in hand ourselves, of which coherence, continuity, that 
 stable and sure method of building which enables 
 each generation in turn to take up the work where 
 its predecessor laid it down, is the main characteristic. 
 His is an emotional value. He is a sensation, not an 
 idea. You may say of him what Matthew Arnold said 
 of Byron — 
 
 " He taught us little, but our soul 
 Has felt him like the thunder roll." 
 
 Arab history is alone in this, that the personal events 
 in it seem of more importance than the general ones. 
 The battles and sieges of Okba's campaigns are like 
 empty explosions that strike the ear without a meaning. 
 But Okba himself, riding into the waves, chiding the 
 Atlantic, turning to meet death against a host of foes, 
 is still a figure that counts. 
 
 So it is to this day. The bloody rebellion that in 
 Algeria followed the withdrawal of the French garrison 
 in 1 87 1, and flickered along the margin of the desert 
 and up and down the length of the Atlas with the 
 uncertain movement of all Arab actions, is already 
 
ARAB INSTABILITY ii 
 
 almost forgotten. But EI Mokrani lives. El Mokrani 
 was a chief who had accepted an office under the 
 French Government, and been the friend and comrade 
 of French officers. Patriot though he was, he conceived 
 himself bound by those obligations and those ties of 
 friendship to take no advantage of the moment when 
 France was struggling with an overpowering enemy. 
 Deliberately he let that opportunity pass, and only when 
 peace with Germany was declared did he issue a 
 formal defiance, and after an interval of forty-eight hours 
 lead his men against the invaders. The end came at 
 Souflat. Seeing defeat inevitable, Mokrani dismounted 
 from his horse and led his last charge on foot. He was 
 shot through the forehead. 
 
 Such are the kind of incidents that the worth of 
 Arab history resides in. Splendid deeds are scattered 
 thickly all through it. And between all these deeds 
 there is a curious family likeness. They are all of 
 them lonely acts, not sociable ones. Their aim, I mean, 
 was not to benefit mankind, or help a cause, or an idea, 
 but simply to vindicate what, as an ideal of personal 
 conduct, was lofty and becoming. For such an ideal 
 the Arab has always been ready to lay down his life ; 
 but he lays it down for himself, not for others. 
 
 If you would realise what all this led to, what a 
 civilisation that had no coherence and a heroism that 
 was only personal resulted in finally, the answer lies 
 round us in Algiers. The strange history of the place 
 is already almost unrealisable, and is made the more 
 so because of the quaint, picturesque, and fantastic 
 aspect of the place. It is difficult to associate so 
 bright and curious a scene with its own past. The 
 first view I had of it was through the tiny disk of a 
 
12 IN THE DESERT 
 
 cabin porthole. A northerly storm had chased us 
 southward, and I had turned in in wet and mist. When 
 I woke we were coming in on a following sea, but the 
 wind had chopped about and blew off shore with a 
 freshness and fragrance which, since I came to know 
 them, I have attributed to the pine-woods of these hills 
 and the flowers of these gardens. The long steamer 
 lifted and sank with the varied cadence that makes 
 being " rocked in the cradle of the deep " so much the 
 pleasantest kind of rocking there is. I heard the waves 
 peel off the iron side and flop back into the trough. 
 Then I lifted myself on my elbow and looked out. 
 The sun was rising, and its first beams rested full on 
 the tall, cone-shaped, lemon-coloured hill of houses. 
 Between us and it stretched a sea of the deepest blue, 
 broken into dark ridges, with white splinters of foam 
 breaking from their crests. The contrast between this 
 powerful foreground, dark and strong and vigorous, 
 added to the ghostly brilliance of the pale hill that 
 rose beyond. One thought of Turner and his ivory 
 white. The light on The Fighting Temeraire is the 
 light on Old Algiers. 
 
 How much else was visible I have already forgotten. 
 I have a vague recollection of the infinitely remote 
 peaks of the Atlas, showing a white tooth or two 
 through the haze, and of the darker hill in the fore- 
 ground near the town. But what held all my atten- 
 tion was the wan pyramid of clustered hjuildings, rising 
 like a spectre out of the dark blue of the sea. 
 
 A saint or anchorite of old might have dreamed a 
 dream like this of the Celestial City. It looked too 
 bright for earthly taint to rest on, or common men to 
 live in ; and yet it is doubtful whether, if you were 
 
ARAB INSTABILITY 13 
 
 to search the world over, you could find a spot with a 
 bloodier and darker past. 
 
 The chance denied the Arabs elsewhere was given 
 them here. They were turned out of the East by the 
 Turks, and out of the West by the Goths ; but here, 
 and in the other North African states, they had the 
 chance of working out their system to an end. The 
 insignificant Turkish garrison certainly offered no 
 obstacle, especially after the Moorish emigration from 
 Spain, to Arab national aspirations if they had pos- 
 sessed any. Nor could a better opening for national 
 development be offered. A central position, a fertile 
 soil, a delicious climate, and a long seaboard were 
 among the advantages provided. 
 
 At the end of nine centuries of Arab occupation 
 the outcome of these advantages was a pirate state with 
 its hand against every man and every man's hand 
 against it. A state which had become so intolerable 
 a nuisance that it was found necessary at last to stamp 
 it out of existence, in the interests of society, as you 
 might stamp upon an adder in the public highway. 
 
 That has been the outcome of the Arab civilisation 
 as far as Algiers is concerned. And if one looked 
 elsewhere, east or west, to Tunis and Tripoli, or to 
 Morocco, we should find the same result. A red-hot 
 state of zeal enables Arabs to act together for a 
 little time, and carry on the same movement ; but 
 as soon as it cools the lack of any real cohesion shows 
 itself at once, and society drops to pieces of its own 
 accord. 
 
 It is this dropping to pieces that the history of 
 Algiers illustrates. In the strong, lawless Turk the 
 fickle but equally lawless Arab found a leader after 
 
14 IN THE DESERT 
 
 his own heart. The two seemed made for each other. 
 Their operations extended over many seas and many 
 coasts. Besides being the terror of the Mediterranean 
 they were the terror of the English Channel. " Those 
 roguish pirates," writes in 1644 Edmund Rossingham 
 to Lord Conway, "which lie upon the western coast 
 have taken from the shore about Penzance near St. 
 Michael's Mount sixty men, women, and children." 
 Five years later the at that time prosperous port of 
 Baltimore, in Ireland, was sacked and 237 captives 
 carried off to slavery. The place has never recovered 
 its prosperity, but probably few people realise that its 
 decline has been due to a Saracen foray. 
 
 About the same time we hear of a petition from 
 the shipowners of Exeter, Plymouth, Dartmouth, 
 Barnstaple, and other towns, representing that the 
 pirates had become so numerous that English ships 
 dared not put to sea. Sailors refused to man them, 
 and even fishermen were afraid to go out fishing. 
 On the common everyday acts of piracy committed 
 it would be endless to enlarge. An idea of the 
 familiarity of the pest may be gained from a resolution 
 passed in Parliament to the effect that fines levied 
 on members who were late for prayers should be 
 distributed among the poor women " who daily attend 
 the House" whose husbands were captives in Algiers. 
 
 The usual way of dealing with the evil was by 
 ransom. As late as 18 10 Sir Arthur Paget, of the 
 frigate Thetis, bought off a couple of English slaves 
 for a gold snuffbox set in diamonds, valued at ;^500 ; 
 and the Ironmongers' Company at the same time 
 paid ;^465 for the liberation of thirteen others. It 
 is hardly too much to say that the pirates, by the 
 
ARAB INSTABILITY 15 
 
 energy and tenacity they threw into their business, 
 had made lawlessness lawful, and established a sort 
 of right to violate right. The recognition of this 
 privilege is testified to by the regular tribute paid 
 by the national governments to Algiers, to secure 
 their merchantmen from pillage — a tax as extraor- 
 dinary, surely, as any mentioned in history. The 
 American tribute was paid down to the year of the 
 battle of Waterloo. 
 
 Algiers was the thorn in the side of European 
 civilisation. Gradually, as the nations settled down 
 and society arranged itself, there came into being 
 that method of modern progress, of which, as I said 
 before, the main characteristic is its strict coherence 
 and power of carrying on a purpose from generation 
 to generation. Of course, when Arab anarchy per- 
 ceived this system of order emerging, it flung itself 
 at its throat with all its might. For a while, too, 
 it held its own. Its fleets were in the Channel. It 
 exacted recognition and a tribute. But order grew. 
 International ideas of responsibility and equity began 
 to establish themselves. Slowly anarchy was driven 
 back as the definite scheme more and more emerged. 
 Like those weeds which take root in the interstices 
 of masonry, Algiers had fed on the dissensions of 
 nations. It was the closing-up of European society 
 which was fatal to her. 
 
 Curiously enough, when one remembers the excesses 
 of violence that had marked her course, it was a blow 
 with a fan, of all weapons, which was the signal 
 for her downfall. But the old Bey who allowed 
 himself this trifling indulgence had mistaken the 
 times he lived in. It was safer to shoot a consul 
 
i6 IN THE DESERT 
 
 from a gun in the seventeenth century than to raise 
 a fan against one in the nineteenth. The city's hour 
 had struck. A fleet and army answered the insult, 
 and three years later the French guns were singing 
 the requiem of Algiers. 
 
 Walking among these alleys, or standing under the 
 bleached walls of the old fort overlooking the Arab 
 town and the blue bay beneath, that history passes 
 before one like a panorama. What a mess they have 
 made of it all ! one is tempted to exclaim, thinking of 
 the opportunities wasted and the chances thrown 
 away. What an extraordinary difference between 
 the beginnings of Arab conquest and this helpless, 
 hopeless disintegration and falling to pieces of society 
 in Algiers ! And yet even in the first flush of their 
 enthusiasm we see that secret spirit of incoherence 
 working in all their designs like a solvent ; a spirit 
 which forms part of the Arab character, which was 
 fated to haunt him all through his history, and finally 
 to crumble all his work away. Had Okba marched 
 more warily, with an eye on his lines of communication, 
 he would not have been cut off in his hour of triumph. 
 Had the Arab scholars and scientists been content to 
 build up their civilisation by degrees, basing it on 
 reason and solid fact, instead of dissipating it in 
 transcendental fancies, they would no doubt have 
 achieved something which would not have been swept 
 out of existence as a housemaid sweeps a cobweb 
 from a wall. Had the solid qualities of slowness and 
 sureness, which are the basis of social and national 
 existence, been inherent in Arab character, Europe 
 would not have been treated to such a spectacle as 
 the decline and fall of Algiers. 
 
ARAB INSTABILITY 17 
 
 There is a particular interest here in Algiers in 
 noting this haunting deficiency in the Arab character 
 and civilisation, for it is on this that the French claim 
 to the right of interference is really based. Two 
 principles confront each other in North Africa to-day : 
 the principle of anarchy which is going out, and the 
 principle of order which is coming in. What European 
 civilisation stands for, before all, is just that coherence 
 and continuity which the Arab is destitute of, and 
 for want of which he has been brought to such 
 melancholy shipwreck. It is because these things are 
 absolutely essential to any kind of advance, or social 
 stability even, and because France can supply, and has 
 the best right to supply them, that she is justified in 
 intervening. 
 
 I confess 1 do not see myself how in this matter 
 the line can logically be drawn between any of these 
 North African states. They are all out of the same 
 egg. All are inhabited by the same race and wedded 
 to the same lawlessness. It seems to me that if the 
 French were justified in interfering with Algiers, they 
 were justified in interfering with Tunis, and will be 
 justified in interfering with Morocco. All these states, 
 left to themselves, make any system of law and order 
 impossible, not only within their own borders, but also 
 in their neighbourhood. The Bedouin and Touareg 
 nomads are the pirates of the Sahara. They deal 
 with the Sudan caravan trade just as the Algerine 
 fleet dealt with the commerce of Europe. Lawlessness 
 knows no frontiers, and it is difficult to see how any 
 settlement of the country can take place, until the 
 nation whose interests are paramount in this part of 
 the world assumes responsible control. What the 
 
 3 
 
i8 IN THE DESERT 
 
 claims of other nations may be to influence France's 
 action is, of course, another matter. But so far as the 
 main question of interference is concerned, that is not 
 a question of France versus Algeria, or France versus 
 Tunisia, or France versus Morocco, but of order versus 
 anarchy in North Africa. 
 
 As I correct these pages (June 21, 1905) the inter- 
 ference of Germany seems to have introduced a new 
 complication. What the upshot is to be it is impos- 
 sible to say. My own impression is that the course 
 of events will not be greatly changed. Germany's 
 politics are, I imagine, more European than North 
 African. On the other hand, France's interests and 
 responsibilities in North Africa are so far-reaching 
 and deep-rooted that, guided with patience and tact, 
 it seems as if their ultimate development was 
 assured. 
 
 NOTE, JULY, 190^. 
 
 Four years have passed. Germany has retired. The Moors 
 have added, and are daily adding, fresh proofs of their instabihty. 
 The French poUcy remains what it was, the one soHd factor in 
 the situation. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 FRENCH DISCIPLINE 
 
 The cafes of Algiers — Cosmopolitan character of the people — 
 Moor and Arab — Arab dependence on the desert — His 
 virtues desert virtues — The Jew in Algeria — His place in 
 society — His political importance — French sociability — Its 
 influence in colonisation — France's peaceable intentions — 
 Pacific penetration — The slowness of French colonisation — 
 Striking likeness between Algeria and Cape Colony — French 
 and English methods — The French excel in collective work, 
 the English in individual initiative — French instinct for 
 organisation — The Latin race in Africa — Part played by the 
 Government — French progress. 
 
 THE Cafe de Bordeaux stands at the corner where 
 the Boulevard de la Republique and the Place 
 du Gouvernement join. There are many other cafes 
 in the near neighbourhood — the Cafe de I'Oasis, the 
 Cafe de la Bourse, the Cafe d'Apollon, the Grand Cafe 
 d'Alger, the Cafe Continental, the Cafe Gruber, the 
 Cafe Glacier, and others. I mention only the chief. 
 My recollection of this part of the town, facing the 
 Quay and the bay with the dark palms of the Jardin 
 d'Essai in front, lifting their arching fronds of leaves 
 against the sky, and making networks of flickering 
 shadows on the white dust of the roads, is that it 
 
 19 
 
20 IN THE DESERT 
 
 consists mainly of crowds of little iron tables with little 
 iron chairs set round them. 
 
 The atmosphere of these cafes is the ne plus ultra of 
 Catholicism. All races, all classes, all colours, avail 
 themselves of the hospitality of these acres of chairs 
 and tables. Here gathers a group of young Moors, 
 who are the town-bred Arabs, and worth a moment's 
 attention. They have taken to trade and shopkeeping, 
 and spend their time in distilling scent and making 
 embroidery, and smoking cigarettes in the dim twilight 
 of their shops. The fire of the desert is extinct in 
 them. They are often handsome in a disagreeable 
 effeminate way, with pale smooth faces, velvety dark 
 eyes, and soft, rather fawning manners. They are 
 dressed very gay in silk-embroidered jackets and waist- 
 coats and big linen trousers. An indescribable sense 
 of unhealthiness and decadence attaches to them. 
 
 Compare them with the Arabs of whom a few are 
 scattered in the crowd. Under the hood of the latter's 
 burnous looks out a face darkened and polished by 
 the sun, seamed with countless wrinkles, with eyes 
 whose piercing and restless glances, darting from group 
 to group, bespeak, under his restrained demeanour, the 
 prompt and wary character of the man. In a fashion- 
 able photographer's window in Piccadilly there are 
 generally to be seen several large portraits of English 
 generals and soldiers, with the carefully-prepared rice- 
 powder complexion which has become a photographic 
 tradition. The difference between those egg-like faces 
 in the gilt frames, with all their life-work, furrowed into 
 cheek and forehead, smoothed away, and a mask of 
 pink-and-white porcelain substituted — the difference 
 between these and the originals, as you remember 
 
FRENCH DISCIPLINE 21 
 
 them, scorched and tanned under their helmets in real 
 life, is the difference between Moor and Arab. You 
 can trace a resemblance, it is true ; but all that gives 
 expressiveness and vigour to the Arab's face, and stands 
 for the racial significance of the type, is gone from 
 the Moor's ; and in the same way, too, the slack and 
 languid movements and step of the Moor, compared 
 with the Arab's alertness and the evident strength of 
 his lean but sinewy limbs, shows what a physical 
 deterioration has taken place. 
 
 So fares it with the Arab when he forsakes desert 
 life for cities. On no other race does such a change 
 work so fatally, for there is no other race whose virtues 
 and fine qualities belong so inextricably to the con- 
 ditions he was grown under. Other conditions, up and 
 down the world, are more or less similar, and people 
 bred in one place are effective in most others. But the 
 Arab is not transferable. He has started forth from 
 the desert imbued with a set of vices and virtues all his 
 own, which make him as much an anomaly among men 
 as his home is an anomaly in scenery. The children 
 of hill and wood and valley and plain — of the mixed 
 scenery generally, who are all much of a muchness — 
 stare in astonishment when the child of the desert 
 comes among them, and mentally ejaculate, " What the 
 devil have we here ? " 
 
 Cut the Arab off from the desert and you doom him. 
 His energy always abates as he retires from that source. 
 The fearful desert elan droops in the damp and cold 
 of the north. Indeed, his whole career was checked 
 ultimately not so much by hostile races as by hostile 
 conditions of soil and climate. His conquests were 
 regulated by the thermometer. Gibbon says somewhere 
 
22 IN THE DESERT 
 
 that if it had not been for Charles Martel we might all 
 be living in England now under an Arab dynasty. 
 But that shows that Gibbon had failed to take into 
 account the Arab's dependence on a special physical 
 environment, and his inevitable deterioration when 
 separated from it. A country with a climate like 
 England's has nothing whatever to fear from Arab 
 enterprise. 
 
 In everything we shall find it the same. In their 
 poetry, in their architecture, in their military prowess 
 and achievements, in their own courage and dignity 
 and sense of honour, there is an invariable and generally 
 very rapid falling off so soon as the Arab and the desert 
 are divorced. Here in Algiers, in the person of these 
 young Moors, mostly descended from the Spanish 
 Moors, you may see some of these effects. The Arab 
 burst into Spain ; the Moor crept out. All the striking 
 and virile qualities in the Arab are desert qualities. 
 His fantastic chivalry and generosity, his intense sus- 
 ceptibility to what is honourable and seemly, combined 
 with an equal indifference to what is right and wrong, 
 are qualities which show in his bearing, which you may 
 admire and which certainly add to his picturesqueness, 
 but they are, nevertheless, not exactly the qualities that 
 go to make a useful citizen and a peaceable member of 
 society. It is a pity that it should be so, but it seems, 
 nevertheless, to be the case, that if you subtract from 
 the Arab's character everything that stands between 
 him and citizenship you subtract from it everything 
 that was worth having. 
 
 Another prominent item in an Algerian crowd is the 
 Jew. He is something of a factor in the settlement of 
 Algeria, and will, they say, be more of a factor still in 
 
FRENCH DISCIPLINE 23 
 
 the settlement of Morocco. His importance consists in 
 the fact that he is a sort of middleman between the 
 French and the natives ; that he mingles easily with the 
 native population on the one hand, and is naturally 
 pledged by self-interest to the French Government on 
 the other. 
 
 Under the old Moslem rule a Jew's life in Algiers 
 was certainly not a happy one. Death and torture 
 were forthcoming at the smallest provocation, and insult 
 and contumely at no provocation at all. A " city " man 
 once told me that between the money-making Jew and 
 the money-making Gentile there was the difference 
 which always distinguishes the professional from the 
 amateur. He was thinking of that earnestness of 
 purpose which works on patiently and mechanically 
 in the face of all obstacles and rebuffs. Certainly the 
 quality was never more strongly illustrated than in the 
 history of Algiers. Weak and hated, rich and unpro- 
 tected, what lot could they expect among a people with 
 whom plunder was an instinct ? Hens among hawks 
 might have led such a life. An instinct that they were 
 layers of golden eggs hindered their total extermination, 
 but persecution often ran the issue fine. Other people 
 have suffered martyrdom for country or for faith, but 
 only the Jews have suffered it for money. 
 
 However, the coming of the French brought a 
 change. In 1871 the Jews obtained the rights of 
 citizenship, and their gratitude to the French Govern- 
 ment was naturally lively. They are said to have 
 shown it in the enthusiasm with which their conscripts 
 joined the ranks of the army. No section of the 
 community had profited by the French invasion as 
 they had. For them it meant a change in the con- 
 
24 IN THE DESERT 
 
 ditions of life which can only be compared to coming 
 into harbour after a raging sea. The calm has been 
 disturbed once or twice since by anti-Jewish riots and 
 demonstrations which were in themselves an indirect 
 testimony to the excellent use the race has made of 
 its opportunities and its rapid rise in wealth and 
 influence. Under French rule the number of Jews 
 has increased by leaps and bounds. In all matters 
 of trade and business with the native races they have 
 an enormous advantage over Europeans, in that their 
 own mixed origin and more or less Oriental breeding 
 places them on terms of something like confidence 
 and equality with those races. On the other hand, 
 they fully appreciate the opportunities of European 
 trade, and the advantage of a strong and orderly 
 form of European government. In short, the Jews 
 have a marvellous power of adapting themselves to 
 all the conditions that foster their own special line of 
 business, and are such thorough cosmopolitans that 
 the gulf which usually separates East from West 
 seems in their case to have no existence. It is 
 the fact that this gulf exists which more or less 
 paralyses French and European enterprise when it 
 comes in contact with Oriental races. And it is 
 their being able to bridge the gulf that gives the 
 Jews their unique position in North Africa, and 
 accounts in a great measure for their rapid growth 
 in numbers and importance. 
 
 Moreover Jewish action promises to be much more 
 important in the future than it has yet been. In 
 Morocco the number of the Jews is said to amount 
 to the gigantic total of 200,000. The bulk of these 
 are scattered among the trading towns on or near 
 
FRENCH DISCIPLINE 25 
 
 the coast. A very large share of the trade in 
 European goods, especially of the retail trade, has 
 fallen into their hands. They have managed to re- 
 commend to the suspicious Berber and Arab tribes a 
 great many things, useful or otherwise, which, failing 
 their explanation and soothing assurances, would have 
 roused hostile prejudices. The growth of their trade 
 has extended their influence, which, among the Ber- 
 bers, is now said to be very considerable. Of course 
 this influence is exerted in favour of France, for the 
 Moroccan Jews are keenly alive to the advantage 
 which their Algerian neighbours have gained from 
 French rule, and are fully aware of the immense 
 opportunities which a large extension of European 
 trade in Morocco would confer on a people who hold 
 as they do the position of middleman. 
 
 The importance of the Jew in North Africa, then, 
 is easy to see. His commercial importance will amount 
 to a good deal. In the traffic between European and 
 Oriental, the Jew in a sense is the natural broker, and 
 he may be trusted to make full use of his chances. 
 But his political importance is also very great, and 
 for the time being eclipses the other, since it has a more 
 immediate bearing on the circumstances of the day. 
 If the Moroccan newspapers are to be believed, the 
 Jews are the most indefatigable and most powerful 
 agents of the French cause that exist in the country. 
 Just as they paved the way by slow degrees for 
 European trade, administering it first in homeopathic 
 doses, so now they are paving the way very gradually 
 and tentatively for French political influence. They 
 are, indeed, looked upon by some people as a kind of 
 advance guard of the French occupation, and it is 
 
26 IN THE DESERT 
 
 maintained that they have by degrees introduced into 
 Morocco a general sentiment which, though it would 
 take instant offence at any high-handed action, is not 
 really unfavourable to a gradual propagation of 
 European ideas. 
 
 All this is remarkable testimony to the value of 
 the Jew as a political agent. There may possibly 
 be another side to the business of which we may 
 hear when the country has become settled. One 
 writer says that it is difficult to see how France can 
 repay such services. That, I imagine, is a matter 
 which the Jews will see to for themselves. 
 
 Besides Jews and Moors there are Maltese, Turks, 
 Spaniards, Berbers, several different breeds of negroes 
 from the Sudan and various other odds and ends of 
 more or less equivocal generation, not classed under 
 separate headings, in the crowd that fluctuates up 
 and down in front of our cafe or gathers and settles 
 at its tables. There reigns, as I have said, a spirit 
 of absolute catholicity. French officers and citizens 
 and visitors mingle freely with Moors, Arabs, and 
 Jews. The groups are intermixed. The talk is easy 
 and general. An old beggar comes along, gets a sou 
 and a drink of water, and hobbles on his way. A 
 negro carrying a bundle stops for a light for his 
 cigarette, and a French officer hands the man his 
 own cigarette for the purpose quite as a matter of 
 course. There is a total absence of constraint, of a 
 feeling of exclusiveness and superiority in any section. 
 All garbs, types, languages, and classes seem inter- 
 mingled in a common sociability which recognises no 
 distinction of caste or calling. 
 
 It was particularly to observe this phenomenon 
 
FRENCH DISCIPLINE 27 
 
 that I brought the reader to the Cafe Bordeaux. 
 For I find, on looking back at the time spent here, 
 that it is this wonderfully easy social intercourse, so 
 characteristic in every way of the French genius, that 
 strikes me as the most significant trait in the life 
 of Algiers. 
 
 People who have visited Paris in spring know the 
 change that comes over its streets at that season. 
 They remember the crowds of white-napkined tables 
 that overflow and spread across the side-walks and 
 out under the trees in ever-growing borders and par- 
 terres. Street annuals, Lamb would have called 
 them, 
 
 " That come before the swallow dares and take 
 The winds of March with beauty." 
 
 They transform the scene. And more than that, 
 they transform the Parisian, and from that hour he 
 begins to live his own life again. The biting east 
 may blow, but it will not prevent a few of the old 
 habitues from creeping back to sit, blue with cold, in 
 their accustomed seats and pass a few words of gossip 
 or greeting with the neighbours. That first glass of 
 hot coffee and snatch of talk mark the turn of the 
 year for the Parisian. When he gets home he says 
 to his wife, " I stopped at the Cafe des Voisins to-day." 
 And she cries, " Aha ! go along ! it begins, then ! " 
 And both laugh and nod at each other. So in- 
 grained in the Frenchman is that sociable instinct 
 which we are sometimes inclined to put down to mere 
 manner. 
 
 And it is a hardy instinct and works under all 
 circumstances. However small and remote the settle- 
 
28 IN THE DESERT 
 
 ment, if there is a Frenchman in it to organise its 
 society the cafe flourishes. The guests include all 
 the respectable male population, French and native. 
 The commanding officer of the little garrison is a 
 kind of honorary president. When he takes his 
 sword off and hitches it to the wall it is a sign that 
 he relapses into that easy sociability which, after 
 all, is the Frenchman's native element. He loves 
 these moments. The probability is that he is a keen 
 soldier ; but after all he is a Frenchman before he 
 is a soldier, and the cafe is dearer to him even than 
 the barracks. 
 
 Up and down the French colonies there are 
 thousands of these little agencies busy, mixing and 
 fusing and kneading together in some slight degree 
 the human paste that comes under their influence ; 
 patching up, as you may say, with tiny stitches the 
 rents made by sword and bullet in days gone by. 
 They are symbolic of much in the French character. 
 " Pacific penetration " in a Frenchman's mouth is no 
 mere phrase. The Commandant Godron, after long 
 service in Algeria, used to maintain that the Sahara 
 frontier should be extended day by day as the gardens 
 and oases invaded the desert. " We must bombard 
 the country with cabbages and crops," he used to 
 say ; and every one who has followed the history of 
 the French army in Algeria will acknowledge that 
 that, too, was no mere phrase. 
 
 If one listens to-day to the plans laid and theories 
 suggested for the extension of French influence in 
 Morocco, one is struck by the genuinely peaceable 
 intention that runs through them all. There have 
 been things done in Morocco lately that seemed to 
 
FRENCH DISCIPLINE 29 
 
 countenance decisive interference. Disturbances, raids, 
 and acts of brigandage that almost invited such inter- 
 ference. Yet, judging from the tone of the French 
 press, such a policy finds no backers. The schemes 
 which do appeal to the French imagination, and 
 which are eagerly discussed, are such as those brought 
 forward from time to time for the conquest of the 
 country by doctors and schoolmasters. A hospital is 
 to be opened at Tangier. Later on another is to be 
 started at Fez. Step by step the number is to grow, 
 following a preconceived plan which will result in 
 their regular distribution over certain portions of terri- 
 tory. The treatment of out-patients and the supply 
 at cheap prices of the simpler kinds of medicine 
 are features of the scheme. The schools are to be 
 branch institutions, linked to the hospitals. The 
 schoolmasters and mistresses are to be familiar with 
 the Arab language and customs, and the entire 
 movement is to be inspired by the desire to win the 
 confidence of the native tribes. 
 
 Such schemes, no doubt, lend themselves to eloquent 
 discussion, and often look better in print than they 
 work out in practice. Nevertheless, they help us to 
 realise the temper in which France is approaching 
 this latest colonial problem of hers. The Depeche 
 Coloniale, which certainly represents the most intel- 
 ligent ideas in France in colonial affairs, has of late 
 years published the views of many influential and 
 experienced men on France's policy in Morocco. 
 And what every one must be struck by in these 
 views is the entire absence of anything in the least 
 arrogant, or dictatorial, or militant in them. I have 
 quoted one suggestion by way of a sample, but they 
 
30 IN THE DESERT 
 
 are all much alike in character. They are all occu- 
 pied with the idea how and at what points to tack 
 on French influence to native life ; how to allay sus- 
 picion and distrust and lead the native imagination 
 into an easy and natural recognition of certain benefits 
 that Western civilisation may perhaps be able to 
 bestow upon them. 
 
 The truth is we in England are apt to make too 
 much of the French military excitability. That mood 
 of theirs is altogether abnormal. The consciousness 
 nations have of each other is generally confined to the 
 moments when they have something to fear from each 
 other. Once in twenty years or so French excitability 
 makes us conscious of her as a nation. The danger 
 passes and we relapse into unconsciousness again for 
 another twenty years. But we carry into and through 
 those twenty years the image of France as she appeared 
 at the moment when she mattered to us. We have 
 seen the mountain in eruption, and think it is always 
 thus. We know nothing of its benigner moods, of its 
 green nooks and pleasant valleys, its cottages smothered 
 in vines, its pastoral farms that nestle in its slopes. 
 After all, it is not what a man is in moments of rare 
 excitement, but what he is in the tenour of his daily 
 life that matters. France's daily life is influenced much 
 less than we think by an excitable vanity, and much 
 more than we think by that strong human instinct, 
 which, making an ideal as it does of the social life, 
 instinctively adopts towards all it comes in contact 
 with such an attitude as makes social life possible. 
 
 This is the instinct that the pacific penetration theory 
 is founded on ; and the more closely one watches 
 French life wherever it is lived, and especially the 
 
FRENCH DISCIPLINE 31 
 
 more closely one watches it in the colonies where it 
 is brought into contact with divers races and nation- 
 alities, the more one will note the solidity of the basis. 
 The Bordeaux, the Apollon, the Continental, and the 
 rest of them, stretching their tables right across the 
 town front, give us glimpses of this influence at work. 
 When the claims of school and hospital to act as 
 civilising agents are pressed, it is time some one stood 
 up for the cafe. 
 
 If an Englishman were asked in what scenes or plans 
 the British influence over native races is best displayed, 
 he would think of the justice and firmness of our rule, 
 and would instance probably our courts of justice or 
 government offices. If a Frenchman were asked the 
 same question as to French influence, he would think 
 of the social Catholicism of the French people, and 
 would focus its general character and action for us in 
 the Cafe Bordeaux. 
 
 Whether this universal sociability of the French tends 
 to the rapid opening up of the country and settlement 
 of colonists on the soil is, of course, another matter. 
 It probably has rather the opposite effect. People who 
 colonise in the spirit of the cafe must needs colonise 
 deliberately. A Frenchman landed on a new coast 
 would plant a tree and place a table and sit down to 
 wait for other Frenchmen. When there were plenty 
 of them they would perhaps set off to explore the 
 interior, which, by the way, would probably by that 
 time have been annexed by an Englishman. Coming 
 as they would not in single spies but in battalions 
 they would not travel too far in a day, nor scramble 
 up and down precipices, nor wander off by themselves 
 to explore alone. Not that they would be in the least 
 
32 IN THE DESERT 
 
 afraid of doing any of these things, but because, if they 
 did them, they would have to forego each other's 
 society and conversation. 
 
 It is important, I think, to notice this distinction. 
 There have never been a more daring and pertinaceous 
 lot of explorers than the French have proved them- 
 selves during the last thirty years in North-West 
 Africa. Scores have risked their lives in that time 
 among the treacherous tribes of the central Sahara. 
 Many have lost them. Their work has been of enor- 
 mous importance in the expansion of the French 
 colonial empire, for it has inspired and directed every 
 new move and every fresh acquisition of territory. 
 Never had any government a more zealous and devoted 
 intelligence department, and it might seem absurd in 
 face of their performances to accuse the French of any 
 lack of personal initiative. 
 
 The fact is, if there is any adequate motive for his 
 doing these things, no one is more ready to do them 
 than the Frenchman. To take part in the colonial 
 movement, to be a pawn in that great game which 
 France is playing in North Africa, is to him a motive 
 sufficient. The coherence and logic of the game, the 
 sequence of the moves, appeal to every Frenchman. 
 He thoroughly appreciates his country's play, and is 
 keenly ready to cut in at the game himself But when 
 you speak to him of exploring as a matter of private 
 pleasure, of adventure for its own sake, of the delights 
 of lonely and perilous sport, of the joy of tracking a 
 buffalo in a swamp, or being mauled by a tiger in a 
 jungle, or even of the possibilities of prospecting for 
 diamonds or gold — why, then you speak to inattentive 
 ears. p? ne vaut pas la peine, would be his simple 
 
FRENCH DISCIPLINE 33 
 
 comment on such undertakings. They wcruld involve 
 for him a sacrifice incommensurate with the object to 
 be attained — the sacrifice of that sociabihty which is 
 what, for him, makes life worth living. 
 
 So the work of colonisation and the settlement of 
 the country proceeds slowly in French hands. It pro- 
 ceeds smoothly and comfortably and steadily, but 
 owing to this intense sociability of theirs and their 
 passion for moving en masse, it certainly proceeds very 
 slowly. 
 
 We and the French are the only Powers whose 
 colonisation in Africa is vital to-day ; that is, whose 
 colonies would endure if the protection of the mother 
 country were withdrawn. France has made her en- 
 trance from the extreme north, England from the 
 extreme south. The vast bulk of Africa lies almost 
 evenly balanced on the equator, and between the 
 opposite ends there are close resemblances. Cape 
 Town lies in latitude 34"20 South ; Algiers in 36'47 
 North. The former has a rainfall of twenty-four inches 
 and a mean temperature of sixty-two degrees ; the 
 latter's rainfall is twenty-nine inches, and temperature 
 sixty-six degrees. Algiers is, therefore, slightly warmer 
 and damper than Cape Town, but the difference is 
 inconsiderable. 
 
 There is the same likeness in the physical features 
 of the two countries. What is called the Tell district 
 in the north — that is, the fertile strip of land along the 
 coast — is balanced by a similar margin of fertility in 
 the south. The fruit gardens of Natal are reproduced 
 along the shore of the INIediterranean, and when I was 
 staying in the Mitidjeh valley in Algeria, with its deep 
 black soil and loaded vines, I could fancy myself 
 
 4 
 
34 IN THE DESERT 
 
 strolling among the famous Constantia vineyards of 
 the colony. 
 
 Inland the mountains rise at about the same dis- 
 tance, the Drakensberg in the south answering to the 
 Atlas in the north ; while, inland of these again, the 
 veld and the Sahara correspond at least in their general 
 aspect and sense of barrenness. Here you have two 
 rival systems of colonisation pitted against each other 
 on equal terms. In each you hear the same problems 
 discussed : How to pacify the country, how to irrigate 
 those barren inland tracts, how to establish settlers 
 from home on the land, how to push on the Cape to 
 Cairo railway which is to unite the British possessions, 
 or the trans-Saharan which is to unite the French. 
 Has such a spectacle ever been seen before as that of 
 two great colonial empires spreading and extending 
 from opposite ends of the same enormous continent 
 with equal swiftness and equal energy ? 
 
 At the same time the methods adopted by each 
 country, and the spirit in which they go about the work 
 of colonisation, are very different ; and if we turn back 
 up the road that climbs the wooded hill of Mustapha 
 Superieur, and sit on the low wall overlooking the 
 town and bay, we shall get an idea, perhaps, of what 
 the difference consists in. 
 
 Below us, north and south, two long piers extend 
 into the sea, like outstretched arms, to embrace a 
 steadily-increasing commerce. Beside the shore stretch 
 the long quays and ample warehouses of the port. 
 Then come the Boulevard de la Republique, the 
 squares, gardens, public buildings, statues, fountains, 
 hotels, theatres, the long arcades, and roomy, tree- 
 shaded streets of the Algerian capital. 
 
FRENCH DISCIPLINE 35 
 
 There is a good deal of dignity and discipline in 
 all this. The regularity and breadth in the thorough- 
 fares and the uniformity in the buildings convert whole 
 streets into single architectural features. Dirt and 
 squalor and confusion do not exist ; in short, the 
 intention of the inhabitants is evident — to endow them- 
 selves with a dignified, convenient, and well-arranged 
 capital. 
 
 It is impossible to deny an attractive flavour to the 
 life of such a place. Behind us the electric trams run 
 smoothly down the hill, carrying prosperous-looking 
 occupants to business or pleasure in the town below. 
 On the slopes, among dark evergreens and trees, com- 
 fortable villas stand in their well-ordered gardens. 
 Most of them are built in Moorish style, with deep 
 verandahs, fantastic arcades, and ogive windows. Their 
 snowy architecture gleams, like marble sculpture, 
 through glossy leaves and evergreens. The gardens 
 glow with a profusion of flowers ; arches and verandahs 
 are half smothered under a surprising display of roses, 
 and the great bougainvillea creeper bursts in purple 
 surf on frequent walls and balconies. 
 
 And all this — this disciplined and well-thought-out 
 arrangement of the town and careful utilisation of the 
 hilly ground commanding the sea breeze and view — is 
 not only very pleasant and rather imposing in itself, 
 but it is also distinctively French. Cape Town and 
 Algiers are as like in their sites as two towns could 
 well be ; Cape Town having an advantage, indeed, for 
 there is but one Table Mountain in the world. But 
 between the towns themselves what a contrast ! Cape 
 Town is all at sixes and sevens. Its streets are incon- 
 venient and ill-arranged. Its architecture is a jumble 
 
36 IN THE DESERT 
 
 of hovels and palaces. The town has grown on the 
 hand-to-mouth principle, big buildings, one by one as 
 they are needed, replacing mean ones. At every step 
 it has to fight it own past, and the incoherent style 
 in which it started life will probably always prevent its 
 attaining to much in the way of dignity and con- 
 venience. Nothing is more difficult than to evolve 
 order out of chaos in matters of bricks and mortar, 
 when once the chaos has laid good hold. We know 
 that in London. 
 
 These things are not unimportant, surely. A fine 
 capital attracts citizens, encourages settlement, and 
 gives a certain stability to colonial life. It reacts on 
 industry and agriculture. Markets are established, 
 commerce stimulated, trade knocks at the door. A 
 certain prestige and dignity attach to a young colony 
 from the possession of a worthy capital. Strangers 
 think more of it, and it thinks more of itself The 
 presence or absence of these effects is what makes the 
 difference between Algiers and Cape Town. 
 
 You must look elsewhere than in towns for English 
 efficiency. The indomitable Anglo-Saxon penetrates 
 far into the interior. He exploits the country, civilises 
 the natives, and employs the survivors. His Govern- 
 ment watches him from afar in nervous perplexity, 
 repudiates his action, and with an ill grace appropriates 
 the fruits of his energy. The whole British Empire 
 bears the impress of our individual initiative. Never- 
 theless it is a quality which has its /?er contras. It gave 
 us India, but it gave us the East India Company, the 
 Rajahs, and the Mutiny. It gave us Rhodesia, but it 
 gave us the Chartered Company and the Matabele 
 rebellion. It gave us Mr. Rhodes, but Mr. Rhodes gave 
 
FRENCH DISCIPLINE 37 
 
 us the Jameson raid. At the same time it is this 
 individual initiative that lends to our colonising the 
 vigour that has always characterised it. 
 
 This quality of individual initiative, with its advan- 
 tages and drawbacks, the French have not got ; but in 
 their capacity for collective action they have something 
 that in part at least makes up for it. 
 
 The instant he comes within range, so to speak, of 
 the collective principle, the efficiency of the French 
 colonist reveals itself Here he has all the boldness 
 and the big ideas that the Englishman develops in 
 the backwoods and jungles. I have instanced Algiers, 
 and I might go on to instance such lesser towns as 
 Sfax, Monastir, Gabes, and others, some of which 
 are the merest sketches. Though only the first touches 
 are visible on the bare canvas, these are already the 
 decisive strokes of the artist who foresees a picture. 
 Streets, boulevards, gardens, quays, and harbours are 
 already indicated. All is rudimentary, yet a certain 
 greatness is foreshadowed. Scorched with desert sun, 
 and blurred with desert sand, these embryo cities are 
 nourished on a high tradition. You can trace in them 
 the largeness of frame that shows the young of a fine 
 species. 
 
 The whole French scheme is of a piece. Their 
 colonial empire is laid down just as their towns are 
 laid down, with the same coherence and regard for 
 discipline and order. They have explored the interior, 
 extended their conquests, advanced their frontiers, with 
 the same sense of method. Colonists, on the same 
 principle, are imported in counted batches, settled in 
 villages duly prepared and arranged for them, provided 
 with all necessaries, such as roads and water, and 
 
38 IN THE DESERT 
 
 periodically visited, advised, and superintended by- 
 Government officers. 
 
 A singular instance of this love of arranging and 
 predisposing is attracting some attention at the present 
 moment. A little while ago a book was published on 
 the advisability of the French leaving Asia and con- 
 fining themselves to the development of Africa. 
 " Lachons I'Asie, Prenons I'Afrique " was the title of it. 
 It was, according to the writer, in Africa that a future 
 lay for the Latins. This was as obviously the sphere 
 for the old race as America was the sphere for the new. 
 When the Gallic imagination gets started on a theme 
 of this kind it runs briskly on, and M. Reclus had no 
 difficulty in composing an eloquent work on the subject. 
 If it had not a great success, this was due apparently 
 to the "Lachons I'Asie " not to the "prenons I'Afrique " 
 part of it. 
 
 The idea of a Latin race, resuscitated and vigorous, 
 overspreading the great southern continent caught on. 
 Indeed, the advice is not wholly new. A score of 
 years ago the division of North Africa marked out 
 was Morocco for Spain, Algeria for France, and Tunisia 
 for Italy. Of these, France has been the only Latin 
 nation capable of taking up her liabilities. Italy has 
 been hampered by the tremendous strain involved in 
 keeping up appearances as a great Power, and Spain 
 has been for long almost bereft of national vitality. 
 France, accordingly, has already appropriated the 
 portion reserved for Italy, and is now about to appro- 
 priate the portion reserved for Spain. 
 
 Apart, however, from the national aspect of these 
 transfers, there is their democratic aspect. Spain, as 
 a nation, is not able to undertake any responsibility as 
 
FRENCH DISCIPLINE 39 
 
 to the control of Morocco, but that does not prevent 
 Spaniards from crossing in large numbers into the 
 country. Italy, as a nation, has lost the chance of 
 securing Tunisia, but that does not prevent a steady 
 stream of emigrants from the south of Italy and Sicily 
 settling in the new colony. So that the fact that 
 France ostensibly governs, or soon will govern, the 
 whole of this part of Africa has had no effect on the 
 Latin movement, and each of the three Latin nations 
 is steadily pouring in a stream of colonists into that 
 part of the African coast lying opposite its own shores. 
 
 What M. Reclus calls, then, the building up of a 
 great Latin race in Africa seems to many people already 
 begun. M. de Pouvourville, a member of the Inter- 
 national Colonial Institute, contributed an article on 
 the subject to the Nouvelle Revue of September 15, 
 1904. The intermixture and gradual fusion of these 
 strains of Latin blood on African soil and the 
 formation of a new race of the old stock, but braced 
 and invigorated by a hardy life in a new country, are 
 to M. de Pouvourville events of surpassing interest 
 and significance. Nor is that to be wondered at. It 
 is a movement of great interest, and a movement well 
 worth calling attention to, and judging from the effects 
 that a colonial life is already having on the character 
 of the inhabitants of Algeria and Tunisia, it may be 
 fraught with far-reaching consequences to the Latin 
 race. 
 
 But what is interesting to note in the discussion 
 on this matter which is going forward is the attitude 
 of the French towards their Government. It does 
 not need saying that if such a mixture of races were 
 taking place in any colonies of ours — if English and 
 
40 IN THE DESERT 
 
 Boers were mingling in South Africa, or English and 
 French in Canada — we might be very glad, and we 
 might congratulate ourselves, but it would never occur 
 to us that it was a matter for the Government to 
 interfere in. We should just as soon expect the 
 Government to attempt to influence the succession of 
 the seasons, or the rise and fall of the tide. 
 
 With the French, on the contrary, the first question 
 is — how is the Government to get control of the 
 movement ? They do not consider it safe, they do 
 not feel that it is in a way to bear fruit, until the 
 Government has taken charge of it. Here is a work 
 of tremendous responsibility, says M. de Pouvourville, 
 for the Government. The Government must watch 
 over the evolution of this new race and inoculate 
 it with all the qualities that are to fit it for its 
 magnificent destiny. Here are " vast conceptions," 
 indeed, which may, as he says, " employ unceasingly 
 all the thoughts and efforts of our statesmen." 
 
 Something, it seems, is already being attempted. 
 The French and Algerian Governments are looking 
 into the matter. An inquiry is going to be opened 
 with the object of arranging immigration and con- 
 cessions to colonists. The fusion into single commu- 
 nities of hitherto separated groups will, it is hinted, 
 be a main object. M. de Pouvourville ends his article 
 by remarking that up to now this phenomenon of 
 the birth and development of a new people has gone 
 on unconsciously, under the impulse merely " of hazard 
 and chance circumstances " ; now, however, the Govern- 
 ment must take charge of operations and establish 
 them on a logical and rational basis. 
 
 It is easy to smile at such a notion of colonising, 
 
FREN'CH DISCIPLINE 41 
 
 but any one who from our point of vantage looks 
 down over Algiers, or allows his thoughts to dwell 
 for a moment on the vast scheme of expansion which 
 has given France control of practically the whole of 
 the great North-Western protuberance of Africa, must 
 know that the smile does not end the matter. The 
 most interesting thing of all about French colonising 
 is, not that it differs at all points and pursues dia- 
 metrically opposite methods from ours, but that it 
 succeeds. About this there is no doubt whatever. 
 Whatever tests we apply — whether we take the rise 
 in population, the steady flow of immigration into the 
 country, the increase of births over deaths among 
 colonials, the yearly progress of its wealth and its 
 trade, the cultivation and irrigation of a constantly- 
 increasing area of its soil ; or whether we look further 
 afield, and watch the handling of the whole group of 
 French colonies in North Africa, their steady enlarge- 
 ment and simultaneous advance towards the unity of 
 a single empire — the result is the same. All the 
 evidence points one way. There is no gainsaying it. 
 The effectiveness of the collective system in French 
 hands is written across half a continent. It is a sight 
 that may well make an Englishman stare. Nowhere 
 through all these great new countries is there a trace 
 of individual initiative save in subordination to Govern- 
 ment control. Not only is the whole colonising move- 
 ment and the settlement of immigrants on the land 
 supervised and arranged by Government with a minute 
 and scrupulous attention, but all the work of explora- 
 tion in the uttermost parts of the Sahara is under the 
 same careful direction. I imagine, if you went to an 
 English official at the Colonial Office and asked him 
 
42 IN THE DESERT 
 
 what exploration was going on in British Central 
 Africa, he would say, " The Lord knows ! Why do 
 you come to me about it?" If, on the other hand, 
 we went to a similar official in France, he would have 
 his finger on the map in a moment. " Here," he 
 would say, "in the Adrar Hills I have a party under 
 Captain A. prospecting for gold. Here in the Gourara 
 Valley, Lieutenant B. is cutting a road. On the south 
 side of the Tademait Plateau, Major C. is making a 
 map of the watercourses. Among the oases of Tidikelt, 
 Colonel D. is sinking artesian wells. Professors Y. 
 and Z. are classifying the fauna and flora of the en- 
 virons of Lake Chad " ; and so our official would take 
 us from one end of the Sahara to the other, and in 
 every valley and river-course and on every frontier 
 line he would have his busy agents gathering intelli- 
 gence or carrying out his plans. Here, in this office 
 is the nerve-centre of the whole system, the box-seat 
 to which all the reins converge. 
 
 And it succeeds? Amazingly! It is ridden by 
 officials and it goes admirably. It is swathed from 
 top to bottom in red tape and it overflows with 
 strength and vitality. And the reason it succeeds 
 so well is because Government control, being the 
 greatest possible convenience, or rather, an absolute 
 necessity, for a people who wish to do things eti masse, 
 the French people not only acquiesce in it, but act 
 in sympathy with it and vigorously second all its 
 attempts at intelligent organisation. While our 
 colonists and pioneers ait our Government, the 
 French are hand in glove with theirs. Just as the 
 energy and enterprise of a people who move in ones 
 is to be looked for in the individual, so the energy and 
 
FRENCH DISCIPLINE 43 
 
 enterprise of a people who move in masses is to be 
 sought in its Government ; and, in effect, the Govern- 
 ment which has created the French colonial empires 
 of North-West Africa and Indo-China is a vastly 
 different affair from the Government which our 
 pioneers have periodically to goad into a reluctant 
 acknowledgment of the results of their personal 
 initiative. 
 
 There is no need to determine which system of 
 colonising yields the better results. All that is im- 
 portant is that we should realise that the French have 
 a system, and a system which, as they work it, works 
 well. Their methods, like their manners, are the 
 outcome of something profound and genuine in them- 
 selves. French colonisation proceeds in a very amicable 
 and conciliatory spirit ; it also proceeds with a good 
 deal of method and coherence ; and it also proceeds, 
 so far as the settlement of the country is concerned, 
 with an ineradicable deliberation. And all these three 
 characteristics it owes to the strength of the social 
 instinct in the Frenchman. 
 
 There are many beautiful things to be seen in and 
 about Algiers. Many things that it is tempting to 
 linger over. Her roses alone, those masses of yellow 
 that cluster on every wall and load every verandah, 
 are worthy of a chapter to themselves. I came back 
 here in late spring, when the place was deserted and 
 the hotels all shut up, and walked among these gardens, 
 the only person in them. The roses were full-blown 
 and falling and the ground was carpeted and paths 
 strewn with their blossoms. Every moment a tuft of 
 petals broke and fell as I walked under the trellised 
 pergolas. Never have I seen decay so lovely. Air 
 
44 IN THE DESERT 
 
 and earth were yellow with rose-leaves. It was like 
 walking in an autumn wood of Marshal Niels. 
 
 But still, among all the impressions I have of the 
 place, the two that strike me as most characteristic 
 are those belonging to the two hills I spoke of to 
 begin with, one carrying the jumbled, crumbling mass 
 of the old Arab town, the other the orderly gardens 
 and villas of the French suburb. The ideas these hills 
 stand for, of incoherence and method, are the ideas 
 that are fighting it out to-day in North Africa ; and, 
 having done our best to realise them, we may travel 
 on now towards the Sahara, where lies the last refuge 
 of the Arab principle and the final test of the 
 French. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE FRENCH OCCUPATION 
 
 African scenery, its clearness and regularity — Divisions of 
 Algeria— Line of the French advance — A distracted colonial 
 policy — The anti-colonial party— Indifference of the French 
 people— France makes up her mind— Interest awakened in 
 colonisation — Increase of immigration — Character of Arab 
 warfare— The North African problem— Impossibility of 
 dividing state from state— The pacification of any part of 
 the country involves the pacification of the whole— France 
 forced to advance— The Arab the leading African race- 
 Gives its own character to the politics of the country. 
 
 IT seems a constant endeavour of Nature in Africa 
 to work with as few forms and on as simple a 
 plan as possible. In South Africa every one will 
 remember how curiously monotonous was the effect 
 of the vast flats sparsely sprinkled with pointed kopjes, 
 sometimes in groups, sometimes in strings, sometimes 
 isolated, but always of the same shape, always built 
 on the same model, though perhaps now ruined and 
 defaced. The plain and the pyramid are Nature's 
 only two motives in South Africa. On these two notes 
 she strums contentedly for a thousand miles. 
 
 In the Nile valley there is the same pre-Raphaelite 
 simplicity of arrangement. There is the single river, 
 the single narrow, flat valley, shut in each side by 
 
 45 
 
46 IN THE DESERT 
 
 the long, interminable range of yellow hill. Valley 
 and river here take the place of kopje and plain, 
 but they are insisted on with the same childlike fixity 
 of purpose. Where but in primitive Africa could you 
 imagine a whole country composed of one valley and 
 watered by one river ? 
 
 Long ago, when Nature first started work, when 
 she first said the words " plain " and " hill " and 
 " valley " and " river," these things, as we see them 
 in Africa still, were the ideas she had in her head. 
 She no longer sees in her own mind now as clearly 
 as she did in those days. She has grown perplexed 
 and divided in her aims. Hills and plains have lost 
 their old exactness and become confused together. 
 Valleys, too, and rivers are but the broken fragments 
 of the original idea. Nature's hand has lost its sure- 
 ness. It is difficult often to know now what name to 
 put to her designs. 
 
 Only in Africa are we able to see how simply and 
 tremendously effective these great fundamental prin- 
 ciples of her architecture could be. Their clearness 
 and conscientious precision appeal to the love we all 
 have for what is definite and unmistakable. Their 
 very clearness impresses one with a feeling — quite 
 mistaken, of course — of the extreme antiquity of 
 African scenery. Just as one is accustomed to recognise 
 the earliest forms of archaic art by the rigidity of 
 the drawing and the repetition of a few formulae in 
 fold and gesture, so here the same characteristics, 
 the same rigidity and precise repetitions, seem to 
 vouch for the same antiquity. These hills and valleys 
 you instinctively feel were the first of their kind. 
 They belong to the early era of a limited and accurate 
 
THE FRENCH OCCUPATION 47 
 
 reiteration, while Nature was still at her pothooks, 
 and before her hand had acquired its subsequent 
 fluent illegibility. 
 
 Algeria, though European in many ways, shows 
 to some extent this gift of distinct articulation. The 
 country is divided, east and west, by the Atlas ranges. 
 Between the northernmost range and the sea is a 
 margin, averaging a hundred miles wide, fruitful for 
 the most part, in some places exuberantly so, broken 
 with short spurs of hills running from the main range 
 to the sea. This margin of fertility lying along the 
 coast is called the Tell. South of this lie the High 
 Plateaux. The Atlas mountains, rising in Tunisia, 
 diverge as they travel west in two main ridges, like 
 the opening blades of a pair of scissors, and between 
 and among these main ridges lie wide-bottomed valleys 
 or upland plains, suspended, as it were, like lofty ham- 
 mocks, between the peaks which rise above them. 
 These uplands are quite distinct in every particular 
 from the rich and flowing Tell. They produce plenti- 
 ful crops of corn and barley and maize, but they have 
 a desolate and bleak appearance, and with their dull 
 colouring, and stony peaks in the distance, and absence 
 of trees are extremely like the Karroo district in South 
 Africa. The climate, too, is very different to the sunny 
 warmth of the coast-line. The mountains attract 
 cloud and rain, the wind whistles through the rocky 
 gorges and across the desolate flats, and the air is 
 often wet and chill, bitterly so in winter. South of 
 the Atlas, again, there is a still more sudden and 
 startling descent, and we come to the third of the 
 Algerian divisions, namely, the Sahara. 
 
 The reader now has the articulation of the country 
 
48 IN THE DESERT 
 
 in his mind — the Tell, the High Plateaux, and the 
 Sahara. The first a fertile coast-line, the second 
 wheat-growing flats hoisted four thousand feet in air 
 by the Atlas peaks, the third an interminable expanse 
 of sand and stone, with which we shall by and by 
 make a closer acquaintance. 
 
 And now, as, leaving Algiers, our train drags its 
 low, rolling cloud of dust eastward to Constantine 
 before striking south to penetrate the rocky barrier 
 between shore and Sahara, let us cast a glance back- 
 ward at the history of French occupation up to the 
 present, in order that we may understand the stage 
 it has reached and the prospect that lies before it. 
 Naturally French progress is from north to south. 
 We follow, therefore, the lines of its advance as we 
 travel towards the desert, only that we cover in hours 
 a distance which it took the French armies as many 
 years to accomplish. 
 
 It was a long time before the French took any 
 interest in the development of their new territory 
 in North Africa. Algeria continued for years to be 
 thought and spoken of as if it were at the Antipodes, 
 instead of almost within sight of Marseilles. Its 
 beautiful scenery, its delicious climate, its rich and 
 fertile soil attracted little attention. The invasion 
 of the country had been imposed on France against 
 her own will. It was only when the anachronism 
 of a pirate state, subsisting by the plunder of its 
 neighbours, in the midst of Europe and in the nine- 
 teenth century, had become too glaring to be longer 
 tolerated, and when, moreover, it had been made 
 evident that if France did not move in the matter 
 England would, that the French expedition was at 
 
THE FRENCH OCCUPATION 49 
 
 last despatched. Once embarked on the enterprise 
 there was no drawing back. The capture, or at least 
 the retention, of Algiers necessitated the conquest of 
 Algeria, since it is absolutely impossible among a 
 people so fierce and warlike as the Arab tribes to 
 hold one portion of the country without holding it 
 all. The attempt to do so has been made again and 
 again, and always with the same results : frontier 
 troubles, armed forays, plunder and murder, a rising 
 of the tribesmen, a massacre, and the invader is 
 forced to resume an advance which should never 
 have been interrupted. 
 
 Thus, after a long interval the renewal of colonial 
 expansion was forced upon France in a manner there 
 was no evading. It is curious to remember, in these 
 days of universal land hunger, how reluctantly and 
 by what slow degrees she was induced to appropriate 
 the fertile province lying at her very door, which for 
 centuries had seemed to be crying out for annexation. 
 
 The succession of languid campaigns that followed 
 failed to arouse any kind of national interest in the 
 colonial policy of the Government. Indeed, a definite 
 colonial policy did not at that time exist. The presence 
 of enemies induced battle. The Arabs broke them- 
 selves by degrees against the military strength of 
 France. But France herself showed no wish to 
 extend and regulate her conquests. Throughout the 
 first half of Louis Philippe's reign the French Chamber 
 was hostile to a definite occupation. The political 
 economists were against it. For long it was un- 
 certain whether the Government would be content 
 with holding one or two of the coast towns, or would 
 seriously undertake the conquest of the country. 
 
 5 
 
50 IN THE DESERT 
 
 An expedient, which was again and again attempted, 
 and which showed the entire misconception under 
 which France laboured as to the part she was called 
 to play in the new territory, was that of governing 
 through native chiefs, and making use of these as 
 instruments of her own authority and influence. 
 Mustapha Ben Omar and others in the beylik of 
 Titeri were thus employed. A more important inter- 
 mediary was the celebrated Abd-el-Kader, for fifteen 
 years the open enemy or doubtful friend of France, 
 lusuf and Achmed, in the province of Constantine, 
 were others. Even the Bey of Tunis was called in 
 to act as middleman between the French Government 
 and the native tribes. 
 
 The whole structure of Arab society was, however, 
 too loosely put together to admit of being influenced 
 by means like these. It was disorderly in its elements. 
 Stability was lacking not only in the authority of the 
 chiefs to whom France appealed, but in the lives and 
 characters of the people. Indeed, for France to seek 
 stability from them was to require that at their hands 
 which it was her own special business to confer ; the 
 need of which was, and is, the main justification for her 
 own presence in North Africa. 
 
 Nevertheless this vacillating policy was persisted 
 in for years. In 1834, M. Dupin, procureur-general, 
 in a speech in the Chamber, declared that the whole 
 idea of colonisation was absurd. No one wanted to 
 colonise, there was no territory to bestow on colonists, 
 and no way of safeguarding their future. " The thing 
 to do," he insisted, " was to reduce expenditure to the 
 lowest possible limit, and hasten in every way the 
 moment that would free France from a burden which 
 
THE FRENCH OCCUPATION 51 
 
 she could not and would not support much longer." 
 Three years later, M. Thiers, not usually lacking in 
 energy, declared that, " If we could secure a few leagues 
 of land round Oran, Algiers, and Bone, I, for my part, 
 should be satisfied. I am no friend of a general 
 occupation," What was still more remarkable, Marshal 
 Bugeaud, one of the most successful of the French 
 commanders in Algeria, was at this time so opposed 
 to a policy of conquest, and so persuaded that the 
 country would never be worth the blood and money 
 spent on it, that he could not conceal his opinion 
 from the troops he was actually leading. " Unfor- 
 tunately," wrote a subordinate in 1836, just after the 
 brilliant campaign of Tlemcen, " he professes these 
 opinions all day, to every one, and at the top of his 
 voice, which, though he may not be aware of it, is 
 rather discouraging to the army." 
 
 When such were the convictions of the leaders in 
 Parliament and in the field, it was no wonder that 
 the resulting operations should be of a desultory nature. 
 Luckily, perhaps, for the future of French colonisation, 
 the restless excitability of the tribes goaded it per- 
 petually to unwilling efforts. It was not, however, 
 until after repeated experience of Arab unreliability 
 that France, convinced, on the one hand, of the danger 
 of abandoning the country altogether, was convinced, 
 on the other, of the disagreeable necessity of governing 
 it for herself. In 1838 Kolea and Blidah were garri- 
 soned, Medea and Miliana were occupied in 1840, 
 Biskra and Delleys fell in 1844. The Moroccans were 
 defeated in the same year, and three years later, Abd- 
 el-Kader, rebel, deputy-governor, and independent chief, 
 surrendered himself prisoner. In 1852 Laghouat 
 
52 IN THE DESERT 
 
 was taken. The expedition against the Khabilis 
 followed in 1856-57, and it was only after the successful 
 issue of this campaign that the conquest of Algeria, 
 north of the desert, could be said to be complete. It 
 had taken twenty-seven years. 
 
 Marshal Bugeaud himself defined the cause of the 
 dilatory nature of the French invasion when, in answer 
 to certain critics, he pointed out that the whole enter- 
 prise had been undertaken without a definite end in 
 view, and with a total lack of earnestness and convic- 
 tion. It had been often said that the country -was 
 conquered when it was not conquered at all. He was 
 told that he ought to do with 21,000 men. He asked 
 for 45,000 as a minimum. The French held several 
 towns, but were little the further advanced for that. 
 " But," he added significantly, " when France makes 
 up her mind to conquer the country — when she makes 
 up her mind seriously, I mean — she will, no doubt, 
 achieve her object." 
 
 Meantime the colonisation of the country partook 
 of the same character as its conquest. During these 
 early years the French Government, so far from 
 encouraging immigration, set itself deliberately to 
 check it. At the end of 1832 an order appeared which 
 provided that, " to prevent a too numerous and plenti- 
 ful immigration, and to safeguard individuals from 
 destitution in consequence of their having inconsider- 
 ately transferred themselves to a new country without 
 possessing any assured means of livelihood, the French 
 Government, besides the measures it has already taken 
 to prevent spontaneous immigration into Algeria, 
 has thought fit to put a stop altogether to ingress into 
 the country until further orders, except for those who 
 
THE FRENCH OCCUPATION 53 
 
 can prove that they have ample means of sub- 
 sistence." 
 
 Nor was this a temporary precaution. For thirty 
 years the same opposition was offered. During all 
 this time the Government acts the part of an exceed- 
 ingly fussy master of ceremonies, who, instead of 
 throwing open the doors and letting the public scramble 
 for their seats, admits them one by one and conducts 
 each one personally to his place. Now and then at 
 long intervals the door was opened for a moment, a 
 required number was admitted, and it was promptly 
 shut again. Five years after the taking of Algiers the 
 number of European colonists of all countries only 
 amounted to 11,221. During the next ten years the 
 number rose to 95,531. After this again the usual dis- 
 abilities were imposed. No one was allowed admittance 
 who had not employment assured beforehand. When 
 in 1853 the Swiss desired to found a colony at Setif, the 
 French Government stipulated that each member must 
 possess capital to the amount of 3,000 francs. The 
 result was that in the ten years following 1845 the 
 average yearly immigration was reduced to a little 
 oyer a half of what it had been in the previous ten 
 years. " The salient characteristic of Algerian coloni- 
 sation," says M. Leroy Beaulieu, " was the systematic, 
 almost constant, opposition of the home Government to 
 any considerable immigration during a period of thirty 
 years." And he adds, " This hostility to the idea of 
 immigration was a settled policy which for years 
 influenced the Government in its conduct of Algerian 
 affairs. A study was made how to limit the number 
 of immigrants, and the task was not a difficult one. 
 New arrivals were required to possess an amount of 
 
54 IN THE DESERT 
 
 capital rare for such classes. Simple workmen had 
 to show 400 francs, and people who went out with the 
 idea of investing in land were obliged to own a fortune 
 of 1,500 or even 3,000 francs." 
 
 We are not to suppose, however, that during these 
 years the Government was suppressing a movement 
 of any vigour on the part of the people. The task 
 of controlling immigration was, as M. Leroy Beaulieu 
 says, " not a difficult one." It required no exertion 
 to shut the door, and a good deal of persuasion to 
 induce any one to take advantage of its opening. 
 In 1857, 80,000 free passages were granted to colonists, 
 of whom 70,000 promptly returned to France. It is 
 really the indifference on the part of the French people 
 which explains both the vacillation and the fussiness 
 of the Government and the lack of energy in the 
 campaign. Conquest and colonisation alike were 
 waiting for France to " make up her mind " on the 
 Algerian question. 
 
 A glance at the census returns shows about when 
 she made it up. Taking periods of five years we find 
 that from 1861 to 1866 the population rose by 890. 
 From 1866 to 1872 (no census was possible in 1871) 
 it rose 7,482. From 1872 to 1876 it rose 26,764, and 
 during the next five years from 1876 to 1881 it rose 
 39,043, the increase being entirely due to immigration, 
 for the deaths in those days exceeded the births in 
 the colony itself. The remarkable point in these figures 
 is the tide of immigration that set in after 1872, and 
 which has been steadily maintained ever since. The 
 ten years previous to 1872 brought in about 17,000 
 immigrants into Algeria, the nine years following 
 brought 65,000. 
 
THE FRENCH OCCUPATION 55 
 
 It is from about 1872, from the time, that is, when 
 she received a blow, which, so far from prostrating 
 her, seems to have had the effect of stimulating her 
 vitality, that we are to date this renaissance of French 
 colonising. Down to this time the weak trait in her 
 colonisation, its lack of personal initiative, has been 
 the ruling characteristic. The scheme has been backed 
 up by no real interest on the part of the people. But 
 French colonisation has other characteristics besides 
 this weakening, negative one of lack of personal 
 initiative. A people who move en masse may be slow 
 to move, but when they do move they move with effect. 
 The strength of the French system consists in its 
 instinct for organisation and method. This from 1872 
 on is the factor that comes into play. Backed up by 
 the tardily-awakened interest of the nation, it set itself 
 to carve out, rapidly, daringly, and systematically, the 
 French colonial empire as it exists to-day. 
 
 There can scarcely be, I imagine, a contrast in 
 history more dramatic than that between France's 
 colonial policy before and after the year of her 
 awakening. The characteristics of the two seem to 
 be irreconcilable. The earlier policy is typical of a 
 people who, if not on the decline, had used up their 
 expansive energy and reached the slack water of their 
 flood ; the latter is the policy of a nation still young 
 in enterprise and physical vigour. It is difficult to 
 believe that the Power which in the later period we 
 find everywhere advancing her frontiers with such 
 boldness, whose explorers and pioneers are scattered 
 through the Sahara and the Sudan, whose territories 
 have spread from the Congo in the south, from the 
 Senegal in the west, from Algeria and Tunisia in the 
 
S6 IN THE DESERT 
 
 north, until they have included almost the whole of this 
 vast protuberance of the north-west in a single colonial 
 empire, can be the same Power which so lately shrank 
 from assuming control over a country almost in sight 
 of her own shores. 
 
 A remarkable feature, from the Arab point of view, 
 about all these campaigns and native risings is the 
 violent, sudden, inexplicable bursts of passion that 
 rise and die down and rise again. The war spirit 
 darts hither and thither with a sort of electric agility 
 that takes no account of divisions or frontiers. The 
 contagion of an indefinable excitement seems the only 
 motive. There is no foreseeing its course or duration. 
 Let a chief or a district rise in revolt, and you may 
 have that chief and district only to deal with, or you 
 may have the whole province and neighbouring states 
 as well. Nothing is more difficult to follow than the 
 rapid changes and fluctuations in the Arab resistance. 
 On Monday the country seems settling into peace, 
 on Tuesday it is up in arms from the Gulf of Gabes 
 to the Atlantic Ocean. Such is the case still among 
 the Saharan tribes, whether belonging to the hinter- 
 land of Morocco or of Algeria, who, while they acknow- 
 ledge no law and no sovereign, are capable of sinking 
 personal quarrels to make common cause against a 
 common enemy. The ties of blood and religion, which, 
 under all their distractions, bind the tribes of North 
 Africa together, may at any time unite them in frantic 
 opposition to a European and Christian Power. 
 
 It is this fluidity of the North African races that 
 gives its peculiar character to the whole question of 
 the settlement of the country. It makes the question 
 one ; a problem of which no part is separable from the 
 
THE FRENCH OCCUPATION 57 
 
 rest. It lays down the condition, that any Power 
 which engages in the pacification of any part of 
 North-West Africa must be prepared to pacify the 
 whole of it. 
 
 It was long before France grasped this fundamental 
 condition of the problem she had tackled. Only when 
 she entered seriously on the question of the settlement 
 of the Sahara, where, of course, this fluidity of the 
 tribes is much more pronounced, and where frontiers 
 have no existence, did the full significance of it begin 
 to dawn upon her. The steps she thereupon took to 
 bring the whole of this enormous territory under her 
 sway have seemed to some people to reveal an 
 altogether excessive thirst for dominion. But an 
 imperious necessity urged her forward ; the same 
 necessity which from the moment of her taking Algiers 
 had pushed her step by step along the road of conquest. 
 
 No one will rightly understand the North African 
 problem as it exists to-day who fails to realise the 
 primary condition that it is a problem which must be 
 treated as a whole. Arab blood and the Moslem faith 
 are two forces which acknowledge no restraints and no 
 boundaries, and it would be as reasonable to expect a 
 prairie fire in full blast to respect the invisible boundary- 
 line of your property as to suppose that the Arab tribes, 
 in one of the periodical fits of excitement to which they 
 are subject, will pay the slightest regard to treaties or 
 frontiers. 
 
 In North Africa it is the Arab race that leads. That 
 race is in a small minority. It probably does not 
 number more than fifteen or twenty per cent, of the 
 native population. Nevertheless it forms the dominant 
 caste. Though the Berbers outnumber the Arabs by 
 
S8 IN THE DESERT 
 
 three or four to one, and are themselves a fine and 
 hardy mountain people, yet they submitted to receive 
 the Arab language and the Arab religion from their 
 invaders. To this day the natives of Algeria are 
 usually referred to in daily talk or writing as " Arabs." 
 The truth is that the Arab is the driving power in 
 North African politics. Other races may supply the 
 physical energy, but it is the Arab temperament and 
 the Arab religion which supply the nervous energy. It 
 is these which inspire and direct ; and more especially 
 it is these which give their character of universality to 
 the questions which agitate North Africa. The Arab 
 is a wanderer. His religion is a call to action. In 
 those two conditions you have the politics of the 
 country. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE FRENCH IN THE SAHARA 
 
 Early exploration of the desert — The French make a beginning 
 — Unlucky ending to many of their expeditions — De Brazza 
 and the Congo — Advance from the south and west — The 
 idea of a united Colonial Empire — The convention of 1890 — 
 Monteil's expedition — Fernand Foureau — The Touareg tribes 
 oppose the French advance — Occupation of the desert — 
 Consistency of the French scheme — French rights in North 
 Africa. 
 
 THE great African feature that comes into promi- 
 nence with the sudden awakening of French 
 energy in colonial matters is the Sahara. Hitherto 
 this had been a terra incognita. There now appeared 
 a succession of explorers who set about the investiga- 
 tion of the desert in the characteristic French way. 
 The English explore for love of adventure, the Germans 
 for love of abstract science, the French for the attain- 
 ment of practical ends. From 1780 to 1850 practically 
 all the desert explorers are English. Lucas, Ledyard, 
 Ritchie, Lyon, Wenham, Oudeney, Clapperton are the 
 names we meet with, few of whom returned to tell the 
 tale of their adventures. Following them we come to 
 certain famous Germans, Barth, Rohlfs, and Nachtigal, 
 
 who carried on the work down to about 1870, and 
 
 59 
 
6o IN THE DESERT 
 
 established our knowledge of the Sahara on something 
 approaching a scientific basis. Then at last come the 
 French. Hitherto the only French explorer of note 
 has been Henri Duveyrier, whose great journey dates 
 from 1859. The French occupation was then beginning 
 to confirm its hold. In 1854 the victory of Meggarine, 
 and the submission of Tuggurt and the tribes of the 
 Oued Rir, introduced France to the desert. The work 
 of sinking wells to revive certain of the decaying oases, 
 which was immediately undertaken, and which met 
 with conspicuous success, suggested a wider occupation. 
 It was not, however, till after 1870 that the exploration 
 of the interior began to be systematically carried out, 
 and there commenced a series of attempts to explore 
 the oases of the mid-desert occupied by the dangerous 
 tribes of the Touareg confederation. In 1873-74 
 Soleillet reached Insalah. In 1874 Dourneaux- 
 Duperre and Joubert were assassinated near Ghadames, 
 which town was reached by Victor Largeau in 1S75. 
 The attempts of Largeau and Louis Say to penetrate 
 southward were frustrated by the Touareg in 1877, and 
 in the following year Erwin von Bary was assassinated 
 by the same tribes. In 1878, the Government having 
 recognised the difficulty of carrying on the work of 
 exploration in the face of the hostile tribes that held 
 the central desert, an armed expedition was organised 
 under the command of the ill-fated Colonel Flatters. 
 It started in 1880, but was far too weak for its purpose, 
 and appears to have been somewhat recklessly led. It 
 was ambushed and cut up by the Touareg, a few 
 natives only escaping to carry the bad news to Algeria. 
 The blow was followed by the massacre of the 
 missionaries, Richard, Morat, and Pouplard ; by the 
 
THE FRENCH IN THE SAHARA 6i 
 
 assassination of Lieutenant Palet in 1886, and of 
 Camilla Douls in 1889. 
 
 If many of these expeditions had an unfortunate 
 ending, their multiplication in the face of difficulties 
 shows at least the interest which was beginning to 
 concentrate round the North African problem. The 
 annexation of Tunisia in 1881 revealed the progressive 
 nature of the French occupation. A similar spirit was 
 developing along the southern borders of the future 
 colonial empire. The name of Savargnan de Brazza is 
 identified with the creation of the French Congo State. 
 His expedition occupied the years between 1875 and 
 1878, and between 1879 and 1883. De Brazza was an 
 ardent believer in that system of " pacific penetration " 
 which, though chiefly heard of lately in reference to 
 Morocco, has really been a pretty constant feature of 
 the French occupation, and he undoubtedly employed 
 it with great effect on the tribes of the Congo. Mainly 
 by treaties with the natives he extended the French 
 protectorate from an undetermined coast-line to some- 
 thing like its present dimensions. His labours were 
 rewarded at the Berlin Conference, when the conquests 
 of his urbanity were duly included in the French 
 colonial empire. 
 
 In all the hitherto isolated and disconnected colonies 
 of the Gulf of Guinea, Dahomey, the Ivory Coast, 
 French Guinea, and Senegambia, the same leaven was 
 working. The year 1854, which saw the conquest of 
 the Sahara begun in the north, saw the beginning in 
 Senegambia of the governorship of General Faidherbe, 
 commonly known as the founder of the French Sudan. 
 The foundations then laid were extended by Briere de 
 risle, whose treaty of 1881 contained the recognition 
 
62 IN THE DESERT 
 
 by the Sultan Ahmadou of the French Protectorate. 
 The treaty in 1887 with the formidable Samory marked 
 a further extension of French influence, and about the 
 same time took place the expedition of Captain Dinger 
 from Bammako in the Upper Niger, by Sikasso, and 
 down the Comoe into the Ivory Coast State, an expedi- 
 tion which gave a decisive stimulus to French influence 
 by linking together the hinterlands of Senegambia and 
 the Ivory Coast. 
 
 This junction effected, the occupation of the interior 
 was swift and uninterrupted. In was continued by 
 Archinard, Combes, Audeoud, Bonnier, Soffres, Deste- 
 nave, Voulet, and other French soldiers, who, in a series 
 of expeditions, swept the French frontiers northwards 
 and eastwards till they occupied the whole bend of the 
 Niger, and flowed round the English territory of 
 Sokoto, to join, at Lake Tchad, with the Congo 
 advancing from the south. 
 
 These events show what a spirit of movement and 
 enterprise was animating all the French colonies from 
 1870 onwards. From all sides they were pushing 
 forward a simultaneous advance ; and though this 
 advance was begun probably in the interest of each 
 individual colony, it ended by and by in making 
 them aware of each other's purpose and presence, and 
 suggesting the idea of a united empire. 
 
 In 1890 the decisive event took place which showed 
 that the thought of consolidation had flashed on the 
 French mind. In that year the convention was signed 
 between France and England which recognised France's 
 claim to the whole of the Sahara between a line drawn 
 from Say to Lake Tchad on the south, and Algeria and 
 Tunisia on the north. The delimitations of frontiers 
 
THE FRENCH IN THE SAHARA 63 
 
 were indefinite in this treaty, however, and they were 
 not finally specified until the convention of 1899. In 
 the interval of nine years France carried on her inves- 
 tigations with increased energy. To these years belong 
 the greatest names among the explorers, Foureau and 
 Monteil, besides a host of lesser ones. The idea of 
 the Sahara had " caught on " in France, and was recog- 
 nised as the proper field for patriotic enterprise, just 
 as the south of Africa was so recognised by England. 
 
 Monteil was a captain of Marines. Two campaigns 
 in Senegal had seasoned him to the African climate 
 and instructed him in the character of African races. 
 In scientific knowledge he was well equipped for the 
 undertaking he meditated. He came to Paris and 
 interviewed an under secretary, and was asked to make 
 out an estimate. He required i^3,500 to cover all 
 expenses, ten rifles, and 3,000 cartridges. The under 
 secretary accepted the offer with alacrity. If the worst 
 came to the worst and the expedition were wiped out, 
 as it probably would be, the loss of three or four 
 thousand pounds and a captain of Marines was unlikely 
 to make much stir in the world. Monteil was given 
 carte blanche to conduct his own expedition in his own 
 way, and decided to start from Senegal on the west 
 instead of from the north. He left St. Louis with a 
 little party of twelve men, soon to be reduced to eight, 
 on October 9, 1890, and in the following December 
 passed through the last French outpost, and plunged 
 into the silence of the African Sudan. Months passed 
 bringing no news of him to the outside world. When 
 over a year had elapsed the destruction of the frail 
 caravan was looked upon as certain, and people began 
 to talk of Monteil in the past tense. 
 
64 IN THE DESERT 
 
 Then suddenly, in May, 1892, the black curtain that 
 had shut him out lifted a little. Letters came to hand 
 reporting the expedition up to Kano. Kano is in 
 Sokoto, 300 miles west of Lake Tchad. The letters 
 had come right across the great desert to Tripoli. 
 The news was old, but it had the effect of stimulating 
 French interest in the explorers. While Monteil had 
 been discovering Africa, France, as M. de Vogue says, 
 had been discovering Monteil. The daring of the 
 adventure, the long suspense, the word of news 
 breaking the silence, struck the imagination of a 
 people always alive to a dramatic situation. Six 
 months later a small and very weary caravan emerged 
 from the Sahara and shaped its course for Tripoli, 
 which it reached on December 10, 1892. In the two 
 years and two months since he had set out, Monteil had 
 covered a distance of 5,000 miles. He had entered the 
 desert quite unknown ; he emerged from it the hero of 
 the hour. The bewildered traveller was bombarded 
 with congratulatory letters and telegrams from friends, 
 admirers, and scientific societies. He laid the fruits 
 of his journey, in the shape of much valuable infor- 
 mation concerning the southern borderland between the 
 desert and the Sudan, and the interior of the Sahara, 
 before the French authorities, and immediately returned 
 to Africa on a new mission. One practical result of his 
 observations was the inclusion of Zinder, the important 
 frontier town on the trans-Saharan caravan route, in 
 the French sphere of influence. 
 
 It would take a volume to deal with all the ex- 
 plorations which have since been organised. One 
 name, however, stands out above all competitors, not 
 only as that of the man who will probably rank in 
 
THE FRENCH IN THE SAHARA 65 
 
 history as the greatest of Saharan explorers, but as one 
 who, from his breadth of view and grasp of all that the 
 Sahara meant in the French scheme of colonisation, 
 was less the instrument than the guide and inspiration 
 of his country's policy. 
 
 Fernand Foureau was born in 1850, and began his 
 African explorations at the age of twenty-seven. After 
 several preliminary expeditions in the Northern Sahara, 
 he turned his attention to what had come to be 
 recognised as the chief danger of the desert and the 
 chief obstacle to a complete exploration. The Touareg 
 tribes of the Central Sahara, occupying positions from 
 Ghadames and Ghat in the east to the great oases 
 of Insalah and Twat on the west, formed a cordon 
 across the desert south of Algeria, completely masking 
 the southern frontiers of the colony. The oases and 
 hills which formed their headquarters fed a cloud of 
 wandering marauders who were scattered over the 
 country wherever a scanty herbage offered sustenance 
 for their goats and camels, or a caravan route promised 
 the chance of blackmail or pillage. 
 
 In 1890 Foureau began a series of expeditions, the 
 object of which was to explore the Touareg country, 
 and from thence the route south by Air to Zinder 
 and the Sudan, a route never yet traversed by a 
 European in its entirety. Alone, except for a handful 
 of natives, protected only by his own intimate know- 
 ledge of the Arab character and country, he made, 
 between 1890 and 1899, no fewer than seven expedi- 
 tions into a region which had proved a veritable death- 
 trap to French explorers. He made many valuable 
 discoveries, and brought home a fund of information 
 on the country lying between the Algerian desert and 
 
 6 
 
66 IN THE DESERT 
 
 the Touareg settlements ; nevertheless, from each of 
 these journeys he returned a disappointed man, in that 
 the inveterate suspicion and hostility of the tribes had 
 each time defeated his object of penetrating to the 
 south. 
 
 Two conclusions, however, had by this time defined 
 themselves clearly in his mind. The first was, that 
 the Insalah position, standing midway between French 
 Algeria and the French Sudan, was the key of the 
 Sahara. And the second was, that the opposition 
 of the Touareg would never be overcome by anything 
 but armed force. For years he had tried to pick the 
 lock ; now he was resolved to force it. " You will never 
 traverse the Touareg country," he writes in one of his 
 reports, " with any kind of security except by de- 
 pending on force and by establishing all along the 
 route well-manned positions, the garrisons of which 
 will police the road throughout. This you will have 
 to do if you wish to open up communications between 
 the Sudan and Algeria." 
 
 As for the Touareg themselves, Foureau, who 
 certainly knew them far better than any living 
 European, had little sympathy to spare for them. 
 " Their life," he writes, " is a constant succession of 
 ghazis (pillaging forays). Every tribe of them, except 
 the Ifoghas, takes part in the business, which means 
 for them a livelihood without the trouble of working. 
 The consequence is, that the Sahara is in a constant 
 state of turmoil and insecurity ; murders, theft, pillage, 
 and ambushes are of everyday occurrence. Not a 
 quiet month ever passes in the desert, and it is quite 
 certain that this state of things must stop all intercourse 
 and commerce, as well as all hope of exploring the 
 
THE FRENCH IN THE SAHARA 67 
 
 country." He then urges that France should undertake 
 the work of pacification, and points out that the more 
 peaceable tribes are agreed that there can be no settle- 
 ment of the Saharan question until France makes up 
 her mind to police the country. 
 
 Foureau's advice had great weight. Already the 
 advanced positions of the Algerian army were pressing 
 southward along the whole line of the desert. Up to 
 1890, El Oued, Tuggurt, Ouargla, Ghardaia, and Ain 
 Sefra had been the outposts. In the years 1891 
 and 1892, a general move forward had been made 
 of about 100 or 150 miles. El Golea was occupied in 
 strength, Hassi Inifel and Fort MacMahon were 
 garrisoned. At the same time a similar advance was 
 taking place in the south. Between 1887 and 1890 French 
 gunboats were exploring the Niger. In 1S93 Segu and 
 INIassina were occupied by Colonel Archinard, and in 
 1895 Timbuktu, the great exchange and mart betwixt 
 the Sahara and the Sudan, fell into the hands of 
 France. 
 
 So between 1890 and 1900 it was coming to be 
 realised that the Sahara might be made a means of 
 communication rather than division. Distant colonies 
 were beckoning to each other across the enormous gulf 
 Moreover it was found that the desert itself was not 
 quite the utter void it had been supposed. Oases, in 
 some parts, dotted its surface, and caravan routes, 
 which in old days had carried a rich trade between 
 the Sudan and the northern states, crossed it from 
 north to south. Now trade had fallen off; caravans 
 had to face the risk of being plundered and pillaged 
 in the desert ; the great market-towns on the borders 
 of the Sahara which had collected the produce of the 
 
68 . IN THE DESERT 
 
 Sudan and despatched it northward, or received and 
 distributed the goods arriving from the north — these 
 teeming cities had now sunk into squaHd and miserable 
 villages. In the desert itself the oases were falling 
 into decay. The working inhabitants were being en- 
 slaved by the robber tribes. The wells were " dying," 
 the sand was encroaching, security for life or property 
 did not exist. The source of the mischief was the 
 Touareg tribes. It was they who watched the routes, 
 plundered caravans, murdered pioneers, and preyed on 
 the trans-Saharan trade as the Algerian fleets had 
 preyed on the Mediterranean merchantmen. And the 
 chief strongholds of the great robber confederation 
 were the mid-desert oases and groups of hills lying, like 
 clusters of pirate-infested islands, off the distant coasts 
 of Algeria. 
 
 The truth of the great explorer's definition of these 
 Touareg strongholds as /a clef de notre occupation had 
 now become evident. The French Government yielded 
 to his wishes, and in 1898 Foureau was accompanied 
 on his eighth journey by a force of 310 men and two 
 guns under Commandant Lamy. 
 
 The description of the hardships, sufferings, fights, 
 the death of Lamy, and final triumph of the expedition 
 must be sought in Foureau's own book. But the final 
 stage in the long voyage is in a special degree note- 
 worthy. By an extraordinary coincidence, or a more 
 extraordinary feat of organisation, three expeditions, 
 which had set out many months before from the three 
 main bases and starting-points of the new colonial 
 empire, all met in the neighbourhood of Lake Tchad, 
 These had come from Algeria, from the Congo State, 
 and from Senegal, and their final meeting in this remote 
 
THE FRENCH IN THE SAHARA 69 
 
 region was naturally hailed as symbolical of the consoli- 
 dation of French interests in North Africa, to which 
 the successful passage of the Sahara by Foureau had 
 put the finishing touch. 
 
 Lake Tchad is the nucleus to which all the French 
 spheres of influence converge, and the movement of 
 these three expeditions towards this spot and final 
 junction there epitomises the whole scheme of French 
 colonisation, and sums up for us its method and instinct 
 for organisation. Every move in France's policy 
 during the last fifteen or twenty years has been oppor- 
 tune. Every delimitation of a frontier has shown an 
 accurate appreciation of the value of the territory at 
 stake. The central Government has been informed by 
 a body of pioneers, not only energetic and enterprising, 
 but perfectly organised and disciplined, and all working 
 together towards a common end. The breadth of 
 handling, as an artist would call it, resulting from such 
 a system is very remarkable. Here are no petty or 
 contradictory aims ; no moving forward and turning 
 back again ; no energy in one place and stagnation in 
 another. The advance is general everywhere. The 
 same thought rules north and west and south. The 
 same object animates the explorer in the desert and 
 the Government that backs him up. What has the 
 result been? If we glance at a map of about 1880 
 we find merely a few coloured spots round the coast 
 of North-West Africa to register the extent of European 
 occupation. There is no marked predominance of one 
 over the others, and nothing to indicate which of them 
 is destined to spread and extend over the interior. 
 But if we turn to a map of twenty years later what do 
 we find ? No great changes have taken place save in 
 
70 IN THE DESERT 
 
 respect of one of the colours. This, from every point 
 along the coast-line at which it was established, has 
 extended inland until the advancing currents, meeting 
 and mingling, have overflowed practically the whole 
 of the north-west. It is the moment of their meeting 
 that the conjunction of the three expeditions at Lake 
 Tchad typifies ; and it is in every way appropriate 
 that the final triumph should have taken place under 
 the personal auspices of the man who had so much to 
 do with insuring it. The French occupation of the 
 great central oases round Insalah which formed the 
 Touareg stronghold, and on the capture of which 
 Foureau had so strongly insisted, was not long deferred. 
 The Flamand mission partially occupied the position 
 in 1899, and was shortly followed by several columns 
 which, after some sharp fighting, finally possessed them- 
 selves of these centres of anarchy, 
 
 Such in outline is the French " scheme " ; and I have 
 dwelt upon it with some care, because it seems to me 
 impossible to take the right kind of interest in any 
 one colony, or bit of a colony, in French North Africa, 
 unless the general scheme of Empire in which that 
 bit plays its part is first grasped. It is impossible to 
 understand France's action in the Sahara unless the 
 Sahara is considered in its relation to this scheme ; and 
 it is impossible to understand her attitude with regard 
 to Morocco unless Morocco, also, is so considered. In 
 the realisation of the French idea of an African Colonial 
 Empire, the control of Morocco is, indeed, an essential 
 factor. With Morocco independent, the idea becomes 
 impracticable. To attempt the pacification of the 
 Sahara and the re-establishment of the old trade routes, 
 with the hinterland of Morocco offering a secure refuge 
 
THE FRENCH IN THE SAHARA 71 
 
 and recruiting-ground for all the lawless and unruly 
 elements of desert life, would be attempting a task 
 foredoomed to failure. It is in its threat of constant 
 interference with their own widely-laid plans for the 
 settlement and development of all these regions that 
 the French find their justification for the control of 
 Morocco. The existence of a scheme such as theirs, 
 a scheme which has proved its stability, and its capacity 
 for dealing with the problems involved, confers certain 
 rights and claims a certain recognition. We can all 
 remember how keenly this was felt to be the case when 
 the French attempted, in their occupation of Fashoda, 
 an interference with a scheme of our own. It was our 
 scheme that gave us our right in the Nile Valley. 
 Similarly it is the French scheme that gives them their 
 right in Morocco. There have been writers, and even 
 some liberal critics of the Government, who have argued 
 that in the agreement which led to the entente we should 
 have held out for more advantageous terms. I cannot 
 think that this view does justice to the French claims. 
 Our agreement to French control in INIorocco, though 
 we may ask and receive something for it, as is the way 
 of diplomacy, was in the main the frank recognition of 
 a title which France, by many years of hard work and 
 a sustained and coherent policy, had already made 
 good.i 
 
 * See Appendix, Note B. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 BISKRA 
 
 A desert port — The Atlas mountains — " The door of the desert " 
 — El Kantara — Importance of Biskra — French officers — 
 Part played by the army — The oasis — Irrigation — Arab 
 isolation — His individual charm — His sentimentality — Arab 
 manners — His chivalrous impulses — Arab horse-dealers — 
 We fit out our caravan — What to take and what to leave 
 behind — We leave Biskra. 
 
 BISKRA leaves on one the impression of a little 
 town moored off shore by its rope-end of railway 
 and floating by the margin of the desert. Cut the rope, 
 and it might, you would think, float away upon the 
 yellow waves of sand. North of it, but at no great 
 distance, the cliffs of the Aures lift themselves into the 
 air. They are a branch of the great Atlas formation 
 which bounds the desert on the north. Seen from the 
 Sahara, itself about on the sea-level here, you get the 
 full effect of their 7,000 feet of elevation. Built up of 
 pale limestone, and destitute, apparently, of any trace 
 of vegetation, they remind one of the battlements of 
 some great border fortress guarding the marches of the 
 north. The desert sand shifts and plays below, and 
 beats in dry, scanty waves against their feet, and creeps 
 
 into every interstice and creek, with the soft fluidity 
 
 72 
 
BISKRA 73 
 
 and patience of water lapping among cliffs ; it meets 
 here the effectual barrier to its advance. 
 
 I have seen these cliffs sometimes at evening, riding 
 back from the palm-groves round Biskra, range 
 shadowed by range, one in the light of the setting 
 sun the colour of pale primroses, and the next to it, in 
 shade, the colour of dark purple clematis. There is one 
 giant of a hill — 
 
 " The last that parleys with the setting sun," 
 
 which the Arabs, from the pinky hue that rests upon 
 it, call Tebel Hamimar Kreddou, or the pink-cheeked 
 mountain. 
 
 If you imagine yourself to be standing, sentinel-like, 
 on the summit of the mountain wall, you would have 
 a large bit of the Northern Sahara mapped out at your 
 feet. Almost straight beneath you Biskra lies among 
 its oases. The thickets of palm are fed by the Oued 
 Biskra, itself collected from many lonely hillsides and 
 gorges of the Atlas, to be poured forth here, a quite 
 considerable stream, into the thirsty desert 
 
 Besides the large groves round Biskra there are other 
 lesser patches of green, diminishing to a speck or two 
 in the southern distance, marking the places where 
 wells have been sunk and a spring of life-giving water 
 set flowing, and showing up in startling relief on the 
 pale and sandy surface of the desert. South, east, 
 and west the Sahara stretches to the distant horizon, 
 apparently perfectly flat from this elevation, but broken 
 really by stony ridges and plateaux, and more or less 
 undulating. The transition from mountain scenery to 
 plain is startling in its abruptness, and suggests the 
 constantly-recurring idea of cliffs overlooking the sea. 
 
74 IN THE DESERT 
 
 This, according to some geologists, is what these 
 cliffs once actually did. It has been suggested that 
 Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, compacted as they are 
 into a mountain system of their own, were once cut 
 off by an ocean from the main continent, and formed 
 a large peninsula attached to Europe by the isthmus 
 of Gibraltar. The pleasing plausibility of the theory, 
 though Schreiner discountenances it, is obvious. The 
 three states together form a distinct excrescence in 
 an otherwise monotonous coast-line, having something 
 the effect of a small forage cap stuck on the huge bald 
 head of Africa. This projection belongs in many ways 
 more to the European than the African system. It is 
 European in aspect, in its bold and broken variety 
 of hills and valleys ; it is European in its fertility, in 
 its olive groves and vineyards, its chestnut and pine 
 forests, and uplands waving with wheat ; and it is 
 European in climate, in the moderation of its heat and 
 the comparative plenteousness of its rainfall. The tower- 
 ing precipice of the great Atlas cuts it off from the 
 south, on which it seems to turn its back, while it 
 faces in more gradual descent the Mediterranean and 
 the company of northern nations of which it feels itself 
 to be one. 
 
 Only when you have passed the Atlas, when the 
 built house gives place to the camel-skin tent, the pines 
 and olives to occasional palm-tufts, mountains and 
 valleys to the naked plains of sand, and the settled 
 population to wandering desert tribesmen, do you really 
 feel yourself in Africa. 
 
 The transition, when it comes, is dramatic in its 
 suddenness. The glare of the Sahara as, travelling 
 south, you emerge out of the mountain passes, strikes 
 
BISKRA 75 
 
 you like the glare of some great furnace-mouth suddenly 
 thrown open before you. For many hours the journey 
 has been through a bewildering array of cliffs and 
 peaks, gaunt and white, much like what the Alps might 
 be if the Alps can be imagined picked of all flesh and 
 reduced to a bare skeleton of rock. Our train has 
 panted and puffed and bored its way through range 
 after range, only to be confronted, on emerging from 
 each, by another still more formidable in its wan and 
 lifeless serenity. We have wakened echoes with our 
 impudent whistle that seemed as if they had lain 
 dormant since these cliffs were built. I had felt half 
 amused, half abashed, at the contrast between this fussy 
 child's toy of a train of ours, with its slapdash, up-to- 
 date ways, and the imperturbable giants of hills whose 
 sleep of ages we disturbed. 
 
 Through these precipices and defiles and turrets, wet 
 with clinging mist, our train glides down quietly on its 
 last descent. Now we are in a narrow gorge with 
 white cliffs towering left and right and the white 
 waters of the El Fedala tossing at the bottom. The 
 presence of the Sahara is unguessed. We have had 
 no hint of it. At the end of the gorge the cliff makes 
 a turn to the right and bars the way. With its usual 
 savoir /aire the train dashes into a tunnel. An in- 
 stant's darkness and you are shot out into the Sahara 
 on the far side. You look back. There is the cliff 
 like a prison wall, with the door you left it by. Foum 
 es Sahara, the Door of the Desert, the Arabs call this 
 gorge with their wonderful knack for hitting on the 
 right name. 
 
 The exit is made the more lovely by the little oasis 
 of El Kantara, whose palms await with impatience the 
 
76 IN THE DESERT 
 
 stream of water we have just been following. Nothing 
 can be imagined more exquisite than this thicket of 
 dark-green feathery heads, in contrast with the rugged 
 scenery we have just emerged from. They nestle in 
 the most confiding manner under the very brow of 
 the precipice. Some of the more adventurous even 
 explore the beginnings of the defile, and enter for a 
 few steps, like inquisitive children, into the, to them, 
 forbidden precincts of the mountains. 
 
 Forty miles more and a few minor descents land 
 us in Biskra. It is an important place, strategically and 
 fashionably ; a mixture, you might call it, of Brighton 
 and Aldershot. It represents France's grip on the 
 Northern Sahara, and is a place of holiday resort for 
 tasters of desert air. The town is strongly garrisoned, 
 and strengthened further by the great fort of St. 
 Germain's. France's hold on the desert is tolerably 
 secure nowadays, unless there should come one of those 
 general conflagrations not altogether unknown to these 
 fiery regions. Her positions and outposts extend in 
 a far-flung net across the Sahara, and feel for foothold 
 in the few oases that exist, to get in touch with the 
 outposts of her colonies in the south. Nevertheless, 
 of all this vast system, Biskra, the terminus of the 
 railway, which feeds and supplies it, and links it to 
 France and the outer world, is one of the main bases. 
 The Western Railway, starting from Oran and ending, 
 for the present, at Figuig, is another. The great 
 Saharan net is pinned down and held along the 
 north at Gabes, Biskra, Tuggurt, and Ain Sefra, and 
 the outlying forts that extend to and include the 
 central oases. 
 
 Besides this Biskra is a health resort of some fashion. 
 
5 5, 1 J J ■> 
 
 > J , :< J > J 
 
 ' :,' 4 ' 
 
 z 
 
 ►J 
 W 
 
BISKRA Tj 
 
 The hot, pure, exhilarating desert air is an attraction 
 in itself, and Biskra is the most accessible place to 
 which people can resort for a taste of it. They take 
 the air at Biskra as at watering-places they take the 
 waters. It is a cure for most ills. Our little train 
 brings its daily loads of passengers and dumps them 
 down by the edge of the desert, and scuttles back 
 for more. There are samples from all nations, but 
 the predominating element is, of course, French. 
 
 Confronted with this great colonising problem of 
 theirs, of which your first glimpse of the Sahara just 
 hints the magnitude, I find myself scrutinising the 
 French folk with a new interest and curiosity, wonder- 
 ing what they will make of their new country, and 
 whether they are the sort of people to turn its oppor- 
 tunities to account. There is no doubt of their 
 pleasure in their new possessions. Their glee at the 
 sight of palms and sand and Arabs, their exclamations 
 and hand-clapping, remind one of a child opening a new 
 box of toys. It is a way so different from ours, and 
 one has got so much to associate toughness and per- 
 severance with a certain reserve, that the doubt at first 
 suggests itself if these loquacious and vivacious crea- 
 tures have the requisite gifts of character. Similarly, 
 too, the French officer, with his dapper ways, carefully- 
 trimmed moustache and finger-nails, affection for his 
 dinner, and attentiveness to women, seems, it may be, 
 at a first glance, scarcely the ideal man for frontier 
 service. 
 
 And yet, curiously enough, it is just in this frontier 
 life that these officers have most distinguished them- 
 selves. Whatever criticism the civil government may 
 now and then come in for, there exists only one opinion 
 
78 IN THE DESERT 
 
 as to the work done by the army. It has been used 
 not only for fighting purposes, but for prehminary 
 exploration and subsequent settlement. Many dapper 
 gentlemen like these, so eager over trifles, so keen about 
 soups and salads, have met their death unflinchingly 
 in the great void to the south, questioning the desert's 
 secrets and mapping out yard by yard the path where 
 the flag would follow. 
 
 After the exploration the fighting. There are few 
 more picturesque sights than a column of native police 
 met in the desert, slinging along silently on their soft- 
 footed camels ; and few more rousing campaigning 
 tales than the episodes of their mid-desert fights. 
 Perhaps some day those dramatic incidents, those 
 lonely reconnoitrings, those struggles round the ksours 
 and in the narrow lanes between the mud huts of the 
 village, the silent gathering of vengeful tribesmen, the 
 night attack, the rocket calling to the companion 
 squadron, the long straight rush to the rescue, the 
 sandhills sparkling with rifle fire — perhaps incidents 
 like these will some day be made real to us. But if 
 they are, I suspect we shall owe the debt to fiction 
 rather than history, and that a Pierre Loti will come 
 nearer the truth about desert warfare than a Leroy 
 BeauHeu. 
 
 The Saharan Spahis, Meharistes, or camel-riders, as 
 they are called, have been recruited themselves from 
 the desert tribes, having been at one time or other in 
 arms against the enemy whom they afterwards joined. 
 Their readiness to fight on either side has been but one 
 of many indications of the general state of faction and 
 chaos prevailing among the Saharan tribes, with whom 
 licence has come to usurp the meaning of liberty. 
 
BISKRA 79 
 
 Their fighting capacity, however, seems undoubted : 
 " Amateurs friands de la poudre et de la lutte," one 
 officer describes them. He praises their courage, en- 
 durance, and marvellous acuteness as scouts and guides. 
 The capacity of this formidable cavalry has been put 
 to its full use by French officers. The Arab and 
 Berber tribes of the interior can still be dangerous 
 enemies, and the struggles that have taken place among 
 their strongholds in the central Sahara have been both 
 frequent and fierce. 
 
 And after the fighting has come the settlement. 
 Territory as it is subdued is first administered by 
 military rule, and when finally pacified is taken over 
 by the civil government. Thus for a while each ex- 
 tension of territory is governed and administered by 
 the army which first reconnoitred and afterwards con- 
 quered it. Roads, bridges, irrigation works, the build- 
 ing of barrages, and the sinking of wells are among 
 the active labours of the French army. 
 
 The importance and extent of the regions under its 
 control are, however, daily declining. Since 1871 the 
 government of the colony has been nominally a civil 
 government. Since 1879 its chief has been a civilian. 
 Nevertheless, the names of some of its earlier military 
 Governors, of men like Bugeaud, Pelissier, Gueydon, 
 Chanzy, are closely bound up with the history of the 
 development of the country. The army's new sphere 
 of influence is limited now to the outlying districts 
 of the Sahara. In the southern colonies, too, the civil 
 power is extending its dominion, and the military re- 
 tiring inland to the hinterlands of the unpacified 
 interior. This is, of course, a quite logical process, 
 and it is only reasonable that each district should 
 
8o IN THE DESERT 
 
 receive civil government as soon as it is ready for it. 
 In fitting it, however, to receive civil government the 
 army has played a great part, and in the triple 
 work it has carried out of exploring, conquering, and 
 administering, it has shown itself possessed of a 
 flexibility and tact which makes it a first-rate colonising 
 instrument. 
 
 Realising these various and laborious works accom- 
 plished, you are aware under the gesticulatory French 
 manner of a tenacity of purpose and strength of 
 character greater, perhaps, than you had suspected. 
 
 Queen of the Ziban, chief among the oases of the 
 Zab district, is the proud title that Biskra bears. Paths 
 lead into the depths of the oasis ; those lovely paths 
 strewn with fern-shaped shadows from the arching 
 palm-leaves above. Silent Arabs pass up and down, 
 and vistas open between the groves of green waving 
 corn and clusters of native huts. Here and there round 
 the outer verge groups of Bedouins sit among their 
 low black tents, who have put in from the outer desert 
 into this port of refuge to refit themselves for another 
 voyage. 
 
 The oasis itself stretches for several miles. You can 
 lose yourself in it for the day. Walking among these 
 palms I used to fancy myself back in the low country 
 of Ceylon. The fields of corn and barley, knee-high, 
 green and waving, stretch in and out among the 
 plantations exactly as the Ceylon paddy fields do ; here, 
 spreading into a smooth expanse of green, there narrow- 
 ing to slender straits and estuaries between palm- 
 covered islands ; the pale green ground, level as a lake, 
 fitting itself in bays and creeks to the darker edges 
 of the palm-groves ; the palms themselves crowding 
 
BISKRA 8i 
 
 in one place into a great throng of dusky, starry heads ; 
 in another stretching out in long array ; or standing 
 in detached clumps, a dozen or two together, with the 
 emerald sea flowing round them and cutting them off 
 from their fellows. 
 
 How many scenes can I not call to mind round 
 about Kalutara exactly like this ! The huts of dry 
 wood beneath the slanting stems, the little brown 
 children, naked or almost, playing in the dust, the 
 limp, dejected dog that slinks growling out of sight 
 at your approach, the women and girls carrying babies 
 tied to their backs in linen garments, all combine to 
 reproduce the idea of a Cingalese village. 
 
 In the same way, too, the water that nourishes these 
 fields and groves is led, as through Ceylon rice-fields, 
 by a network of tiny canals, some only a few inches 
 broad, from patch to patch and tree to tree. The 
 system of irrigation is quite a scientific achievement. 
 The water, except a certain amount drawn from wells, 
 all comes from a single stream, the same that has 
 already begotten the El Kantara oasis, but now re- 
 christened, after the manner of the Arabs, whose rivers 
 never carry the same name any great distance, the 
 Oued Biskra. Its waters are carefully distributed first 
 in larger brooks, and then in threadlike channels. As 
 each corn-patch and every separate palm-tree has to 
 be watered, and, moreover, must receive its allotted 
 amount, neither more nor less, at prescribed intervals, 
 it will be seen that the distribution of the current 
 involves a good deal of care and management and a 
 certain amount of engineering skill. The tracing of 
 veins on a leaf, springing from the mid-rib and ending 
 in the maze of tiny veins no larger than the meshes 
 
 7 
 
82 IN THE DESERT 
 
 of a spider's web that intersect the whole surface, gives 
 an excellent idea of the irrigation of an oasis. 
 
 These twilit haunts, with their grave suggestion of a 
 half-melancholy Orientalism, have now strange visitors. 
 Gays groups of French ladies explore them with delight. 
 There is always something quaint and incongruous in 
 the meeting of East and West. Madame's skirt as she 
 trails it in the soft dust, the veils and curls that envelop 
 her head, the children in their high-heeled boots pirou- 
 etting in front, have a whimsical effect under these 
 palms. They bring with them an odd, not unpleasant 
 whiff of a life that here seems so remote and unreal, 
 the far-off, tinkling life of boulevard and Parisian cafe. 
 
 More whimsical still, the occasional long-drawn 
 " saay " of the American is heard in the grove, cutting 
 the air as the cry of a jay cuts the silence of English 
 summer woods. When East meets West it is usually 
 the West that is at a disadvantage. But the American 
 is an exception. From the vantage-ground of a brand- 
 new civilisation he surveys the Orient with an imper- 
 turbability equal to its own. 
 
 Less complex and varied than Europeans, more 
 primitive and of one piece, it is, no doubt, a compara- 
 tively easy business to get an insight into Arab 
 character. What I was just now trying to prove from 
 the Arab's history — that he has no coherence, no instinct 
 for thinking and acting collectively — is exactly what 
 you feel when you come face to face with him. The 
 Englishman, the Frenchman, the American is sustained 
 by the consciousness of a national civilisation. The 
 weight of his race is behind him and you feel it in all 
 he does and says. Whatever he may be in himself, 
 he can say " We." The Arab can only say " I." He 
 
BISKRA 83 
 
 is lonely, a solitary and fierce figure. And in his mien 
 and manner, his composure and reserve, his instinctive 
 haughtiness, his wariness and alertness, the isolation of 
 the man speaks. 
 
 It is the clue to his temperament. Directly or in- 
 directly most travellers have been struck by it. Most 
 travellers bear witness to the strange contrast between 
 the personal nobleness of the man and the collective 
 failure of the race. I was turning over the pages lately 
 of a book by Mr. Pruen, who was, some years ago 
 now, attached to one of the mission stations of Central 
 Africa. Engaged though he was in a perpetual con- 
 troversy with the Arab slavers who carried off whole 
 batches of his most promising converts at a time, he 
 cannot help dwelling every now and then on their 
 personal gifts of courage and courtesy. They were the 
 terror of the country. No fixed and settled life was 
 possible in their neighbourhood. Their visits were 
 marked by ruin, and their paths could be traced by 
 skeletons. We should expect one who had seen the 
 burning villages, and watched the terrible march to 
 the coast, to be unreservedly indignant against the 
 authors of such mischief But Mr. Pruen knows the 
 Arab from the other point of view too. He knows 
 him as an acquaintance and friend, and has had per- 
 sonal dealings with him ; and the consequence is he 
 is never able to proceed far with his denunciation 
 without some particular recollection cropping up, and 
 quite altering the tenour of his discourse. We start 
 upon a tale of wholesale devastation to find ourselves 
 in the next paragraph presented with some incident in 
 which the high breeding and sense of honour of these 
 human panthers is strikingly manifested. A pest he is, 
 
84 IN THE DESERT 
 
 and a scourge, and a blight upon the country ; but then, 
 he is such a gentleman ! 
 
 Part of what we do belongs to Society, part to our- 
 selves. Society's share is governed by principle, our 
 own share by sentiment and feeling. The Arab knows 
 nothing of principle ; he would not, I believe, admit 
 as an abstract proposition that it is wrong to steal. 
 It depends. It may be wrong to steal from you, yet 
 not wrong to steal from another man ; or it may be 
 wrong to steal from you now and here, yet not wrong 
 to do so under other circumstances. Not principle, but 
 sentiment and feeling are what govern Arab conduct. 
 In all matters of sentiment his instinct is sure. If you 
 can appeal to him on any ground of hospitality or 
 generosity ; if you can touch his emotion in any way ; 
 if you can say that you trust him because your father 
 knew his father, or because your child and his have the 
 same coloured eyes, you have a hold on him. But it 
 is always the personal claim, no abstract rule, which he 
 recognises. Establish such a claim, visit him as a 
 friend, break bread with him, claim the hospitality of 
 his tent, and you may rely implicitly on the personal 
 sentiment you have touched. Trust, on the other 
 hand, to precept and law, and, as the Yankees say, 
 you will "get left." 
 
 All this is terribly anti-social, but it has its charm. 
 Their habit of judging by sentiment invests all inter- 
 course with Arabs with an added interest and signi- 
 ficance. Seeing how entirely your future relations with 
 each other hang on the issue, it is natural that the 
 Arab should enter on the acquaintanceship with all 
 possible dignity and deliberation, and should express 
 in his countenance and bearing his sense of the im- 
 
BISKRA 85 
 
 portance of the occasion. Under such circumstances 
 the question of manners becomes a matter of the first 
 moment. So accustomed is the Arab to study every 
 tone and lineament for the faintest indication of a 
 meaning, and so accustomed is he to convey his own 
 sentiments by the same subtle means, that manner 
 with him becomes charged with expression. He is 
 an artist in manners. It is the one thing he is an 
 artist in. The gravity of his bearing throws into relief 
 each inflection of voice or look, just as a smooth back- 
 ground sets off the artist's touch. A stranger who 
 might happen to be present at any meeting between 
 Arabs would be struck first by their gravity and com- 
 posure, and if he were a dull observer would note 
 nothing beyond it. If he were acute, however, he would 
 almost instantly perceive that the air was electric, and 
 that currents of meaning were darting to and fro ex- 
 pressed in a language of manners which owed their 
 significance to their imperturbability. The best de- 
 scription of the Arab manner I have come across is 
 M. Clamageran's, who has defined it as " I'art de rendre 
 des sentiments delicats par des moyens tres simple," a 
 sentence which it would be hard to beat, perhaps, as 
 a definition of artistic expressiveness of any kind. 
 
 And then, too, people who judge thus, in this per- 
 sonal direct way, are saved from that terrible old 
 mistake of estimating a man by his belongings and 
 accessories. It used to be the boast of Arab poetry 
 in its great days that it " never praised a man except 
 for what was in him," and although that level was 
 certainly not maintained by later poets, yet the habit 
 of judging directly and without regard to surroundings 
 has always been an instinct of the race. All those 
 
86 IN THE DESERT 
 
 evidences of worldly prosperity and success, which turn 
 the heart of the Anglo-Saxon to water, leave the Arab 
 quite unmoved. Not that he does not value splendour, 
 especially splendour in arms and horses : on the con- 
 trary, he values it highly. But he values it only as 
 a setting. The kind of character he admires, masterful 
 and intrepid, will naturally possess it. His own strong 
 hand will have conquered it. Still, it is a consequence, 
 not a cause. He is splendid because he is a fine fellow. 
 He is not a fine fellow because he is splendid. In a 
 word, the Arabs, like all Mohammedans, are free from 
 the least taint of snobbishness. 
 
 There is a fascination in such a type. Memory 
 brings me back man after man possessed of all the 
 charm that Mr. Pruen felt so keenly and M, Clamageran 
 so happily defined. It brings me back a certain sheyk, 
 who was once my travelling companion on the Upper 
 Nile — a tall, lean, keen-faced man, of a complexion 
 almost black, with a glitter on it like the sun polish 
 on desert stones, who walked among the fellaheen on 
 the crowded deck like a chief among his slaves. With 
 him I shared — for I was a steerage passenger myself 
 in those days — the same narrow corner of the deck. 
 He was strict in his religious duties, and at the ap- 
 pointed hours would spread his mat on the deck, and, 
 turning in the supposed direction of Mecca, would kneel 
 and rise and kneel again, bowing with his forehead to 
 the ground in the imposing attitudes of Moslem prayer. 
 Quick at detecting the least sign of consideration or 
 respect, if we stopped talking or moved to make room, 
 he would treasure up the courtesy, and, when his 
 prayers were over, turn and acknowledge it with a 
 grave gesture, and a smile that seemed no conventional 
 
BISKRA 87 
 
 grimace, but expressed the intention of a deliberate 
 friendliness. How can one help, with such recollections 
 to look back to, sympathising to the full with Mr. 
 Pruen's secret liking for the Arabs ? 
 
 Our plan at Biskra was to conceal the purpose of 
 our journey altogether, and without proclaiming our 
 need of horses, which of course would have the effect 
 of doubling the price of them, by an adroit question 
 here and there and the exercise of a little patience and 
 a little tact, to explore without alarming the market. 
 
 I smile now when I think of our innocent cunning. 
 Before a word had been spoken, or a question asked, 
 it was round the town that two rich young Englishmen 
 were looking out for horses. Before ever we set foot 
 in the bazaars our business was known to every soul 
 in them as clearly as if we had placarded the walls with 
 it. How and by what means acquired Heaven only 
 knows, but news of us had somehow been diffused over 
 the place, carried on the electric atmosphere, like the 
 clang of a gong echoing east and west. Men looked 
 up and recognised us. 
 
 Thenceforward we lived in a whirl. We could not 
 set foot in the street but instantly parties of Arab 
 horse-dealers would swoop upon us out of passages 
 where they had been lying in ambush, or from behind 
 clumps of palms, dragging their lean quadrupeds on 
 strings behind them. We passed along the street like 
 figures in Greek friezes, leading long processions of 
 sacrificial victims. It was in vain we feigned indif- 
 ference, turned away bored, chaffed them, protested we 
 were at our journey's end. By some mystic instinct, 
 from the instant we set foot among them they had 
 scented a prey. 
 
88 IN THE DESERT 
 
 Orientals have this power of divination. It is their 
 gift and must be reckoned with. It admits of no 
 argument. The clumsy protests of the European are 
 to them like the transparent acting of a child. They 
 ignore it ; unconsciously, with a faith in their own 
 insight which is almost terrible, they address them- 
 selves to the knowledge of your real intentions which 
 you hold in common. You feel the rebuke. To have 
 your declaration that you are going back to Algiers by 
 train to-morrow met by the quiet assurance that your 
 interlocutor's brother has a pony to sell, well used to 
 desert travel, is to feel your own nothingness, Arabs, 
 like women, deal in intuition as common currency. 
 We had of course, in the long run, to accept the corner 
 in horses as ^fait acco7tipli and buy at sellers' prices. 
 
 But it was when we had acknowledged our intention 
 and set to work dealing that the fun began. Biskra 
 is dusty even for an Algerian town, and during the 
 time of our stay there a yellowish pall hung above the 
 place continually, raised by hoofs of galloping horses. 
 An Arab's notion of showing off his horse is to charge 
 down the street past you as hard as he can lay legs 
 to the ground, uttering short shrieks and brandishing 
 a long thin rifle over his head. Wherever we went 
 we were pursued by these thundering cavaliers. Down 
 they would charge, their dark features convulsed with 
 excitement, their white burnouses blown out in the 
 wind behind, and go whirling down the road in a cloud 
 of dust and debris. It was an appeal to our imagina- 
 tion, designed to fire us with the idea of their steed as 
 of something fleet and strong and terrible. Their 
 contempt when we set about the cold-blooded process 
 of prising open mouths and pinching legs was unutter- 
 
BISKRA 89 
 
 able. What a lack of poetic instinct was here ! What 
 base-born giaours we must be to entertain a low 
 curiosity about Mazeppa's legs and teeth ! Had we 
 the spirit of a louse we should leap upon his back, 
 cast our purse at his owner's feet, and speed forth 
 incontinently into the boundless desert. Indeed, as 
 Mazeppa was usually a broken-down cripple, or a 
 lanky, weedy foal, a cloud of dust often set him off to 
 the best advantage. 
 
 A desert journey is the one of all others on which 
 it is well to be loaded with no superfluities. Murray, 
 I see, has the advice that you should take with you 
 as much as may be portable of the paraphernalia of 
 civilisation, including bedding, wine, provisions, and 
 a carriage. Before following that advice it is worth 
 reminding oneself that there is no surer sign of a 
 simpleton in travel than is shown in the effort to 
 carry about into other countries the things belonging 
 to his own. The necessaries of life in one place are 
 its lumber in another. The food, dress, customs, and 
 habits of any particular country and climate are the 
 necessaries of life in that place. You will not improve 
 on them. On the contrary, the closer you adapt 
 yourself to them the closer you draw to the genius 
 and spirit of the country. 
 
 I can imagine no more pitiful spectacle than the 
 sight of a European equipped as Murray advises and 
 lueeing- beds and wine about the Sahara with him. 
 Such a man has no right to be travelling at all. As 
 long as these things represent the necessaries of life 
 to him, let him stay in the life in which they are 
 necessary. It is argued, " If I like to have these 
 things, and think them worth the expense, why should 
 
go IN THE DESERT 
 
 I not take them ? I like my comforts, I choose to pay 
 a heavy price for them, and there the matter ends." 
 But that is exactly where it does not end. The cum- 
 brousness and expense of these luxuries is their least 
 evil. The real evil of them is that they obstruct 
 observation by hampering you with a whole set of 
 ideas which are nothing to the purpose. They are 
 irrelevant, and that is bad ; but they make their owner 
 irrelevant too, and that is worse. It is next door to 
 impossible to really enter into the life of any new 
 country while one carries about with one the old 
 symbols of one's own previous existence. 
 
 The right preparation for desert life consists not 
 in what you take with you, but in what you leave 
 behind. The desert stands for emancipation. It 
 gives you the chance of laying aside for a little while 
 all the accumulated trappings of an elaborate civilisa- 
 tion. The few things it is really necessary to take 
 are soon enumerated. People who live much on horse- 
 back in a hot country never wear tight clothes. The 
 Boers wear trousers, the Arabs a burnous. I think, 
 if I were making the journey again, I should as a 
 matter of comfort adopt the Arab dress, which for 
 day or night is a perfect adaptation to the needs of 
 the climate. Failing that, the best substitute is a suit 
 of old flannels. 
 
 A grass mat spread on the sand is a sufficient 
 mattress. This rolls up into a small space and is 
 light and easy to carry. Your saddle turned upside- 
 down makes a very comfortable pillow. One rug, an 
 old one, is all the bedclothes you will need. A great- 
 coat should be taken for the early, before-dawn rides, 
 when the air is sharp, and a small shelter tent is 
 
BISKRA 91 
 
 useful in case of occasional sand or rain storms at 
 night and to give a shade from the dazzling light of 
 the moon. These, with a spare shirt or two, a few 
 pairs of socks, a soft hat, Arab slippers, tooth-brush, 
 hair-brush, soap, shaving-things, a small looking-glass, 
 and a sponge, make up all your personal equipment. 
 For the camp you will need several good water-skins, 
 a saucepan and frying-pan, a kettle, matches, a gun 
 and a few cartridges for knocking over an occasional 
 partridge, and plenty of cigarettes. That, I think, is 
 all, unless I include in the list that most important 
 article of all, a friend ; such a one as Bacon defines 
 him, who halves griefs and doubles joys ; whom you 
 can share talk and jokes, and, above all, silence with. 
 I wish the reader my own luck in the matter. This 
 desert journey was but one of many pleasant memories 
 that my friend and I had placed to a common account. 
 There is no need to bother about provisions, and 
 especially avoid all the tinned meats and extracts, 
 and condensed abominations, the only effect of which 
 is to bring on great thirst without appeasing hunger. 
 Buy at each village you come to enough food to last 
 you to the next. A kid, a few pigeons or chickens, 
 rice, bread, dates, and oranges can be obtained at any 
 oasis village, and at each of these you will lay in a 
 store sufficient to last you for the one, two, or three 
 days from there to the next oasis. Of coffee I would 
 make an exception. It is the drink of the desert. 
 Take a liberal supply, with sugar, coffee-pot, and a 
 cup or two, and pack these in a separate parcel where 
 they are easily accessible. If you add to that parcel 
 a handful of rusks, or a few dried dates, you will be 
 independent of fate, and any chance delay, such as 
 
92 IN THE DESERT 
 
 might occur from extra-violent sandstorms or an 
 accident to one of your beasts, will not matter. Be- 
 sides which, nothing is more delightful than to come 
 to some dell or glade in dazzling mid-desert, where 
 a few thorn-trees and grass tufts sprout, and call a 
 halt and light a blaze, and fling yourself on the sand 
 and enjoy a cup of coffee and a cigarette. These 
 unforeseen impromptu picnics are among the most 
 charming moments of desert life, and ought to be 
 provided for. 
 
 All you want can be obtained at Biskra. Ponies 
 cost about £io, camels about £4.. It is best to buy 
 these outright, as you will be able to sell them again 
 without any difficulty when the trip is over, probably 
 for little less than you gave for them. It is economy 
 to buy good beasts, even at a rather higher figure, 
 for not only are they pleasanter to ride and use, but 
 they are more likely to fetch their price again. The 
 French remount officers are always on the look-out 
 for good and well-bred ponies for mounting their 
 Spahis on. These are always saleable. Of our two 
 ponies, one bought for ;^8, but not up to army form, 
 fetched £/^. The other, a rather smart little grey, 
 for which we gave £12, we sold to the remount 
 department at Kairwan for £1$. 
 
 When at last our little caravan was complete and 
 marshalled for departure it presented what I took to be 
 an imposing appearance enough. First walked our 
 three camels, laden with our tent, blankets, sleeping 
 mats, water-skins, cooking utensils, and a few pro- 
 visions, stealing along with noiseless footfall and 
 gazing left and right with that expressionless expres- 
 sion of theirs which they seem to have inherited from 
 
BISKRA 93 
 
 their desert home. Each is guided with a single string 
 by its rider, perched aloft and swinging to the long 
 stride. The most important personage in the caval- 
 cade by far is Ahmeda, our guide. Arms to the Arab 
 are what jewels are to a woman ; and Ahmeda, besides 
 being gorgeously arrayed in other respects, is slung 
 about with all the matchlocks, pistols, and knives which 
 he either possessed himself or had been able to borrow 
 for the occasion. The inhabitants of all the hotels 
 came out on to the verandahs to watch our start. It 
 was evident they had all had enough of our horse- 
 dealing, and were heartily pleased to see the last of us. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 IN THE DESERT 
 
 Some first impressions of the desert — Absence of detail — Sense 
 of space — Its natural features — The feeling of isolation — 
 Invigorating effect of great light — Bedouin gipsies — The 
 attraction of the desert — Influence of primitive scenery 
 — Escape from custom and routine — Burton on the desert 
 — The senses sharpened and stimulated — Power of noticing 
 things. 
 
 IF one could imagine a country like England entirely 
 stripped of all verdure, its green pastures turned 
 into sandy wastes, all trace of man's work gone too, 
 houses and cottages, farmyards, the banks and hedges 
 of fields — in short, if one could conceive the whole 
 country reduced to dry, crumbling rock and sand 
 and ourselves travelling through it, the impression we 
 should have of it, I imagine, would be that it was 
 almost quite flat, practically an endless plain. 
 
 Little inequalities count for a great deal with us 
 because we are always studying detail. There is so 
 much to look at close round us, such variety and such 
 richness ! The meadows and woods, the villages, the 
 dark and shady hollows, the bubbling stream at our 
 feet, the birds in the trees, the flowers in the hedges, 
 the cottage garden or an orchard in blossom — these 
 
 94 
 
IN THE DESERT 95 
 
 things one after the other draw our attention. Our 
 eyes have no wish to stray far, nor can they. Hedges 
 banks, and enclosures, or woods and bushes usually 
 bound our view at a few hundred yards. 
 
 So our eyes, accustomed to observe the things close 
 round us, take note of the most trifling irregularities. 
 None is so small as not to be of great effect in our little 
 foregrounds. The knoll that lifts the village church 
 tower, though it be only fifty feet high, is a distinguished 
 eminence. And the wooded hollow where the smoke 
 of some snug manor house rises through clustering 
 trees, or the hardly perceptible trough where a little 
 brook or river runs, instantly in the same way become 
 marked features. But take away the things that 
 emphasise them, take away the manor house, and trees, 
 and church tower, and brook, and they are marked 
 features no longer. Let your valley and hollow and 
 knoll be all mere monotonous sand and rock, and, as 
 you ride by them, your wandering, roving glance will 
 not even notice their existence. 
 
 So it is with the desert. If you think of it as a vast 
 expanse of level landscape rolled out flat, it is only 
 because nothing clothes its little ups and downs with 
 interest and keeps you studying the lie of the land fifty 
 yards round your feet. It is not flat really. Reefs, 
 tablelands, and long ridges of rocks protrude from its 
 surface. It is seamed with ravines, sometimes flanked 
 by precipices, with dry watercourses cut in the rock 
 between. It has its valleys, its mountains, and its 
 plains. There are the makings here of much 
 picturesque and varied scenery if they were properly 
 worked up. 
 
 The immense spaciousness of the Sahara is due not 
 
96 IN THE DESERT 
 
 so much to its flatness, in fact, as to its deadness. 
 " The vasty halls of death " is a line that recurs to me 
 as I think of those solitudes. It is a landscape entirely 
 of distances, of a released attention ; and it brings no, 
 grist to your little mill in the shape of definite thoughts 
 and interesting observations, though it does sharpen 
 and quicken every faculty you possess. The Arabs 
 have the habit of holding up their heads and looking 
 at the horizon, and that is where the charm of desert 
 scenery lies. Things at a great distance put on a 
 mystery and attractiveness of their own. They mean 
 nothing, but they suggest a lot, and perhaps the mere 
 capacity for taking so huge a range and the dagger- 
 like penetration of your glance in the pure air gives 
 a secret pleasure and excitement to the distant view. 
 Moreover, in that vast monotony the horizon line is the 
 only strong one, and the eye has a natural inclination 
 to run along it. Any conspicuous object breaking it 
 will attract attention, and a far-off peak on the line of 
 march will hold your gaze for hours. 
 
 Put it down to the deadness and monotony that 
 throws attention away into the distance, or put it down 
 to the unstained clearness of air which doubles your 
 range of vision — it is due to both causes, no doubt — 
 one is made conscious in the desert, in a degree I have 
 never felt elsewhere, of the grandeur of the feeling of 
 mere space. It is the idea of lateral expansion as 
 opposed to the vertical expansion we admire so much 
 in Alpine scenery ; the idea, in architecture, of the old 
 basilicas as opposed to the Gothic minster. And, it 
 seems to me, in the sphere of scenery any way, to be a 
 more satisfying, tranquillising, and altogether bigger 
 idea. Mr. Berenson speaks somewhere of the "noble 
 
IN THE DESERT 97 
 
 spaciousness" of classic architecture. The noble 
 spaciousness of the Sahara is one of its most 
 tremendous characteristics. Nothing vertical counts 
 here. Cliffs and crags seem of pigmy stature and 
 hardly noticeable. One can imagine a fretful Alp quite 
 lost and overlooked in this immense area. 
 
 The soft " crush, crush," of our camels' feet on the 
 powdery, sugary sand is the only noise in the air as we 
 jog on, our little caravan raised into unnatural relief by 
 the surrounding smoothness. In all that barren land- 
 scape we are the only conspicuous objects, and as the 
 last tufts of palms sink out of sight behind we enter 
 into lonely possession of the globe. Was ever so vast 
 a stage engrossed by so small a company? In my 
 mind's eye I see our tiny procession from bird's-eye 
 height ; a little string of figures no bigger than ants, 
 moving, or scarcely moving, on this vast expanse of 
 yellow. We carry like a ship our own solitude with us. 
 We are the centre of a circle that moves with us as we 
 move, and the soft " crush, crush " of the camels' feet are 
 the yards by which we carry the circle forward. 
 
 And, as the hours pass and the sandy slopes unroll, 
 it seems to me that I am made conscious for the first 
 time in my life of the meaning of the word ligJit. 
 There is no possibility here of any mitigation of it, of 
 any shelter or refuge from it : the glare comes down to 
 the level earth all round ; the earth itself, yellow and 
 crystalline, is a form, it seems, of mineralised light. 
 I feel, as I ride on, as if I were saturated with light and 
 penetrated by it ; as if I lived in and breathed it as a 
 fish lives in and breathes water. Nor is there anything 
 in the least oppressive in such intensity of brightness. 
 On the contrary, it seems as if what was heavy and 
 
 8 
 
98 IN THE DESERT 
 
 opaque in oneself were burnt away, and body and mind 
 were possessed by a new energy and alertness. It even 
 appears that such light has a physically nourishing and 
 sustaining quality of its own. The Arabs, in the way 
 of food, manage on little more than a mess of rice and 
 a few dates, and your own meals in the desert will be 
 of the lightest. There is no need to run one's own 
 little generator when one can draw supplies straight 
 from the main power-station. 
 
 The total sterility of the desert does not come all at 
 once. There is a margin of scattered scrub under the 
 northern mountains. The parched bushes hold on to 
 life with desperate tenacity, and adopt all kinds of 
 queer shifts for treasuring up a little moisture and 
 making their foliage sun-proof, yet turn wan and grey 
 in the effort. They are images of silent despair. 
 Their stems are thin and shrivelled, and their leaves 
 exude particles of salt. The whole scene is one of 
 great desolation, without motion in the air, and a sense 
 in all you look at of almost stony immobility. The 
 verdure of the place, to mock it by that name, the wiry 
 grass tufts and bitter shrubs, look almost as lifeless as 
 the burning sand and sun-blackened rock. 
 
 Such as they are, however, occasional flocks of goats 
 and sheep find sustenance on them, cropping and 
 nibbling at the leathery twigs, urged on and watched 
 by ragged nomad Arabs, whose black camels'-hair tents 
 we sometimes pass, spread upon and propped up by the 
 bundles of white thorn bushes collected for fuel, and 
 looking in the distance like clusters of great black toad- 
 stools growing in patches. They wander, these nomads, 
 on the plain during the winter months, and, when summer 
 comes and the heat dries even these guttapercha shrubs 
 
> > ) > 
 
 -J 
 
 D 
 
 -) 
 
 a 
 H 
 
IN THE DESERT 99 
 
 to tinder, drive their flocks up the mountain slopes which 
 we can still faintly discern, blue in the north. Even 
 now they are setting in that direction with a tide-like 
 motion ; all slowly eating their way northward towards 
 their summer quarters, sole moving objects in the 
 desolate expanse. 
 
 " A disgusting place," the reader will think of the 
 desert ; " dry, burnt up, unwatered, monotonous, with- 
 out interest, dead. What should take a man to such a 
 country?" I will tell him. 
 
 The gipsy camp on an English heath, the camp fire, 
 the kettle, and the tent, speak a language we all under- 
 stand. Uncomfortable — impossible, as it may be — 
 your first glance was a glance of envy. What sight in 
 childhood fascinates one more than these wandering 
 roadside bivouacs ? What game is more exciting than 
 " playing at gipsies ? " I remember how we smug 
 little scions of civilisation used to stare at the tan-faced, 
 bare-footed gipsy children, with a handkerchief tied 
 over their head instead of hat. With some such feelings 
 birds in cages stare at birds on the wing. 
 
 But it is uphill work playing at gipsies in a country 
 like England, where every field and wood and hedge- 
 row bears the marks of centuries of careful discipline 
 and control. I write this in a pretty little Sussex 
 village, in the month of May, and near the end of it. 
 The hedges are cream-laden with may blossom, the 
 fields are yellow with buttercups. It is Sunday morn- 
 ing, and a bell out of a cluster of trees is calling the 
 villagers to church. They plod obedient to its 
 summons, each clad in Sunday best, and leaving a 
 track of pomatum smell behind him. Fat cows lie on 
 fat pastures ; lambkins frisk and suck and twiddle their 
 
100 IN THE DESERT 
 
 tails ; the wind plays, but not too roughly, with the 
 young corn ; larks above spill out their little cups of 
 song over the land. It is all sweet beyond words ; yet 
 when I went out, with my thoughts full of the desert, 
 and walked among the sleek and gentle fields, I could 
 not but feel a something too willingly submissive, and, 
 as it were, spaniel-like in such a scene. 
 
 Among the many things Nature gives us in England, 
 there is one thing she cannot give — sympathy with 
 the old primitive original instinct of emancipation. 
 She is on the side of the powers that be, the side of 
 authority and routine and tradition. " Submit your- 
 self," she says, " I submit myself, and see how I 
 thrive." Hers is a tranquillising influence, not a bracing 
 one. Under her tuition the mind is attuned to a kind 
 of servitude. So that here, where the stifling influence 
 of custom is so strong, and its ruts cut so deep, is just 
 where there is no escape from it. You fly to Nature, 
 but all that her docile fields and obedient rivers and 
 inviolable park palings can do for you is to sweeten 
 and hallow custom, and reconcile you to it, and 
 strengthen and confirm its hold upon you. 
 
 The desert is of another order of scenery, and made 
 of sterner stuff. It is as ugly as hell, to be sure. It 
 has none of the English motherly fondness and gentle- 
 ness about it. It hates you like poison, and will kill 
 you if it can. But it is a landscape that has never 
 bent its neck to the yoke of man, and its barren reefs 
 and unploughed sands have the old, primitive, savage 
 vigour about them still. 
 
 This is its potent attraction. We are rebels, all of 
 us, but the odds are against us. We live the same 
 day over and over again. We make our moves in a 
 

 > J » » 
 
 
 D 
 O 
 
 Q 
 

 • •• -•• -•. 
 
 • • « ■ 
 
IN THE DESERT icf 
 
 trance. We talk of leading our lives, but our lives 
 lead us. We are like quaint figures in a piece of 
 tapestry, and daily routine is the busy little needle 
 and thread that assiduously stitches us in. We belong 
 to a " period." By and by there will come a professor 
 and lecture on us. He will point out our curious 
 attitudes and dress, so characteristic of Edward the 
 Seventh work, and give an account of the extraordinary 
 notions we had about things, and all the odd beliefs 
 and sham little artistic and literary enthusiasms that 
 made up the life we accepted so confidently. He will 
 illustrate us with lantern slides, and people will say, 
 " How interesting ! " and " How real it makes us 
 look ! " 
 
 In the desert for the first time you have Nature 
 with you in the old struggle for emancipation. The 
 mind here can recollect and renew itself. It comes out 
 from these solitudes, not, perhaps, with any great store 
 of facts, but invigorated, and, as it were, retempered. 
 The senses whet themselves on these crags and reefs. 
 A new vitality and daring is infused into you. You 
 step out of your tapestry for a moment, and stretch 
 your legs and look about you. 
 
 There is a sentence in Burton's " Pilgrimage " which 
 a little bears out my meaning. He says that in desert 
 scenery, owing to the very few things to be seen, your 
 attention is concentrated and vigorously exerted on 
 the merest trifles. A rock, a tree, a track upon the 
 sand, awaken instant curiosity, and invite the sharpest 
 scrutiny. Observation, he says, is stimulated to the 
 highest pitch by the mere capacity for grasping every 
 detail. 
 
 Every one who has been in the desert will feel the 
 

 ffibi.:;}-:: ; , IN THE DESERT 
 
 truth of that ; every one will remember the strength 
 and vigour of glance that comes from these vast spaces, 
 so sparingly touched with points of interest. Every 
 detail develops a sudden significance. I remember 
 sometimes examining some desert plant, the exuda- 
 tions of gum and salt from its broken leaves, the 
 manner in which it was rooted in the ground, the 
 effect on its constitution of sun and soil ; or, again, 
 to have studied the formation of the rocks, the dark 
 polish wrought by the scrubbing of the sand as it blew 
 against them, their clefts and small fissures and splits, 
 due to contraction by heat and cold, and the close 
 graining of the crystals ; or, at other times, to have 
 noted the character and shape of the sand-dunes, the 
 traces of old gales which had left the sand in wreaths 
 and waves, arrested in the act of breaking, and stricken 
 into a mortal stillness, yet with the presence of the 
 wind still felt among them, like an animal's in its 
 deserted lair. I remember, I say, noticing these things 
 with an intense consciousness of their meaning which 
 was a revelation to me. 
 
 There is in the desert, among the few signs of life 
 there, a kind of enormous beetle that leaves in crawling 
 a tiny trail in the soft sand. This trail, seen for the 
 first time, I one day followed up, until I came at last 
 to the poor pilgrim itself, whose progress of a few 
 yards in the hour was in such pathetic contrast to the 
 infinite space around it. And at this moment I can 
 see exactly the action and look of the creature ; the 
 tiny splay feet, that at every step dislodged a few grains 
 of sand, and sent them rolling down the slope ; the 
 crooked knees and bandy legs, the bent head, and in 
 its broad back and hunched shoulders, and boorish. 
 
IN THE DESERT 103 
 
 plodding gait, a suggestion of impenetrable prejudice 
 and bigotry past all words to describe. 
 
 Woods and meadows at home, the clearness of 
 English brooks, the smell of apple blossom, damp 
 moss on rocks, the sight of cattle standing in water — 
 these things remembered in this wilderness seem too 
 beautiful for reality. The thought of them comes with 
 a stab of recollection, and you say to yourself, " Why 
 did I not appreciate them when I had them ? " And 
 yet you know that when you return to them again it 
 will be as it was before. However fond you may be 
 of them, they will not call forth in you the same 
 emotion that these sands and rocks and few paltry 
 signs of life call forth. The fault will be in yourself. 
 You will not have the same power of realising them. 
 The numbness will have settled down again upon your 
 senses, the cloud upon your brain. You will walk in a 
 lethargy, half the time not realising what is around 
 you. Not all the rich variety and beauty of English 
 landscape will ever bring back this inward deep delight 
 with which you look at one poor shrivelled leaf, or a 
 beetle's footprint in the sand. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE ARAB AND THE DESERT 
 
 Excitement of the desert — Its stimulus of the nerves, not of the 
 mind — Corresponding excitability in Arab temperament and 
 character — Their campaigns — Non-intellectual nature of 
 desert scenery — Its deadness — Effects on the Arab — Lack 
 of coherence in Arab character — Destructiveness of the 
 desert — Its object to blot out all life and all form — Similar 
 aim of all Arab activity — His history a history of destruction. 
 
 I WILL put together a few notes here on a subject 
 which interested me much at the time — the rela- 
 tion between desert scenery and the character of the 
 desert people. What I came to feel more and more 
 strongly as time went on was the extraordinarily 
 stimulating and exciting effect of the desert and the 
 desert climate on the one hand, and its entire lack of 
 anything substantial and definite to think about and 
 feed the mind with on the other. The pureness and 
 keenness of the air, and the wonderful brilliance of light 
 in which you live, and which seems physically to in- 
 vigorate and sustain you, enhance your consciousness 
 and sharpen all your faculties. You are more sus- 
 ceptible to the least impressions. You see, hear, feel, 
 
 move with an alertness quite new. Every sense is 
 
 104 
 
THE ARAB AND THE DESERT 105 
 
 strung up, as it were, quicker, livelier, more express 
 in its movements than heretofore. I may say that 
 every sense develops on this account a distinct pleasure 
 of its own. It is a delight to the eye to see and to the 
 ear to hear in this atmosphere and with this sensitive- 
 ness. And if some of these pleasures are increased, 
 others seem to be new altogether. The pleasure of 
 touch, for instance, is quite latent with us, I take 
 it, and scarcely recognised at all. In the desert it 
 awakens, and becomes a source of positive feeling. 
 The touch of things, the variability of their texture, 
 their hardness, sharpness, roughness, or the degree 
 of their flexibility and softness, the sense of intimacy, 
 sympathy, knowledge of their nature, involved in the 
 mere handling of stones, sticks, leaves, or sand — all 
 this gives positive delight, and seems like the awaken- 
 ing of a new sense. 
 
 And as you live amid these surroundings this strung- 
 up feeling grows to tension and breeds a sharp excite- 
 ment. At the same time all this extra vigilance is 
 very ill requited. If a twig rattles or a stone clicks 
 in the sun, your ears shout the message to you as 
 if it were a gun-shot, but for the most part they live 
 an idle life. Your glance ranges these wastes like a 
 wild beast. It delights in its freedom and in its own 
 movements. Yet all the time it is sending in to the 
 brain little news or none. In short, the stimulus that 
 breathes in the air is addressed to the nerves and 
 senses, not to the mind. It makes you feel intensely, 
 but not think. 
 
 I used to think that the temperament I read in 
 the keen face and glancing eyes under the burnous 
 was the very temperament I felt in the glare and 
 
io6 IN THE DESERT 
 
 breath of the desert. All round one here quivers the 
 nervous excitability of which one sees so much 
 in Arab doings — the nervous excitability which 
 inspired all their conquests and campaigns and in- 
 vested them with their dangerous character of tre- 
 mendous violence, suddenness, and unexpectedness. 
 None of these outbursts ever seemed, or to this day 
 seem, to be based on any intelligible cause or directed 
 to any intelligible end. They are mere explosions of 
 pent-up nervous energy, as vague, dangerous, and short- 
 lived as an explosion of gas or dynamite. 
 
 And accompanying this excessive excitability, which 
 was the spirit in which the Arab worked, and the 
 impulse which in old times drove him forth on his 
 career of destruction, we have round us here, too, 
 the sense of that profound limitation which undid all 
 his work and led him back eventually to the desert 
 again. Though there is much here to feed feeling, 
 there is nothing, as I said, to feed thought. It would 
 be impossible to conceive a land more destitute of 
 anything that can suggest a connected train of reason- 
 ing. No doubt a Professor Schirmer may find even 
 in this lifeless solitude matter for study and reflection. 
 But for ordinary mortals a scene must live if it is to 
 command a reasoning attention. In most countries 
 life and fertility are conditions of Nature. On all sides 
 the soil brings forth its fruits and crops. The seasons 
 succeed each other. Leaf and bud, blossom and fruit 
 and seed are stages in an endless cycle. There is 
 perpetual development, each phase the result of what 
 went before, the cause of what is to follow. By every 
 possible inducement, by the food we eat, the wages 
 we earn, by our interests and occupations, and even our 
 
THE ARAB AND THE DESERT 107 
 
 amusements and sports, we are invited to study a 
 perpetual sequence of cause and effect. What wonder, 
 our lives being woven into such a system, if a method 
 of the same kind is encouraged in our minds, and a 
 progressive and coherent mode of thinking becomes an 
 intellectual habit? 
 
 This influence for the Arab is non-existent. The 
 rich and varied scheme of development to which 
 dwellers in other countries adapt themselves does not 
 operate in these wastes. Here, day by day and year 
 by year, everything remains almost entirely unchanged. 
 Nothing, or almost nothing, we see invites us to reason 
 forward or to reason back, but the mind is left in idle 
 and stationary contemplation. It is difficult for us 
 to tear ourselves out of our setting and imagine what 
 such an existence as the Arab's must be like. But if 
 we try to realise the effect that such an empty life 
 must gradually produce on the mind, and conceive 
 it operating on a race for countless generations, we 
 can recognise, perhaps, the consequences of it in Arab 
 character. 
 
 For what that character lacks is the capacity to 
 think consecutively, to reason accurately on secure 
 premises, and to go on slowly but surely, testing every 
 step, in the knowledge that each phase can only be 
 a sound basis for what is to follow if it is a logical 
 deduction from what went before. This capacity the 
 Arabs never have possessed, and it is owing to the 
 lack of it that the whole mass of their achievement 
 is to-day a crumbling ruin. If from that ruin, which 
 rose so magically and collapsed so suddenly, we turn 
 back to these sandy tracts, the similarity between the 
 two stares at us with almost human significance. What 
 
io8 IN THE DESERT 
 
 is it this landscape of restless sand lacks ? The question 
 brings us face to face with the everlasting deficiency in 
 Arab character and the Arab civilisation. It lacks that 
 principle of cohesion which is the first condition of all 
 progressive development. 
 
 So, I used to think, the strength and weakness of 
 the Arab were alike displayed in the desert. All the 
 influences that stimulated his nerves and starved his 
 intellect were round one there. In his successes — 
 his frantic conquests and frantic art and science — 
 is the stored-up force of the desert's nervous energy. 
 In the decline and disintegration of all his power and 
 all his labour is the desert's fatal incoherence. 
 
 And the two are as like in conduct as they are in 
 character. The Sahara is not altogether the motionless, 
 dead thing it looks. It is carrying on a work of 
 destruction all the time. The means it employs are 
 the sand itself, helped by heat and cold and wind. 
 The variation of temperature by day and night, often 
 eighty or a hundred degrees, causes an expansion and 
 contraction of the rocks so sudden as often to split 
 them asunder as if a quarryman's hammer had done 
 the work. "Sometimes," says Professor Schirmer, "a 
 rock flies all to bits under the influence of the sudden 
 contraction." And he quotes a passage from Living- 
 stone, who used frequently to hear, after particularly 
 blazing days, the black basaltic rocks exploding and 
 the ringing of their fragments as they fell to the 
 ground. In many places under the slopes of hills 
 are to be seen heaps of broken stones which have been 
 split in this manner and rolled down the incline. 
 In the same way it is the common testimony of the 
 natives that in the desert east of Damascus the black 
 
THE ARAB AND THE DESERT 109 
 
 stones burst in summer. In the Sahara many of the 
 plateaux are strewn with these sharp fragments, which 
 cut the feet of camels and make walking difficult ; 
 and one explorer — Rohlfs, if I remember right — relates 
 how he was forced to make little sandals for his dogs 
 to prevent their feet from being lacerated by the 
 splinters. 
 
 This rough quarrying, made easier by the dark, 
 almost black, colour of the rocks, due, it is said, to 
 the chemical action of the light upon their surface, 
 which increases their heating capacity, is the first 
 stage in the work. Where this process stops another 
 begins. Apart from the newly-split fragments the 
 common aspect of the desert is a surface scattered 
 with stones and pebbles worn as smooth and glossy 
 as if they had lain for ages in the bed of a river. 
 This smoothness is due to the sand, which works upon 
 the broken fragments, rubbing and wearing them away. 
 No one who has felt a violent wind in the desert and 
 the cutting force of the sand borne along on the wind 
 will wonder at this effect. 
 
 Moreover the sand works not only on detached 
 fragments, but on the permanent rock. The flanks 
 of the cliffs near El Golea are worn and sculptured 
 in some places to a mere lacework of stone. Some 
 of the plateaux of calcareous rock have been rubbed 
 till they are like sheets of ice, and between the Nile 
 and Faragrah the lined and polished surfaces reminded 
 Rohlfs of rocks that had been scored by glaciers. The 
 varying degrees of hardness in the strata is a further 
 aid to destruction. The soft stone yields first, and the 
 result is that cliffs and hills are often undercut as if 
 they had been hollowed out by waves, and often the 
 
no IN THE DESERT 
 
 overhanging strata are so completely undermined that 
 they come crashing to the ground, where their frag- 
 ments are instantly set upon by swarms of busy sand 
 grains and gradually reduced to their component atoms. 
 
 Thus the hills and cliffs themselves yield by degrees 
 to the sand's onset. The Sahara, it must be remem- 
 bered, wears no covering of vegetation and earth 
 stitched together by innumerable roots of plants and 
 trees to protect it. It is open to all attack. At 
 Nefsaoua there is a line of pinnacles crumbling rapidly 
 away, of which one is still left of the original stature. 
 This is protected by a topknot of shrubs and earth, 
 nourished by a spring which flows from its summit. 
 It is this patch of soil and vegetation, not the hardness 
 of the rock, that has preserved it. 
 
 There are regions in which the sand has already 
 completely triumphed. The dunes are calculated to 
 occupy about a ninth of the whole Sahara. These 
 are the districts where the sand has achieved its 
 object, where all fragments of rock and stone, repre- 
 senting the last relics of structural form, have been 
 decomposed. The plateaux and stony ground are 
 the pai;ts still in a transition state, having mostly 
 become bare of all vegetation without being as yet 
 finally dissolved. These tracts of firmer ground stand 
 in the desert like continents rising out of, and washed 
 by the gulfs and channels of a sandy sea. Slowly 
 however, the dunes are gaining ground. The eastern 
 ones are making progress towards Ghadames. In 
 several places in the region of the Irgharghar, near 
 El Golea, and between Sionah and Bahariah, they 
 have invaded the old caravan routes. Year by year 
 decomposition makes almost imperceptible progress. 
 
< 
 
 -) 
 
THE ARAB AND THE DESERT in 
 
 In all this, the object of the desert is clear enough, 
 Its one endeavour is the destruction, blotting out, 
 and utter decomposition of all organic forms. Every 
 tiny oasis in the desert has to fight for its life. Each 
 one stands a siege. Water, soil, a handful of palms 
 give foothold for a little community. Individual pro- 
 perty, social obligations, recognised responsibilities and 
 laws, germinate and take root, keeping pace with the 
 growth of plant and tree. But all around, constantly 
 repulsed but constantly renewing the attack, the old 
 blind monster fumbles and feels, like water round a 
 ship, indomitable, persistent, assiduous, hankering to 
 get back its own. 
 
 Professor Schirmer has likened the form and 
 structure of the desert to the framework of a skeleton, 
 losing shape and coherence as it dissolves into ashes. 
 To bring about this dissolution is the one end of desert 
 activity. For this purpose the sand exists. Volatile, 
 restless, persevering ; so weak that it is blown about 
 by every breeze, and takes the imprint of a breath of 
 air ; so strong that the cliffs and rocks of basalt yield 
 to its attack, it offers the best image I can think of, of 
 the principle of dissolution in Nature ; of the power 
 which undoes and takes to pieces, which has declared 
 a war of extermination against all life and all order, 
 against man and beast and tree and plant, and even 
 against the senseless shapes of rock and stone ; which, 
 in a word, is satisfied with nothing short of decomposi- 
 tion to the ultimate atom. 
 
 And all this is as true of the Arab as of the sand. 
 He is a social solvent as the sand is a natural one. 
 Fickle and unstable, a creature of impulse and blown 
 about by every whim, he is consistent in nothing but 
 
112 IN THE DESERT 
 
 his profound dislike of law and order, of fixed duties 
 and responsibilities, and all that goes to build up a 
 coherent society. If, instead of magnifying those 
 fantastic attempts at creation of his which have had 
 little real foundation, we turn to the field in which the 
 power of the race has been displayed, we should find 
 that destruction and the taking of things to pieces 
 has always been the Arab's vocation. Those so-called 
 conquests of his were really the taking advantage of a 
 unique opportunity for destroying and pulling down. 
 The collapse of the Western Empire, and weakness 
 and paralysis of the Eastern, afforded the Arab a 
 fine field for the display of his peculiar prowess. He 
 took to the lumber and (^('/(^rzj-of these crumbling empires 
 as fire takes to rotten wood. But if in the void that 
 separates ancient civilisation from modern the Arab 
 appears to advantage, there no sooner entered on the 
 scene nations of solid character and creative genius 
 than he retired before them, and yielded to their 
 advance. 
 
 Since those days his efforts have all had one direction. 
 Along the coasts of the Mediterranean the breath of the 
 Sahara is felt in the hot south wind, and Arab activity 
 has had about the same range. To all these coasts 
 the siroccos of old brought the imps of the desert. 
 Every town and village and hamlet learnt to recognise 
 in them the sworn enemies of fixed society. With the 
 progress of time every step in advance won by the 
 civilising principle of law and order has been registered 
 in a corresponding shrinkage of Arab influence ; and 
 the fall of Algiers and Tunis and the approaching 
 collapse of Morocco are only logical issues of what, 
 with the Arab, has been all along a perfectly consistent 
 
THE ARAB AND THE DESERT 113 
 
 line of conduct. Even yet, to this day, restricted as his 
 activity is, it remains the same in kind. Whenever 
 one hears of any Arab enterprise we can always be 
 sure of one thing about it, and that is that it will be 
 a destructive one. It may take the form of a raid upon 
 an oasis, or the surprise of a caravan, or the capture 
 of a government official, or the breaking-up by slave 
 gangs of a Sudan village ; but in any case it is quite 
 certain to have for its purpose the pulling to pieces of 
 society in some way or other.^ 
 
 Asrain, in Arab and desert alike the same outward 
 manner of immovable composure masks a secret ex- 
 citability within, and the immobility of the landscape 
 is reflected in that iron self-control which is the 
 favourite Arab affectation. The repose is the repose 
 of a taut harp-string in both. So alert is the silence of 
 the desert that you find yourself involuntarily listening. 
 The hush seems a prelude to some important announce- 
 ment. You hesitate to break it. It must be something 
 more than usually worth saying that would claim so 
 vast an attention. So, with a sense of having the same 
 thing presented in a different shape, I have often 
 noticed, on mid-day halts, or in the evenings in the 
 caravanserai, how still and silent, hour after hour, the 
 Arabs sit. Not lethargic, or sleepy, or inattentive ; 
 keenly attentive, on the contrary ; but with only their 
 dark eyes glancing from side to side ; speaking never. 
 It is the desert dumbness that is on them. You feel it 
 yourself as you travel through these rigidly attentive 
 landscapes. A man thinks twice before he breaks the 
 silence of the Sahara. 
 
 One cannot help, then, I say, beginning to under- 
 ' See Appendix, Note C. 
 9 
 
114 IN THE DESERT 
 
 stand something of Arab character here in the desert. 
 Lie upon this hot slope. Pick up a handful of the 
 warm grains and let them run through your fingers. 
 Nothing can hold them. The tiny, rounded particles, 
 each one distinct and separate from its fellows, slip like 
 water through imperceptible chinks. They will take 
 no form, for they have no consistency. You can make 
 nothing of them. i 
 
 Drink in this thin, scorching air. Can you not feel ] 
 it refining all your senses, stirring every faculty to \ 
 panther-like alertness ? This is that desert ^/an, the 1 
 most curious and terrible of forces, of which the world j 
 has had such memorable experience. When the Saracen ' 
 hosts gathered for their rush, and — i 
 
 " On the wings of mighty winds 
 Went flying all abroad," 
 
 this was the stuff they were full of. This was the 
 mettle of their pasture. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 WHERE THE " ARGO " SAILED 
 
 Ahmeda's horse and horsemanship — The Shott Melrir — The old 
 river system — The drying-up of the desert — Arab metaphors 
 — The tradition of the sea — Greek corroboration — Yarns of 
 the Argonauts — Modern science contemptuous — Evidence 
 of the inland sea — Arab and Greek tradition confirmed. 
 
 ALL our little caravan feels the exhilaration of 
 this air and scenery. Our ponies break into a 
 frisky gallop as we come to firmer stretches of sand ; 
 the Arabs from their camels glance about them with 
 increased animation, and settle themselves contentedly 
 to the familiar swaying stride ; even the camels them- 
 selves, or so I fancy, are pleased at the bottom of their 
 cold hearts to be adrift in the waste once more. 
 
 Ahmeda's exultation showed itself in a hundred 
 fierce or gay signs. Something in his blood answered 
 to these surroundings. His look changed. His eye, 
 questioning these distances, was a changed eye. He 
 was riding a tall, shambling nag with a lop-sided action 
 like a cow, the result of hobbling of two legs on the 
 same side together. When hurried it had to invent 
 an action of its own as it went along. Its trot 
 suggested the dislocation of every limb, and its gallop 
 
ii6 IN THE DESERT 
 
 was sheer anarchy. You looked round instinctively 
 as the brute passed to see what was left behind. 
 " Never," I used to think to myself, as I watched the 
 tangled heap of legs, tails, heads, and flying burnouses 
 rushing over the plain, " never will that creature come 
 together into the likeness of a horse again." Yet every 
 time when Ahmeda pulled up the subsiding sandstorm 
 of its own raising disgorged a steed apparently intact. 
 
 How its rider contrived to adapt his seat to its 
 sprawling attitudes was always a mystery to me ; but 
 Ahmeda was perfectly at home in the saddle. When 
 we found ourselves at last in the full loneliness of the 
 desert, his joy broke out in all kinds of antics. Now 
 he would scent the presence of an enemy and dart off 
 to a knoll from which to spy out over the plain. He 
 had a small, cheap telescope, quite without any mag- 
 nifying power, and which obscured everything seen 
 through its smoky little glass, but which he was never 
 tired of gluing to his eye, as if he were reading the 
 secrets of the desert through it. After these examina- 
 tions he would assume a manner light-hearted and care- 
 less, or grave and preoccupied, according as the results 
 of the reconnaissance had been satisfactory or sinister. 
 
 Sometimes, again, he would spur his horse to a frantic 
 gallop, and then flinging the reins on its neck bring his 
 rifle to his shoulder and fire across the plain as he tore 
 along. These antics of his invariably took a warlike 
 form. The unsuspecting prey, the cunning ambush, 
 and the sudden onslaught were the themes he worked 
 on. The number of caravans he plundered during 
 these first two or three days must have been quite 
 considerable. The old instincts were evidently not 
 dead in Ahmeda. I doubt if they are quite dead in 
 
WHERE THE "ARGO" SAILED 117 
 
 any Arab. As I watched his face on his return from 
 his forays I used to think that a persuasive Mahdi 
 would easily set fire to that tinder, and the vigilance of 
 the ubiquitous French garrison became more explicable. 
 
 It was on our second day out that we came to a deep 
 and far-reaching depression in the desert's surface. 
 The stony ground broke away suddenly in a long 
 irregular slant, and descended steeply to the bottom 
 of the valley. Standing on the summit we had a view 
 across to the low cliffs a few miles off on the opposite 
 side. Eastward the flats, widening as they went, 
 stretched to the horizon. That part which we were 
 about to cross was but a narrow tongue ; the last 
 creek or bay, evidently, of this vast trough. 
 
 But the peculiarity of the view, and what arrests one 
 in some astonishment, is that all the floor of the hollow 
 is loosely paved with what at this distance seem like 
 broken fragments of ice. The scales and pieces, 
 twinkling and flashing in the sunlight and stretching 
 away for miles into the distance, look exactly like 
 the photographs and sketches one has seen of ice-floes 
 in the northern seas. 
 
 This depression of which we stand on the verge is 
 one of the most noteworthy features in the Sahara. 
 From here eastward there stretches a chain of these 
 salt lakes for over two hundred miles to the east coast 
 of Tunisia. The Shott Melrir is the westernmost of 
 the line. It is followed by the Shott Rharsa, the much 
 larger Shott Jerid, and the Shott al-Fejij, which reaches 
 to within about twenty miles of Gabes on the Tunisian 
 coast. These lakes, which once formed a deep bay 
 of the sea, are still considerably below sea-level, from 
 which they are cut off by the sandbanks of the east 
 
ii8 IN THE DESERT 
 
 coast. It has been shown that before the present total 
 steriHsation of the Sahara a large river system, both 
 from north and south, drained into this now extinct 
 sea. It received the torrents from the Atlas range, and 
 it received, what was far more important, the large rivers 
 which drained the mountains and plains of Central Africa. 
 
 As the desert spread, and gradually encroached upon, 
 and finally blotted out, the verdure of the country, 
 these mighty streams dried up, or sank such waters 
 as they collected from the mountain rainfall below the 
 sandy floor of the desert. Unfed by tributary rivers, 
 the arm of sea gradually contracted and silted up. 
 The sandbanks grew and extended across its mouth 
 until they joined, and, forming a continuous chain, 
 cut if off from the sea altogether, and then under the 
 fierce African sun its waters rapidly evaporated. In 
 winter, when the streams come down from the northern 
 mountains, a few reach as far as these lakes, which 
 then turn into salt marshes dangerous to cross. With 
 summer the streams fail, the water dries up, and a 
 glittering field of white and scaly salt is all that remains. 
 
 Any one who knows the Arab love of metaphor will 
 expect to hear that a sight so extraordinary as this 
 dazzling view in mid-desert will have been made a 
 target of by their metaphorical marksmen. Quite a 
 number of pretty phrases have become embroidered 
 round it. It is like a bowl of glittering soapsuds, like 
 a cake of camphor, like a sea of opal, like a cake of 
 florescent crystal, like a pail of molten lead and gold ; 
 and in the evening, when the peaks of the Aures fade 
 away, purple and blood-coloured in the short twilight, 
 it is like a leaf of blanched silver. 
 
 The habit of accumulating new images and new 
 
WHERE THE "ARGO" SAILED 
 
 119 
 
 words is an appetite with the Arabs. They have a 
 proverb that God's gift has descended on three things, 
 the brain of the Franks, the hands of the Chinese 
 
 #2» 
 
 
 SKETCH MAP SHOWING THE FLOW OF THE GREAT 
 NORTH SAHARAN RIVERS TOWARDS THE SHOTTS. 
 
 and the tongues of the Arabs. Destitute as they are 
 of other arts, they have made the naming of things 
 and the description of things a subject of perpetual 
 
120 IN THE DESERT 
 
 study and conscious endeavour. Speaking of the old 
 competitions that took place between the poets of 
 various tribes in the days of the Ignorance, Sir 
 W. Jones says that they served to recruit the language 
 with a supply of new words ; " for," he says, " as 
 every tribe had many words peculiar to itself, the poets, 
 for the convenience of the measure, or sometimes for 
 their singular beauty, made use of them all ; and as 
 the poems became popular these words were by degrees 
 incorporated with the whole language." 
 
 The Arab is instinctively an artist in his choice of 
 words. The exclamations Burton heard among his 
 fellow-pilgrims at sight of the sacred grove of Al 
 Medinah, read, as he has transcribed them, like a 
 passage from an Arab poet. " Live for ever, O most 
 excellent Prophet ! live in the shadow of happiness, 
 during the Hours of Light and the Times of Day, 
 whilst the Bird of the Tamarisk (the dove) moaneth 
 like the childless mother, whilst the West Wind 
 bloweth gently over the Hills of Nijd, or the Lightning 
 flasheth bright in the Firmament of Al Hijaz." Here 
 is a gift of utterance indeed ! We should have to wait 
 some time before we heard an English peasant describe 
 the cooing of a wood pigeon as the moaning of a 
 childless mother; and as long, perhaps, before we heard 
 a salt-marsh likened to an opal sea or a leaf of silver. 
 But the Arabs, as I say, make a study of these things, 
 and round every striking and peculiar natural object 
 or feature there gathers in consequence a whole 
 collection of epithets and images, the happiest of which 
 find a place in the language, and are perpetuated in 
 popular speech much as the words imported by the 
 old poets used to be. 
 
WHERE THE "ARGO" SAILED 121 
 
 It is a curious example of the persistence of tradition 
 that, though for an untold number of centuries this 
 bay has been silted up and the desert been in almost 
 full possession, yet there still exists among the tribes 
 of the south the legend of a sea across the Northern 
 Sahara, with ports and ships, opening into the 
 Mediterranean. Modern opinion has varied on the 
 subject of this sea. Until lately it was accepted as 
 a matter of course that the whole desert once formed 
 the bottom of a sea. Where else could so much sand 
 come from ? Later, it was discovered that the Sahara 
 was really a dried up continent. It was not sea 
 bottom, but a tableland rather, with an average 
 elevation of several hundred feet above sea-level. It 
 had the usual mountain ranges and plateaux, now 
 all dry rock, and the channels of rivers and torrents 
 could still be traced, cut in its stony surface. Finally, 
 it was discovered that the sand was the result of the 
 action of the wind rather than of water, and that 
 its manufacture was in active progress at the 
 present time ; and then the idea of the old sea was 
 as absolutely rejected as it had once been absolutely 
 accepted. 
 
 However, the no-sea theory would not do any 
 more than the all-sea theory had done. Fossils 
 were discovered in the desert which proved that the 
 sea once rolled in certain parts of it. Some have 
 been found in the neighbourhood of Lake Tchad, 
 but the most plentiful and conclusive discoveries 
 have been made in the north, in the valley of the 
 Oued Rir, and in the depressions of the shotts. 
 Consequently a mixed solution is now offered. The 
 Sahara was never a sea, but it contained seas, and 
 
122 IN THE DESERT 
 
 one of these seas ran under the Atlas where the shotts 
 now are. 
 
 Of course, in pursuing its own calculations science 
 paid no heed to the idle tales that were current in 
 the country itself. Curiously enough, however, those 
 tales were not of Arab or Berber origin only. Arab 
 legend was supported by Greek myth. The story of 
 the Argonauts vouched for an inland sea or lake 
 somewhere in this very neighbourhood. The Argo, 
 it will be remembered, is supposed to have sighted 
 the mountains of the Peloponnese on her homeward 
 voyage, and then to have been driven south by a 
 northerly gale and wrecked somewhere, presumably, 
 on the Libyan coast. Certain nymphs of the neigh- 
 bourhood thereupon came to her rescue ; but, being 
 delivered from this danger, she was afterwards driven 
 into an inland lake, from which she seems to have been 
 unable to extricate herself, until, her usual luck holding, 
 a Triton appeared who guided her into open water again. 
 
 Sailors are notoriously imaginative, but as a rule 
 only in detail. They embellish, but hard facts are 
 somewhere underneath. The writer was a sailor 
 himself once, and has listened through many sultry 
 night-watches to the strange mingling of memory and 
 imagination that sailors weave into their yarns. From 
 such experience he fancies he would have risked a 
 guess that, though the Triton and the nymphs might 
 be embellishments, the sandbanks and the inland lake 
 were real. 
 
 At any rate, here was a curious tally in the way 
 of legends. Here, in the mythology of the sailor 
 people of the ^Mediterranean, is confirmation of the 
 strange old fable that still survives among the 
 
WHERE THE "ARGO" SAILED 123 
 
 Saharan tribes. Once there was a sea there, say 
 the tribesmen. Once we sailed on that sea, say the 
 sailors. Modern Science, of course, smiled superior. 
 She knew what tricks imagination plays with poor 
 weak human nature. Meantime she set to work to 
 apply her own more reliable tests. She proceeded 
 to question, not man, but Nature. She looked once, 
 and declared that the whole place had been a sea. 
 She looked again, and declared that none of it had 
 ever been a sea. She looked a third time, and declared 
 that there had been a sea just hereaway south of the 
 Atlas ; which is exactly what poor tradition has been 
 saying all along. 
 
 The conclusion will recommend itself to every 
 traveller in these parts. After visiting Gabes and 
 the eastern coast of Tunisia, and seeing the narrow 
 strip that divides the inland depressions from the 
 outer sea, and watching the great cliff-like range 
 of the Aures with their palpably sea-coast look, and 
 taking into consideration the downward trend of the 
 desert floor all the way from the Ahaggar range to 
 the foot of the mountains, which would form a natural 
 watershed and system of drainage towards this point, 
 and remembering the still visible threads of the outlying 
 tributaries on the mid-desert plateaux which bear 
 witness to the course of ancient rivers down the centre 
 of the basin towards this Triton's sea — in short, after 
 grouping the facts in one's mind as they have 
 appeared to one, and further propping them on Arab 
 legend, Greek myth, and scientific fossils, one may 
 allow oneself to suppose that in looking out from 
 these sandcliffs over the glistening surface of the shotts 
 we are looking across the very sea, or part of it, 
 
124 IN THE DESERT 
 
 which Jason in his saucy clipper navigated in days 
 of old. 
 
 What in remote antiquity was the aspect of this 
 northern depression it is impossible to divine. But 
 the existence of these great rivers is proof of the 
 fertility of the regions through which they passed. 
 And of the existence of the rivers there is no question. 
 In the midst of this deadness and sterility one can still 
 read, in the wide beds and chiselled rocks, the evidence 
 of the force and volume of water that once poured 
 through this waste. Still the upper Irgharghar, rising 
 in the Ahaggar range in mid-desert, sometimes after 
 heavy rains will carry a current as far as Amguid. 
 The lower river carries no water at any time in the 
 year, though its course is traceable in places by the 
 rounded fragments of rock of its bed. Yet explorers 
 have narrated that the old channels of the great 
 Saharan rivers, like the Mia and the Irgharghar, some- 
 times after a rare, torrential downpour develop in an 
 instant a majestic flood that rolls proudly in mid-desert 
 with the strength of old days for a few hours and a 
 few miles, and is then sucked down into the porous soil. 
 
 The Ahaggar range girdles the basin on the south, 
 while the Tademait Plateau bounds it on the south- 
 west. In these two mountain-formations the two main 
 streams of the basin had their source. They united 
 near Tuggurt and flowed thence to the sea. Curiously 
 enough, it is the ends and feeble tributaries of these 
 extinct Niles that still survive, while the main rivers 
 they fed have long disappeared. The smaller streams, 
 raised above the reach of the encroaching sand, still 
 gather the occasional rains that fall upon the uplands ; 
 but betwixt those mountains and the site of the old sea 
 
WHERE THE "ARGO" SAILED 125 
 
 stretches an ocean of tumbled sand-dunes, their rounded 
 monotonous summits, unrelieved by a speck of green, 
 not unlike the petrified billows of some ocean solitude. 
 They have wiped out and buried the old rivers, whose 
 course is now fitfully traceable where the surface is 
 hard, or by the wells that have been sunk to tap the 
 water beneath, or the moisture that rises in the depres- 
 sions between the dunes and gives life to a grove of 
 date-palms and an Arab village. 
 
 Enough, however, from these signs is discernible to 
 reconstruct the dead river system as it once was. We 
 must of course imagine the feebly-surviving puddles of 
 the shotts infinitely enlarged. The shore-line at Gabes, 
 and up the east coast of Tunisia, we must suppose to be 
 in great part dissolved. It was, we may imagine, among 
 the gradually silting up quicksands of this treacherous 
 coast that the Argo first got into difficulties. There are 
 writers who now contend that the sea into which it 
 afterwards penetrated lay further to the north, some- 
 where in the neighbourhood of Monastir. Having been 
 so long denied a Lake Tritonis at all, it seems we are 
 now, by way of compensation, to have several. The 
 point does not seem very vital. At their eastern end, 
 in Tunisia, the Atlas mountains sink gradually down 
 into the plain as once, in remote times, they sank down 
 into the sea. The low-lying land of Eastern Tunisia, 
 running in among the hills, was the arms and branches 
 of that sea, which, as the sandbars formed across its 
 eastern inlets, stagnated by degrees and gradually filled 
 up. The contraction of the sea, first to a lake and 
 finally to a few salt marshes, would cover an immense 
 period of time. At what stage in the process the Argo 
 appeared on the scene, to what dimensions the sea had 
 
126 IN THE DESERT 
 
 shrunk by then, and what regions beyond the present 
 shotts it covered, are questions best left to experts. If 
 we add to all this the uncertainty as to the course of a 
 vessel lacking chart and sextant, and steered by a 
 Triton, the whole episode becomes more or less per- 
 plexed as regards detail. 
 
 Still there remains the basis of certain main facts, 
 and what we may reasonably believe is that here, in the 
 eastern parts of Tunisia and southern Algeria, re- 
 plenished by great rivers from the south and overlooked 
 by tall cliffs on the north, lay that sea, or part of that 
 sea, of which the Arabs on the one hand, and Greek 
 mythology on the other, still maintain the vague 
 tradition. 
 
 We wound our way down the stony slope and held 
 straight across the flats, ploughing at intervals through 
 the crackling surface of salt. The spurs of hills came 
 down round us, jutting forward like capes into the sea. 
 As we climbed the opposite hills and turned to look 
 back, the blue battlements of the Aures rose above us in 
 the sky. We could well imagine the impulse of the 
 French soldiers, who, on reaching the edge of those 
 cliffs and looking out over the great expanse of desert, 
 cried out, " The sea, the sea ! " And once, we may 
 think, the sea was actually here, and blue waves 
 sparkled where the sand now sleeps. 
 
 As the processes of the change pass before one's eyes 
 one scarcely knows whether to be struck by the vastness 
 of these transformations, extending over such huge 
 areas of time and space ; or to wonder at the childlike 
 pettiness of operations which are just the same, after 
 all, as those which govern the dying puddles on the 
 road's surface after a summer shower. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 WELL-SINKING IN THE DESERT 
 
 The underground water supply — Importance of the artesian 
 process — Arab legends about water — Their notions of well- 
 boring — Their fight with the desert — Invasion of their 
 oases — " Dying " of their wells — Arab engineers — Their 
 failure — The French inter\'ene — Their success — Gratitude 
 of the Arabs — Renovation of oases — Apparent happiness and 
 content — The rising of 1870 — Re-establishment of order — 
 What the French have done in the Oued Rir. 
 
 THE old Lake Tritonis is dead, and the rivers that 
 once flowed into it are dead ; at least, they 
 appear to be so. Their interest belongs to the past, 
 you would say ; present importance they can have none 
 whatever. Yet, though their course is only to be traced 
 here and there by the old channels which their current 
 in bygone ages has sculptured in the rock, and though 
 their beds are for the most part obliterated under an 
 accumulation of sand and debris, these rivers are, never- 
 theless, not so dead as they look. Their waters, sunk 
 beneath the sand, percolate along their old channels, or 
 are collected and retained in the impervious strata deep 
 below, circulating within which they give rise to that 
 
 system of a subterranean water supply which is the 
 
 127 
 
128 IN THE DESERT 
 
 most interesting and suggestive characteristic of the 
 Sahara. 
 
 Oued means " river," and the reader, if he looks at a 
 map of the Sahara, will be struck by the vast number of 
 these rivers marked upon it. With the exception, how- 
 ever, of a few scanty streams which, among the mountain 
 regions and for a certain period of the year, carry a 
 fitful and uncertain current, the Saharan " rivers " have 
 forgotten these many centuries what water looks like. 
 They justify the name of river, however, by the fertilising 
 influence, a feeble one comparatively, it is true, which 
 they continue to exert. Indeed, in the Sahara the word 
 oued means now not so much literally a river as the 
 effects of a river. The river, being hidden, is thought of 
 in the work it does, and oued comes to mean " fertile 
 valley," or valley not totally destitute of some signs of 
 fertility. 
 
 In this fact of a secret water supply lies the hope of 
 the regeneration of parts at least of the Sahara. It 
 appears that under its intractable exterior the desert 
 hides some kindlier impulses after all ; impulses that 
 admit of being appealed to ; springs of feeling that may 
 yet be unlocked. It so happens, too, that just where we 
 are, here by the Shott Melrir, facing the whole stretch 
 of the Oued Rir valley to the south, is the best place in 
 the whole Sahara for realising this fact. 
 
 For standing here we stand at the point where the 
 drainage of a country as big as France once emptied 
 itself in a single stream into the sea. The great depres- 
 sion reaching from the Ahaggar range in the mid-desert 
 to the line of Shotts under the Aures possessed three 
 main rivers, or rather two, which united to make a third. 
 These were the Irgharghar, flowing due north from the 
 
WELL-SINKING IN THE DESERT 129 
 
 Ahaggar ; the Mia, flowing north by east from the 
 Tademait Plateau ; and the Rir, formed by the junction 
 of these two, which finally emptied itself into the sea 
 here where we stand. 
 
 The Rir at one time, then, was a stately stream. In 
 no other part of the Sahara does there exist so large a 
 watershed all directed to a single outlet. This region 
 happened to be the one in which the French first made 
 acquaintance with the desert. The amazing response 
 received here to the process of well-sinking raised the 
 most sanguine and romantic hopes. Enthusiasts saw 
 the whole desert mantling with fertility. It was not for 
 some time realised that the part they happened to have 
 struck was a very exceptional part ; that it represented 
 a concentration of moisture from an exceptionally large 
 area, and had supplies of water to yield much greater 
 than existed throughout the desert generally. 
 
 When this was at last realised the disappointment 
 was great, and many scornful and unkind things were 
 said of the Sahara which had just now been the darling 
 of the French imagination. However, it is beginning 
 to be seen now that, though the desert may not have 
 other districts so rich in water as the Oued Rir, it has 
 plenty which may repay the sinking of wells. The 
 artesian process will not, perhaps, transform the face of 
 the country, but it may modify its character in many 
 places. It is a very potent instrument for the further- 
 ance of French occupation and settlement. It helps in 
 the creation or maintenance of the little fertile islands 
 scattered here and there through the waste, and these 
 again support villages and a fixed population. They 
 become centres in a small way of law and order. More- 
 over, the power of calling forth water is the surest claim 
 
 10 
 
I30 IN THE DESERT 
 
 the French could advance to the respect of the desert 
 tribes. Every one, in the Sahara at least, understands 
 the language of artesian wells. 
 
 The Algerian desert consists of two fairly distinct 
 zones, the Western, or High Sahara, which is a rocky 
 or stony plateau, stretching westward into Morocco ; 
 and the Eastern, or Low Sahara, extending into Tunisia. 
 This Low Sahara forms the northern part of that great 
 depression, seven hundred miles from north to south by 
 from three to four hundred miles broad, the drainage of 
 which, gathered by distant converging rivers, is concen- 
 trated in the Oued Rir ; the Rir valley itself leading 
 down to the shotts, which are the deepest part of the 
 depression and still beneath sea-level. These grada- 
 tions are, of course, too gradual and on too vast a scale 
 to be perceptible. You have no idea, as you gaze 
 southward from the shott across an apparently level 
 stretch of desert, that you are looking up a long gradual 
 incline which culminates in a great range of mountains 
 in the middle of the Sahara ; nor that, from all round, 
 the slope trends downward to this lowest point. Never- 
 theless, such is the fact, and it has proved a fact of 
 enormous importance to the dwellers in this region. 
 
 The surface of the low desert consists partly of tracts 
 of pure sand-dunes, partly of a dry calcareous crust of 
 rock and shingle. Beneath this sandy and porous 
 crust, however, there exist, often at very slight depths, 
 impervious strata of rock and clay which may be called 
 the true floor of the desert, on which the sand rests 
 like an accumulated layer of dust in an unswept room. 
 The rivers and torrents which descend from the moun- 
 tains, partly from the great Atlas range, partly from 
 the high Sahara on the west, and partly from the 
 
WELL-SINKING IN THE DESERT 131 
 
 mountains in the mid-desert to the south, pass beneath 
 the sand until they encounter the watertight strata 
 beneath, within which they secretly circulate and extend 
 for great distances. So that though, when in the midst 
 of the desert and surrounded by blinding white sand- 
 dunes, the very idea of water seems absurd, and its 
 existence impossibly remote, yet it is often present at 
 a distance of only a few yards underfoot. 
 
 This secret reservoir — so tantalisingly close, so diffi- 
 cult of attainment— of what in the desert are veritably 
 the waters of life, is a phenomenon which has always 
 haunted the Arab imagination, and has expressed itself 
 in all kinds of legends and quaint theories and explana- 
 tions. One tradition relates, what was no doubt the 
 case, that the earliest oases grew round springs of 
 naturally flowing water. These in time became gradu- 
 ally exhausted, and on this happening the Marabouts, 
 or priests, confronted with a danger that menaced the 
 existence of the tribes, united in offering up solemn 
 prayers to the Almighty for guidance. It was in 
 answer to these prayers that the existence of the under- 
 ground supply of water was revealed, and the idea of 
 tapping it by boring wells was suggested as a direct 
 inspiration from heaven. Further south the tradition 
 varies somewhat. It is there believed that a servant 
 of the Prophet, having been inhospitably received by 
 the people of the Rir, invoked a curse upon them, which 
 sealed up the natural springs of their oases. In conse- 
 quence of this ten of the most aged and venerable of 
 the priests were chosen to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca 
 to expiate the sin of the whole country. Their piety 
 was rewarded. The springs were set going, and, in 
 addition, the knowledge of the hidden water and of 
 
132 IN THE DESERT 
 
 the means of reaching it was revealed. In both cases, 
 it will be seen, the art of well-sinking is supposed to 
 have had its origin in a suggestion from heaven. The 
 dignity and solemn importance of the work were such 
 that nothing short of celestial guidance could be allowed 
 to inspire it. 
 
 What one has to remember — what traditions like 
 these testify to — is that the constant war which the 
 desert wages against any form of settlement and fixed 
 abode is the dominating fact of desert life. Every 
 inch of cultivated ground, and they are few and far 
 between, has to be daily defended against the enemy. 
 Sand penetrates like water, and just as the sailor has 
 to be constantly at work caulking and overhauling 
 every part of his vessel to keep it seaworthy and water- 
 tight, so the Arab in the desert has to guard and repair 
 his oasis to keep it sandtight. 
 
 It is no easy task. The sand is constantly on the 
 move. When the wind rises, the dunes, as the Arabs 
 say, " walk." The word is very expressive of what 
 takes place, for the rustling of the sand as it pours 
 along the ground, and the rapid change in the shape 
 of the drifts, give a strong impression of actual motion 
 in the whole landscape. To prevent the obliteration 
 of their gardens the Arabs plant rows of palm-leaves 
 round the brims of the hollows, and along all the crests 
 of the neighbouring dunes. It looks a childish ex- 
 pedient, but it is not without its effect. The sand is 
 first set in motion along the sides of the dunes, and 
 pours and rushes up the slope (each grain rounded to 
 a marble in the process), and it is not till it reaches 
 the crest of the ridge that it rises like smoke into the 
 air. At this point the palm-leaf borders intercept it 
 
WELL-SINKING IN THE DESERT 133 
 
 and lay it to rest. When, indeed, the dunes walk in 
 good earnest, nothing can arrest them. The sand rises 
 at every point under the lashing wind, turns the sky a 
 uniform swarthy red, and blots out the view at the 
 distance of a hundred yards. The spectacle of a land- 
 scape of dunes in rapid motion all around you, their 
 crests melting and smoking in the wind, is one of the 
 most curious, but to the husbandman or the traveller 
 the most menacing, that the desert has to offer. 
 
 It will be seen that the tenure under which the Arabs 
 of the desert hold their estates is a rather precarious 
 one. By the middle of the last century the state of 
 misrule, or no rule, in the desert, the perpetual incur- 
 sions and forays of the tribes, had disintegrated the life 
 of the fixed communities round the oases. With the 
 Bedouins came the desert, symbol of chaos in nature 
 as they in society. The discouragement or flight of 
 the villagers was taken instant advantage of by the 
 sand. Gently but assiduously it invaded the helpless 
 plantations, just as on the banks of the Upper Nile 
 the traveller sees it to-day encroaching on the strips 
 of fertility that fringe the banks of the river. 
 
 But what, more even than the incursion of Bedouins 
 and disruption of the villages, assisted the operations 
 of the desert was the exhaustion, the " dying," as the 
 Arabs expressively put it, of the wells. The boring 
 system of the Arabs had been carried on from time 
 immemorial by corporations of specially trained ex- 
 perts, among whom the office was hereditary, and who 
 were held in universal honour and consideration. They 
 were divided into the two classes of the vteallem, or 
 wise men, and the r'tassin, or divers. It was the 
 business of the first to select sites for boring and 
 
134 IN THE DESERT 
 
 construct the wells, and of the latter to clean them 
 out and keep them clear of sand, with which they were 
 liable to become choked. At the time of the French 
 invasion these corporations had become almost extinct, 
 the whole of the Oued Rir possessing only a dozen 
 divers and three chiefs, all of whom were stricken 
 with phthisis. One of these survivors is reported by 
 Lieutenant Rose as lamenting the effeminacy of the 
 later Arabs, who dared no longer face the dangers to 
 which the excavators were exposed. "If God, the 
 worker of miracles, does not come to our aid, in ten 
 years the Oued Rir will be abandoned and buried 
 beneath the sand." Divine assistance, as M. Jus gently 
 hints, took the form of French intervention, and the 
 Oued Rir was saved. 
 
 The danger of the Arab method of excavating was 
 due chiefly to the sudden rush of water up the well 
 shaft when the water-bearing strata were tapped. The 
 engineers began operations by sinking a shaft which 
 they lined with a rude timbering of palm-trunks, 
 carried down to a depth where the sides became solid 
 and not liable to fall in. This done, they erected a 
 scaffolding of a couple of palm-trunks, with a third laid 
 across over the mouth of the pit, from which two ropes 
 raised and lowered the baskets which the workmen 
 below filled. M. Jus, superintendent of the Saharan 
 excavations, gives a lively account of the whole process, 
 the one and only engineering feat practised by the 
 children of the desert. He describes the patient artisan, 
 sitting at the bottom of the pit, singing to himself the 
 while, and chipping his way slowly downward with a 
 small, short-handled pick, with which on off-days he 
 worked in his garden. 
 
WELL-SINKING IN THE DESERT 135 
 
 The strata enclosing the water are, according to the 
 Arabs, the stone Hd which covers a subterranean sea. 
 It is commonly recognisable by its superior hardness 
 and consistency. Arrived at this point the ineallent 
 ceases this operation, and before the final task of 
 liberating the water is undertaken, the villagers sub- 
 scribe what is called the dia, or "price of blood," for 
 the workman who is to give the final stroke. The dia 
 may average the respectable sum of ;^io. This point 
 settled, the adventurous workman who is to complete 
 the boring lets himself down by one of the ropes, and 
 with his pick works a small orifice in the final layer of 
 rock. It sometimes happens, M. Jus observes, that the 
 water rushes with such fury out of its underground 
 prison that the poor engineer is rolled over and 
 suffocated before his companions are able to extricate 
 him. 
 
 The work of the r'tass is somewhat different, but 
 quite as dangerous. In some cases the water rises 
 slowly and becomes choked as it rises with sand, which 
 has to be removed before the spring can maintain a 
 constant flow. Sometimes, too, wells silt up and have 
 to be periodically cleaned out. This is the office of 
 the r'tass. A party of r'tassin consists usually of four 
 subordinates and a chief To assist their operations 
 a rope is made fast to the scaffolding above, its other 
 end being tied to a heavy stone lowered to the bottom 
 of the well, which keeps it taut. A second cord passed 
 over the horizontal bar of the scaffolding lowers and 
 raises the basket which is to receive the sand. 
 
 The r'tass who is to make the first plunge begins by 
 warming himself thoroughly at a huge fire lit near the 
 mouth of the pit. He then oils his body all over, and 
 
136 IN THE DESERT 
 
 stuffs his ears full of well-greased wool. Then he 
 jumps into the water up to his shoulders and stands 
 with his feet on the timbers. He performs his oblations 
 and says his prayers. " Then he coughs, spits, wipes 
 his nose, draws in three or four long breaths, and blows 
 the air out into the water with a bubbling noise, says 
 good-bye to his companions, and finally seizes the taut 
 rope and glides down." 
 
 The work is carried out in deep silence, every one 
 being conscious of the danger run. The chief holds 
 the cord by which the diver has descended, and which 
 is his means of communication with the surface. A 
 single jerk means that the diver is ready for the basket, 
 and at a sign from the chief this is lowered. A second 
 jerk indicates that the basket is full. On the r'tass 
 reaching the surface his comrades embrace him, lift him 
 out of the water, and take him to the fire, while a 
 second gets ready for his dive. 
 
 When the r'tass, as not unfrequently happens, gets 
 into difficulties, a succession of quick jerks gives 
 warning to the chief, who with a particular signal 
 communicates with the others, one of whom instantly 
 dives to the rescue of his comrade. 
 
 The time usually spent under water by the rtassin 
 is from two to three minutes, while each rtass makes 
 from four to five plunges daily. Each basket of sand 
 brought to the surface averages some ten litres, which 
 would amount to fifty litres extracted as each man's 
 day's work. When we remember that these two or 
 three minutes of immersion are accompanied first with 
 all the effort necessary to reach the bottom, and 
 secondly with the work of collecting the sand and 
 loading the basket, while the water itself, dense and 
 
WELL-SINKING IN THE DESERT 137 
 
 turbid, is probably in violent agitation, such a feat 
 of endurance must seem remarkable enough. The race 
 seems to have an aptitude for the water. I am 
 reminded of the Arab boy-divers of Port Said and 
 other places, whose darts through the clear sea in 
 pursuit of pennies I have so often watched from the 
 deck of a P. & O. 
 
 The profession, however, of these divers, though 
 highly honoured and highly paid, was open to such 
 objections that one is scarcely surprised at its growing 
 unpopularity. Blindness and deafness were apt to be 
 the lot of the r'tass who escaped downright suffocation, 
 and failing these he was pretty sure to be crippled 
 by phthisis or rheumatism. 
 
 Besides this system there was, of course, and still is, 
 the immemorial shadoof, so familiar to the traveller 
 on the Nile, who watches the tall points sinking and 
 rising along the river bank. It is easier to pull down 
 than to pull up: that is the little bit of experience 
 embodied in the shadoof A tall pole like a fishing-rod 
 is balanced on a crutch a few feet high, the butt-end 
 being weighted with a huge lump of clay, and a rope 
 and bucket suspended from the tip. Standing by the 
 pit-edge the Arab hauls the cord down till the bucket 
 reaches the water, when he lets it go, and the weight of 
 the clay hoists the bucket up. 
 
 Such were the clumsy and inadequate systems in vogue 
 when the French debouched upon the desert fifty years 
 ago. A hydrologist of the name of Dubocq had, ten 
 years before, drawn attention to the possibilities of well- 
 sinking in this district, and General Desvaux seems to 
 have been immediately struck by the possibility of 
 bringing European science to bear on the problem. 
 
138 IN THE DESERT 
 
 The native pits being of wood were constantly wearing 
 out and the sides falling in, and to clear out and revive 
 one of these " dead " wells was always a work of great 
 difficulty and danger. In consequence of this failure of 
 water the oasis of Tamerna was almost completely dried 
 up. The wells at Sidi-Sliman, Ourlana, El Harihira, 
 Moggar, Tiguedidin, and others had become almost 
 choked ; while El Berd was totally overwhelmed in 
 sand, and Sidi-Rached on the point of sharing the 
 same fate. 
 
 It was, as it happened, at the latter place, Sidi- 
 Rached, that General Desvaux first conceived the idea 
 of introducing the artesian apparatus which has since 
 then wrought such a change in this part of the Sahara. 
 It happened that from the top of a sandbank he 
 obtained a view of the entire oasis ; on one side green 
 with dense thickets of palms, on the other completely 
 smothered under the encroaching sand of the desert. 
 He was informed by the Sheyk that the northern wells 
 had become choked ; that they had found it impossible 
 to sink new ones, and that in a few days the population 
 belonging to that part of the oasis intended to give up 
 the struggle and to disperse. The object-lesson of such 
 a view was not lost on this practical Frenchman, and, 
 thanks to the support of Marshal Randon, at that time 
 Governor-General of Algeria, the immediate introduction 
 of the artesian process was decided on. 
 
 Tamerna, in the Oued Rir, was the place fixed upon 
 for the first essay. Sinking began on May 17, 1856, 
 and on June 9th the water-bearing strata were pierced 
 and a river of water, 4,000 litres to the minute, gushed 
 forth. The joy of the natives was unbounded, and the 
 news of this French achievement spread with incredible 
 
^ . <•* 
 
 
 Thk Immemorial Shadoof. 
 
WELL-SINKING IN THE DESERT 139 
 
 rapidity throughout the south, bringing pilgrims from 
 long distances to visit the scene of the marvel. The 
 new well was solemnly christened by the assembled 
 Marabouts, and received the auspicious name of the 
 " Fountain of Peace." 
 
 Lieutenant Rose, who was in charge of the detach- 
 ment working the pumps at Tamerna, sent to General 
 Desvaux a report on the proceedings, which gives us 
 a vivid idea of the excitement caused among the Arabs 
 by this enterprise of the invaders, and of the mixed 
 feelings of jealousy, astonishment, and delight with 
 which the experiment was watched. M. Jus, the super- 
 intending engineer, had indicated the 2nd of June 
 as the day when water would be reached. The hard- 
 ness, however, of the intervening soil occasioned some 
 delay. Several days were passed in mingled doubt, 
 expectation, and uncertainty. The work grew harder 
 and harder as the screw penetrated deeper. Parties of 
 Arabs reinforced the gangs, and the work was kept 
 going day and night. " But the Arabs, instead of 
 seconding our workmen with all their might, were slack 
 and ill-humoured. There was no mistaking the feelings 
 of these men. They might calculate the great advan- 
 tages they would reap in the event of our success, but 
 one could read in their faces the intense satisfaction it 
 would give them if we failed. Every time the pipe was 
 drawn up fruitlessly they thought they saw the triumph 
 of their process over ours. The partisans of the r'tassin 
 looked hopeful, and Moslem prejudice evidently thought 
 that the struggle against new ideas, of which they stood 
 in dread, was won." 
 
 So amid disappointment and anxiety on one side 
 and ill-concealed triumph on the other, the boring 
 
I40 IN THE DESERT 
 
 was pushed doggedly on till the 9th. At mid-day on 
 that day the drill encountered more rocky strata, the 
 depth attained being now 150 feet. M. Jus affixed a 
 smaller and pointed drill to deal with the obstacle. 
 The final scene we will give in Lieutenant Rose's own 
 words : — " We worked two more hours without result, 
 when all of a sudden the rod, after a continued encounter 
 of hard rock, sank so suddenly that we thought it had 
 broken ; but a moment later we saw the stream running 
 stronger in the little canal that had been cut to receive 
 the waste water, and then the strong shaking of the 
 pipe told us we had achieved our object, and that a 
 powerful spring had really been struck. Soon the 
 water poured out of the outer pipe, and the flag run up 
 to the top of the scaffolding and the shouts of the 
 workmen announced our success to the natives. In two 
 minutes every living soul was on the spot. They tore 
 down the palm-branches that covered in the machinery. 
 Every one must needs see with their own eyes this 
 water that the Frenchmen had set running in five 
 weeks, while they themselves would have required five 
 years and five times as many workmen. Then up came 
 the women of all ages, and those who could not get 
 near the well managed to get water passed to them in 
 the little cups of our soldiers, which they drank with 
 enthusiasm. All the people were embracing each other, 
 and the women fairly screaming for joy." 
 
 So for the moment, at any rate, the success of the 
 " miracle " had silenced criticism. The champions of 
 the old regime were obliged to conceal their enmity. 
 The night is passed in dancing and festivity. A goat 
 is sacrificed at the mouth of the well. The Sheyks 
 and Marabouts of Tamerna, and the leading men of 
 
WELL-SINKING IN THE DESERT 141 
 
 the neighbouring villages, gather round it to recite 
 their prayers. The musicians of Tuggurt and Temacin 
 range themselves in the midst. The young girls 
 surround them dancing. The men, according to their 
 wont, fire their guns in the air. All the inhabitants 
 give themselves up to a manifestation of triumph and 
 delight, such as only those, perhaps, who are acquainted 
 by experience with what the word "water" means in 
 the desert can understand. "And at last," adds our 
 lieutenant, " I had the pleasure to see the covert signs 
 of ill-will disappear from all faces, and I found myself 
 surrounded with people who were blessing without 
 any reserve the name of France and those who, in 
 that name, had revived their groves, their sole fortune." 
 Let me turn back a moment to the case of Sidi- 
 Rached, that oasis the pitiable state of which so ap- 
 pealed to General Desvaux. M. Jus gives some account 
 of the scenes that occurred at the sinking of the well ; 
 scenes which were, he tells us, profoundly touching. 
 " When the shouts of the soldiers announced that 
 water was flowing, the natives rushed up in crowds. 
 They threw themselves on this new spring we had 
 set flowing out of the earth's bosom. The mothers 
 bathed their children in it. The old Sheyk of Sidi- 
 Rached, at sight of the current which was to restore 
 a livelihood to his family, could not master his feelings, 
 but, falling upon his knees with streaming eyes, he 
 lifted up his shaking hands towards heaven and thanked 
 God and the French." 
 
 Finally, let us hear the views of General Desvaux 
 himself, after these early experiments. He points to 
 the success, greater even than hoped for, which had 
 crowned their efforts. " Public opinion among the 
 
142 IN THE DESERT 
 
 natives," he says, " has been very much impressed by 
 these useful undertakings, and by the energy with 
 which they have been carried out. . . . French ad- 
 ministration has entirely changed the aspect of these 
 countries ; instead of the anarchy, the injustice, of the 
 old times, the constant acts of brigandage, it has 
 instituted a just and beneficent form of government. 
 It has restored security to the roads hitherto so 
 dangerous. , . . The party devoted to our interests has 
 grown stronger and more numerous, and it does not 
 hesitate to declare that the French Government in 
 two years has done more for the peace and prosperity 
 of the Oued Rir than the Ben-Djellab through all the 
 centuries of their rule." 
 
 There was, no doubt, at this time, while the benefits 
 the French had to offer were fresh before their eyes, 
 a strong wave of feeling in favour of the invaders. 
 General Desvaux quotes the revered Marabout of 
 Temacin, Sidi-Mohammed-el-Ain, who had just re- 
 turned from a pilgrimage to Mecca, as saying that he 
 had passed through a great many Moslem countries, 
 but that he had found tyranny and violence every- 
 where, and had never drawn a breath in freedom 
 until he got back to French territory again. French 
 officers could now travel freely, without escort, all 
 through the Oued Rir and Oued Souf regions, so lately 
 conquered, and would be everywhere welcomed with 
 enthusiasm. Another significant sign of the times 
 was the apparent willingness of some of the nomad 
 tribes of the Sahara to abandon the wandering life 
 and settle down to the cultivation of the oases. This 
 was the case in regard to the Selmia tribe, which 
 established itself at the newly-sunk well at Oum-el- 
 
WELL-SINKIXG IX THE DESERT 143 
 
 Thiour. Such a change seemed to point to a modifi- 
 cation of Arab prejudices, to a certain mitigation of 
 their instinct towards the uncivihsed Hfe, which was 
 full of hope for a permanent settlement of the country. 
 It only needed a few years of French government, 
 argued the General, and a few wells sunk in the desert 
 to break up the old ideas of Arab life and open a 
 breach for Western civilisation. Even Poetry lifted 
 up her voice to celebrate the new era, and a native 
 bard extolled the benefits of an alien government 
 and described particularly the wonderful twisting 
 machine which went down into the bowels of the earth 
 to look for water, an operation which is likened to a 
 diver diving to the bottom of the sea in search of pearls. 
 For some years reports continued to be of a most 
 satisfactory nature. The i860 report of General 
 Desvaux dwells upon the sympathy, amounting to 
 enthusiasm, with which the French and their miracu- 
 lous pumps are being everywhere greeted by the 
 native tribes. The old worn-out oases are being re- 
 stored. New ones, flanked by happy villages, are 
 rising, " as at the touch of the enchanter's wand," out 
 of the desert. Feuds and brigandage are things of 
 the past. The millennium seems suddenly to have 
 alighted upon the Sahara, and we are edified by the 
 sight of a happy and industrious people, who spend 
 their contented days in cultivating the fruits of the 
 earth and praising alternately the name of God and 
 the French nation. Who could have foretold that ere 
 many years had passed away this peace and pros- 
 perity would give place to revolt and massacre, and 
 blood flow as plentifully as the new-found springs 
 of water? 
 
144 IN THE DESERT 
 
 There is no need to follow the French well-sinking 
 in all its detail. The enterprise was by no means 
 confined to the Sahara. It extended to many regions 
 of the plateaux, and even the Tell, where it seems to 
 have been as welcome and successful as in the Sahara 
 proper. Near the Shott-el-Hodna especially, a large 
 number of wells were sunk. At El Fayd a feud 
 between two villages, which appeared insatiable, yielded 
 to the common blessing of a fresh water supply. 
 At Ain-Kelba, a position was selected for boring 
 near the Kouba erected in honour of two much 
 revered Marabouts. There was in the neighbourhood 
 a natural spring of the same name, Ain-Kelba, which 
 means " the fountain of the dog," almost dried up, yet 
 perpetuating a legend still repeated. It is said that 
 two hundred years ago, at the time of a great droughty 
 all the tribes of the Hodna had fled to such springs 
 as still yielded a few drops of water, when there 
 returned from Mecca a pious Marabout, on foot and 
 followed by his dog, and finding no tent to shelter 
 or person to succour him, he laid himself down ex- 
 hausted and dying of thirst on the parched ground. 
 His dog thereupon, seeing his master on the point of 
 death, and guided by a divine instinct, set to work to 
 scratch in the sand, and by and by a clear spring of 
 water gushed out, and the pilgrim was quickly restored. 
 This sacred spring had, however, in the lapse of years, 
 almost run dry, and the people of the district in 
 times of drought were reduced to the last extremity. 
 Here the French successfully sunk a well, which 
 they supplemented by another at Am-Nakrar, a little 
 distance to the east. It is of the latter boring that 
 we have some account by Captain Aublin, an account 
 
WELL-SINKING IN THE DESERT 145 
 
 which coincides in every way with the description 
 given of the wells already sunk among the Saharan 
 tribes. " The miracle," he remarks, " has been repeated 
 here which is already familiar to the Oued Rir." 
 The importance of the work and the effect it is 
 likely to have does not escape him. In particular he 
 draws attention to an interesting belief, current among 
 the desert tribes, to the effect that in remote times, 
 when the Christians inhabited those regions, the rivers 
 which are now dried up carried full currents and 
 spread fertility through all the land. The present 
 " miracle " would, he fancied, confirm that tradition, 
 and would increase the prestige of the white race by 
 associating it in the native imagination with the 
 presence or control of water. 
 
 Yet Captain Aublin was sagacious enough to see 
 that these blessings had another side to them. They 
 would, he thought, end by accustoming the Arab to 
 the idea of a fixed abode and a life of civilisation, 
 and they would ultimately win his confidence and 
 good-will. At the same time there must be the 
 bitter thought in many Arab minds that the invaders 
 were confirming their hold upon the country, that 
 the old free and unfettered existence had passed 
 away, and that the new one, whatever its amenities 
 might be, was in fact subject to the government of a 
 foreign race. Nevertheless, the final thought that 
 remains is one of confidence. As he observes, the 
 suspicion of the villagers turns to admiration and 
 delight at the appearance of the water ; as he 
 watches their rejoicings and self-congratulations and 
 prayers, and listens to their entreaties that the wonder- 
 working machine may be transported into all their 
 
 II 
 
146 IN THE DESERT 
 
 territories, the French officer forgets the dark, covert 
 glances on some faces and declares that successes 
 such as these spell peace between the races and cause 
 the vanquished party to forget its defeat in the 
 benefits heaped upon it. When a little later the 
 rtassin themselves, such as remained, seeing their 
 employment at an end, begged to be initiated into 
 the mysteries of the artesian process, and duly 
 received an outfit and a French instructor to explain 
 it, and set to work to strike some new wells at Tug- 
 gurt, it seemed past doubt that the tribes had been 
 not only conquered but reconciled. 
 
 A few final words from a report of General Desvaux 
 in i860 will give an idea of the predominant feeling 
 of optimism at that time : " The artesian wells begun 
 in 1856 in the province of Constantine, by order of 
 Marshal Randon, the Governor- General, have been 
 continued without interruption from that time. Wel- 
 comed with enthusiasm by the natives, and followed 
 with sympathy in France, these works have continued 
 to produce the most satisfactory results. The oases 
 of the Oued Rir have been saved from ruin ; fountains 
 and villages have sprung up in mid-desert; a part of 
 the rich valley of the Hodna has been watered. In 
 the Oued Rir (Tuggurt), confidence has become so 
 general and so complete, that the natives, certain that 
 they will reap the fruits of their labours, are working 
 hard at new wells, planting palm-trees and rebuilding 
 their houses ; the tribes of the neighbourhood are 
 renewing their trade with the villages, having nothing 
 now to fear from the outlaws of old days. A change 
 so marked in the social and political condition of the 
 Sahara is due to the justice of French administration 
 
WELL-SINKING IN THE DESERT 147 
 
 and to the blessings of the wells. Left outside the 
 civilisation scheme which by the conquest of 1830 
 had been introduced into the rest of Algeria, the 
 inhabitants of the Oued Rir, to whom the victory at 
 Meggarine had been a revelation of France's strength, 
 had found at last the justice and protection they 
 needed. Instead of the Ben-Djellab, who were a 
 burden on the people, and who shrank from no vio- 
 lence or crime, they had a Government which devoted 
 itself wholly to the idea of administration, reorganisa- 
 tion, and to every possible means of redressing old 
 wrongs." 
 
 The French soldiers were now to be seen, says this 
 very optimistic report, as peaceful labourers " instilling 
 life into the fainting oases, and mixing quietly with 
 those who were lately their enemies, with all that 
 devotion to duty which is so characteristic of the 
 French army; they welcomed the roughest work, the 
 most melancholy solitudes began to show signs of 
 life, and after their artesian campaigns every soldier 
 returned happy in the knowledge of that good to 
 which he had contributed." The rise in the value of 
 palm-trees is a significant sign of the change that had 
 taken place in stability of government. A fine tree 
 worth 5 francs under the tyranny of the Ben- 
 Djellab was worth 30 francs in i860. 
 
 It might, however, have been noticed that, whereas 
 the rejoicings and congratulations were more or less 
 superficial, the result of an appeal to such common- 
 place ideas as love of ease and plenty, the black 
 looks that were sometimes noted bore witness to a 
 discontent of far deeper origin. While the water first 
 sparkled and the drooping palms revived, all other 
 
148 IN THE DESERT 
 
 claims might be unheeded ; but by and by, as the 
 people grew used to, and heedless of, their benefits, 
 the thought of the freedom they had forfeited re- 
 curred to them with growing importunity. In 1864 
 General Perigot succeeded General Desvaux, and in 
 his report of two years later, otherwise as optimistic 
 as ever, there is one ominous passage referring to 
 the insurrection of one of the tribes in the Hodna, 
 " blinded by fanaticism," which resulted in the partial 
 destruction of two of the wells. 
 
 I will not attempt to describe the terrible revolt of 
 five years later. It was due to those " black looks" we 
 have heard of; to the growing discontent that was 
 inflaming the Arab and Khabili imagination, and to 
 the removal of the bulk of the French army, and espe- 
 cially of the experienced officers known personally 
 to the natives, to take part in the Prussian campaign. 
 It spread equally throughout the tribes of the Sahara 
 and the Steppes. The Bedouins of the desert enjoyed 
 a return to the old days of foray and plunder. Ouarla 
 was besieged, Tuggurt taken, and the inhabitants 
 massacred. The French were murdered wherever the 
 tribesmen or the Khabilis could cut them off; a 
 strong band of insurgents even marched on Algiers. 
 But this revolt, after all, like the lesser one that 
 followed it a few years later, was a mere interlude. 
 The French took up their task again where it had 
 been interrupted. Their garrison returned. Their 
 engineers got to work once more with their miracu- 
 lous machinery. Their occupation confirmed its grip 
 over the Northern Sahara, and extended far into its 
 central regions. So far as the Oued Rir was con- 
 cerned, the results of the well-boring surpassed all 
 
WELL-SINKING IN THE DESERT 149 
 
 expectations. ]\L Jus, who for years had charge of 
 these operations, made before his retirement a careful 
 and exact computation of the work done throughout 
 this district. Let me give an instance or two of the 
 results. 
 
 In 1856 the number of inhabitants was 6,772, and 
 had been decreasing yearly. In 1890 it was 13,302. 
 The number of palm-trees, in which the wealth of the 
 villages mainly consists, had increased from 359,300 
 in 1856 to 630,512 in 1890. This increase in the 
 number of trees does not, however, express the increase 
 in actual value, because it is invariably the case that 
 when a district is deteriorating, as was the case with 
 the Oued Rir when France took it over, the trees, 
 from having to do with an insufficient quantity of 
 water, became meagre and dwindled away, losing their 
 capacity to bear good crops, and, consequently, their 
 value. Such was the condition of the plantation in 
 1856 that during the following years it was found 
 necessary to replant them almost completely. This 
 was done. The 359,300 old trees of 1856 were valued 
 at 1,300,000 francs. The 630,512 young trees of 1890 
 were valued at 10,097,160 francs. That is to say, 
 though the number of trees had not quite doubled, 
 the value of them had increased nearly eightfold. 
 
 To get at the cause of all this we must turn to the 
 water account. In the Oued Rir the water supply 
 shows an increase of from 46,000 quarts per minute 
 in 1856 to 270,000 quarts per minute in 1890; an 
 increase of nearly 600 per cent, in the thirty-four 
 years. It may be added, too, that the number of 
 fruit-trees, other than date-palms, rose in the same 
 time from 40,000 to 90,000, and the value of dwelling- 
 
150 IN THE DESERT 
 
 houses increased from 210,800 francs to 967,800. This 
 was the effect of the artesian process. When France, 
 by the treaty with England, secured the Sahara for 
 her share of Africa, Lord SaHsbury made the charac- 
 teristic comment that " the French cock enjoyed 
 scratching in the sand." The remark seems to have 
 appealed to the French sense of humour, for I find it 
 repeated in every book or article of theirs on the 
 subject. I think, however, it will be agreed, so far 
 at least as the Oued Rir is concerned, that the cock 
 has scratched in the sand to some purpose. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 TUGGURT 
 
 Arab love of display— Entering the town— A visit to the Mara- 
 bout—Arab silence— An Arab ca/t'— Oriental colour— Colour 
 emotional and belonging to the East — Form intellectual and 
 belonging to the West— Incompatibility of the two ideals — 
 Oriental colour an expression of Oriental life and character 
 — St. Mark's the great artistic example— Its colour-effect 
 obtained by banishing structural forms. 
 
 AS we neared Tuggurt, Ahmeda rode on in front 
 to warn the inhabitants and arouse some little 
 interest and curiosity in our behalf. Of all things 
 the Arab dearly loves to make what Yankees call " a 
 splash." To attract attention, to be watched and 
 followed and make a sensation generally, is heaven 
 to him. Ahmeda was easy-going and jovial enough 
 in the desert, but when he put himself at the head of 
 our cavalcade to ride through an Arab village or 
 encampment he was a changed man. His gravity 
 and dignity, and the haughtiness with which he 
 stared round him, were quite alarming ; but I think 
 the performance was quite understood by the on- 
 lookers to be a mere bit of acting. They watched 
 Ahmeda pacing proudly through their midst with 
 
 critical acuteness, as you might watch an actor on 
 
 151 
 
152 IN THE DESERT 
 
 the stage, to see how he availed himself of the oppor- 
 tunity for showing off. 
 
 When we saw in the distance the vast conglomera- 
 tion of the mud roofs of Tuggurt I detected in Ahmeda 
 signs of anxiety and restlessness I was already familiar 
 with. After a bit he came to us and represented that 
 it would be well if he went on and engaged our quarters 
 for the night. This we agreed to, knowing well, of 
 course, that his object really was to rouse the town 
 and prepare for his own reception. 
 
 We entered by a narrow tunnel into the labyrinth 
 of the town. The houses, or hutches, are of one 
 storey, built of clots of sun-dried mud with low-domed 
 roofs of the same material, over the tops of which we 
 looked as we rode along the tortuous alleys. I was 
 surprised to see such hovels roofed in this way, but 
 no doubt the scarcity of timber explains it. The mud 
 walls, unwhitewashed and unpierced by any windows, 
 and the medley of narrow passages winding in and 
 out, gave one the impression, stronger here than in 
 Algiers, that one was in some haunt of insects or 
 ingenious animals. The town seemed moulded out 
 of the very slopes of the hill it stood on, and at a 
 short distance attracted no attention, and could not 
 be separated from its background. And when the 
 silent-footed, mysterious Arabs began to well out 
 through doors and alleys, swathed in their soft white 
 garments and moving as noiseless as so many ghosts, 
 though they seemed the right kind of inhabitants for 
 these dim, blind walls, they looked a breed other than 
 human. 
 
 Ahmeda had done his work well. At every entry 
 and passage dark faces and white burnouses huddled, 
 
TUGGURT 153 
 
 and keen eyes shot covert glances at us as we passed. 
 He himself rode a little in advance and enjoyed him- 
 self like a child. As the crowd grew his stateliness 
 and disdain increased. He told us he had arranged 
 an interview for us with the Marabout of the town, 
 and thither we went. The Marabout was a big, fat 
 man — a good deal of the Turk in him, I thought. 
 He was dressed very gaily in pale blue silk, if I re- 
 member right, and sat in a big, curiously-constructed 
 chair in the open space in front of his dwelling, there 
 awaiting us. 
 
 As we approached we heard the sound of music, 
 but could not make out from whence it came. It 
 sounded much like a barrel organ, but no instrument 
 was anywhere visible. We had collected by this 
 time in our passage through the town quite a crowd 
 of followers, and as we debouched on to the open 
 space I v/as aware of a sort of eagerness and ex- 
 pectation as they gathered closer up to us, as if they 
 were awaiting some event of great interest. We 
 advanced in a hush of expectancy only broken by the 
 now loud and imminent squeaks of the invisible barrel 
 organ. Where on earth did the sounds come from ! 
 Suddenly the truth flashed upon us ; they came from 
 the Marabout's chair. 
 
 The holy man got up to receive us, when the music 
 instantly ceased. He pointed us to a lesser chair 
 apiece on either side of him, and we all sat down. 
 No sooner did his ponderous weight descend upon his 
 own chair than it burst forth again into complaining 
 squeals. We were, of course, struck with the expected 
 wonder and admiration. It appeared that the French 
 Government had made a present of this marvellous 
 
154 IN THE DESERT 
 
 chair to the old Marabout, and it is certain that in 
 so doing it showed its knowledge of the Arab character. 
 
 We sat in a row, the sky-blue Marabout in the 
 midst, a circle of Arabs squatting round. Ever and 
 anon, as I glance at the attentive ring, the dark eyes 
 roll away to the horizon, but roll back, I feel, as soon 
 as I turn my head. The conversation consists of an 
 occasional grave inquiry about England, especially 
 about the King ; the number of horses and wives he 
 has, and whether he too has a musical chair. What, 
 however, interested me more than the talk was the 
 silence. Talk among Arabs is not felt to be necessary 
 It would be impossible for a circle of English people 
 to sit, unoccupied, looking at each other and saying 
 nothing. The discomfort would be unbearable. Arabs 
 feel none of this. They sit on, vigilantly, imperturb- 
 ably, and quite silently. The difference strikes one as 
 much more than a difference of manner ; it is a differ- 
 ence of temperament, the mark of a race which, as I 
 said before, feels but does not think. 
 
 That night I strolled into an Arab cafe. It was a 
 mere mud-hut of a place, sparsely whitewashed, with 
 .sand floor, having a big mud-built stove at one end, 
 with little copper utensils gleaming on it. One candle 
 stuck in a pinch of clay made the darkness faintly 
 visible. A group of a dozen men sprawled or crouched 
 upon the floor round a domino board. Several of them 
 were Spahis in baggy blue pantaloons and short em- 
 broidered jackets ; dark and handsome men, with 
 reckless looks and keen, attentive Arab faces. One 
 or two wore loose cloaks of dark crimson with big- 
 crimson hoods drawn over their faces. Others wore 
 the dark chocolate-coloured burnous, and others, again, 
 
TUGGURT 155 
 
 were in the usual white garments, their black faces 
 blacker from the folds of white linen they peered 
 out ofi 
 
 Huddled on the ground altogether they made an 
 indescribable mix and blend of rich colour. There 
 was just enough light to show it ; to blacken the 
 faces in the deep shade of hoods, or light up a cheek 
 or forehead like a piece of bronze. Crimson, dark 
 brown, and white were the chief colours, all low and 
 together in large masses with the pale sand and walls 
 as a set-off. Then their attitudes and features ! One 
 stretching back at full length and yawning ; this one 
 banging down his domino excitedly ; that one as 
 fiercely gesticulating dissent ; another throwing himself 
 forward over the other's shoulders to point advice ; 
 he in the corner crooning a careless carol to himself. 
 All of it so unstudied, so loose and easy and un- 
 conscious ! 
 
 I stood in the door some while, sipping coffee and 
 looking. Outside the night was white as milk. The 
 open space and the houses round looked as if they had 
 been snowed on. There was a faint odour in the air of 
 dust and spice, decay and sweetness mixed, the familiar 
 smell of the East, always the same. A few ghost-like 
 figures in their winding-sheets crossed the place and 
 vanished into unseen openings. Then I turned my 
 head, and beside me was this darkly-glowing interior 
 and swarthy pomp of colour. 
 
 It is not enough to say of colouring like this that it 
 
 is deeper, richer, stronger than ours. It is all this, of 
 
 course, but it is more than all this. It is different in 
 
 kind. In the East colour is a substantive, in the West 
 
 ' See Appendix, Note D. 
 
156 IN THE DESERT 
 
 it is an adjective. We have coloured things ; the 
 East has colour. 
 
 Oriental colour is rich almost to gloom, but the 
 gloom is like that of a ruby or sapphire, not on the 
 surface, but deep and full of volume and power. And 
 from this very depth of tone it derives a certain 
 simplicity and gravity. Even a certain severity. It 
 does not excite, it satisfies. The mind feeds upon it. 
 In short, it strikes one as having an influence and 
 character of its own, not as being the attribute of 
 anything else. You do not, when you think of Oriental 
 colour, think of any particular objects which it adorns ; 
 you think of the colours, not the things coloured. It 
 exists in itself, not as an attribute or quality of some- 
 thing else. 
 
 Emotional rather than intellectual, the Oriental 
 temperament finds in colour its proper vehicle for 
 expression. The Oriental mind does not reason and 
 does not construct. It does not, therefore, express itself 
 readily in those arts which have a definite purpose and 
 meaning, like sculpture and architecture. These belong 
 to the intellectual West. What the East does express 
 itself freely in is that medium which is itself emotional 
 rather than intellectual, namely, colour. 
 
 And so when I find myself in a place like this cafe 
 I feel myself in the presence of something new. I have 
 been accustomed to think of colour as an adjective ; to 
 think, that is to say, of the object first and of its colour 
 afterwards, as one of its several properties. And used 
 in this way it seems natural that colour should be, as 
 with us it always is, weak and powerless, not rich and 
 satisfying. But here in the cafe that is not at all the 
 use made of colour. There is not here any insistence 
 
TUGGURT 157 
 
 on the idea of form. The burnouses and garments are 
 all huge, loose, and unshaped. They make great full- 
 brushed daubs of colour, but do not suggest form at all. 
 And in all the surroundings the same idea is borne out. 
 The interior itself, far from being of exact dimensions, 
 is rounded and blurred in outline. The walls bulge, 
 the angles are rudely turned ; the roof is a low ponder- 
 ous curve, the great oven protrudes a shapeless 
 rotundity into the room. Darkened shadows fill the 
 space, and the feeble candle-rays have only power to 
 show a vague suggestion of whitewashed creamy wall, 
 somewhat of the colour of old stained ivory. Shape 
 there is none, form none ; all is vague and indefinite. 
 
 And the use of this in setting off the mass of colour 
 in the midst is incalculable. If that mass were set in 
 any ordinary room, let it be as plain as you like, but a 
 room as ours are, correctly and exactly built, with level 
 walls, flat ceiling, accurate windows and doors, it would, 
 I am sure, lose three-fourths of its effect. The sugges- 
 tion of distinct architectural form that would exist in 
 the room, the definite purpose expressed in all the 
 surroundings, would go far to kill the effect of the 
 colour altogether. It would rouse in your mind that 
 kind of intellectual perception which exact form always 
 appeals to, and in so far as it was able to do this, it 
 would weaken and cripple your emotional perception 
 of the colour. As it is there is no such clash. That 
 passively receptive attitude of the mind, so directly 
 opposed to the reasoning and thinking attitude, is 
 encouraged here, ministered to and sustained by the 
 whole mise-en-scene. The surroundings and background 
 all bear out the same impression, and powerfully carry 
 the suggestion of the colour itself deep into your mind. 
 
158 IN THE DESERT 
 
 But at the same time there is nothing of the happy 
 accident kind about this setting. This ill-constructed 
 and shapeless interior is just as significant of the race 
 that built it as the heap of colour in the middle is. Let 
 the reader glance at any available illustrations of Arab 
 construction, and he will see that the Arabs have not 
 got it in them to build a flat wall or a symmetrical 
 arch. They do not think or feel in terms of form at all. 
 It is, indeed, impossible that they should, since, as we 
 see when we imagine this colour in an exact setting, 
 the process of thinking in form is itself destructive of 
 thinking in colour. The whole effect of this cafe is 
 of a piece, harmonious and spontaneous. It all comes 
 out of one impulse of the mind, and is the expression 
 of a homogeneous character. Even the dimness of the 
 light is wholly characteristic. An English public-house, 
 how mean and poor soever, will make an effort to light 
 itself up brightly, because it is the English wish to see 
 things clearly ; an instinct which is natural to a 
 character based on the sense of form. The Oriental 
 wish is not to see things clearly, but feel them deeply, 
 and to Orientals a clear light is not a recommendation, 
 but the reverse. 
 
 One could multiply instances. What makes the 
 fascination of such places as the bazaars of Con- 
 stantinople, or those of Kairwan, a town which we 
 shall be coming to by and by in the course of these 
 travels ? The same elements are all present as in 
 this cafe. The little shops under their arches make 
 heavy blots of dark colour ; the light is shaded and 
 dim, a soft twilight ; and, most essential, but most 
 often overlooked, there is nowhere the obtrusion of 
 the idea of exact form. The niches or tunnels which 
 
TUGGURT 159 
 
 contain the wares, the walls, supports, roof, and 
 architecture generally, are inexact, indefinite, almost 
 formless. As architecture it is all beneath contempt. 
 As a vehicle for colour, harmonising with and deepen- 
 ing the impression of the rich colours massed beneath, 
 it is beyond all praise. 
 
 The advantage of seeing these things amid their 
 natural surroundings is that it is only thus that they 
 attain to the significance of an interpretation of life. 
 The colour achievements of Orientals, their stuffs and 
 carpets and tiles and glass, torn from their surroundings 
 and seen in a London shop, have no power in them- 
 selves to depict character. It is when you see them 
 in the setting which harmonises with their own 
 character that their interpretative power is felt. They 
 stand here for something more than a gift, a tradition, 
 or an accomplishment. They stand for a temperament. 
 They make up with the things about them a 
 spontaneous, consistent expression of life and character. 
 Transplant them and this significance dies out of them. 
 He who attempts to estimate Oriental colour by study- 
 ing it in a museum attempts an impossibility. Better 
 would it be if he were just to let the fire burn low 
 in his own study, and, sitting in the twilight, let his 
 mind attune itself, if it will, to the rich obscurity round 
 him. He will be nearer to understanding Eastern colour 
 in that hour than all the museums will ever bring him. 
 
 But, best of all, let him, if he can, visit the villages, 
 homes, or bazaars of an Eastern people. Here, and 
 here only, does colour exist for its own ends. Here 
 only has it the richness and the strength which it 
 gains from being the expression of racial character. 
 No helpless parasite of form, no decorative quality 
 
i6o IN THE DESERT 
 
 attached to this or that ; here it hves its own Hfe, 
 here it rules supreme. This is that kind of artistic 
 expression which has in it the character of a people. 
 This is what you read or feel in these gliding figures, 
 in these dark, speculative eyes, in these breathing 
 silences, in these gusts of scorching passion. The 
 handiwork interprets the man. To stand amidst the 
 dim splendour of that hovel yonder is to be offered 
 the soul of the East to handle. 
 
 And yet there is one other place where, in a different 
 way but still more completely, the same idea is brought 
 home to us. When the Greek architects built St. 
 Mark's they built it out of the consciousness they had 
 of what the sense of colour meant to the East. They 
 did in St. Mark's for the Eastern sense of colour what, 
 in the Doric temple, they had done for the Western 
 sense of form. Every one must feel the depth, 
 solemnity, and power of the colour effect of St. Mark's ; 
 and feel too that colour here is not treated in the 
 Western fashion. It is not treated as something 
 subordinate to form. In St. Mark's you think not of 
 coloured things, but simply of colour. This is the secret 
 of its power ; but observe how this end is achieved. 
 Every single feature suggestive of form is banished 
 from St. Mark's. The very race who, when they were 
 dealing with form as their ideal, insisted on and 
 developed every structural feature with such severity 
 and precision, directly they came to use colour as their 
 ideal entirely discarded those features. They let their 
 architraves and cornices and pediments and friezes all 
 go, and fashioned their interior out of a flexible mass 
 of soft and ductile gold, indented, rounded, undulating 
 drawn up into hollow domes or curved into apses, but 
 
TUGGURT i6i 
 
 never for a moment evincing anywhere the sharpness 
 and precision of form. 
 
 What they thus turned into laws of art is precisely 
 what we have round us here in life in this village 
 cafe. The Greeks had seen and felt, in daily 
 observation, what colour meant to the Oriental. They 
 had realised that for him it had a significance of 
 its own, and a significance incompatible with the 
 significance of form, because appealing to opposite 
 faculties ; to the emotional and sensuous faculties, not 
 to the intellectual. They perceived that the two 
 cannot coexist ; that colour, if it is to be its own 
 sufficing end, must exist independently of form. The 
 knowledge they acquired and the sources they drew 
 from are still scattered through Oriental life. It is not 
 too much to say that any one who feels the profound 
 colour-effect of this little twilit cafe I have been de- 
 scribing will, if he analyses his feelings, find that they 
 are similar in kind to the feelings evoked by St. Mark's. 
 It would be odd, indeed, if they were not, for the very 
 same means are employed in the great basilica as in 
 the little hovel. In both there is the use of rich 
 masses of colour used for its own sake ; in both all 
 suggestion of exact form is banished, all sharp edges 
 and clean-cut angles are avoided, and deep, heavily 
 rounded ceilings bound the interior ; in both a dim 
 twilight heightens the effect of mystery, and adds to 
 the richness and depth of colour. In short, the laws 
 which the Greek artist worked out with such splendid 
 audacity in his architecture were merely matters of 
 common life, and are being exemplified, as blind 
 instincts, by Orientals every day and all over the world.^ 
 ' See Appendix, Note E. 
 12 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE OUED SOUF AND ITS OASES 
 
 The region of dunes — Aspect of the scenery — Difficulty of judging 
 size and distance — The several kinds of oases — The hope of 
 well-sinking — The " cup " oases — Our stay in an Arab village 
 — The Souf dates — The census of palm-trees — The date 
 harvest — The cares of desert husbandry — The source of 
 desert life — The attack of the sand. 
 
 THE Oued Souf, lying eastward of Tuggurt, forms 
 a portion of the Grand Erg, the region of pure 
 sand-dunes. The decomposition of the desert's struc- 
 ture — of rock and cliff and plateau — is here com- 
 pletely carried out. The last pebble has been resolved 
 into the grains that composed it. The whole land- 
 scape is a testimony to the successful perseverance of 
 the sand, and bears witness to its victory. 
 
 Hour after hour, and day after day for several 
 days, the curved slopes of sand lay round us as pure 
 as drifts of snow just fallen. Not a blade of green 
 marked their surface. The whiteness of the sand 
 was dazzling, and its absolute monotony and same- 
 ness, combined with the deep, equally unvarying blue 
 of the sky, produced an effect of eccentricity not far 
 
 removed from the grotesque. 
 
 162 
 
THE OUED SOUF AND ITS OASES 163 
 
 The dunes succeed each other in an endless array 
 of hillocks, rarely divided, in my recollection, by any 
 appreciable flat. The caravan proceeds by winding 
 in and out between their bases. Let the reader pic- 
 ture a field sprinkled, as thickly as they can be set 
 together, with molehills. Let him, if he can, by an 
 effort of the imagination, turn those molehills pure 
 white, and see with his mind's eye a string of black 
 insects making a corkscrew progress by winding in 
 and out between them, and he will have a bird's-eye 
 view of our caravan among the dunes. 
 
 As we entered into these white defiles an unutter- 
 able deadness, emptiness, and mortal stillness seemed 
 to close about us. The unreality of the landscape 
 was added to by the loss of all sense of proportion. 
 The scenery is mountainous on a diminutive scale. 
 It suggests an endless array of chains of hills and 
 mountain summits, the similarity of which in shape 
 to formations of real ranges gives the idea of con- 
 siderable size. Crest beyond crest and ridge beyond 
 ridge, they stretch away into the distance. It is im- 
 possible to judge their dimensions or the width of the 
 valleys that separate them. Nothing exists that can 
 supply a standard of measurement ; no tree, or house, 
 or rock, or other object gives scale to the picture. 
 No atmospheric effect softens the further outlines 
 and suggests their distance. In this pure air you 
 see all things, as it were, in a vacuum, and the 
 distant ranges are as clear and white as the nearer 
 ones. 
 
 Under these circumstances the instinct of a European 
 is enormously to exaggerate the size and distance 
 apart of the hills. The peak you see some way off, 
 
i64 IN THE DESERT 
 
 lifting its head above its fellows, will seem a Mont 
 Blanc, to be measured in thousands of feet. The 
 last range you can distinguish on the horizon will 
 seem a day's journey off. In five minutes you are 
 passing under Mont Blanc, which turns out to be 
 a hillock of two or three hundred feet high, and in 
 another five are crossing the range where you thought 
 to camp for the night. 
 
 In spite of constant correction I never could get 
 the hang of this scenery. Again and again I rubbed 
 the illusion of great size and great space out of my 
 eyes, but it always returned. Our caravan itself was 
 the only object that could give a standard, and this 
 it sometimes did with very startling effect. Repeatedly, 
 
 after riding forward, H and I would sit on some 
 
 blond summit and watch the vast tumbled expanse 
 that lay around us until we had all unconsciously 
 received the impression of its vastness. Then through 
 a gap far away would come a terrifying spectacle — 
 gigantic beasts, half as big as the hills themselves, 
 with curved, outstretched necks, and huge men lolling 
 on their backs. They came bearing down upon us 
 with leisurely gait, that somehow left hills and 
 valleys behind in a few steps. For a moment one 
 was aware of a struggle between scenery and camels 
 as to the correct size of scale. Then as the realisation 
 of Ahmeda's cooking-pots asserted itself the scenery 
 would give in and collapse pitifully to its real dimensions. 
 
 To a stranger's eye the existence of water in this 
 country of the Souf would seem hopelessly out of 
 the question. But it is never safe in the matter of 
 water to judge the Sahara by appearances. We are 
 now in the trough of that great depression which 
 
THE OUED SOUF AND ITS OASES 165 
 
 drains towards the shotts, and the water-carrying 
 strata here approach nearest to the surface. Fre- 
 quently among these dunes there is but a crust of 
 earth dividing the water from the surface. The gardens 
 of these regions fill small hollows excavated by hand 
 between the dunes, so that the palms have their roots 
 in the soaked strata. The oases look like round bowls 
 of green plants set in the earth, the tops of the palms 
 reaching to about the level of the desert. 
 
 There are three kinds of oases. First, the river 
 oases, which are confined to the neighbourhood of 
 hills sufficiently big to attract a rainfall. The descend- 
 ing water quickly sinks beneath the sandy floor of 
 the desert, but during the winter and spring its bed 
 will frequently carry for some distance a torrent which 
 in summer either dries up entirely or shrinks to a 
 slender line of stagnant pools. The oases are planted 
 sometimes in the bed of the river, sometimes on its 
 bank, and the water is intercepted by barrages and 
 conducted by an elaborate system of watercourses to 
 the palms. These are, however, not the most pros- 
 perous oases, the water being apt to fail just at the 
 season when the palms have most need of it. 
 
 The second kind are those fed by wells, whether 
 bored by the Arabs themselves or by the artesian 
 process, which is now steadily supplanting the native 
 method. Of these I have already spoken. They 
 represent the only possibility or hope of mitigating 
 the awful sterility of the desert. To what extent the 
 system may be generally applied is a question it is 
 impossible to answer fully as yet. Southward to 
 Ouargla and the furthest French outposts wells have 
 been pierced, and oases planted or renovated, and in 
 
i66 IN THE DESERT 
 
 many places, from points of vantage, the windings of 
 the hidden river may be traced by the spots of green 
 which mark its course, each one of which is secretly 
 sucking at the buried stream. Through parts of the 
 Tunisian desert, and especially along the eastern coast, 
 where forests of palms have been planted in the last 
 fifty years, the artesian apparatus has been used 
 with signal effect. There is reason to suspect that in 
 many districts in the Sahara it can be employed. The 
 signs and cuttings of prehistoric rivers are traceable 
 in places throughout the central and southern deserts, 
 and these are held to indicate the presence of subter- 
 ranean water. Certain mountain ranges, as the Borku 
 and Tibesti groups in the east, the Ahaggar and 
 Tademait in the centre, and the Adrar in the west, 
 attract a rainfall and encourage hopes of irrigation. 
 The great oases of the central desert at Tuat, Tidikelt, 
 and throughout the Gourara valley are rich in water, 
 and capable, probably, of considerable extension 
 Several artesian wells have already been sunk there. 
 And there are numbers of other spots where villages 
 and a restricted fertility already exist, and these it is 
 expected may be enlarged and their number added to. 
 It is, in fact, in the artesian process that the optimists 
 see a hope of the Sahara undergoing in time such a 
 change as will fit it to be included in a scheme of 
 civilised organisation. A settled population may, 
 through it, be increased, the trade of the old caravan 
 routes may be revived, travelling may become safe 
 and comparatively easy, a trans-Saharan railway may 
 link the Sudan with the north, the control of the 
 Government over the predatory tribes may become 
 more tangible and effective. 
 

 1 I 
 
 3-'- 
 
 4'-\ 
 
 
 
 
THE OUED SOUF AND ITS OASES 167 
 
 There is something so attractive even to the mere 
 traveller in the creation of oases — the work strikes 
 one as so purely beneficent, and the appeal made 
 to the eye and the imagination is so emphatic — that 
 any one who has travelled in the desert and who 
 remembers — and who can forget ? — the change from 
 these blazing wastes of sand to the dense thickets 
 of palms, and the delight of being received from the 
 outer glare into the green embrace of these groves, 
 must always think of the work with sympathy, and 
 be under the temptation, perhaps, to exaggerate its 
 prospects. The Sahara is the ultimate problem with 
 which all the French North African colonies are 
 concerned. Follow up any one of them and it brings 
 you to the desert. The desert forms the vast core 
 of this great empire, and before the separate colonies 
 can become united in anything but name, the question 
 how to span these almost uninhabited wastes, how 
 to extend the oases, and how to curb the enterprise 
 of Bedouin marauders, will have to be dealt with. 
 There are pessimists in regard to the part that well- 
 sinking may be made to play in the scheme of union 
 as well as optimists. The moderates, however, while 
 they agree that the hopes of the Sahara must not be 
 pitched in the key of the Oued Rir, are sanguine that 
 the work of irrigation may be so extended as to render 
 French occupation of the desert effective. 
 
 Much hangs on this issue. The permanent nature 
 of the artesian borings has already introduced, 
 wherever it has succeeded, a quite new sense of 
 security into Arab life. The French wells apparently 
 do not " die." The villagers, not being haunted by the 
 fear of having to abandon their homes and push off 
 
168 IN THE DESERT 
 
 into the waste, and not being bullied and plundered 
 and even actually enslaved by their nomad brethren, 
 as was the happy custom in days of yore, attach 
 themselves permanently to the soil and range them- 
 selves on the side of law and order. It must be 
 remembered, too, that the stability of the Govern- 
 ment which protects them depends itself on the 
 creation of habitable centres, since it is impossible 
 to exercise efficient control over the desert except 
 from points of vantage within it. Thus the mitiga- 
 tion of desert sterility by means of oases and springs 
 and the pacification of the desert tribes are aspects 
 of the same process. Pacification depends on fertil- 
 isation. The Arab and Touareg nomads are fierce 
 and dangerous races, but it is not by armed expedi- 
 tions and flying columns that they will be finally 
 dealt with, but rather by weakening those natural 
 conditions which sustain them. The desert stands 
 for the principle of incoherence in nature. The Arab 
 stands for the same thing in society. He may be 
 trusted to flourish and exercise his peculiar gifts, to 
 pillage and rob and plunder and generally disintegrate 
 every existing form of social structure, so long as the 
 conditions favourable to such an existence reign in the 
 Sahara. What it comes to, in short, is this : the tribes 
 can only be subdued by subduing the desert ; the 
 desert can only be subdued by planting oases ; and 
 oases can only be planted by sinking wells. To realise 
 this sequence is to understand the part which an 
 engineering process may be called upon to play in 
 the consolidation of a great colonial empire. 
 
 And then, besides the river and the well oases, 
 there exists also the excavated or "cup" variety. 
 
THE OUED SOUF AND ITS OASES 169 
 
 This, though a small family, is the most exquisitely 
 lovely of any. I have been faintly reminded of 
 them by those little villages, nestling among orchards 
 and elm-trees, which you come to suddenly in deep 
 nooks among the smooth sweeping outlines of 
 Exmoor, or look down upon from the rolling bare 
 downs of Dorsetshire ; nooks which seem to have 
 collected and appropriated all the fertility which 
 by right should be outspread over the surrounding 
 country. 
 
 But in the desert the effect is heightened by the 
 utter barrenness of the sand and the extraordinary 
 richness of the fertile spots. These little " cups," 
 an acre or two in extent, clustering in groups or 
 strung out in an irregular chain, are filled to the 
 very brim with verdure. The palm-heads form a 
 roof above, supported by the slender columns of 
 their stems. Below fruit-trees, peach, apricot, almond, 
 fig, open their blossoms and spread their paler green 
 leaves, while the ground itself is thickly covered with 
 succulent crops and vegetables. Seen from the top of 
 some taller dune, the view of the desert floor, inlaid 
 with these patines of bright green, combines into one 
 view, with extraordinary effect, the extremes of barren- 
 ness and fertility. 
 
 We stayed among these villages nearly a week, 
 being kept partly by the bad weather. It blew 
 continuously, and to travel in this country of loose 
 sand during a wind is difficult, if not dangerous. 
 The nights were calm, and then the murkiness died 
 out of the air and the stars shone out. At dawn 
 the wind would gradually rise and the air slowly 
 become obscured. First there came a milky tinge 
 
170 IN THE DESERT 
 
 along the horizon, obliterating its sharp outline. 
 Gradually the whiteness spread over the sky, and, 
 as the wind lashed up more and more sand, it grew 
 darker and darker, until it became a dull murky 
 red, almost like a London fog. 
 
 During these days we lived in a disused, or un- 
 finished, little hut in the midst of one of the villages 
 w^hich are huddled on the slopes above the gardens. 
 Our lodging consisted of a small walled enclosure, 
 with, in one corner of it, a roofless hut : 
 
 " Four naked walls 
 That stared upon each other." 
 
 Here we spread our rugs and saddles. From 
 here every morning we watched the sky above the 
 low roofs of the village grow sickly white and yellow. 
 There was no escaping the sand. Everything we ate 
 and drank was gritty with it, and the thickness of the 
 atmosphere brought on a feeling of almost unbearable 
 weariness and oppression. It was a blessed change at 
 evening when the wind died and the moon came out. 
 Our little camp looked snug enough then. The ponies 
 tethered to their footrope ; under a white arch opposite 
 the flicker of a fire where the men are sitting ; above, 
 the clear sky and sparkle of stars. 
 
 Sometimes we braved the weather and went for 
 rides and walks among the villages and oases. We 
 skirted, or climbed, the smooth sandbanks, and came 
 every now and then to hollows, or dells, between 
 them, or narrow ravines winding round their bases, all 
 filled with date-palms, whose heads as we stood on 
 the slopes above came to the level of our feet. These 
 
I\ A\ Arab Viliace. 
 
THE OUED SOUF AND ITS OASES 171 
 
 cups, full of verdure, were usually unsuspected until 
 we got to the brink of them. Each came as a fresh 
 and delightful surprise. Sometimes they appeared in 
 the distance like a fringe of dark green feathers, just 
 rising above the sand. 
 
 These Souf plantations are famous for the quality 
 of their dates. Indeed, the natural conditions here 
 are most suited to the peculiar needs of the trees. 
 The date-palm has this odd and apparently contra- 
 dictory habit — that it loves moisture yet cannot bear 
 rain. Great heat and extreme dryness of atmosphere 
 are necessary for it to ripen its crop. It only 
 prospers when, in the Arab phrase, it has its feet 
 in water and its head in fire. The difficulty of 
 fulfilling these requirements constitutes the date- 
 palm the exclusive perquisite of the Sahara. It is 
 formed expressly to profit by that subterranean supply 
 of water which is the curious characteristic of desert 
 agriculture. It is the desert tree as unmistakably as 
 the camel is the desert animal. 
 
 Here in the Souf the trees stand with their roots 
 permanently in moisture. In the oases depending on 
 springs and wells the trees are watered at regular 
 intervals, just like cattle, and the supply allowed to 
 each is carefully measured. The waterings should be 
 at intervals of five to ten days, and the allowance for 
 each tree should, if possible, attain to half a litre per 
 minute. It has been tried in lesser quantities, and 
 careful experiments have shown that the half-litre tree 
 yields a 20 per cent, larger crop than that nourished 
 on a third of a litre. The least stinting of their drink 
 is immediately registered in a diminished harvest, and 
 the deterioration of the tree soon follows. 
 
172 IN THE DESERT 
 
 The decay cf the palms is the most significant and 
 conclusive testimony possible to the impoverishment 
 and dwindling numbers of the population of the village. 
 So much are dates the staple of food and commerce 
 that it is always customary among Arabs, and, indeed, 
 I think among all who are familiar with desert life, to 
 compute the wealth and strength of a village by the 
 number of its date-palms. It is easier to census these 
 than to census the people, and the result is more 
 reliable. Instead, therefore, of speaking of a village of 
 such-and-such a population, as would be customary with 
 us, you will alv/ays in the desert speak of a village of 
 so many palms. The equivalent in human numbers 
 will be understood. The village of Elim, " where were 
 twelve wells of water and three score and ten palm- 
 trees," is described in this way in the Book of Genesis. 
 The people are not mentioned. 
 
 I have met with an account by A. E. Pease of the 
 date harvest, answering to the vintage of a wine 
 country, which makes one long to be among these 
 oases at that season. " In October," he says, " the 
 bunches of golden and brown fruit hang in great 
 clusters on the gaudy orange stems from the head of 
 every palm. Towards the end of the month and early 
 in November the Arabs and negroes may be seen 
 daily climbing the high trees and cutting down the 
 great white masses. Then follow, during the succeeding 
 weeks, all the other operations of the date harvest, the 
 stacking of the dates in the houses, the packing in the 
 shops and warehouses, the loading and unloading of 
 the camels." A novice will divide all dates into the two 
 classes of dry dates and glutinous. There are, how- 
 ever, a great number of varieties of both classes. The 
 
THE OUED SOUF AND ITS OASES 173 
 
 most prized of all, I am told, is the deglat-nour, a 
 delicious, semi-transparent date that melts in the 
 mouth. 
 
 More clearly here than elsewhere, since the oases 
 are smaller and the sand more mobile, can one realise 
 that state of constant feud in which the villagers and 
 the desert live together. When first I saw the fringes 
 of dry palm- leaves stuck like decorative friezes along 
 the contours of the dunes round the hollows, I fancied 
 that the village children had been playing here at a 
 little gardening on their own account. Later, when 
 I noted the effect of these puny-looking obstacles, 
 and the way in which they caught and stilled the 
 rolling sand before it could take wing from the dune's 
 summit, I saw them as part of the tactics of a pro- 
 longed campaign. 
 
 The cares of the desert husbandman do not end 
 with the finding of water. That finding is the signal 
 for the beginning, not the ending, of the strife. It is 
 the first requisite, indeed, and that on which all hangs. 
 Its preciousness is a commonplace, a truism ; you say 
 it and have done with it. And yet, living in the 
 desert you are bound to recur to it. Again and again 
 you are made to feel how water measures life. Yonder, 
 in the hollow, a tap is turned and a spring set flowing. 
 The gardens gather round it, the heads of the palms 
 throng taller and thicker, the village spreads along 
 the slope. Human life with all its vicissitudes is here. 
 The little drama, ever old and ever new, is played and 
 played again ; the web woven and rewoven. There is 
 the gossip in the village above, the toil in the garden 
 below, the friendships, quarrels, and daily cares, the 
 love-making under this big moon. And all this hangs, 
 
174 IN THE DESERT 
 
 as palpably as a coat upon a nail, by that jet of water 
 in the hollow. There is the source of all life, from the 
 old greybeard who saw, maybe, the first palm planted, 
 down to the last-arrived brown baby tossed out to 
 kick in the dust and flies. Let that be turned off, 
 and instantly life fades from garden and village, and 
 the desert resumes its sway. 
 
 And the oases once formed must be maintained. 
 The desert never despairs or gives in ; you can never 
 say you have conquered it. Now it comes at you like 
 a roaring lion, all its dunes charging in mad commotion, 
 with yellow manes flying in the wind, as though they 
 would carry the position by a coup de main. But even 
 on tranquil days it is never quite idle. Look at this 
 tiny thread of new sand that has slipped down the 
 slope, and is, innocently and all unconsciously as you 
 would say, gliding in between these onions. Come 
 to-morrow and you will find it advanced another few 
 inches ; come next month and your onion bed will be 
 a thing of the past. Innocent as it looks, that thread 
 is the advance-guard of the desert. It represents a 
 settled and constant purpose which can only be met 
 by an equally steady resistance. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 A HAVEN OF REFUGE 
 
 The desert in a rage— A rough ride— Arrival at Nefta— FertiUty 
 of the oasis — Composure of camels — Death of one of our 
 camels — Their adaptability to the desert— Their beauty 
 amidst this scenery — Our camp in the oasis — A night scene 
 — Sensuousness of Oriental scenery — A scrap of poetry. 
 
 OUR worst experience of the desert in one of its 
 mad fits of rage was on a morning when, luckily 
 for us perhaps, we were nearing the large oasis of Nefta, 
 near the Tunisian frontier. The flapping of the tent 
 and the drumming of rain-drops upon it woke us, and 
 Ahmeda, in some excitement, with his haik bound 
 about his face, hurried our departure. He explained 
 that, so long as the rain lasted, it would keep the sand 
 quiet, and that this was our opportunity to press on. 
 Accordingly, in a very short time we had struck tent, 
 loaded camels, saddled ponies, and were under way. 
 It seemed to us a somewhat purposeless proceeding. 
 The rain was, and had been, heavy, the ground was 
 saturated, and there seemed no prospect of its drying 
 in a hurry. As Nefta, we knew, was only half a day's 
 march, it seemed unnecessary to start off in this frantic 
 hurry, in the middle of the night and the pouring rain, 
 
 175 
 
1/6 IN THE DESERT 
 
 to reach it in safety. Ahmeda, however, made no 
 answer to these representations beyond loading up the 
 camels and flinging saddles on ponies. The other 
 men, wretched as they appeared, and as Arabs always 
 appear in rain, seconded his efforts with all their 
 energy. It was evident there was a motive in their 
 haste which was not as yet apparent. 
 
 Morning broke wan and sickly. As the light grew 
 the rain slackened. The big warm drops became less 
 frequent and at last ceased. The dull, opaque sky 
 was of a pasty-faced white, and the air was hot and 
 oppressive ; but the wind still blew as hard or harder 
 than ever. 
 
 Hardly had the rain stopped than I tasted between 
 my lips and teeth the familiar gritty texture of sand. 
 Hardly had the light increased sufficiently to disclose 
 to view the drifts when all their hedges and crests 
 could be seen crawling and flickering in the gale. 
 Already there was that droning sound in the air which 
 meant the beginning of the "walking" of the dunes. 
 We saw now the reason of all the hurry. The rain 
 cannot hold the sand for more than the instant it is 
 falling. So soon as it strikes earth, it sinks in. One 
 moment you may be streaming with water like a 
 drowned rat, the next you are choking in clouds 
 of sand. 
 
 Ahmeda ranged up alongside and waved to me to 
 follow him. " How far to Nefta ? " we shouted at him. 
 " Two hours," he screamed back. The air was growing 
 darker and darker, and the roar of the sand as it rushed 
 along the desert made speech, except by shouting, 
 impossible. I could just distinguish our tall camels 
 in the gloom, their ungainly action giving them some- 
 
A HAVEN OF REFUGE 177 
 
 thing the look of ships pitching and tossing in a gale 
 of wind. 
 
 However, it was no use to stay with them. Ahmeda 
 led the way, pushing his tall and shambling beast 
 along at a great pace, and guiding himself by some 
 mysterious instinct which was to us totally incompre- 
 hensible. We followed as best we might, breathing 
 sand as we went, and with our unprotected faces bent 
 to escape the cutting sleet. My recollection of the 
 next two hours is no more definite than would be the 
 recollection of being rolled over and over by a huge 
 breaker. A singing and roaring in the ears, almost total 
 blindness, a sense of something not very far removed 
 from suffocation, and the feeling that you are in the 
 hands of elements very much more powerful than 
 yourself — these are the only vague and general im- 
 pressions that remain to me. 
 
 I have heard, and can well believe it, that the 
 Arabs in many regions look upon these sandstorms 
 with a superstitious dread and horror as being the 
 work of evil and hostile spirits. They convey that 
 impression. They seem to express an almost humanly 
 malignant rage and spite. The shrieking of the sand, 
 the bewildering fury of its attack, the sudden dark- 
 ness, the chaos of mingling earth and sky, suggest 
 one of those mad instincts of hate so fierce and definite 
 as to be unaccountable for as an unconscious process 
 of Nature. This rage you feel is meant. This is 
 intentional spite. Only devils could act thus. 
 
 I have a clearer recollection of our appearance when 
 at last we got into Nefta. If we had been buried in 
 sand and dug up again we could not have been more 
 saturated with it. Hair, ears, clothes, were full of it. 
 
 13 
 
178 IN THE DESERT 
 
 Our cheeks were scarlet and sore with the ceaseless 
 battering, and on them had formed hard crusts of sand, 
 cemented by the water that had streamed from our 
 eyes. To penetrate into the green recesses of the oasis 
 and leave the tumult and storm behind, was an 
 experience never to be forgotten. The oasis we were 
 in was an extensive one, with many flowing streams 
 and dense throngs of palms that, sheltering each other, 
 shut out both wind and sand. Far in the distance 
 by the edge of the grove the long leaves were weep- 
 ing and tossing ; but here all was tranquil. Beneath 
 the palms a quantity of peach and other fruit-trees 
 made clouds of white and pink blossom, and the earth 
 beneath was green with crops. With senses still half 
 bewildered, we led our ponies into the midst of this 
 tropical vegetation and camped, by permission of the 
 owner, in a green plot near running water. 
 
 It was hours before our camels turned up. We 
 strolled through the oasis, following the narrow tracks 
 of hard-beaten mud which led into the green glades. 
 The large heads of the young palms springing from 
 the ground made clumps of dense and glossy foliage, 
 mixed with the flowers of almond, peach, and apricot 
 trees. Corn and rice, and onions, and other vegetables 
 grew knee-high on the ground. Far above us the 
 starry heads of the taller palms shook and whispered 
 in the passing currents of air. Occasionally, the faint 
 tinkle of water sounded. We were soon completely 
 enveloped in this delicious underwood, the view show- 
 ing nothing but green labyrinths on all sides, the 
 surrounding desert completely shut out and forgotten, 
 so that we might have been wandering in an inter- 
 minable jungle. 
 
< 
 
 o 
 
 z 
 
 < 
 
 < 
 
A HAVEN OF REFUGE 179 
 
 Pveturning, we climbed the hill to the village, built 
 as they generally are on the slope overlooking the 
 oasis, for the alluvial land is too precious to be used 
 for building purposes. We visited an Arab cafe 
 spread with grass mats, where we sat and drank 
 delicious sweet coffee out of tiny cups, and then re- 
 turned once more to our grove. 
 
 At length, much to our relief, we saw our belated 
 caravan approaching, gliding through the trees with 
 its usual stealthy, undulating movement. The Arabs 
 were much buffeted and dishevelled, and proceeded 
 to shake the sand from their garments and clear it 
 from their faces with many groans and lamentations. 
 The camels preserved their usual air of impenetrable 
 tranquillity. They gazed at the delicious verdure about 
 them with the same sang-froid with which they gaze 
 upon the desert wastes. 
 
 It seems as if nothing, painful or pleasant, had 
 power to ruffle a camel's serenity or disturb his slightly 
 cynical composure. Just before reaching Tuggurt one 
 of our camels fell sick. By some mysterious signs 
 the Arabs knew it was bad, but to an ordinary eye, 
 except that it was inclined to lag a little, there seemed 
 nothing the matter. Calmly it walked into the village 
 and sat down in its place, and calmly, with the same 
 cold indifference as it had lived, it died. 
 
 I was told a story by our guide of a camel which, 
 after being cruelly ill-used by its driver for a long 
 time, turned upon the man, threw him down, killed 
 him by crushing him with its sharp breastbone, and 
 then proceeded to tear him up into the smallest 
 pieces. One can imagine that if once that iron com- 
 posure of theirs were broken down some such frenzy 
 
i8o IN THE DESERT 
 
 might ensue. They have, I think, that sort of attrac- 
 tion that belongs to a curious, whimsical piece of 
 mechanism which is yet wonderfully adapted to its 
 own special purpose and place. In cities the very 
 houses laugh at them. But watch them in the desert, 
 slinging forward with tireless, stealing action, and see 
 how every gift they possess is brought out and applied. 
 How well the soft sand upholds those ridiculous, 
 great, spongelike feet! How admirably the slack 
 action, which consists only of a swing of the long, 
 pendulum-like legs, is fitted to deal with these vast 
 spaces! How marvellous, above all, is that arrange- 
 ment of an internal pouch, or " extra stomach," where- 
 by the animal can carry its own supply of water. The 
 camel needs a Sahara to set it off. Its very tempera- 
 ment seems caught from the desert. It has the desert's 
 reserve. I never saw an Arab caress or pat his camel, 
 or a camel that seemed to know its own master. It 
 has the desert's aloofness and cynicism. It blends in 
 colour with the desert's tawny hue. 
 
 Millet once wrote in a letter to Pelloquet, " I desire 
 that the creations which I depict should have an air 
 of beinfj dedicated to their situation." He adds in the 
 same letter that everything is beautiful provided it 
 turns up " in its own place," and he ends, " This, then, 
 is my conclusion : the beautiful is that which is in 
 place." 
 
 So I have seen a camel coming from the town 
 into the desert, and, by the act of placing itself in 
 harmony with its surroundings, put on beauty like a 
 garment. I have seen the uncouthness of form and 
 shape and the awkwardness of gait disappear and 
 perfect propriety and comeliness take their place. 
 
A HAVEN OF REFUGE i8i 
 
 I have seen the whole character of the beast change 
 under my very eyes, and, from being a grotesque 
 and a monstrosity, become perfectly natural and a 
 delight to look at ; and so I conclude with Millet, 
 " the beautiful is that which is in place." 
 
 Our camp was pitched that night in the grove. 
 Towards evening the storm went down. The curdled, 
 murky air gradually cleared. The noise of the desert 
 ceased. Above the palms the great, languid stars 
 looked down at us, closing and opening their saucer 
 eyes. Our fire lit up a little space, showing the 
 groups of hooded x\rabs, the ponies, and the crouch- 
 ing, teapot-shaped forms of the camels. The twigs 
 and branches round us projected into the light, and 
 the upward-arching leaves of a young palm glittered. 
 Beyond this illuminated spot all was mystery, deep 
 recesses veiled in shadow throwing up the groups 
 in the foreground. One caught whiffs every now 
 and then of musky scent from almond or other 
 flowers. The whole scene — motionless palms and big 
 stars, snake-necked camels and crouching Arabs, the 
 flickering beams of the camp fire, the velvet-shadowed 
 spaces beyond, and the warm and perfumed air — all 
 seemed charged and loaded with the same deep 
 emotion. Somehow, Wordsworth, the poet of English 
 wood and meadow, has managed to put into three 
 lines more of this emotion of tropical scenery than 
 is to be found in all Byron's or Moore's Eastern tales 
 put together — 
 
 " The breezes their own languor lent, 
 The stars had feelings which they sent 
 Into those gorgeous bowers." 
 
i82 IN THE DESERT 
 
 Nights passed in the low country of Ceylon came 
 back to me. I remembered the droning chants and 
 spicy smells of Cingalese villages, the dull throbbing 
 of tomtoms, the yellow light, the deep surrounding 
 gloom, the polish on the slow river, hardly moving 
 between masses of overarching foliage. There was 
 the same feeling there as here, the same wonderful 
 depth and richness of light and shadow, the same 
 suggestion of hidden splendour, of wealth and luxuri- 
 ance felt rather than seen, the same languid, warm, 
 and scented atmosphere. These are the things that 
 make up that elemental force, an emotion, not a 
 thought, on which the character and life and art of the 
 East are founded. 
 
 According, however, to Ahmeda, the morals of the 
 neighbourhood were by no means equal to its beauty. 
 He announced his intention of keeping a vigilant 
 look-out, and proceeded to post a sentry between us 
 and the village and carefully to secure all the animals. 
 We were inclined to take a light view of the danger 
 to start with, but when he returned with his firearms 
 and proceeded to load and prime them the gravity 
 of the situation made itself felt. Heaven defend me 
 from my friends ! ,1 remember thinking as I watched 
 the barrel of an old revolver staring impartially round 
 as if in search of a victim. However, in spite of our 
 precautions, the night passed bloodlessly away. 
 
 Next morning, standing in the grove and watching 
 the daybreak bring its details into view, I endeavoured 
 to describe the scene in a kind of Arab chant, with the 
 following result — 
 
 " Soft and light as foam the almond-blossom breaks ; the 
 white tufts of it appear in the shadow of the palms. 
 
A HAVEN OF REFUGE 183 
 
 The camels are loading ; through the fruit-trees pass moving 
 
 figures. 
 It is a green twilight in which I stand ; the slender columns 
 
 of the palms shoot upward, 
 Bearing their delicate heads like clusters of ferns against 
 
 the sky. 
 A bird sings near me a note or two and is silent; now 
 
 through the grove steals the first yellow sunbeam. 
 The spell is broken— a dove wings its way through the 
 
 covert, straight and fast, as if on an errand ; 
 The leaves shake in the breath of morning, an Arab passes, 
 
 a dog barks. 
 The spell is broken— the indescribable hush and silence, as 
 
 of sleep surprised, is over. 
 As I turn to go, through all the countless heads of palms 
 
 breaks the yellow sunlight. 
 When I read this let me recall this hour, this scene in the 
 
 Sahara." 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 SCENES BY THE WAY 
 
 The evening camp — Birds — A moonlight start — Cold nights — 
 Instincts wakened by desert scenery — Sunrise — The sound 
 of it — A desert landscape — Arab poetr}' — Its insistence on 
 shade and water — Arab society — The spring grazings — Their 
 poetic treatment — A scene in Devonshire — Tendency of the 
 imagination to recall such scenes in the desert — The mirage 
 — The desert's sense of humour. 
 
 THE coldness, silence, and starlight of the start 
 before dawn and the gathering when the day's 
 march is ended round the evening camp fire are the 
 two hours best worth remembering in desert life. We 
 camped, as a rule, in some dell or hollow, sheltered 
 from view and from the wind. On the march, unless 
 there was water near our destined halting-place, we 
 would have filled our water-skins at the last well ; and 
 sometimes we had to carry with us a supply for more 
 than one day. " Drinking water " is 2l facon de parley 
 in the desert. Threepennyweight of salt to the quart 
 is enough, as the reader will find if he tries it, to give it 
 a strong briny flavour. Such water, however, is freely 
 drunk in the Sahara. Horses, camels, and donkeys 
 even thrive on water containing nearly half an ounce 
 of salt to the quart. It varies very much in different 
 
 neighbourhoods, but is always distinctly brackish and 
 
 184 
 
SCENES BY THE WAY 185 
 
 generally impregnated besides with potash, magnesia, 
 sulphuric acid, and other delicacies, to such an extent 
 that the old custom of poisoning the wells always 
 struck me as a very superfluous one. 
 
 All things, however, adapt themselves to it. Water 
 that will appease the thirst of an Arab would only 
 aggravate that of a European. The date-palm, piece 
 de resistance of Arab life, has the capacity of living 
 with its roots in a solution of brine that would try the 
 constitution of anything but seaweed, and all such 
 bushes and grasses as struggle for life in the desert 
 are saturated with salt and have a strongly salt and 
 bitter taste. The Arabs distinguish carefully between 
 the degrees of brackishness of the water, and a good 
 well is widely celebrated, caravans often going miles 
 out of their way to strike it. Even the purest, however, 
 is strongly tinctured with the sulphur imbibed from the 
 soil, and the blackest coffee only partially disguises 
 its flavour and smell. 
 
 If possible we would halt where some tussocks of 
 dry grass, or scanty scrub, or low, twisted thorn-bushes, 
 with long white thorns like bayonets, gave a supply 
 of fuel. These, easily pulled up and piled in a heap, 
 were lit by the touch of a match, and instantly the fire 
 blazed up, jumping from twig to twig with a rapid 
 snapping noise like volleys of tiny musketry. The 
 little coffee-pot was then thrust into the blaze and cups 
 and sugar set out on the sand. The camels were let 
 loose to graze, the ponies tethered and given their 
 forage, and the little tent pitched. By this time coffee 
 was ready, and we gathered round the fire to sip it, 
 while we rolled our first cigarette and looked round 
 with great satisfaction at our small encampment, 
 
186 IN THE DESERT 
 
 ensconced so snugly in its dell, with the white sand- 
 dunes spreading for leagues all round. 
 
 I used to walk up the slope above camp and enjoy 
 from there the view across the desert in the last half- 
 hour of sunset. There is a moment's feeling of 
 relaxation, and the desert seems to sigh with relief, 
 as the sun drops like a golden ball into the west. A 
 few birds sometimes chirp from the plain below, though 
 of these there are very few. The commonest is the 
 desert lark ; a pale dove-coloured little thing with 
 black marks on wings and tail. It has a clear, 
 melancholy call of one note, and loves sitting on the 
 topmost twig of a bush or grass-tuft and there uttering 
 this low, soft cry. Every now and then it goes through 
 a curious performance of shooting straight upward 
 some yards into the air, and then pitching over and 
 coming down head first. This is done in a languid 
 and woebegone way, as if the performance had long 
 outgrown any interest it may once have possessed. 
 Both song and flight still keep a faint memory of lark 
 traditions. The flight is a lark's flight broken off at a few 
 yards. The single note of song has the lark's sweetness. 
 
 Even for that single note, however, one is grateful 
 in the desert. You must live for weeks in the midst 
 of a dead silence to appreciate the singing of birds. 
 Your thoughts go back then to English lawns, mornings 
 and evenings, with the long shadows across them, and 
 the clear calls of blackbirds and thrushes echoing in 
 the shrubberies — 
 
 " In Devon woods at break of day 
 The birds sing clear ; 
 Oh, burning land of desert sand, 
 No birds sing here." 
 
SCENES BY THE WAY 187 
 
 I find this note in my diary, jotted down on the spot 
 one evening. " The last beams of the sun come to 
 me across a broken sea of sand-dunes. At my back, 
 in a saucer-shaped hollow, already in shade, the camp 
 fire snaps and sparkles. Figures run about with pots. 
 The call comes up that supper is ready. On the slope 
 opposite our camels browse, stretching their long necks 
 left and right to the coarse grass-tufts, their coats lit 
 to a warm yellow by the sun's last rays. How solitary 
 our speck of a camp looks on the face of this vast 
 solitude ! I stop a moment and look out across the 
 sand. The sun's last spark flickers and disappears. 
 The awful blue pallor settles down on the face of 
 the desert." 
 
 England and English life used to seem remote at 
 these times to the verge of unreality. One saw it as 
 something from which one had become, for the moment, 
 wholly detached. The things that were so important 
 — Piccadilly and its omnibuses, " the old crush at the 
 corner of Fenchurch Street," Parliament and politics, 
 Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Balfour, grave literary schemes 
 and consultations, the slings and arrows of outrageous 
 editors, and all the pushing and pulling, and scolding 
 and arguing, and sweat and dust of that compressed 
 and tangled little state of existence — somehow all these 
 things no longer seem important at all. You have won 
 clear of it all for a little, and drift at ease, the bare soul 
 under the bare sky, relishing its solitude and calm. 
 
 There was an arrangement of the sand and grass- 
 tufts, which I remember, here and in most of our desert 
 halting-places, which seemed purposely designed to 
 bear out the weird loneliness of the scene. The wind 
 in the desert blows with the regularity of the trades, 
 
i88 IN THE DESERT 
 
 almost always from one quarter, and of course drifts 
 and carries the sand to a great extent along with it. 
 The big tussocks of grass, growing a few yards apart, 
 arrest this flow of sand, and the wind sweeping past 
 either side leaves a mound perfectly rounded and 
 symmetrical, exactly like a grave, with the grass-tuft 
 for a headstone. The effect used to be just as if we 
 had come to camp in some vast cemetery, and the 
 countless graves scattered around seemed to account, to 
 my fancy, for the solitude and lifelessness of the scenery. 
 
 But better than camp even was the morning ride 
 before sunrise. Whether it is the way you live in the 
 desert, the wholesome, light food, chiefly dates, figs, 
 and rice, or the pure air, I do not know, but anyway 
 the misery of the " getting-up " process, the blinking 
 and groaning and stretching and yawning, are entirely 
 and absolutely obliterated. Instinct or some slight 
 sound rouses you, and with the opening of your eyes 
 sleep has vanished. Instead of struggling for half an 
 hour with the fumes of it, you wake, as animals wake, 
 to an instant and full consciousness of all around you. 
 
 The moon still rides in crystal clearness, and the 
 great stars are scattered thickly over the sky down 
 to the very edge of the desert. The nights are extra- 
 ordinarily cold, compared with the great heat of the 
 day, for the sand, light and porous, radiates its 
 warmth away directly the sun's rays are withdrawn 
 from it. There is something rapier-like in the thin 
 piercing cold of a desert night, matching in sharpness 
 the steelly glitter of the moonlight. Coats and rugs 
 are flung on shoulders while the hot coffee, invariable 
 accompaniment in the desert to every halt or start, is 
 got ready. Preparations for the march take but a few 
 
SCENES BY THE WAY 189 
 
 minutes. The sleeping mats are rolled up, the tent 
 struck and packed, the ponies saddled, the grunting, 
 protesting camels loaded and corded, and in a few 
 minutes the little caravan is winding in single file 
 through the white drifts. 
 
 As these preparations are carried out on sand they 
 are, of course, carried out quite noiselessly. The white 
 figures of Arabs, the crooked shapes of camels, the 
 ponies, and ourselves move and mingle without a 
 sound, like ghosts. This gives an appearance of great 
 stealth and secrecy to our proceedings. You would 
 say, watching us as we steal away, that we were 
 planning a night attack, or fleeing from a pursuing 
 enemy. 
 
 One has some such feeling, a sense of cat-like 
 vigilance and cunning, answering mysteriously to such 
 surroundings. I used to feel abnormally crafty at this 
 time of day. To waylay a caravan and pillage it would 
 have seemed quite a natural and obvious thing to do. 
 I should not have minded its being wrong, or cared 
 what people said about it. 
 
 I used to imagine that such promptings might be 
 the legacies of long-past actions ; a secret tingling 
 and response of deep buried instincts to the suggestion 
 of their appropriate environment. Somehow the scene 
 suggested experiences. It did not look familiar, 
 perhaps, but it felt familiar. You could not say you 
 remembered such a landscape, yet something in you 
 responded to it, was secretly thrilled by it, sometimes 
 seemed almost, or quite, to recognise it. 
 
 I am sure that where Nature is entirely primitive 
 and savage she whispers little furtive suggestions to 
 the savage in each of us. " Don't you remember," 
 
190 IN THE DESERT 
 
 she mutters, " you felt thus, and thus ? Wouldn't it 
 be nice to go back to those days again ? " And then 
 the what you were a million years ago cocks an ear 
 and stirs in its sleep. Ah, well it is the pretty Sussex 
 fields and dumpling hills of Devon cannot hear the 
 wicked whisperings of the desert. 
 
 The flats and salient features of this strange land- 
 scape are quite formless in the moonlight. The 
 shadows look like crooked pieces of jet inlaid in a 
 white surface. Even by day the desert is weird 
 enough, but laid out in black and white with the 
 vacant glitter of starlight hanging over it, it seems to 
 have no connection with the earth you know of 
 
 By and by we are watching the beginning of that 
 tremendous spectacle, played for our sole benefit every 
 morning — sunrise in the Sahara. As the moment 
 approaches the air darkens, as though for fuller effect 
 of contrast, and the cold sharpens. There is a breath 
 heard that comes from nowhere and dies away. It is 
 the desert turning in its sleep, as they say. Then a 
 tuft or two of loose cloud in the east catches the 
 first suggestion of colour, so welcome after the watery 
 whiteness of the night. It appeals to what little life 
 there is, and the low wail of a lark is heard near by 
 as he pitches his first melancholy somersault for the 
 day. Now a spark catches in the lower edge of a 
 narrow cloud that lies along the horizon and runs 
 along it like fire along paper. Next moment the sky 
 is all ablaze. The clouds dissolve away. Two or three 
 arrowy spokes of light dart to the zenith. The molten 
 rim comes over the desert edge, and the first beam hits 
 you full with marksmanlike precision as though you 
 were a target. 
 
SCENES BY THE WAY 191 
 
 These desert sunrises used to remind me of some 
 great orchestral performance. First the note or two 
 and tuning up ; then the baton raised, the one, two, 
 three, and the crash of instruments all together. One 
 does not usually talk of listening to a sunrise, but 
 those in the desert used to strike me as distinctly- 
 audible. One could even characterise the music. It 
 had the sound of cymbals and gongs. 
 
 By degrees comes the test of endurance. As the 
 sun gets higher and hotter you feel the desert set 
 its teeth and settle down for long hours of silent 
 endurance. Slowly and deliberately the sun scans 
 its face, with such a searching scrutiny as if it had 
 dropped a half-sovereign here the day before and had 
 come back to look for it. The air scorches your face, 
 and you sip it through closed lips as you sip too 
 hot tea. Your eyes burn, and you press your fingers 
 on them now and then to give the relief of complete 
 darkness. 
 
 And what a view the light discovers as it lays bare 
 the face of the desert ! An endless plain — 
 
 " Forlorn and wild 
 The seat of desolation," 
 
 made up of whitish-brown or yellow sand and grit and 
 rock, stretching to a horizon that seems a thousand 
 miles away, so far can your glance penetrate in this 
 pure atmosphere ; broken by rocky plateaux or 
 irregular chains of low hills, seamed with reefs and 
 strewn with black fragments of stone worn smooth 
 and glossy by the friction of blown sand ; a landscape 
 utterly dead and mineralised, from which everything 
 suggestive of the possibility of life has fled. 
 
192 IN THE DESERT 
 
 And yet, strange as it may seem, it is out of this 
 sterile scenery that the Arabs have evolved their 
 songs of green bowers and shade. Perhaps that 
 poetry can only be understood in the desert. No 
 other has allusions so thrilling to groves, foliage, the 
 scent of flowers, dew, moisture, and the murmuring 
 of water. Their treatment of these subjects is even 
 apt at times to strike one as morbid, as excessive. 
 But it does not seem so when you are in the desert 
 yourself and when your thoughts of shade and water 
 have the poignancy the desert gives them. 
 
 A translation must miss the force of the original, 
 but I will quote a specimen of the Arab treatment of 
 these things : — 
 
 " The shades have spead their canopy, and the flowers spread 
 
 their pillows. 
 The streams roll along their shores of flowers, some white, 
 
 some red, some 3'ellow, some sweet-scented. 
 See ! the waters gliding through the gardens, and the trees 
 
 and their fruits resemble bracelets and chaplets ; 
 The birds sing melodiously upon them in every variety of 
 
 note. 
 The nightingale and the dove pour their plaintive strains, 
 
 and make every lover weep. 
 The gentle zephyrs whisper, and the branches move in 
 
 softest measure. 
 The boughs dance in the groves, among the trees, in the 
 
 graceful movement. 
 The dewdrops fall, and the flowers and the trees are 
 
 studded with their pearls." 
 
 The reader will feel a certain exaggeration of 
 sentiment here ; an exaggeration which is due to 
 the influence of the desert. 
 
 But what brings home to us, I think, most strikingly 
 
SCENES BY THE WAY 193 
 
 the need the Arabs felt for dwelling on, in their poetry, 
 what was so stinted in their lives, is a recognised rule 
 of theirs, which laid it down that all considerable 
 poems, whatever their subject, should open with a 
 description of the spring grazing-grounds to which the 
 tribes all resorted for a certain time in the year. The 
 two main divisions of ancient Arab poetry were the 
 Ode, or Kasidah, and the Fragment, or Kitah, and of 
 these the former, which was the longer and more 
 important, was strictly formal in its development. 
 Whatever the event might be which the poet wished 
 to celebrate, he must begin by describing the bygone 
 love-affairs, and the romantic meetings and partings 
 of lovers which had taken place during the time when 
 the tribes drove their camels to their common pasture- 
 grounds. 
 
 No passages in Arab poetry are more touching, more 
 romantic, or contain keener thrusts of pathos, than 
 these recollections of vanished springs and vanished 
 loves. But to understand them aright it should be 
 remembered that they deal in experiences which were 
 common to the nation. The Arabian late winter and 
 early spring, when the scanty rainfall encouraged some 
 growth of herbage over many parts of the land, was 
 the time of social intercourse. At this time the camels 
 were driven far and wide to common grazing-grounds, 
 and acquaintanceships and friendships sprung up 
 between the tribes. It was, moreover, a time of 
 peace. The blood feuds of the Arabs were pursued 
 with so much industry that it was found necessary to 
 temper their thirst for justice with certain restrictions, 
 and by mutual consent four months of the year were 
 set aside as a close season, during which the taking 
 
 14 
 
194 IN THE DESERT 
 
 of life under any plea was illicit. Of these peace 
 months the first three coincide with the grazing season, 
 an arrangement which was obviously indispensable if 
 the benefits of that season were to be enjoyed. 
 
 Here were the makings of romance on a national 
 scale. All lovely influences combined to foster it. The 
 sights and sounds of spring were in the air. The 
 herbage sprouted, flowers blossomed, water sparkled, 
 the songs of nightingales resounded in the glade, the 
 herds browsed, while over all an unwonted peace 
 reigned, and enemies who had been seeking each 
 others' lives but a little while before and hoped to 
 be doing so again but a short time hence, might now 
 associate freely and enjoy the pleasant season in full 
 security. 
 
 Such interludes must have seemed like a glimpse 
 of the Elysian fields. How deep they sank into the 
 national consciousness, the Kasidahs remain to tell. 
 By and by the draughts of summer came again, the 
 desert resumed its sway, the days of peace drew to an 
 end, and each tribe sought the distant and permanent 
 wells round which were its headquarters, and which 
 afforded it a scanty supply of moisture through the 
 summer heat. Imagination may suggest the melancholy 
 partings, the breaking-up of camps, the farewells of 
 friends, the more agonised farewells of lovers. Some- 
 times for lovers it was not farewell. A fleet dromedary 
 might lurk in the darkness of the grove, a noiseless 
 shadow flit across the empty desert, and the disappear- 
 ance of the dark-eyed damsel with her daring lover 
 might furnish a vendetta to start the summer upon. 
 
 Tradition demanded that the Kasidah should, to 
 begin with, revive the memory of these sylvan scenes 
 
SCENES BY THE WAY 195 
 
 and romantic episodes, so painfully sweet to the Arab 
 imagination ; and only when that standing demand 
 was satisfied might the poet go on to deal with the 
 matter he had in view, which was most probably a 
 panegyric on himself or his tribe, interspersed with 
 boasts of his camel's fleetness or the breeding of his 
 stallion. 
 
 There is something touching and pathetic in this 
 endeavour to supply by poetic description the kind of 
 refreshment which one is meant to derive from Nature, 
 but which in the desert is so entirely lacking. And yet 
 this demand on the poet's imagination is really only 
 a typical example of what each individual's imagination 
 is trying to do for itself. It seems a natural instinct, 
 amidst such surroundings, to attempt to conjure up 
 visions of coolness, foliage, and shade, so as to allow 
 the mind to feed upon them. And never do such 
 scenes seem more real and vivid to the mind's eye 
 than when one is surrounded by scenery most alien 
 to them. The shepherd in Wordsworth's poem, who 
 had turned sailor, drew a vision of the life he missed 
 out of the waves and foam round him, and — 
 
 " Even with the organs of his bodily e}^e, 
 Below him, in the bosom of the deep, 
 Saw mountains — saw the forms of sheep that grazed 
 On verdant hills." 
 
 In something the same way imagination in the desert 
 plays such tricks with one that I can almost be said to 
 have seen with my "bodily eye" in those wastes the 
 kind of features which most one lacked there. 
 
 There is a spot in the valley of the River Exe, in 
 Devonshire, which might be singled out as typical of 
 
196 IN THE DESERT 
 
 the greenness and moisture of that most green and 
 moist of counties. The river here divides, part of it 
 diverging to act as a mill leat. The mill, however, was 
 burnt down a good many years ago, and the leat's 
 occupation being gone, it seems to have occurred to it 
 of its own accord to abandon that enterprise, and it 
 has accordingly broken across the neck of land which 
 separates it from the main river, and in doing so has 
 cut off an angle and made an island of it. A feeble 
 trickle only continues in the old path of duty towards 
 the mill, through a dense tunnel of hazels and alders. 
 
 These changes happened more years ago than any 
 one can remember. The mill and the mill leat are 
 practically things of the past. Only an extra richness 
 in the bushes, and the thick growth of willow herb 
 and meadowsweet, show the dampness that lingers 
 along the hidden course of the leat. The island is a 
 dense covert of alder and ash-trees, some of which have 
 been cut off by the cross-current, and now stand, coated 
 with moss, in mid-stream with channels of water, shaded 
 by their branches, gushing and bubbling round them. 
 Trout and water rats and moorhens haunt here. Some- 
 times a water ousel will light on a snag, and bob and 
 curtesy at the foam below, or a kingfisher draw its line 
 of blue up the long dark pool. 
 
 Water is seen or heard here on all sides, and speaks 
 from each side with a different accent. There is the 
 deep murmur of the mother river, the agitated clamour 
 of the leat hurrying to rejoin it, and now and then the 
 low, bell-like note of the few drops that, with impossible 
 loyalty, still proclaim their faith in the vanished mill. 
 The place had always, from the days I used to bathe 
 there with other village children, been a favourite haunt 
 
SCENES BY THE WAY 197 
 
 of mine. For suggestions of coolness, dense foliage 
 shade, and water tinkling and gliding in all directions 
 it could not be beaten. As a rule, water with us runs 
 in fixed beds and channels, which gives it a stereotyped 
 and sophisticated look. Here it ran wild, following its 
 own gipsy impulses. This was what, perhaps, gave the 
 sense of naturalness to the place. One could imagine 
 it a haunt of dryads or water pixies. 
 
 Well, this place now forms a part of my recollections 
 of the Sahara. There was a pool just below an over- 
 hanging tree-trunk, where great blobs of foam, just the 
 colour of the meadowsweet, went round and round 
 perpetually, and the water always looked as black by 
 contrast as stout in a tankard — that pool I have seen 
 in the desert as clearly as ever I saw it in Devonshire. 
 
 In the case of the Arabs the endeavour to recreate 
 such scenes as their spring pasturings must have been 
 a normal imaginative condition. It expressed itself, 
 as I have said, in that established regulation which 
 required that every important poem was to open with 
 a realistic description of these scenes. No matter how 
 disconnected the subject of the poem might be with 
 such associations, the first portion of it must be dedi- 
 cated to the few glimpses the Arabs ever obtained of 
 greenness and shade. To us, of course, a regulation 
 of this kind would seem like an arbitrary forcing upon 
 the poet of an absurd irrelevance. But in the desert 
 it is not an irrelevance. Thoughts of shade and water 
 are never irrelevant there. Had I been obliged to 
 attempt a Kasidah of my own, on the prowess of 
 Ahmeda and his steed, let us say, it would have seemed 
 to me perfectly natural to introduce, preferably at the 
 beginning, an account of that spot on the Exe I have 
 
198 IN THE DESERT 
 
 described. Had there been a party of us with the same 
 recollections it would have seemed perfectly natural to 
 make a rule that all our poems should begin with some 
 such description. Never to the Arabs could an account 
 of their spring pastures seem irrelevant, for their imagi- 
 nations were so constantly at work correcting present 
 sterility with the image of those scenes, that the scenes 
 themselves were always, in a sense, present, and could 
 always make their claim to notice felt when it was a 
 question of the poetic treatment of any subject what- 
 soever. 
 
 And besides what there is of pathetic in this dwelling 
 of the Arab mind on the little it ever experienced from 
 Nature of kindness and motherly love, there is also 
 something that gives one a great idea of the power 
 and influence of the desert. It is difficult to define 
 and limit an influence like this, even though one is 
 perpetually conscious that it counts for a great deal 
 in Arab character. It is, therefore, useful to be able 
 to point to a concrete example of the working of it ; 
 a definite effect which it had on the mind and imagina- 
 tion of the Arab race, resulting in fixed and arbitrary 
 rules in regard to the form and matter of their poetry. 
 
 A somewhat similar illusion of the desert's own in- 
 venting is the mirage, which tantalised our aching eyes 
 on many a burning day's march. It is an attempt of 
 the desert's own to reproduce the appearance of water 
 and freshness in these wastes, and certainly, as a bit of 
 counterfeiting, it beats the poets hollow. In some 
 valley, perhaps, where the stony hillocks break down 
 abruptly to the plain there lies a glittering pool of blue 
 water. A breeze plays upon it, for the surface is 
 silvered with a slight ripple. The hoax is sometimes 
 
SCENES BY THE WAY 199 
 
 kept up until you are on the verge of the pool. Then 
 the water shakes. Its edges begin to dissolve. The 
 brink recedes as you advance. It breaks up. Parts 
 seem to rise and float in air, and you ride in among 
 the dissolving fragments and find nothing but unwetted 
 sand and hot stones. 
 
 This is the desert's idea of humour. It is impossible 
 for any one knowing it to doubt that it enjoys doing 
 this sort of thing. The mirage is the smile that flits 
 over its haggard face, and a wholly characteristic ex- 
 pression it is. Many a poor wretch, no doubt, dying 
 the desert's death, has writhed under the irony of its 
 bitter joke. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 ARAB POETRY 
 
 Its portraiture of Arab life and character — Its genuineness and 
 vigour — The type it describes — The death of Rabiah — The 
 traits it dwells on — Limitations of the type — Arab love- 
 poetry — Its contrast with modern — Lack of depth in the 
 Arab — The type common among Moslems — The Afghan — 
 The Turk — The Albanian — The Moslem stage in civilisation. 
 
 BUT I have another reason for wishing to recur to 
 Arab poetry. That that poetry gives us a vivid 
 picture of the Arab in his great days every one knows ; 
 but the picture is a picture of more than the Arab. It 
 is a picture of the orthodox Moslem type, which has 
 never varied for twelve hundred years, and exists to-day 
 wherever orthodox Mohammedanism prevails. 
 
 The great age of Arab poetry belongs to the time 
 when the Arab race was gathering up its strength, like 
 a great wave for bursting, for the effort which was to 
 carry El Islam through the world. The forming of the 
 nation and of a common language were the means to 
 that end, and in both processes Arab poetry played an 
 important part. Its tremendous popularity among the 
 tribes, its stirring descriptions of scenes and a country 
 general to the whole race, its insistence on universally 
 recognised virtues and ideals, its appeal to the same 
 
ARAB POETRY 201 
 
 passions and memories and prejudices, tended to bring 
 out what all Arabs had in common and nourished a 
 national sentiment. It was through its poets that tribe 
 spoke to tribe. In the sam« way the honour in which 
 poetry was held, the annual recitative competitions to 
 which the tribes sent their most popular minstrels, and, 
 in this way, the transmission from tribe to tribe of 
 words and expressions sanctioned by fine poetry, all 
 helped to spread a common language. 
 
 Moreover, it is important to notice that this common 
 language and common nationality were a language and 
 nationality entirely of the central or true Arabs, of 
 the Ishmaelites, the Arabs of the sand. The waxing 
 strength of the nation was marked by the decline and 
 final extinction of the authority of the settled agricul- 
 tural states. The nationality that arose on the fall of 
 the Himyarite dynasty— settled in the fertile regions 
 bordering on the Indian Ocean — was a nationality 
 solely of desert tribes. The language which became 
 universal was a purely desert language. The poetry 
 that flourished was desert poetry. The warriors who 
 carried the faith east and west were desert nomads. 
 In short, the whole Mohammedan impulse, poetic, reli- 
 gious, and national, was of exclusively desert origin. 
 It had to thrust aside everything that was not of the 
 desert before it could satisfactorily exhibit itself It 
 came burning hot, so to speak, from the sand. 
 
 And of the breed of men who championed and swept 
 forward this great movement, Arab poetry speaks with 
 absolute clearness and precision. It describes the 
 details of desert life with a vigour and realistic truth 
 there is no mistaking ; it throws the same fiery passion 
 again and again into incidents of a similar kind. The 
 
202 IN THE DESERT 
 
 Arab poetry of this time has the merit that belongs 
 to our own early ballad poetry. Whatever else it may 
 or may not be, it is real. It deals with real events and 
 real men. 
 
 Poetry was more a popular possession of the Arabs 
 than, perhaps, it has ever been among any other people. 
 The pains taken to preserve and perpetuate it bear 
 witness to the almost sacred character which this, their 
 sole art, had attained to. The duty of thus preserving 
 it, in an age ignorant of writing, was entrusted to a 
 special order of rawis, or reciters, often themselves 
 poets, whose business it was to learn by heart each 
 poem of their master, as it was composed, together with 
 any special meaning or interpretation which any doubt- 
 ful passage was intended to bear. Each poet had his 
 rawi, and each rawi, in his turn, transmitted the poems 
 and interpretations he had received to a disciple ; and 
 thus they were handed on by a literary class consecrated 
 to the purpose from generation to generation. 
 
 That shows us the profoundly popular character of 
 the art. And to that I will add this testimony of Ibn 
 Rashik, translated by Sir Charles Lyall : " When there 
 appeared a poet in a family of the Arabs the other 
 tribes round about would gather together to that family 
 and wish them joy of their good luck. Feasts would 
 be got ready, the women of the tribes would join 
 together in bands, playing upon lutes as they were 
 wont to do at bridals, and the men and boys would 
 congratulate one another ; for a poet was a defence 
 to the honour of them all, a weapon to ward off insults 
 from their good name, and a means of perpetuating 
 their glorious deeds and of establishing their fame for 
 ever. And they would wish one another joy but for 
 
ARAB POETRY 203 
 
 three things — the birth of a boy, the coming to light 
 of a poet, and the foahng of a noble mare." 
 
 We may rely upon the reality and genuineness, hence 
 the trustworthiness, of poetry of this kind. An un- 
 lettered and wandering race, without fixed habitations 
 or written literature, whose architecture was the tent, 
 and who in their passage through the world left no 
 trace deeper or more durable than their footprints in 
 the sand, it seems as if the Arabs turned instinctively 
 to poetry as their only means of self-expression, their 
 only rescue from oblivion and claim on the memory 
 of future generations. 
 
 So that, in dealing with Arab poetry, and attempting 
 to extract from it a living presentment of the Arab 
 of that age, it is not as though we were set the task 
 of deducing from the poetry of Rossetti or Swinburne 
 a picture of contemporary English squires and farmers. 
 Arab poetry is not imaginative and abstract, nor is it 
 the outcome of a complex civilisation. It portrays the 
 habits of a primitive people, and portrays them in 
 direct and forcible language ; and so unanimous and 
 consistent is it in its testimony, so strong and vigorous 
 in its strokes, so outspoken in all it loves and all it 
 hates, that the typical desert personality jumps out of 
 it at us, so to speak, and we see in it, as we see in 
 nothing else he has left to us, the living Arab as he 
 was in the great days of El Islam. 
 
 What was he like ? We see a man physically, per- 
 haps, as perfect as any type that has existed ; a figure 
 spare and lean, but sinewy and vigorous, with move- 
 ments which betray, under the control of a natural 
 dignity, the keenly sensitive nervous organisation of 
 the character. With that a face and features fitted 
 
204 IN THE DESERT 
 
 to express the kind of emotions by which such a form 
 should be governed ; an alert and fierce sensibility, 
 haughtiness and pride, a swift, instinctive readiness to 
 vindicate his own rights and resist the claims of others. 
 A favourite legend in Arab poetry is that which 
 describes the heroism and death of Rabidh, son of 
 Mukaddam. The chief, convoying a party of women, 
 is pursued and attacked by hostile tribesmen. Seeing 
 the following cloud of dust, he turns to reconnoitre, 
 and his sister, misinterpreting the action, cries out upon 
 him for deserting his womenfolk ; Rabidh haughtily 
 rebukes her — 
 
 " Sayest thou, my sister, I am one to quail ? 
 Hast thou not known me join with spear and sword, 
 And bring ray blade back red with men's life-blood ? " 
 
 He gallops to meet the enemy, and a desperate fight 
 ensues, Rabidh striking down several with his arrows. 
 Then he spurs after the caravan and urges it on its 
 way, and again turns to meet the pursuing enemy. 
 Again and again he turns to beat off his assailants, 
 and when his arrows are spent he attacks them with 
 sword and spear. At last, in one furious encounter, 
 Nubaishah, son of Habib, gives him a fatal lance thrust. 
 " I have slain him," he cries. " Thy mouth lies, O 
 Nubaishah," answers Rabidh. With difficulty, mortally 
 wounded, he extricates himself from his enemies and 
 rejoins his party. He bids his mother bind him up with 
 her veil, which she does. He says to her — 
 
 "A horseman hast thou lost like burning gold — 
 A hawk that drives the throng like frightened birds, 
 Deep diving with his blows before, behind." 
 
ARAB POETRY 205 
 
 Still the enemy follow, and once more Rabidh turns 
 to bay. Where the track enters the mouth of a pass 
 he reins up his mare, barring the way. His pursuers 
 hesitate to attack him. At length, while he still fronts 
 his enemies, death steals upon him, and as he feels its 
 approach the indomitable chief thrusts his lance head 
 into the ground and leans upon it as if resting. So he 
 dies ; but still, propped by the long lance in the saddle, 
 the motionless form guards the pass. Day passes and 
 twilight descends, but the well-trained mare never 
 moves, and the dead knight sits as rigid as the sur- 
 rounding rocks. At a bowshot off the enemy confer 
 together. At last one of them, approaching closer, 
 looses an arrow at the mare. She starts aside, and 
 Rabiah's body falls with a crash to the ground. 
 
 This theme has been several times treated in Arab 
 poetry. Indeed, scarcely a better one could be thought 
 of to illustrate the qualities which the Arab most 
 ardently admires. In mere scenic effect the situation is 
 striking and fine. The gathering twilight, the timid 
 and distracted foe watching and whispering, the gap in 
 the gaunt rock, and the motionless steed with its dead 
 rider, make up a composition which might well stir an 
 Arab's blood. But stronger still was the appeal to his 
 sympathy. Every trait of Rabiah's is a trait sacred 
 in Arab eyes. The courage that despises odds, the 
 fortitude that smiles at wounds and death, the prowess 
 that even in death is terrible to the enemy, these are 
 the greatest of Arab virtues : and these are the virtues 
 that the dead horseman, with his rescued women behind 
 him and his shrinking foes in front, immortalises. 
 
 Every hero we meet with in Arab poetry is of this 
 same type. By far the most important and vigorousl> 
 
2o6 IN THE DESERT 
 
 treated subjects are war, revenge, slaughter, the melee 
 of hostile tribes, or combats between deadly enemies. 
 The ideal Arab character is such a man as this — 
 
 " Lean-sided and thin, but not from lacking, 
 Liberal-handed, keen-hearted, haughty. 
 He journeyed with Wariness, and when he halted 
 There Wariness halted, herself his comrade." 
 
 The desert wariness is particularly insisted on — 
 
 " A man must be crafty and wise when peril is round his 
 head." 
 
 Again — 
 
 " Yea, his is the wary soul, on whom lights a thing to do, 
 And finds him alert, intent, his end straight before his 
 eyes." 
 
 He who would prosper in the desert must " watch 
 like a warder," must carry with him " the heart of a 
 wary man and bold." 
 
 The leanness and hardness of a warrior, tireless and 
 in perfect training, is the corresponding physical 
 attribute. He should be "slender of flank and lean." 
 In speed and endurance he — 
 
 " Outstrips the sweep of the wind as it drives in its course 
 along : 
 It blows but in gusts, while he still journeys unresting on." 
 
 Generosity is an Arab virtue, and no less a one is a 
 certain dignity and stateliness of bearing — 
 
 "A rushing rain-flood when he gave of his fulness; 
 When he sprang to the onset a mighty lion ; 
 In the midst of his kin flowed his long black hair ; and 
 His skirts trailed : in war a wolf's whelp with lean flanks." 
 
ARAB POETRY 207 
 
 Throughout all these poems there rings an immense 
 boastfulness, the boastfulness of men living in small 
 and ever-conflicting societies, and holding their own 
 by sheer strength of arm — 
 
 " If there should be among a thousand but one of us, and 
 men should call ' Ho, a knight!' he would think that 
 they meant him. 
 When the fighters blench and quail before the deadly 
 stroke of the sword-edge, we leap forth and catch it in 
 our hand." 
 
 Vainglory was counted no slur when men had to 
 make good their words with deeds, and the more 
 direct the boast the better — 
 
 " If thou givest the cup to the noblest, reach it to us, 
 And if thou callest one day to a mighty and valiant deed 
 The chiefest of noble men, let thy call go forth to us." 
 
 To outface others, to trample down opposition, is 
 the finest thing possible — 
 
 "We ''ay nay whenso we will to the words of other men ; 
 But no man to us says nay when we give sentence." 
 
 And again — 
 
 " Our swords have swept throughout all lands both West 
 and East, 
 
 And gathered many a notch from the steel of hauberk- 
 wearers ; 
 
 Not used are they when drawn to be laid back in their 
 sheaths 
 
 Before that the folk they meet are spoiled and scattered." 
 
2o8 IN THE DESERT 
 
 To die by the steel is the only death worth having — 
 
 "Our souls stream forth iu a flood from the edge of the 
 whetted swords ; 
 No otherwise than so does our spirit leave its mansion." 
 
 The poet gives the rein to his profoundest emotion 
 when he speaks of revenge wreaked on the tribe's 
 enemy. " Never is blood of us poured forth without 
 vengeance," cries one. Another thus describes the 
 treatment accorded to the slayer of his uncle — 
 
 " To Hudhail we gave to drink of death's goblet, 
 Whose dregs are disgrace and shame and dishonour. 
 The hyena laughs over the slain of Hudhail, 
 And the wolf — seest thou— grins by their corpses, 
 And the vultures flap their wings full-bellied, 
 Treading their dead, too gorged to leave them." 
 
 I have taken these extracts from many different 
 poems in Sir Charles Lyall's collection of translations. 
 One after the other these poems are as like as peas in 
 a pod. They are all perfectly agreed as to the kind 
 of man they admire, and what those characteristics 
 are which form an ideal character. And the man 
 they paint is a man strongly marked with the aggres- 
 sive and virile virtues ; full of pride and valour, fiercely 
 militant, vengeful, courteous, too, and dignified and 
 generous ; in all respects what we should call a gentle- 
 man — one who is himself his own standard, and whose 
 demand upon conduct is that it shall be worthy of 
 himself. 
 
 Not an ignoble ideal, certainly ; on the contrary^ 
 so noble a one, or at least so spirited and attractive 
 a one, that anything set against it will be apt to seem 
 dull and colourless by comparison. Nevertheless, the 
 
ARAB POETRY 209 
 
 reader will certainly find, if he takes the trouble to 
 think it out, that the aggressive and purely virile ideal, 
 however picturesque, is essentially unsatisfactory. It 
 is so because it results in an inevitable stupidity. The 
 qualities which give depth to character are not the 
 Arab fine-sounding and showy qualities at all, but a 
 much more sober and much less striking lot. They 
 may be said to be directly opposed to the Arab traits, 
 for they are concerned with the negation rather than 
 with the assertion of the sense of self, and they bring 
 depth because every act of understanding of whatever 
 kind is in itself an act of sympathy, that is, an act of 
 self-obliteration. The self-assertive or unsympathetic 
 attitude is, in short, wearisome because of its inherent 
 shallowness. Now the reader may search through 
 every one of these poems, and of any praise of such 
 virtues as patience, gentleness, modesty, humility, and 
 the like, virtues which are all concerned in some form 
 or other with the act of self-negation, he will find not 
 one trace. More even than that, he will find these 
 virtues treated as despicable weaknesses. To forgive 
 an injury, to count himself as nothing, to go down 
 lower when he can go up higher, are not to the Arab 
 counsels of perfection, not things which he would do 
 if he could, or at any rate knows that he ought to 
 do ; they are the marks of abject worthlessness. One 
 of their poets, after taunting his associates with their 
 slackness in coming to his rescue, sums up his scorn 
 and detestation of them in the words — 
 
 " They requite with forgiveness the wrong of those that do them 
 a wrong, 
 And the evil deeds of the evil they meet with kindness and 
 love ; " 
 
 IS 
 
210 IN THE DESERT 
 
 words which have a curious ring in our ears as an 
 expression of contempt and condemnation. 
 
 If it were a mere question of the poetry itself it 
 would not be difficult, I dare say, to show what this 
 loses by its limited range of vision. It would be easy 
 to show that, though it has great rhetorical vigour 
 and great directness, though its descriptions are tren- 
 chant and telling and every word hits the mark, though 
 nothing can be more vivid than the picture it draws 
 of all the vicissitudes and adventures of a desert race, 
 yet it gives us such a merely literal interpretation of 
 nature and life as is only saved from being wearisome 
 by its historical interest. The Arab's thoughts about 
 nature are the thoughts of the man of action only. 
 He conceives all things as relating to himself, as 
 deriving significance from himself. Friendly aspects 
 of nature are to be praised and commended, hostile 
 aspects are to be defied and overcome. But he 
 himself is the only source of meaning or interest in 
 each case. The thought of another never crosses 
 his mind. The question never shifts for a moment 
 from What is this to me ? to What is this in 
 itself? 
 
 Next to war the Arab poet's chief topic is love, and 
 this too he treats in his own characteristic way. His 
 passion unlocks for him none of Nature's secrets. 
 Nothing that he sees is endowed with any added 
 meaning or emotion of its own. All Nature is sub- 
 servient to his own affairs. The winds are to carry 
 his messages to his beloved, the streams murmur her 
 name, the flowers are poor imitators of the brightness 
 of her eyes or the fragrance of her breath. 
 
 Contrast such a method with the same subject 
 
ARAB POETRY 211 
 
 treated with real depth. What is the secret of the 
 passion in Hnes like these ? — 
 
 " On such a night, 
 When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, 
 And they did make no noise ; on such a night 
 Troilus, metliinks, mounted the Trojan walls, 
 And sighed his soul towards the Grecian tent 
 Where Cressid lay that night." 
 
 It lies in the first lines, in the idea given us of emotion, 
 not as something human and finite but suffusing all 
 nature and existing in nature quite apart from man. 
 The wind would be kissing the trees that night as 
 gently if Troilus and Cressida had never been heard 
 of. The instinct of a great poet is to deepen the 
 human emotion by making it cognisant of the natural, 
 universal emotion. The instinct of a shallow poet is 
 to make the human emotion dominant and nature 
 subservient to it, by which means he kills emotion 
 altogether. The consequence is that, while second-rate 
 love-poetry is always prating about its own passion, 
 and using a kind of language which has more emphasis 
 than meaning, first-rate love-poetry often scarcely 
 alludes to its own passion directly at all, yet keeps 
 us profoundly conscious of it from the emotion in 
 which it steeps everything it touches. When Lorenzo 
 says to Jessica — 
 
 " Look how the floor of heaven 
 Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold : 
 There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st 
 But in his motion like an angel sings. 
 Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubins," 
 
 though there is no word of love spoken, yet its presence 
 
212 IN THE DESERT 
 
 is felt in the consciousness it brings to the lover of 
 what is deep and inward and profound in nature. 
 
 So, too, in the passage I have already quoted from 
 Wordsworth — 
 
 "The breezes their own languor lent, 
 The stars had feelings which they sent 
 Into those gorgeous bowers." 
 
 What a depth of passion enters directly the emotions 
 are thought of as nature's own ! We have only to 
 compare Wordsworth's " The breezes their own languor 
 lent" with Shakespeare's "When the sweet wind did 
 gently kiss the trees " to see how precisely similar the 
 standpoint of the two poets was. It was a standpoint 
 which to the Arab was simply incomprehensible. 
 
 I will quote one further example for the sake of 
 the contrast in the two styles it affords. In the lines — 
 
 " The slender acacia did not shake 
 
 One long milk-bloom from the tree. 
 The white lake blossom fell into the lake. 
 And the pimpernel dozed on the lea," 
 
 we have a fine specimen, as every one will feel, of 
 emotional poetry. The silent summer night, the 
 still, deep water, the heavy blossom falling of its own 
 weight, are images all charged with emotion. Im- 
 mediately following these we have the lines — 
 
 " But the rose was awake all night for thy sake. 
 Knowing thy promise to me ; 
 The roses and lilies were all awake. 
 They sighed for the dawn and thee ; " 
 
ARAB POETRY 213 
 
 in which we are conscious of coming suddenly to the 
 surface, and exchanging with shocking abruptness the 
 language of emotion for the language of compliment. 
 What has happened is that the poet has shifted his 
 standpoint in regard to Nature. In the first passage 
 he thought of her, as Wordsworth and Shakespeare 
 did, as having her own feelings and being full of a 
 deep sentiment of her own, while in the last she is 
 treated as entirely subordinate to the human beings, 
 with no other office but to fetch and carry for them. 
 The result of this transition is that the poetry drops 
 into a mere jingle, and the sentiment of love it is 
 meant to convey becomes quite superficial, and even, 
 by contrast with what was first suggested, vulgar. 
 
 Verse of this rose-was-awake order we should have no 
 difficulty in finding plenty of in Arab poetry. Such 
 conceits are a habit of the Oriental mind, and occur 
 frequently enough in common speech. I read the other 
 day in a French newspaper an account of a visit of the 
 Governor-General of Algeria to some Arab chiefs at 
 Beni-Ounif, at which the Arabs assured their visitor 
 that "les palmiers et les pierres elles-memes s'agitent 
 pleins d'allegresse a votre arrivee " ; a compliment 
 precisely similar to the lover's in " Maud." We have 
 plenty of this in Arab love-poetry, but what we look 
 for in vain in that poetry is any trace of a conception 
 of love as of something that confers initiation, that is 
 less eager to speak of its own affairs and refer every- 
 thing to itself, than it is to speak of the new meaning 
 and beauty it feels and sees in nature. 
 
 The test of good writing with us is that the writer 
 does not stop at the outward and obvious. Wherever 
 he settles he penetrates, he draws blood. But the 
 
214 IN THE DESERT 
 
 Arab's treatment of all subjects is merely a literal 
 treatment. He judges of everything only as it affects 
 himself. In short, Arab poetry, like all ballad poetry, 
 though direct is hard, though vigorous is matter-of-fact, 
 though sincere is superficial. And these limitations in 
 his poetry are the limitations in the man. The man we 
 have been looking at in Arab poetry, despite all his 
 directness, vigour, and sincerity, is hard, matter-of-fact, 
 and superficial. In conversing with average Europeans 
 one is conscious, as a rule, of no strict mental barrier 
 separating obvious and outward things from the inward 
 and profound. Their minds shade off. You may come 
 pretty quickly to insensibility or indifference, but you 
 do not run your head against a brick wall. With the 
 Arab you do. It is not that he lacks capacity. It is 
 that his allegiance is already enlisted on the side of a 
 merely outward and obvious interpretation of life. A 
 fierce believer in everything that is self-assertive, virile 
 and boldly overbearing, he is an absolute stranger to 
 the idea of self-effacement in any shape or form. What 
 he can pluck by force he takes ; but he has no other 
 idea of conquest. Heaven itself, he thinks, can only 
 be carried sword in hand. 
 
 It is interesting enough to be shown, as Arab poetry 
 shows us, what manner of man it was who carried fire 
 and fury through the world twelve hundred years ago, 
 and who has left behind him on the page of history 
 a mark and an impression so utterly unlike those of any 
 other race of which it bears record. But Arab poetry 
 shows us a great deal more than this. It shows us 
 the Moslem type not only as it existed in Arabia in 
 the days of Mohammed, but as it exists to-day all 
 the world over. 
 
ARAB POETRY 215 
 
 If the reader will imagine himself to be standing in a 
 Ceylon or Indian village, he will probably see come 
 striding through the crowd of slender-limbed, languid 
 natives a great tan-faced Afghan with long, glossy hair 
 and curled moustache, dressed in swinging white 
 garments, with half a dozen crooked knives stuck in his 
 sash. Look at that gait and swagger. Watch those 
 keen glances darting right and left among the crowd. 
 Note the pride and curbed self-assertion of manner, the 
 haughty and arrogant bearing that says as plainly as 
 if the words were spoken, "If thou givest the cup to the 
 noblest, reach it to me ! " You do not need to be told 
 that the man is a Moslem ; you can see it. 
 
 Or stand, as I remember once standing, among the 
 motley crowd of the Constantinople streets, and see 
 a regiment of Turkish cavalry file by. The similarity 
 of type will strike you in a moment. The lean, sinewy 
 figures, the careless, easy seat, the keen, roving glance, 
 the look on each tanned face of fierceness and pride, all 
 these are traits that seem to you familiar, that you can- 
 not mistake. Where did you see that look and bearing 
 before? Why, in the Afghan stalking through the 
 Ceylon bazaar. 
 
 Or, for a third example, come to the craggy hills of 
 Southern Albania, and mix, if but for half an hour, 
 with the armed shepherds, as wild and intractable as 
 their own crags, or as the gaunt dogs which guard their 
 flocks from the wolves, and whose attentions to strangers 
 you are apt to find such a nuisance. You will under- 
 stand from the first glance at the men more of the inter- 
 minable Balkan difficulty than newspapers and books 
 can ever teach you. These are the fellows who swoop 
 down from their peaks on the mixed races of the plains 
 
2i6 IN THE DESERT 
 
 and carry fire and slaughter through village and valley. 
 Their natural aptitude for fighting and foraying, for 
 bearing things with a strong hand, for cowing the weak 
 and feeble, for vindicating the old " might is right " 
 theory, is written all over them. You see it in their gait, 
 glance, walk, and manner, you hear it in every accent 
 of their voice, you feel it in their individuality and 
 presence. 
 
 These are specimens of the Moslem type, the type 
 that stops short at the virile virtues, that makes the 
 best host and worst neighbour in the world, that has 
 many splendid qualities to recommend it, but to which 
 all that makes life profound and inexhaustible is a dead 
 letter. It is the most strongly marked and salient type 
 I have ever met with. There is the Moslem walk, the 
 Moslem scowl, the Moslem courtesy, the Moslem 
 dignity, the Moslem carriage and attitudes and features, 
 the Moslem composure, and the Moslem fury. All 
 these traits and characteristics, inspired by the same 
 temper, expressing the same ideal, conspire to depict 
 a figure so notable that you must be a dull observer 
 indeed if you cannot pick him out from a mixed crowd 
 as you would pick out a Chinaman in the London 
 streets. 
 
 Some people say it is the religion that creates the 
 type. " There," they say of Mohammedanism, " is a 
 religion that breeds men." It would be truer, I think, 
 to say that Mohammedanism recommends itself to men 
 at a certain stage of their development, and has for that 
 stage a natural affinity. Every race goes through a 
 time when the virile estimate of life and the splendour 
 of self-assertion seem the finest things possible. It is at 
 this time it is open to the attack of El Islam. The 
 
ARAB POETRY 217 
 
 Moslem religion answers all its needs at this stage, and 
 lays good hold of it, and having once laid hold of it, it 
 sanctifies the ideas belonging to this stage, and so tends 
 to restrict the race to it. There is no instance on record 
 of a people having embraced Mohammedanism and 
 afterwards achieving a complete, or what gives promise 
 of ever becoming a complete, civilisation. 
 
 For my part I think we may well thank our stars 
 that we, too, when we were passing through the Moslem 
 stage of civilisation, were never caught in the Moslem 
 net. There was a time when it would have suited us 
 well. The ideals of European society in the mediaeval 
 age were the ideals which are the regular Moslem 
 stock-in-trade. The same love of action, the same type 
 of manhood, the same dominating and virile qualities 
 were common to both. The same achievements were 
 held in honour and the same customs recognised. 
 Woman's place in life in feudal or Moslem society, 
 immured in the castle or the harem, was similar. In 
 the usages of chivalry there was the same correspon- 
 dence. The ideas that suited them suited us, and were 
 largely and freely assimilated by us. We know how 
 forcibly Arab poetry influenced the early ballad poetry 
 of Europe. It was, indeed, of precisely the same quality. 
 
 Our crusades and the Arab conquests, again, were 
 events identical in character and perfectly typical of the 
 Moslem stage of civilisation. A simple faith in strength 
 and steel animated both. What sent men crazy about 
 the crusades was not the Holy Sepulchre, but the 
 thought of dedicating the exuberant vitality and energy 
 with which they were overflowing to the service of God. 
 The Holy Sepulchre was the object alleged ; but if it 
 had not been the Holy Sepulchre it would have been 
 
2i8 IN THE DESERT 
 
 something else. What we wanted to do was exactly 
 what the Arabs in their great national irruption wanted 
 to do — we wanted to sanctify and make holy what we 
 most believed in and gloried in. And what we and 
 they most believed in and gloried in was physical 
 strength and courage. Conquests and crusades alike 
 mark an age in which this ideal rules paramount. This 
 was what Arab and Christian both felt to be the best 
 they had to offer and the most worthy heaven. The age 
 of the crusades was, in fact, our Moslem stage of 
 development. It was the age when the ideals of Arab 
 poetry were our ideals, and the standard that satisfied 
 the Arab would have satisfied us. 
 
 It was so long before the special character of Christ- 
 ianity could unfold itself! It lived through so many 
 centuries not by what was best in itself; centuries 
 during which a quite outward religion such as Moham- 
 medanism would, as far as general society was con- 
 cerned, have met all needs. Suppose that our rugged 
 Germanic ancestors, instead of coming in contact with 
 a religion which made it its special business to sanctify 
 the deeper virtues built upon the idea of self-sacrifice, 
 and which managed to entrench itself and hand on to 
 calmer ages the teaching of a faith at that time little 
 understood, round which, as round a central core, might 
 gradually form in successive envelopes a whole system 
 of civilisation, with all its manifold activities, intellectual, 
 imaginative, scientific, all partaking of and working out 
 in their own departments the same quality of inward 
 depth which existed in the central moral idea ; suppose, 
 instead of this happening, we had been met at the 
 outset, as the Turks were met, by a religion which 
 sanctioned all that we then knew of good, but contained 
 
ARAB POETRY 219 
 
 no promise of after-development. Should we not have 
 accepted it? And, having accepted it, should we not 
 have found it a millstone round our necks ever after ? 
 Should we not have been entangled permanently 
 among the ideals of a half-way stage of development ? 
 
 That, at least, is what has happened to all other 
 Moslem races. They have walked gladly into that 
 religion, and, once in it, the key has been turned on 
 them and they have never got any further. Let the 
 reader recall for a moment the figure of Rabiah, the 
 hero of Arab poetry. Match that figure with every 
 Arab celebrity mentioned in history. They are identi- 
 cal. Match it again with types of every race which 
 holds by the strict and orthodox teaching of Moham- 
 medanism to-day. Again they are identical. Now 
 look around, among all these races so rich in warriors, 
 and ask. Where are the leaders in other lines of activity ? 
 Where are the St. Francises in piety, the Wordsworths 
 in poetry, the Newtons in science, the Bacons in 
 philosophy? Where is there a trace of insight or depth, 
 spiritual, imaginative, or intellectual? 
 
 No such trace exists. The energy of Mohammedanism 
 is still merely a militant energy. It has stopped short 
 at the masculine, self-assertive virtues, and every race 
 that has embraced it has stopped short with it. One 
 result of this general stopping short is, of course, the 
 prevalence of a single type, and it is, as I began by 
 saying, one of the great merits of Arab poetry that it 
 reveals this type so clearly. That the poetry was 
 written twelve hundred years ago or more makes not 
 the slightest difference. The type has never changed 
 or varied. The orthodox Moslem of Arab poetry is the 
 orthodox Moslem to-day all the world over. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 The desert religion an incentive and a bond — The Arab as propa- 
 gandist—The sects of Islam — Conservatism of the orthodox 
 faith — The Shiites — Their efforts to infuse emotional depths 
 and warmth into the religion — Fruitlessness of the attempt — 
 What backs up the orthodox party — The influence of the 
 desert — The standard of life it maintains — Mecca the 
 Mohammedan Rome. 
 
 IMMOBILITY is surely the most extraordinary trait 
 of the Arab race. If it is true that all races have 
 their ballad-poetry stage, it is true also that, with most 
 of them, this passes. The poetry of thought succeeds 
 to the poetry of action. The Shakespeares and Words- 
 worths come in their season. But the Arab has 
 remained always in the ballad-poetry stage. The ideals 
 of that stage are the only ones that have ever had any 
 meaning for him. 
 
 In a measure those ideals are indigenous to the 
 country. He who lives in the desert lives in an enemy's 
 land. He makes his way here by force. He must fore- 
 see his needs, forget nothing, and press on to his 
 destination. He must fight with nature for every well 
 and palm-tree he possesses. His whole life is a training 
 in wariness, vigilance, courage, endurance. Such are 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 221 
 
 the qualities called forth by this scenery and which are 
 indispensable to existence in it. But beyond this 
 nothing. The stable conditions which develop social 
 life are altogether wanting. That life is here unknown. 
 The influence it exerts is an unknown influence. And 
 since to these surroundings the Arab has been inured 
 for immeasurable lapses of time, what wonder that the 
 limitation, here so marked, should have become in time 
 a fixed limitation in character, and that the only virtues 
 applicable to such a country should have come to seem 
 to him the only virtues worth having ? 
 
 But the influence of the desert does not stop at the 
 Arab. The desert ideal has become much more than 
 an effect upon a particular race. It has translated itself 
 into a dogma and a creed. It has become a teaching 
 and an idea. It is a bond of union between races in 
 the same stage of development all the world over. 
 And this result it has achieved through the religion it 
 has propagated. 
 
 Mohammedanism gave the Arabs two great things 
 It gave them for the first time a kind of national unity, 
 and it gave them a tremendous incentive to action and 
 conquest. By temperament and precept the Arab is a 
 propagandist. Every movement to-day of any conse- 
 quence that agitates the desert has the spread of Islam 
 at the root of it ; the features of the first great mission 
 are reproduced in miniature in every rising and under 
 every Mahdi in turn. Only whereas these later ebulli- 
 tions are sporadic, and agitate only scattered and 
 weakened tribes, the original outburst was a solid 
 national effort, towards which the Arab race had been 
 concentrating its strength for centuries. In that effort 
 the desert delivered its shock and scattered its seed. 
 
222 IN THE DESERT 
 
 Its religion was carried east and west through the 
 world, but the exertion drained the desert itself of its 
 store of energy. Apparently Arab nationality was 
 forged and cast for the delivery of one tremendous 
 blow, and having delivered that blow it collapsed. 
 
 And yet, spent and exhausted as it seems, the 
 remarkable thing is that the birthplace of the faith 
 still exercises a distinct influence over the creed it 
 propagated ; still watches over it and guards it and 
 protects it. 
 
 Mohammedanism was not everywhere accepted with- 
 out protest, nor was it everywhere persevered in without 
 some attempted modifications. Matthew Arnold, in 
 his essay on a Persian Passion Play, speaks of the 
 " fierce and militant " character of the faith. " It is 
 not a feeling religion," he truly says. " No one would 
 say that the virtues of gentleness, mildness, and self- 
 sacrifice were its virtues ; and the more it went on the 
 more the faults of its original narrow basis became 
 visible, more and more it became fierce and militant, 
 less and less was it amiable." The Arab possesses no 
 impulses that can respond to gentleness and mildness, 
 while he has a vivid appreciation of everything fierce 
 and militant. It is in accordance with the character 
 of the race, therefore, that these latter qualities in the 
 religion of Mohammed should have been developed, 
 and that the gentler ones should drop out of sight. 
 Offer the Arab any religion, and the same modifications 
 would occur ; the fiercer traits would grow and expand, 
 well nourished by the soil, until they altogether eclipsed 
 and crowded out the gentler ones which received no 
 nourishment at all. 
 
 But if the tendency of the Arab was to develop the 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 223 
 
 sterner side of his religion, the tendency of some other 
 races was to lay stress on whatever there was of gentle- 
 ness and mildness in it, and even to add to this. In 
 the essay I have already quoted from the touching 
 story is told of the martyrdom of the grandchildren 
 of the Prophet. Matthew Arnold dwells on the gentle- 
 ness and self-renunciation of these pathetic figures, 
 whose spirit of meek endurance is so unlike that 
 of the usual strenuous soldier-saint of Islam, and he 
 speaks of the warmer current of emotion which the 
 sanctification of their story tended to introduce into 
 the colder and harder parent stream of Moham- 
 medanism. 
 
 No doubt the story does form an exception in Islam 
 traditions, and the dwelling on it and development of it 
 into a religious ceremonial is a kind of protest against 
 Mohammedan austerity. But who was it who felt the 
 need of this protest ? It was not the Arabs, but pre- 
 eminently the more sedentary, more peaceable, and 
 more civilised Persians, who sanctified the story ; who 
 seized upon it and made it a part of their religion. 
 And not only that, but who made it by far the most 
 revered and cherished part, and a part that appealed to 
 them more intimately and touched them more closely 
 than any of the precepts of Islam. It was they who 
 lingered over all that was moving and pathetic in the 
 legend, and who elaborated it into those Passion Plays 
 which excite such enthusiasm and attract such sym- 
 pathising and deeply-stirred multitudes. Moreover, 
 these dramas are constantly tending to enlarge their 
 boundaries. Other incidents and stories of the same 
 emotional character are introduced, which are com- 
 monly taken from Christian tradition, or the Bible, 
 
224 IN THE DESERT 
 
 where they are to be found in greater abundance 
 than in the bleak history of Islam. ^ 
 
 I should soon lose myself if I were to try and dis- 
 entangle the various heresies and sects of the faith ; 
 but I imagine that the same endeavour to supply 
 emotional warmth was at the root of most of the 
 innovations. The Mohammedan religion, as the reader 
 probably knows, is split into the two main bodies of 
 the Sunnite and Shi'ite sects. Of these the Sunnite is 
 the orthodox sect and represents the centre of Moham- 
 medanism. And the distinctive note of it is that it 
 rejects and repels all attempts to soften and enrich the 
 faith by working up the emotional side of it. On the 
 other hand, the Shiites are heretics. They have little 
 in common with the austere Sunnites. They prevail 
 outside the Arab nation, and especially in Persia, 
 though there is a tendency for the more educated 
 and cultured Moslems to be of this sect in all nations. 
 And the point on which, under various shapes and 
 guises, they are always insisting, and their insistence 
 on which drives them into heresy, is the need which, 
 from their point of view, exists for impregnating and 
 suffusing the faith with emotional warmth and feeling. 
 
 The sanctity surrounding the persons of the Caliph 
 Ali and the martyrs of Kerbela, which forms the 
 subject of the Persian plays, is a main tenet of the 
 Shiites. But their work of innovation did not stop 
 there. Sufism has been another influence of the same 
 kind which has been especially fathered by the sect. 
 Professor Guyard defines Sufism as the mystical ele- 
 ment in the Moslem religion, and he says, " Mysticism 
 is rather a way of practising religion than a distinct 
 ' See Appendix, Note F. 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 225 
 
 religion in itself; it depends on the temperament of 
 the believer and is able to accommodate itself to any 
 dogma. Tender and dreamy souls are particularly 
 drawn to it. And so it is that we find among the 
 Mussulmans that it is a woman who has the credit of 
 having initiated Sufism." 
 
 This woman, who took the first step towards steeping 
 the new religion in the tender and dreamy light of 
 mysticism, was named Rabia. She lived in the first 
 century of the Hegira, and her tomb is still visited at 
 Jerusalem. " Her doctrine," says Professor Guyard, 
 " was simply the theory of divine love. She taught that 
 God alone is worthy to be loved, and that we must 
 make an act of sacrifice of everything pertaining to this 
 world to Him, in the hope of one day being reunited to 
 Him in the world to come." This idea of self-efface- 
 ment in the contemplation of the Eternal brought the 
 new sect into touch with the Gnostics. Gnostic thought 
 had, as we should have expected, already made itself at 
 home in the Shiite party. Accordingly, for that party 
 Sufism had a double recommendation. It had the 
 recommendation that it was a teaching of pure love 
 and absolute self-surrender, and it had the recommenda- 
 tion that it was allied in principle with a philosophy 
 which was already familiar. The natural result was 
 that Sufism identified itself closely with the Shi'ite 
 heresy, and made particularly rapid progress in Persia, 
 where that heresy had its home. 
 
 Here, then, are two clearly distinguishable and rival 
 influences at work in Mohammedanism. One an ex- 
 pansive influence, an influence bent on harmonising the 
 new religion with the subtleties and depths of the 
 human mind and human spirit, and which welcomes 
 
 16 
 
226 IN THE DESERT 
 
 to that end the mystical visions of the Gnostics, the 
 absorption of self in the Infinite as taught in the 
 doctrines of Sufism, and a passionate love and devotion 
 to saints and martyrs ; the other intensely conservative 
 and bent on maintaining the faith in all its rigorous 
 and cold monotheism. The two influences are quite 
 distinct from each other, and a certain method in their 
 distribution is apparent. Wherever conditions favour- 
 able to barbarism prevail, there the sterner sect pre- 
 dominates. Wherever more civilised conditions are 
 found, there the party of expansion has influence. 
 
 Throughout India Mohammedanism has completely 
 changed its character. It has been impregnated and 
 soaked by the converted population in the rites and 
 legends of their ancient faith until Mohammed himself 
 would not recognise it. This is particularly the case 
 throughout the plains. In Sind, the Punjab, and 
 Kashmir some of the old primitive vigour still survives, 
 and plays and flickers freely about the great rampart 
 of the north-west frontier. North of this the sterile, 
 waterless hills of Beloochistan and Afghanistan's almost 
 inaccessible mountains afford it the kind of foothold it 
 needs, and it flourishes among the deserts of Eastern 
 Turkestan and the desolate steppes of Samarkand and 
 Bokhara. 
 
 In the east, then, the haunts of orthodoxy are those 
 isolated and remote states which form part of, or lie 
 adjacent to, the lonely region which is known as the 
 Roof of the World. Further west it comes under the 
 protection of a race which, like the founders of the 
 faith themselves, has never been able to advance far 
 along the path of progress or to shake off" altogether 
 the instincts of barbarism, the Turks. Between, how- 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 227 
 
 ever, the semi-barbarous Asian states and the semi- 
 barbarous Turkish Empire lies Persia — Persia, old in 
 civilisation and religion centuries before this new faith 
 had ever been heard of. The raw, external religion of 
 Mohammed, with its fierce insistence on action and 
 outward things, its lack of depth and gentleness, and 
 what Christians call grace, might satisfy the shepherds 
 of the Oxus or the nomads of the Pamirs, but it 
 entirely failed to meet adequately the Persian con- 
 ception of life, and Persia has remained in consequence 
 the hotbed of all those innovations of which we have 
 been speaking. 
 
 In short, in a glance from east to west over the whole 
 region traversed by Arab influence, let your eye seek 
 out those spots naturally rude and barbarous, the moun- 
 tain fastnesses of the Balkans in the west or of the 
 Himalayas in the east, the deserts of Africa, Arabia, 
 or Turkestan ; there, where advance in civilisation is 
 slow or impossible, is where primitive Mohammedanism 
 flourishes. These are the strongholds of orthodoxy. 
 In the very types that accept the sterner faith there 
 is an extraordinary similarity. They are all framed 
 on the same model. They are all emphatically men. 
 They have the virile virtues — pride, courage, courtesy, a 
 natural independence, warlike instincts. But you are no 
 sooner among them than you feel a something lacking. 
 They have not an atom of real inward depth, not a trace 
 of that quality in the mind which answers to grace in 
 the spirit. To associate with them is to be made 
 vividly conscious of what a real and terrible want the 
 humanising and liberalising sects have been all these 
 centuries struggling to make good. 
 
 All religions have a tendency to expand and become 
 
228 IN THE DESERT 
 
 modified by time to answer to wider and more subtle 
 spiritual and intellectual needs, and there is nothing 
 extraordinary, therefore, in the efforts of the Shi'ites to 
 expand Mohammedanism. On the contrary, it was a 
 natural and inevitable process, the more natural and 
 inevitable when we remember the original coldness 
 and narrowness of the creed. What is, I think, ex- 
 traordinary is that this tendency should have been 
 so sternly and successfully resisted. Not its desire to 
 expand but its refusal to expand is the peculiarity of the 
 faith. One seems to be aware here of an influence at 
 work more reliable and dependable than the human 
 mind and human intelligence. How comes it that cen- 
 tral Mohammedanism, the orthodox party, as it has the 
 right by numbers and influence to call itself, has main- 
 tained so consistent and successful a resistance to the 
 natural widening and completer application to life of its 
 doctrines? By what authority has it been enabled to 
 repel the liberalising tendency at all points ? What is 
 it that gives to Mohammedan conservatism its tre- 
 mendous consistency and endurance? It pretends to 
 no infallibility, and yet it maintains a unity which, one 
 fancies, it never could have derived from so changeful a 
 source as the human mind, and which gives it an 
 authoritative air resembling certainly in some degree 
 the aspect of the Roman Catholic Church. 
 
 The fact is that if Mohammedanism has not got 
 infallibility it has something that, up to a certain point, 
 supplies the place of it. It has, in the desert, a tre- 
 mendous influence, physical only and natural it is true, 
 but permanent and unchanging, to back it up. The 
 desert not only conceived and launched the ^Moslem 
 faith on the world, but it keeps watch and ward over it 
 

 
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MOHAMMEDANISM 229 
 
 still. It is the desert which maintains the obdurate 
 orthodoxy of primitive belief. It is from the desert 
 that the heat waves occasionally issue which reanimate 
 the old dogmas. It is to the desert that yearly pilgrim- 
 ages bring hosts of the faithful from all parts of the 
 earth to reimmerse themselves in the original enthu- 
 siasm. It is to the desert that the thoughts of all Mos- 
 lems turn when, facing towards Mecca, they prostrate 
 themselves in prayer. The sanctification of Mecca was 
 a master-thought. The drawing together of believers to 
 one spot, the concentration of the Mohammedan mind 
 on this spot, must, one would suppose, facilitate a cer- 
 tain agreement and a certain unity. Only it is essential 
 that this spot should possess a definite character of its 
 own, and be capable of exercising a definite influence. 
 Mecca does this. It is not only the capital of a religion, 
 it is the capital of the desert. The local influence here 
 is tremendous. To be in the desert oneself and among 
 Arabs is to be at once conscious of it. There is here, in 
 nature and in man, a spirit fierce and strenuous, but 
 narrow and bigoted ; a spirit strong to impose its own 
 rigid and zealous will, but inflexible, and as it were 
 cast in an iron mould. 
 
 Every one who has been in the desert must be more 
 or less conscious of this influence of the place, and every 
 one who has read accounts of the great pilgrimages will 
 be able to form a faint idea of the tremendous power 
 and dominion which this spirit has over masses of men. 
 Mecca, in a word, is the centre of a very narrow and 
 limited, but, just because limited, distinct and well- 
 defined influence. It is this influence which the sancti- 
 fication of the city imposes on the faithful, and which, 
 in fact, constitutes in their imaginations what Christians 
 
230 IN THE DESERT 
 
 call the odour of sanctity. It is to this influence that 
 in pilgrimage and prayer they constantly submit them- 
 selves ; and consequently it is this influence which 
 comes to exert over the faith a certain control and 
 which ensures a kind of unity. 
 
 It is difficult to imagine that any other region in 
 which the spirit of Mohammedanism may be said 
 naturally to dwell ever could have fulfilled this role. 
 Others, one can easily suppose, might have given birth 
 to such a creed. What nobler nursery could it have 
 had than the tremendous mountain system that 
 girdles North India? Here, in that fierce and lonely 
 isolation, is the atmosphere, here is' the temper and 
 spirit of Mohammedanism. 
 
 But to breed or foster an idea is one thing, to propa- 
 gate it is another. The spirit of the great mountain 
 groups is an isolated and self-contained spirit. Moun- 
 tains retain their children, locked in their embrace ; the 
 desert pours forth its brood into the world. There is 
 much likeness in the essential temper of the two. Each 
 fosters a direct, virile view of life, and brings into 
 prominence those virtues which make for immediate 
 personal efficiency, and so yields plentifully the kind 
 of nutriment that the Moslem religion thrives on. But 
 the desert as a centre of the faith has this decisive 
 advantage, that its character is exactly the reverse of 
 self-contained. Its impulse constantly is to expand 
 or explode, to overflow its own boundaries, to rush 
 forth and scatter itself through the world. 
 
 Travelling once on the Upper Nile, in days when 
 Wady Haifa was the front, they showed me the slopes 
 along the river at Toski where we fought Wad el 
 Negoumi in 1889. The Arab leader evaded Wady 
 
MOHAMMEDANISM 231 
 
 Haifa and marched south by the hills, and the English 
 boys who told me the tale brought out their Nubians 
 and gave chase along the river, knowing he must 
 strike water at last, like a deer, to soil. At Toski he 
 swept down upon them, and a mound between the 
 trees on the river bank is where they buried him. 
 What adds interest to the incident is that Negoumi 
 had issued what we should call a "proclamation" an- 
 nouncing that he was about to purge not Egypt only 
 of the unbeliever, but that all Europe should be made 
 to yield to Moslem arms and the Moslem faith. That 
 is the desert's accent, and it is an accent that every 
 great propagator of Islam has caught. It is the voice of 
 Kaled or of Omar, and had Negoumi's adversaries been 
 as theirs, the same result might have ensued. It needs 
 but a certain measure of weakness, or degeneration, in 
 the surrounding powers to put the activity of the desert 
 into effective operation. The gap between the fall and 
 rise of Roman and European civilisation was the great 
 opportunity of the race. In our day the weakness of 
 Egypt in the Nile valley, and the withdrawal of France's 
 Algerian army in 1870, have been its two chances ; and 
 it showed itself as ready to profit by them as ever. 
 The tribes have weakened, but have changed little in 
 character during the last thousand years. The fiery 
 desert spirit is all for expanding and overflowing. It 
 is as anxious as ever it was to put down dissent and 
 carry its Koran through the world. 
 
 This is what, it seems to me, gives the desert its 
 advantage over all other naturally Moslem regions. 
 It is the desert alone which is capable of setting up 
 and maintaining the connection between detached 
 fragments of Mohammedanism. I forget how that 
 
232 IN THE DESERT 
 
 familiar saying, " If the mountain will not come to 
 Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain " 
 originated, but it seems to sum up neatly enough 
 the part the desert has played in the propagation and 
 maintenance of the faith. It was because the desert 
 could go to the mountain, while the mountain could not 
 go to the desert, that the desert was able to assert 
 its place as the common binding link between those 
 centres of the Moslem spirit whose natural isolation 
 it has overcome. It is this that makes Mecca the 
 Rome of the Mohammedan world. 
 
 Only with a difference. The unity, such as it is, of 
 Mohammedanism is obtained at the price of one of 
 the two things that make a religion efficient, its power 
 of adaptability to the needs of m.an. The test of 
 orthodoxy is the fiercely literal view of life which the 
 desert so unvaryingly maintains. Beyond that it can- 
 not go. Let those satisfied with such a view come 
 to it and accept its standard. Never will that standard 
 change, never more especially will it admit one of 
 those deeper thoughts of gentleness or self-sacrifice 
 which are heresies to the desert life before they are 
 heresies to the desert religion. It is this inability to 
 expand, to open up the depths in the human mind 
 and spirit, which seems to mark it as so hopelessly 
 sterile. The immobility of the desert itself seems to 
 rest on the Moslem religion. It keeps a certain consist- 
 ency, but it produces nothing. It is durable, but it is 
 barren. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 KAIRWAN 
 
 Approach to the town — An ideal bathe — Arab roads — Aspect of 
 Kairwan — LoneHness and desolation of its surroundings — 
 The beginnings of the city — Choice of a site — Early miracles 
 — Warlike character of the town — Its luxury and culture — 
 Fanaticism of the town — Early visits and reports — Violation 
 of the sanctuary — French occupation — A broken spell. 
 
 THE night before reaching Kairwan we camped 
 on the banks of what for North Africa might 
 be called an important river. Its bed occupied a 
 width of several hundred yards, and was composed 
 of dry white shingle interspersed with strips and clumps 
 of evergreen which formed dark green islands in the 
 midst of it. This wide white bed was conspicuous 
 enough, but the current was more difficult to find. 
 At last, parting the leaves of a thick covert of oleander, 
 1 came upon a narrow stream, ankle-deep and a few 
 feet wide, all that was left of a flood which during 
 the winter rains evidently swelled to a furious torrent 
 capable of tearing up shrubs and bushes and whirling 
 along rocks. 
 
 We had seen no natural stream since the El Fedala 
 ushered us into the desert. Now I sat down and 
 
 watched the water that came running and dancing 
 
 233 
 
234 IN THE DESERT 
 
 towards me. Its whiteness bore testimony to the 
 limestone masonry of those blue ramparts in the north. 
 I could trace it a long way in that direction, its bright 
 threads of water, for it often broke into many streamlets, 
 glistening among the white stones and making a net- 
 work on the flats of sand. Its murmur and motion 
 as it came dancing and singing along were inconceivably 
 pleasant after these weeks of the desert. After a while I 
 undressed and lay me down and let the white creamy 
 water run over me, and cuddled down upon the smooth 
 stones, like Keats's minnows that — 
 
 " Nestle 
 Their silver bellies on the pebbly sand " ; 
 
 and felt the heat and fatigue and stains of desert 
 travel washed away by the cool and cleansing current. 
 
 This ideal bath I looked upon as the right Moslem 
 preparation for entrance into the holy city. It is 
 advisable, indeed, for several reasons, to approach 
 Kairwan as we did, from the south. Most of the few 
 v people who visit it come by railway from Tunis. Such 
 
 a transition, however, from a bustling and cosmopolitan 
 port to this worn-out, solemn old place, which has 
 never had any thought but religion, and whose fallen 
 fortunes seem symbolic of so much more than its 
 own decay, is altogether too abrupt for initiation. 
 One should come into Kairwan from the desert, trail- 
 ing some of those gradually-gleaned impressions and 
 ideas, wanting which the sacred city is as closed to 
 strangers to-day as ever it was. 
 
 There is much that is appropriate in the position 
 and surroundings of Kairwan as a holy city of Islam. 
 It stands in a greatly lonely and desolate plain, a plain 
 sprinkled with a few sparse tufts of sage brush, and 
 
KAIRWAN 235 
 
 with scarcely a sign of man's presence to be seen for 
 hours of riding on its vast expanse. Great roads 
 lead towards the city. Roads that have carried the 
 pilgrimages of many centuries and are padded and 
 worn by the feet of countless generations of worshippers. 
 Venerable roads, yet still retaining, somehow, more 
 the character of the runs of animals than the regular 
 and permanent tracks of human beings. 
 
 That one we came in from the desert by was in 
 many places, perhaps, two or three hundred yards 
 wide. Hardly could you call it one road. It was a 
 compound of a great many little paths. In some places 
 these tended to unite and combine to make a single 
 track of it ; in others they unravelled and fell apart 
 like a lose skein of thread. If they joined, it was 
 accident and blind contact that did it. There was no 
 intention to make a road. 
 
 The weary plain and these worn tracks, the distant 
 hills, and in the midst of the plain the domes of the 
 sacred city, made me think of the approach to Rome. 
 But this is far sadder. The feeling here is not of 
 venerable antiquity, but of desolation. The thought 
 of an influence still exerting itself, a heart beating 
 in the midst of all this antiquity, is wanting. The 
 place is very melancholy and lifeless. Along these . , 
 much-worn roadways are no osterie, or rest-houses, 
 for the refreshment of travellers. No mule carts 
 laden with sacks or wine barrels jog along on their 
 way to the town. No groups of drivers and peasants 
 gather at tables in the plane shade. A long way off 
 the hills rise out of the plain, with that solemn clean- 
 cut outline never to be dissociated from Africa ; but 
 there is no glint of white villages on their blue slopes. 
 
236 IN THE DESERT 
 
 The sun rises in clear unclouded air, and as I look 
 across the landscape suddenly revealed, for dawn here is 
 like the drawing of a curtain, it seems to me that it ex- 
 presses the same vacancy and emptiness that is in the sky. 
 
 Such desolation seems sadder here than elsewhere. 
 One misses instinctively the signs of security and 
 peace that should surround an ancient citadel of religion. 
 
 The soil is not altogether unfertile, nor unwatered. 
 Streams and torrents have brought down some of the 
 earth from those hills and spread it over the plain, 
 and in the beds of some of them water still flows. 
 The fault is not in nature ; more likely, I fancy, it 
 is in the character and practice of that stern faith 
 which has never known how to set any value on the 
 duties of citizenship. It was impossible not to read 
 in this melancholy waste, this loneliness, this sterility, 
 a comment on that creed whose sanctuary these 
 things had come to embrace and surround. 
 
 The tomb of Okba ibn Nefi stands in the desert at no 
 great distance from Biskra. It bears an inscription 
 which in one sentence expresses for us that spirit of 
 greatness that lasted among the Arabs for so brief 
 an interval: "This is the tomb of Okba ibn Nefi. 
 May God have mercy upon him." 
 
 Okba was a great soldier, and, what among Moslems 
 is pretty much the same thing, a great saint ; but he 
 was also, as Kairwan proves, and which is much rarer 
 among the Arabs, something of a statesman. He 
 divined exactly in what the strength of Arab character 
 consisted, and what were the best means, or only hope, 
 of bracing and sustaining it and giving it the stability 
 it lacked. Thanks to this clear knowledge, he was able 
 to found a city which was as terrible as it was holy 
 
KAIRWAN 237 
 
 and as much feared as it was reverenced ; which poured 
 forth its conquering armies into Spain and Italy and 
 Sicily ; which was a menace for centuries to all the 
 South of Europe, and of which to-day very few people, 
 even among the educated, have ever heard the name. 
 
 Kairwan was founded in 670. It was intended to 
 be a great garrison town, a rallying point for the 
 strength of Islamism in Africa. " Neither was it, they 
 say," writes Leo Africanus, the Arab historian, " built 
 for any other purpose but that the Arabian army might 
 securely rest therein." The difficulties and risks of 
 campaigning in North Africa with Egypt for a base 
 had taught the Arabs the need of a great military 
 depot somewhere midway along its extent, and Kair- 
 wan was the answer to that need. The choice of the 
 site, however, and the process of foundation seem to 
 have depended entirely on Okba. Leo expressly says 
 that it was he who " persuaded the citizens of Tunis 
 that no army or garrison ought to remain in any sea 
 town." This point he carried, and the new city was 
 founded 120 miles south of Tunis, and thirty to forty 
 from the Gulf of Gabes. When he had reached the 
 proper spot, Okba struck the butt of his long lance into 
 the ground, which is still the habit of chiefs when 
 choosing their camping-ground, and cried to his men, 
 " Here is your Kairwan " ; meaning here was their 
 caravanserai, or resting-place, and naming in the word 
 the future town. 
 
 This condition of an inland and secluded site was a 
 vital one. The Arabs are those people who mix worst 
 with the world, and who most quickly lose their 
 strength of character when blended with other races. 
 A seaport is fatal to them. In securing this lonely 
 
238 IN THE DESERT 
 
 position Okba secured the first great condition neces- 
 sary to his city's greatness. Kairwan felt the advantage 
 of it all through her history. She kept to the end 
 something of the fierce, fanatic spirit which is the 
 spring of Arab action. The Arab cities of the coast 
 quickly lost their character. Such towns of theirs as 
 existed in the desert or on the margin of it — as Zinder 
 and Timbuktu in the south, Tuggurt and Biskra in the 
 north — were merely trading centres, built where the 
 caravan routes converged towards the Sudan or the 
 northern settlements. They embodied nothing of that 
 fiery spirit which for a brief space made the Arab so 
 irresistible. Kairwan alone of the cities of North Africa 
 engrossed that spirit and with it a certain strength and 
 durability. 
 
 But other influences came to foster it. War and 
 sanctity are twin instincts with the Arab. Religion 
 as they understand it is vindicated and propagated by 
 war ; war is inspired and sanctified by religion. The 
 Arab is not able to separate the two in his mind, and so 
 it is quite appropriate that a city formed for war should 
 have become invested with a peculiarly sacred character. 
 
 Indeed, religion was on the scene as soon as her ally. 
 Miracles rocked the cradle of Kairwan. It is narrated 
 that a thick jungle in those days clothed this plain, and 
 that Okba's men were scared by the number of wild 
 beasts and serpents. Thereupon Okba, " whose inter- 
 cession," says Novairi, " was all-powerful with the 
 Divine Being," addressed himself thus to the wild 
 beasts, his warriors seconding his words with earnest 
 amens : " Oh, you serpents and savage beasts, be it 
 known to you that we are the companions of the 
 Prophet of Allah. Depart from the place we have 
 
KAIRWAN 239 
 
 chosen to establish ourselves in. Should we find any 
 of you henceforth on this spot ye shall be put to 
 death ; " upon which the offending animals immediately 
 began to depart, and " the Mussulmans saw with 
 astonishment, during the whole day, the venomous 
 reptiles and ferocious beasts retreating far away, and 
 carrying with them their young, a miracle which con- 
 verted a great number of Berbers to Islamism." 
 
 The same divine sanction attended the foundation 
 of the Great Mosque. There being a doubt and diffi- 
 culty as to the correct Orientation of the mosque, Okba 
 dreamed a dream ; and in his dream a voice spoke 
 to him, saying : " When the morning shall have come, 
 take the Standard, place it on thy shoulder; thou shalt 
 hear before thee a recital of the Tekbir unheard by 
 any but thee ; the place where the prayer will end is 
 the spot chosen for the Kibleh, there place in the 
 mosque the holy niche for the Imam." Okba carried 
 out these instructions. He shouldered the banner, 
 heard and followed the voice, inaudible to other ears, 
 and, at the spot where it ceased, marked the sacred 
 niche which directs the gaze of the faithful towards 
 Mecca. Of all the Kiblehs of North Africa this one 
 has to this day a peculiar prestige. It is common in 
 most mosques for the Imam when praying to turn a 
 little to this side or that of the Kibleh, as though to V' 
 correct a slight inaccuracy in the indicated direction. 
 None venture, however, to take such liberties with 
 Okba's mosque. The Imam there invariably faces 
 straight towards the niche which was so wonderfully 
 revealed. When all is borne in mind that Kairwan 
 owes its founder, the choice of the site, the early 
 miracles, its religious and warlike prestige, it will be 
 
240 IN THE DESERT 
 
 agreed that a city has seldom been more indebted 
 to the exertions of one man than Kairwan was to Okba. 
 
 Thus was established the holiness and sanctity which 
 grew with the city's growth, until the religious con- 
 sciousness of the whole of North Africa concentrated 
 itself on Kairwdn. Many legends and traditions stimu- 
 lated this enthusiasm and curiosity. One was that the 
 stones of which the Great Mosque was built had found 
 their way to their places without aid of mortal hands. 
 Another was that a certain pair of superb columns 
 which embellish the mihrab were so miraculously 
 adjusted that no person with the taint of mortal sin 
 upon him could pass between them. What, however, 
 decisively raised Kairwan to the rank of a holy city 
 and place of pilgrimage was the burial here of Abdullah 
 ibn Zemaa, the Companion of the Prophet. He lies 
 buried with three hairs from the Prophet's beard, which 
 were his talisman living, now interred with him dead ; 
 one under hrs tongue, another under his right arm, the 
 third upon his heart. 
 
 The sanctity and influence of this stronghold of the 
 faith are thus described by Guerin in i860: " Les 
 caravans qui s'y rendent constamment de tous les 
 points de la Tunisie viennent s'y retremper en quelque 
 sorte dans I'lslamisme ; sa Grande Mosquee ... est 
 sans cesse visitee avec un profond respect par les 
 adeptes du Goran, les sanctuaires de ses santons sont 
 egalement le but de pelerinages frequents; tout cela 
 entretient dans I'esprit des masses un fanatisme que 
 rien jusqu'ici n'a pu affaiblir." 
 
 Meantime every advance in holiness was registered 
 in a corresponding growth of militarism. Half the 
 great feats of arms of North Africa seem to have 
 
KAIRWAN 241 
 
 emanated from Kairwan. We in Europe have good 
 reason to remember Tarik, who marched an army from 
 here to the invasion of Spain ; to whom Granada, 
 Cordova, and Toledo yielded their gates, and who 
 has stood godfather to that most important of all 
 British rocks — the Rock of Tarik, Djebel Tarik or 
 Gibr-al-Tar. Numbers of the Moors when they were 
 finally evicted from Europe returned to their holy city, 
 and it is said that still in many Moorish homes in 
 Kairwdn there hangs the antique key that once opened 
 a door in Spain. 
 
 I need not enter into the city's exploits. She sent 
 frequent expeditions into Italy and Sicily, she captured 
 Malta, she founded several towns along the Tunisian 
 coast, and besieged and took Tunis. Her armies 
 ravaged Lombardy, took Genoa, and dominated Sicily. 
 All her power and splendour seem to have culminated 
 in the eleventh century, when, according to Richard 
 Ford, the city held 300 mosques, 900 baths, 600 cara- 
 vanserai, and a million inhabitants. In luxury and 
 refinement it rivalled Cordova and Granada. Philo- 
 sophers, poets, mathematicians, and all those various 
 architects who combined to build up the many-coloured 
 dream of Arab civilisation, spread its fame in literature 
 and science. Its writers have handed down to us the 
 memory of the olive groves and orange gardens, with 
 rills of water murmuring in their shade, which once sur- 
 rounded the city and turned it into an earthly paradise. 
 
 There is something fascinating to the imagination in 
 the growth of this lonely and isolated city, which seems 
 to have courted with care and forethought all the 
 circumstances that would be fatal to the prosperity of 
 a civilised town. If such prosperity usually depends 
 
 17 
 
242 IN THE DESERT 
 
 on a central position and facilities in trade and com- 
 merce, the success of a Moslem town depends on 
 exactly opposite conditions. Algiers is an instance of 
 the fate of an Arab town that opens up relations with 
 the world. What the Arab spirit demands, if it is to 
 retain any of its virtue, is absolute seclusion and isola- 
 tion. Endow the Arab city with every advantage that 
 a town can have, and it falls to cureless ruin. Handi- 
 cap it with the most overwhelming disadvantages, and 
 it grows and flourishes. Here at Kairwan, remote from 
 human intercourse, gathered and concentrated, as time 
 passed, the dregs of that fierce, militant zeal which had 
 carried the current so far. And still as it shrank and 
 diminished, bitterer, as the condensing pool grows Salter, 
 became its fanaticism and intolerance, more closely, 
 strictly, and jealously did it guard itself from the 
 approach of the world. 
 
 This seclusion is the note of orthodox Mohamme- 
 danism. It is as safe to track a tiger to its lair as a 
 Moslem to his sanctuary. Mecca and Medina, as they 
 are the only places that excel Kairwan in piety, so 
 they are the only two where a stranger's presence was 
 more savagely resented. Kairwan retained its intoler- 
 ance intact almost to the last moment. In 1830 Sir 
 Grenville Temple, with the help of a strong escort and 
 carrying an order from the Bey, managed to pass 
 hurriedly through its streets. He calls the town the 
 " hotbed of all the bigotry of Mohammedanism in 
 Africa." He was only allowed to go out after sunset, 
 and then disguised as an Arab, and there were some 
 parts of the town that he might not enter lest he should 
 be torn to pieces. Ten years later the Marquis of 
 Waterford's attempt at exploration ended in his being 
 
KAIRWAn 243 
 
 stoned and nearly killed by the townsmen. Dr. Tris- 
 tram, in 1857, explored much of the country south of 
 the Atlas, but he did not venture to enter Kairwan, 
 though he passed near it. Even down to 1877 there 
 were many formalities and some risk attending a visit. 
 Edward Rae describes his expedition in that year ; the 
 suspicion, dislike, and occasional rage which his appear- 
 ance excited, and the threats and insults which were now 
 and then lavished on him, guest of theKaid though he was. 
 
 Five years later the French army in three columns 
 converged upon the city. From the accounts written 
 at the time by the French officers it is evident that a 
 strong resistance was expected. The army was, how- 
 ever, too strong. The city lies in a plain. It is easy to 
 surround, and a force once entrapped in it could never 
 make good its escape. The Arab horsemen accordingly 
 abandoned it before the troops could reach it, and fell 
 back upon the hills. Summoned to surrender, the city 
 calmly opened its gates. A white flag fluttered from 
 the great tower of Okba's mosque, and, in solemn silence, 
 for the first time since the foundation of the city 1,212 
 years before, a Christian force filed through its streets. 
 
 Such is the character of a Moslem metropolis — fiercely ^_y 
 aggressive in its prime, fiercely exclusive in its decline. 
 It is in keeping with the nature of the place that, once 
 violated, its sacred character should have fallen from 
 it. Exclusiveness with the Arabs not only guards 
 sanctity, it is sanctity. Guerin more than fifty years 
 ago described the peculiar inviolability of this town, 
 which had " remained virgin to the contact of any faith 
 but that of Okba." And he adds, " hence" and I under- 
 line the word, " the sort of holy and mysterious aureole 
 with which the Mussulman religion surrounds it." But, 
 
244 IN THE DESERT 
 
 once the French had occupied the place, it was in Arab 
 eyes desecrated. The mosques of the cities of Tunisia 
 are, as a rule, very jealously guarded. A stranger may 
 with difficulty enter any of them. But there is one 
 exception. The mosques of Kairwan, the most sacred 
 of all, are open to all comers. Rae, whose visit took 
 place in 1877, tells how he once suggested entering the 
 Great Mosque to a group of idlers who were seated at 
 one of its gates, and whom his own urbanity had appar- 
 ently put into a good humour, and he describes the 
 snarl of hatred which the proposition met with and 
 the instant preparation for resistance. Any visitor may 
 enter now as he wills, and no Arab will trouble to turn 
 his head. It was, I believe, a stipulation of the French 
 Government that the mosque should be open. But the 
 entire indifference of the people proves how much its 
 character is shaken. That "holy and mysterious 
 aureole " which used to surround it has faded since 
 strangers have been allowed entrance. It was holy 
 because it typified the fierce isolation of the race. Not 
 the miracles of its Great Mosque, not the sacred tomb 
 of the Companion, but the fact that never in all these 
 centuries, except by stealth and at peril of his life, had 
 an unbeliever set foot within its walls, was what vouched 
 in the eyes of Moslems for its high sanctity. On the 
 day when the French army entered the town three- 
 quarters of this sanctity departed. The tomb and 
 mosque remain. They guard their miracles and sacred 
 relics still, but they no longer symbolise to the Arab 
 that lonely and strict seclusion in which lies, as Okba 
 knew so well when he founded Kairwan, the secret of 
 his strength and stamina ; and accordingly their glory 
 has departed from them. Kairwan is a broken spell. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 ARAB ARCHITECTURE 
 
 The romance of the Arabs — Quality of their architecture — The 
 early mosques — Difference between Moorish and Arab 
 architecture — The Great Mosque — Fine effect of the 
 whole — Slovenliness of detail — Indistinct arches — Arab and 
 Gothic architecture compared — The Arab lack of purpose — 
 Quality of his masonry — Decorative design — Corresponding 
 mannerisms in life — Arab crowds and streets compared to 
 English — Fickleness of the desert. 
 
 A CHARM and enchantment clings to everything 
 Arab. Taking Europe's history as a whole, the 
 events of it all seem natural and commonplace with one 
 exception ; and that exception is the Arab invasion. 
 This is bathed in an atmosphere and a light of its own. 
 Wild legends and ballads are its only histories. Dark 
 eyes and snowy turbans and desperate deeds of love 
 and valour are its incidents. These things make up 
 the spell that surrounds the Arab. He is poor old 
 Europe's romance. And yet, child of impulse as he is, 
 what a dashing figure he cuts ! A dreamer of ineffectual 
 dreams, an actor of terrific energy, to-day a Sybarite, 
 to-morrow an anchorite, it is impossible to make head 
 or tail of him, and yet it is impossible not to love him. 
 He retains always, through all vicissitudes — 
 
 "What he had received 
 From nature, an intense and glowing soul." 
 
 245 
 
246 IN THE DESERT 
 
 He is never commonplace or vulgar for an instant. 
 Even in his vices he is not ignoble. He is sometimes a 
 hero, often a devil, but never a slave. 
 
 No wonder that all he ever did is steeped for us in 
 that poetic glamour which effectually rebuts criticism. 
 Even his architecture, and his architecture especially, 
 is lifted out of the sphere of reason and analysis, and 
 the vision of the dark-eyed maidens who have glanced 
 from these lattices, and turbaned warriors who have 
 pranced through these courts, is sufficient to disguise 
 the weakness of the structure and the trivial originality 
 of the forms employed. 
 
 In some ways this is a pity. The interpretative 
 quality in architecture is its main fascination. There is 
 no form of art which so faithfully portrays the character 
 of its creators as this does. An Arab building is, indeed, 
 a signally graphic presentment of Arab life and history. 
 Look at this masonry, with its blocks of stone, probably 
 filched from some earlier classic building, and fitted 
 hastily and feebly together with wide joints of inferior 
 mortar. Look at these irregular, nodding arcades, with 
 their air of insecurity, their lack of symmetry and 
 precision. Note the eccentric forms of arch used, 
 the horseshoe, the stilted, the ogive, the foliated. 
 Commonly enough the arch-ribs, intersecting at the 
 apex, expand, then meet, then expand again, and so 
 go wobbling up the wall with something of the fluctuat- 
 ing motion of tongues of flame. Naturally most of 
 these buildings are falling into decay. They were not 
 built to endure. The columns are generally old frag- 
 ments stuck together. The Roman capitals, of all 
 shapes and sizes, are often put on upside-down and 
 heightened, where necessary, by rude fragments of 
 
ARAB ARCHITECTURE 247 
 
 stone, or even by billets of wood. Even where some 
 care was taken and more regard for symmetry observed, 
 the fantastical nature of the forms employed was an 
 element of inherent weakness. Simplicity is the essen- 
 tial of strength, an essential in which the whimsical 
 structures of the Arabs were wholly wanting. 
 
 And yet it is perhaps in its very drawbacks that that 
 architecture's value lies. As architecture it is indeed 
 worthless. It has taught us nothing that we had not 
 better never have learnt. But as a human document it 
 is among the most interesting, and it is in its very 
 deficiencies that its interest is embodied. All this 
 furious speed and zeal, this straw-fire energy and whim- 
 sical extravagance, are a humorously exact personifica- 
 tion of the very qualities we meet in Arab history. 
 They have the Arab expression. They have his look 
 and way. In them the evolution of Arab civilisation, a 
 civilisation defying the ordinary constructive rules, 
 fanciful and feeble, is reproduced to the life. The heat, 
 the haste, the luxuriant imagination, the lack of all 
 common sense and sound judgment, are all there. 
 Neither civilisation nor architecture was made to cope 
 with time. The fatal instability that is the root of Arab 
 character possessed them. 
 
 No, if we are to look for anything of real value 
 bequeathed to us by the Arabs, we shall scarcely find it 
 in their buildings. To this day the Arab talks of 
 " building " his tent when he pitches it ; and very 
 rightly, for it is the only kind of architecture he has 
 ever understood. It is his weakness that shows itself. 
 His real influence is felt, not seen. Nothing he ever 
 built or fashioned gives us the best of him, unless 
 perhaps it be some of those beautiful gardens where the 
 
248 IN THE DESERT 
 
 nightingales still sing among the odorous orange bloom 
 and in the tangle of roses birds build their nests. His 
 influence survives, but not in art. It survives in the 
 character of southern races. It has introduced a strain 
 of sentiment and manners for which the West is the 
 richer. And to us, to poor, prosaic, middle-aged old 
 Europe, it is a pleasant memory, the memory of our 
 one romance. 
 
 Still, let us see if we can put aside this glamour that 
 enwraps the subject, and get something definite out of 
 Arab architecture. 
 
 That architecture is like everything else the race ever 
 did in this — that if you wish to find the most expressive 
 and only really imposing period of it you must turn 
 back to that brief interval when the national tie held. 
 It was in the century or two immediately preceding and 
 following their tremendous irruption that the Arabs 
 accomplished everything with any touch of power or 
 character in it — whether in art or literature or action — 
 that they ever did accomplish. Their after-civilisation 
 has ingenuity, fancy, luxury, but it has not the sincerity 
 and simplicity of the earlier work. 
 
 Okba's Great Mosque was one of the first, as it is one 
 of the most sacred, mosques built. The reader will see 
 a plan of it on the opposite page. It is sufficiently clear 
 to be understood at a glance. It consists of a large 
 open courtyard with a double arcade of arches round it, 
 which, on the eastward or Mecca side, however, are 
 deepened to ten arcades, making at that end an 
 immense dim hall, very low for its extent, and upheld 
 by a forest of several hundred columns. This is the 
 plan of all the early mosques, and it was adopted 
 because it most closely corresponded to the habits of 
 
"ORTH 
 
 PLAN OF GREAT MOSQUE OF KAIRWAN. 
 
250 IN THE DESERT 
 
 desert life. It is, indeed, neither more nor less than a 
 caravanserai, identical in general configuration with 
 many that are to be found to-day on the desert routes. 
 These " resting-places " consist, just as the mosque does, 
 of a large open space into which camels and goats may 
 be driven at night, and of a portion at one end, or 
 sometimes all round, arched over to afford shelter and 
 shade for travellers to rest in. 
 
 In towns these caravanserai, now called khans, soon 
 became more complicated. The great central space 
 diminished in size ; the surrounding buildings increased 
 in height to several storeys, and were divided into 
 separate apartments. Exactly the same change occurs 
 in the mosques. The great square shrinks and shrinks 
 till it becomes an insignificant courtyard. The body of 
 the building is divided into a number of chambers of 
 greater or less sanctity and very involved and com- 
 plicated architecture. 
 
 The caravanserai mosques, as they may be called, 
 only maintained themselves for about three centuries. 
 But during that time they were fairly universal. They 
 are to be found wherever the Arab penetrated : in 
 Syria, in Spain, in North Africa. In all the countries 
 he conquered, so long as the Arab remained an 
 Arab, he remained true to the caravanserai mosque. 
 
 And the reason is evident. The caravanserai mosque 
 gives him all that a building possibly can give a man 
 of the desert. To a wanderer there is bound to be 
 something repugnant in all constraint and all con- 
 finement. Gipsies hate houses. There is that in 
 their intricacies, in their passages, stairs, and doors, 
 bolts and bars, that suggests the feeling of being 
 trapped. 
 

 O 
 
 < 
 
 o 
 
 i 
 
< c c _ c 
 
ARAB ARCHITECTURE 251 
 
 But the caravanserai mosques hardly suggest con- 
 straint at all. The open space in the midst, bare to the 
 sky, is the dominating feature of the whole. The 
 arcades form but a fringe round it. Nor are these cut 
 off. There is no mystery. As you enter you can at a 
 glance take in the entire place. The arcades lie open to 
 your eye in all directions. The air blows softly through 
 them, free to come and go. The most shy and wild of 
 mortals could find nothing here to alarm or perplex 
 him. Here are the things he loves. Here is water for 
 him to wash in, and deep shade for him to rest in. 
 Here, too, is something of the amplitude of space and 
 largeness of the desert itself. 
 
 So long, then, as the Arab retained any feeling for 
 the desert this was how he built. And it may, I think, 
 be said that he retained his feeling for the desert as 
 long as he retained the right to call himself an Arab. 
 The various names indifferently applied to the race 
 and its doings are a cause of some confusion. Saracen, 
 Arab, Moor, are the words used. Saracen we may 
 strike out as being of romantic origin merely and of 
 no specific meaning. Moor and Arab we want to 
 express the difference between the town and desert 
 people. The line of demarcation is by no means 
 distinct, for the Arabs naturally did not turn into 
 Moors at the mere sight of bricks and mortar. They 
 retained the desert spirit some little while, and when 
 it went, it went gradually. It is the going of it that is 
 shown in these mosques. For as long — that is to say, 
 about to the tenth century — as the Arab remained true 
 to a form of building which derived all its merit from 
 its close association with desert life, so long did he 
 keep the Arab heart in him. When he took up with 
 
252 
 
 IN THE DESERT 
 
 the cribbed and cabined style of architecture he was 
 becoming a Moor. The remembering or forgetting 
 of the desert is the difference between Moor and Arab. 
 
 PLAX|of£mOSQUE of AMRU. SPECIMEN' OF TRUE ARAB ARCHITECTURE. 
 LSl^Ci^ JjOiL^.o. DESERT INFLUENCE PARAMOUNT. 
 
 It is in their general plan and arrangement that 
 the merit of these early mosques lies. Every one 
 coming into them is struck by the large simplicity 
 and restfulness of the scene. There are the elements 
 

 The Indekimte Arab Arch. 
 
ARAB ARCHITECTURE 253 
 
 here of a certain grandeur. The simplicity of Arab 
 character, the fewness of their needs, insured this 
 effect. They asked for little, but they all agreed in 
 asking for the same things. And this economy, com- 
 bined with this unanimity, has acted on the building 
 almost like an artistic knowledge of effect. It has 
 delivered it from all irrelevancies and redundances ; 
 it has kept it perfectly simple and legible ; it has given 
 meaning and purpose to every part, and something 
 approaching unity to the whole. 
 
 That is the first impression of the mosque. The 
 reader must couple it in his mind with that early 
 ballad poetry of theirs, so direct and genuine and 
 sincere, of which I spoke in an earlier chapter. But 
 when we begin to look into their architecture for a 
 confirming and deepening of the first impression, we 
 find ourselves met by deficiencies much like those 
 which met us in the poetry. Their architecture 
 cannot be called beautiful. It lacks something that 
 is necessary to beauty. It has not depth enough of 
 thought and feeling. 
 
 Suppose we were to compare for a moment these 
 arcades with an arcade of Bramante's. What we 
 should immediately feel would be that Bramante was 
 supported by a whole era of civilisation ; that he was 
 backed up and nourished by thoughts and feelings 
 which are profound and subtle and complex. This 
 is what gives his work the quality that makes us 
 never tired of looking at it. It is not easily ex- 
 hausted. It has depth. Bramante, in short, got a 
 great deal out of life that the Arab builder could not 
 possibly get out of life ; and so he put a great deal 
 into his work that the Arab could not put in. The 
 
254 IN THE DESERT 
 
 mosque pleases up to a certain point. It is very con- 
 venient and absolutely honest. It gives the kind of 
 pleasure a thing gives which is obviously well adapted 
 to its purpose, and which, by the way, the works of 
 birds and animals can give equally with the works 
 of men ; but it does not go deep enough for beauty. 
 It is too obviously the outcome of a soil intellectually 
 barren. 
 
 This becomes apparent directly we get to the detail. 
 It is all bad, and bad in a way that shows us that 
 the simplicity of the whole is due to no correctness 
 of thought or feeling, but to mere convenience. The 
 arches are the weakest of their kind. They are of 
 that unhappy description which does not know its 
 own mind. They are intended to be of the horse- 
 shoe pattern, but if you look closely you will perceive 
 many variations. No two are exactly alike. In some 
 the horseshoe is more pronounced than in others. 
 In some, again, it is more pronounced on one side 
 than the other. In few or none is the curve of the 
 arch severely accurate. In each one, looked at care- 
 fully, you will read in the mind that made it unsure- 
 ness of purpose, instability of will. Not one of them 
 but bears witness to that vague, unsettled mental 
 condition in which the Arab lives. 
 
 Throughout the rest of the building the same sloven- 
 liness everywhere appears. It is composed almost 
 entirely of fragments of classic buildings. The mihrab 
 is of course the place of honour. Its two columns 
 have Byzantine capitals, and its marble panels are 
 worked in Byzantine designs. It is the one bit of 
 detail that tells. Elsewhere all the shafts and all the 
 capitals have been pillaged from Roman ruins. The 
 
ARAB ARCHITECTURE 
 
 255 
 
 capitals appear to be of white travertine, and are much 
 chipped and broken. They are all, or almost all, of 
 the usual florid Corinthian or composite order of 
 late Rome. 
 
 These capitals and columns are v/hat give the interior 
 its architectural character, and these the Arabs did not 
 
 PLAN OF MOSQUE OF SULTAN BARKOOK, TRANSITION 
 MOSQUE, SHOWING DECLINE OF DESERT AND 
 RISE OF CITY INFLUENCE. 
 
 make, but collected. All that remained for them to 
 do themselves was to put the fragments together. 
 How did they do this ? About as hurriedly and 
 carelessly as it could be done. The capitals are often 
 too large or too small for the shafts they stand on. 
 The shafts are often not of the right length, and are 
 
256 IN THE DESERT 
 
 made longer by rude blocks of stone thrust in at the 
 top or bottom. Many of the capitals have been hastily 
 patched up, where broken, with common plaster. 
 
 One little feature deserves notice. The imposition 
 of arches on these classic capitals made it necessary 
 to provide them with abaci. These, the only original 
 Arab features here, are of wood. The Arabs could not 
 spare time or trouble to fashion them of stone. 
 
 These traits are not in any way peculiar to the 
 Kairwan mosques. They are typical of Arab archi- 
 tecture. On turning over a diary kept in Cairo some 
 years ago, I find similar notes of mosque after mosque. 
 Of the shape of the arches I find the words " indeter- 
 minate " or " indefinite " used again and again. Again 
 and again I find myself in doubt as to the actual shape 
 they are meant to assume, and especially I find it 
 difficult to decide whether their tall, weak, egg-shaped 
 summits are meant to have a point at the top or not. 
 
 As regards their indefiniteness of shape, I find it 
 noted in my Kairwdn diary that the interior arches 
 of the east-end arcades, which form the mosque 
 proper, are round-headed, except the central nave, the 
 arches of which, resting on coupled columns, are 
 "slightly pointed." Of the exterior arches of the quad- 
 rangle I have the note, "of the usual unmistakable 
 Arab form : tall, flat soffit, slightly pointed, with their 
 weak and indecisive cutting." I lay stress on these 
 notes because they deal with a point commonly 
 ignored. In all the accounts I have seen of the Great 
 Mosque the arches are called simply round or horse- 
 shoe. No hint of a variation is suggested. Similarly 
 as regards the Tooloun, El Hakem, and other mosques 
 in Cairo, their arches are always categorised unhesi- 
 
ARAB ARCHITECTURE 
 
 257 
 
 tatingly in a certain class, as if they were all alike 
 and all of unmistakable shape. Nay, the illustrations 
 of these mosques and of the Kairwan mosque are, so 
 far as I know, always drawn in such a way as to 
 convey the same, but totally erroneous, impression 
 of perfect uniformity and decision of outline. Re- 
 
 '•' "■"' ■■■■'■ "■"•'<-'^^<»5X-<V-;^;£»'.*%;SS?(x/xi^J \/'//7yn: 
 
 PLAN OF MOSQUE OF SULTAN HASSAN. SPECIMEN OF MOORISH 
 ARCHITECTURE. CITY INFLUENCE PARAMOUNT. 
 
 porters have described or copied not what the Arab 
 has done, but what they thought he meant to do. 
 
 All this is very characteristic. An Englishman or 
 a Frenchman hates an indefinite line. To draw an 
 arch which is not quite sure itself whether it is round 
 or pointed is to him almost impossible. It is an 
 outrage on his sense of form. He makes up his own 
 
 18 
 
2S8 IN THE DESERT 
 
 mind on the subject first, and then makes up the 
 arch's mind for it afterwards. Unfortunately, in doing 
 so he strips the arch of just exactly what constitutes 
 its particular interest. It is just this indecision and 
 vagueness which makes it so perfect a sample of Arab 
 character. It is in this that its interpretative value 
 lies. 
 
 The best way, it seems to me, to bring out this 
 character in Arab architecture is to contrast it for a 
 moment with Gothic. There is enough resemblance 
 to justify the comparison, and a relationship between 
 the two styles has always been felt. Both were the 
 distinctive national styles of the races which, from 
 the East and South, overran the decaying empires 
 of Rome and Constantinople. Both represented an 
 assault by the pointed arch, and all the pointed arch 
 stood for, on the round. Gothic broke up Romanesque 
 just as Arab had, wherever it could reach it, broken 
 up Byzantine five centuries before. The two invading 
 styles were alike in their character of consuming 
 energy, so typical of the races that gave them birth. 
 But there is a difference in the quality of that energy. 
 The Gothic energy not only breaks up Romanesque 
 but goes on to achieve a purpose of its own. It clears 
 the Romanesque idea out of the way to make room 
 for its own ideas ; and the architecture it proceeded to 
 develop, so resolute, so uniform in character and feeling, 
 so logically and thoroughly carried out in plan and 
 detail, shows with what virile tenacity and sureness that 
 purpose and those ideas were grasped. 
 
 Arab fervour, on the other hand, is not of this 
 quality. It is not fervour in pursuit of a definite 
 object. Its destructive power is great ; but its con- 
 
' ' T 
 
 Gothic Sureness of Purpose. 
 
ARAB ARCHITECTURE 259 
 
 structive power is nil. The most remarkable thing 
 about it is its intense animosity towards all forms 
 suggesting calmness and repose, such as the plain 
 arch and round vault. The fury with which it attacks 
 these and the eagerness with which it sets to work 
 to twist and distort them give to all its doings a similar 
 character. But if from these negative achievements 
 we turn to look for positive ideas and a constructive 
 purpose, none such is forthcoming. I know of no other 
 architecture of which this can be said. All other styles 
 have a constructive purpose of their own. Egyptian, 
 Roman, Greek, Gothic, Renaissance, each in turn calls 
 up the thought of distinct and clearly-articulated 
 structures. Arab alone, except in its primitive stage, 
 calls up no such thought. All it suggests is complicated 
 designs, eccentric arches, and fantastical decoration. 
 We know it, in short, by detail and not by structure. 
 And yet it would seem as if the Arabs had, as a 
 race, much the same opportunity as the Goths. The 
 definite work of reviving a languid, stereotyped 
 society and building up a new civilisation, which lay 
 before the northern invaders, seemed to lie before the 
 southern ones too. But if the Arab had the oppor- 
 tunity he had not the gifts of character to take 
 advantage of it. When he had broken up Byzantine 
 society his ideas gave out. He was not able to re- 
 organise it on a permanent basis and evolve a 
 durable civilisation of his own. He exhausted him- 
 self in whim and fancy. And just as the Gothic 
 purpose is felt in its thorough and systematic style of 
 architecture, so the Arab lack of purpose is seen in 
 all its whimsical and capricious details. The Arab 
 style is essentially destructive. It can break the 
 
26o IN THE DESERT 
 
 Byzantine round arch, or the smoothness of the 
 Byzantine vault ; but when it has done that much it 
 is at a loss. It stops exactly where the whole scheme 
 of Arab civilisation stopped. Just when the world 
 began to expect something worth having, just when 
 the race had cleared the stage for itself, it glided off 
 into the fantastical and the unreal. All its precious 
 astrological and necromantic fancies, with which it 
 turned solid subjects into unrealities, are the very 
 counterpart of its weak and whimsical style of building. 
 They represent the disintegration of fixed forms, but 
 discover no purpose beyond. 
 
 I know of nothing more comical than the contrast 
 between the headlong fury with which the Arab cast 
 himself on the Byzantine system of life, the impatience 
 with which he thrust it all aside, the breathless hurry 
 with which he started a system of his own, and then, 
 all of a sudden, when it came to a definition of that 
 system, his pathetic helplessness and failure. From 
 that moment on the movements of this prompt and 
 haughty warrior are the movements of an imbecile or a 
 naughty child. It is scarcely possible to believe that all 
 the splendid, irresistible energy of his campaigns and 
 conquests should have evaporated in forms and ideas so 
 purposeless and vague. That, however, is the Arab way. 
 Set him to pull down, and he is a very Samson. Set 
 him to build, and he is left " weak as is a breaking wave." 
 
 Such is Arab character. Ask the dry waves of sand, 
 when they have obliterated the road, the cliff, the 
 oasis, what their own ideas are and what purpose of 
 their own they have in view. None, they will tell 
 you ; they have done all they want to do. So it is 
 with the Arab. When he has smashed the existing 
 
ARAB ARCHITECTURE 261 
 
 order of things he is at the end of his tether. The 
 weak eccentricity, the absence of the constructive 
 architectural sense, this it is in Arab architecture that 
 gauges the man. His failure is written in his flimsy 
 and fantastic style of building. Directly we contrast 
 it with the style that went on, that had ideas of its 
 own, directly we note, in Gothic, the bold and logical 
 design carried out in detail and main plan, so daringly 
 and resolutely, we feel the difference between a con- 
 structive and non-constructive people. Arab and 
 Goth were equal rivals once. Order and chaos fought 
 in their persons for the Roman inheritance. Step by 
 step chaos has yielded to order. We can trace the 
 contest now as a contest between opposing principles. 
 The difference between the volatile Moslem hordes 
 that whirled through South Europe and the virile and 
 stubborn races that carved out the nationalities of the 
 north was that one had purpose and the other hadn't. 
 That is the difference we can read still between Gothic 
 architecture and Arab. ^ 
 
 The quality of Arab masonry the reader will have 
 guessed already from what has been said. Most of 
 their mosques are built of bricks with joints as wide 
 as the bricks themselves, and the mortar is of such 
 wretched consistency that it falls out and crumbles, 
 like earth, at a touch. Looking along the face of a 
 wall you see that it is never perfectly flush, but always 
 bulges and gives in places. Most of the mosques in 
 North Africa are, in fact, falling to ruins, though many 
 of them are single-storey buildings, and in that climate 
 the wear and tear of material is reduced to a minimum. 
 To examine, however, the jointing and setting of the 
 masonry is enough to account for this. The wonder 
 
262 IN THE DESERT 
 
 rather is that such crazy constructions should have 
 lasted so long. None of the feeling we associate with 
 the remains of great ruins belongs to the ruins of Arab 
 architecture. The idea of shattered strength, of frag- 
 ments bearing witness to the original power of material 
 and workmanship — columns rising out of green turf, 
 their arches twisted about with ivy, west windows 
 framing nothing but the blue sky, yet each beetling 
 crag of it still imposing and grand in its decay — all 
 this, which makes up the attraction of a northern ruin, 
 is foreign to an Arab one. The Arab building is so 
 constructed that when it begins to go to pieces it 
 crumbles and dissolves into a debris of dust and plaster 
 and fragments of brick, of which you can provoke a 
 fresh cataract at any time by a poke of your stick. 
 If the reader care anything for architecture he will 
 know the significance of this. It would probably be 
 true to say that every one who has built in good 
 masonry has built finely and well. It would certainly 
 be true to say that no one has built finely and well who 
 has not built in good masonry. People who care for 
 form feel above all the need of exactitude. In architec- 
 ture the significance of every line and contour depends 
 on perfect accuracy ; the lines and curves of great 
 architecture being so charged with expression that 
 the slightest indecision or uncertainty is felt and noticed 
 in an instant. On the other hand, it is impossible 
 to avoid this indecision and wavering unless the 
 masonry composing the building be finely and evenly 
 jointed and perfectly firm and accurate. This makes 
 the quality of masonry always the prime test of a good 
 building age. And when we find, as we do throughout 
 all Arab work from beginning to end, that the masonry 
 
Arab Lack of Purpose. 
 
ARAB ARCHITECTURE 263 
 
 employed is of a most wretched and inferior kind, it 
 is a proof positive that the race was lacking in the 
 architectural sense. Such faults as incorrect arches 
 and untrue walls bear the same relation to bad masonry 
 that immoral or criminal actions do to a vicious cha- 
 racter ; they are the inevitable outward signs of 
 inward corruption. Masonry is the character of archi- 
 tecture, and all possibilities of form and expression 
 depend upon it. It is in this, the very material out of 
 which a definite purpose has to be forged, that the Arab 
 weakness most clearly shows itself 
 
 Of decorative design there is not very much in these 
 early mosques, and here at Kairwan there is less than in 
 the Cairo examples. In those early days the Arab \/ 
 had not learnt to concern himself seriously with the 
 idea of decoration. When, indeed, he had recourse to 
 colour, and panelled his walls with lustrously-glazed 
 tiles, he produced results second only to the Persian. 
 But directly he tries his hand at sculpture his invariable 
 procedure is to honeycomb the surface with small, un- 
 decipherable patterns, leaving no margins or background 
 of smooth material to set off the decoration. The work 
 is on so minute a scale that, not being disciplined or 
 controlled by any bold, prominent lines, it is at a few 
 yards totally illegible. The eye cannot see it, and turns 
 from it in weary disgust. Indeed, it does not deserve 
 the name of design at all. 
 
 Here in the detail, as in the masonry and main 
 forms of Arab architecture, a definable intellectual 
 purpose, a foreseen effect wrought out by appropriate 
 means, will be sought for in vain. It will be sought 
 for in vain in the architecture because it will be 
 sought for in vain in the man. Again and again I 
 
264 IN THE DESERT 
 
 have been struck and arrested by tricks of manner 
 and habits of the xArabs which recalled their character- 
 istic methods in art. I find, for example, this note in 
 my diary on camel-loading in the desert : " Quick, 
 nervous, restless, they introduce strings and knots in 
 all directions. They have a preference for a number 
 of bits tied together to one plain rope. They are 
 full of ineffectual, ingenious contrivances for hitching 
 up this or hanging up that. The load, instead of 
 being held by one or two stout cords passed around 
 it, is balanced by a number tangled together. It is 
 certain to slip before we have been out long. When 
 that happens the Arabs throw themselves upon it 
 in a great state of agitation and zeal. They grapple 
 with the tottering mass, their eager fingers pluck and 
 tear and push. They are possessed with a frenzy 
 of nervous agitation. And when they have finished 
 the nodding load appears covered with a fresh network 
 of string, one bit made fast to another in inextricable 
 confusion, the whole arrangement so lacking in simplicity 
 and strength that a touch will upset it." To this I have 
 added as a parallel case: "The commonest of all 
 Arab designs is that of a pointed leaf with stalk 
 emerging from the point, expanding into a fresh leaf, 
 emerging again from the point of that one, and so 
 continuing, stalk melting into leaf, leaf into stalk, 
 without beginning or end. These threads the Arab 
 takes and winds about and entangles until he has 
 covered all the surface he is dealing with. So far as 
 the design is concerned, that is always the same — an 
 ingenious, weak muddle." 
 
 Exactly, in fact, like the camel-loading: "wanting 
 in simplicity or strength." I never see that futile 
 
ARAB ARCHITECTURE 265 
 
 leaf and stalk tanglement — I saw it but yesterday on 
 the ceiling of a Great Western Railway carriage — 
 without thinking of the ingenious weak muddle that 
 our drivers wove that morning on the backs of the 
 camels. 
 
 Or, again, since we are coming to matters of every- 
 day life, what is it that I feel here in Kairwan, as I 
 walk about the streets or stand in the dim covered 
 bazaar? What is it that gives its special character 
 to this place, and differentiates it so utterly from an 
 English town ? It is the lack of order, method, 
 purpose in all I see. Of these streets and houses, or 
 hovels, is there one that knows its own mind, that 
 has succeeded in being the thing it set out to be, 
 or ever, rather, had an idea at all of what it was 
 going to be? Is there one street straight and regular, 
 one building with exact perpendicular walls, with clean- 
 cut angles, with a firm and level roof? In all this 
 jumble of tottering walls and broken outlines is there 
 anywhere discoverable a single glimpse of the great 
 architectural sense, the sense of purpose? 
 
 But these are outward manifestations. It is to the 
 people you must come at last. Watch, in the streets, 
 the groups that pass or loiter, that now collect and 
 now hurry on. The impression produced is like that 
 of the fluctuating uncertain motion of summer gnats 
 eddying or pausing in the air. Each individual, if 
 you watch his progress, will exhibit in his own move- 
 ments this general uncertainty. Now he will start 
 running, as though anxious to get to his destination 
 as soon as possible. In a hundred yards he will pull 
 up and dawdle along vacantly singing. Next he will 
 meet a friend and fall into talk with him, the inter- 
 
266 IN THE DESERT 
 
 view being generally of an excitable and gesticulatory 
 as well as affectionate kind. Then off again at top 
 speed, until an old water-carrier coming along, chinking 
 his cups, attracts his attention, and he has a drink 
 and exchanges a certain amount of voluble repartee. 
 Then the thought strikes him of a cigarette. This 
 he rolls and lights and pauses a moment to inhale a few 
 whiffs under the shadow of a mosque porch with 
 other loiterers. This is his progress. This is one 
 of those aimless threads of which the whole crowd 
 is made up. I used to watch the vague, spasmodic 
 movements of these passers-by at first with that sense 
 of discomfort one has when one is watching manoeuvres 
 one does not understand. I could feel that here was 
 something, a character or spirit prevailing, different 
 from that which prevailed in Western crowds. But 
 what was it? Then with the consciousness one began 
 to have of the meaning and significance of their waver- 
 ing arches and weak designs, came the recognition that 
 the crowd itself was but a human expression of quali- 
 ties of which the architecture was a brick-and-mortar 
 expression. What other kind of crowd, indeed, could 
 walk in such streets or rest under such arcades ? 
 
 My thoughts flew back to English thoroughfares. 
 I saw the people coming and going, an average steady 
 pace bearing witness to a purpose easily borne in 
 mind. Even on holidays and Sundays I remembered 
 how people who walk for pleasure walk, as it were, 
 with decision. So accustomed are we to have an 
 object, to be going about a definite business, that a 
 purposeful gait has become second nature to us, and 
 even when we have no purpose in view, we walk as 
 if we had one. 
 
z 
 
 
 m 
 
ARAB ARCHITECTURE 267 
 
 And to right and left above these steady walkers 
 I saw the curt, determined lines of Western architec- 
 ture ; each window-frame exactly cut, each pillar 
 and arch and pediment and moulding accurate to a 
 hair's breadth ; ugly enough, it may be, but what a 
 grim tenacity of purpose lurks in every stroke and out- 
 line. Does not the architecture here, too, reflect the 
 very character and manner of the crowd beneath ? is 
 it not as much the architectural expression of the 
 Western temper as these vaguely distorted walls and 
 arches are the expression of the Eastern? Is not the 
 whole contrast, if we like to push the matter, between 
 Western history and Eastern built into these streets 
 and houses ? 
 
 Has the reader ever chanced to see an Arab crowd 
 in a violent state of excitement ? The sight is a 
 little perplexing, and more than a little amusing. I 
 once saw an Algiers crowd which, on the occasion of 
 some anti-Semitic disturbance, conceived it had a 
 mighty grievance. Under such circumstances, the pro- 
 cedure of an English crowd is familiar to us. It 
 commonly collects in immense, disciplined bodies with 
 flags and drums ; marches in a quite orderly way 
 through the streets — submitting all the way to the 
 directions of the usual police organisers of the traffic ; 
 arrives at Hyde Park ; demonstrates its numbers and 
 convictions, and marches stolidly home again. 
 
 It knows exactly what it wants, and it adopts those 
 quiet means and measures which it thinks are likely 
 to get it what it wants. The Arab crowd, on the 
 contrary, does not know in the least what it wants. 
 It is conscious of nothing but its own fury. Dangerous, 
 should you come in contact with it, it is possessed 
 
268 IN THE DESERT 
 
 by an impotence which may seem strange to those 
 who observe only its apparent energy. The truth is 
 it is impotent because it is incapable of forming a 
 design, of carrying out a purpose. 
 
 This clue held, my discomfort in watching the 
 Arabs gave place to a secret enjoyment. I saw in 
 them a part of their surroundings. I recognised in them 
 the living source of those vague and fitful impulses 
 which I had been studying in their arches and tracery. 
 And not that only, but turning back into their past 
 it was impossible not to see the same fatal deficiency 
 everywhere attending them ; not to see that their 
 whole civilisation and history is lacking in that quality 
 which comes out so strongly in Western crowds and 
 streets, in the Western arch and wall and face, and 
 walk and manner and character. 
 
 It helps one to a comprehension of all this to be 
 in the desert, to feel around one the influences which, 
 the same here as in his native Arabia, have evolved 
 the desert type. Here in the desert, indeed, the whole 
 problem of environment is reduced to its simplest 
 form. The scenery is of one universal character, 
 scarcely diversified at all, showing one or two power- 
 ful traits and no more. For centuries untold the 
 Arab tribes have been exposed to these strong and 
 simple influences. For countless generations they 
 have pitched their tents on these wastes of fickle, 
 burning, restless sand, and breathed this stimulating, 
 fiery air, until the characteristics of the desert have 
 so entered into them that in describing one you 
 describe the other. Sometimes at the mid-day halt, 
 when the desert is locked in that grim repose I have 
 spoken of, I have sat and watched it, imbibing the 
 

 > t 
 
ARAB ARCHITECTURE 269 
 
 air and view, until, as happens in some moods, I have 
 felt myself to be almost a part of my surroundings. 
 And then my glance has strayed to the Arabs crowded 
 near : never lolling or dozing ; attentive ; their dark, 
 piercing eyes glancing over the scene, their fingers 
 restlessly passing and dropping their rows of beads, 
 their mobile features expressing a succession of light 
 and fleeting emotions, and I used to think that, like 
 the nymphs of streams, or fauns of woods, they were 
 the genii of the place, the incarnated spirits of the 
 Sahara. 
 
 Emanating from such a source, the Arab, in spite 
 of all his fickleness and irritability, is so much of one 
 piece, all that he has ever done and said and thought 
 is so identical in character, that if you understand him 
 in one respect, you seem to understand him in all. 
 If you understand him as a knotter of camel loads, 
 you understand him as fighter, as builder, as artist, 
 as poet, as philosopher. Only to understand him 
 aright in any particular, it is necessary, perhaps, for 
 once to stand on this shifting desert floor and watch 
 the Bedouin tribes that come and go, and fold their 
 tents, and flit and wander across its surface, and 
 leave no trace of their presence upon it. Such, indeed, 
 has been the Arab progress through the world. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE MOSLEM SPHERE OF INFLUENCE 
 
 Arab society, its nebulous and incoherent character — Arab 
 thought, its lack of depth and solidity — Immobility of Arab 
 civilisation — The same true of all Moslem races — The ortho- 
 dox faith responsible for this — Parallel between Islam and 
 Christianity — Influence of Christianity on Western thought 
 and society — Moslem liberalism anxious to attain the same 
 results — It adopts principles similar to the Christian — The 
 Wahhabi reaction — The Babis — Prospects of ISIoslem 
 liberalism — Real strength of Islam in the orthodox party — 
 The life of the desert the source of its strength. 
 
 HERE at Kairvvan our pilgrimage ends ; but 
 before finishing I would like to submit to 
 the reader an idea of the effect which the Moslem 
 faith seems to have had on Moslem society. 
 
 Two main traits, as I endeavour to estimate what 
 the Arab has been and has done in the world, strike 
 me concerning him. One is the lack of cohesion in 
 Arab society. Groups form, dissolve, and form again. 
 There is no enduring organisation. And, though there 
 is much vague and fluctuating movement, there is no 
 regulated progress. All is loose, eddying, nebulous, 
 and incoherent. 
 
 And besides this social peculiarity there is to be 
 
 270 
 
THE MOSLEM SPHERE OF INFLUENCE 271 
 
 found, in the working of the Arab mind and intelh'- 
 gence, in Arab architecture, Arab poetry, Arab philo- 
 sophy, a perpetual sticking to externals, a want of 
 depth, an apparent inability to penetrate. I think 
 these are the two deepest impressions one gleans from 
 Arab life and thought — a want of coherence in Arab 
 society, a want of depth in the Arab mind. 
 
 Both these traits are natural to, and the proper 
 characteristics of, what I have called, because of its 
 delight in personal deeds, the ballad-poetry stage of 
 civilisation. Thought in such an age is without depth 
 because depth of thought means the forgetting and 
 thrusting aside of self Society in such an age is 
 without cohesion, because the social cement is made 
 of what each individual gives up and surrenders to the 
 common stock ; is, in fact, the measure of the self- 
 sacrifice of the units composing society. Consequently, 
 where the rule and ideal of life is that a man gives up 
 nothing, but glories in self-assertion and bending every- 
 thing to his own will and his own ends, thought is 
 bound to lack depth and society to lack coherence. 
 
 All races pass through this phase, but the Arabs 
 have remained in it. And not only have the Arabs 
 remained in it, but all Moslem races have remained 
 in it. The Turks have had in the last four hundred 
 years every opportunity of progressing ; yet intellectual 
 barrenness and social instability remain the outstanding 
 traits of their civilisation. Any observer, I think, must 
 be struck by these peculiarities in connection with the 
 Moslem religion, and be led to question the religion 
 itself for the cause. And if he is led to do this, he will 
 only be doing what all liberal-minded and intellectual 
 Moslems are themselves doing. For what the party 
 
272 IN THE DESERT 
 
 of progress in all Moslem countries feels is that it 
 is inflexible orthodox Mohammedanism that keeps 
 Moslem thought and Moslem society what it is. And 
 so all effort that has for its aim the consolidation of 
 society and the joining of the Moslem mind in the 
 intellectual work of the age is directed primarily 
 towards modifying the orthodox faith. 
 
 If we turn back to the days when we, too, were in 
 our ballad-poetry stage, when we and the Arabs were 
 at one in our view of life, and thence note our diver- 
 gence — we under our religion, they under theirs — we 
 shall ascertain, perhaps, what it is in Mohammedanism 
 that the Moslem progressives object to. For the truth 
 about the Moslem problem seems to be that Moslem 
 liberalism is bent on getting out of the Moslem religion 
 — and so altering it as to make this possible — what 
 Europe has got out of the European religion. 
 
 Taking, then, any, or all, the centuries from the fifth 
 to the twelfth, and comparing European society with 
 Arab, we find that both looked at life with much the 
 same eyes. Both admired the same hardy virtues, 
 delighted in the same enterprises, and gloried in the 
 same achievements. No doubt, in a kind of civilisation, 
 the Saracens were the more advanced ; but the attitude 
 of both towards life was essentially the same. It was 
 the aggressive, self-assertive attitude. For us as for 
 them it was the ballad-poetry phase. European 
 thought and European society bear all the marks of 
 that phase. The thought is without depth. The 
 society is without coherence. 
 
 Nevertheless, between these two societies, so similar 
 in spirit, there existed one very vital point of difference. 
 The European society possessed a moral doctrine, or 
 
THE MOSLEM SPHERE OF INFLUENCE 273 
 
 theory of life, which was not only at variance with, 
 but in direct antagonism to, the prevailing and mun- 
 dane view of life. Usually, of course, a religion is 
 mainly, like art, the expression of the life of its age, 
 Mohammedanism was, through these centuries, for 
 instance, entirely the expression of Moslem life in that 
 age. But mediaeval Christianity was not the expression 
 of European life. It was, on the contrary, utterly 
 opposed to life ; so utterly opposed to it that it had 
 to build itself cloistered forts of its own and subsist 
 by the ministrations of men totally divorced from the 
 world. The fact is, it had elected to build on exactly 
 that principle which in that age was least understood. 
 In an age of physical force and a vigorous self-assertion 
 it laid stress exclusively on meekness and self-sacrifice. 
 There is scarcely a quainter contrast in human history, 
 I should think, than the contrast between mediaeval life 
 and mediseval religion. 
 
 The barons went on pillaging their neighbours and 
 cutting their prisoners' throats. The monks went on 
 preaching the beauty of meekness and self-sacrifice. 
 Times changed by degrees, manners grew less mili- 
 tant, hearts softened. The besieged doctrine crept out 
 of its cloisters and began to mix a little in the world. 
 
 At this point the European and the Arab diverge. 
 Up to now, though the)' had fought like mad, they 
 sympathised with and understood each other. They 
 admired the same things. Their poetry, manners, 
 and chivalry were similar. They borrowed from each 
 other their ideas of what was fine and becoming. 
 But from now on, though they gave up fighting, they 
 never sympathised with or understood each other 
 again. 
 
 19 
 
2/4 IN THE DESERT 
 
 Slowly Western society and Western thought changed 
 under the influence of the new leaven. Western thought 
 vv^as deepened. The new principle was found to apply 
 not only to the sphere of morals, but to every kind of 
 intellectual and spiritual research. It not only placed 
 man in right relation to God, it placed him in right 
 relation to the universe. When Wordsworth says — 
 
 " Give unto me, made lowly wise, 
 The spirit of self-sacrifice," 
 
 he is not thinking of the moral precept in its moral 
 sense. He is thinking how entirely dependent that 
 power of entering into the essence of things, in which 
 all his own joy lies, is on his ability to utterly thrust 
 aside and forget himself. So, in the field of science, 
 Darwin's attitude towards his monkeys and pigeons 
 and earth-worms is precisely of a similar kind. Wher- 
 ever, in whatever way, the mind of man was applied to 
 the search for truth, this new principle — new at least 
 among the societies of the West, and more directly and 
 powerfully affirmed now than it had ever been pre- 
 viously — became the basis of the inquiry and the 
 condition of its fruitfulness. 
 
 But this new teaching was something more than an 
 abstract principle. It was embodied in a great human 
 organisation. It supplied to distracted society the 
 means and idea of union. Amid general chaos and 
 anarchy it stood for a universal social bond, the only 
 one that existed. It may sound daring, in an interval 
 of reaction, to talk of the efficacy of this principle from 
 the social point of view ; but let the reader cast his 
 glance back over the course of events in Europe for the 
 last six or eight centuries, and he will see that the 
 
THE MOSLEM SPHERE OF INFLUENCE 275 
 
 tendency has been for society to form on an ever- 
 widening and more secure basis. Peace and law and 
 order, however h"able to interruption, have become the 
 normal conditions of life, instead of their contraries. In 
 short, what has happened with us since we left the 
 ballad stage of our civilisation behind, is that the mind 
 of man has acquired depth, and society has acquired 
 coherence. 
 
 Whether any principle or doctrine would have sufficed 
 to drag the Arab through that phase of civilisation to 
 which nature and breeding seemed to have suited him, 
 may perhaps be doubted. Anyhow the experiment 
 was not tried. Starting level with us in other respects, 
 Arab society, instead of a religion at variance with half- 
 way ideals, and pointing to something more profound, 
 possessed a religion in accord with those ideals and 
 tending to perpetuate them. The consequences have 
 been felt all through Arab history and life. The want 
 of feeling, the want of depth, in the Arab religion has 
 become the characteristic of the Arab mind and of 
 everything the Arab mind produces. Moreover, no 
 great universal social organism has instilled the idea of 
 a possible union into the fluctuating Arab life. Conse- 
 quently the old outward and external point of view, 
 the old social incoherence, which we and they shared in 
 common in mediaeval days, have remained to the present 
 time the characteristics of Arab thought and Arab 
 society. 
 
 Or rather, they remain the characteristics of Moslem 
 thought and Moslem society. The anarchy that pos- 
 sesses Moslem society is generally the most remarkable 
 thing about it, and in these days it is, too, the most 
 practically important thing about it. That Moslem 
 
276 IN THE DESERT 
 
 races cannot provide anything of value in the domains 
 of thought, literature, and art, is a matter which chiefly 
 concerns themselves. But that society with them 
 means chaos is a matter which is bound more and more 
 to concern other people as well. I have pointed out 
 how, as social coherence and the ideas of law and order 
 spread through the West, the Arab sphere of influence 
 dwindled and diminished. It is now practically extinct. 
 But the Moslem problem does not end with the Arab. 
 All its elements appear in the Turkish Empire. More 
 virile and stubborn than the Arab, the Turk displays 
 the same well-known Moslem traits ; the same sterility 
 of mind, the same reliance on physical force, the same 
 indifference to the idea of social order and stable 
 government. What is intolerable to the sense of 
 Europe in Constantinople to-day is just what was 
 intolerable in Algiers three-quarters of a century ago. 
 Though we have shifted the ground of difference from 
 religion to politics, the political difference is only the 
 outcome of the religious difference. When we say that 
 Turkish or Arab ideas of law and order, Turkish or 
 Arab ideas of government, are incompatible with 
 European ideas, we really mean that a state of society 
 which is the outcome of Mohammedanism is incompat- 
 ible with a state of society which is the outcome of 
 Christianity. We do not call our quarrel a quarrel of 
 religions, but it is so all the same. In the old days the 
 crescent and the cross contended directly. Now they 
 contend in their effects. Their social systems contend, 
 their politics contend ; but the real division lies beneath 
 them. It lies in the fact that the Western religion 
 has given to the Western people an ideal which has 
 profoundly modified the old outward conception of 
 
THE MOSLEM SPHERE OF INFLUENCE 277 
 
 life, an ideal which is tending to the ordering and 
 consoHdating of society on an immense scale, and which 
 has impregnated every action of the Western mind with 
 a certain quality of inwardness and depth. While, on 
 the other hand, Mohammedanism not having such 
 an ideal to propose, no such change has taken place in 
 Moslem society or in Moslem ideas. 
 
 Unless we realise the contrast in these results we shall 
 scarcely comprehend the questions that agitate the 
 Moslem world to-day. For the liberal and progressive 
 movement in Islam is partly a religious and partly a 
 political and social movement. And those who would 
 deepen the religion, and those who would turn it into a 
 more perfect civilising instrument, work in unison. 
 
 The religious reformers object to the faith because it 
 is lacking in depth and emotion, and the whole course 
 of action of the great Shi'ite heresy is the history of an 
 endeavour to suppl)- this want by introducing the idea 
 of self-abnegation and self-surrender into the faith. 
 The social and political reformers object to it because it 
 is in its nature isolating and anti-social. Their quarrel 
 with it is not that it fails to put a man into right rela- 
 tion with God, but that it fails to put him into right 
 relation with his neighbour. They profoundly dissent 
 from the effects that orthodox Mohammedanism has 
 produced in the way of civilisation. The object of their 
 endeavours is to bring the Moslem mind into touch 
 with the European, to animate Moslem society with the 
 spirit of progress, to give it common aims and aspira- 
 tions, and make it capable of collective and coherent 
 action. But these two parties, the party that wants to 
 make the faith a more satisfying religion and the part)- 
 that wants to make it a better civilising instrument, are 
 
278 IN THE DESERT 
 
 really one party. They are fronted by the same ad- 
 versary, and similar measures of reform suit both. 
 
 There have been during the last couple of centuries 
 two opposing impulses in Islam which perfectly illustrate 
 the objects of the liberal movement and the nature and 
 power of the force that is opposed to it. The reform 
 inaugurated by Abd-el-Wahhab, about the middle of 
 the eighteenth century, was puritan and reactionary in 
 character. A return to the narrowest and strictest 
 interpretation of the Koran, the fiercest intolerance, and 
 a hatred of all foreigners were the salient traits of the 
 movement. Needless to say such an impulse was 
 desert-born. It was instinct with the desert tempera- 
 ment and teaching and the desert fanaticism, and its 
 success among the Arabs of Arabia was proportionately 
 great. It has been a movement, the strongest of modern 
 times, towards the resuscitation of the vigour and 
 influence of orthodox Mohammedanism, and it illus- 
 trates in its own character the elements on which 
 orthodox Mohammedanism relies. This spirit it is 
 which is so inveterately opposed to liberalism in Islam. 
 
 The second impulse, the impulse on the liberal side, 
 springs, as it is also needless to say, from Persia. The 
 pretension of Seyed Mohammed Ali to be the Bab, or 
 Gate, or " intermediary," was in effect an attempt to 
 supply the thing needed in Mohammedanism, both 
 socially and religiously. It was an attempt to humanise 
 and vitalise the faith and to endow it with an authorita- 
 tive, recognised presence and voice, such as it must 
 possess if it is to form a rallying point for social 
 organisation. Consequently when the Bab declared 
 himself, social and religious reformers alike saw in him 
 their opportunity, and he was backed up not only by 
 
THE MOSLEM SPHERE OF INFLUENCE 279 
 
 the spiritually-minded, by mystics, enthusiasts, and 
 visionaries, but also by men of affairs, men of intellect, 
 sagacity, and learning. A liberalism of ideas became 
 the characteristic of the new sect. It was distinguished 
 by its cheerfulness, hospitality, and charity. In nothing 
 was its enlightenment more shown than in its treatment 
 of women. The old Eastern degradations and dis- 
 abilities were abolished. Polygamy, concubinage, the 
 use of the veil, were disallowed or discouraged. The 
 equality of the sexes was recognised. And all this 
 reform, all this liberalism, all this spirit of progress 
 gathers round the person of an individual who aspires 
 to play much the same part towards Mohammedanism 
 that Christ played towards Judaism. 
 
 This, it seems to me, is the curious and interesting 
 feature about Moslem reform. The whole history of 
 Shi'ism, with its saints and martyrs and Christs, its 
 insistence on charity, meekness, long-suffering, is the 
 history of an endeavour to introduce into the Moslem 
 faith ideas with which Christianity has long since made 
 the West perfectly familiar. But the Moslem movement 
 is just as much social and political as religious. The 
 people who are concerned about civilisation and pro- 
 gress are as anxious to adopt these ideas as the people 
 who are concerned about religion. The Persian liberal 
 is as ready to believe in a Christ as the Persian saint — 
 not that he wants his help in getting to heaven, but 
 that he wants his help in attaining his objects on earth. 
 The want of depth in Moslem thought, the want of 
 cohesion in Moslem society, are instinctively identified 
 by the party of progress with the influence of the old 
 orthodox faith ; and this party, whose aim it is to join in 
 modern civilisation and modern thought, finds itself per- 
 
28o IN THE DESERT 
 
 petually fumbling and feeling after that very principle 
 which made the difference between European and Arab 
 society in the mediaeval ages. 
 
 What are the prospects of Moslem liberalism ? Not, 
 so far as I can make out, very brilliant. The strength 
 and vigour of Mohammedanism are in the orthodox 
 party. As the religion of the half-way stage of civilisa- 
 tion, orthodox Mohammedanism has a part to play in 
 human affairs. Mr. Wilfrid Blunt tells us that he does 
 not see in its " territorial losses a sign of Islam's ruin as 
 a moral and intellectual force in the world." He looks 
 to the time when the Caliphate shall be once more 
 established at Mecca. " It is to Arabia that Mussul- 
 mans must in the future look for a centre of their 
 religious system." Centred in Arabia, their religious 
 influence is to extend through the low latitudes, and in 
 the decay of Buddhism it will be Mohammedanism, not 
 Christianity, that will be the form under which God will 
 eventually be worshipped in the tropics. 
 
 In Burmah, in the Malay Archipelago, in India, 
 China, and Tartary, and all through Central Africa, the 
 rapid advance of Islam is, year by year, lending great 
 colour to these prophecies of Mr. Blunt, made three- 
 and-twenty years ago. On the other hand, Mr. Blunt 
 recognises that the days of Islam in Europe are num- 
 bered. Throughout the Balkan Peninsula and the east 
 of Europe generally it is steadily on the decline. The 
 Turks themselves are profoundly conscious that the 
 period of their rule at Constantinople is limited, and 
 " ancient prophecy and modern superstition alike point 
 to a return of the crescent into Asia." 
 
 Such a move will carry Islam into its right sphere of 
 operations. It can teach self-respect. There is in its 
 
THE MOSLEM SPHERE OF INFLUENCE 281 
 
 simplicity a certain nobleness. Among the tribes of the 
 Sudan, among Burmese and Malays, its influence is 
 salutary. If we divide human progress into the three 
 phases of self-indulgence, self-respect, and self-denial, it 
 is in the central one of the three that orthodox Moham- 
 medanism holds sway. Hence over the races still in 
 the lower phase it exerts an influence for good, and Mr. 
 Blunt is perhaps right when he says that these will turn 
 more and more to the Moslem faith. Only where the 
 higher principle reigns does Mohammedanism find itself 
 powerless and stop short as at a word of command. 
 With Western thought and Western civilisation it is out 
 of touch, and its hold upon life is conditional upon life 
 stopping short of these. 
 
 It is, so it seems to me, because the desert life 
 naturally stops short of these that the desert is the true 
 stronghold of the faith and Mecca its central shrine. 
 Orthodox Mohammedanism, reeking as it does of the 
 desert, energetic and militant, yet failing in just the 
 qualities which give depth to thought and coherence to 
 society, is, after all, the best clue to the Arab's character 
 and histor3^ It explains both his successes and failures. 
 It explains the fury of his attack, the rapidity of his 
 conquests, and his success in destroying and consuming 
 all that is rotten, effete, and worn out in the world. It 
 explains the lack of definite purpose in all his under- 
 takings, and his failure to build up anything durable 
 and solid of his own. It explains why in the twilight of 
 the middle ages he was so prominent and terrible a 
 figure, and why to-day he is back in the desert once 
 more. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 But yet, I think to myself, as the image of the desert 
 
282 IN THE DESERT 
 
 itself rises before my mind's eye, who can set bounds 
 to such a force as this or foretell its operations? Idle 
 and empty the sand sleeps in the sun. It has looked 
 so always, yet how deceptive has that vacancy and 
 calm been often proved to be ! The memory recurs 
 to me of Wady Haifa, in those days when Wady Haifa 
 and its little outpost Sarras were frontier stations, and 
 when the safety of all Egypt was in the hands of a 
 dozen or two of English boys and their Sudanese 
 troops. North of them the Egyptian fellaheen sowed 
 their crops and watered their land in peace. South 
 of them the dervishes raged at large, threatening the 
 wild onslaught that might come at any moment. 
 Later, travelling in these confines of the Sahara, I 
 have found the same thing ; only here it is young 
 Frenchmen who are drilling and organising their black 
 troops and leading them out to fight and chase Arab 
 marauders. They, here, are Europe's guardsmen, the 
 representatives of her creed of law and order, and to 
 north of them lie the secure Algerian vineyards and 
 olive groves, and to south the unrest and chaos of 
 the desert. 
 
 And when I struck the hills at Sbeitla, the hills that 
 overlook the great Saharan plain, and came on one 
 of Rome's ancient settlements with the walls and 
 columns of its temples erect among the surrounding 
 desolation, I recognised on the testimony of every 
 fitted block that Europe when she was here before 
 was on the same business that she is on to-day. Law 
 and order marched under the eagles, as they do under 
 our flag and France's. 
 
 For the conflict between Europe and the desert is 
 not a conflict of nations or races, but a conflict of 
 
THE MOSLEM SPHERE OF INFLUENCE 283 
 
 ideas. It has passed through many phases and been 
 conducted by many hands, but it is always the same 
 conflict. The centurion who watched from these 
 walls of Sbeitia (I think I see the figure of the man 
 and the set face fronting south) and the subalterns 
 who guard their mud forts by the desert's edge are, 
 in this quarrel, not Roman, or French, or English, but 
 fellow-soldiers in one long campaign which is not 
 ended yet. 
 
 Looking back at the incidents of that campaign, one 
 would almost say that, in some blind way, the desert 
 knew when its opportunity had come. When, twelve 
 centuries ago, the cataclysm burst over the West which 
 the West was so ill-prepared to face, it was found that 
 the Arab had timed his effort to the hour. The 
 moment of dark twilight which divided, in Europe, 
 the classical from the Christian civilisations was, as I 
 have said, the greatest opportunity the child of the 
 desert ever had. During Rome's long rule he had 
 remained quiescent. The walls and fortresses, 
 garrisoned with the order and discipline of the 
 Roman government, advanced to the very edge of 
 the desert and overlooked him in his sanctuary. In 
 the presence of that terribly perfect disciplinary system 
 the poor Arab shrank, as }'ou may say, to his smallest 
 stature. Those were evil days for him. He could 
 neither endure nor resist the t}'ranny of the great 
 imperial machine, and so he buried himself in the 
 heart of his sands, the one place sacred to lawlessness 
 in the prevailing dominion of law, and bided his time. 
 
 It came. The great imperial machine began to 
 creak, and the whisper that something was wrong 
 with it went through the desert. Gradually the feeling 
 
284 IN THE DESERT 
 
 that a great moment was at hand grew. The wander- 
 ing Bedouin tribes scented the adventure which was 
 to unite their hitherto distracted energies, and during 
 the last two or three centuries of that long waiting 
 every means was put in practice to prepare for the 
 coming exploit. The scattered clans drew into a 
 single people. A common language penetrated the 
 peninsula. Never had the spirit of the race been 
 so high as at this moment when the noble Arab 
 minstrelsy struck its most ringing notes, calling to high 
 adventures and acts of daring. In that instant, just 
 as it crouched for its spring, the desert breed, for the 
 first time in history, was a nation. All ignorant of 
 the uses it was to be put to, it resembled some infernal 
 machine or bomb of unprecedented power gradually 
 maturing in mid-desert. And while it grew in deadli- 
 ness and power its rival, the great imperial machine, 
 wobbled and rocked more and more, until finally it 
 came to a standstill altogether. I have always thought 
 that this moment, the moment of Western relaxation 
 and prostration on the one side, and of the fierce eyes 
 gathering and glaring out of the desert on the other, 
 was one of the most dramatic in all history. There 
 was but one thing wanting to the Arabs, an inspiration 
 and war-cry to hurl them forward with a single impetus. 
 That, as we know, was supplied. In the year 622 a 
 certain Mohammed, the orphan son of Abdallah, a 
 native of Mecca, touched with his match the fuse of 
 the desert bomb, and in five minutes (roughly speaking) 
 the Arabs, who had never hitherto shown their noses 
 outside the desert, were everywhere. 
 
 Now pass over eight hundred and seventy years and 
 come down to New Year's Day of the year 1492. It 
 
THE MOSLEM SPHERE OF INFLUENCE 285 
 
 is the day of the fall of Granada, and the final extinc- 
 tion of the Arab power in Europe. Granada had 
 always been loved by the Moors. It was by nature 
 more beautiful, in its glowing, shady gardens and views 
 of the encircling hills, than most cities, and no pains 
 had been spared to beautify it architecturally. Its 
 loveliness is still a tradition among the Moors of North 
 Africa, and they still lament, in their wistful and 
 melancholy poetry, the loss of the earthly paradise 
 in which they once sojourned. I am told, here in 
 Kairwan, that in certain families there are still pre- 
 served the old keys of those castles in Spain of theirs 
 the memory of which yet haunts their imaginations. It 
 was sore to go, and to his last stronghold the Arab 
 clung with desperate tenacity. But the end was in- 
 evitable. The Moorish expulsion was no result of one 
 man's policy nor of any campaign or series of cam- 
 paigns. A royal marriage might promote the union 
 of Spain and the consequent stability of rule might 
 generate law and order and strengthen the state for 
 its final struggle with the Moors. But these tendencies 
 were not peculiar to Spain or the rulers of Spain. All 
 Europe was building upon them its development and 
 civilisation. From the moment that the northern 
 barbarians had cleared the ground for themselves 
 and settled down in the countries of their choice they 
 had begun to organise themselves, to evolve order 
 out of chaos, and to lay down the foundation of a 
 disciplined and progressive society. This was the 
 process that was fatal to the Arab. It signified the 
 reconstruction in Europe of a social system, differing 
 of course from the Roman in many ways, yet similar 
 to it in its intellectual qualities of organisation and 
 
286 IN THE DESERT 
 
 cohesion. It tended therefore to reproduce just those 
 conditions which, in the classic age, had hemmed the 
 Arab in upon the desert ; and step by step, as those 
 conditions were once more evolved, the Arab once 
 more fell back upon the wilderness he had emerged 
 from, until finally, in 1609, just three hundred years 
 ago, the last of the race were spurned from Spanish 
 shores and crossed the Mediterranean to reinforce the 
 pirate fleets of Algiers. 
 
 And then there came a day at last, but eighty years 
 ago, when the Arab's visit to Europe was returned. 
 The French, representatives of law and order, took 
 Algiers, promising to evacuate it shortly. We promised 
 the same thing when we occupied Egypt. But the 
 idea we represented was too strong for both of us. 
 The state of chaos which rendered the introduction 
 of law necessary required not only its continued 
 presence but its indefinite advance. The French were 
 drawn on to annex Algeria and Tunisia and encroach 
 upon the desert. The English were drawn on up the 
 Nile to the conquest of the Sudan. Thus after long 
 delay the Arabs have once more been driven in 
 upon their own breeding-ground. 
 
 Such have been the fluctuations, but what do they 
 portend ? Why do Europe and the desert act like a 
 seesaw, the decline of one registered in the rise of 
 the other? Why, whenever Europe waxes and grows 
 strong, does the Arab, in like degree, shrivel up and 
 collapse ? And why, when Europe collapses, does 
 the Arab dilate and become a figure of terror ? 
 
 The answer is scattered through these pages, and 
 I will not recapitulate old arguments. If I have made 
 the reader in any way conscious of the desert he will 
 
THE MOSLEM SPHERE OF INFLUENCE 287 
 
 be aware of it as an environment dedicated to the 
 development of individualism. He will feel that in all 
 it gives as well as in all it withholds, in all the tests 
 and trials of its dangerous, lonely, wandering life, no 
 less than in the absence in it of all the opportunities 
 that draw men together into settled communities 
 and teach them to coalesce and depend on each 
 other, the desert is the great tutor of solitary man- 
 hood and self-dependence. Not less certain is it that 
 what Europe stands for, and has always stood for, 
 is the collective principle, the instinct for combi- 
 nation, and the power of a society not only united 
 in the bonds of law and order at the pre.sent moment, 
 but united by a common sequence of ideas with the 
 generations which have preceded and are to follow 
 the present one. As a school for individual manhood 
 of the purely virile type, no school equals the desert, 
 nor have I ever met a man whom, for dignity, 
 courtesy, self-control, and the qualities generally which 
 we associate with the word " gentleman," I could place 
 on a level with the Arab. Yet the strength of the 
 finest individual type is as nothing to the strength 
 which springs from cohesion and combination. The 
 Arab is formidable only to two kinds of races — to those 
 which have not reached or have lost the power of 
 collective action. Savages and decadent civilisations 
 are his natural prey. The empire he dismembered 
 had lost its faith in the ideals which work for unity 
 and was already in a state of social disintegration when 
 he fell upon it. And as the loss of social cohesion let 
 him in, so the recovery of it drove him out. Every 
 step in Europe's progress has been scored in Arab 
 losses. 
 
288 IN THE DESERT 
 
 They stand pitted against each other, these two, Hke 
 two boxers sparring for an opening ; yet it seems 
 that at present we can afford to despise an ancient 
 enemy. It is low tide with the Arab. He is back 
 in the sand again. The moment is come — 
 
 " When that which drew from out the boundless deep 
 Turns again home." 
 
 I stood, at Sbeitla, by an old high-water mark. The 
 tide of Western civilisation had been there long ago, 
 but had ebbed since then. Now it was here again, and 
 I watched it flooding in and lapping round the same old 
 stones and pouring over and beyond. When will it, or 
 will it ever, turn ? " Esto perpetua ! " exclaims Mr, Belloc 
 as he turns his face to Europe from Algerian wander- 
 ings : let the European system endure for ever. So be 
 it ; yet the Arab has a terrible ally. He is backed by 
 the desert. So long as the desert remains the desert 
 it will continue to breed men of the Arab type. If 
 the time should come when European civilisation 
 declines, when its cohesion relaxes and society tends 
 to disintegrate, then, it is likely enough, there will 
 be found specimens of desert manhood ready to 
 take an old occasion by the hand. A thousand years 
 are but as yesterday in desert chronology. Who can 
 tell but that a thousand years hence those old Kairwan 
 keys may be fitted to Spanish locks again ? 
 
Appendix 
 
 Note A. — Arab Civilisation (p. 9). 
 
 Dr. T. I. DE Boer, of the University of Groningen, has 
 written lately a work on the " History of Philosophy in Islam," 
 which has been translated into English, and from which I will 
 quote a few sentences. It gives such an analysis of the Arab 
 mind as accurately bears out the impressions one receives 
 from their art and poetry, their towns, their history, and their 
 life. The sources of Arab philosophy, according to Dr. de 
 Boer, were Greece, Persia, and India. Of these the last two 
 represented speculative subtlety and the first order. "Orien- 
 tal wisdom, astrology, and cosmology delivered over to Muslim 
 thinkers materials of many kinds, but the Form — the formadve 
 principle— came to them from the Greeks. In every case 
 where it is not mere enumeration or chance concatenation 
 that is taken in hand, but where an attempt is made to arrange 
 the manifold according to positive or logical points of view, 
 we may conclude with all probability that Greek influences 
 have been at work." The idea of Form as not of Oriental 
 origin, and not inherent in the Arab mind and character, is 
 the impression which is most strongly borne out by Arab 
 architecture. 
 
 I gather from Dr. de Boer that in Arab thought generally it 
 was Oriental subtlety rather than Greek form which played 
 the leading part. Arab philosophy has, he tells us, "no 
 important advances in thought to register." Of their beauti- 
 ful caligraphy, he says that it is " more decorative in its nature 
 
 20 ''" 
 
290 IN THE DESERT 
 
 than constructive, like Arabic art in general." And he adds, 
 " In the very characters of the Arabic speech we may still see 
 the subtlety of the intelligence which formed them, although 
 at the same time we may see a lack of energy which is 
 observable in the entire development of Arab culture." 
 
 Of the verses of a celebrated poet of the tenth century, 
 Mutanabbi, we have the remark, " frightfully tedious in their 
 contents; although epigrammatic in their form." And of the 
 philosophic poet, Abn-1-Ala-al-Maarri, we hear that "he is 
 almost entirely wanting in the gift of combination. He can 
 analyse, but he does not hit upon any synthesis, and his 
 learning bears no fruit." Of the science of astronomy there 
 is much the same tale to tell. "According to the different 
 conceptions entertained of the relation which subsisted 
 between the heavenly bodies and sublunary things, either a 
 rational astronomy was developed or a fantastic astrology." 
 But " only a few kept entirely free from astrological delusions." 
 Again, "in the domain of natural science Muslim learned men 
 collected a rich body of material ; but hardly in any case did 
 they succeed in really treating it scientifically. . . . To 
 establish the wisdom of God and the operation of Nature 
 . . . alchemistic experiments were instituted, the magical 
 virtues of taUsmans tested, the effects of music upon the 
 emotions of men and animals investigated, and observations 
 made on physiognomy, while attempts were also set on foot 
 to explain the wonders of the life of sleep, and of dreams, as 
 well as those of soothsaying and prophecy." 
 
 Medicine was a science which much occupied the Arabs, but 
 in their practice of this subject, too, we find the same tendency 
 to the vague and conjectural. " The old-fashioned doctor was 
 disposed to be satisfied with time-honoured magical formulae, 
 and other empirical expedients; but modern society in the 
 ninth century required philosophical knowledge in the 
 physician. He had to know the 'natures' of foods, stimu- 
 lants or luxuries, and medicaments, the humours of the body, 
 and in every case the influence of the stars. The physician 
 
APPENDIX 291 
 
 was brother to the astrologer. ... He had to attend the 
 lectures of the alchemist," and so on. 
 
 In short, the study of the Arab mind and processes of 
 thought which Dr. de Boer has elaborated in his book con- 
 firm in every way the impression one receives from observing 
 Arab life and art. Fancifulness and lack of common sense 
 attend him. He was destitute of the constructive instinct, 
 and when he had cleared the ground for himself in South 
 Europe he was not able to avail himself of his opportunity. 
 The prevailing tendency to exaggerate his performances arises, 
 I suppose, partly from a certain outward show of luxury and 
 splendour which his civilisation bore — though the materials 
 and even architects of it were mainly imported from the 
 East — partly from the romantic glamour that colours and 
 hides everything Arab, but chiefly, no doubt, from the fact 
 that he had the advantage of exercising his talents at a time 
 when the rest of the world was sunk in semi-barbarism. In 
 the darkness that separates ancient civilisation from modern 
 the brilliance of the Arab is salient. Like the glowworm, he — 
 
 "Shows by night a feeble beam, 
 Which disappears by day." 
 
 It is sometimes said that this very fact that the Arabs at 
 a given period were " more advanced " than other people is a 
 sufficient claim to admiration. Even if their civilisation was 
 not a very first-rate affair, no other race for half a dozen cen- 
 turies could show as good a one. But the point is that during 
 these centuries no other race had yet produced the civilisation 
 proper to it at all. The fruit-time of the other races was to 
 come; but these centuries were the fruit-time of the Arab. 
 His harvest was over, he was decadent all round, before he 
 was driven out of Europe. By this civilisation the construc- 
 tive power of the race must be judged. We do not say of 
 Greek civilisation that it was great because it excelled that 
 of the Phrygians, nor of Roman civilisation that it was great 
 
292 IN THE DESERT 
 
 because it was in advance of that of the Huns. We say of 
 Greek and Roman civilisation that they were great because 
 they have bequeathed what is of permanent value to the mind 
 of man. Arab philosophy, though most of what passes as 
 Arab philosophy appears to have been Syrian or Persian, 
 may have influenced mediaeval scholasticism, but can we say 
 that Arab thought and literature has bequeathed anything of 
 permanent value to mankind ? 
 
 Note B. — Old and New French Colonising (p. 71). 
 
 It is the fashion to speak of the new French colonising as a 
 renaissance. The difference, however, between the old and new 
 .methods of colonising seems to be more remarkable than any 
 resemblances. There appeared a book a year or two ago by 
 Sir Gilbert Parker and Mr. Bryan called " Old Quebec " which 
 gave an admirable sketch of the old system as it was applied 
 to Canada. That system consisted simply in the transplanta- 
 tion to the new land of a section of French society as it existed 
 at that time in the mother country. A complete little feudal 
 system was established on the banks of the St. Lawrence. 
 
 " The Canadian seigneurs held their land of the king, and 
 the habitants, or cultivators of the soil, held theirs of the 
 seigneurs upon the performance of specific duties and the 
 payment of cens et rente. On the St. Martin's Day, when 
 the censitaires commonly liquidated the obligations of their 
 tenure, the seigneurie presented an animated scene. Here 
 were gathered all the tenants, bearing wheat, eggs, and live 
 capons, to pay for their long, narrow farms at a rate ranging 
 from four to sixteen francs." 
 
 Nor did his rent complete the tenant's obligations. 
 " Throughout the year he must grind his grain at the 
 seigneur's mill, paying one bushel in every fourteen for the 
 service, bake his bread at the seigneur's oven, work for him 
 one or two days in the year, and forfeit one fish in every eleven 
 to the lord of the manor." 
 
APPENDIX 293 
 
 Founded as a missionary trading post, Quebec had always 
 been noted for a certain docility of piety. She had been 
 brought up under priestly control. Her early governors — 
 Champlain, D'Ailleboust, Montmagny — were military monks. 
 The Jesuits lent their powerful influence to foster the pre- 
 vailing spirit of submission, and obtained, by a judicious 
 alternation of persuasion and penance, a remarkable hold 
 over the community. Absence from church was punishable 
 by law, as also was absence from confession. The calendar 
 was filled with special days for prayer and purification. 
 Priests, monks, and nuns crowded the city in numbers dis- 
 proportionate to the lay population. The Conseil Superieur 
 took careful note of the least religious laxity, and the pillory, 
 the stocks, and a certain " wooden horse with a sharp spine," 
 were the ready instruments of correction. 
 
 Such a glance sufficiently indicates the spirit of the French 
 colonising of that day. The life was not unhappy nor un- 
 beautiful. Feudalism lost much of its harshness in trans- 
 plantation. The Canadian peasant, dreaming out his peaceful 
 existence in the shadow of the chateaux and the church, super- 
 vised with affectionate assiduity by the seigneur and the priest, 
 enjoyed a lot which to many people, who love the backward 
 rather than the forward glance, still seems the happiest 
 possible. But to colonisation, which is essentially a forward- 
 looking business, such a lot bears no sort of application. The 
 life of the French settlement, for all its beauties and amenities, 
 was a stereotyped and outworn life, a life incapable of adapt- 
 ing itself to new conditions and a new country. Some adven- 
 turous spirits there were who rebelled against it, and accepted 
 outlawry as the consequence. These coureurs de bois, as they 
 were called, whom the excessive lawfulness of the settlement 
 drove to the utter lawlessness of the backwoods, are a singular 
 testimony to the irksome influence of formalism amid surround- 
 ings which called, above all, for a flexible adaptability. The 
 attitude of the ruling powers towards them is sufficiently shown 
 by the edict which provides that "any person going into the 
 
294 IN THE DESERT 
 
 woods without a licence should be whipped and branded for 
 the first offence, and sent for life to the galleys for the second, 
 while a third offence was punishable by death." 
 
 Compared with the British Colonies, living their own 
 lives and grappling with Nature on equal terms, the French 
 were like branches of an ancient tree cut off and thrust 
 into the ground as compared with handfuls of seed scattered 
 over the soil. They lacked the vitality which is not to be 
 separated from the idea of liberty. The opinion, which 
 still in many quarters lingers, that the French are " no 
 colonists," was derived from these past experiences. It was 
 a legitimate conclusion at the time. But the conditions of 
 their colonising to-day are wholly different. The decaying 
 bulwarks of feudalism no longer stand between the colonist 
 and the colony. And the consequence, in the case of 
 North Africa, is a remarkable quickening of public interest 
 in colonial life. Settlers, possessing the soil they cultivate, 
 overspread the land ; industries, public works, improvements 
 — the draining of swamps, the irrigation of deserts, the 
 engineering of railways and roads — are pushed forward with 
 vigour and intelligence. More than twenty years ago it was 
 remarked by one of Algeria's acutest historians, Maurice 
 Wahl, that the Algerian colonists soon became distinguished 
 from their countrymen at home by a certain audacity of 
 character and mind, and a readiness to adopt advanced 
 methods and new ideas, and to apply the latest discoveries 
 in science to the uses of agriculture and industry. This 
 is, of course, the true colonial temper, and the develop- 
 ment of it by the French under present conditions suggests 
 that our ancient competition with them should be regarded 
 not so much as a competition between Frenchmen and 
 Englishmen as between Feudalism and Freedom. The 
 English settlers, in the act of emigration, had escaped from 
 a system which the French failed to escape from. They 
 had shaken off fetters which their rivals carried with them. 
 It was this, perhaps, rather than any racial disqualification. 
 
APPENDIX 295 
 
 which accounts for the French failure and our success. 
 At present these hindrances no longer exist, and France 
 as a Republic may achieve — and is, in fact, rapidly achiev- 
 ing — successes in colonisation which to France as a despotism 
 were out of the question. 
 
 Note C. — Arab Rule (p. 113). 
 
 In Sir Charles Eliot's book on the East Africa Protectorate 
 there will be found an account of the Arab occupation 
 of Zanzibar and of Arab rule in the interior, which is in 
 all essentials an exact replica of the history of Algiers. 
 Slavery is the Arab vice. It is much more than an ordin- 
 ary social evil resulting from conditions that pass. It is 
 a profound racial characteristic. The Arab takes to slavery 
 as a Chinaman to opium. The tracking down of his less 
 strong and courageous quarry, the panic created by his 
 appearance, the flight, the pursuit, the capture, the ruin 
 left behind, are rapture to him. It is the one form of 
 industry the race has developed in the course of its rule. 
 " It is," says Sir Charles Eliot, " as slave-owners and slave- 
 traders only that the Arabs have cut a figure in East 
 Africa." They have introduced, he tells us, nothing; they 
 have built nothing. Their long ascendancy is, in short, 
 memorable only for its attempt to pull to pieces such poor 
 vestiges of social order as they could lay hands on. 
 
 Another witness to the inability of the Arabs to estabhsh 
 settled government is a French officer, M. de Champeaux, 
 who writes from personal observation of the Central Saharan 
 oases. The leading native elements of these strongholds, 
 which so long defied the French advance, are the Arab 
 and Berber, and the contrast between their instinct for 
 organisation is very noticeable. " Dans les oasis soumises 
 a I'influence arabe il n'existait aucun chef, aucune assemblee 
 permanente pour commander. Dans les circonstances graves 
 les gens le plus notables, les Kebar, se reunisaient pour de- 
 
296 IN THE DESERT 
 
 liberer sur la conduite a tenir, le parti a prendre et sur les 
 moyens d'action. En temps ordinaire, I'autorite d'un person- 
 nage marquant se faisait seule sentir, mais non directement." 
 On the other hand, " Chez les Berberes, au contraire, I'auto- 
 rite dirigeante n'etait pas temporaire. Elle subsistait con- 
 tinuellement dans la djemaa, ou reunion, des hommes 
 importantes de la cite. Dans les djemaas, composees 
 d'individus les plus nobles et les plus influents tant par 
 leur naissance et leurs reputation maraboutique que par leur 
 instruction et leurs richesses, il y avait egalite complete ; et 
 le chef de la djemaa, lorsqu'il en existait un, n'avait aucune 
 preponderance sur les autres membres." 
 
 At the same time the mere personal ascendancy of the 
 Arab has always declared itself, and no native-organised 
 society has been able to resist it. Palgrave speaks of their 
 marked predominance "over whomever they came in contact 
 with among their Asiatic or African neighbours, a superiority 
 admitted by these last as a matter of course and an ac- 
 knowledged right." He adds that he " would unhesitatingly 
 affirm Arabs to be the English of the Oriental world " ; his 
 reason being that they are so vastly superior to their 
 neighbours. 
 
 Both the region of which Sir Charles Eliot writes and 
 the group of oases of which de Champeaux writes are 
 instances in which the Arabs have been for many generations 
 left free to work out their own system of social order and 
 government. The results seem to have been quite in con- 
 formity with their more ambitious attempts on the Mediter- 
 ranean coasts. 
 
 Note D. — Oriental Drapery (p. 155). 
 
 Again and again I find myself struck, while watching Arabs, 
 with what is, I suppose, a lost sense in art with us — I 
 mean the extraordinary significance and beauty of fold as 
 interpreting life and movement. Drapery, in its free, natural 
 
APPENDIX 297 
 
 state, so indicates every changing attitude and motion of the 
 body, so conforms itself to every mood, so instantly ex- 
 presses the vivacity, dignity, repose, or dejection of the 
 figure it obeys, that it may almost be said to be imbued 
 with something of a human character, and actually to itself 
 share in the emotions it depicts. 
 
 Why is it that the crowds of Kafiirs I have often seen 
 huddled under the lee of a compound in the cold grey of 
 a veld morning are so much more vividly present to my 
 memory than any similar European crowd ? Why can I 
 recall them, yet cannot recall the groups and figures of 
 English workmen whom I knew much better? Because 
 the Kaffirs' garments made them strike the eye like pic- 
 tures. Their straight-hanging blankets, drawn over the 
 head and drooping to the legs, were charged with all the 
 feeling of the cowering, forlorn bodies underneath. I can 
 see them now, those still effigies, so mutely suggestive of 
 patience and cold. 
 
 It is noticeable that only the human body is able to 
 give this interest to drapery. A cloak flung upon a chair 
 may arrange itself in much the same folds as on a 
 kneeUng or stooping figure. But these folds only indicate 
 the form of the chair, a matter so comparatively uninter- 
 esting that they attract little attention, and, having no 
 meaning, have little or no beauty ; that is to say, little or 
 no beauty apart from colour and the variations of colour 
 wrought by gradations of light and shade. This kind of 
 beauty they have, just as the straight folds of a curtain 
 have it, which interpret no form at all. But the real 
 significance of drapery is an interpretative or borrowed 
 quality ; a quality given to it by the form concealed beneath. 
 And it is only the human form which possesses sufficient 
 interest to be able to infuse this quality into drapery in any 
 marked degree. 
 
 It is evident how this condition handicaps modern art. 
 You can only put into art what you can get out of life, 
 
298 IN THE DESERT 
 
 and this sense of the significance of drapery it is impos- 
 sible to get out of modern life, because free drapery does 
 not exist in modern life. 
 
 Consequently our sense in this direction remains uncul- 
 tivated, and probably we do not know our own loss. 
 Watching Arabs riding or walking in front of me, or 
 crouched within the doorways of their shops, or loitering 
 and strolling about in groups in market-place or bazaar, 
 has sometimes suggested to me a little of what that loss 
 must be. If once you become aware of the interpretative 
 function of drapery, and begin to look at it with a view 
 to finding out what it has to say, there is literally no end 
 to the expressiveness it will develop. The personality of the 
 wearer will seem to overflow into it. It will come towards 
 you with graciousness and a large and liberal swing, or 
 shrink into the narrow folds of coldness and suspicion, or 
 cower timidly in some corner, quite nerveless and illegible. 
 There is nothing it cannot do or be. It acts the light 
 impetuosity and frolic fun of the children that come scam- 
 pering up to look at the strangers. It celebrates the noble 
 dignity of the sheyk you visit in his tent. It explains with 
 irresistible pathos the misery and dejection of the old 
 beggar at the gate. I believe the fascination of an Oriental 
 / crowd, and particularly the fact that you never tire of it 
 or seem to exhaust its interest, is due mainly to its wearing free 
 drapery. 
 
 Note E. — Oriental Colour (p. i6i). 
 The note of Oriental colour is unmistakable. It consists in 
 two characteristics. First, the colour is the perfect colour, 
 deep and true, not running to shades and half-tones. 
 Secondly, it is not used to define the forms and shapes of 
 things, but is disposed and controlled more by light and 
 shade than by the dimensions of objects. The result of the 
 combination of these two characteristics is that deep and 
 suffused glow which one notices in the work of the great 
 
APPENDIX 299 
 
 colourists, and which so easily distinguishes their work from 
 the work of those who use colour to define objects. 
 
 The East itself, however, does not supply in art any 
 adequate expression of its own sense for colour. It has 
 not, perhaps, the character, the self-discipline, and self- 
 control which are as necessary as inspiration to a great creative 
 effort. Its sense for colour does not normally get beyond 
 those instances of everyday life w'hich we were just now 
 noticing at Tuggurt. In everyday life, however, its presence 
 is quite unmistakable. It is a popular possession, a popular 
 instinct. Every gipsy that travels westward carries with 
 him, in dress and ornament, marks of this love of colour, 
 which at once to Western eyes proclaim his Eastern origin. 
 And we know that this sense is so profound and innate 
 that even after generations of civilised life, and when, perhaps, 
 the descendants of these aliens have become members of 
 ordinary society, not to be distinguished from their neighbours 
 save by an extra darkness of eye or hair, their craving for 
 colour and, as it were, understanding of colour will still 
 show itself, and will, moreover, invariably take the same turn, 
 a turn, that is, towards the swarthy tints which suggest 
 sunlight, such as orange and crimson and rich brown. While 
 a drop of Oriental blood remains in the race this instinct 
 will manifest itself, bearing witness in an extraordinary way 
 to the depth and permanence of the Eastern sense for 
 colour. 
 
 Tracked to its source, the sentiment that underlies Oriental 
 colour, the depth, richness, emotion of it, seems to be the same 
 that belongs to Oriental scenery. In tropical jungle vegeta- 
 tion there is an influence at work different to the influence 
 felt in European scenery. All the moods of Eastern nature 
 are sensuous. The inextricable richness of the vegetation, 
 the tangle of creepers, the gorgeous blossoms, the occasional 
 heavy, almost sickly, scent of lily or lotus, the moisture of 
 the air, the fireflies wheeling in the dusky shadows — these 
 and countless others are features which may be divided 
 
300 IN THE DESERT 
 
 in enumeration but are not divided in the profound sensuous 
 impression they produce. And running through all this 
 medley, as its main element, is the gorgeousness of the colour 
 ing, a colouring which always keeps a certain glow of warmth 
 and passion in it, and is of the kind for which Eastern 
 races in their own dress and adornment always show so 
 instinctive a predilection. 
 
 The only really adequate expression in art to which this 
 sensuousness felt in tropical scenery and tropical colouring 
 has ever lent itself is the Byzantine style of architecture. By 
 Byzantine I do not, of course, mean the so-called Byzantine of 
 Santa Sophia, which is a study of curves strictly structural 
 and intellectual in character, a kind of glorified Roman 
 therms, impregnated with classic influence, and not sensuous 
 at all. The style of Santa Sophia, if we take Eastern 
 colouring to be the motive aimed at, was a failure; and 
 that the Greeks themselves knew it to be a failure is 
 shown by the fact that they never repeated it. By Byzantine 
 I mean the style as the Byzantines eventually worked it 
 out, the style of plastic gold mosaic, worked into rounded 
 apses and ponderous low domes, obscured by dark shadows 
 and shot with the crimson and azure of the figures portrayed. 
 Of this St. Mark's is the central example. I wish I could 
 place the reader, for a moment, first among the influences 
 of a tropical night, with all its suggestions of veiled magnifi- 
 cence, its richness of gloom, its underglow of tawny colour ; 
 and from that scene, while its appeal was fresh on him, 
 transport him suddenly into the interior of St. Mark's. If 
 he did not, here in the basiUca, recognise the same character 
 and influence which he felt but now in the tropical jungle, 
 I would agree to forfeit the conviction I hold that every 
 genuine manifestation of art is the expression of perceptions 
 common to human nature. 
 
 Once, however, we distinguish the character of Oriental 
 colouring, and realise its central expression in Byzantine 
 art, it is impossible not to perceive that its effect may be 
 
APPENDIX 301 
 
 traced further, and that in St. Mark's itself we have the 
 source of a deep and spreading influence. St. Mark's not 
 only voices the Orientalism of Venice, its control over the 
 subsequent art of the Republic is unquestionable. Venetian 
 colour, as developed in Venetian painting, reeks of St. Mark's. 
 It has the same richness and glow. It suffuses and melts 
 away forms in the same way. It is governed by its own 
 laws and limitations only, that is, by light and shade, not 
 by the dimensions of objects. And these traits are of the 
 East. The source she sucked her strength from comes 
 out in the matured art of Venice. The dark splendour on 
 the canvases of Titian and Tintoret was never of Western 
 origin. It is its own end, it is not used to define. It is 
 sensuous, not intellectual, and may be tracked back through 
 the St. Mark's mosaics deep into the sources of Eastern 
 life and character. 
 
 How far the influence has since extended who shall say ? 
 But when the reader comes upon any salient and unmistakable 
 example of it, such an example as the painting of Reynolds 
 or Rubens affords, let him remember that the East has 
 spoken through Venice, and ask if these masters have not 
 learnt in Venice the secret of that glow. The subject 
 opens too wide a prospect to be here continued ; only in 
 dealing with such common scenes of Oriental life as we 
 have been meeting with at Tuggurt, and may meet with else- 
 where, I would wish to link them to the main ideas to 
 which they belong and which lend them significance. They 
 are the little wayside, usual expressions of that sensuous 
 and emotional character which belongs to the East, which 
 differentiates it from the intellectual West, of which St. 
 Mark's at Venice may be taken as the central artistic embodi- 
 ment, and which, through St. Mark's, has illumined Western 
 art with many a fitful and struggling ray. 
 
302 IN THE DESERT 
 
 Note F. — Character of Shiism (p. 224). 
 
 The greatest of authorities on Persian religion and philosophy, 
 according to Professor Browne, who speaks of his work, " Les 
 Religions et les Philosophies dans I'Asie Centrale," as "a 
 classic unsurpassed, and indeed unapproached in the subject 
 whereof it treats," is that very Count Gobineau from whom 
 Matthew Arnold has taken his description of the subject- 
 matter of the plays. Count Gobineau treats the Shiite 
 heresy very largely as a national movement. The old Parsi 
 religion, he thinks, which fell with the national independence 
 of Persia before the Arab invasion, became identified with 
 a sentiment of patriotism. The sanctification of Ali and 
 the denial of the legitimacy of the first three Caliphs was 
 a device more political than religious. It aimed at under- 
 mining the authority of the reigning house. The temporal 
 and spiritual powers being united in the persons of the 
 Caliphs, to aim at one was to strike the other. To deny 
 the claim of the reigning Caliphs to the apostoUc succession 
 was to deny their right to rule and govern. In short, the 
 Shiites were cloaking an act of political treason under the 
 guise of religious reformation. Still, I suppose Count 
 Gobineau would not have us ignore the rehgious signifi- 
 cance of the movement. A host of questions at once 
 arise if we do so. How is it that the Shiite doctrine has 
 so long outlasted its political significance? It is as vital 
 to-day as ever it was ; it excites the fury of the Sunnite 
 faction in as high a degree as ever it did. The Persian 
 pilgrims are liable still, as Burton relates, to every kind 
 of insult and outrage from their Sunnite rivals, on account 
 of this belief of theirs. Yet the temporal power of Islam has 
 long disappeared from Persia, and there can, therefore, 
 be no longer a direct political meaning or threat attach- 
 able to the doctrine. What makes it last, then, if not 
 its religious meaning? 
 
 Again, if Shiism is primarily political, how is it to be 
 
APPENDIX 303 
 
 accounted for that all the innovations it has sanctioned — 
 Sufism, Gnosticism, Mysticism, Babism — are all similar in 
 their religious and philosophical character, are all obviously 
 directed to a similar religious purpose? The activity of 
 Shiism is evidently to-day a religious and philosophical 
 activity, not a political activity, though it may have reinforced 
 itself at the beginning with a political motive. 
 
 Moreover, the Indian people and the Persians are in 
 character and temperament much alike. Both showed the 
 same desire, under Mohammedanism, to revive the ancient 
 forms of a pantheistic religion. In the case of the Indians 
 there is, I believe, no question of politics as a motive. They 
 had no political end to gain. Their motive was pure dis- 
 content with the cold aloofness of the Moslem creed. Why 
 should not such a motive equally explain the attitude of the 
 Persians ? 
 
 Sufism, Count Gobineau is inclined to regard as a kind of 
 disease of the Oriental intellect resulting from an almost 
 abnormal subtlety and activity of mind constantly working 
 upon the incomprehensible. Still there are some sentences in 
 Count Gobineau's own description which seem to point to the 
 want that the new teaching was intended to meet. Thus he 
 speaks of it as " a passive attitude of the soul which surrounds 
 with a halo of inert sentimentalism all imaginable conceptions 
 of God, man, and the world." And again he calls it, "a 
 general disposition to make everything pass like a spectacle 
 before the interior man." The philosophy of Sufism is that 
 "the sensible man should shut himself up in himself. It is in 
 his own heart only that he can find joy, security, pardon for 
 faults, tender indulgence, and finally God." 
 
 Now, granting all the abuses that this system of thought led 
 to, and the sanction for every kind of self-indulgence that it 
 involved, there is still this about it, that it has depth, that it 
 is an interior development, and is, in that respect, in marked 
 contrast with the Mohammedan religion. Looked at close, 
 one may see in Shiism at one time a patriotic, at another 
 
304 IN THE DESERT 
 
 a quietest movement ; but looked at in connection with 
 Mohammedanism, one sees in it a protest against a deficiency 
 in the Arab reUgion, and an attempt to make that deficiency 
 good. The real aims of the Shiite sect are best set forth in 
 the Encyclopedia compiled by an association of philosophers 
 in Basra in the second half of the tenth century. Political 
 considerations were not wanting, but discontent with the 
 Moslem limitations was the ruling principle. " There is 
 found in their Encyclopjedia," says Professor de Boer, "an 
 eclectic Gnosticism built on a foundation of natural science, 
 and provided with a political background. . . . The whole 
 representation is that of the doctrine of a persecuted sect, 
 with the political features peeping out here and there. We 
 see also something of suffering and struggle — something of 
 the oppressions to which the men of this Encyclopaedia, or 
 their predecessors, were exposed, and something of the hopes 
 they cherished and the patience they preached. They seek 
 in their spiritualistic philosophy consolation and redemption." 
 The influence against which they had to contend is marked 
 by themselves. "Our Prophet, Mohammed," they said, 
 " was sent to an uncivilised people, composed of dwellers in 
 the desert, who possessed a proper conception neither of the 
 beauty of this world, nor of the spiritual character of the world 
 beyond. The crude expressions of the Koran, which are 
 adapted to the understanding of that people, must be under- 
 stood in a spiritual sense by those who are more cultured." 
 
 From this point of view of the general tendency of Persian 
 innovation it seems to me that Matthew Arnold's remarks still 
 have great value. He does not, it is true, allow much for 
 racial differences. He does not distinguish the immobility of 
 Arab civilisation and the anti-social life of the desert, which 
 have so much to do with the maintenance of Mohammedan 
 orthodoxy. But he brings out with great clearness what, after 
 all, is the very crux of the matter — the lack of feeling in the 
 Moslem religion, and the need for supplying it. 
 
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