The little steamer, the Spahi, which conveyed us across the Strait, was seaworthy for all her cranky appearance, and made the passage of thirty-two miles quickly and comfortably for all her roughness of accommodation. She was a cargo-boat, but her skipper was English, and did his best to make the ladies feel at home. Besides, Captain No. 1 had brought a select basket of provisions and a case of dry, undoctored champagne. One of our first experiences as we cleared Algeciras, with turrets like our martello-towers sentinelling the hills, and the three-masted wreck—"Been twenty-one days there," said the skipper, "and not an effort has been made to raise it yet, and not even a warning light is hung over it at night"—was to sight a bottle-nosed whale puffing and spewing its predatory course.

"What are those ruins upon the Spanish shore for?" asked the accomplished lady.

When she was informed that they were the beacons raised in the days of old, when the Moorish corsairs haunted that coast, and that the moment the pirate sail was descried in the offing (I hope this is correctly nautical) the warning fire blazed by night, or the warning plume of smoke went up by day, to summon Spain's chivalry to the rescue, she was enchanted, and recited a passage from Macaulay's "Armada."

We made the transit in a little over three hours, and, rounding the Punta de Malabata, cut into the Bay of Tangier, and eased off steam at some distance from the Atlantic-washed shore. There is no pier, but a swell and discoloration, projecting in straight line seawards, marks where a mole had once stood. That was a piece of British handiwork; but the Moor, who is no more tormented by the demon of progress than the Turk, had literally let it slide, until it sank under the waters.

The Sultana of Moorish cities Tangier is sometimes called, and truly she does wear a regal, sultana-like air as seen from afar, cushioned in state on the hillside, her white flat roofs rising one above another like the steps of a marble staircase, the tall minarets of the mosques piercing the air, and the multitudinous many-coloured flags of all nations fluttering above the various consulates. But in this, as in so many other instances, it is distance which lends enchantment to the view.

We went as near to the shore as we could in small boats, and when we grounded, a fellowship of clamouring, unkempt, half-naked Barbary Jews, skull-capped, with their shirts tied at their waists and short cotton drawers, rushed forward to meet us, and carry us pickaback to dry land. The ladies were borne in chairs, slung over the shoulders of two of these amphibious porters, or on an improvised seat made by their linked hands, but to preserve their equilibrium the dear creatures had to clasp their arms tightly round the necks of the natives. This would not look well in a picture, above all if the lady were a professional beauty. But there was nothing wrong in it, any more than in Amaryllis clinging to the embrace of Strephon in the whirling of a waltz. Custom reconciles to everything. On stepping into the small boat I had my first difficulty with Albert. I trod on his tail. The dog looked reproachfully, but did not moan. His mistress scowled, and warned me to take care what I was about for an awkward fool. Her husband, with a pained look on his face, mutely apologized for her, and I humbly excused myself and vowed amendment. I am not revengeful, but I did enjoy it when one of the porters, tottering under the weight of the fat lady, made a false step and nearly gave her a sousing. I clambered on my particular Berber's back, dear Albert in my arms, and we splashed merrily along; but Captain No. 1, who turned the scales at seventeen stone two pounds, had not so uneventful a landing. Twice his bearer halted, and the warrior, abandoning himself to his fate, swore he would make the Berber's nose probe the sand if he stumbled.

As I was discharged on the beach, I was confronted by a majestic Moor. His grave brown face was fringed with a closely-trimmed jet-black beard, and his upper lip was shaded with a jet-black moustache. He wore a white turban and a wide-sleeved ample garment of snowy white, flowing in graceful folds below his knees; and on his feet were loose yellow slippers, peaked and turned up at the toes. This was Mahomet Lamarty, better known as "Fat Mahomet," who had acted as interpreter to the British troops in the Crimea, and who, at this period, was making an income by supplying subalterns from Gib with masquerade suits to take home and horses to ride. Mahomet in his sphere was a great man. He was none of your loquacious valets de place, no courier of the Transcendental school. He had made the pilgrimage to Mecca and was a Hadji; he was a chieftain of a tribe in the vicinity, and had fought in the war against the Spanish infidels; he could borrow his purest and finest Arab from the Kadi; he was free to the sacred garden of the Shereef, or Pope-Sultan, one of the descendants of the Prophet, Allah be praised!

Mahomet, who was known to both the Captains, passed our small impedimenta through the custom-house—there is an orthodox custom-house, though there is no proper accommodation for shipping—and we trailed at his heels up the close, crowded, rough alleys which did duty as streets. It would be hard to imagine a more thorough-going change than our scurry across the waves had effected. We were in another world completely. We had been transported as on the carpet of the magician. It was as if the calendar had been put back for centuries, and the half-forgotten personages of the "Thousand-and-One Nights" were revivified and had their being around us.

Tangier is a walled and fortified town; but Vauban had no hand in the fortifications, and it is my private opinion the walls would go down before a peremptory horn-blast quicker than those of Jericho. It swarms with a motley population much addicted to differences in shades of complexion. The Tangerines exhaust the primitive colours and most of the others in their features. There are lime-white Tangerines, copper and canary-countenanced Tangerines, olive and beetroot-hued Tangerines, Tangerines of the tint of the bottom of pots, Tangerines of every—no, I beg to recall that, there are no well-defined blue or green Tangerines; at least, none that came under my ken. The town is as old as the hills and courageously uncivilized. There is no gasholder, no railway-station, no theatre, no cab-stand, no daily paper, and no drainage board to go into controversy over. It is unconsciously backward, near as it is to Europe—a rifle-shot off the track of ships plying from the West to the ports of the Mediterranean. It preserves its Eastern aroma with a fine Moslem conservatism. Its ramparts of crumbling masonry are ornamented with ancient cannon useless for offence, useless for defence. There is said to be a saluting-battery; but the legend runs that the gunners require a week's clear notice before firing a salute.[B] There is no locomotion save in boxes and on the backs of quadrupeds; and quadrupeds of the inferior order are usually, when overtaken by death, thrown in the streets to decompose. But if the irregularity of the town would galvanize the late Monsieur Haussmann in his grave, its situation would satisfy the most exacting Yankee engineer. It is huddled in a sheltered nest on the fringe of a land of milk and honey; it has the advantage of a spread of level beach, and rejoices in the balmiest of climes.

The streets are so narrow that you could light a cigar from your neighbour's window on the opposite side; but there is no window, neither at this side nor the other. A hole with a grating is the only window that is visible. Moors are jealous, and to be able to appreciate their household comforts you must first succeed in turning their houses inside out. Those who have dived into the recesses say the fruit is as savoury as the husk is repulsive. The windowless houses with their backs grudgingly turned to the thoroughfares are low for the most part, and the thoroughfares are—oh! so crooked—zigzag, up and down, staggering in a drunken way over hard cobble-stones and leading nowhere. There are mosques and stores entered by horse-shoe arches, a bazaar dotted over with squatting women, cowled with dirty blankets, selling warm griddle-cakes; moving here and there are the same spectral figures, similar dirty blankets veiling them from head to foot; over the way are cylinders of mat, with nets caging the apertures at each end, to hold the cocks and hens, rabbits and pigeons, brought for sale by Riffians, descendants of the corsairs of that ilk, stalwart, brown, and bare-legged, with heads shaven but for the twisted scalp-lock left for the convenience of Asrael when he is dragging them up to Paradise. Hebrews have their standings around, and deal in strips of cotton, brass dishes, and slippers, or change money, or are ready for anything in the shape of barter. Seated in the shade of that small niche in the wall, as on a tailor's shop-board, is an adool, or public notary, selling advice to a client; in the alcove next him is a worker in beads and filigree; from a dusty forge beyond comes the clang of anvils, where half-naked smiths are hammering out bits or fashioning horse-shoes. Mules with Bedouins perched, chin on shin, amid the bales of merchandise on their backs, cross the bazaar at every moment; or files of donkeys, stooping under bundles of faggots, pick their careful way. By-and-by—but this is not a frequent sight—a Moslem swell ambles past on a barb, gorgeous in caparisons, the enormous peaked saddle held in its place by girths round the beast's breast and quarters, and covered with scarlet hammer-cloth. If we move about and examine the stalls, we see lumps of candied sweetmeats here; charms, snuff-boxes made of young cocoanuts and beads there; and jars of milk or baskets of dates elsewhere. At the fountain yonder, contrived in the wall, mud approached by rugged, sloppy steps, water-carriers, wide-mouthed negro slaves, male and female, with brass curtain-rings in their ears, and skins blacker than the moonless midnight, come and go the whole day long, and gossip or wrangle with loafers in coarse mantles and burnous of stuff striped like leopard-skin. Beside the silent, gliding, ghost-like Mahometan women and the Hottentot Venus, you have Rebecca in gaudy kerchief and Dona Dolores in silken skirt and lace mantilla from neighbouring Spain. In the mingling crowd all is novelty, all is noise, all is queer and shifting and diversified.

The hotel where we put up was owned by Bruzeaud, formerly a messman of a British regiment. It was approached by a filthy lane, and commanded a prospect of a square not much larger than a billiard-table. In the middle of this square was the limp body of a deceased mongoose. At the opposite side of it was a Mahometan school, where the children were instructed in the Koran, and their treble voices as they recited the inspired verses in unison kept up drone for hours. The build and surroundings of the hostelry left much opening for improvement, but we had no valid ground for complaint. The beds were clean, Bruzeaud was a good cook, the waiter was attentive and smiled perpetually, which made up for his stupidity; we had a single agreeable fellow-guest in a Frenchman, who spoke Arabic, and had lived in the city of Morocco as a pretended follower of the Prophet; and, besides, there was that dry undoctored champagne, which it is permissible to drink at all meals in Africa.

There was another hotel in Tangier, a more pretentious establishment, owned by one Martin—surname unknown. Martin was a character. He was an unmitigated coloured gentleman, blubber-lipped and black as the ace of spades, with saffron-red streaks at the corners of his optics. He was a native of one of the West India Islands, I believe, but I will not be positive. Mahomet Lamarty pressed me to tell him in what English county Englishmen were born black, and when I said in none, he gravely ejaculated that in that case Martin was a liar, and habitually ate dirt. To avert possible complications into which I might have been drawn, I had to hasten to explain that Martin might possibly have been born in a part of England known as the Black Country. He had served in the steward's department on the ship of war where the Duke of Edinburgh, then Prince Alfred and a middy, was picking up seamanship. Hence his Jove-like hauteur. He had rubbed-skirts with Royalty, and to his fetter-shadowed soul some of the divinity which hedges kings and their relatives had adhered to him. I never met a darkey who could put on such fearful and wonderful airs. Where he did not order he condescended. He showed me an Irish constabulary revolver which he had received from "his old friend, Lord Francis Conyngham—'pon honour, he was delighted to meet him. It was good for sore eyes—who'd a-thought of his turning up there!" Splendidly inflated Martin was when he spoke of "his servants." This thing was entertaining until he grew presumptuous. If you are polite to some people they are familiar, and want to take an ell for every inch you have conceded. And then you have to tell them to keep their place. But Martin, with the instincts of his race, saw in time when it was coming to that. What a misery it must be for a coloured gentleman of ambition that the tell-tale odor stirpis cannot be eliminated! Martin spent extraordinary amounts of money on the purchase of essences, but to no effect; he could not escape from himself; the scent of the nigger, che puzzo! would hang round him still. He was a great coward with all his magniloquence, and when cholera attacked Tangier, left it in craven terror, and sequestered himself in a country house a few miles off.

The two captains and I "did" Tangier conscientiously, with the zest of Bismarck over a yellow-covered novel, and the thoroughness of a Cook's tourist on his first invasion of Paris. We crawled into a stifling crib of a dark coffee-house, and sucked thick brown sediment out of liliputian cups; we smoked hemp from small-bowled pipes until we fell off into a state of visionary stupor known as "kiff;" we paid our respects to the Kadi, exchanged our boots for slippers, and settled down cross-legged on mats as if we were the three tailors of Tooley Street; we almost consented to have ourselves bled by a Moorish barber—Mahomet Lamarty's particular, who lanced him in the nape of the neck every spring—for the Moorish barber still practises the art of Sangrado, and also extracts teeth. But in my note-taking I was sorely handicapped by my ignorance of the language. Arabic is spoken in the stretch extending from Tetuan to Mogador by the coast, and for some distance in the interior; Chleuh is the dialect of the inhabitants of the Atlas range, and Guinea of the negroes. Spanish is slightly understood in Tangier and its vicinity, and is well understood by the Jews. The houses are generally built of chalk and flint (tabia) on the ground-floor, and of bricks on the upper story. Moorish bricks are good, but rough and crooked in make. The houses inhabited by Jews are obliged to be coated with a yellow wash, those of natives are white, those of Christians may be of any colour. The Jews are made to feel that they are a despised stock, and yet with Jewish subtlety and perseverance they have managed to get and keep the trade of the place in their hands. That fact may be plainly gathered from the absence of business movement in the bazaars and public resorts of Tangier on the Jewish Sabbath. Your Hebrew does not poignantly feel or bitterly resent being reviled and spat upon, provided he hears the broad gold pieces rattling in the courier-bag slung over his shoulder. He nurses his vengeance, but he has the common sense to perceive that the readiest and fullest manner of exacting it is by cozening his neighbour. At this semi-European edge of Africa he enjoys comparative license, although he is forced to appear in skull-cap and a long narrow robe of a dark colour something like a priest's soutane. But the son of Israel when he has a taste for finery (and which of them has not?) compensates for the gloom of his outer garment by wearing an embroidered vest, a girdle of some bright hue, and white drawers.

The daughters of Israel—but my conscience charges me with want of gallantry towards them in a previous chapter, and now I can honestly relieve it and win back their favour. They are the only beautiful women who mollify the horizon of Tangier: the Mahometan ladies are not visible, those of Spanish descent are coarse, and of English are washed-out; while their lips are against the negresses. I have a batch of photographs of females in an album—aye, of believers in the Prophet amongst them, for it is a folly to imagine you cannot obtain that which is forbidden. Hercules, I fancy, must have overcome with a golden sword the dragon that watched the gardens of the Hesperides—which, by the way, were in the neighbourhood of Tangier, if Apollodorus is to be credited. On looking over that album, the majority of the faces are distinctly those of Aaronites, and most favourable specimens of the family, too There are melting black orbs curtained with pensive lashes, luxuriant black hair, regular features, and straight, delicately chiselled noses. These Jewesses generally wear handkerchiefs disposed in curving folds over their heads, and are as fond of loudly-tinted raiment and the gauds of trinketry as their sisters who parade the sands at Ramsgate during the season. There is a photograph before me, as I write, of a Jewish matron, fat, dull, double-chinned, and sleepy-eyed, who must have been a belle before she fell into flesh. She wears massy filigree ear-rings, two strings of precious stones as necklaces, ponderous bracelets, edgings of pearls on her bodice, and rings on all her fingers. Her shoulders are covered with costly lace, and the front of her skirt is like an altar-cloth heavy with embroidery. I dare say, if one might peep under it, she has gold bangles on her ankles. It would surprise me if she had an idea in her head beyond the decoration of her person. As we turn the leaf, there is a full-blooded negress with a striped napkin twisted gracefully turban-wise round her hair, and coils of beads, large and small, sinuously dangling on her breast, like the chains over the Debtor's Door at Newgate. A very fine animal indeed, this negress, with power in her strong shiny features; a nose of courage, thin in the nostrils, and cheek-bones high, but not so high as those of a Red Indian. If she were white, she might pass for a Caucasian, but for that gibbous under-lip. She lacks the wide mouth and the hinted intelligent archness of the Two-Headed Nightingale, and has not the moody expression and semi-sensuous, semi-ferocious development of the muscular widows of Cetewayo; but for a negress she is handsome and well-built, and would fetch a very good price in the market. The slave-trade still flourishes in Morocco. On the next page we meet two types of young Moorish females: one a peasant, taken surreptitiously as she stood in a horse-shoe archway; the other a lady of the harem, taken—no matter by what artifice. The peasant, swathed from tip to heel in white like a ghost in a penny booth, and shading her face with a cart-wheel of a palm-leaf hat looped from brim to crown, and with one extremity of its great margins curled, is a prematurely worn, weather-stained, common-looking wench, with a small nose and screwed-up mouth. She is a free woman, but I would not exchange the dusky bondswoman for five of her class. Centuries of bad food, much baby-nursing, and field-labour sink their imprint into a race. The harem lady, whose likeness was filched as she leaned an elbow against a low table, is in a state of repose. She squats tailor-fashion, her fingers are twined one in another in her lap, her eyes are closed, and her expression is one of drowsy, listless voluptuousness. She is fair, and her dress (for she is not arrayed for the reception of visitors) is simple—a peignoir, and a sash, and a fold of silk binding her long rich tresses. A soft die-away face, with no sentiment more strongly defined than the abandonment to pleasure and its consequent weariness. By no means an attractive piece of flesh and blood, and yet a good sample of the class that go to upholster a seraglio.

I have never had the slightest anxiety to penetrate the secrets of the Moslem household, and I consider the man who would wish to poke his nose into its seclusion no better than Peeping Tom of Coventry—an insolent, lecherous cad. I would not traverse the street to-morrow to inspect the champion wives of the Sultan of Turkey and Shah of Persia amalgamated; and I deserve no credit for it, for I know that they are puppets, and that more engaging women are to be seen any afternoon shopping in Regent Street or pirouetting in the ballets of half-a-dozen theatres.

Your lady of the harem is an insipid, pasty-complexioned doll, nine times out of ten, and would be vastly improved in looks and temperament if she were subjected to a course of shower-baths, and compelled to take horse-exercise regularly and earn her bread before she ate it.

How do I know this? it may be asked. Who dares to deny it? is my answer.

But here is a digression from our theme of the condition of the Jews at Tangier, and all on account of a few poor photographs! In one sentence, that condition is shameful. It is a reproach to the so-called civilized Powers that they do not interfere to influence the Emir-al-Mumenin to behave with more of the spirit of justice towards his Jewish subjects. In Fez and other cities they have to dwell in a quarter to themselves—"El Melah" (the dirty spot) it is called in Morocco city; and when they leave the Melah they have to go bare-footed. They are not permitted to ride on mules, nor yet to walk on the same side of the street as Arabs.

The late Sir Moses Montefiore, a very exemplary old man in some respects, visited Morocco in his eightieth year to intercede on behalf of his co-religionists, and promises of better treatment were made; but promises are not always kept.



CHAPTER VI.

A Pattern Despotism—Some Moorish Peculiarities—A Hell upon Earth—Fighting for Bread—An Air-Bath—Surprises of Tangier—On Slavery—The Writer's Idea of a Moorish Squire—The Ladder of Knowledge—Gulping Forbidden Liquor—Division of Time—Singular Customs—The Shereef of Wazan—The Christian who Captivated the Moor—The Interview—Moslem Patronage of Spain—A Slap for England—A Vision of Beauty—An English Desdemona: Her Plaint—One for the Newspaper Men—The Ladies' Battle—Farewell—The English Lady's Maid—Albert is Indisposed—The Writer Sums up on Morocco.

THE Government in Morocco would satisfy the most ardent admirer of force. It is an unbridled despotism. The Sultan is head of the Church as of the State, and master of the lives and property of his subjects. He dispenses with ministers, and deliberates only with favourites. When favourites displease him, he can order their heads to be taken off. Favourites are careful not to displease him. The land is a terra incognita to Europeans, and is rich in beans, maize, and wool, which are exported, and in wheat and barley, which are not always permitted to be exported. Altogether the form of administration is very primitive and simple. It is a rare privilege for a European to be admitted into the Imperial presence, and indeed the only occasions, one might say, when Europeans have the privilege are those furnished by the visits of foreign Missions to submit credentials and presents. It is advisable for a private traveller not to go to the chief city unless attached to one of these official caravans; but by those who have money a journey to Fez may be compassed with an escort. This escort consists of the Sultan's very irregular soldiers, who are armed with very long and very rusty matchlocks, of a pattern common nowadays in museums and curiosity shops. Ostensibly the escort is intended to protect the traveller from the regularly organized bands of robbers which infest the interior; but the experience of the traveller is that when the robbers swoop down he has to protect the escort. Christians are looked upon as dogs by all the self-satisfied natives, and treated so by some of them when they can be saucy with impunity. It was my lot to be called a dog by a small fanatic, who hissed at me with the asperity and industry of a disturbed gander, and pelted me with stones. But two can play at that game, and that boy will think twice before he lapidates a full-grown Christian again. But he will hate him for evermore, and when he has reached man's estate will teach his son to repeat the doggerel: "The Christian to the hook, the Jew to the spit, and the Moslem to see the sight."

The Sultan collects his revenue (estimated at half a million pounds sterling a year, great part of which is derived from the Government monopoly of the sale of opium) by the aid of his army; but as he never nears the greater portion of his dominions, there must be some nice pickings off that revenue by minor satraps before it reaches his sacred hands. There is quite a phalanx of under-strappers of State in this despotism. For instance, at Tangier there is a Bacha or Governor, a Caliph or Vice-Governor, a Nadheer or Administrator of the Mosques, a Mohtasseb or Administrator of the Markets, and a Moul-el-Dhoor or Chief of the Night Police. There is a leaven of the guild system, too, as in more advanced countries. Each trade has its Amin, each quarter its Mokaderrin. There is a Kadi, or Minister of Worship and Justice, to whom we paid our respects. Justice is quick in its action, and stern in the penalties it inflicts. The legs and hands are cut off pilferers, heads are cut off sometimes and preserved in salt and camphor, and the bastinado is an ordinary punishment for lesser crimes. But the Moors must be thick in the soles, nor is it astonishing, as the practice is to chastise children by beating them on the feet. Mahomet Lamarty volunteered to procure a criminal who would submit to the bastinado for a peseta. In the market-place I compassionated an unfortunate thief minus his right hand and left leg. We took a walk to the prison, which is on the summit of the hill, Captain No. 1 thoughtfully providing himself with a basket of bread. What a hell upon earth was that sordid, stifling, noisome, gloomy keep, with its crowds of starving sore-covered inmates. In filth it was a pig-sty, in smell a monkey-house, in ventilation another Black-hole of Calcutta. Turn to the next page, reader mine, if you are squeamish. Heaven be my witness, I have no desire to minister to morbid tastes; but I have an object in describing this dreadful oubliette, for it still exists—exists within thirty-two miles of British territory, and it is a scandal that some effort is not made to mitigate its horrors. Through the bars of a padlocked door, from which spurt blasts of mephitic heat, we can descry amid the steam of foul exhalations, as soon as our eyes become accustomed to the dimness, a mob of seething, sweating, sweltering captives, like in aspect as a whole to so many gaunt wild beasts. Some are gibbering like fiends, others jabbering like idiots. They are there young and old; a few—the maniacs those—are chained; all are crawled over by vermin, most are crusted with excretions. The sight made me feel faint at the time, the very recollection of it to this day makes my flesh creep. We were fascinated by this peep at the Inferno. The moment these caged wretches caught a glimpse of us they rushed to the door, and on bended knees, or with hands uplifted, or with pinched cheeks pressed against the bars, raised a clamour of entreaty. We drew back as the rancid plague-current smote our faces, and questioned Mahomet by our looks as to what all this meant.

"They want food," he explained.

These prisoners are allowed two loaves a day out of the revenues of the Mosques; but two loaves, even if scrupulously given, which I doubt, are but irritating pittance. They may make cushions or baskets, but their remuneration is uncertain and slender. Those who are lucky get sustenance from relatives in the town, but the majority are half-starving, and are dependent for a full meal on the bounty of chance visitors. We poked a loaf through the bars. It was ravenously snapped at, torn into little bits, and devoured amid the howls of those who were disappointed. Then a loaf was cast over the door. What a savage scramble! The bread was caught, tossed in the air, jumped at, and finally the emaciated rivals fell upon one another as in a football scrimmage, and there was a moving huddle of limbs and a diabolical chorus of shrieks and yells. That could not be done again; it was too painful in result Mahomet undertook to distribute the remainder of our stock through an inlet in the wall, and we drew away sick in head and heart from that den of repulsive degradation, greed, brutality, cruelty, selfishness, and all infuriate and debased passion—that damnable magazine of disease physical and moral. It is undeniable that there were many there whose faces were passport to the Court of Lucifer—murderers, and dire malefactors; but better to have decapitated them than to have committed them to the slow torture of this citadel of woe. There were inmates who had been immured for years—inmates for debt whose hair had whitened in the fetid imprisonment, whose laugh had in it a harsh hollow-sounding jangle, and whose brows had fixed themselves into the puckers of a sullen, hopeless, apathetic submission to fate. Their lack of intelligence was a blessing. Had they been more sensitive they would have been goaded into raging lunacy.

Let us to the outer freshness and make bold endeavour to fling off this weight of nightmare which oppresses us. Passing by the ruinous gate yonder with its wild-looking sentry, we reach the open space where crouching hill-men are reposing on the stunted grass, and ungainly camels, kneeling in a circle, are chewing the cud in patience, or venting that uncanny half-whine, half-bellow, which is their only attempt at conversation. Let us take a long look at the country beyond with its gardens teeming with fruit and musical with bird-voices; walk up to the crown of that slant and survey the valleys, the plateaux, the brushwood, the flower-patches, spreading away to the hills that swell afar until the peaks of the Atlas, cool with everlasting snow, close the view. One is tempted to linger there lovingly, though darkness is falling. There is a gift of blandness and briskness in the very breathing of the air. When you have had your fill of the beauties on the land side, turn to the sea, meet the evening breeze that comes floating up with a flavour of iodine upon it, range round the sweeping vista, from giant Calpe away over the Strait flecked with sails on to Trafalgar, smiling peacefully as if it had never been a bay of blood, and finish by the vision of the great globe of fire descending into the Atlantic billows.

Our stay in Tangier was most gratifying because of its variety and unending surprises. Existence there was out of the beaten track, and kept curiosity on the constant alert. It was a treat to pretend to be Legree, and to negotiate for a strong likely growing nigger-boy. I discovered I could have bought one for ten pounds sterling, a perfect bargain, warranted free from vice or blemish; but as I was not prepared to stop in Africa just then, I did not close with the offer. It may be a shocking admission to make, but if I were to settle down in Morocco, I confess, I should most certainly keep slaves. There is a deal of sentimental drivel spouted about the condition of slaves. Those I have seen seemed very happy. In Morocco they are well treated; and if desirous to change masters the law empowers them to make a demand to that effect. It is true that a slave's oath is not deemed valid, but Cuffy bears the slight with praiseworthy equanimity. I am sure if Cuffy were in my service he would never ask to leave it, and I would teach him to appraise his word as much as any other man's oath (except his master's), by my patented plan for negro-training, based on Mr. Rarey's theories. As the land about Tangier was rated at prairie value—an acre could be had for a dollar—I might have been induced to invest in a holding of a couple of hundred thousands of acres, but that my ship had not yet come within hail of the port. What a healthy, free, aristocratic life, combining feudal dignity with educated zest, a wise man could lead there—if he had an establishment of, say, three hundred slaves, a private band, a bevy of dancing girls, Bruzeaud for chef, an extensive library, sixteen saddle-horses, and relays of jolly fellows from Gibraltar to help him chase the wild boar and tame bores, eat couscoussu, and drink green-tea well sweetened. He should Moorify himself, but he need not change his religion, and if he went about it rightly, I am sure, like the village pastor, he could make himself to all the country dear. Take the educational question, for example. If he were diplomatic he would pay the school-fees of the urchins of Tangier. These are not extravagant—a few heads of barley daily, equivalent to the sod of turf formerly carried by the pupils to the hedge academies in dear Ireland, and a halfpenny on Friday. He should affect an interest in the Koran, and make it a point of applauding the Koran-learned boy when he is promenaded on horseback and named a bachelor. He might—indeed he should—follow the career of his protege at the Mhersa, where he studies the principles of arithmetic, the rudiments of history, the elements of geometry, and the theology of Sidi-Khalil, until he emerges in a few years a Thaleb, or lettered man. Perhaps the Thaleb may go farther, and become an Adoul or notary, a Fekky or doctor, nay—who knows?—an Alem or sage. Ah! how pleasant that Moorish squire might be by his own ruddy fire of rushes, palm branches, and sun-dried leaves; and what a profit he might make by judicious speculation in jackal-skins, oil, pottery, carpets, and leather stained with the pomegranate bark! He would have his mills turned by water or by horses; he would eat his bread with its liberal admixture of bran; he would rear his storks and rams. The professors who charm snakes and munch live-coals would all be hangers-on of his house; and he would have periodical concerts by those five musicians who played such desert lullabies for us—conspicuously one patriarch whose double-bass was made from an orange-tree—and would not forget to supplement their honorarium of five dollars with jorums of white wine. Sly special pleaders! They argue with the German play-wright: "Mahomet verbot den Wein, doch vom Champagner sprach er nicht."

From the Frenchman at the hotel, whose knowledge of Morocco was "extensive and peculiar," I acquired much of my information on the manners and customs of the people. Watches are only worn and looked at for amusement. Instead of by hours, time is thus noted: El Adhen, an hour before sunrise; Fetour (repast) el Hassoua, or sunrise; Dah el Aly, ten in the morning; El Only, a quarter past twelve; El Dhoor, half-past one; El Asser, from a quarter past three to a quarter to four; El Moghreb, sunset; El Acha, half-an-hour after sunset; and El Hameir, gun-shot. Meals are taken at Dah el Aly, El Asser, and El Moghreb. The houses are built with elevated lateral chambers, but there is a narrow staircase leading to the Doeria, a reception-room, where visitors can be welcomed without passing the ground-floor. The walls are plastered, and covered with arabesques or verses of the Koran incrusted in colours. The wells inside the houses are only used for cleansing linen; water for drinking purposes is sought outside.

Among many singular customs—singular to us—I noted that a popular remedy for illness is to play music and to recite prayers to scare away the devil. An enlightened Moor might think the practices of the Peculiar People quite as strange, and question the infallibility of cure-all pills at thirteen-pence-halfpenny the box. The dead in Morocco are hurried to their graves at a hand-gallop. That, I submit, is no more unreasonable than many English funeral usages, such as incurring debt for the pomp of mourning. At Moorish weddings the bride is carried in procession in a palanquin to her husband's house amid a fantasia of gunpowder—the reckless rejoicing discharges of ancient muskets in the streets. Well, white favours, gala coaches, and feux de joie at marriages of the great are not entirely unknown among us. Nobody sees the Moorish wife for a year, not even her mother-in-law, which I consider a not wholly unkind dispensation. The Moorish wife paints her toe-nails, which, after all, is a harmless vanity, and less obtrusive than that of the ladies who impart artificial redness to their lips. And, lastly, the Moorish wife waits on her husband. Personally, I fail to discover anything blamable in that act, though I must concede that it is eccentric, very eccentric. These allusions to the Moorish wife in general lead up naturally to one in particular in whom I took a professional interest, for she was as remarkable in her way as Lady Ellenborough or Lady Hester Stanhope, or that strong-minded Irishwoman who married the Moslem, Prince Izid Aly, and whose son reigned after his father's death.

The Shereef has been mentioned. He is the great man of the district, with an authority only second to that of the Sultan himself. Claiming to be a lineal descendant of Mahomet, he is entitled to wear the green turban. His name at full length is long, but not so long as that of most Spanish Infantes—Abd-es-Selam ben Hach el Arbi. He is a saint and a miracle-worker. He has been seen simultaneously at Morocco, Wazan, and Tangier, according to the belief of his co-religionists, wherein he beats the record of Sir Boyle Roche's bird, which was only in two places at once. Like Jacob, he has wrestled with angels. He is head of the Muley-Taib society, a powerful secret organization, which has its ramifications throughout the Islamitic world. He draws fees from the mosques, and has gifts bestowed upon him in profusion by his admirers, who feel honoured when he accepts them. Exalted and wide-spreading is his repute where the Moslem holds sway, and unassailable is his orthodoxy, yet he has had the temerity to take to himself a Christian wife. This lady had been a governess in an American family at Tangier. There the Shereef made her acquaintance, wooed and won her. They were married at the residence of the British Minister Plenipotentiary; the officers of a British man-of-war were present at the ceremony, and slippers and a shower of rice, as at home, followed the bride on leaving the building. The Shereef and, if possible, the Shereefa were personages to be seen, and Mahomet Lamarty was the very man to help us to the favour. His Highness lived four miles away, and we formed a cavalcade one afternoon and set off for his garden, the ladies accompanying us. We passed through cultivated fields of barley and dra (a kind of millet), crossed the river Wadliahoodi, and ascended a road which faced abruptly towards the hills. An agreeable road it was, and not lonesome; we had the carol of birds and the piping of bull-frogs to lighten the way, and leafy branches made reverence overhead. There were abundance of fruit and such beautiful shrubs that I rail at myself for not being botanist enough to be able to enlarge upon them. There were orange-groves, yellow broom, dog-rose, and apples, pears, peaches, apricots, plums, pomegranates, figs, and vines. It was such an oasis as a very young Etonian in the warmth of a midsummer vacation might have likened to Heaven. The range of hills of El Jebel rose left and right, and at parts presented a steep cliff to the ocean. This ridge is about twelve miles in width, and its fertile slopes amply merit to be lauded as the best fruit-producers in the empire, "as bounteous as Paradise itself."

Mahomet Lamarty, who was our guide, entered the Shereef's grounds to prepare for our introduction; and now the ladies, who had insisted on coming with us, rebelled, and said point-blank they would not salute the Shereefa as "Your Highness." They were impatient to see her, but they declined to give countenance to a Christian who had demeaned herself by wedding a heathen.

"The visit was of your own seeking, ladies," I said; "if you are not willing to treat Her Highness with deference, better stay outside."

They were not equal to that sacrifice after riding four miles.

"Who'll start the conversation?" said Captain No. 1. "You start it" (to me) "like a good fellow, and I'll take up the running."

Captain No. 2 said he would hang about for us outside.

Mahomet beckoned to us and we ventured into the garden. Coming down a pathway we saw an austere, swarthy, obese man of the middle height. He was white-gloved, and wore a red fez, a sort of Zouave upper garment of blue, with burnous, baggy trousers, white stockings, and Turkish slippers. It was the Shereef. I had agreed to open the interview, but when it came to the trial my Arabic (I had been only studying it for two hours) abandoned me. Mahomet did the needful. I thanked His Highness for his kindness in admitting us to his demesne, and he smiled a modest, solemn smile, and looked greeting from his small eyes. When he discovered that I had been travelling in Spain, he asked me—always through Mahomet—what they were doing there. On having my reply—that they were tasting the miseries of civil war—translated to him, he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and slowly ejaculated:

"Unhappy Spain! Silly, unfortunate people! That is the way with them always. They are at perpetual strife one with another."

And then Mahomet interposed with a parenthesis of his own depreciatory of the Spaniards, whom he loathed and despised. He had fought against them in the war of 1839-1860, and the Shereef had also headed his countrymen, and had shown great courage and coolness in action. His presence had infused a high spirit of enthusiasm into the undisciplined troops.

"Bismillah!" grunted Mahomet. "The Spaniard is beneath contempt. He was almost licked in one battle. He was four months here, and how far did he get into the interior?"

Mahomet conveniently forgot the defeat of Guad-el-ras, the occupation of Tetuan, and the indemnity of four hundred millions of reals which was exacted as the price of peace; but he was literally correct, the victorious O'Donnell did not flaunt his flag beyond a very exiguous strip of the territory of Sidi-Muley-Mahomet.

We were walking as we talked, and by this time had reached the brow of a wooded rise which commanded an uninterrupted prospect of the ocean. The flowery cistus flourished on the eminence, and cork-trees, chestnuts, and willows shielded us from the fierceness of the sun. Behind and around were a succession of richly-planted gardens. We halted, and the Shereef, scanning the horizon in the direction of the Rock, suddenly put a question to me which almost took my breath away:

"Do they buy commissions over the way still?"

"No; that system has been abolished."

"It is well," he remarked, with a scarcely suppressed sneer. "It was incredible that a great nation and a fighting nation should make a traffic of the command of men, as if a clump of spears were a kintal of maize," and as he relapsed into silence a soldierly fire gleamed in his irides, his frame seemed to straighten and swell, and the nature of the prophet retired before that of the warrior.

From where we stood we could ferret out a house with a veranda in front, built on a terrace and begirt with trees. That was the residence of His Highness; but we turned our eyes in another direction, lest we should be suspected of rude curiosity by this courteous African. I was trying to divine the tally of years our host had numbered. No Arab knows his own age, and here it may be useful to tell the reader wherein the distinction lies between the Moor and the Arab. Virtually they are the same; but the name of Moor is given to those who dwell in cities, of Arab to those who roam the plains. Mahomet came to my aid. His Highness had whiskers when Tangier was bombarded by Prince de Joinville. That was in August, 1844, a good nine-and-twenty years before, so that Abd-es-Salam must have long doubled the cape of forty, which would leave him considerably the senior of his Frankish wife.

We turned at a noise—the creak of a rustic wooden gate on its hinges; a figure approached. And then it was given to me to gaze upon Her Highness the Shereefa of Wazan. She was not called Zuleika, but Emily—her maiden name had been Keene, and she came not from the rose-bordered bowers of Bendemeer's stream, nightingale-haunted, but from the prosaic levels of South London, where her father was governor of a gaol. Truly she was a vision of gratefulness in that paynim tract—a rich brunette, with large black eyes, long black ringletted tresses, and a well-filled shape with goodly bust. Her attire was neat and graceful and not Oriental. She was clad in a riding-habit of ruby brocaded velvet, with jacket to match, had a cloud of lace round her throat, and an Alpine hat with cock's feather poised on her well-set head. She might serve as the model for a Spanish Ann Chute. Bracelets on her plump wrists and rings on her taper fingers caught the sunshine as she occasionally twirled her cutting-whip. Her voice was bell-like and melodious, with the faintest accent of decision, and her manner, after an opening flush of embarrassment, was cordial and debonair. The embarrassment was because of her inability to extend to us the hospitality she desired. She explained that she had to receive us in the garden as the house was undergoing repairs. After the customary commonplaces, she freely entered into conversation, and took opportunity at once to deny that she was a renegade; she wore European costume, as we saw, and attended the rites of the English Church, for it was one of the stipulations of the marriage contract that she should have perfect liberty to follow her own faith.

"I wish every English girl were as happily married as I," she said, "and had as loving a husband."

It was gratifying, therefore, to note that she found herself as women wish to be who love their lords. She had been married on the 27th of January, and as the Shereef had entered into his present residence but recently, they were still at sixes and sevens. It was his habit to spend the winter in the country and the summer in town. She had been but two years in Morocco, and had not yet mastered Arabic.

"His Highness understands English?" She shook her head, and quickly interpreting a lifting of my eyelids, she smilingly added, "Spanish was the medium of our courtship." And then, as we promenaded the garden path, she became communicative, and dwelt with pardonable expansion on the virtues of her lord and master, who followed behind side by side with the portly Yorkshireman. His charity, she said, was unbounded. Slaves were frequently sent to him as presents, but he kept none. He was modest on his own merits, and yet he was the most enlightened of Moors. He had visited Marseilles, a war-ship having been put at his disposal by the French Government, and was most anxious to take a tour to Paris and Vienna, and above all to England. It was his desire that railways should be constructed in Morocco, and he was glad when he was told that there was some likelihood of a telegraph cable being laid to Tangier.

"Then," interrupted I, "with your Highness's influence on the tribes around, exercised through your husband, there should be a fair prospect of pushing civilization here."

"Ah, yes!" she exclaimed, with a glow on her cheeks, "that is one of my dearest hopes, that is my great ambition. I believe that my marriage, which has been cruelly commented upon in England, may effect good both for these poor misunderstood Moors and my own country people."

"Is the Shereef on friendly terms with the Sultan?"

"No, I am sorry to say there is a feud between them at the moment. The Sultan objects to my husband for using an English saddle."

"Hum!" (to myself mentally) "if the august Muley cannot brook an English saddle, what must he think of an English wife? Or do these Moslems, like some Christians I know, strain at a gnat and swallow a camel? Mayhap it is even so. The pigeon-prompted camel-driver, who built up his creed with plentiful blood-cement, saw fit to add a new chapter to the Koran, when he fell in love with the Coptic maiden, Mary."

The Shereefa told me that her father and mother had come out to see her. They were averse to the alliance at first, but were satisfied that she had done the right thing when she told them how content she was, and with what high-bred consideration for her wishes in the matter of religion her husband had behaved. Their intention was to stop for four days, but they extended their visit to fourteen. "And now," she continued, "I can use to my lord the words of Ruth to Naomi, 'Whither thou goest I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people'"—a pause—"yes, and 'thy God my God,' for there is but one"—archly—"the matter of the Prophet we shall leave aside."

I admired the lady's pluck, and if I were that Moorish squire I have tried to sketch, I should esteem it an honour to have her on my visiting list. But I am a theological oddity, and my wallet of prejudices, it is to be feared, is sadly unfurnished. I never could rise to that sublimated self-sufficiency of intellect that I could consign any fellow-creature to everlasting pains for the audacity of differing in dogma with myself. I have met good and bad of every creed, Mahometans I could respect—whose word was their bond—and so-called Christians and Christian ministers with a most uncharitable spiritual pride, whom I could not respect. The liver of the persecutor was denied me. Were the fires of Smithfield to be rekindled, my prayers would be sent up for the floods of Heaven to quench them, and for the lightnings of Heaven to annihilate the fiends who had piled the faggots.

"By-the-bye," said the Shereefa, "do you know any of those people who write for the papers in London?"

I admitted that I had that misfortune.

"Some of them are fools as well as cowards," she went on. "They have written articles about me full of ignorance and malice. Have they no consideration for the feelings of others?"

"I am afraid, your Highness, some of them are more brilliant than conscientious; they would rather point an epigram than sacrifice style to truth or good-nature."

"One of them in particular," she said, and there was an irritated ring in her voice, "has singled me out for attack, and given me in derision a name which he believes to be Mahometan, but which is really Jewish."

And with her cutting-whip she viciously snapped off the heads of some poppies. The episode of Tarquin's answer to the emissary of Sextus occurred to me, and I felt that if my colleague, Horace St. J——, were there, he would have passed a very bad quarter of an hour.

The females of our party joined us, and I formally presented them, taking a malicious pleasure in emphasizing the "your Highness." The Shereefa received them right graciously, but it was easy to notice that a chill came over the conversation. They were careful never to use the title to their English sister. In fact, it was a tacit ladies' battle.

It was time to leave, and the Shereefa presented her visitors with two nosegays, gathered by her own hands. The act had in it something very royal, with the smallest trace of sly condescension. The Shereef accompanied us to the outer gate. On the way I motioned to Captain No. 1 to offer him a cigar. He did; his Highness accepted it, bowed, and gravely put it in his pocket. As we stood on the road at parting, a peasant was passing with a load of twigs on his shoulders. He cast them off, threw himself on his knees, kissed the hem of the holy man's garments, and the back of his proffered hand.

We were descending the hill when a rustle in the bushes attracted me, and a white face peeped out and a voice besought me in English to stop. It was the Shereefa's London lady's-maid. She could not resist the temptation of enjoying a few sentences with one of her own race. From her I learned that there were twenty-seven Moorish women in her master's household; that there was a tank at Wazan large enough to float a ship; that her master had been married before, and had two sons and a lovely Mahometan child, a daughter, to whom the Shereefa was teaching English and the piano; "but remember, please," and here she grew important, and had all the dignity of a retainer, with a great sense of what was due to her caste and the proprieties, "that my mistress's children, if she have any, will be Europeans!"

As we got back to our hotel the muezzins were summoning the faithful to their vesper orisons, and Albert was moaning ruefully under the sideboard. Mrs. Captain had out her sweetly pretty pet at once, and covered him with caresses and endearments.

"Somebody has given him something that has disagreed with him. Was it you?" she said to me, and there was that in her tone which made me quake in my shoes.

Meekly and truthfully I protested that I had not; I had fed him in the morning in her own presence; the darling was in his usual health and spirits when we left, but—intercede for me, Puck, and you aerial imps of mischief, for no other spirit will—I could not help murmuring in audible soliloquy, "The carcase of that mongoose, which was on the square outside this morning, is no longer there."

The scene that followed, to borrow the hackneyed phrase, beggars description. The house was turned upside down; to my mental vision arose sal volatile and burnt feathers, swoons and hysterics. Mahomet's dove alone can tell how all might have ended had not the Frenchman suggested a bolus. Captain No. 1 and I were commissioned to inquire into the mystery of the disappearance of that baleful mongoose. When we got out of earshot of the hotel there was the popping of a cork, and we emptied effervescing beakers to the speedy recovery of Albert the Beloved. Certes, that bull-dog had a very bad fit of dyspepsia; but the bolus did him a world of good, and before we retired to rest we had the felicity to hear him crunching a bone. Peace spread its wings over our pillows.

The next day we took a trip to the lighthouse on Cape Spartel, the women labouring in the field making curious inspection of the cavalcade as it wended by, but quickly turning away their faces as we males tried to snatch a look at them. The road was no better than a rugged track on a stony plateau. There was a spacious view from the Phare, which was an iron and stone building put up at the cost of three or four of the European Powers (I forget which now), the keepers being chosen from each of the contributory nations. The Sultan had given the site, but refused to hand over a blankeel towards the expenses, arguing that as he had no fleet, he had no personal object in making provision against wrecks. We were well mounted, but these Barbary cattle have a nasty trick of lashing out, so that it is prudent to give a wide range to their hind-hoofs. Mahomet, riding with very short stirrups, led the party. My saddle was an ancient, rude, and rotten contrivance, and as I loitered on the road home, giving myself up to idle fantasy, my friends got on far ahead. Waking from my day-dream I gave the nag the heel, and as it sprang forward at a canter the girth turned completely round, and I was pitched over in unpleasant nearness to a hedge of cactus. The ground was soft, and I was not much bruised; but when I rose the nag had disappeared round a corner, and I was left alone in the African twilight. Presently a sinewy fiery-eyed Moor came with panther-step in sight leading me back the nag. He had a basket of oranges on his back, and gave me one with a respectful salaam as I vaulted on my Arab steed and galloped Tangier-ward bareback.

Judging from the scanty rags upon him, this man was of the poorest, yet he asked for nothing; there were sympathy, innate politeness and independence withal in his bearing. To him I abandoned the saddle; it was the least he might have for his friendly act. Talking over this incident with the Frenchman at Bruzeaud's, who knew the country, he told me that the Moor was intelligent, honest, faithful to his engagements, and had a go in him that, under advantageous circumstances, would enable him to spring again to his former height of power and riches. But he struck me as happy, although some of his social customs recalled the feudal age, and he lived under the always-present contingency of decapitation. May it be long before speculation rears the horrid front of a joint-stock hotel in Tangier, or the prospectors go divining for copper, coal, iron, silver and gold. I could wish the Moorish women, however, would wash their children's heads occasionally, and not take them up by the ankles when they spank them. After a sojourn in every way pleasurable—pshaw! Albert's illness was a trifle, and we soon resigned ourselves to the miseries of the prisoners on the hill—we ate our last morsel of the Jewish pasch-bread of flour and juice of orange, cracked our last bottle of champagne, and took our leave of the Dark Continent with lightsome heart. The impression this little by-journey left upon me was so agreeable that I could not avoid the enticement to communicate it to the reader. If I have wandered from romantic Spain, it was only to take him to a land more romantic still.



CHAPTER VII.

Back to Gibraltar—The Parting with Albert—The Tongue of Scandal—Voyage to Malaga—"No Police, no Anything"—Federalism Triumphant—Madrid in Statu Quo—Orense—Progress of the Royalists—On the Road Home—In the Insurgent Country—Stopped by the Carlists—An Angry Passenger is Silenced.

"How like a boulder tossed by Titans at play!" said the sentimental lady, as we approached Gibraltar on our return.

"More like a big-sized molar tooth," broke in Mrs. Captain.

And, indeed, this latter simile, if less poetic, gave a better idea of the conformation of the fortified hill, with the gum-coloured outline of all that was left of a Moorish wall skirting its side. The tooth is hollow, but the hollow is plugged with the best Woolwich stuffing, and potentially it can bite and grind and macerate, for all the peaceful gardens and frescades of the Alameda that circle its base like a belt of faded embroidery. At Gibraltar our party separated, the Yorkshire Captain and his friends taking the P. and O. boat to Southampton, my countryman going back to Tangier after having made some purchases, and I electing to voyage to Malaga by one of Hall's packets, which was lying at the mercantile Mole discharging the two hundred tons of Government material which it is obliged to carry by contract on each fortnightly voyage. When Albert and I parted no tears were shed; we resigned ourselves to the decree of destiny with equanimity. But I humbly submit that Mrs. Captain, when thanking me for my good intentions towards him, might have spared me the ironical advice not to volunteer for duties in future which I was not qualified to fulfil. "Volunteer," ye gods! when she had absolutely entreated me to take him in charge.

Before leaving the Club-House, I was pressed to relate our adventures in Africa. I had no pig-sticking exploits to make boast over; but I turned the deaf side of my head to certain whispers about holy men who imported wine in casks labelled "Petroleum," who affected to be delivering the incoherent messages of inspiration when they were merely trying to pronounce "The scenery is truly rural" in choice Arabic, and who accounted for the black eye contracted by collision with the kerb by a highly-coloured narrative of an engagement in mid-air with an emissary of Sheitan. Neither did I accord any pleased attention to anecdotes of a "lella," or Arab lady, who tempted the Scorpions to charge ten times its value for everything she bought by telling them to send them to a personage whose title was exalted. Gib is a very small place, and, like most diminutive communities, is a veritable school for scandal. I took my last walk over the Rock, past the "Esmeralda Confectionery," which still had up the notice that hot-cross buns were to be had from seven to ten a.m. on Good Friday, and paced to the light-house on the nose of the promontory, where the meteor flag, ringed by a bracelet of cannon, flies in the breeze. And then I meandered back, and began to ask myself, had Marryat aught to do with the sponsorship of this outpost of the British Empire? Shingle Point, Blackstrap Bay, the Devil's Tower, O'Hara's Folly, Bayside Barrier, and Jumper's Bastion—the names were all redolent of the Portsmouth Hard; and I almost anticipated a familiar hail at every moment from the open door of "The Nut," and an inquiry as to what cheer from the fog-Babylon.

The trip to Malaga on one of the Hall steamers which trade regularly between London and that port, calling at Cadiz and Gibraltar, was very agreeable, and the change to such dietary as liver and bacon was a treat. We were but three passengers—a steeple-chasing sub of the 71st, Senor Heredia, of Malaga, and myself. And now I have to make an open confession. I am unable to decipher the log of that passage. I have a distinct recollection of the liver and bacon, but more important events have worn away from my mind. There are the traces of pencil-marks before me; I dare say they were full of meaning when I scrawled them down, but now I have lost the key. "Jolly captain—left his wife—forty years—electric light deceives on a low beach—fourteen children—El Cano—break in the head of wine-casks": there is a literal copy of the contents of a page, which may mean nothing or anything, frivolity or a thesaurus of serious information. Memory, what a treacherous jade thou art! It may be said, why did I not take copious notes in short-hand? I would have done so were I a stenographer; but I am not. I tried to acquire the accomplishment once, and ignobly failed. I could write short-hand slightly quicker than long-hand, but when written, I could not transcribe my jottings.

Flanking a beautiful coast, mostly hill-fringed—with hills, too, of such metallic richness that lead and iron were positively to be quarried out of their bosoms—we steamed into the harbour of Malaga, and landed at the Custom-House quay. But there were no Customs' officers to trouble us with inquiry. A red-bearded, flat-capped, dirty fellow in bare feet, holding a bayoneted rifle with a jaunty clumsiness, accosted Senor Heredia with a laughing voice. He was a sentinel of the provisional government established in Malaga. The nature of that government may be judged from his frank avowal: "We've no police—no anything." There were French and German war-vessels at anchor, which was some guarantee of protection for strangers. A novel tricolour of red, white, and a washed-out purple had replaced the national flag. The Federal Republic existed there, and yet the city was quiet; and official bulletins were extant, recommending the citizens to preserve order. But this quietude was not to be relied on over-much. One of the magnificoes under the new regime was a dancing-house keeper, and his principal claim to administrative ability lay in the ownership of a Phrygian cap. Another, who styled himself President of the Republic of Alhaurin de la Torre, a territory more limited than the kingdom of Kippen, had stabbed a lady at a masked ball a few months previously, for a consideration of sixty-five duros. Still, it would be unfair to infer from that example that every Malagueno was a mercenary ruffian, Senor Heredia related to me an anecdote of a poor man who had found a purse with value in it to the amount of thirty thousand reals, and had given it up without mention of recompense. But a city where the wine-shops had nine doors, and potato-gin was dispensed at a peseta the bottle, and there were "no police—no anything," was not a desirable residence; and, as I had no call there, and weeks might elapse before another revolution might be sprung, I gladly took train to the capital.

Madrid was tranquil, but with no more confidence in the duration of tranquillity than when I left it. The army was still in a state akin to disruption, with this difference—the rascals who had rifled the pockets of the dead Ibarreta a few weeks before, would sell the bodies of their slain officers now, if there was any resurrectionist near to make a bid. Worse; I was given to understand that there were suspicions that the gallant staff-colonel had been shot by his own men. The dismissed gunners were still wearily beating the pavements, and a subscription organized on their behalf among the officers of the other branches of the service by the Correo Militar was open. What were these gentlemen to do? There was a rumour that they had been invited to enter the French service, to which they would have been an undoubted acquisition, bringing with them skill, scientific knowledge, and experience. But they were Spaniards, not soldiers of fortune, and would decline to transfer their allegiance, even if France were disposed to bid for it. Still, what were they to do? In Spain as in Austria—

"Le militaire n'est pas riche, Chacun salt ca."

But the militaire must live. Othello's occupation being gone, the artillery officers had no alternative but to do what Othello would have done had he been a Spaniard—conspire.

The usual manoeuvring and manipulations were going on as preparation for the election of the Constituent Cortes, and the extreme Republicans were full of faith in their approaching triumph all along the line. They were awaiting Senor Orense, but if he did not hasten it was thought events so important would eclipse his arrival that, when he did come, the Madrilenos would pay as small heed to him as the Parisians did to Hugo when he surveyed the boulevards anew after years of exile. They would honour him with a procession, and no more. The venerable Republican, by the way, is a nobleman, Marquis of Albaida. But he is not equal to the democratic pride of Mirabeau, marquis, who took a shop and painted on the signboard, "Mirabeau, marchand de draps."

"If you are a true Republican, why don't you renounce your title?" somebody asked once of Orense.

"If it were only myself was concerned I would willingly," responded the Spaniard; "but I have a son!" Rousseau was a freethinker, but Rousseau had his daughters baptized all the same.

Meanwhile the Carlists were making headway. The Vascongadas, Navarre, and Logrono, with the exception of the larger towns and isolated fortified posts, were now in their power. Antonio Dorregaray, who was in supreme command, was reported to have 3,200 men regularly organized, well clad, and equipped with Remingtons. The Remington had been selected so that the Royalists might be able to use the ammunition they reckoned upon helping themselves with from the pouches of the Nationalists. In addition to this force of 3,200, which might be regarded as the regular army of Carlism, there were formidable guerrilla bands scattered over the provinces. Our old acquaintance, Santa Cruz, had 900 followers in Guipuzcoa. The other cabecillas in that region were Francisco, Macazaga, Garmendia, Iturbe, and Culetrina, all men with local popularity and intimate knowledge of the mountains. In Biscay, the commander was Valesco, and his lieutenants were Belaustegui, del Campo, and the Marquis de Valdespina, son of the chieftain who raised the standard of revolution at Vitoria in 1833. Their factions were estimated at 2,500. After Dorregaray, the most dangerous opponent to the Government troops was Ollo, an old ex-army officer, who was licking the volunteers into shape; and after Santa Cruz, the most noted and dreaded chief of irregulars was Rada, who was also operating in "the kingdom," as their province is proudly called by the daring Navarrese. The elements in which the Royalists were wanting were cavalry and artillery; but they had some money, foreign friends were active, the French frontier was not too strictly watched nor the Cantabrian coast inaccessible, and Don Carlos—Pretender or King, as the reader chooses to call him—was biding his time in a villa not a hundred miles from Bayonne. When the hour was considered favourable, he was ready to cross the border and take the field, or rather the hills; and his presence, it was calculated, would be worth a corps d'armee in the fillip it would give to the enthusiasm of his adherents.

And yet the "only court" held its tertulias, and the donas talked millinery, and bald politicians sighed for a snug post in the Philippines, and the gambling-tables and the bull-ring retained their spell upon the community. It was the old story: Rome was on the verge of ruin, and the senate of Tiberius discussed a new sauce for turbot.

As I saw no immediate prospect of the outburst of those important events, which were cloud-gathering over Madrid, and nearly all my colleagues had departed, I resolved to pursue my journey to London. I had carte blanche to return when I deemed there was no further scope for my pen; but there was an obstacle in the way. Miranda was the terminus of the rail to the north; the track thence to the Bidassoa had been closed by order of the lieutenants of his Majesty in nubibus, King Charles VII. In other words, 179 kilometres of the main iron line, the great artery of communication with France, were held by the insurgents. Obstacles are made to be met, and, if steadily met, to be overcome. Surely, I reasoned, there must be some intercourse carried on in these districts. I passed through territory occupied by Carlists before. Why not again? Besides, I had nothing to fear from the Carlists, the tramp carols in the presence of the footpad (which, I submit, is a neat paraphrase of a classic saw); and if I did chance to meet them, there would be that dear touch of romance for which the lady-reader has been looking out so long in vain.

I started. The journey to Miranda I pass by. One is not qualified to write an essay on a country from inspection through the windows of a railway-carriage in motion, more particularly at night. As well attempt to describe a veiled panorama, unrolling itself at a hand-gallop. At Miranda, which was crowded with soldiers, there was a diligence that plied to San Sebastian by tacit arrangement with the knights of the road—that is, the adherents of Don Carlos. As the fares were very expensive, I suspect the speculator who ran the coach was heavily taxed for the privilege, and recouped himself by shifting the imposition to the shoulders of passengers. The day was fine, the roads were good, the vehicle was well-horsed, and we got away from the boundary of republican civilization at a rattling pace. My fellow-voyagers were mostly French, some of them of the gentle sex, and chattered like pies until they fell asleep. I believe it is admitted by those who know me best that I can do my own share of sleep. On the slightest provocation—yea, on what might be condemned as no reasonable provocation—I can drop my head upon my breast and go off into oblivion. Nor am I particular where I sit or if I sit at all. Any ordinary person can fall asleep on a sofa or at a sermon, but it requires a practitioner with an inborn faculty for the art to achieve the triumphs of somnolence which stand to my credit. I have taken a nap on horseback; I have marched for miles, a musket on my shoulder, in complete slumberous unconsciousness; I have nodded while Phelps was acting, snoozed while Mario was singing, and played the marmot while Remenyi was fiddling; awful confession, I have dozed through an important debate in the House of Commons! I am yawning at present. It is to be hoped the reader is not. And so I burned daylight the while we drove through a country reputed to be pregnant with surprises of scenery until, at long last, the diligence drew up in the straggling street of Tolosa. We halted here for dinner, and resumed our journey with a fresh team at an enlivening speed, until about two miles outside the town we came to an abrupt stop.

"An accident, driver?"

"No, senor, but the Carlists."

Some of my fellow-passengers turned pale, the ladies did not know whether to scream or consult their smelling-bottles; and before they could decide, a tall, slight, gentlemanly-looking man of some four-and-twenty years, with a sword by his side, a revolver in his belt, an opera-glass slung across his shoulder, and a silver tassel depending from a scarlet boina, the cap of the country, appeared at the hinder door of the diligence, bowed, and asked for our papers. He glanced at them much as a railway-guard would at a set of tickets, inquired if we were carrying any arms or contraband despatches, and being answered in the negative, gave us a polite "Go you with God," and motioned to the driver that he might pass on. As we galloped off, all eyes were turned in the direction of the stranger; he leisurely walked over a field towards a hill, two peasants equipped with rifles and side-arms following at his heels. They were young and strong, and wore no nearer approach to uniform than their officer.

"This is abominable," cried a French commercial traveller (so I took him to be), as soon as we had got out of hearing of the trio. "The notion of these three miscreants stopping a whole coachful of travellers in broad daylight is atrocious!"

"They did not detain us long," said I.

"They did us no harm," said another.

"And that officer, I am sure, was very polite, and looked quite a D'Artagnan—so chivalrous and handsome," added one of the ladies.

"They are no better than bandits," said the commercial traveller. "Driver, why did you not resist?"

For reply, the driver pointed with his whip to a wall, under the lee of which a party of at least fifty armed men, portion of the main body from which the outpost of three had been detached, were smoking, chatting, or sleeping. The commercial traveller relapsed into silence. We met with no further adventure in our ride to the frontier, but experienced much fatigue.



CHAPTER VIII.

On the Wing—Ordered to the Carlist Headquarters—Another Petit Paris—Carlists from Cork—How Leader was Wounded—Beating-up for an Anglo-Irish Legion—Pontifical Zouaves—A Bad Lot—Oddities of Carlism—Santa Cruz Again—Running a Cargo—On Board a Carlist Privateer—A Descendant of Kings—"Oh, for an Armstrong Twenty-Four Pounder!"—Crossing the Border—A Remarkable Guide—Mountain Scenery—In Navarre—Challenged at Vera—Our Billet with the Parish Priest—The Sad Story of an Irish Volunteer—Dialogue with Don Carlos—The Happy Valley—Bugle-Blasts—The Writer in a Quandary—The Fifth Battalion of Navarre—The Distribution of Arms—The Bleeding Heart—Enthusiasm of the Chicos.

AFTER a short stay in London I was despatched to Stockholm, to attend the coronation of Oscar II of Sweden and his spouse, which took place in the Storkyrkan, on the 12th of May. At the Hotel Rydberg I met my Madrid acquaintance, Mr. Russell Young, who was a bird of passage like myself, and had just arrived from Vienna, where he had been detailing the ceremonial at the opening of the International Exhibition in the Prater. While enjoying myself at a ball at the Norwegian Minister's, I received a telegraphic message, ordering me at once to the Austrian capital. I was very sorry to leave, for I was delighted with peaceful airy Stockholm and the free-hearted Swedes—it was such a change after Spain; but I had neither license nor leisure to grumble, and flitted to Vienna as fast as steam could carry me. The Weltausstellung did not prove to be a lodestone, although in justice it must be admitted it was one of the finest shows ever planned, and was fixed in one of the most agreeable of sites. It was too far away, however, to attract the British public, and there were rumours of cholera lurking in the Kaiserstadt; so I was recalled, but to be sent to Spain once more. My mission was to penetrate, if possible, to the headquarters of the Carlists, with the view of giving a fair and full report of the strength, peculiarities, and prospects of their movement.

At the London office of the sympathizers with the cause I was furnished with the address of certain Carlists in confidential positions in France, and letters were sent on in advance, so as to secure me a favourable reception. Armed with a sheet of flimsy stamped in blue with the escutcheon of Charles VII., and the legend "Secretaria Militar de Londres," and with, what was more potent, a big credit on a banking-house, I started afresh on the now familiar route.

Before undertaking the journey into the territory in revolt I halted at Bayonne to procure the necessary passes. These were obtained with ease from the Junta sitting in the Rue des Ecoles, the members of which professed that they desired nothing so much as the presence of the representatives of impartial foreign journals, so that the truth about the struggle should be made known to the rest of Europe. From Bayonne I proceeded to Biarritz, where I had a conference with the Duke de La Union de Cuba, a warm Carlist partisan, to whom I had an introduction, and thence I went to St. Jean de Luz, a drowsy, quaint, world-forgotten nook. A petit Paris it was called in a vaunting quatrain by some minstrel of yore. But Brussels may be comforted. It is nothing of the kind, but something infinitely better. The breezes from the main and the mountains, from the Bay of Biscay and the Pyrenees, conspire to supply it with ozone. There is music in the boom of the surf as it pulsates regularly on the velvet sands of a semicircular inlet, where dogs frisk and youngsters gambol in the sunshine.

In a hotel on the edge of that inlet, the Fonda de la Playa, where I put up, a young Irish gentleman named Leader was recuperating from a severe wound in the leg. He had received it in the service of Don Carlos, in a skirmish near Azpeitia, where he was the only man hit. He was out with a party of the guerrilleros, and came across a company of the Madrid troops. To encourage his own people, or rather the people with whom he had cast in his fortunes, he went well to the front, and mounting on a bank of earth, hurled defiance at the enemy. He was picked down by a stray shot, and if he had been taken prisoner it is probable that he would have paid for his temerity with his life. The Spaniards were not clement towards foreigners who interposed in their domestic quarrel. Leader was carried off by his companions and secreted in a peasant's hut. The troops, swearing vengeance, searched the hut next to it, but, by some accident, failed to continue the quest to the refuge of the wounded man. He bled profusely, but the haemorrhage was finally arrested by some rude bandaging, and at night he was helped astride a donkey, and conveyed across the frontier into France. He told me he had suffered excruciating torments at every jolt of the jog-trotting animal on that mountain journey. Had the bullet struck him an inch higher he would have had to suffer amputation; but his luck stood to him, and at the time we met he was getting on fairly towards recovery, thanks to youth, a good constitution, and the healthy air of St. Jean de Luz. I could not understand the ardour of Leader's partisanship for the Carlists. He spoke the merest smattering of Spanish, and had no profound intimacy with the vexed question of Spanish politics or the rights of the rival Spanish houses. The ill-natured whispered that he was crying "Viva la Republica" when he was knocked over. It is possible, for he had fought for the French Republic with Bourbaki's army, and may, in his excitement, have forgotten under what flag he was serving. I take it he was a soldier by instinct, and ranged himself on the side of Don Carlos more from the love of adventure than from any other motive. He was a fine athletic young fellow, with a handsome determined cast of features. He had been an ensign in the 30th Foot, and had resigned his commission to enjoy a spell of active service when the Franco-German war was proclaimed. That he had behaved bravely in the campaign which led to internment in Switzerland was evidenced by the ribbon of the Legion of Honour which he wore. Leader was very anxious that an Anglo-Irish legion in aid of Don Carlos should be organized. I felt it my duty to warn those to whom he appealed to think twice before they embarked on such a crusade. He was very wroth with me for having thrown cold water on the project, but that did not affect me. I had more experience of such follies than he, and my conscience approved me. A man may be justified in playing with his own life, but he should be slow in playing with the lives of others. He prepares a vexing responsibility for himself if he is sensitive.

In the next room to Leader was a fellow-enthusiast, Mr. Smith Sheehan, an ex-officer of Pontifical Zouaves, and son of a popular and eccentric town-councillor of Cork. He was an agile stripling, skilled in all gymnastic exercises. He had also done some fighting with the Carlists, and was in France on furlough, which the soldiers in the Royalist force appeared to have no insuperable difficulty in getting. He told me there was a large infusion of his old regiment amongst the guerrilleros, and that they helped to bind the partisan levies in the withes of discipline. Most of them had smelt gunpowder at Mentana and Patay. The famous cabecilla, Saballs, had been a captain at Rome, and Captain Wills, a Dutchman, who had been killed in a brush at Igualada, had been sergeant-major in Sheehan's company.

There was another ex-British officer of short service, who had a remarkably imposing and well-cultivated growth of moustache. He was a violent doctrinaire Carlist, but suffered from a chronic malady which prevented him from taking the field; still there was none who could plot with a more tremendous air of mystery. He was a Carlist because it was "the correct thing" to be one in the fashionable ring at St. Jean de Luz, where he had settled, and because he inherited a name associated with chivalric insurrection. For the sake of his family I shall call him Barbarossa. He was no honour to his house, for he was an inveterate gambler, and was not careful in discharging the obligations he wantonly contracted. He is dead. His death was no loss to society. In fact, if the whole host of gamblers, lock, stock and barrel, were swept by a fairy-blast to the regions of thick-ribbed ice, the world would be the gainer.

When I left Spain, Carlism was to be put down in a fortnight—in Madrid. Now it threatened to last as long as a Chinese play. The Royalists—I suppose they had earned the title to be so named by their perseverance—had achieved numerous small successes which had raised their morale, and they were being supplied with arms of precision from abroad, and trained to their use. They had even taken some mountain-guns from their enemy. Leader made me laugh with his accounts of Lizarraga shouting "Artilleria al frente!" and a couple of mules, with one wretched little piece, moving forward; and of the intimidating clatter made by three shrunk cavaliers in cuirasses a world too wide for them, and alpargatas, trotting up a village street. The alpargata is the mountain-shoe of canvas, with a hempen sole, worn by the Basque peasants. The association of surcoats of mail and rope slippers is incongruous; but what does that reck? Those cuirasses were spolia opima.

And Santa Cruz?

The honest gentleman had retired into private life. His excesses had raised such a storm of opprobrium against the Carlists that they had to request him to desist. Lizarraga summoned him to render himself up a prisoner. "Come and take me," replied Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz had near two thousand followers; Lizarraga a few hundred. Lizarraga declined the invitation. But the priest caused seven-and-twenty Carabineros, taken prisoners at the bridge of Endarlasa, near Irun, to be shot, and this filled the cup to overflowing. The Carlists averred they would slay him; the Republicans vowed they would garrote him for a Madrid holiday; the French Government declared its intention of putting him under lock and key if it caught him within its jurisdiction. His band was disarmed "by order of the King," and dispersed, and the Cura himself nebulously vanished—whither we may see anon.

There was a large accretion to the population of St. Jean de Luz in Iberian refugees, and as they sat and conversed under the foliage of the public promenade, frequent sighs might be overheard, and remarks that if this sort of thing were to go on, "Spain would soon be in as bad a condition as France." At all hours there came to the beach poor exiles of Spain, who turned their eyes sadly to the line where sky met ocean. Of what were their thoughts—of home and friends, of the flutters of the casino or the ecstasies of the bull-ring? If they were looking for the Spanish fleet they did not see it, for a reason as old as the "Critic." It was not in sight. They came down in numbers in front of my hotel at nine o'clock on the morning of Monday, July 28th, a few days after my arrival, when a strange yellow funnel turned the point, and a long low Red-Roverish three-masted schooner-yacht steamed into Socoa, the roadstead of St. Jean de Luz. If the exiles were correctly informed, that was the Spanish fleet in a sense—the notorious Carlist privateer, the San Margarita, which had recently landed arms and ammunition for the Royalists at Lequeieto and elsewhere. She had been doing a stroke of business in the same line that morning. In the grey dawn she had dropped into the embouchure of the Bidassoa, at a few hundred yards from the town of Fontarabia. The work was well and quickly done. Boats requisitioned by friends on land put off to her, and returned laden with bales of merchandise. These artless bales were packages of breechloaders, with bayonets to match, wrapped in sail-cloth. As soon as they were received on shore they were distributed amongst some thousands of Carlists in waiting, who at once proceeded to fix bayonets, fall into ranks, and with shouts of exultation march off in good order.