The Entire Project Gutenberg Works of Mark Twain

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CHAPTER VIII.

This is royal! Let those who went up through Spain make the best of it
--these dominions of the Emperor of Morocco suit our little party well
enough. We have had enough of Spain at Gibraltar for the present.
Tangier is the spot we have been longing for all the time. Elsewhere we
have found foreign-looking things and foreign-looking people, but always
with things and people intermixed that we were familiar with before, and
so the novelty of the situation lost a deal of its force. We wanted
something thoroughly and uncompromisingly foreign--foreign from top to
bottom--foreign from center to circumference--foreign inside and outside
and all around--nothing anywhere about it to dilute its foreignness
--nothing to remind us of any other people or any other land under the sun.
And lo! In Tangier we have found it. Here is not the slightest thing
that ever we have seen save in pictures--and we always mistrusted the
pictures before. We cannot anymore. The pictures used to seem
exaggerations--they seemed too weird and fanciful for reality. But
behold, they were not wild enough--they were not fanciful enough--they
have not told half the story. Tangier is a foreign land if ever there
was one, and the true spirit of it can never be found in any book save
The Arabian Nights. Here are no white men visible, yet swarms of
humanity are all about us. Here is a packed and jammed city enclosed in
a massive stone wall which is more than a thousand years old. All the
houses nearly are one-and two-story, made of thick walls of stone,
plastered outside, square as a dry-goods box, flat as a floor on top, no
cornices, whitewashed all over--a crowded city of snowy tombs! And the
doors are arched with the peculiar arch we see in Moorish pictures; the
floors are laid in varicolored diamond flags; in tesselated, many-colored
porcelain squares wrought in the furnaces of Fez; in red tiles and broad
bricks that time cannot wear; there is no furniture in the rooms (of
Jewish dwellings) save divans--what there is in Moorish ones no man may
know; within their sacred walls no Christian dog can enter. And the
streets are oriental--some of them three feet wide, some six, but only
two that are over a dozen; a man can blockade the most of them by
extending his body across them. Isn't it an oriental picture?

There are stalwart Bedouins of the desert here, and stately Moors proud
of a history that goes back to the night of time; and Jews whose fathers
fled hither centuries upon centuries ago; and swarthy Riffians from the
mountains--born cut-throats--and original, genuine Negroes as black as
Moses; and howling dervishes and a hundred breeds of Arabs--all sorts and
descriptions of people that are foreign and curious to look upon.

And their dresses are strange beyond all description. Here is a bronzed
Moor in a prodigious white turban, curiously embroidered jacket, gold and
crimson sash, of many folds, wrapped round and round his waist, trousers
that only come a little below his knee and yet have twenty yards of stuff
in them, ornamented scimitar, bare shins, stockingless feet, yellow
slippers, and gun of preposterous length--a mere soldier!--I thought he
was the Emperor at least. And here are aged Moors with flowing white
beards and long white robes with vast cowls; and Bedouins with long,
cowled, striped cloaks; and Negroes and Riffians with heads clean-shaven
except a kinky scalp lock back of the ear or, rather, upon the after
corner of the skull; and all sorts of barbarians in all sorts of weird
costumes, and all more or less ragged. And here are Moorish women who
are enveloped from head to foot in coarse white robes, and whose sex can
only be determined by the fact that they only leave one eye visible and
never look at men of their own race, or are looked at by them in public.
Here are five thousand Jews in blue gabardines, sashes about their
waists, slippers upon their feet, little skullcaps upon the backs of
their heads, hair combed down on the forehead, and cut straight across
the middle of it from side to side--the selfsame fashion their Tangier
ancestors have worn for I don't know how many bewildering centuries.
Their feet and ankles are bare. Their noses are all hooked, and hooked
alike. They all resemble each other so much that one could almost
believe they were of one family. Their women are plump and pretty, and
do smile upon a Christian in a way which is in the last degree
comforting.

What a funny old town it is! It seems like profanation to laugh and jest
and bandy the frivolous chat of our day amid its hoary relics. Only the
stately phraseology and the measured speech of the sons of the Prophet
are suited to a venerable antiquity like this. Here is a crumbling wall
that was old when Columbus discovered America; was old when Peter the
Hermit roused the knightly men of the Middle Ages to arm for the first
Crusade; was old when Charlemagne and his paladins beleaguered enchanted
castles and battled with giants and genii in the fabled days of the olden
time; was old when Christ and his disciples walked the earth; stood where
it stands today when the lips of Memnon were vocal and men bought and
sold in the streets of ancient Thebes!

The Phoenicians, the Carthagenians, the English, Moors, Romans, all have
battled for Tangier--all have won it and lost it. Here is a ragged,
oriental-looking Negro from some desert place in interior Africa, filling
his goatskin with water from a stained and battered fountain built by the
Romans twelve hundred years ago. Yonder is a ruined arch of a bridge
built by Julius Caesar nineteen hundred years ago. Men who had seen the
infant Saviour in the Virgin's arms have stood upon it, maybe.

Near it are the ruins of a dockyard where Caesar repaired his ships and
loaded them with grain when he invaded Britain, fifty years before the
Christian era.

Here, under the quiet stars, these old streets seem thronged with the
phantoms of forgotten ages. My eyes are resting upon a spot where stood
a monument which was seen and described by Roman historians less than two
thousand years ago, whereon was inscribed:

"WE ARE THE CANAANITES. WE ARE THEY THAT
HAVE BEEN DRIVEN OUT OF THE LAND OF CANAAN
BY THE JEWISH ROBBER, JOSHUA."

Joshua drove them out, and they came here. Not many leagues from here is
a tribe of Jews whose ancestors fled thither after an unsuccessful revolt
against King David, and these their descendants are still under a ban and
keep to themselves.

Tangier has been mentioned in history for three thousand years. And it
was a town, though a queer one, when Hercules, clad in his lion skin,
landed here, four thousand years ago. In these streets he met Anitus,
the king of the country, and brained him with his club, which was the
fashion among gentlemen in those days. The people of Tangier (called
Tingis then) lived in the rudest possible huts and dressed in skins and
carried clubs, and were as savage as the wild beasts they were constantly
obliged to war with. But they were a gentlemanly race and did no work.
They lived on the natural products of the land. Their king's country
residence was at the famous Garden of Hesperides, seventy miles down the
coast from here. The garden, with its golden apples (oranges), is gone
now--no vestige of it remains. Antiquarians concede that such a
personage as Hercules did exist in ancient times and agree that he was an
enterprising and energetic man, but decline to believe him a good,
bona-fide god, because that would be unconstitutional.

Down here at Cape Spartel is the celebrated cave of Hercules, where that
hero took refuge when he was vanquished and driven out of the Tangier
country. It is full of inscriptions in the dead languages, which fact
makes me think Hercules could not have traveled much, else he would not
have kept a journal.

Five days' journey from here--say two hundred miles--are the ruins of an
ancient city, of whose history there is neither record nor tradition.
And yet its arches, its columns, and its statues proclaim it to have been
built by an enlightened race.

The general size of a store in Tangier is about that of an ordinary
shower bath in a civilized land. The Muhammadan merchant, tinman,
shoemaker, or vendor of trifles sits cross-legged on the floor and
reaches after any article you may want to buy. You can rent a whole
block of these pigeonholes for fifty dollars a month. The market people
crowd the marketplace with their baskets of figs, dates, melons,
apricots, etc., and among them file trains of laden asses, not much
larger, if any, than a Newfoundland dog. The scene is lively, is
picturesque, and smells like a police court. The Jewish money-changers
have their dens close at hand, and all day long are counting bronze coins
and transferring them from one bushel basket to another. They don't coin
much money nowadays, I think. I saw none but what was dated four or five
hundred years back, and was badly worn and battered. These coins are not
very valuable. Jack went out to get a napoleon changed, so as to have
money suited to the general cheapness of things, and came back and said
he had "swamped the bank, had bought eleven quarts of coin, and the head
of the firm had gone on the street to negotiate for the balance of the
change." I bought nearly half a pint of their money for a shilling
myself. I am not proud on account of having so much money, though. I
care nothing for wealth.

The Moors have some small silver coins and also some silver slugs worth a
dollar each. The latter are exceedingly scarce--so much so that when
poor ragged Arabs see one they beg to be allowed to kiss it.

They have also a small gold coin worth two dollars. And that reminds me
of something. When Morocco is in a state of war, Arab couriers carry
letters through the country and charge a liberal postage. Every now and
then they fall into the hands of marauding bands and get robbed.
Therefore, warned by experience, as soon as they have collected two
dollars' worth of money they exchange it for one of those little gold
pieces, and when robbers come upon them, swallow it. The stratagem was
good while it was unsuspected, but after that the marauders simply gave
the sagacious United States mail an emetic and sat down to wait.

The Emperor of Morocco is a soulless despot, and the great officers under
him are despots on a smaller scale. There is no regular system of
taxation, but when the Emperor or the Bashaw want money, they levy on
some rich man, and he has to furnish the cash or go to prison.
Therefore, few men in Morocco dare to be rich. It is too dangerous a
luxury. Vanity occasionally leads a man to display wealth, but sooner or
later the Emperor trumps up a charge against him--any sort of one will
do--and confiscates his property. Of course, there are many rich men in
the empire, but their money is buried, and they dress in rags and
counterfeit poverty. Every now and then the Emperor imprisons a man who
is suspected of the crime of being rich, and makes things so
uncomfortable for him that he is forced to discover where he has hidden
his money.

Moors and Jews sometimes place themselves under the protection of the
foreign consuls, and then they can flout their riches in the Emperor's
face with impunity.




CHAPTER IX.

About the first adventure we had yesterday afternoon, after landing here,
came near finishing that heedless Blucher. We had just mounted some
mules and asses and started out under the guardianship of the stately,
the princely, the magnificent Hadji Muhammad Lamarty (may his tribe
increase!) when we came upon a fine Moorish mosque, with tall tower, rich
with checker-work of many-colored porcelain, and every part and portion
of the edifice adorned with the quaint architecture of the Alhambra, and
Blucher started to ride into the open doorway. A startling "Hi-hi!" from
our camp followers and a loud "Halt!" from an English gentleman in the
party checked the adventurer, and then we were informed that so dire a
profanation is it for a Christian dog to set foot upon the sacred
threshold of a Moorish mosque that no amount of purification can ever
make it fit for the faithful to pray in again. Had Blucher succeeded in
entering the place, he would no doubt have been chased through the town
and stoned; and the time has been, and not many years ago, either, when a
Christian would have been most ruthlessly slaughtered if captured in a
mosque. We caught a glimpse of the handsome tessellated pavements within
and of the devotees performing their ablutions at the fountains, but even
that we took that glimpse was a thing not relished by the Moorish
bystanders.

Some years ago the clock in the tower of the mosque got out of order.
The Moors of Tangier have so degenerated that it has been long since
there was an artificer among them capable of curing so delicate a patient
as a debilitated clock. The great men of the city met in solemn conclave
to consider how the difficulty was to be met. They discussed the matter
thoroughly but arrived at no solution. Finally, a patriarch arose and
said:

"Oh, children of the Prophet, it is known unto you that a Portuguee dog
of a Christian clock mender pollutes the city of Tangier with his
presence. Ye know, also, that when mosques are builded, asses bear the
stones and the cement, and cross the sacred threshold. Now, therefore,
send the Christian dog on all fours, and barefoot, into the holy place to
mend the clock, and let him go as an ass!"

And in that way it was done. Therefore, if Blucher ever sees the inside
of a mosque, he will have to cast aside his humanity and go in his
natural character. We visited the jail and found Moorish prisoners
making mats and baskets. (This thing of utilizing crime savors of
civilization.) Murder is punished with death. A short time ago three
murderers were taken beyond the city walls and shot. Moorish guns are
not good, and neither are Moorish marksmen. In this instance they set up
the poor criminals at long range, like so many targets, and practiced on
them--kept them hopping about and dodging bullets for half an hour before
they managed to drive the center.

When a man steals cattle, they cut off his right hand and left leg and
nail them up in the marketplace as a warning to everybody. Their surgery
is not artistic. They slice around the bone a little, then break off the
limb. Sometimes the patient gets well; but, as a general thing, he
don't. However, the Moorish heart is stout. The Moors were always
brave. These criminals undergo the fearful operation without a wince,
without a tremor of any kind, without a groan! No amount of suffering
can bring down the pride of a Moor or make him shame his dignity with a
cry.

Here, marriage is contracted by the parents of the parties to it. There
are no valentines, no stolen interviews, no riding out, no courting in
dim parlors, no lovers' quarrels and reconciliations--no nothing that is
proper to approaching matrimony. The young man takes the girl his father
selects for him, marries her, and after that she is unveiled, and he sees
her for the first time. If after due acquaintance she suits him, he
retains her; but if he suspects her purity, he bundles her back to her
father; if he finds her diseased, the same; or if, after just and
reasonable time is allowed her, she neglects to bear children, back she
goes to the home of her childhood.

Muhammadans here who can afford it keep a good many wives on hand. They
are called wives, though I believe the Koran only allows four genuine
wives--the rest are concubines. The Emperor of Morocco don't know how
many wives he has, but thinks he has five hundred. However, that is near
enough--a dozen or so, one way or the other, don't matter.

Even the Jews in the interior have a plurality of wives.

I have caught a glimpse of the faces of several Moorish women (for they
are only human, and will expose their faces for the admiration of a
Christian dog when no male Moor is by), and I am full of veneration for
the wisdom that leads them to cover up such atrocious ugliness.

They carry their children at their backs, in a sack, like other savages
the world over.

Many of the Negroes are held in slavery by the Moors. But the moment a
female slave becomes her master's concubine her bonds are broken, and as
soon as a male slave can read the first chapter of the Koran (which
contains the creed) he can no longer be held in bondage.

They have three Sundays a week in Tangier. The Muhammadans' comes on
Friday, the Jews' on Saturday, and that of the Christian Consuls on
Sunday. The Jews are the most radical. The Moor goes to his mosque
about noon on his Sabbath, as on any other day, removes his shoes at the
door, performs his ablutions, makes his salaams, pressing his forehead to
the pavement time and again, says his prayers, and goes back to his work.

But the Jew shuts up shop; will not touch copper or bronze money at all;
soils his fingers with nothing meaner than silver and gold; attends the
synagogue devoutly; will not cook or have anything to do with fire; and
religiously refrains from embarking in any enterprise.

The Moor who has made a pilgrimage to Mecca is entitled to high
distinction. Men call him Hadji, and he is thenceforward a great
personage. Hundreds of Moors come to Tangier every year and embark for
Mecca. They go part of the way in English steamers, and the ten or
twelve dollars they pay for passage is about all the trip costs. They
take with them a quantity of food, and when the commissary department
fails they "skirmish," as Jack terms it in his sinful, slangy way. From
the time they leave till they get home again, they never wash, either on
land or sea. They are usually gone from five to seven months, and as
they do not change their clothes during all that time, they are totally
unfit for the drawing room when they get back.

Many of them have to rake and scrape a long time to gather together the
ten dollars their steamer passage costs, and when one of them gets back
he is a bankrupt forever after. Few Moors can ever build up their
fortunes again in one short lifetime after so reckless an outlay. In
order to confine the dignity of Hadji to gentlemen of patrician blood and
possessions, the Emperor decreed that no man should make the pilgrimage
save bloated aristocrats who were worth a hundred dollars in specie. But
behold how iniquity can circumvent the law! For a consideration, the
Jewish money-changer lends the pilgrim one hundred dollars long enough
for him to swear himself through, and then receives it back before the
ship sails out of the harbor!

Spain is the only nation the Moors fear. The reason is that Spain sends
her heaviest ships of war and her loudest guns to astonish these Muslims,
while America and other nations send only a little contemptible tub of a
gunboat occasionally. The Moors, like other savages, learn by what they
see, not what they hear or read. We have great fleets in the
Mediterranean, but they seldom touch at African ports. The Moors have a
small opinion of England, France, and America, and put their
representatives to a deal of red-tape circumlocution before they grant
them their common rights, let alone a favor. But the moment the Spanish
minister makes a demand, it is acceded to at once, whether it be just or
not.

Spain chastised the Moors five or six years ago, about a disputed piece
of property opposite Gibraltar, and captured the city of Tetouan. She
compromised on an augmentation of her territory, twenty million dollars'
indemnity in money, and peace. And then she gave up the city. But she
never gave it up until the Spanish soldiers had eaten up all the cats.
They would not compromise as long as the cats held out. Spaniards are
very fond of cats. On the contrary, the Moors reverence cats as
something sacred. So the Spaniards touched them on a tender point that
time. Their unfeline conduct in eating up all the Tetouan cats aroused a
hatred toward them in the breasts of the Moors, to which even the driving
them out of Spain was tame and passionless. Moors and Spaniards are foes
forever now. France had a minister here once who embittered the nation
against him in the most innocent way. He killed a couple of battalions
of cats (Tangier is full of them) and made a parlor carpet out of their
hides. He made his carpet in circles--first a circle of old gray
tomcats, with their tails all pointing toward the center; then a circle
of yellow cats; next a circle of black cats and a circle of white ones;
then a circle of all sorts of cats; and, finally, a centerpiece of
assorted kittens. It was very beautiful, but the Moors curse his memory
to this day.

When we went to call on our American Consul General today I noticed that
all possible games for parlor amusement seemed to be represented on his
center tables. I thought that hinted at lonesomeness. The idea was
correct. His is the only American family in Tangier. There are many
foreign consuls in this place, but much visiting is not indulged in.
Tangier is clear out of the world, and what is the use of visiting when
people have nothing on earth to talk about? There is none. So each
consul's family stays at home chiefly and amuses itself as best it can.
Tangier is full of interest for one day, but after that it is a weary
prison. The Consul General has been here five years, and has got enough
of it to do him for a century, and is going home shortly. His family
seize upon their letters and papers when the mail arrives, read them over
and over again for two days or three, talk them over and over again for
two or three more till they wear them out, and after that for days
together they eat and drink and sleep, and ride out over the same old
road, and see the same old tiresome things that even decades of centuries
have scarcely changed, and say never a single word! They have literally
nothing whatever to talk about. The arrival of an American man-of-war is
a godsend to them. "O Solitude, where are the charms which sages have
seen in thy face?" It is the completest exile that I can conceive of.
I would seriously recommend to the government of the United States that
when a man commits a crime so heinous that the law provides no adequate
punishment for it, they make him Consul General to Tangier.

I am glad to have seen Tangier--the second-oldest town in the world. But
I am ready to bid it good-bye, I believe.

We shall go hence to Gibraltar this evening or in the morning, and
doubtless the Quaker City will sail from that port within the next
forty-eight hours.




CHAPTER X.

We passed the Fourth of July on board the Quaker City, in mid-ocean. It
was in all respects a characteristic Mediterranean day--faultlessly
beautiful. A cloudless sky; a refreshing summer wind; a radiant sunshine
that glinted cheerily from dancing wavelets instead of crested mountains
of water; a sea beneath us that was so wonderfully blue, so richly,
brilliantly blue, that it overcame the dullest sensibilities with the
spell of its fascination.

They even have fine sunsets on the Mediterranean--a thing that is
certainly rare in most quarters of the globe. The evening we sailed away
from Gibraltar, that hard-featured rock was swimming in a creamy mist so
rich, so soft, so enchantingly vague and dreamy, that even the Oracle,
that serene, that inspired, that overpowering humbug, scorned the dinner
gong and tarried to worship!

He said: "Well, that's gorgis, ain't it! They don't have none of them
things in our parts, do they? I consider that them effects is on account
of the superior refragability, as you may say, of the sun's diramic
combination with the lymphatic forces of the perihelion of Jubiter. What
should you think?"

"Oh, go to bed!" Dan said that, and went away.

"Oh, yes, it's all very well to say go to bed when a man makes an
argument which another man can't answer. Dan don't never stand any
chance in an argument with me. And he knows it, too. What should you
say, Jack?"

"Now, Doctor, don't you come bothering around me with that dictionary
bosh. I don't do you any harm, do I? Then you let me alone."

"He's gone, too. Well, them fellows have all tackled the old Oracle, as
they say, but the old man's most too many for 'em. Maybe the Poet Lariat
ain't satisfied with them deductions?"

The poet replied with a barbarous rhyme and went below.

"'Pears that he can't qualify, neither. Well, I didn't expect nothing
out of him. I never see one of them poets yet that knowed anything.
He'll go down now and grind out about four reams of the awfullest slush
about that old rock and give it to a consul, or a pilot, or a nigger, or
anybody he comes across first which he can impose on. Pity but
somebody'd take that poor old lunatic and dig all that poetry rubbage out
of him. Why can't a man put his intellect onto things that's some value?
Gibbons, and Hippocratus, and Sarcophagus, and all them old ancient
philosophers was down on poets--"