I remember, too, the covered shed containing the mill that grinds the flour for the town, and the curious little bakehouse to which Dar el Baida takes its flat loaves, giving the master of the establishment one loaf in ten by way of payment. I recall the sale of horses, at which a fine raking mare with her foal at foot fetched fifty-four dollars in Moorish silver, a sum less than nine English pounds.
And I seem to see, even now as I write, the Spanish woman with cruel painted face, sitting at the open casement of an old house near the Spanish church, thrumming her guitar, and beneath her, by the roadside, a beggar clad, like the patriarch of old, in a garment of many colours, that made his black face seem blacker than any I have seen in Africa. Then Dar el Baida sinks behind the water-port gate, the strong Moorish rowers bend to their oars, their boat laps through the dark-blue water, and we are back aboard the ship again, in another atmosphere, another world. Passengers are talking as it might be they had just returned from their first visit to a Zoological Garden. Most of them have seen no more than the dirt and ugliness—their vision noted no other aspect—of the old-world port. The life that has not altered for centuries, the things that make it worth living to all the folk we leave behind,—these are matters in which casual visitors to Morocco have no concern. They resent suggestion that the affairs of “niggers” can call for serious consideration, far less for appreciation or interest of any sort.
Happily Djedida is not far away. At daybreak we are securely anchored before the town whose possession by the Portuguese is recorded to this hour by the fine fortifications and walls round the port. We slip over the smooth water in haste, that we may land before the sun is too high in the heavens. It is not without a thrill of pleasure that I hear the ship’s shrill summons and see the rest of the passengers returning.
[Illustration: PILGRIMS ON A STEAMER]
By this time it is afternoon, but the intervening hours have not been wasted. I have found the Maalem, master of a bakehouse, a short, olive-skinned, wild, and wiry little man, whose yellowed eyes and contracting pupils tell a tale of haschisch and kief that his twitching fingers confirm. But he knows the great track stretching some hundred and twenty miles into the interior up to Red Marrakesh; he is “the father and mother” of mules and horses, animals that brighten the face of man by reason of their superlative qualities, and he is prepared to undertake the charge of all matters pertaining to a journey over this roadless country. His beasts are fit to journey to Tindouf in the country of the Draa, so fine is their condition; their saddles and accoutrements would delight the Sultan’s own ministers. By Allah, the inland journey will be a picnic! Quite gravely, I have professed to believe all he says, and my reservations, though many, are all mental.