My Travels in Morocco. James Richardson
Читать онлайн книгу.
into the Straits by almost miraculous interposition.
What was this Moorish boat in which I went on shore? A mere long shell of bad planks, and scarcely more ship-shape than the trunk of a tree hollowed into a canoe, leakily put together. It was filled with dirty, ragged, half-naked sailors, whose seamanship did not extend beyond coming and going from vessels lying in this little port. Each of these Mogadorian port sailors had a bit of straight pole for an oar; the way in which they rowed was equally characteristic. Struggling against wind and current with their Moorish rais at the helm, encouraging their labours by crying out first one thing, then another, as his fancy dictated, the crew repeated in chorus all he said:—"Khobsah!" (a loaf) cried the rais.
All the men echoed "Khobsah."
"A loaf you shall have when you return!" cried the rais.
"A loaf we shall have when we return!" cried the men.
"Pull, pull; God hears and sees you!" cried the rais.
"We pull, we pull; God hears and sees us!" cried the men.
"Sweetmeats, sweetmeats, by G—; sweetmeats by G—you shall have, only pull away!" swore the rais.
"Sweetmeats we shall have, thank God! sweetmeats we shall have, thank God!" roared the men, all screaming and bawling. In this unique style, after struggling three hours to get three miles over the port, we landed, all of us completely exhausted and drowned in spray.
It is usual for Moors, particularly negroes, to sing certain choruses, and thus encourage one another in their work. What, however, is remarkable, these choruses are mostly on sacred subjects, being frequently the formula of their confession, "There is no God, but one God, and Mahomet is his Prophet," &c. These clownish tars were deeply coloured, and some quite black. I found, in fact, the greatest part of the Moorish population of Mogador coloured persons. We may here easily trace the origin of the epithet "Black-a-Moor," and we are not so surprised that Shakspeare made his Moor black; indeed, the present Emperor, Muley Abd Errahman, is of very dark complexion, though his features are not at all of the negro cast. But he has sons quite black, and with negro features, who, of course, are the children of negresses. One of these, is Governor of Rabat. In no country is the colour of the human skin so little thought of. This is a very important matter in the question of abolition. There is no objection to the skin and features of the negro; it is only the luxury of having slaves, or their usefulness for heavy work, which weighs in the scale against abolition.
As soon as we landed, we visited the lieutenant-governor, who congratulated us on not being carried down to the Canary Islands. Then his Excellency asked, in due studied form:
"Where do you come from?"
Traveller.—"Gibraltar."
His Excellency.—"Where are you going?"
Traveller.—"To see the Sultan, Muley Abd Errahman."
His Excellency.—"What's your business?"
Traveller.—"I will let your Excellency know to-morrow."
I then proceeded to the house of Mr. Phillips, where I took up my quarters. Mr. Willshire, our vice-consul, was absent, having gone up to Morocco with all the principal merchants of Mogador, to pay a visit to the Emperor.
The port of Mogador had to-day a most wild and desolate appearance, which was rendered still more dreary and hideous by a dark tempest sweeping over it. On the shore, there was no appearance of life, much less of trade and shipping. All had abandoned it, save a guard, who lay stretched at the gate of the waterport, like a grim watch-dog. From this place, we proceeded to the merchants' quarter of the town, which was solitary and immersed in profound gloom. Altogether, my first impressions of Mogador were most unfavourable, I went to bed and dreamt of winds and seas, and struggled with tempests the greater part of the night. Then I was shipwrecked off the Canaries; thrown on the coast of Wadnoun, and made a slave by the wild Arabs wandering in the Desert—I awoke.
Mr. Phillips, mine host, soon became my right-hand man. His extraordinary character, and the adventures of his life are worth a brief notice. Phillips said he was descended from those York Jews, who, on refusing to pay a contribution levied on them by one of our most Christian kings, had a tooth drawn out every morning (without the aid of chloroform), until they satisfied the cruel avarice of the tyrant. In person, Phillips was a smart old gentleman, with the ordinary lineaments of his race stamped on his countenance. The greater part of his life has been spent in South America, where he attained the honours of aide-de-camp to Bolivar. In those sanguinary revolutions, heaving with the birth of the young republic, he had often been shut up in the capilla to be shot, and was rescued always by the Jesuit fathers, who pitied and saved the poor Jew, on his expressing himself favourable to Christianity. Returning to England, after twenty years' absence, his mother did not fully recognize him, until he one day got up and admired, with youthful ardour, a china figure on the chimney-piece, which had been his toy in his boyhood. On the occurrence of this little domestic incident, the mother passionately embraced her lost prodigal, once dead, but now "alive again." Phillips came to Mogador on a military speculation, and offered to take the command of the Emperor's cavalry against all his enemies.
This audacity of a Jew filled the Moor with alarm. "How could a Jew, who was not a devil, propose such an insult to the Commander of the Faithful, as to presume to take the charge of his invincible warriors!" Nevertheless, the little fellow weathered the storm, and got appointed "captain of the port of Mogador," with the liberal salary of about thirty shillings per month; but this did not prevent our aide-de-camp, now metamorphosed into a sea captain, from wearing an admiral's uniform, which he obtained in a curious way on a visit to England. He met in the streets of London with an acquaintance, who pretended to patronize him. The gentleman jokingly said, "Well, Phillips, I must give you an uniform, since you are appointed captain of the port of Mogador." The said gentleman received, a few months afterwards, when his quondam protégé was safe with his uniform strutting about Mogador, to the amazement of the Moors, and the delight of his co-religionists, a bill of thirty pounds or so, charged for "a suit of admiral's uniform for Mr. Phillips, captain of the port of Mogador;" and found that a joke sometimes has a serious termination.
Phillips, on his first arrival in this country, entered into a diplomatic contest with the Moorish authorities, demanding the privileges of a native British-born Jew, and he determined to ride a horse, in order to vindicate the rights of British Jews, before the awful presence of the Shereefian Court! About this business, the Consul-general Hay is said to have written eleven long, and Mr. Willshire about twenty-one short and pithy despatches, but the affair ended in smoke. Phillips, with great magnanimity and self-denial, consented to relinquish the privilege, on the prayer of his brethren, natives of Mogador, who were very naturally afraid, lest the incensed Emperor might visit on them what he durst not inflict on the British-born Jew.
Of the achievements of Phillips in the way of science (for he assures he is born to the high destiny of enlightening both barbarians and civilized nations) I take the liberty, with his permission, of mentioning one. Phillips brought here a pair of horse-shoes belonging to a drayhorse of the firm of Truman, Hanbury, Buxton, and Co., to astonish the Moors by their size, who are great connoisseurs of horse-flesh. The Moors protested their unbelief, and swore it was a lie—"such shoes never shod a horse." Phillips then got a skeleton of a head from England. This they also scouted as an imposition, alleging that Phillips had got it purposely made to deceive them. "Although they believed in the Prophet, whom they never saw, they were still not such fools as to believe in everything which an Infidel might bring to their country." Phillips now gave up, in despair, the attempt to propagate science among the Moors.
Our ancient aide-de-camp of Bolivar is a liberal English Jew, and boasts that, on Christmas-day, he always has his roast-beef and plum-pudding. I supped with him often on a sucking-pig, for the Christians breed pigs in this place, to the horror of pious Mussulmen. This amusing adventurer subsequently left Mogador and went to Lisbon, where he purposed writing a memorial to the Archbishop of Canterbury, containing the plan, of a New Unitarian system of religion, by which the Jews might be brought within the pale of the Christian Church!
For