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Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #48286.
Mogreb‑el‑Acksa is a travelogue by Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham, the Scottish politician‑author who spent the late nineteenth century wandering Morocco. The book opens with a sprawling, self‑reflective preface in which the narrator admits his own moralising and his habit of writing “after the fashion that men speak over the fire at night,” promising a straightforward record of what he saw rather than grand theories of empire or religion. He then launches into Chapter I, describing a cloudy October evening in Tangier, the electric glow of the harbor, and his boarding of a small boat manned by Jewish rowers. The narrative quickly moves to his plans to masquerade as a Turkish doctor in order to reach the little‑known city of Tarudant, introducing a cast of colorful companions, an interpreter, a Moorish guide, and a Jewish consul, while sketching the ruins, gardens and multicultural life of coastal towns such as Arzila and Larache.
The voice is unmistakably Victorian, a blend of earnest observation, digressive philosophising and occasional wry humor. Graham writes with a rich, sometimes baroque diction that reflects his background as a parliamentarian and adventurer, yet he strives for the immediacy of a campfire story. Readers who enjoy detailed, first‑hand accounts of North‑African geography, the interplay of European and Arab cultures, and the idiosyncratic personalities that populate a 19th‑century travel diary will find this work rewarding. It especially appeals to those who appreciate a narrative that values the melancholy of wandering over didactic moralising, and who are comfortable with the occasional meandering of a period‑specific prose style.
The opening · free to read
TO WAYFARING MEN.
SIRS, the Holy Scriptures, which, as we know, were written for our learning, seem to imply that some of us are fools.
This may be so, and when I moralise, wrapped in the frequent contemplation of my travels, upon lost opportunities, lack of discernment, and on the general folly incident to all mankind, but which each man deems centred in himself, I think so too. But still a traveller in this travelling world, going perhaps to nowhere, or to some place that he would rather never visit, cannot but find his most congenial public amongst wayfaring men. Therefore to you who, like myself, have crossed, or even now are crossing, desert or pampa in the night; riding towards Capella, if in the southern hemisphere (Sohail in Africa), keeping the wind a little blowing on your right cheek, dismounting now and then to smoke and slack the girths; then camping on some river, sleeping fitfully and rising oft to view your horses feeding so quietly under the southern stars; or you who in the liner, ocean tramp, or even "windjammer" are going somewhere for no special reason, I now address myself.
Writers, I take it, firstly write to please themselves, if not, 'tis ten to one their writing pleases nobody. Following my postulate I have set down that which pleased me upon my pilgrimage, hoping that it may please at least some two or three who, like myself, have wandered. Therefore in this, my modest book of travels, I have tried to write after the fashion that men speak over the fire at night, their pipes alight, hands on their rifles, boots turned towards the blaze, ears strained to catch the rustle of a leaf, and with the tin tea mug stopped on its journey to the mouth when horses snort; I mean I strove to write down that which I saw without periphrasis, sans flag-wagging, and with no megrim in my head of having been possessed by some great moral purpose, without which few travellers nowadays presume to leave their homes.
I fear I have no theory of empires, destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race, spread of the Christian faith, of trade extension, or of hinterlands; no nostrum, by means of which I hope to turn Arabs to Christians, reconcile Allah and Jahve, remove the ancient lack of comprehension between East and West, mix oil and vinegar, or fix the rainbow always in the sky so that the colour-blind may scan it at their leisure through the medium of a piece of neutral-tinted glass; and generally I fear I write of things without a scrap of interest to right-thinking men: of humours, sayings, proverbs, traits of character; little of eating, drinking, or night alarms of vermin, as travellers will; but, on the contrary, of lonely rides, desolate camping places, of ruined buildings seen in peculiar lights, of simple folk who pray to Allah seven times a day, and act as if they never prayed at all; in fact of things which to a traveller, his travels o'er, still conjure up the best part of all travel--its melancholy. So I apologise for lack of analysis, neglect to dive into the supposititious motives which influence but ill-attested acts, and mostly for myself for having come before the public with the history of a failure to accomplish what I tried; and having brought together a sack of cobwebs, a pack of gossamers, a bale of thistle-down, dragon-flies' wings, of Oriental gossip as to bygone facts, of old-world recollections, of new-world practices half understood; lore about horses' colours, of tales of men who never bother much to think, but chiefly act, carving their lives out, where still space is left in which to carve, and acting thus so inconsiderately whilst there still remain so many stones unbroken, social problems to be solved, and the unpuncturable pneumatic tyre not yet found out.
Touching my traveller's privilege I propose to use it sparingly, but at the same time not to blurt out the brutal truth too trippingly, for truth, I take it, suffers by too much comprehension, in the same manner as the Mass has suffered even by its transmutation into Elizabethan English. Religion, once made understandable of all, loses its authenticity, and soon degenerates into the arid dialectics of the self-righteous Nonconformist. What so consoling to a religious man, as in a building (with the entry free) to join in singing praises to an unknown God, in an uncomprehended tongue? And so perhaps the truth, {x} declare it quite unblushingly, and it may become as little interesting as is an ill-concocted lie.
It may be that my poor unphilosophic recollections of a failure may interest some who, like myself, have failed, but still may like to hear that even in a failure you can see strange things, meet as strange types, and be impressed as much with wild and simple folk, as any traveller who thundered through the land, Bible and gun in hand, making himself no spiced conscience, but putting into practice the best traditions of our race, confident that the one way to win a "nigger's" heart "is to speak English to him," and doing so even at the rifle's mouth.
But if they do not interest, then I fall back again upon my wanderers, and hope that in my slight impressions they may find something they recognise, something that they have felt before upon the journey that they make across the Pampa of their lives, making it as they do in general on horses hipshot, lean and saddle-galled, asking their way from those they meet, who answer them as wise as they, "Ride on to the lone tree on the horizon, then bear a little to the right, and if you keep the line, you cannot miss the houses, for the barking of the dogs will guide you, if it falls dark."
And then comes evening, and the travellers, still kicking at their horses' sides, straining their eyes, keep pushing forward, stumbling and objurgating on the trail.
R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM.
GARTMORE, 1898.
SOUTH-SOUTH-WEST, a little westerly with a cloudy sky, and with long rollers setting into the harbour of Tangier, and the date October 1st in the last year of supposititious grace. The old white town, built round the bay with the Kasbah upon its hill, and the mosque tower just shining darkly against the electric light, for Tangier passed from darkness to electric light, no gas or oil lamps intervening, gave the effect as of a gleaming horse-shoe in the dark. Outside the harbour, moored twice as far away as the French ironclad, swung the Rabat at anchor, for the captain, a Catalan of the true Reus breed, was bound to supplement his lack of seamanship with extra caution. Towards her we made our way late in the evening in a boat manned by four strong-backed Jews, and seated silently, for it was the first stage of a journey concerning which each of our friends had added his wisest word of disencouragement. Nothing so spurs a man upon a journey as the cautions of his friends, "dangerous," "impossible," "when you get there nothing worth seeing," and the like, all show you plainly that the thing is worth the venture, for you know the world is ever proud to greet the conqueror with praise and flowers, but he has to conquer first. And if he fails, the cautious kindly friend wags his wise head and shakes his moralising finger, thinks you a fool, says so behind your back, but cannot moralise away experience, that chiefest recompense of every traveller. So in the boat besides myself sat Hassan Suleiman Lutaif, a Syrian gentleman, who acted as interpreter, and Haj Mohammed es Swani, a Moor of the Riff pirate breed, short, strong, black-bearded, with a turned-up moustache, and speaking Spanish after the Arab fashion, that is without the particles, and substitution of the gerund for every portion of the verb. El Haj and I were old acquaintances, having made several journeys in Morocco, and being well accustomed to each other's ways and idiosyncrasies upon the road.
Our bourne was Tarudant, a city in the province of the Sus, but rarely visited by Europeans, and of which no definite account exists by any traveller of repute. Only some hundred and fifty miles from Mogador, it yet continues almost untouched, the only Moorish city to which an air of mystery clings, and it remains the only place beyond the Atlas to the south in which the Sultan has a vestige of authority. {2}
Outside its walls the tribesmen live the old Arab life, all going armed, constantly fighting, each man's hand against his neighbour, and, therefore, in a measure, raised against himself. And yet a land of vines, of orange gardens, olive yards, plantations of pomegranates, Roman remains, rich mines; but cursed "with too much powder," as the Arabs say, and therefore doomed, up to the present day, to languish without pauperism, prostitution, and the modern vices which, in more favoured lands, have long replaced the old-world vices which man brought with him into the old world. Even my friends were all agreed that to reach Tarudant in European clothes was quite impossible. Thus a disguise became imperative. After a long discussion I determined to impersonate a Turkish doctor travelling with his "taleb" {3a}--that is, scribe--to see the world and write his travels in a book. {3b} God, the great doctor, but under Him His earthly vicegerents, practicants, practitioners, with or without diploma, throughout the east, enjoy considerable respect; they kill, they cure, and still God has the praise. No one asks where they studied, and if faith in his powers helps a doctor in his trade, the east of all lands should be most congenial to all those who live by lancet, purge, and human faith. My stock of medicines was of the most homeric type, quinine and mercury, some Seidlitz powders, eye wash for ophthalmia, almost, in fact, as simple as that of the old Scotch doctor who doctored with what he styled the two simples, that is, laudanum and calomel.
The multitudinous dialects of Arabic, the constant travelling, either upon the pilgrimage or for the love of travel, which seems inherent in the Arab, render it possible for a European occasionally to pass unrecognised, even although his stock of Arabic is as exiguous as was my own. Behold us, then, approaching the Rabat, a steamer of the Linea Tras-Atlantica Espanola, bound for Mogador, some five days' journey below Tangier, the point at which I intended to put on Moorish clothes, buy mules and horses, engage a guide, and set out for Tarudant, the city where La Caba, Count Julian's daughter (she whose beauty tempted Don Rodrigo, and to avenge whose honour her father sold Spain to the Moors), lies buried, though how she came to die there is to historians unknown. On board the ship there was no light, no look-out, and the accommodation ladder was triced up for the night, stewards were asleep, and the long narrow vessel dipped her nose into the rollers, rolling and heaving in the dark, whilst we in Spanish, English, Arabic, and Portuguese rang all the changes upon ship ahoy. At last a sulky, sleepy quartermaster deigned to let down the ladder, and we scrambled upon deck.
Next morning found us off Arzila, the Julia Constantia Zilis of the Romans, a small, walled town lost among orange gardens, and girt by walls built by the Portuguese. Over the gateway the half-obliterated arms of Portugal can still be seen, but mouldering to decay, as is the country that they represent. Close to the walls rises the tomb of the Saint of Arzila; the white dome springs from a dense thicket of palmetto, dwarf rhododendron, berberis, and aromatic shrubs, a tiny stream bordered by oleanders (bitter as is an oleander is a proverb in the land) runs past it; above the dome and red-tiled roof two palms keep watch, and whisper in the wind the secrets palm trees know, and tell each other of the East, and of the various changes, Arab and Berber, Moor and Portuguese, they have seen during the course of their slow growth and long extended days. Columbus visited the place; the battle of Trafalgar was fought a few leagues off, and an old shepherd, still living where he was born, above the lighthouse on Cape Spartel, remembers to have seen it as a boy when he lay out upon the hills tending his goats.
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