Chapter IX

Position of Fez—Water supply—Breakfast at Grand Vizier’s—Hidden
treasure—Sultan’s garden—Laying down telephone—Royal stud—Dinner at
Kaïd Hadj Hamed’s—Surgery.

Some of the views one gets of the town from the neighbouring heights are very pretty, and quite unlike any style of landscape I have seen before. The plain at the extremity of which the city is built extends for many miles in a south-west direction, and is almost a dead level, with an average width of some six miles. It is watered by the Wad el Fas (River of Fez), which falls into the Sebú about four miles below the town. Fez itself, though placed completely in a hollow, is certainly a very beautiful town when viewed from a short distance off; and apart from its fine surroundings, the plentiful mixture of bright green foliage, which peeps out from the otherwise glaring white of the houses, forms a vivid and agreeable contrast. The ground it stands on is by no means level, while close to it and all round, except towards the south-west, the land is undulating and rises to a considerable height, with many admirable and far more healthy sites on which to have built a town. The attraction of having more building material close at hand, and also an unlimited water supply, are the cause of the choice, this element, though in a very undrinkable state, being obtainable in almost every street. The river, which flows through part of the town, is led off in ducts in every direction, all private houses of any pretension having it let in to supply the fountains, &c., of which there is one in every patio. The stream is a good deal used for working corn-mills, some of which, by the noise one hears, seem to be grinding all night; the old circular stone, with a hole in the middle, is still in vogue, and broken and disused specimens are to be seen lying all about the town. The water is of a dull slate colour, with a considerable deposit on being left to stand for a short time, and is not without a large proportion of visible animal life. Rich people have theirs brought in from a distance, but for the poorer classes the ordinary supply must be a ready means of laying the foundation of disease, and is none the more palatable from the fact that into it flows, at the head of the stream, the Sultan’s private aqueduct, in which the 300 or 400 fair denizens of the palace have previously performed their ablutions.

The Moors of the present day seem to think Fez as near an approach to Paradise as can be found on earth; this opinion, too, has been shared to a certain extent by early English travellers, one of whom, in the sixteenth century, gives us the following fantastic description of the features of the town to which I have more prosaically alluded:—“Nature and art have played the wantons, and have brought forth this city, the fruit of their dalliance.... So doth the earth seem to dance in little Hillocks and pretie vallies, diversifying the Soyle.” Of the river and its subdivisions, too, he says, “He is divided into two armes, embracing this lovely nymphe; and he finds meanes of secret intelligence with his love ... which, still enjoying, he wooeth, and ever wooing enjoyeth!”[35]

The canals I have mentioned as permeating the town, while cooling the air in summer, must make the place damp and unhealthy, and with the narrow sunless streets and infinity of smells account for the pale, unwholesome looks of the Fasi. Sad, _insouciant_, and wrapped in melancholy and rags, as most of them are, they form a sorry contrast to the bold, cheery inhabitants of the provinces. The soldiers and black population, including slaves, are the only exceptions; but the former pass a great portion of the year out in camp, and the latter are bound to present a uniformly shining appearance, at all events as regards their outer man.

It is difficult to explain why disease is not more rife here than it is, as there is every facility both for propagating and engendering it, while of medical aid there is next to none. Almost the only remedy used by native physicians is bleeding, or rather cupping, which is considered a panacea; while for wounds or fractures small slips of paper, with verses of the Koran written on them, are bound over the part affected. Of surgery and anatomy they are quite ignorant, and, in fact, such science is forbidden by the Koran; while the idea of medicine is distasteful, especially to the rich, who are always suspicious of poisoning; so the few drugs known are seldom administered.

_Wednesday, 21st April 1880._

It is whispered that though some of the high Court officials are willing enough to entertain us, either from motives of hospitality or for the purpose of affording a treat to their womenkind, yet some are most reluctant to show us any civility. Among the former are the Kaïd el Meshwa (or the Mouchoir, as we have christened him—a by no means inappropriate name, considering his father was a “washerwoman”) and the cheery little Hájeb, or “Eyebrow,” while the others comprise the Governor of Fez and the Grand Vizier. The latter functionary, however, acting from pressure put upon him by the Sultan, invited us to his house to breakfast, and there we repaired shortly after nine o’clock. The house is prettily situated on sloping ground at the outskirts of the town, and the entrance at which the Vizier’s secretary received us is at the bottom of a beautiful garden, laid out in terraces up towards the house. Walking up through here we passed our host’s harem, or rather their abode, on our left hand, and mounting some steps came to an open court paved with mosaics, on the other side of which was the entrance, where the minister himself was standing to welcome us. “Marhaba bík! marhaba bík!”[36] is a phrase one soon masters in this country; and our host, addressing it to each of us, led us into the house. I do not know whether the owner or his mansion claims the first description, but leaving the better-looking to the last, I will begin with the Prime Minister, Síd Muhammed ben Moktsar. He is the individual who refused at first to call on His Excellency, and has only been in office a short time. Connected by marriage with the Sultan, he gives himself considerable airs, and is said to combine in a rare degree the properties of fool and fanatic. He is a short and very stout man of between thirty-five and forty, with a perpetual forced smile on his face, and, sitting cross-legged on a sofa, with his mouth always wide open, beside Sir John, reminded one irresistibly of a large toad. However, commencing from very little, he is now second man in the Empire, and in the few months he has been in office has amassed enough money to spend, at all events, £10,000 or £15,000 on his beautiful house. As his actual salary is _nil_, or almost nominal, this shows the extent to which he has squeezed the unfortunate people whose affairs he manages. The system is the same throughout,—none of the officials are paid; and some of them, such as the Governor of Fez, are expected to make payments to the Sultan of several thousand pounds per annum. Besides what he has laid out on his house, the Grand Vizier has a quantity of ready money, and he told Kaïd Maclean—of whom he professes to be very fond, and whom he calls “his son”—how he had disposed of it. “It is all in gold doubloons,” he said, “and I have got it locked in a chest, and buried in one of my gardens at Mequinez; the slaves have ‘gone away’ (Anglicè, are dead or in prison for life) who buried it, and no one but myself knows the place.” “Well, now,” said M., “I am your ‘son,’ so you may as well tell me where it is, and give me the key.” “Ah!” said the Vizier, with a leer of infinite cunning, “I went for a long ride lately alone, took the key with me, and threw it into the Sebú.” It seems very strange that men in a position like his, and to a certain extent educated, should do such things; but as investments are unknown, and it is illegal for a Moor to set up a bank, it is not so much to be wondered at. The amount of treasure so deposited in gardens, walls, &c., is said to be incredible; a will is very rarely made, as there is no security for its being carried out, and a man buries all he has for safety’s sake, intending, probably, on his death-bed to acquaint his friends with its whereabouts; but either he dies a violent death, or else, hoping always that an illness may not be his last, he hesitates to unburthen his mind in case he may recover and then be murdered for his money. Thus the secret dies with him, and he departs elsewhere to account, among other irregularities, for the talent he has so successfully wrapped up.

On another occasion this intelligent statesman, feeling unwell, sent for Kaïd Maclean, who hurried down to him, and finding his liver was affected, went home for a box of blue pills. Returning with them himself to the Vizier, he gave him a couple. The patient, taking them in one hand, drew M. towards him with the other, and, forcing the pills into his mouth, obliged him to swallow them. “Now,” he said, with an air of triumph, “I will take two myself in a little time;” this he accordingly did, and derived considerable benefit. On being expostulated with afterwards on his unworthy suspicion, he tried to excuse himself, saying, “Well, you see, I thought some of the servants might have tampered with the box and poisoned the medicine.” “In which case, don’t you see, you would have poisoned _me_?” suggested his benefactor. “Ah, God is great!” was the reply, and the matter dropped.

This worthy’s house is very perfect in its way, and a good specimen of modern Moorish architecture. The entrance hall and all the rooms are paved with fine mosaics, the patio and some of the terraces in the same style, but of coarser material. Two or three large sofas fill up the front of the hall, while the back part, which is raised a little, is covered with cushions and rugs. From this open off two rooms (in one of which we had breakfast), both in the same style, with arched ceilings of richly coloured wood and stucco. Up the stairs, which are very steep and narrow, as in all Moorish houses, are a variety of rooms of all sizes—bath-rooms, bed-rooms, and little bijou sort of apartments, highly ornamented, like the courts of the Alhambra, but the gold-work fresh and bright, and the colours of every imaginable hue. As the house stands considerably above the level of the town, and there are no neighbours to overlook it, it is provided with numerous windows—an unusual innovation among these privacy-loving people. Some had glass in them, others none, and from them all there was a magnificent view of the town, with its dark background of lofty hills; while from the garden below there came the perfume of roses and orange blossoms, which seem here to be in perpetual bloom.

The Vizier had prepared a table for us, with chairs, knives and forks; the latter implements were unpacked in our presence from a large plate-chest specially procured from Paris for this and similar occasions hereafter, and their use was explained by our servants to the slaves of our host, who had never seen anything of the sort before. On these occasions we are always requested to bring with us our own Moorish attendants, who are accustomed to our outlandish manner of feeding, and can minister to our wants more readily than the slaves of the Faithful.

In this instance we had the worthy Boomgheis and Selám Hajút, Sir John’s butler, to wait on us—a duty which commends itself to them, as, after we finish, the _débris du festin_, and more should they require it, fall to their share.

The table was covered with a snow-white cloth, on which were china dishes containing every imaginable and unimaginable kind of sweetmeat and confectionery, more like the preparations for a marriage-feast than an ordinary breakfast. We surveyed these edibles not without some anxiety; it was to be our first experience of a real Moorish “feed,” and as we had accidentally heard that the comestibles had been prepared and on the table for the last three weeks, for the inspection of the minister’s friends, we were a little uneasy as to the effect that they might have upon us after so long keeping. The number and variety of hot dishes which came in presently was astonishing, and our own servants seem to have been put up to insisting on our trying them all. Nothing, however, was very nasty, though everything was unlike anything we had ever seen before, and some of the sauces were oleaginous to the last degree. The last of the solid courses was a huge dish of _kuskussú_,[37] which, however, we hailed with delight, as its arrival usually betokens the beginning of the end. In the matter of freedom of action, we unbelievers scored considerably off His Excellency, who was given a place of honour in the hall, and fed at a small table with our host, Síd Búbakr, and the Sultan’s treasurer, which latter gentleman I had remarked taking notes in pencil of the Bashador’s conversation while breakfast was preparing. His companions, of course, disdained the use of knives and forks, and argued with Sir John in favour of their plan of eating with their fingers. To keep him in countenance, however, they were seated on chairs and sofas, which they managed to do pretty comfortably, though usually with one leg furtively tucked up on the seat beneath them. Their natural cross-legged position is by no means ungraceful, though in the case of the fat Vizier it brought his great toe, which he caressed continually as he sat toad-like on the sofa, into closer proximity with his food than was pleasing to a European eye.

The number of dishes of kuskussú we saw put before the servants outside and returning empty, to say nothing of the substantial fragments from our table, was simply incredible; but eating, like all other enjoyments in this country, is carried to excess, and the Prophet never showed a greater knowledge of his followers than when he laid an embargo on alcohol.

The feast over and a visit paid to the stables, where there was nothing much worth seeing, Haynes and I rode to the palace to see about fixing the telephone, &c., with Síd Búbakr as guide and Mr. Náhum as interpreter. We kept outside the town till we arrived near the palace at the large enclosure where the reception of last Monday had taken place. On the way there I had some conversation with Síd Búbakr through the medium of the interpreter, and found that his travels in Europe had extended only to Gibraltar and Algeçiraz; he had seen the bull fights at the latter place, and thought them “bad and cruel.” I asked about the slave-market here, which I am anxious to see. It seems they are not sold at the public “Sôk” or market, which is held on Mondays and Thursdays, but at a different place altogether, any evening in the week, as occasion demands. When we arrived at the entrance into the palace grounds the guards there made us dismount, and after some delay the Chief of the Household, Síd Hamed ben Músa, came out and took us into an inner courtyard. Here he thought would be a good place for laying down the telephone; but as we were not of the same opinion, and wanted to have it in the garden next the palace, he said he would go, and “if the Sultan were awake,” ask leave for us to go in. After keeping us waiting a very long time,—which we heard he did through being annoyed at our determination to invade the sacred precincts,—he returned with the Sultan’s permission, and the boxes containing the telephone and heliographs carried on the backs of slaves. The inner gate was then opened, and, going across a courtyard and through another enormous door, we found ourselves in His Majesty’s garden. To our right and left was a broad walk paved in mosaic; a high arched colonnade on the left extended along this walk for about forty yards, and the continuation of this building was the palace, raised a few steps above the walk, and having a more private and cared-for-looking garden in front of it. The grove or garden we were in was so thick with orange-trees and shrubs, that one could get no view of the palace, though we were not many yards off. The roof only—a green tiled structure like those on the mosques—was visible, the building itself, as far as I could judge, not being very large, though the interior, where no Christian has ever set foot, is said to be of exquisite workmanship. The orange-grove was intersected by straight grass walks at right angles to each other, and from the end to half-way along one of these we decided to lay down the telephone. The kaïd of the Freigíahs (chief of the tent-pitchers) having been summoned, we were told we “only had to command and our slaves would obey;” so we instructed him to pitch a tent at one end of the walk, and another half-way down, so as to keep the ends of the telephone under cover, which order was speedily executed. It took a long time putting the instrument up, and when completed neither of the bells would work, and the voice sounded dim and indistinct. As I knew nothing about it, and my colleague confessed himself at fault, we decided to leave it for to-day, and to-morrow to bring to bear on it the scientific attainments of the “photographer.” A little before we left, the attendants implored us not to delay, as the “ladies were coming out.” Feeling sure the ladies could not wish to hurry us, we completed our work, but were unfortunately not favoured with a glimpse of any of them.

The following morning I returned to the palace with Lawless. While he was busy with the telephone I occupied myself in cutting out a circular piece of thin black paper with which to cover the glass of the heliograph for use at short distances, when the extreme brilliancy of the flash renders it impossible to read the signals. I found my plan answer very well, the disk I left in the centre of the glass being about the size of a crown-piece. We took a look at His Majesty’s horses while we were there, about thirty of them all picketed in one of the grass walks. They looked a pretty strong and serviceable lot, but we were told on enquiry the “best were kept elsewhere.” As I did not recognise the one the Sultan rode on Monday, this may be true. Most of them seem to have a touch of the dray in their composition, which I fancy is accounted for by George III. having sent a present of some stallions of that breed to the then Emperor of Marocco.

Some slaves are at work all day in building a high wall round the palace garden. The material is mud and gravel, which they beat down between parallel boards into a mass called “_tapia_,” which soon hardens into a substance like concrete. They sing a wild monotonous air the while, swinging their rammers or mallets in time to the music, and at the last word of the couplet bring them all down together. There is consequently a good deal more singing than hammering, but unless allowed their own way I am told they cannot work at all. I turned the flash of the heliograph full among them, which made them lie down and yell with terror; so, being afraid they might roll off the top of the wall in their fright, I did not repeat the experiment.

In the afternoon Kaïd Maclean rode with some of us to the house of Kaïd Hadj Hamed, to whom we had long promised a visit. He commands a regiment here, and is much more intelligent and civilised than his peers. On a late occasion he accompanied Kaïd Maclean to Gibraltar, and dined at our mess, where, with the exception of being unable to speak, he comported himself like anybody else, using his knife and fork with much ease and dexterity. These implements, however, do not seem to have sufficiently commended themselves to him to induce him to adopt their use in his own house, and the ample dinner he provided for us had to be discussed with our fingers. Hadj Hamed received us at the door of his house, and took us through a passage to the patio in the centre, where a number of his friends were assembled. In a kind of chambered recess off it, cushions were spread for us, and behind us were a lot of mattresses piled up and covered with very handsome stuffs of native manufacture. The entertainment began, as usual, with tea, after which the large circular table, like a sieve, appeared, and was placed in our midst as we squatted on the floor. Some very good soup made its appearance first,—in fact, all the courses were edible, and some really good; the soup we discussed in small basins with much ease; but roast mutton, which followed, without the aid of knives and forks, was more difficult. Chickens were easily managed, as with two people pulling at a leg or wing in opposite directions the question settled itself. Our host, however, when he saw us in difficulties, would neatly tear off a few shreds of meat from the joint, and present them to us. The repast, though unenlivened by the cup that cheers, was rather a festive one; a band played and sang without ceasing in the patio, and our host’s endeavours to make himself agreeable were quite successful. Dinner over, a brass kettle and basin were brought in, and the very necessary ablutions took place; after which a number of silver bottles of rose water appeared, the contents of which were liberally applied by Hadj Hamed over our heads, down our backs, and everywhere about us. Lastly, the incense-burner was brought, with which, after incensing us all round, he smoked all our hats in turn, and Maclean’s turban. So ended Hadj Hamed’s feast, during the whole of which a gallery of veiled ladies looked down upon us, one or two, presumably the best-looking, occasionally discovering their charms. Our host has only lately been married—on Saturday last—and a continual round of feasting has been going on ever since; but the occasion of our honouring him has, so he says, been the “consummation of his marriage.” Our servants had great feastings while we were at dinner, and much regret was expressed by our host that the English servants were not of the number; he begged, in fact, to be allowed to send for them. Considering, however, the close propinquity of Hadj Hamed’s numerous harem, and the possibility of its not being regarded by the two _valets de chambre_ in the same sacred light with which we have brought ourselves to view these establishments, we thought it better not to lead into such temptation those for whose morals we should be held responsible. We took a short ride round on our way home, but the amount of kuskussú our grooms had consumed made it a matter of expediency to send them straight home to digest.

The number of sick and maimed brought to our Esculapius for treatment seems to increase daily. Doubtless many more would like to come, and probably the preference is given to the one who can afford the highest tip to the soldier on duty at the gate. The medico’s tent, though well adapted for consulting patients, is pitched a little too near the Kiosk where we feed to admit of much practical surgery being carried on in secret, and to-day, immediately after breakfast, the moans of a poor miserable-looking creature, who was being operated on for tumour in the neck, attracted my attention. The doctor’s Moorish servant, “Máho,” was holding the lad’s head, the operating theatre being the garden walk, and the doctor was wiping his instrument on a geranium leaf! Notwithstanding this necessarily rough-and-ready system, the amount of relief afforded to the applicants is great. The doctor did not, naturally, anticipate the numbers who would come for help, so the instruments he has with him are merely those for field surgery, while the supply of medicine at his disposal is wholly unequal to the demand; the latter, moreover, has to be economised in case of dysentery, cholera, or other epidemic attacking the Mission. Eye diseases are the commonest form of ailment which are brought for treatment, and would afford rare practice for an oculist. Walking in the town, the number of people with only one eye that one sees is incredible; even in little children it seems as common as with adults, the only people with usually the full complement being the women. Of this style of affliction, smallpox, ophthalmia, &c., are the chief causes.[38]