General View Of Tangiers....

There are no two countries in the world more entirely different from each other than the two which are separated by the Straits of Gibraltar; and this diversity is peculiarly apparent to the traveller who approaches Tangiers from Gibraltar, where he has left the hurried, noisy, splendid life of a European city. At only three hours’ journey from thence the very name of our continent seems unknown; the word “Christian” signifies enemy; our civilization is ignored, or feared, or derided; all things

A throng of ministers, consuls, dragomans, secretaries, clerks, a great international embassy, representing six monarchies and two republics, and composed for the most part of people who had been all over the world. Among others, there was the Spanish consul, dressed in the graceful costume of the province of Mercia, with a poignard in his girdle; the gigantic figure of the United States consul, once a colonel in a cavalry regiment, towering a whole head above the rest of the troop, and riding a

The next morning we started before sunrise in a thick wet fog, which chilled us to the bone and hid us from each other. The horsemen of the escort had their cowls over their heads, and their guns slung across their shoulders. We were all wrapped in cloaks and mantles; it seemed like autumn in the Low Countries. In front of me I could discern nothing distinctly save the white turban and blue cloak of the Caid; all the others were confused shadows lost in the gray mist. We went onward in silence o

At a certain point the ambassador made a sign to the caid, and the escort came to a stand, while we, accompanied by a few soldiers, went a short distance beyond to visit the ruins of a bridge. The place was worthy of the silent respect with which we stood and viewed the little that remained of what was once a bridge. Three hundred years ago, on the fourth of August, over those flowery fields, fifty cannon and forty thousand horsemen thundered and charged under the command of one of the greatest

The next morning, at sunrise, we forded the river Kus, on the right bank of which the city of Alkazar is situated, and again advanced over an undulating, flowery, solitary country, whose confines stretched beyond our sight. The escort was scattered in a number of detached groups, looking like so many little cortéges of a Sultan. The artists galloped here and there, sketch-book in hand, sketching horses and riders. The rest of the members of the embassy talked of the invasion of the Goths, of com

We struck our camp and moved on in the usual order, amid the cries and musket-shots of the escort, arriving in two hours’ time at a small watercourse which marked the confines of Seffian. Here we were met by a large company of horsemen, led by the governor of the province which extends from Seffian to the large river Sebù. The escort from Ben-Auda turned and disappeared; we forded the stream, and were instantly surrounded by the new-comers. The Governor Abd-Alla. Bu-Bekr-Ben-el-Abbassi, an elega

For more than an hour we travelled through fields of barley, from which showed here and there a black tent, the head of a camel, or a cloud of smoke. In the paths we traversed, scorpions, lizards, and snakes were numerous. Our saddles were so heated by the sun that we could scarcely hold our hands upon them. The light blinded our eyes, the dust choked us, and every thing around was still as death. The plain which stretched before us like an ocean seemed awful to me, as if the caravan were doomed

The province we were about to enter was a kind of colony divided into farms among a large number of soldiers’ families, in each of which military service is obligatory for all the sons; thus, every boy is born a soldier, serves, as he can, from his very infancy, and receives a fixed pay before he is able to handle a musket. These military families are also exempt from taxes, and their property is inalienable as long as male descendants exist. They thus constitute a regular militia, disciplined a

We started for Zeguta at an early hour in the morning, cheered by the thought that that day we should see the mountains of Fez. A light autumnal breeze was blowing, and a slight mist veiled the prospect. A throng of Arabs muffled in their mantles looked on as we left the camp; the soldiers of the escort kept together in a compact body; the children of the duar watched us with sleepy eyes over the hedges and from the tents. But soon the sun shone out, the horsemen scattered, the air resounded wit

Whilst I was running here and there in search of my mule—which, I do not know how or why, was at last found among the baggage—the members of the embassy departed. I still had time to come up with them, but in leaving the camp and going down a rocky path, my mule stumbled, the saddle slipped, and literature, as represented in my person, was precipitated to the ground. It took half an hour to set matters straight again, and meantime, adieu to the embassy! I had to make the journey alone, followed

We had not advanced half a mile toward the city when we were surrounded by a throng of Moors and Arabs come from Fez and from the country round, on foot and on horseback, on mules and on donkeys, two and two like the ancient Numidians, so eager to see us that the soldiers of our escort are obliged to make use of the butt end of their muskets to keep them from pressing upon us. The ground being low, the city, whose castellated walls we had seen from the camp, remains for some time hidden. Then al

After twenty-four days of city life the caravan impressed me as a new spectacle. And yet nothing was changed, except that beside Mohamed Ducali rode the Moor, Schellal, who although his business had been amicably settled, thought it more prudent to return to Tangiers under the wing of the Ambassador than to remain in Fez under that of his government. An acute observer might also have observed upon our faces, if he were a pessimist, a certain annoyance; if an optimist, a calm serenity, which was

It was noon of the fifth day after our departure from Fez, when, after a five hours’ ride through a succession of deserted valleys, we passed once more through the gorge of Beb-el-Tinca, and saw again before us the vast plain of the Sebù inundated by a white, ardent, implacable light, of which the memory alone makes my face glow. All, except the Ambassador and the captain, who participated in the fabled virtue of the salamander, that lives in fire without being burned, covered their heads like b

After the spectacle of great cities in decadence, a moribund people, and a lovely but melancholy landscape; after such sleep, such old age, and such ruin, here is the work of the eternal hand, and here is immortal youth; here is the air that revives the blood, the beauty that refreshes the heart, the immensity in which the soul expands! Here is the ocean! With what a thrill of delight we salute it! The unexpected apparition of a friend or a brother could not have been dearer to our hearts than t