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Morocco By: Samuel L. Bensusan (1872-1958) |
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PAINTED BY
A.S. FORREST DESCRIBED BY
S.L. BENSUSAN [Illustration: Stamp] LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1904 [Illustration: IN DJEDIDA] Transcriber's Note: The following apparent printer's errors were changed:
from appearonce to appearance
from everthing to everything
from kindgom to kingdom
from "Tuesday market. to "Tuesday market."
Other inconsistencies in spelling have been left as in the original.
"As I have felt, so I have written." EOTHEN.
Preface
It has been a pleasant task to recall the little journey set out in the
following pages, but the writer can hardly escape the thought that the
title of the book promises more than he has been able to perform. While
the real Morocco remains a half known land to day, this book does not take
the traveller from the highroad. The mere idler, the wayfarer to whom
Morocco is no more than one of many places of pilgrimage, must needs deal
modestly with his task, even though modesty be an unfashionable virtue;
and the painstaking folk who pass through this world pelting one another
with hard facts will find here but little to add to their store of
ammunition. This appeal is of set purpose a limited one, made to the few
who are content to travel for the sake of the pleasures of the road, free
from the comforts that beset them at home, and free also from the popular
belief that their city, religion, morals, and social laws are the best in
the world. The qualifications that fit a man to make money and acquire the
means for modern travel are often fatal to proper appreciation of the
unfamiliar world he proposes to visit. To restore the balance of things,
travel agents and other far seeing folks have contrived to inflict upon
most countries within the tourist's reach all the modern conveniences by
which he lives and thrives. So soon as civilising missions and
missionaries have pegged out their claims, even the desert is deemed
incomplete without a modern hotel or two, fitted with electric light,
monstrous tariff, and served by a crowd of debased guides. In the wake of
these improvements the tourist follows, finds all the essentials of the
life he left at home, and, knowing nothing of the life he came to see, has
no regrets. So from Algiers, Tunis, Cairo ay, even from Jerusalem itself,
all suggestion of great history has passed, and one hears among ruins,
once venerable, the globe trotter's cry of praise. "Hail Cook," he cries,
as he seizes the coupons that unveil Isis and read the riddle of the
Sphinx, "those about to tour salute thee." But of the great procession that steams past Gibraltar, heavily armed with
assurance and circular tickets, few favour Morocco at all, and the most of
these few go no farther than Tangier. Once there, they descend upon some
modern hotel, often with no more than twenty four hours in which to master
the secrets of Sunset Land. After dinner a few of the bolder spirits among the men take counsel of a
guide, who leads them to the Moorish coffee house by the great Mosque.
There they listen to the music of ghaitah and gimbri, pay a peseta for a
cup of indifferent coffee, and buy an unmusical instrument or two for many
times the proper price. Thereafter they retire to their hotel to consider
how fancy can best embellish the bare facts of the evening's amusement,
while the True Believers of the coffee house (debased in the eyes of all
other Believers, and, somewhat, too, in fact, by reason of their contact
with the Infidel) gather up the pesetas, curse the Unbeliever and his
shameless relations, and praise Allah the One who, even in these
degenerate days, sends them a profit. On the following morning the tourists ride on mules or donkeys to the
showplaces of Tangier, followed by scores of beggar boys. The ladies are
shown over some hareem that they would enter less eagerly did they but
know the exact status of the odalisques hired to meet them. One and all
troop to the bazaars, where crafty men sit in receipt of custom and
relieve the Nazarene of the money whose value he does not know... Continue reading book >>
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