 Chapter 1 of From Tangier to Tripoli. This is a LibriVox recording. A LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Betty B. From Tangier to Tripoli by Frank G. Carpenter. Chapter 1. Just a word before we start. This book is the story of my travels in Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, Tripoli, and the mighty desert that lies to the south of them. We start with Morocco, the land of the Moors, and end in Old Tripoli, or Italian Libya, as it is now called. The talks are given as they were penned in the heart of North Africa, with only slight changes to make them correspond more nearly with our interest in these lands and peoples as they are today. The work therefore partakes of the old and the new. My notes being modified only were absolutely necessary in retaining the original story and form. For instance, during my stay in Morocco at the Sultan Abed El Aziz, one of the most picturesque of modern monarchs, still maintained his Mohammedan rule, and the robber Rezuli was still cutting his pranks under high heaven. The memories about these men and their people picture a civilization which promises soon to become a tale of the past. Today, a new Morocco is being born into the colonial family of France. While in Algeria, the Republic is gaining fresh sustenance and strength. Tunis and Old Carthage are of perennial interest, and the mighty Sahara, invaded though parts of it are by the airplane and the railway, changes not through the ages. In these travels, I have included my talks with the late Rana Valona, the former Queen of Madagascar, and Bahansin, once King of Dahome, whom, through the courtesy of the French government officials, I was able to meet. Both Dahome and Madagascar are now included in the Empire of France. In their domains, henceforth, will be part of the white man's burden as worn by the French, leaving these unique monarchs as milestones, marking the progress of modern civilization. The chief virtue of these talks, I believe, is that they are given in the open air, from notes made on the streets of city or village, while riding camelback over the desert or passing through the mountains and valleys on foot or in automobiles. The pictures of what I have seen are at times sketched in the blazing sun of midday and again in the soft twilight of the evening. But I have had the reader ever before me and have tried to give him a radiographic representation of just what was passing under my eyes. All of these countries, however, are changing to correspond with the revolution which began with the Great War in Europe and even now goes on throughout the world. In order to keep the reader in step with the trend of the moment, I have added a chapter containing last-minute notes of their progress and more important events. The whole, I believe, gives a good picture of Northwestern Africa as it is today. End of Chapter 1 In the land of Othello Come with me this bright Sunday morning for a walk through one of the oldest cities of this land of Othello. The sombre face moors are going to and fro through the streets, and we shall meet with many a-skel. We shall not see the faces of their testimonies for they are concealed except for slits for the eye, and we shall have to be careful last we give offense. We must fight shy of the mosques for Christians are not admitted, and we'd best think twice before entering the door of a house, no matter how wide open it be. We are in Tangier at the end of Northwestern Africa, so near Europe that by a short ride to Cape Spartale one sees the hills of Spain plainly in view. Gibraltar, with its mighty lion head rock, is within a cannon shot of us, an hour or so of smooth sailing having brought us from that port to the nearest gateway to Africa. It is only ten days since we left the wharves of New York on a great ocean liner, and we have jumped, as it were, from the bright light of our Christian civilization into the semi-darkness of these Mohammedan moors. Tangier lies on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean in a hollow, or nest, in these wild African hills. It has a big wall around it, and its blue and white houses remind us a lot of gigantic store boxes of all sorts of shapes thrown together at haphazard. The highest part is the citadel where the governor lives. There he holds court, and there is his prison, where scores of half-naked miserable beings are shut up with chains around their legs. At night they sleep on the floors, all tied together by one chain, which binds the necks of the whole crowd of criminals. They do their own cooking, but their friends must furnish the food, or they will starve on the short rations of dry bread and water. There is no habeas corpus act here, so it is not hard for a man of influence to send a poorer brother to jail. From the heights near the governor's place, one sees what a strange town is this, so close to Europe. How out of date it seems in this 20th century. The roofs are flat and there is not a chimney in sight. There are no smoke stacks and no smoke rises from the jumble of houses below us. This does not mean, however, that the 60,000 people living in them do no cooking. They eat three meals a day, but their cooking is done upon fires of charcoal, made in clay basins, half the size of a wash bowl, with a hole at the side for the draft. Some of the larger establishments have little brick ovens built into the walls of their kitchens. As the land about here is treeless and there is no coal, the fuel is expensive, an armful of faggots as big as broom handles costing a dollar, with charcoal proportionately high. For this reason, about all the washing is done in cold water. We can see the clothes hanging out on the roofs of the houses. There are but few yards and the women often dry their wash near the streams outside the city, where they clean the garments by pounding them on the stones. As we go about the streets, we realize that Tangier, like almost every Moroccan city, suffers from a scarcity of water. The streets are sprinkled by men who go through them with goat skin bags on their backs, bending half double as they scatter the drops here and there. Each bag holds about 10 gallons and the water comes from the sea. Other carriers go from house to house with fresh water, which they bring from the wells or the streams outside the city. They ring bells as they go and have little brass cups in which they will give you all the water you can drink for less than a cent. I should, however, as soon think of drinking a cup of pure typhoid bacteria as of tasting such water, although I stopped one of these ragged old water peddlers today and bought a cup while my guide Mohammed snapped my camera. If I had bought the whole skinful, I should have had to pay only four or five cents. Much of the water for cooking and washing is brought into the city in little five-gallon cakes, two or three of which are slung on each side of a donkey, with the peddler sitting on top or walking behind. At a rough guess there are 500 water carriers of one sort or another in this town of Tangier. And why do they not have water wagons? I hear someone ask. Open the eyes of your imaginations and see. These streets are so narrow that a handcart could not be pushed through them. In some I can stand in the center and touch both walls with my hands. There is not a wheeled vehicle inside the whole town. There is not even a handcart or a wheelbarrow, but there are so many donkeys that one has to jump from side to side to keep out of their way. They go along without bridles or hulters directed by the cries and the sticks of the donkey boys who follow behind. The donkeys are the drays of Tangier and carry enormous loads. I saw two little fellows today, not much higher than my waist, almost covered by an upright piano, which rested on their backs as they walked through the main streets of the city. Everyone knows that six men are required to lift a piano in our country, yet the two little beasts carried this one in its pine box on their bare backs. It was steadied by two porters who walked at the sides. The animals had enormous ears and their rat-like tails, shaved close, made me think of abbreviated black snake whips. Both were ragged and naughty and scarred with sores where their masters had cut away the skin in order that they might the more easily hurry them onward by goading the raw flesh. This afternoon I met a donkey caravan. Each animal loaded with two heavy bags of flour. The little fellows had to brace themselves while the men threw on the bags and then they went off staggering. One of them stumbled and threw his load over his head. It took two lusty porters to replace the sacks. My heavy trunks were brought from the boat to the hotel upon donkeys, and I have seen donkeys without number carrying sand in baskets, bringing in charcoal and wood, and even loaded with stones and brick for building material. Some freighting is done by mules. I saw two going along the street today with the iron girders for a building strapped to their backs. Mules serve also as riding animals, and I have traveled for miles upon them through the country about. The saddles are great red cushions, a foot thick with stirrups so big that they rest the whole foot from the heel to the toe. The natives ride their donkeys or mules sitting far back with their long legs hanging down. The native women ride astride looking like rag bags tied to the saddles. Their covered heads bob up and down as the beasts jog along. Morocco has also many fine horses of Arabian blood. Some belong to the Moorish cavalry as may be seen by the rifles carried by their riders, who use short stirrups so that their knees are high up on the saddle. The turn now and look at the people as they pass by. These Moors are unlike any Africans we have in America. They are tall, straight, big boned, and broad shouldered, moving about with a grace and a dignity not found in our land. They wear long white gowns with hoods at the back, which are often pulled up over their turbans, making them look taller. Their bare feet are clad in bright yellow slippers. The men are all bearded, for the razor touches only the hair of their heads. Nearly every other man has a white skin, while most of the dark-skinned Moors even have features like ours. Their noses are large and straight, their foreheads are high, and their eyes as fierce as those of a fellow. They walk with a haughty stride, swinging their arms, and two men frequently go along hand in hand. The people are very polite, even the poorer classes, and the burbers from the country being free from any roughness or rudeness of manner. Observe how friendly they are with each other. Those two old men on the corner have been gossiping for more than an hour. A little later, these streets will be bordered with groups of men sitting on the ground or upon low stalls, leaning back against the walls as they chat. They spend a great deal of time in the tea houses and are fond of entertaining each other. Since this is a Mohammedan land, no one ever introduces his wife or daughter to his friend. The two sexes are kept wide apart. This throws the men together and makes close friendships among them more common than in our part of the world. Most of the other Mohammedan nations drink coffee. The Moorahs drink tea and are especially fond of it when flavored with mint. It is served in tumblers at tea houses all over the country. The Moorahs drink it boiling hot, sitting cross-legged on the ground as they do so. Most of the tea comes from Japan via England, London alone sending as many as 20,000 chests in one year. The Moroccans are fond of sweets and their consumption of sugar is so great that it has almost ruined their teeth. This one can see whenever a man opens his mouth. Besides the white-gowned Moors, we meet other odd characters at every step. There are rough fellows in gowns and hoods of dark gray or brown, fierce-looking mountaineers with brown faces and negro slaves as black as a stove. There are many mulattoes. We see also men from the desert and beyond, travelers from Fez and other interior cities and laborers, some of whom are almost in rags. One queer character of Tangier is a beggar who claims to have visited America. He is jet-black with hair standing out like wooly wires over his head. He goes about with cymbals, dancing and singing and asking for alms. He accosted me today saying, Master, you American, I've been in America, I've been Chicago, Buffalo, San Louis, Umweo, Philadelphia, and Washington. I, Sudan man with Barnum Circus, we too American, suppose you give me money. Washington is my home when in the United States. And it was in its honor that I handed him a half-dozen coppers. He bowed to the ground, then danced away, jingling his cymbals. The women are among the strangest sights here. One does not see much of them, except an eye or so, but they look out nevertheless. If an American girl will take a well-worn blanket of thin white flannel and drape it about her body over her clothes so that it hides the whole of her person, wrapping a fold or so about the head and leaving only a crack for one eye, or perhaps both, she will present a fair likeness of the average Moorish girl as she goes along the streets. The only bear skin one can see is the little section about the eyes, at least that is until the lady gets by. She shows more at the rear than the front, for from behind one sees quite an expanse of bare leg. The rosy heels of these maidens can always be glimpsed, rising and falling in their red slippers as they hasten along. The women do not loiter and chat on the streets, and though they often visit their friends, they spend little time at the doors greeting each other. And there are no front gates to hang over while they discuss the servant question or retail the last scandal. Some of the lower-class Moorish women go about with their faces exposed, and an old woman may, now and then, drop the covering which hides her features. The young and the pretty are always kept hidden, and I notice that many have a cloth behind wrapped closely about the lower part of the face, in addition to the outside covering, which they hold tight as they go. Moorish girls are said to be fond of fine clothes, and these ghostly wrappings often hide costly garments. Over the kaftan, a sort of waist and skirt reaching to the feet, they wear a garment of sheer material through which the bright kaftan shows. They have belts of leather or sashes of gold thread. They sometimes have handkerchiefs about their heads held up by cardboard. They like jewelry and load themselves with earrings, bracelets, and anklets. They paint the eyebrows, lips, and cheeks, but are not tattooed. About the only women's faces one sees are those of the Jewesses. The younger girls are often good-looking. They have fine dark eyes and ivory white skins, with cheeks tinged with the hue of a dark moss rose. The older women run to much flesh and seem coarse. The dress of the Jewish women is much like that worn in our country, say that the richer ones use gold embroidery for trimming. They wear silk handkerchiefs tied about the head, half concealing the forehead, and covering most of the hair. I wish I could show you some of the Moorish children who are flocking about me. They are just as sweet as our American little ones, although they seem different. They dress somewhat like their parents, the boys wearing red pheasants and long white gowns. While playing in the streets, many go bareheaded. And if you will imagine a crowd of little Americans of, say, six, eight, and ten years dressed in white nightgowns, playing on the streets, and thoroughly enjoying themselves, you will have one of the common sights of this city. You must make the faces, however, white and yellow and even black, and must shave the heads close with the exception of spots here and there where long locks are allowed to grow. The little girls have at first only a single lock on the crown of the head. Later, this is allowed to spread out until it finally covers the whole head. The hair is then braided. The boy's head is shaved as soon as he is born and is kept shaved for the greater part of his life. Each rich family has its own barber, who, until he is married, keeps the head of the boy in order for nothing. At that time he receives a present and is well paid thereafter. Every man is shaved regularly, the whole head being scraped except the lock left on the crown, by which as a handle that Mohammedan thinks he may be pulled into heaven. The man being shaved sits upon the ground, the barber's soaping and lathering him as he bends over him. The hair is cut close to the scalp, a good job leaving it like the skin of a drum head sprinkled with pepper, or better, gunpowder. End of chapter two. Chapter three of From Tangier to Tripoli by Frank G. Carpenter. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Betty B. About some matters in business. The shops of Tangier are full of interesting features. The trade is mostly in the hands of the Jews and the American salesman who comes to Morocco must expect to carry on his business largely through them. There are Moorish bazaars, it is true, in Tangier and all of the cities. And there are Moorish commercial houses with large capital in Fez, but the Jews are everywhere and they deal with all classes. As businessmen they are the equals of any of their race. Coming to this country along about the 13th century to do business with the Moors, the Hebrews have been here ever since. They are despised and at times ill treated by the other races. First came they were required to wear black clothes and shoes and to go on foot as they passed through the cities. Today they wear black skull caps, black slippers and long black coats belted in at the waist. I am told that in the Berber districts they have curls hanging down in front of their ears, but otherwise they dress like the Berbers. In some of the Moroccan cities of the interior the children of Israel still live in their own sections and in some they are shut off at night from the rest of the town. These quarters are known as Malabs. They are among the most squalid parts of the city. Their streets are narrow and dirty. The front doors are little more than holes in the walls and most of the houses contain many small rooms in which the people are herded together like cattle. The homes of the rich are much better. In local matters the Malabs are governed by the Jews themselves. The rabbis are about the most influential of all. The people are religious and attend their synagogues regularly. They do no business on Saturday, their Sabbath, on which day many of them will not even open a business letter. I attended one of their synagogues here. It was a dark little room surrounded by dwellings. The Hebrews now have their own schools in which their children get a sort of modern education. Although much of the time is devoted to Hebrew and Spanish, the schools teach also French and English, geography, and other subjects. I have made a hunt through the bazaars here today for American goods, visiting among other places the largest fancy grocery store in Tangier. I told the Jew clerk to show me samples of all the American articles he had and he brought out kerosene oil, corned beef, and cornmeal. The cornmeal was in a paste-board package labeled Chicago and the oil in a square can from Philadelphia, while the corned beef was in a flat tin box from a packing house in Kansas City. At another store I saw canned salmon from Seattle and pickles from Boston. All of these goods came via London. I imagine the store has not had any great demand for the cornmeal and I am sure the average Moroccan stomach would be surprised at American flour. The bread of the country is made of meal ground at home. Every family has its own mill, consisting of two rude grindstones, one on the other, the grain being poured through a hole in the top stone. These mills are turned by the women of the family and as the stones are worn, bits of them come off and mix with the flour, leading to broken teeth and bad digestion. The Moroccan bakeries are interesting. There are scores of them here and baking is a regular profession, for very few people do any baking at home. They make their flour into dough for bread and cakes and send it to the nearest bakery to be cooked. Often a baker will have his regular customers and will send out his boys, little long-gowned, dark-faced urchins, to bring in the dough. They usually carried upon boards which rest upon their heads and a few hours later take back the baked article. The baker gets 10% of the amount of dough sent and a loaf of that proportion is always put in for his pay. The bake ovens look like caves. They are found here and there along the main streets of the cities. One steps first into a dark cellar-like room where the proprietor, a white-gowned, turbaned moor sitting cross-legged, watches the count and bosses the laborer who has charge of the oven. This man is none too clean. He has a long paddle upon which he puts the loaves of dough and places them upon the oven floor. This is on about the level of the floor of the room while the baker stands in a pit at the front of it. The ovens are long. Each has a fire of twigs in one side, so arranged that by means of drafts the smoke is carried away. The loaves are the size of a tea plate and about 2 inches thick. They taste good. The baker sells the extra loaves which he takes in trade. There are bread peddlers in every market. They are usually women shrouded in white blankets who hide their faces from the men as they sell. Nevertheless, keep a sharp watch through the people and their headshaws for their change. In my tour of the shops I saw no American tables, chairs or beds for sale, nor did I see on display any quantity of furniture from any other country. It will be a long time before the ordinary Moroccan will want furniture. The poor classes sleep on the floor. They are so hearty that a man will wrap himself in his gown and lie down anywhere for a snooze. There are men sleeping on the stones out in the streets here every night and by the hundreds. Many houses are guarded this way. Spring beds are unknown to such people and they seldom have chairs. When they sit they do not hang their legs down, but double them up under them or lean back against the wall with their long beards resting on their knees. If they use a bench or divan it is to sit cross-legged upon it. The tables are rude, often being simply low round brass pans upon legs. Some of them are beautifully carved. Candles are in demand and many thousands of dollars worth are imported every year. I noticed too that there are few socks and stockings and no American shoes so popular in Europe for sale in Tangier. Men want a loose slipper of soft leather with a counter that can be bent over. As a usual thing they take their shoes off when they enter their homes and never wear them inside the churches or mosques. The black of the American shoe looks strange to the Moroccan for every Moorish gentleman likes a delicate pale yellow. As to the women they wear red slippers of soft Morocco leather, the better class having their footwear embroidered with gold and silver. In the house most of the girls go barefooted while no one wears a French heel. Indeed no heels are worn here and even fine Moroccan boots are heelless. All of the footwear is handmade. The Moors do not want stockings. Most of them have never even heard of them and I should say there are not 10,000 women in the whole country who wear them. Only the very well-to-do or those who have been affected by foreign influences wear them on occasions. If one would see all classes of these people he can do so in the big market on the edge of Tangier. It is in a space covering ten or more acres which on two or three days of each week is filled with people buying and selling. There are dignified Moorish merchants. There are hooded men in from the country moving about with bare legs. There are peasant women with great hats and veiled Mohammedan ladies. There are Jewish men in their caps and long coats and Jewish women with their heads bound up in bright colored handkerchiefs. There are swaggering Moorish soldiers on foot and on horseback. A great lumbering camel shuffles along here and there while countless donkeys carrying loads as big as themselves push their way through the throngs. There are peddlers of all sorts from those selling water from goat skin bags on their shoulders to those hawking sweetcakes and candies. There are women loaded with faggots and men carrying charcoal. There are bread peddlers and vegetable peddlers and other odd-looking men and women selling almost everything under this African sun. End of Chapter 3. Chapter 4 of From Tangier to Tripoli by Frank G. Carpenter. This LibraVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Betty B. Bandit Days in Morocco. Everywhere I go in Tangier I am reminded that I am in the wild and turbulent land of Morocco. There are ten Mohammedans to every Christian and the men who would laugh or sneer at the prophet in a public place would be in danger of death. The town is surrounded by walls and guarded by soldiers. The country outside is filled with brigands and bandits. Rumors of a holy war against the Christians are rife. And it is said that in the oasis of Tafelalt where the Sultan's family comes from, troops are preparing to invade Algeria and attack the French. On my way here I called it Al Jazeera Spain where the conference of the powers was held in the hope of bringing some sort of order and safety into Moroccan affairs. But the Al Jazeera's conference, far from settling things, has stirred up the people. And the police force of 2,500 men under foreign officers, which it provided for the eight ports of Morocco, is insufficient. There is already trouble at many of the ports. Since I landed one of the mountain tribes besieged Mogador on the Atlantic and attacked the French Jews. The Jews who composed nearly half the population have been making a great deal of money. And some of them have been gradually moving out of the mellab and renting houses in the Moorish section of the town. This I am told was the cause of the trouble. The chief of one of the Mohammedan tribes nearby was called in and drove the Jews back to their own quarter telling them they should know their place and keep it. A reign of terror exists in Marrakesh, the southern capital of the Sultan, and his majesty cannot control any part of his dominions outside of Fez. Right here around Tangier, within a short distance of the fortifications of Gibraltar, and just over the way from Spain and southern France, the country is full of wild and warring tribes, most of whom are fast losing their fear of the foreigner. As I write this, it is impossible to go five miles east of the city without soldiers to guard one. The burbers of the region are up in arms. The governor of Tangier, the former cattle thief, Rezuli, refuses to take any risks and will not send an escort of soldiers with me to the town of Tatuan, which is only two days' journey from here. I can look out of my hotel window and see the villa of Walter B. Harris, the well-known London Times correspondent, which is situated near here on the shore. It is not more than an hour's walk from where I am riding, but its owner dare not remain there overnight for fear he may be kidnapped and taken out into the mountains to be held for ransom, as was the American citizen, Ion Perdicaris. Mr. Harris was the first of the foreigners to be kidnapped by Rezuli. He was living in his beautiful home on the seashore, just three miles from Tangier, when 2,500 brigands with Rezuli at their head carried him off. They held him in captivity for more than three weeks, but released him without ransom. During this time, Mr. Harris had a close view of Rezuli. He describes him as a handsome and rather fascinating man of strong character and a great bluffer. He says that the sultan has but little power, that he is afraid of the two rebel leaders, Rezuli and Buhamara, and that he has bribed them to keep the peace. Buhamara has now about one-fifth of Morocco under him, and Rezuli, with comparatively few soldiers, is growing rich off the country around this city. He, as I understand, is laying up money since he got the $70,000 in ransom for Perdicaris and is buying business properties here in Tangier. In his room at the Cecil Hotel, Mr. Harris talked with me about the situation. He thinks it rather hard lines that he dare not live at home, although the British have a treaty with the sultan, which provides for the protection of foreigners. His villa is within 15 miles of the fortifications at Gibraltar and within an hour's walk of the walls of the sultan's chief port. Nevertheless, its owner has to stay at one of the hotels in the city for fear of kidnappers. The governor of Tangier keeps 50 soldiers guarding the villa and its contents, but it still is unsafe. At the same time, Morocco insists on all the rights that she has under her treaty with foreign nations, and the foreigner is allowed no favors. The other day, Mr. Harris attempted to send two white peacocks to a friend who was living at the hotel at Al-Jasiris across the street. He brought them to the custom house but was told that they could not be sent out of the country as there was nothing in the treaty with Great Britain about the exportation of peacocks. Mr. Harris has resided in Morocco during the greater part of the last 16 years and has gone by caravan over most of it. He has traveled widely also in other Mohammedan countries. He has ridden on camelback over Arabia and speaks Arabic fluently. During his stay in Fez, he was a great friend of the sultan and is now an intimate acquaintance with some of the most powerful of his ministers. He is also closely associated with C. L. Mehdi L. Manabi, who was for a long time minister of war, and who as such, through his influence with His Majesty Abed L. Aziz, practically controlled Morocco. Manabi lost cast when he failed to quell the rebellion Abu Hamara and was forced to leave the sultan's cabinet. I asked Mr. Harris some questions about railroads. He told me that the Moors object to them on the grounds that they are a foreign innovation and also because it is feared that they put the donkeys, mules and camels out of their jobs. As it is now, the trade of Morocco goes by caravan or by sea from port to port. The freight rates per animal in the interior are relatively low and the charges for board and feed at the Moorish hotels are almost nothing. In Fez, it costs about four cents a day to feed a camel and less than three cents a day for a horse or a mule. The ordinary native can be taken care of for a little more. The expenses on the road are also small, but the loads carried are so small that an animal will soon eat up the value of its freight. As to the transportation of foreigners, the cost is enormous. The distance from Tangier to Fez is about 170 miles and in the United States, a railroad journey of that distance would cost, including baggage, about $8 and the time required would be only about five hours. The ordinary foreigner cannot reach Fez in less than a week and the cost of the journey from Tangier will be from $20 to $30 a day. I thought of making the trip, expecting to spend a month on the way there and back. One of Cook's Drago-mans said that I would have to pay $35 per day for all the time of my absence, making my one month's journey, including a stay of two weeks at Fez, cost me $1050. For this reason, I would have had to employ a soldier or so and would have required about three mules to carry my baggage, as well as mules for myself, a guide, and a cook. I should have had to camp out every night and should have been lucky had I reached Fez in one week. Connected with the American Legation at Tangier, I found a Drago-man who offered to give me the same accommodations for $600. Moreover, there was great danger of being captured by brigands on the way and held for ransom, so on the whole, I did not think the trip worth the risk. Our American minister, who made the journey from Tangier to Fez a month or so ago, spent 12 days on the way. He had a large company of soldiers furnished by the Sultan, who paid all his expenses, amounting to many thousands of dollars. It takes a thief to catch a thief. This all maxim holds good here. At present, the country west of Tangier is quiet, because the Sultan has bribed Razuli to take care of it. This same brigand, who captured an American citizen and made the Sultan pay a ransom of $70,000 before he would let him go, has been appointed by the Sultan, the governor of the Tangier district, and his men are the only guards of this city. I find Razuli soldiers in every street, and they are patrolling the main roads outside the town. We took donkeys yesterday and rode out over the hills to the villa, where Mr. Pritikaris was living at the time of his capture. I was accompanied by my son Jack and my turban guide, Haj Mohamed Breck. We found sentries every few feet and passed to an encampment of soldiers at the edge of the city. The soldiers wore red fesses and gay Moroccan uniforms, but many were bare-legged and bare-footed. They were armed with Mauser rifles, and their fierce eyes gleamed out of their bearded faces at us without smiling. They were not at all friendly, and so when they objected to being photographed, I did not insist. In the meantime, Razuli holds a peculiar position in Moroccan politics. He has bluffed the Sultan and his officials and has, as it were, held up the government and the army. He has made the nominal rulers of the country give up a lot of hard cash, as well as one of the fattest of fat jobs. He knows that he has many enemies and the Sultan would welcome his assassination. As a result, he is badly frightened and is trying to guard against accident. These Moors are wonderfully friendly with one another. They are among the most polite people on earth. When two of them meet, they embrace, and each kisses the head and the hands of the other. I am told that Razuli has discontinued all such greetings for fear he may be entertaining a Judas, whose kiss may be accompanied by the heart thrust of a dagger or the drawing of a knife across his throat. Indeed, the way Razuli is now handling his collars is somewhat in the style of Russell Sage after he was almost blown up by dynamite. Mr. Sage made his visitors talk to him through a little window, like that for general letter delivery in a post office. Razuli makes all strangers stand at the door while they talk and he remains at the other end of the room. Razuli is now at war with the tribes on the other side of Tangier, and the fighting goes on even in the city itself. These rival Berbers sometimes pepper one another across the market space, foreigners being advised at such times to keep out of the way. As Razuli now holds the town, this condition makes it difficult for the tribes of the eastern mountains to do their buying and selling in Tangier, which is their chief marketing place. They have been hard up for supplies and only yesterday they sent in their women, knowing that on account of their sex, Razuli would not attack them. The women brought in their wares upon donkeys, expecting to carry back food. The bandit's gallantry, however, did not extend to the beasts of burden, so he captured the donkeys and sent home the women, old and young, weeping and wailing. The result of this will be a truce sooner or later, but there may be a pitched battle before that occurs. At present, every traveler carries a gun and every native who goes about the country has his rifle and knife. I am told, however, that the Moroccans look upon life as of but little account. They are always fighting with one another. Families have feuds which last from generation to generation, and there are feuds also between the tribes. The only rule is that of the stronger, and the country is fast approaching a state of anarchy. Indeed, these conditions make me think of what Colonel Pettit said to me during our war with Spain, when I had landed at Zambuanga in the Philippines to see something of the Moros there. I had called at the military headquarters, and it asked the commander if it would be safe for me to go through the Moro villages. Colonel Pettit replied, I think so, my boy, but I would advise you first to tie your head on with a string. It is about the same here. One is safe enough if one does not go into the wrong combination, and there are plenty of wrong ones. These Mohammedans are more fanatical than our Moros. They call all Christians dogs, and the Moro does not want them in his school, his home, or his church. A Frenchman who tried to enter a mosque at Fez not long ago was shot dead at the door. Since it is against the law of the Quran to have one's picture taken, I find it dangerous to use a camera. The average Mohammedan scowls when he sees one pointed at him, and many of the Muslims would fight rather than be photographed. Just yesterday, for instance, my son Jack, a Husky young fellow of 21, who was making this trip with me, tried to enter a phone dock, or a Mohammedan hotel and stable combined, which was near the market. He happened to have his camera open at the time. Inside there was a crowd of Muslims made up largely of men from the interior. Catching sight of the camera, they thought Jack intended to take their photographs, and rising in a body, they jumped for him, and our Drago man, Haj Mohammed, both fought them back with their sticks, and after a time we made our way off. One cannot really understand the situation in Morocco until one considers the people. These Moors are not like our Negroes, whose ancestors came from across the Sahara in the lands bordering the Gulf of Guinea. Those people are as black as your boots and as barbarous as any tribes on the face of the earth. They are low in intelligence and are terribly debased, while the Moors have brains which we'll compare with our own. About the only black Africans here are those who have been brought across the desert from the Sudan to be sold as slaves. There are, however, many mulattoes, the offspring of Negroes and Moors. The population of Morocco, all told, is perhaps about six millions. A census has never been taken, and by some the numbers estimated to be much higher. The majority of the people are Berbers or Cabales, and after them come the Arabs and the Jews. The Berbers have a language of their own and once had their own religion. Today they are about all Mohammedans, and, like true believers in the Prophet, present the foreign invasion. They do not want to pay taxes, and not long ago, when one of the Sultan's officials demanded the 10th of the crop of a certain tribe, the chief replied, If the Sultan wants taxes, let him come himself for them. We will mold them into silver bullets and deposit them in his person. That tax has not yet been collected. The Arabs came in with the Mohammedan invasion many centuries ago and have mixed more or less with the Berbers. Some are nomadic Bedouins living in the Oasis of the Sahara or on the edge of that desert, while a large number are farmers on the rich plains of Morocco. Arabs are found also in the cities. The Jews number perhaps 200,000. They live in all the cities and here and there in the villages. As I have said, they are the real businessmen of the country doing most of the banking and having the principal wholesale and retail shops. Many of the chiefs of the large tribes are financed by Jews who lend money to the Moorish officials as well. Most of these Jews came originally from Spain and some belong to families which have lived hundreds of years in Morocco. They are universally despised, are sometimes stoned by the Moorish boys in the street and are forced to do certain menial work. The name mellab given to the Jewish quarter in the Moorish town means salt and may have been given because of one special job which the Jews have. That is the pickling of the heads of rebels before they are fastened up over the gates of the cities as a warning to traders. Almost every Moroccan city has three parts. One belonging to the government, where the officials live, another containing the stores and the homes of the Moors, and the third, the quarter of the despised Jews. There are but few large towns and all are of about the same character as Tangier, being made up mostly of box-like flat-roofed buildings surrounded by walls. These walls are entered by gates so that the city can be tightly closed at night. The business is largely done in markets although all towns have shops and bazaars. The cities of Morocco, however, contain but a small part of the population. The masses live in movable tents or in villages of huts of stone chinked with mud and thatched with straw. Many of the huts are altogether of straw while not a few are of sun-dried brick. How squalidly these people live one can see by riding a few miles out into the country. The average village is like a collection of falling straw stacks, each surrounded by a hedge of cactus, the leaves of which have thorns as sharp as fine needles. Each house stands alone and no foreigner dares peep in through the gate or look over the hedge. The cactus usually encloses a small barriard into which the cattle, sheep, goats, horses, pigs, camels, and chickens belonging to the family are driven at night. Such villages have no streets and no pavements whatever. After sunset they grow as dark as a pocket except where the houses are lighted by candles or perhaps by American kerosene. The villagers are farmers who own lands nearby. No one lives on his farm and in looking over the landscape one sees no barns or fences. There are only bare fields or the crops. In the pasture lands the sheep, goats, pigs, and other animals are watched by a shepherd who was often employed by several farmers at so much for each animal, the flocks thus feeding together. At night when he drives them all to the village everyone makes a beeline for its own individual home. No one would think of leaving even a goat outside the town after dark for fear of thieves. Often a half dozen or more of the villages make up the home of one tribe. Such a tribe is governed by a chief who collects certain taxes and acts as the leader in the wars with other tribes. This is the condition throughout the Sultan's empire which is rather an aggregation of wild pastoral and agricultural tribes than a kingdom or empire in our sense of the word. Each tribe cares only for itself in its own particular region and there is I am told no such thing as a real country or state of Morocco. The only binding chords between the tribes are those of religion. They are one in fanatical hatred of the Christian and all that belongs to him. They want nothing to do with him and resent his presence here. Morocco is in a sad state. The army has dwindled to a few hundred troops and the Sultan has no soldiers to speak of outside of Fez. When Minabi was minister his majesty had about sixteen thousand troops and his power was such that the various tribes sent in tribute and presence worth many thousands of dollars. Every tribe sent one or more horses, many sent large sums of money and there were other gifts of value. Now the government has practically no control over the tribes and the people are refusing to pay taxes or to send in tribute to the Sultan. Such are the conditions within a mile of Tangier, the chief seaport of Morocco. In the interior they must be far worse. There are many families intense but all are on a constant lookout for thieves and brigands and nearly every tribe is at war with its neighbors. End of Chapter 4. Chapter 5 of From Tangier to Tripoli by Frank G. Carpenter This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Betty B. Behind the Scenes with the Sultan Come behind the scenes with me and take a look at Moulay Abid El Aziz, the Sultan of Morocco. He is the ruler of the best part of northwestern Africa. His empire is almost one-twelfth the size of the whole United States and more than five million Berbers and Moors look upon him with reverence. The Sultan is just 26 years of age with all the strength of full-blooded youth. He has a muddy white complexion and his slightly bloated face bears the marks of smallpox which he had years ago. He has a straight nose, a large mouth, a long upper lip and a somewhat receding chin. Like all his people he never shaves his face but his curly black full beard is so thin that it does not show much in the picture. He has rather a blasé air wearing in ordinary conversation a somewhat bored look. He seems to have sucked dry the orange of power and luxury and to care more to take things easy and have a good time than to rule. Indeed I understand that he would be glad to leave the throne for he thinks the game of governing a country as turbulent as this is not worth the candle. He is fast losing prestige with his own people by consorting with foreigners and were it not for his position in the Mohammedan hierarchy he would air this have had to step down and out. All the rest of the Mohammedans of the world acknowledge some kind of allegiance to the Sultan of Turkey. This is true of our Moros and of the 50 odd million Muslims of India as well as of the lesser number in Turkey and Egypt. But these Moros will not let the Turkish Sultan send a representative here. They acknowledge no allegiance to him considering that only the family of this young man has the right to the title of commander and ruler of the faithful. Indeed the Sultans of Morocco are perhaps the most blue-blooded monarchs on earth. Abed El Aziz, the 35th lineal descendant of Ali, the uncle and son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed, is the 15th monarch in his own dynasty. His father was the famed Mullah Hasan who was sultan for 21 years during which he ruled with an iron hand. When about to die he chose as his successor Abed El Aziz, his son by a Circassian slave imported from Turkey although he had other and older sons. The Sultan is the high priest of the religion of this country as well as its chief executive. He is called the great Imam or Prince of True Believers and he prays for all. One of his chief elements of strength is the power of conferring blessings which has come down to him from Mohammed. He is supposed to have this direct from God but if any other man of his family could make the people believe that he had this power in a greater degree he could easily raise a rebellion and oust Mullah Abed El Aziz from the throne. This was attempted by Bou Hamara, the so-called son of the Shi'as who falsely claimed to be an elder brother of Abed El Aziz and who, by slight of hand tricks, made the people think he was performing miracles. He started a revolution and the soldiers broke out into an insurrection notwithstanding the fact that their officers gave them a flogging and dusted out their mouths with red pepper for speaking against his majesty. This Bou Hamara was eventually put down but the rebellion was quelled by a compromise whereby the son of the Shi'as has, like Rizuli, been bribed with a fat office. He is now ruling a large section of the country. This would seem to put a premium on a second rebellion. Like the old emperors of China, the Sultan makes sacrifices for his whole nation. This he does by killing a sheep on every Behram or Muhammadan Easter. At this time every good Moorish family is supposed to offer up sacrifices and it is estimated that as many as 30,000 sheep are killed on that day in the city of Fez. The sheep are brought in from the surrounding country and mutton prices rise to such an extent that a good fat ram or you will bring $30. If there were such a custom in America the market would surely be cornered. The sheep killing is started by the Sultan surrounded by a large concourse of people. One of the holy preachers first sings out a sermon after which the sheep is handed over to his majesty. He cuts its throat and as the blood gushes forth the bands play in the cannon thunder. The news is sent out all over the city whereupon the sacrificing begins extending to every part of Morocco. By Ram is the great festival occasion of all the year. The Moors come out in their good clothes, the soldiers have new uniforms and the people who, like pious Muslims everywhere, have been fasting throughout Ramazan, which is their lint, give themselves up to rejoicing. The chiefs of the various tribes are then supposed to send presents to the Sultan and in the past vast sums have been received. Some tribes bring money, often money into thousands of dollars, some horses and some slaves, a negress being a common gift. During the present year the gifts were few and the horses poor. This was the result of the recent rebellions and was brought about by the association of the Sultan with Europeans and the jealousy and distrust with which his people regard him. Indeed the monarch's tastes seem to be Christian rather than Mohammedan. He is so fond of western methods that he would, if he could, introduce them into his empire. He has made some attempts to do so, but his people object and this is one cause of his unpopularity. He is notwithstanding an independent young man and persists in courting the favor of the foreigners. I am told that he spends a part of every day with Europeans and that he is not all exclusive in his selection of them. One high class moor here complains to me that his majesty allows common merchants and other tradesmen to come to the palace while others tell me that he has spent millions on all sorts of foreign knickknacks which some of his Christian friends have begged him to buy. One of his extravagances is a camera of solid gold which cost him ten thousand dollars. At the same time he bought two thousand dollars worth of printing paper and thirty three thousand dollars worth of other supplies. His photographic outfit in addition to the camera cost him all told thirty five thousand dollars, a large part of which went as a matter of course into the pockets of those who ordered it. Another recent purchase is a bedstead of crystal mirrors with pendants like a chandelier. The story goes that he sees three images of himself whenever he crawls into bed and that the pendants jingle when he turns over. He has bicycles made of aluminum on which he delights to play bicycle polo with his friends. He learns all sorts of games easily and can do no end of bicycle tricks. He will ride up a steep plank and down again and he has ruined several fine wheels by crashing into the walls. The Sultan has a number of automobiles, a London handsome and a coach of state. His gold coach which cost many thousands of dollars now stands outside the palace at the mercy of the weather. In the meantime the Sultan's foreign friends who have ordered these things for him are making fat fortunes and are working the young man for all he is worth. Every foreign thing he buys costs him ten times what it is worth and his ministers and friends absorb the profits. They are already rolling in luxury. In fact everyone about Abed El Aziz steals both from him and his people. I am told that the whole income of Morocco has gone into extravagant expenditures. The taxes bring in something like five million dollars a year yet Morocco is now several hundred thousand dollars in debt. One of the Europeans here tells me he thinks that the Sultan has salted down a pretty penny for a rainy day while another courtier says that he is strange to say almost mean in the expenditures which come out of his own immediate treasury. He will quibble about an outlay of one hundred dollars if the money is to be paid down on the nail and at the same time will dash off without thinking in order for one of his custom houses to pay over a sum of ten thousand or more in taxes. Anyone who understands the jealousy and hatred which the Morris feel for Christians can easily see how unpopular such actions on the part of their ruler must be. The better classes are no fools and it is hard for them to respect even a Sultan who does such foolish and irreligious things. As I have said they are opposed on religious grounds to pictures and photographs so the Sultan's golden Kodak is particularly offensive to them while the fact that he is a really good photographer does not better the matter. They do not approve of his buying a yacht and having it carried inland to Fez to be played with on the Little River near there. They are angry about the crown he ordered at a cost of one hundred thousand dollars or so for it is against the Mohammedan religion for the Sultan to wear a crown and his people objected especially to his coronation coach. As a Morris home life is not supposed to be known outside his immediate family no European ever sees the Sultan's harem. I doubt whether any Mohammedan man except his own eunuchs has ever crossed its threshold and it would be improper to question his majesty as to the health of the multitudinous ladies of his household. Nevertheless the gossip gets out in one way or another and I am able to give you some idea of this feature of the Sultan's establishment. According to the Quran every man has the right to four wives and no end of concubines. The palaces are large and the Sultan himself lives on the first floor in a suite of big rooms at the four corners of which his wives have their apartments. Each wife has her own quarters and servants but all are subject to the rule of certain slave women called Arifaz. Negro concubines who are specially favored by Moulay Hassan, this Sultan's father. The ruler's real wives must be chosen from the different branches of the royal family so that he is forced to marry his cousins. The Sultan of Morocco is frequently presented with secondary wives or concubines by his tribal chiefs. The girls are often sent up for his approval especially at the feast of Bayram and he can select for his household such as may take his fancy. In addition he has a large number of cold black negrises purchased from time to time in the local slave markets and also other women imported from the Orient. This potentate has many palaces. He has quarters in nearly every town in his dominions and the governor's home here in Tangier belongs to him. He has four different capitals, one in southern Morocco, one in central Morocco, one at Tafelelt and another at Fez. This last is the largest and everything there is managed on a vast scale. The palace is surrounded by walls. It is in the Dar el-Makazin where all the government officials live. The buildings contain no end of bedrooms and living rooms as well as a large kitchen and dairy. They swarm with servants both male and female. The kitchens are managed by Negro cooks and among the other man's servants are the men of the bath, men of the tea and men of the water. There are also men of the bed and men of the mat. The bathmen have to do with the imperial chamber. The tea men make the royal tea using the best of the green leaves mint. The bed men have charge of the sultan's tent when he camps and the mat men bring his prayer rug and spread it out for him at the hours for prayer. In addition, there are Negro men's slaves who take charge of the sultan's horses and mules. There are others who walk behind him when he goes out for an airing to flick off the flies and a third set that carries the imperial parasol to shut out the rays of the sun. Or rather in his own private apartments the sultan is attended by women only. His servants are concubines and slaves. Like the man's servant they are organized into classes each slave having her special job. He has girls of the wash basin girls of the soap and girls of the towel. There is one set of females who help him at his bath and another whose business it is to serve his meals. His majesty now eats alone as long as his mother was alive he took his meals with her. He eats with his fingers and I doubt not in so doing can senators himself more cleanly than you or me. The Mohammedans have a saying that everyone knows whether one has washed his fingers but no one can tell who has washed the knives and forks. Before eating the young sovereign lays his hands in scented warm water repeating this performance at the close of his meal. He can be easily broken and much of his meat is served in small bits. His chief meal is at midday he also takes something on rising and a light supper in the evening. As far as I can learn the Moorish ruler has a soft snap. He works only in the morning devoting the afternoon to his foreign friends to playing polo billiards, bicycling or any other amusement which may suit him. His evenings are spent with the numerous members of his family. He dresses early, drinks a cup of coffee and then says his prayers. In doing the latter he faces toward Mecca and goes through all the motions prescribed by the most rigid Mohammedan rules. He has a mosque in his palace grounds which he attends every Friday. At the close of his morning devotions his majesty goes from his palace to the great buildings where he holds his court and where the various officials have their offices. Here he enters a small room such of his ministers as he desires to see. He leaves his work largely to his officials doing no more of it himself than he can help. At noon he stops for dinner after which he takes a smoke and a nap rising about three o'clock. He frequently has music in his palace and is said to play well on the violin and guitar. He has more than 100 musicians and all sorts of instruments. He has a piano upon which he drums at times his mother having taught him to play. From a Moorish standpoint the Sultan is well educated. He can recite a great part of the Quran and is well up in Muslim law. He gets papers from all parts of the world and has a clipping bureau which furnishes him with extracts on all matters relating to Morocco. He has a cabinet consisting of a Grand Vizier, a Secretary of State a Secretary of the Interior and a Secretary of War. He has also a Chief Chamberlain a Treasurer and a Chief Administrator of Customs. He has had an army of 10,000 or 15,000 men and at times as many as 20,000 troops in different parts of Morocco. The soldiers are said to be armed with good weapons and to have a few batteries of field guns. Within the last year the army seems to have grown weaker and weaker. The rebellion of Bou Hamara, the capture of Perticaris and the ransom forced from the Sultan by Rezuli together with the foreign complications have made his majesty so unpopular that his support is drifting away from him. One of the big mistakes Sultan Abed El-Aziz made was in dismissing his Minister of War and Chief Advisor C. Al-Medhi El-Minabi. He was in high favor and the real ruler of Morocco until the rebellion of the so-called son of the Shias who claimed to be the elder brother of the Sultan but after that he was forced to resign. Minabi's excuse for leaving Fez was that he wanted to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. He went there via the Mediterranean and after getting back settled in Tangier becoming a British subject and thereby protecting himself against any possible persecution from his enemies who had taken his place with the Sultan. It is said that Minabi saved a lot of money while he was one of the Sultan's chief officials and that instead of the calls of his house at Fez or under its floors as is sometimes done by the Moors he deposited it in the Bank of England to his own order. This prevented his enemies getting possession of his fortune. After his settlement here in Tangier he withdrew the money and invested a great part of it in a large apartment house and other buildings. His own home is one of the finest in the city and I doubt not will compare favorably with any private home in the country. It was in Tangier that I had an interview with this interesting character. Traveling upon my mule through the narrow streets I rode with my party by the Kasbab or the Governor's Palace past the soldiers and officials sitting at the gate of the city and on into the country. About a half mile from the city gates we came to a walled enclosure with a plain unpretentious door. We knocked upon this and it was opened by slaves who took charge of our mules. Passing in through a sort of Porter's Lodge where a half dozen other slaves were sitting we found ourselves in a great court or park surrounded by Moorish buildings the rooms of which looked out upon it. This park was made up largely of gardens filled with beautiful flowers and semi-tropical plants and trees. One section of it contained a tennis court with the cement floor as smooth as marble where the light to play tennis with his European friends. There is a central path through the gardens down which we walked until we came into two great reception rooms where the war minister receives his men friends. Passing through the first set of parlors which are floored with mosaic and luxuriously furnished we came into a large room walled with glass looking out upon the Atlantic Ocean. The house is built on a high bluff overhanging the sea and the islands of Spain were in plain sight across the waves. We could hear the surf roar as it dashed itself against the rocks below. At the entrance to this room stood two tall clocks of the kind that sell in the United States for five hundred dollars a piece and play chimes at the striking of the hours. The tile floor was covered with oriental rugs. The great devans were upholstered in rich red Moroccan leather while about the walls were cases meaning rare china, swords, rifles and other weapons inlaid with gold and silver. The surroundings were those of a man of taste and this was my impression of the ex-minister when he appeared. C. L. Medi L. Medi is a typical more of the better class and of a kind one does not expect to find in what is generally known as one of the black spots of this black continent. He would make one of the handsomest ever trod the stage. He is tall, straight and fine looking his Moorish costume making him look even taller than he actually is. He has a light complexion and like all Moorish men wears a full beard, his whiskers being brown and curly and as fine as spun silk. A broad forehead with large hazel eyes may be seen below his white turban. His nose is straight and his cheekbones are high. His costume consisted of a long white gown or a bernouse with a hood at the back and sleeves so wide that they showed his forearms to the elbows. The skin was as white as yours or mine. As we watched he now and then smiled showing a good set of strong teeth and he twice perceptibly yawned. In the course of my brief interview with him I asked Mr. Medi whether his people made good soldiers. Both the Berbers and Moors are brave and excellent fighting stuff in them and if the time comes when the tribes can be organized and welded together an army of a hundred thousand men could be raised. As it is now each tribe furnishes a certain quota of mountain men and these all together make up the army. One large clan may furnish two thousand soldiers, a second a regiment and a third only a company. Such soldiers are officers by the tribal chiefs who are subordinate to the general Sultan. There are so many quarrels among the different divisions that it is difficult to harmonize and organize them. They are always warring among themselves and it would be only through religious feeling that they could be formed into a compact army organization. In closing our conversation I asked Mr. Medi to send through me a few words of greeting to the American people saying, your excellency is about the most progressive man in Morocco and I should like to take from you a word of greeting to what we consider the most progressive nation of the western world. The Sultan's ex-war minister smiled at this. His face however soon grew serious and he said I have a great admiration for you Americans and I hope I shall be able to cross the Atlantic to visit you. The only message I have for you is that you should study this country and cultivate closer trade relations with it. We have here some six million inhabitants and we are now large consumers of cottons and other things which Americans make. Our homes are lighted chiefly by American petroleum and our people wear clothes made of stuff grown by you. Your raw cotton however goes to England and the English do the weaving and sell us the goods. I understand that you have cotton mills of your own why not make the goods yourselves and get all the profit. We Moroccans are friendly to you and we would be happy to trade with you. But as it is our chief supplies come from the various countries of Europe mostly from England, Spain, Germany and France. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 of From Tangier to Tripoli by Frank G. Carpenter this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Betty B in Spanish Africa I am in what is about the last of Spain's colonial possessions in the 16th and 17th centuries she owned the best part of the new world. If we include the Louisiana Purchase which we bought from France after Spain had let it slip through her fingers she had the cream of North America she had almost the whole of South America accepting Brazil the best of the West Indies were hers Cortes poured the treasures of Montezuma into her royal coffers and Pizarro shooing his horses with solid silver robbed the Incas of Peru and sent gold freighted galleons sailing across to his Spanish sovereign. The Philippines added to these sources of wealth and for a long time two great golden streams rolled across the Atlantic and the Pacific to Spain's treasure chests in her colonial possessions she was then the richest of all the powers today by mismanagement and oppression she has become the poorest and since her war with us when she lost Cuba Puerto Rico and the Philippines there have been none so poor to do her reverence. Indeed all the land which Spain has left outside her own boundaries is in Africa and even here her territories are the ragtag and bobtail of the continent they cover a bit over 100,000 square miles but are largely desert sand or fever swamps and the tillable lands suitable for white men which they contain are not as big as some counties of Texas while their total population is only about that of Cleveland in contrast with this two of the great powers of Europe have been quietly gobbling up the fat things of this mighty continent France has the lion's share if we include the island of Madagascar she has more than one third of all Africa a vast deal of her territory however is in the desert of Sahara being made up of stone and sand which might form good building materials but which are of no value where they lie Great Britain comes next among the national landowners with close to another third of the continent Spain owns in Africa the island of Fernando Po and a small tract on the mainland on the Gulf of Guinea her country there contains about 9,000 square miles or little more than the area of the state of Massachusetts the land is swampy and so unhealthful that it has become known as the white man's grave it is covered with a luxuriant vegetation and produces some India rubber and palm oil the only foreigners are a few Spanish French and English merchants the natives are among the most degraded of the Africans they are negroes of the lowest type and slavery is common Fernando Po itself has convict settlements from which the criminal seldom return north of the Gulf of Guinea between Morocco and French West Africa Spain has a wide strip of land ruled by the governor of the Canary islands it stretches for several hundred miles along the Atlantic but it is one of the worst parts of the whole desert of Sahara it has neither rivers nor oases of any value and is very thinly populated this region of Rio de Oro is golden only in name Spain's northern zone in Morocco is a mountainous strip stretching from La Riche on the Atlantic to Malilla on the Mediterranean and from Ceuta in the north to Wazan in the south Ceuta is just across the way from Gibraltar I passed it on my way to Tangier it can be reached from Al-Jasiris by a government steamer which takes over dispatches and mail every day to the dock on which the town stands and where the fortifications are Ceuta was where the moors embarked when they first crossed over from Africa to invade Spain many centuries ago and they dwell in all the country about it today they still so dislike the Spaniards that it is impossible for the Ceuta people to go back into the interior unless accompanied by soldiers there are stories that the moors never mentioned the Spaniards in parentheses Malilla which I visited is the chief town of what is called Spanish Morocco it lies on the Mediterranean several hundred miles east of Ceuta and about 36 hours by steamer across the way from Malaga Malilla has long been noted for its Spanish military prison there are 8,000 soldiers stationed there a large number of whom have come as punishment for desertion and transgressions of military discipline Spain has often had to fight the moors to keep her hold on this little patch of Morocco and at such times has had tens of thousands of soldiers in Malilla and its vicinity I cannot imagine a worse place it makes one think of the inscription over the door to Dante's Hell which reads all hope abandoned, ye who enter here the town is built upon a mighty bluff which runs out into the sea there are thirsty hills all about each with a great white round fort upon it and large iron-barred barracks in and about the city outside these large buildings the houses are one and two-story structures of brick and stucco painted all colors of the rainbow they are built Spanish fashion in blocks with iron-barred windows as prison-like as their surroundings the inhabitants are chiefly Spanish Jews and motley moors the Jews have little stores in the city and the moors sell in bazaars just inside the walls where each turbaned merchant stands in a sort of hole with his goods piled around him there is a moorish encampment nearby and a caravan trade is carried on with all western and southern Morocco I have not found the natives here any too friendly when we landed and showed our passports describing us as Americans the soldiers scowled un-too pleasant although I succeeded in getting some excellent photographs of them during my stay in the town when it became known that we were Americans the boys and men gathered around us with a hostile air one of them threw a stone the size of a man's fist at our carriage and narrowly missed hitting me as it was it struck the door handle and bent it our coachman jumped down and ran after the boy but we concluded not to give the offender over to the police and indeed were rather glad when we were safe out of the town it seems odd to think of pirates carrying on their trade in the 20th century but piracy is a regular business with certain of the tribes of the rift mountains near here they do not go out with large ships and attack the vessels of the Mediterranean as they did at the beginning of the last century but they rob and sometimes kill the sailors of the smaller craft when the bad seas drive them upon the shore about a century ago the whole coast of Morocco was infested with pirates and there were sea robbers all the way from the Strait of Gibraltar to Tripoli just before entering the Strait one seas on the north coast the town of Tarifa with its old Moorish forts from which the Moors swooped down upon passing vessels and made them pay tribute from that town and that practice came our word tariff the Moors of Morocco and Algeria were preying on all the commerce of the Mediterranean and nearly every great nation submitted to their exactions we did so for some years but in 1815 declared war upon these pirates and were the first to bring them to time we had trouble with the day of Algiers and sent Commodore Decatur over to tell him that Americans would pay him tribute no longer the day insisted until Decatur appointed his guns at the city of Algiers then the day began to weaken he sent out word to our Commodore suggesting that if he would pretend to storm the town using powder only the tribute might be omitted Commodore Decatur replied that cannonballs always went with American powder and that if the day received the one he must take the other soon after Decatur captured some of the Algerian ships and the day finally had to pay him damages to the amount of about $60,000 and to conclude a treaty which renounced all tribute from Americans for the future time was when the Barbary pirates not only seized the ships but enslaved their captives Captain John Smith served as such a slave shortly after our refusal to pay tribute the English did likewise and bombarded Algiers the French followed in a war with the pirates and in 1820 they threw the day from his throne and took the $10 million in gold and silver which they found in his treasury I saw a blind beggar going through the streets here this morning his eyes had been burned out with red hot pokers by one of the Berber chiefs of the mountains nearby and he presented a horrible sight I learned that this was done as a punishment for stealing and that it is not an uncommon practice in certain parts of Morocco at the first theft the man's hand was cut off while at the second his eyes are burned out sometimes a foot is also cut off after which the thief must move about upon crutches with a boy to lead him during my stay in Tangier I rode one morning out into the country and made some photographs of a village which had taken summary vengeance upon an under official who had been unjust and oppressive in collecting taxes for the Basha who held office prior to the present governor this official was caught as he passed through the village and his eyes were burned out that was not long ago and it shows that such crimes are still possible in this land of Morocco on the other hand a recent sultan of Morocco Mulai Hassan inflicted punishments on his subjects which were horrible to an extreme one of these might be called salting to death it consisted of cutting four great gashes out of the palms of the hands of the offender and filling them with salt the fingers were then bent inward and fitted tightly into the holes or cuts after that each hand was sewed up in green rawhide which shrank as it dried causing terrible pain in some cases the rawhide was sprinkled with lemon juice which it is said rapidly accelerated the shrinking of the hide often forcing the fingernails clear through the palm and out the back of the hand after this the criminal was taken to jail and left without water the torture was such that he usually died within a few days despite the wildness and disorder of her moroccan possessions Spain clings to her foothold in north Africa and talks of running a railway tunnel under the straight of Gibraltar as a part of a line to extend southwestward to the coast of Africa at Rio de Oro perhaps too she hopes someday to regain Gibraltar a gold stepping stone to Africa I spend some time at Gibraltar on my way to Morocco and had a good chance to inspect the outside of the fortifications and the harbor improvements the largest of the naval war vessels can be dry docked there while the deep harbor is big enough for the whole British Atlantic fleet the rock of Gibraltar lies at the end of a narrow neck of land connecting it with the Spanish peninsula one could walk across this neck the town of Gibraltar which contains something like 30,000 people is situated upon it with its houses extending along the lower sides of the rock itself this rock is a gigantic piece of solid limestone rising almost straight from the water on the side facing the Mediterranean sea to a height nearly as great as that of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia if you could put two Washington monuments one on top of the other and on the top of these aspire as tall as the dome of the capital you would have just about the height of Gibraltar the rock is about three miles long and less than a mile wide at its greatest width approaching it from the sea one sees many portholes here and there along the sides they come from the tunnels within the whole rock has been tunneled it has 80 miles of galleries burrowed through it until it is a honeycomb of chambers the fortifications have of course the finest of modern guns and other war machinery only a few parts of them are shown to visitors and only the British soldiers and war office know just how the works are constructed and defended there are undoubtedly many big guns some of which would land shot in Africa across the way where the straight is only about 12 miles wide at that point as Gibraltar is practically a free port to back on everything else is cheaper there than in Spain which is some two miles away across the isthmus the land between is called the neutral ground and there is now a high woven wire fence across it which is guarded day and night by the Spanish customs officers the fence was put up in order to prevent tobacco being carried across without duty being paid the smugglers had trained dogs to carry parcels from one side to the other the way they did it was to take one of their number as a Spanish customs officer and then having tied a bag of tobacco to the neck of the pup they wished to train they would drive him in the direction of this bogus official as soon as the dog came near the man in the customs uniform would run for him and if he caught him would give him a good thrashing the pup soon learning that all men so dressed were his enemies naturally gave them a wide berth forever after the dogs were brought from the Spanish side to Gibraltar and they are loaded with tobacco they would start home on the run and until this fence was erected no customs official could get within a mile of them the British always keep several thousand soldiers at Gibraltar the place is a crown colony with the governor general who is also commander in chief in proportion to the area which he rules the governor of Gibraltar is one of the best paid officials on earth he covers about two square miles and his salary is twenty five thousand dollars a year our president must look after about three million six hundred thousand square miles if he were paid the same rate per square mile as is the governor general of Gibraltar he would be receiving the enormous sum of forty five billion dollars a year end of chapter six chapter seven of from Tangier to Tripoli by Frank G. Carpenter this labor box recording is in the public domain recording by Betty B. in Oran I have left Morocco and am now traveling in Algeria another important part of African France the richest of the French colonial possessions lie along the southern shores of the Mediterranean and of them all Algeria is perhaps the best it is a winter garden for France furnishing vegetables for all of her cities besides being the granary which supplies a large part of her flower many look upon this country as a little strip of mountain and desert the truth is that the part of it lying along the sea and running back up the foothills of the atlas has some of the richest soil upon earth this is the tell which includes a territory about as large as New York and Massachusetts combined running clear across Algeria and on into Tunisia the tell for centuries has grown the wheat of this part of the world the Phoenicians and Carthaginians built empires upon it and it was for a long time one of the principal bread baskets of imperial Rome it was fought for by the Greeks and the Vandals it became a Mohammedan land in the 8th century when it was conquered by the Arabs Algeria consists of these rich lands of the tell of the high plateaus of the atlas just south of them and of the foothills running down into the Sahara the country is just about as long from east to west as from Philadelphia to Cleveland and as wide as from Washington to Boston by way of New York it contains as much land as all New England with New York New Jersey and Louisiana added there too Northern Algeria or Algeria proper is divided into three departments each beginning at the Mediterranean and cutting across to the Sahara the largest of these is at the east and is known as Constantine it is almost as big as Minnesota and has about the same number of people the next is Algiers which is not far from the size of Missouri with the population of 1600,000 and the other is the western province of Oran where I am writing Oran is just about the size of Pennsylvania and contains more than 1,000,000 people Southern Algeria consists of the four territories of Ayn-Sephra Ardea Tugort and the Saharan Oasis the population of Algeria is a mixture of Spaniards Italians French Maltese Jews Negroes the white Africans known as Kabales or Berbers and Arabs Mohammedan Arabs predominate the Negroes were originally brought across the Sahara as slaves and sold in the market of Algiers in some of the Algerian Oasis the people are nearly all Negroes and I see many in the towns the Negro women often act as shampoos in the Moorish bath houses while many of the men are beggars some of whom dance about singing weird songs to the clashing of queer iron cymbals one such followed my carriage today his dance was a sort of a notch dance consisting of a continuous contortion of the hips and a twisting of the waist Oran has a fine harbor in a beautiful bay with a high ragged mountain looking down upon it east of the mountain there is a ravine or canyon with low hills extending eastward while in and on the sides of this is the town of Oran there is some flat ground for the wharves but back of them the buildings of the city climb the hills in three great terraces giving every house an outlook over the Mediterranean Sea the port has all modern landing facilities including steam trains and electric lights a long breakwater has been built out at the west against which the stormy Mediterranean dashes itself in vain from the wharves one rides up smooth roads which have been cut out of the sides of the mountain to the upper parts of the city and the best hotels down near the port are great warehouses filled with alpha grass bags of wheat and oats hogs heads of wine and other stuff ready for export the wharves are piled high with such wheres which are hauled up and down the hills by mules in immense drays each carrying four or five tons I have seen seven huge hogs heads of wine on one dray drawn by four mules hitched tandem and other drays carrying loads that would seem an impossibility in the United States most of the traffic here goes upon two wheels from the load of five tons on a cart with a bed 20 feet long to a bushel or so hauled in a little store box on wheels by a donkey not much larger than a Newfoundland dog the Algerian mule has an odd hornace the collar ends in three horns two of them are as long as cows horns and extend out from the shoulders the third about two feet long is just over the neck and is shaped like the horn of a rhinoceros these horns are hung with bells which jingle as the animals move I observe that the mules have leather blankets tied on their backs they may be for the hot weather or rain some of the better animals have hair clipped from their backs and sides many were shoes that stick out about half an inch beyond the hoof all around the shoes of the donkeys are made in a triangle with no opening at the back as in our horseshoes at home about four fifths of the people of Iran are Europeans and were it not for moors negros and burburs sprinkled through every crowd a person might imagine himself in one of the smaller cities of France the buildings are just like those of French towns they are usually of an even height of five or six stories built a brick and plastered with steppo of a creamy hue they have stores and shops on the ground floor and apartments above most of the people live in flats or apartments in nearly every block there is a restaurant or cafe with little round iron tables on the street outside it about which a motley crowd drinking coffee, wine or some other liquor as they gossip and chat play cards or dominoes or read the newspapers at the same time there are little Arab bootlacks moving about begging custom and Arab news boys who are selling copies of the Oran Daily for about to sue a piece the city has a number of newspapers that publish dispatches from all over the world it has schools, libraries and a museum there are parks scattered throughout the town and under their trees French peasant girls are sitting and knitting there are many bare-headed French women moving about and now and then a Frenchman in a blouse is pushing apart just as in France if one would see the African side of this French town he must go back of this modern section to the hills above it there is what is known as the village negra which may mean black village or negro village as one wishes to translate it the houses in this quarter are flat-roofed and of only one story Arabs sit on the streets chatting others lie at full length upon mats on the pavements wrapped up in their gowns there are moorish coffee houses where Arabs and Berbers sit cross-legged on the floor drinking together and there are Arab women moving about each seeing her way only through a people about as big around as a wedding ring which she is made in the white sheet-like gown wrapped tight about her there are Berber girls with big earrings their cheeks and chins blue with tattooing in addition to these figures are the jugglers and storytellers with crowds of Arab men and boys watching their antics or listening to their tales shoemakers and tailors working out on the streets water carriers and peddlers all the other features of the life of the native such black villages or native quarters are found connected with all Algerian towns the French quarters are almost all together French but one has only to go to the outskirts to find all the motley crew that inhabits North Africa I've spent some time looking for the old Oran the French have wiped out all vestiges of it it was probably a port in the days of the Romans it must have had a long history we know that the Mohammedans founded a town here a thousand years ago and about 50 or 60 years before Columbus was sailing about through the West Indies trying to find a new way to the Orient a Spaniard wrote that Oran then had 6,000 houses 140 mosques and schools equal to the colleges of Cordova, Granada and Seville sometime after this city was taken by Spain but it was later recaptured by the moors and finally acquired by the French in 1831 End of Chapter 7 Chapter 8 of From Tangier to Tripoli by Frank G. Carpenter this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Betty B The Deli of North Africa Join me and my Mohammedan Mustafa for a walk through the Deli of North Africa we are in a city that was famous when Agra was at the height of its glory and one that has mosques and tombs containing Moorish decorations which will compare in beauty with those of the famed cities of India there are doors of bronze in the mosque of Sidi Bou Medin as beautiful as those at the entrance to the capital at Washington an equal in their fine workmanship to those of Giberti at Florence there are temples of Mohammedan worship hundreds of years old which have a beauty greater than the mosques of Cairo and Constantinople yet all were constructed when Europe was still semi-civilized and a hundred years or so before the new world of America was dreamed of not far from these mosques are the remains of a ruined city which surpassed Pompeii in extent of its glory and in another direction is the tomb of the man who built that city with the Arabs praying in and about it today all this is not in Italy Greece or India the countries to which we look for the monuments of the past but in this wild continent of Africa on the edge of turbulent Morocco 30 miles south of the Mediterranean and about 100 miles from Oran the chief seaport of western Algeria which is so far out of the line of travel that strangers seldom come here but it is one of the most interesting places on the continent the Tlem Sen of today is a small city situated in a beautiful valley at an elevation about as high above the seas as the average height of the Alleghenes it has behind it great bare rugged mountains which are capped with huge rocks making them look like fortifications thrown up by the gods and their strength as fortifications was probably one of the reasons for the sight of the ancient cities another reason was the rich tell region lying below standing upon the walls of Tlem Sen one sees as far as the eye can reach nothing but vineyards and orchards and rich fields of grain there are hundreds of thousands of olive trees loaded with fruit there are fine gardens and fields of potatoes making a patchwork of green of different shades which extends on all sides below the city until it meets the hills on the horizon white roads cut here and there through this expansive green all lead up to the walls of Tlem Sen the city is entered by gates it was a fortified town in the past and the French have fortified it today the high walls have portholes at every few feet through which rifles and other guns can be thrust companies of soldiers are always moving to and fro through the streets and the citadel where the sultans of the past had their gorgeous residences many centuries ago is now a barracks, prison and hospital for the Algerian troops its old walls and gateways still stand and the minaret of its mosque 90 feet high overlooks the rest of the city about 500 years ago the citadel contained some of the wonders of the world it had a clock which was celebrated two centuries before that on the Strasbourg Cathedral was made while in one of the galleries paved with marble and onyx stood a solid silver tree upon which were many species of singing birds made of gold and silver within a stone's throw at the citadel surrounded by buildings that would not look strange in any country town in France it comprises the mighty mosque Djama el-Kabir it was built in A.D. 1136 but it is today in as good condition as when the Moors first worshipped in it 800 years ago the buildings of this mosque cover about an acre and the roof is supported by a vast number of columns bearing up great arches hung with many chandeliers the buildings surround the court in the center of which is a fountain of onyx as I pass through the Mohammedans were sitting and washing themselves before going in to pray we were allowed to enter the mosque but had first to put on slippers we then walked about through the worshippers who were kneeling on their prayer rugs and bowing again and again as they looked toward Mecca when Tlemcen was in the height of it's glory it had 70 mosques one of the most famous was built in honor of a confectioner saint who preached to the children as they gathered around his candy stall I doubt not that he attracted them by giving them sweets he became so popular that the Sultan made him a tutor to his three sons this angered the Grand Vizier who had the candy saint condemned as a sorcerer and beheaded outside the gates shortly after this the ghost of the candy saint appeared before the Sultan and made a complaint to the Grand Vizier hand and foot and threw him into a vat of cement as the cement hardened the Grand Vizier hardened with it until he was buried alive in a solid block of stone after this the Sultan built the mosque which remains to this day this is said to have happened just 130 odd years before Columbus discovered America I have no doubt the story is true I saw the mosque here with my own matter of fact American eyes another mosque in Tlemcen built in 1208 was in honor of an Arab lawyer it contains some of the most exquisite Moorish work of the world and is perhaps the finest monument any lawyer has ever had the lawyer it commemorates is said to have been a man of the truth one of the most interesting of the mosques lies several miles from Tlemcen on the side of the mountains the city boomed in one of the most famous scholars of the Moorish civilization of 800 years ago this man studied at Granada and Fez and then traveled to Mecca he lectured at Baghdad, Seville and Cordova and ended his career by lecturing here the mosque is a wonder of fine workmanship it is floored with mosaic its doors are a bronze and its decorations are of Moorish lace work of wonderful patterns near it there was a famous Moorish college and there is a school here today while I walked through the mosque I heard the boys singing out their Quran as they swayed back and forth going over and over the Arabic sentences written on their wooden slates I found many worshipers at prayer inside and the red faced keeper grew quite angry when I asked if I might take their photographs on my way back to town I stopped at an Arab cafe and drank coffee with half a dozen black faced burburs who had just left the mosque they were bearded and turban they had taken off their slippers as they sat down to drink and I observed that their bare feet were clean and the toenails almost as well cared for as those a manicure or rather a pedicure had worked upon them the men looked strangely at me from under their turbans evidently thinking me as much a curiosity as I considered them nevertheless they were friendly and we drank our coffee together the coffee was brought in steaming it was black as ink, somewhat thick and very sweet the price was one cent a cup I drove on to the ruins of Mansoura on the other side of Tlemcen that city which was built when Tlemcen was great had a population of 150,000 souls it was noted as a city and genius its kings were lovers of art, science and literature they had their own armies of disciplined soldiers a police force, judges and courts they coined their own money and had schools and colleges this was several hundred years before America was discovered Mansoura sprang up on the plains almost in a night an Arab general Abu Yaqoub had besieged Tlemcen in camping with his army three miles from the city the siege lasted seven years and Mansoura was constructed by Yaqoub during the intervals of fighting for many years it was a rival of Tlemcen its walls and forts enclosed a space of something like 300 acres and it had a magnificent mosque with a minaret 130 feet high this tower was decorated with green porcelain tiles and was a wonder of beautiful workmanship most of the tower is intact but the mosque has long since fallen to dust the great walls of Mansoura are still to be seen in some places as solid as when first built and in others broken and crumbled the whole space covered by the city is now a rich vineyard the vines growing close up to the walls and hugging the foot of the tower a crowd of burbers were picking the large white grapes into great baskets as I drove through the ruins which I tried to people with the army and the gay throng of 600 years ago it was impossible amid such surroundings to rebuild even in imagination the immense edifices the magnificent palaces the great houses and the gardens traversed by streamlets as described by the historians but the scenes recall to me some of the verses of Omar Kayem about the evanescence of all things earthly they say the lion and the lizard keep the courts were jam-shed, gloried and drank deep and baram that great hunter the wild ass stamps or his head but cannot break his sleep Yaqub soldiers finally conquered Tlemcen but he himself was assassinated just before its surrender after that the city of Mansoura began to decline and its greatness was soon swallowed up in that Tlemcen but after all a live dog is better than a dead lion and the Algeria of the present is more interesting than that of the dead centuries of the past I like the swing and go of this French colony the jaunty air of the soldiers as they strut about in their bulgy red pantaloons and short jackets and their tall caps of bright scarlet the stately walk of the Arabs as they go on slipper feet through the streets all the long gowns and tall hats of some of the native gentlemen of Tlemcen we think five dollars much to pay for a derby and ten dollars a big price for a black silk tile but these Tlemcen natives pay quite as much for straw hats their hats are however gorgeous beyond description and stand from twelve to eighteen inches above the crown of the head they are made of straw as finely woven as a Panama and of several different colors the brims which are covered with silk embroidery extend for six inches all around the hat these hats are large enough to be worn over turbines and so big that I was able to put one on over my cork helmet one of the industries of Tlemcen is making such hats the town is quite a manufacturing center the natives I mean the Berbers and Moors seem to be engaged in house industries of one kind or another I went through street after street lined with little shops lighted only by the doors at the front containing men and boys weaving cloths embroidering caps for women and hats for men sewing on slippers and shoes and working at the various other trades of the country the weaving is all done with native wool upon rude hand looms in the dirtiest of shops the most beautiful of white bernouces are made and little round caps covered with velvet and embroidered with gold and silver are turned out in places no better than dog kennels the whole of the native quarter is a mixture of the gorgeous and the squalid a man will wear an eight dollar hat and at the same time go about in a dirty white gown with his feet and legs bare halfway to the knee a woman will go along wrapped and on her head will be one of these gold embroidered caps just about as big around and of the same shape as the tin funnels used in our kitchens the cap will be hidden by the blanket which she keeps so tight about her face that only a hole the size of a postage stamp can be seen through this hole will peep a liquid black eye and it is only when she stumbles or when the amorous wind tears open her garments that you may see any other part of her person even little girls are often so draped although some show their faces at home the ladies either go barefooted or in slippers of velvet embroidered with gold they plait their hair in long braids and arrange it in knots behind the head they wear the little gold caps I have described tying them on with cords of gold thread under the chin those who can afford it are loaded with jewelry they have bracelets and some have gold rings in their ears even the children are decked with jewelry I see little girls with earrings almost big around as the bottom of a teacup and anklets of silver as thick as their own little fingers the Arab men wear gowns of white woollen material striped with silk and bound in by sashes at the waist under the gown there are baggy trousers while over it is a white woollen bernouse of fine texture the richer men sometimes wear over this another bernouse or sort of overcoat of navy blue cloth embroidered with silk some of them wear stockings and some riding horseback have long red boots of the finest Morocco leather which are almost as soft as wool over the foot is a shoe covering the boot to the ankle and to this shoe a spur is attached the poor Arabs wear bakes long gowns shaped like night shirts made of camel's hair and wool in white and black stripes many of the native garments are made in Tlemcen the town has long been noted for its fine workmanship its lace hats shawls and blankets being famous among other garments are some made for the Jews especially the bright red shawls which they use here for mourning the Tlemcen of today is composed largely of new French buildings the streets are French streets there is a square in the center of town where the people meet to walk about and there is a park outside it filled with great plain trees and wild olive trees which is known as Tlemcen's Bois de Boulogne on my way here I stopped at city Bell Abes a rapidly growing French settlement named after Mohammed and saint it still has its era quarter the city is built in the shape of a rectangle there are great walls about it and like most of these Algerian towns has a military quarter inhabited by several companies of the foreign soldiers employed by the French to garrison Algeria the troops are composed of such riffraff from Europe as can be enlisted at a few cents a day in this hidden corner of Africa the Europeanized little town of city Bell Abes has its regular concerts by the military band the theater and also a café Chanton where the songs and dances are even more wicked than those of Paris itself indeed things are moving fast in this French section of the African continent end of chapter 8