Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 142, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 June 1911 — ALONG THE COAST OF MOROCCO [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

ALONG THE COAST OF MOROCCO

THE Moroccan coast extends, approximately, as far south as Cape Juhy, almost parallel with Las Palmas; at least you will find it neatly ruled oft there on the map. In reality the frontier is a nebulous, shifting affair, that shades off imperceptibly throughout a hundred miles, or more,, of desert, merging into that equally nebulous region known as the French Sphere of Influence. This southern . border Is the county of the Touaregs, those wild marauders of the desert, who rove over a tract of the continent half as large as the whole United States. A race of pure nomads, without government, without cities, or crops, or agriculture of any kind, these Touaregs, said by ethnologists to be entirely distinct from both Arab or negro, are a part of that strange, secret empire of northern Africa, the fanatical, underground empire of the Mohammedan sect known as the Senoussi. An intangible, mysterious affair is this secret league, impalpable as the air, yet wielding an enormous power that makes it the strongest bulwark Africa puts up to protect itself from the march of European civilization. Just south of Cape Juby, where the Sahara turns the flank of the protecting spurs of the Atlas range, is the place where Fax Lebaudy, the son of France’s “sugar king,” tried to establish his “Empire of the Sahara,” with his court, composed of the frail favorites of Parisian dance halls, and his army made up of French ragamuffins, officered by the discard of European society. Mogador, the first port of call, is apt to be a disappointment to those dreaming of the Arabian Nights and expecting to be landed among roses, oases and odalisques. In any oriental port much must be allowed for oriental imagery, but Mogador is hardly more eastern in appearance than'Las Palmas, just a mass of white houses on a land-locked bay. This bay is deceptive in its placidity, all along the coast it is understood that steamer landings are to be made “surf permitting,” and Mogador is no exception; it is all right once you are inside, but first there is the bar to be negotiated. There is a legend in Mogador, also to be met with in every other port as far south as St Paul de Loanda, of a shipment of furniture for a newly married consul—in Accra they tell it of the governor, and in Lagos of the bishop—that spent an entire winter going up and down the coast and back and forth to England with never a chance of landing. A comparatively modern town, with straight streets, Mogador looks far more Spanish than Moorish. It is quite a sophisticated place, with a large trade and a considerable European colony, of late years much augmented in the winter by tourists. For some reason the surrounding country Is much safer than even the country about Tangier, in plain sight of the lights of Gibraltar. This fact, together with its climate and the splendid shooting to be had, have made it a favorite rendezvous for sportsmen. Of late years It has lost much of its trade, owing to the completion of the French railway to Tlmbuctoo; before that scores of caravans, some of them thousands of camels strong, left Mogador every year tor the markets of the southern Sahara, but now the trade goes prosaically In freight cars from Senegal. But though the town lacks, something of local color, though the minarets are only square, squat towers, and though domes and Moorish arcades are conspicuous by their ab aence, the population is as purely oriental as could be wished. Stately Arabs in flowing burnouses, nearly naked tribesmen from the desert, veiled ladies wrapped tn huge white sheets, like walking bundles of laundry, shuffling Jews In. sad-colored robes, green turbaned marabouts, bare-legged Moors, and scores of those greasyhaired Syrians who penetrate to every part of the tropical world, they flow np and down the streets. North of Mogador the coast trends away eastward, ftnnetlmes the boats call at Sail! and Masagan, but more frequently the next port of call is Rabat, just across the river from Sallee. Sallee and Rabat have a chequered history, sufficiently frenzied to suit the

most romantic taste. For 300 years the Sallee Rovers were the terror of the European coasts as far north as Biscay and Marseilles, and it is said that at one time there were over 10,000 Christians held as slaves in the town. Rabat is the port of entry and the residence of the consuls. Sallee is closed to foreigners, and -permission must be had from its governor before one can set foot on its dilapidated quays. Surrounded by its battlemented walls, Sallee is almost a sacred city in its purely Mohammedan exclusiveness, and its Inhabitants rank far above those of the open ports; not a Christian Is allowed to dwell in the town. Built in a time when it was enormously wealthy it is said, by those who have visited it, to be literally a city of palaces; but Moorish palaces are so constructed that hardly a hint of their grandeur reaches the eye of the passers-by. All the art and luxury is within, lavished on the interior court and its surrounding galleries and rooms, and all that the outside affords is a series of blank walls, with occasional barred windows, and a green-painted door, studded with huge nails and banded with iron. Northward again from Rabat is Laralche, which greets one with a note of actual western enterprise in the way of a steam tug to tow~ the freight lighters over the bar. Its picturesque jumble of gray towers, white walls and pink and yellowwashed houses, makes a briliant picture against the blue sky, but, like 'all the other ports, Laralche is best seen from the bay, Moorish sanitation is a thing to be carefully passed over and left undescribed. The big, white lighthouse at Cape Spartel comes into view, the sky streaked with the smoke of steamers bound In and out of the Straits, the bold outlines of the mountains round Tarifa loom trough the haze. The silence and the mystery, the bluegreen nights, the golden airs and the wide, vacant spaces of sea and land have gone; this is a high road of commerce, just round the corner lies Gibraltar, where the people are playing tennis, drinking tea and banging out the latest comic songs on their pianos. At Tangier. Rounding a point, the steamer drops anchor off Tangier. From the Inside the orientalism of Tangier is a bit faded, there is too much of the boulevards, or rather, of the Midway "Streets of Cairo" and of Barcelonese underworld, mixed in with it To one fresh from the rigidly Mohammedan cities to the south the difference is at once apparent; here are whole streets of Spanish, and Gibraltar "Scorpions," the offscourings of every port from Cadis to Genoa, and the Jews live where they please, instead of being confined to a "Mellah,” as the Moors call a Ghetto. Here are case signs in French, Spanish and weird English, a constant coming and going of tourists in gray tweeds and fluttering veils, the bazaars are piled with imitation Moorish “junk," manufactured In Germany, and displayed for the trapping of the unwary. And everywhere are shifty-eyed Individuals, in violently Moorish attire, who accost the stranger with unpleasantly leering offers to act as “guide;" one wonders what fanatical, exclusive Sallee would say to all this? But seen from the bay, before landing, the illusion is still perfect; a sweep of green hills, dotted with villas, and at their foot a mass of gleaming white houses. One tall minaret dominates the city, a few date palms thruat their crests above the maze of flat roofs. In the harbor is a tangje of shipping, fishing boats and coasting vessels, with lateen sails and pair ted prows, jostle black-sided steamers with tall funnels; there is a horde of small boats, a swirl of white draperies and bare legs, a babel 6f voices, and the Inevitable, wearying stare of fierce, black eyes. There may be a suspicion of pose about it all, a lurking suggestion that possibly Tangier has found the easiest way of making a living is to be just a little more aggressively itself than ever, but, at first sight, it is as truly oriental as even the out-of-tho-world cities down south, between the ocean and the desert.

CHARLES SAXBY.