Life in Morocco and Glimpses Beyond | Page 6

Europeans were allowed to settle and trade in the Empire, in all probability as little molested there as they would have been had they remained at home, by varying religious tests and changing governments. It is almost impossible to conceive, without a perusal of the literature of the period, the incongruity of the position. Foreign slaves would be employed in gangs outside the dwellings of free fellow-countrymen with whom they were forbidden to communicate, while every returning pirate captain added to the number of the captives, sometimes bringing friends and relatives of those who lived in freedom as the Sultan's "guests," though he considered himself "at war" with their Governments. So little did the Moors understand the position of things abroad, that at one time they made war upon Gibraltar, while expressing the warmest friendship for England, who then possessed it. This was done by Mulai Abd Allah V., in 1756, because, he said, the Governor had helped his rebel uncle at Arz?la, so that the English, his so-called friends, did more harm than his enemies--the Portuguese and Spaniards. "My father and I believe," wrote his son, Sidi Mohammed, to Admiral Pawkers, "that the king your master has no knowledge of the behaviour towards us of the Governor of Gibraltar, ... so Gibraltar shall be excluded from the peace to which I am willing to consent between England and us, and with the aid of the Almighty God, I will know how to avenge myself as I may on the English of Gibraltar."
Previously Spain and Portugal had held the principal Moroccan seaports, the twin towns of Rabat and Salli alone remaining always Moorish, but these two in their turn set up a sort of independent republic, nourished from the Berber tribes in the mountains to the south of them. No Europeans live in Salli yet, for here the old fanaticism slumbers still. So long as a port remained in foreign hands it was completely cut off from the surrounding country, and played no part in Moorish history, save as a base for periodical incursions. One by one most of them fell again into the hands of their rightful owners, till they had recovered all their Atlantic sea-board. On the Mediterranean, Ceuta, which had belonged to Portugal, came under the rule of Spain when those countries were united, and the Spaniards hold it still, as they do less important positions further east.
The piracy days of the Moors have long passed, but they only ceased at the last moment they could do so with grace, before the introduction of steamships. There was not, at the best of times, much of the noble or heroic in their raids, which generally took the nature of lying in wait with well-armed, many-oared vessels, for unarmed, unwieldy merchantmen which were becalmed, or were outpaced by sail and oar together.
Early in the nineteenth century Algiers was forced to abandon piracy before Lord Exmouth's guns, and soon after the Moors were given to understand that it could no longer be permitted to them either, since the Moorish "fleets"--if worthy the name--had grown so weak, and those of the Nazarenes so strong, that the tables were turned. Yet for many years more the nations of Europe continued the tribute wherewith the rapacity of the Moors was appeased, and to the United States belongs the honour of first refusing this disgraceful payment.
The manner in which the rovers of Salli and other ports were permitted to flourish so long can be explained in no other way than by the supposition that they were regarded as a sort of necessary nuisance, just a hornet's-nest by the wayside, which it would be hopeless to destroy, as they would merely swarm elsewhere. And then we must remember that the Moors were not the only pirates of those days, and that Europeans have to answer for the most terrible deeds of the Mediterranean corsairs. News did not travel then as it does now. Though students of Morocco history are amazed at the frequent captures and the thousands of Christian slaves so imported, abroad it was only here and there that one was heard of at a time.
To-day the plunder of an Italian sailing vessel aground on their shore, or the fate of too-confident Spanish smugglers running close in with arms, is heard of the world round. And in the majority of cases there is at least a question: What were the victims doing there? Not that this in any way excuses the so-called "piracy," but it must not be forgotten in considering the question. Almost all these tribes in the troublous districts carry European arms, instead of the more picturesque native flint-lock: and as not a single gun is legally permitted to pass the customs, there must be a considerable inlet somewhere, for prices are