CHAPTER XII THE PIRATE CITY OF SALLI

Across the river from Rabat and across a stretch of sand half-a-mile wide, a low line of white battlements, showing but a single gate, keeps the famous city of Salli, the headquarters of the Moroccan pirates, who in their day made themselves feared as far as the shores of England. Every one remembers that it was to Salli Robinson Crusoe was taken and held in slavery for many months, finally escaping in a small boat belonging to his Moorish master. For years the corsairs were the scourge of Christian merchantmen, and up to two centuries ago they plied their trade, which was deemed honourable among the Moors and carried with it the title ‘Amir-el-Bahr,’ Lord of the Sea, from which has come the English word Admiral. It has been but a few years since Salli could be visited by Europeans, and the inhabitants boast to-day that not a Christian lives within their sacred walls. They do not know that the Times correspondent—of whom I have spoken often already—once stayed amongst them for some time; they remember only a thin, studious, devout Moslem, who knew the Koran and the history of Islam as they did not, and had travelled to all the holy places. Harris told me that greater hospitality and truer courtesy could have been shown him nowhere than among the descendants of the Salli Rovers. But the deference, I may add, was to the Moorish garb he wore; to the man who wears the clothes of an infidel, and, reversing their custom, shaves his face and lets the hair grow on his head, there is little common decency accorded.

Our man would not go with us alone to Salli, though since leaving Casablanca he and his wife had taken refuge there with the lady’s parents. To obtain an escort he took us down to the custom-house where the Basha of Salli came every day to watch the imports. We arrived at the landing just as the Basha got out of his ferry, a soldier following him and also a servant carrying his dinner in a plate slung in a napkin. The governor was a stately Moor of middle age, pock-marked of course, but clean and intelligent-looking, and we addressed him as a gentleman, to have our bow but slightly acknowledged. To Driss, who spoke to him, he intimated that because of the feeling of the people at this moment he would rather not be seen talking with Europeans. The Basha then entered the custom-house, and by means of Driss as messenger conducted negotiations with us, still standing on the landing-place. The negotiations were extensive of course, and after half-an-hour, receiving and replying to various unimportant questions—Were we anxious to see Salli to-day? Would not to-morrow do as well? Had we any reason for going there?—each of which was delivered singly, at last a soldier came and said that he would go with us but we must wait till he went and fetched another. This is the way when one is not welcome.

Finally permitted to cross the river, we ploughed through the sands and passed the boneyard outside the walls to the narrow gate, where we waited again till yet another soldier came; and in this order, one man in front and two behind us, we entered upon the sacred cobbled streets, now not too crowded, for it was Ramadan, when folk are active most at evening and before the sun is high. In the quarter of good homes, through which we passed first, only little children in the care of youthful slave girls seemed to be abroad; and it is hard to say which we most alarmed. There was in every instance first a surprised start, then a quiet flurry. Little girls in long dresses, wearing but one long earring and distinguishable from boys only by having two patches of hair on their otherwise shaven heads, would shift their slippers, grab them up in their hands, and go tearing off, their cloaks flying, to disappear into a broad, low, arched doorway, and down the steps behind. The black girls, older, snatched the babies they were tending, covered their faces, and shuffled off to call the women. As we passed, the single uncovered eye of many women, white and black, lined the door held an inch ajar, and once, at our glance, one of the women growing modest slammed the heavy thing and—we judged from the yell—caught the nose of one of her sisters. Sometimes they came and peered over from their low-walled roofs, pointing us out to their children, the first infidels perhaps many of them had seen; and on these occasions we always watched, for the streets were sometimes but a yard wide and we were easy marks had any of them spat.

There can be no mistake about the records of history, which state that thousands of Christian slaves, many of them British, were sold on the great white market at Salli. The faces of many of the people to-day are distinctly European. Here there seemed to me to be less mixture of black blood than in the other towns, many of the people being as white as Europeans. We saw among the children a boy of five or six years who would not have looked unnatural in Ireland, and later, in the mella we came across a little girl with golden hair. At this last we puzzled our brains—for our inquiries brought no explanation—finally surmising that some rich Jew, a hundred years ago, had bought her ancestor.

In the centre of the town is a cone-shaped hill crowded with white, square houses of the best class, which range themselves round a mosque and minaret upon the summit. The massive tower, inlaid with tiles of many colours, once served as beacon for the pirates, though now, like all the Moorish coast, it sheds no light for Christian ships. When we asked to see the great mosque, our soldiers made excuses and would have led us another way, but we adopted the method of turning at the corners that we chose, leaving the man in the lead to double back from the way he would set. Of course he always protested, but from experience with other escorts we knew that to see what is to be seen in Mohammedan countries one must lead the way oneself, and the greater the protest of the guard the more one can be certain that one is on the proper track. The soldiers were anxious to take us promptly to the mella, where we might stay, they said, as long as we pleased; but first we searched out the mosque and later the market-place. The Sok here is in itself by no means so imposing as at Laraiche or even at Rabat, and there are to be seen no characters that are not also at the open ports; but here there gather Moors and Arabs and Berbers of an intenser religious ardour, who follow closer the customs of the ages past and whose very faces show their greater hatred of the Nazarene.

The people of Salli—largely for their intolerance of Christians and their glorious rover ancestry—hold a social position second only to that of the people of Fez and the holy city of Ouzzan, and they are wealthier as a rule than the inhabitants of other towns; and these are reasons that holy men and maimed creatures flock here to beg. But at the time of our visit the presence of the Sultan at Rabat had drawn all wanderers, beggars, saints, minstrels, and itinerant tradesmen, across the river, and on the Sok of Salli there was but one poor bard to stop his story at sight of our unholy apparition. He stopped and refused to go on, and the people murmuring began to move off, while our soldiers urged us to pass on with them.

SHAWIA TRIBESMEN.

The walls of the mella were but a few hundred yards away, and there we repaired at last, where crowds who followed us were beaten back only to prevent annoyance. We could stop and speak with the Jews and enter their synagogues and even their houses, and they would pose for photographs, though many of them now saw a camera for the first time. Having taken refuge here from the Spanish Inquisition of the fifteenth century the Jews of Morocco might be expected to harbour prejudices against the Christian world, but, strangely, nowhere, not in the heart of the closed country, are they at all fanatic.

A drove of boys and men, with women trailing on behind, followed us as we left their walled reservation, and would have come beyond but for the Moorish keeper of their gate, who raised his stick and shouting drove them back. It is the law at night that all Jews must be inside the mella when the gates are closed at seven or eight o’clock; and this good rule is for their safety, that they may not suffer robbery and abuse. The Jews of Morocco, oppressed and often robbed, pay the country’s fighting men for their protection; in Moorish towns they pay the basha, in the country they pay the kaid or other chief of the strongest neighbouring tribe. They are protected too by the Government, because they are thrifty and can be made to pay, under pressure, heavy taxes.