THE

PILLARS OF HERCULES;

OR,

A NARRATIVE OF TRAVELS

IN

SPAIN AND MOROCCO

IN 1848.

VOL. II.

THE

PILLARS OF HERCULES;

OR,

A NARRATIVE OF TRAVELS

IN

SPAIN AND MOROCCO

IN 1848.

BY

DAVID URQUHART, ESQ., M.P.,

AUTHOR OF
“TURKEY AND ITS RESOURCES,” “THE SPIRIT OF THE EAST,” ETC.


IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY,
Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty.

1850.

LONDON:
Printed by S. & J. Bentley and Henry Fley ,
Bangor House, Shoe Lane.

CONTENTS

OF

THE SECOND VOLUME.

THE

PILLARS OF HERCULES.

BOOK III.

(CONTINUED.)

CHAPTER VI.

ARAB DOMESTIC INDUSTRY.

The sheik deploring the result of the day’s hunt, I expressed the hope that we should make up for it next day; on this they were thrown into paroxysms, and they set about the sheik, some by fair means, the rest by foul, to prevent my doing anything save going along the main road, or going any road except that to Dar el Baida, whither I had no particular wish to go. Despite these difficulties, I found means to concert privately a chase for the next day. We were to be limited to twenty guns, and, with a good supply of beaters, to start early. In the morning, Sheik Tibi and the other soldiers, after using every effort to stop me, insisted on going also; thus, the sun was high before we got a start. We drew two valleys with no better success than the day before, expending two hours on each. Being satisfied that there was a purpose in this, I persisted in trying further off, and being joined by thirty or forty men from the next tribe, the oath was administered and we proceeded. It was now a sight to see the boars, as they issued from each of two valleys simultaneously beaten, running about, listening and watching, starting and returning, as the roll of musketry came up from both sides: it was like shooting hares in a well-stocked preserve, without dogs. The scenery surpassed that of the day before. I was now quite at home with these people, and it was only after it was over, that we thought it might have been imprudent to start on such an expedition, without knowing a word of their language, and not only without, but in defiance of, the persons charged with the care of us.

The boars enjoy a state of unparalleled happiness under the fostering shadow of Islamism and the law of Moses; a law not so observed in ancient Judæa as in Modern Morocco, as may be seen by the denunciations of the Prophets—the occupation of the Prodigal Son and the selection made by the cast-out devils. These two laws have excluded from this region domestic pigs and peopled it with wild ones.

The Arabs hold them to be transformed men and infidels; and converse with them, interpreting into words their grunts and motions. Each Arab, as he came up, soliloquised or addressed a curse to the carcasses, as he would to a slaughtered doe. These notions are natural enough, for they seem possessed of man’s reason with brute’s force. We had commonly an alarm at day-break of boars close to the douar, and though instantly pursued by dogs and horsemen, they managed to escape by speed, dodging, and short turns. They move through the bushes with a surprising facility of avoiding noise, squeezing by strength and with their thick hides through places that appeared utterly impassable. They get over everything, through everything, and lie as close under cover as they are alert when up. In starting for a chase, the boys commence by plaiting the rush-like palm leaves into a sling, for it is only by stones that they can start them. No pigs are fed like these. They have the run of the forests of cork, producing the bellota and the palmetto-root: they prefer, however, the potato-like root of the aram, which is called yerni , and grows generally in the bunches of the palmetto. In substance it is like a milky turnip, of a sweetish and mawkish flavour. Next to this they feed on the narcissus, the plant of which is called bugareg , and the root bililouse . They like very much the loto , of which I have yet to speak, and therefore deserve the name of lotofagoi. It is called folilla . Their well-known predilection for turfel —truffles—would be gratified in the extreme, were it not that the taste of the Arab coincides with theirs. Every square yard contains these plants, and when the vegetation is dried up, these roots remain in the ground fresh and succulent. No wonder, then, that they prosper, with free quarters and full commons.

The tribes of the Tahel are wood-destroyers. They consume constantly, and never plant. A portion of their fuel is brushwood; but still the olive, the oak, and the arar, the remnants of primeval forests, daily disappear. Around Rabat, not a tree is to be seen; yet the firewood is the roots which are dug out of the plain.

The copses, woods, and forests of the cork-tree, which I have traversed, will have disappeared in a very few years. This, however, is the effect of stripping them of their bark for exportation. It was saddening to pass through these groves, where the ancient patriarch of the forest was circled by the scalping-knife, which did not spare even the young promise by his side; and, as if in savage ruthlessness, and not blinded avarice, they sought to ensure the decay of the tree. They had stripped the bark only to the height of a man, neglecting the rest. They seek the bark only for tanning. The cork stripped off was lying rotting around. The cork may be taken from the tree, without injury, as it covers the real bark through which the sap runs. This the Spaniards never touch.

Four years ago, this speculation was introduced by a French merchant. He offered 4,000 dollars for the liberty of exportation, besides four per cent. duty. The farm has risen this year to 25,000 dollars. The Arabs seemed shocked at this work, but avoided the subject with apparent uneasiness, whenever it was introduced. I asked them why they did not plant trees for their children, as they were constantly destroying those that their fathers had left? The answer was, “It is not the custom; if we planted them there would be nobody to watch them, and they would be destroyed.”

At present, large districts are destitute of douars from the deficiency of fuel. A considerable portion of the country I have passed over will soon be in the same condition, unless by the reduction of the population the forests are again allowed to spread. The extent of the change within a century is marked by the extinction of wild beasts. Travellers, a century ago, narrate that they did not dare to pass the night out of a douar for the lions and panthers. Reading these accounts enables one to understand how the people of Palestine were not to be driven out before the Jews in one month or in one year, lest the beasts of the field should multiply against them. In the times of the Romans, the lions and panthers must have been as numerous as are now the boars. [1]

The chief lady of the douar was too busy for ceremony;—she left that department to her husband. She was first lieutenant. But one evening, as we were returning to the douar, she signified that she had something to say, and conducting me into the tent, made me sit down, and, seating herself opposite, said, “Christian,—since the wives and daughters of your country’s sheiks neither cook nor weave, nor make butter, nor look after the guests or sheep, what do they do?” Having already avowed that the greatest sheik in the English country had not in his tent or in his house a spindle or a loom, I explained how our ladies occupied themselves. She shook her head, and said, “It is not good;” but added, after a pause, “Are your women happier than we?” I answered, “Neither of you would take the life of the other. But when I tell my countrywomen about you, they will be glad to hear, and they will not say, 'it is not good.’” “Christian,” she said, “what will you tell of me?” I answered, “I will say I have seen the wife of an Arab Sheik, and the mistress of an Arab tent, such as we read of in the writings of old, [2] such as are the models held up to our young maidens; such as we listen to only in songs or see in dreams.”

Had a voice spoken from the earth, I could not have been more startled. It was Nature saying to Art, “What is thy worth?” What do we know of the happiness and the uses that belong to the drudgeries of life? Our harvest is of the briers and thorns of a spirit uneasy and over-wrought. Here are no changes in progress—no revolutions that threaten—no theories at war—no classes that hate—and why? The household works. There is no subdivision of labour—the household, not the man, is the mint of the state. It is so by its work, its varying cares, and interchanging toil. These impose discipline, nurture affection, knit and fortify that unit. Take away these cares, this industry, this dexterity, this power of standing alone, and what will—what can—a “home” become, save a crib to sleep in, with a trough to feed at, supplied from the butcher’s cart and the huckster’s stall? Take from the household its industrial character, and you take away its social charm, and its public worth. You exchange domestic industry for political economy—that is, the fictitious evils which it classifies: for habits you substitute laws, that is, cumbrous mockery: for happiness, refinement, that is, pretence:—and you become possessed of the gifts of fortune—the few at least who draw the prizes, only to lose the value, of life.

The change in our manners is producing, no doubt, an alteration in the position as well as in the happiness of women. From my first acquaintance with the East, I was struck with the erroneous notions which we entertain regarding the state of the sex there. I could not resist the evidence of their occupying relatively a higher station, and I perceived that the difference depended upon the greater strength of the family tie. I find in an official French work [3] my proposition strengthened.

“In all the Sahara, the fabrication of stuffs is exclusively the work of the women. The men apply themselves to the culture of the date-trees. It has been already shown that in the movements and expeditions, the women have their share equally allotted to them with the men. Thus, in the produce of the labour of the Sahara, that of the women amounts to one-half. In the intervals of their necessary household occupations, they find time to contribute to the common riches an equal quantity with the men. This is a fact which it appears to us worthy of being placed in evidence, because it is impossible that it should remain without influence on the condition of the female sex. The inutility of the occupations in which they are engaged almost everywhere else, explains perhaps, to a certain degree, and excuses the state of dependence in which they are placed, and the disregard of which they are the object; but where by the nature of the occupations they are placed upon a level equal with that of man, he must cease to regard himself as the sole chief of the domestic hearth, and be prepared to share the family sovereignty with his companion. It is certain that in the Sahara the merit of a woman is measured above all by her talents and dexterity.”

In Egypt all things were consecrated, and then displayed in types. The successive labours (as even to these days in Africa) were announced from the sanctuary, accompanied by sacrifices and processions, and amidst the richness of their ceremonials, and the pomp of their temples. The changes of the seasons which they announced, appeared to flow from their directing power, and the labours undertaken to be the fruit of their providential care. Before calendars were printed, all field labours had to be determined by astronomy, and especially in the valley of the Nile, which was subject to disappear under a deluge, and whose fertility consisted in the rise and duration of the flood. Placing ourselves in the soft and yielding, the unlearned and unprejudiced embryo of society; man groping his way, fearful to stray, yet eager to advance, what more natural than a scientific priesthood and a symbolical worship? The Greeks, copying these fruitful symbols, sacrificed purpose and usefulness to grace. The name of Moses, we are informed in Scripture, means saved from the water . The Muses was the same word: nine months in Egypt are saved from the waters —these are the Muses. Each had its festival, and the symbol of its occupation. There were three other similar—these are the Graces—they are admitted by the most learned Hellenists to be water-nymphs;—together they make up the year. Here, then, we have the homeliest occupations the basis of the religious pomps of Egypt, and of the mythology and art of Greece; the distribution of these works filled up the year, combined field and in-door labour, and linked the community, while furnishing the charm of life.

The plough, the yoke, “The invention of gods and the occupation of heroes;” are the loom, the spindle, and distaff of less noble parentage? You sever the distaff and the plough, the spindle and the yoke, and you get factories and poor-houses, credit and panics—two hostile notions, agricultural and commercial. Poetry becomes politics, patriotism faction; and a light-hearted and contented people rusts into clowns or sharpens into knaves.

I made, amongst the Arabs, the discovery that home industry was the secret of the permanency of their society. I made, on subsequently visiting the Highlands, another, namely, that home-made stuffs are the cheapest . I refer, of course, to the common clothing of the labouring population. The comparison cannot be instituted where the habit has been extinguished; for on the one hand, the implements and the dexterity are wanting; on the other, fashion has set another way, and new habits have arisen, adjusted to the articles and stuffs that have been introduced. In the Highlands, however, the comparison is easy, and I speak after thorough examination, and with perfect certainty, when I say that a family clothed by its own homework, as compared with a family which buys its clothes at the shop, saves one-third. Of course, in the former case, no cotton will be used, and home-bred wool and home-grown flax will be the staple.

The change in this respect is generally deplored; but it is considered as inevitable, it being the result of cheapness, no hand-labour being able to stand against machinery. But the heavy charges are not for the operation but for the capital engaged, and the numerous transfers and profits. Home-spinning costs nothing . [4] Twenty pounds of wool converted unobtrusively into the yearly clothing of a labourer’s family, makes no show; but bring it to market, send it to the factory, bring it thence to broker, send it to dealer, and it will represent commercial operations and apparent capital to the amount of twenty times its value, and costs the labourer, when returned to him, twice as much as it would cost him money in dyeing, spinning, weaving, &c. The working class is thus amerced to support a wretched factory population, a parasitical, shopkeeping class, and a fictitious, commercial, monetary, and financial system. The landlord, for his share, pays five shillings per acre poors-rates. And all this is the result, not of cheapness, but delusion. The people of England were better clothed and fed than at present, when there were no commerce and no factories. At this moment, after exhausting human ingenuity, they are returning to domestic labour, as a means of remedying the evils of Ireland!

Hallam has admitted that in those times which we look back on with pity, the labourer received twice as much as at present for his labour. This is a terrible blow and a fearful avowal. Mr. Macaulay, on the contrary, “sees nothing but progress, hears of nothing but decay.” He must have transposed the two senses, or carefully selected the spots for indulging in their use: if, indeed, by progress he means approach towards a fair remuneration for labour, and by decay a falling away from just judgment in important concerns. Or is it his purpose to cover Hallam’s indiscretion?—“They say that in former times the people were better off. The time will come that they will say the same of this.” If we be in a state of progress, those who speak thus must be very foolish, and if the proposition deserved notice it required refutation.

The Arab tent, without our waking follies, presents to us the reality of our dreams. Property has there its value, wealth its honour, labour its reward. On the one side, the fruits of wisdom without effort, on the other the toil of the understanding without profit.

But the Arab woman asked, “Are your women happier than we?” The European lady would be shocked at the bare possibility of comparison. She shrinks from domestic occupation, yet is she not able to expel nature, so as to despise Nausicaa and Naomi. We cannot refuse to bow before the shades of the heroic or patriarchal times—our nature acknowledges Abraham or Alcinous. Yet, if our condition be that of refinement, how contemptible must be Tanaquil and her distaff, Penelope and her loom?

An English lady, who had the means of comparison, has not hesitated to assert that between an Eastern and an European household, the balance of happiness leans to the side of the former; and in the Eastern household it is certainly the women who have the larger share—who are the idols, and who possess authority such as belongs not to our courts, and affections on the part of those under their sway which belong not even to our dreams. The most touching words of the wisest of men are the description of the mistress of a household. It is an Arab woman he describes.

“Look at the hand of man! The best gift of Providence! What so perfect in mechanism, what so beautiful in form? Is it not given for work, and ought not that work to be for the service of those we love? Can we omit that use without the sacrifice of more than words can tell? Let not any one who follows the picture disturb the effort of his own imagination, to fill it up by thinking of the possibility of carrying it into effect. Obstacles arise at every point. Our set habits all point the other way. Julia could work for her husband because there was then a noble and an antique costume. An empress, she could summon about her her handmaidens, because there was a formula of ceremony which enabled all ranks to associate without derogation or familiarity. Then there was the hall to assemble in. 'The plant,’ still stood in every house. Because all this is gone, are we not to count the loss? If we cannot restore, let us not mistake. If we cannot return, let us not hurry on—in the wrong direction. It is something to know whither we are going, when the speed is the result of our own will.

“Nations are not changed by time or accident—they change themselves. Progress of society—march of intellect! Good heavens! we can utter such trash and call ourselves reasonable beings: as well speak of the justice of a steam-engine, or the virtue of a rocket. What need to examine their state;—their words suffice. When the phrases have gone mad, what can be in order?

“It is something in the midst of empires crumbling to the earth and civilization gasping for breath and struggling with itself for life, to point to the permanency of single tribes, who have never reasoned, but who have simple habits; and to be able to say to the wildly-frantic or to the meekly-deluded, ‘Christians, ye are incorrigible.’”

Such were the concluding words of a series of articles by M. Blacque, which appeared in the Moniteur Ottoman , in 1834. Since then fifteen years—barren, save in convulsions such as many centuries have not witnessed before—have justified his judgment on Europe’s condition, and his anticipations of her fate. M. Odillon Barrot, his cousin, on one occasion said that had he returned, he “would have played a great part in France.” I answered, “He would have made France play a worthy one.” He was offered the highest offices in the Russian Government, and on refusing them was persecuted by his own . The Turkish Government then adopted him, and he was poisoned while on his way to England. The incidents of his life and death, no less than the passages left by his pen, will serve at a future time, perhaps, to illustrate that chimera with a brain of cobwebs and a heart of mud, which is called civilization, and which we are pleased to designate as the child of science and the parent of corruption.

But I do not speak of “civilization,” as an entity . It will be found in no classical writer, Greek or Roman, English or French, German or Italian. It is a word which belongs to us,—exclusively to us; let us be either proud or conscious—its invention must be either a merit or a shame.

What is it? It is no standard. We have the words “excellence,” and “perfection.” It is no description of a particular people, for it neither does nor can describe or define. Its own sense has to be defined. Whoever uses the word, conjures up to correspond with it an idea of some aggregate condition, which never can have the same parts in any two speakers’ minds, or in the mind of the same speaker at any two moments. It is an unknown quantity, like x in algebra; but instead of concluding the operation by finding out its value, we commence the proposition by supposing it known. These are the reasons why you do not find it in any classical writer. These are the reasons why it has been received as a discovery for this generation. It facilitates talk without meaning, is a cloak for ignorance and pretence, and covers, by an apparent “grasp of intellect,” the shrinking from intellectual effort, which consists in getting possession of the instruments we use, and in fathoming the meaning and assuring ourselves of the accuracy of the terms we employ. It is made up of things that have no ratio—virtue and science, wealth and political order; so also, vice, ignorance, poverty, and discontent—each of these must be found in it: to employ it logically, you must class plus and minus quantities and rate each in decimals. So in one country there would be so many degrees of positive, in another so many of negative civilization. If you cannot do this, you use an instrument that is necessarily false; the whole field of your intellectual operation must be, as it is, reduced to that condition in which our buildings, railways, and accounts would be, if arithmeticians and engineers were to create an elementary sign of number, the value of which was uncertain, and might be mistaken for an 8 or a 9. It is the case, not of an error of opinion, but of false process, which renders it impossible to be right. It is not opinions, but words, that ruin states. Should a sane people occupy Europe after the Gothic race has been put down or swept away, the title of M. Guizot’s great work will suffice for the history of times distinguished at once by a fatuity that cannot reason, [5] and an activity that will not rest. Alas for man, if such things as we have seen since the conversation in the Arab tent, which prompted these reflections, were the fruit of the proper use of his faculties! Alas for folly too, if, with such men for its apostles, institutions could endure or nations prosper!

[1] When the Romans first saw lions and panthers, they called them African rats ( Mures Africanos ). Pliny tells us, that Q. Scævola, when edile, first exhibited lions in the arena. Sylla exhibited one hundred; Pompey six hundred; Cæsar four hundred.

[2] “And all the women that were wise-hearted did spin with their hands, and brought that which they had spun, both of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, and of fine linen. And all the women whose hearts stirred them up in wisdom, spun goats’ hair.”— Exodus xxxv. 25, 26.

[3] Exploration scientifique d’Algérie.

[4] The spinning-wheel of the Highlands is one of the most remarkable inventions. That formerly used in England, and still lingering where here and there a housewife has sense to say, “I cannot afford to buy in the shops stockings for my family,” was like that used now in the East, and anciently figured in Egypt. A wheel was turned by one hand, whilst with the other the wool, cotton, or flax was prepared for the spindle: as each portion was twisted the wheel was reversed, so as to run it on the spindle; but in the coil the thread passes through an orifice in the axis of the spindle, and is then carried by a bar to be distributed over the pirn . The wheel runs always on, and when yielded by the fingers, passes to the coil. Both hands are free for the work. The wheel being turned by a treddle, it is, compared to other spinning, as the delving of the Basque provinces to all other methods of culture, and performs at least twice as much work.

[5] Yet in M. Guizot’s organ such a sentence as the following could be pronounced on “civilization,” and such a verdict given for “barbarism.” “Amongst us, the intelligence and the moral sense developed to excess, are troubled with the habit of judging of particular facts through the medium of general ideas, and more or less complicated systems. Among the Arabs, reason is in its simplicity, but also in all its primitive clearness and rectitude: the idea of what is just and what is unjust is always clear and sure.”— L’Epoque , April 11, 1846.

CHAPTER VII.

RUINS OF BATHS.

After a few days spent as those I have described, we started in a south-westerly direction, and towards evening passed out of the land of the Ziaïdas. Their territory extends a summer day’s journey from north to south, and from east to west. We then entered that of the Ladzian. Our guardians inquired from the shepherds touching different douars, to select one for sleeping, but did not seem satisfied with the replies. I urged going to one of the Lachedumbra, a tribe of the Ladzian, and they reluctantly complied. This was the first douar we approached as perfect strangers. We rode up to within two hundred paces and halted. After we had waited about ten minutes we advanced half way and halted again. Then one man walked slowly out; one of our party in like manner advanced. They saluted. After some time the Arab shouted, and instantly a single man advanced from each of the tents on the side next us: they stood for some minutes as if holding council. The chief then turned round, and walking straight up to me, took my hand in their manner, and thrice repeated Mirababick ; the others then advanced, and pronounced the salutation all together. Each of the party was thus greeted in turn. We were led inside. The whole douar set to work, and in a few minutes our tent was pitched, and strewed with fresh shrubs. A sheep was led up to the door, the customary present of the sheik, that we might see it before we made our supper on it. This was a Sherriff’s douar, and the government officers have no right to enter. Such was the explanation given to me. It is difficult to ascertain, and impossible to vouch for, the commonest fact in a country where one is not thoroughly conversant with its habits, and when information is received through interpreters, however intelligent and upright these may be; and, indeed, integrity is next to an impossibility in an interpreter; but this an eastern traveller learns, if at all, at the wrong end of his experience.

I have seen no douar entered except by the free will, and in some cases the formal consent, of the tribe. I was much perplexed at this, as it appeared at first a contradiction to, and as I afterwards ascertained, modification of the fundamental rule of Arab society. It doubtless arose from the necessity of defence against a central government .

After they had pitched our tent, instead of pressing upon us as amongst the Ziaïda, they drew off about thirty yards, and squatted down in a circle: a few only came, and then it was to bring presents, or to petition for medicine for a greasy heel, or a barren wife, as the case might be. I proposed to the sheik a boar hunt, to which he readily assented; but it was fixed for a future day.

From the high ground, as we approached it, Dar El Baida has an imposing appearance: inside it is a heap of ruins. A house consisting of a single room—a good one on a second floor, and entered from a terrace—was prepared for us. Our horses were piqueted in the street before it. We understood there was a French Consular agent and some Europeans here, and consequently we brought for them a camel-load of game.

This place is said to have been retaken from the Portuguese by the following stratagem. A Moor pretended to become Christian, settled in the town, and obtained permission to have a gate opened in the wall close to his house for the convenience of sending in and out his flocks. He one night brought in a number of his countrymen covered with hides, as cattle among them. Such is the story of the place; and if you doubt it, they say, “There is the gate.”

The Spanish name is Casa Bianca, just as if we chose to call it “White House.” Its ancient name, “Anafe,” involves some obscurity. The same name belonged to a colony in Asia Minor, and to an island close to Crete, which forms an episode in the Orphic epic of the Argonauts. The adventurers were rescued by Apollo, who discharging an arrow into the deep, the island arose, and was called Anafe, from ἀνφααίνειν , to appear . What this etymology is worth for the Cretan Island, it must also be for the Lybian promontory: its present name likewise implies brightness. It is on the other hand asserted, that this is the new case of lucus a non lucendo , and that Anafe means,—that is, in Hebrew not Greek,—dark and gloomy, [6] and that the island was so called, not from having appeared in the light, but by being shut out from the light by groves. [7] If so, the Lybian promontory must likewise in those days have been green and feathered, and not as now, naked and pale. The Phœnician Backs and Parrys did not dot their charts with the names of the Admiralty Lords of Tyre. They gave names descriptive or commemorative, as the other names of this coast will vouch. That the name is Phœnician, not Greek, is clear from finding it here. We have also Thymiatirium, where Arzilla now stands, and which is interpreted in Hebrew—an open plain. Ampelusa was on the northern promontory, and its interpretation coincides with the descriptions left of groves delightful to the eye, filled with fruit grateful to the taste. This must have been one of the spots first named, and this name seems to confirm what we derive from so many sources regarding the primeval horticulture of this land. Had the Phœnicians come to plant vines, and gardens—that is, to cultivate and civilize—they would not have given such a name. These glimpses of the well-being in the most early times bring up the contrast with the present. The parched and naked brow of the once shady Anafe, further recalls an island nearer home, once, also, named after its forests, [8] where now scarce a tree is to be found. Would that the resemblance were complete! If Moorish rule has blasted the oak, it has at least spared the man. What Moorish rule has worst done it has done with a purpose, and neither on principle nor for philanthropy.

A quantity of grain was in store, and much arriving destined for England. The stores were filled all along the coast, but there are no means of shipment. This port is a principal place for the exportation of bark and wool, both managed by Scheik Tibi, who, last season, when the country was otherwise impassable, went and came, conducting caravans of seventy and eighty camels; by his personal character ensuring safety on the road. The schooner which had been in company with us during our voyage, lay on the beach high and dry. An English brig at anchor in the open roadstead was pitching bows under, though there was scarcely a breath of wind, and had narrowly escaped shipwreck two days before from her cables having been cut by the rocks.

There is here a sort of bay. The southern horn is a headland running a little way out, and distant four or five miles. On its bald black brow I was told that traces of the Phœnician city were to be seen. I was all impatience to reach the spot, for it was just a site for them, and no one since would have gone there. So here was the site of a Lybo-Phœnician city, and any fragment was precious. I found nothing standing, yet was not disappointed; for the stones in the fields were rolled fragments of building: the mortar was of such consistency that it wore or split only with the stones imbedded in it, and these were crystalline: the stones were small, the mortar abundant; the masses looked like amygdaloid. For the first time was I assured that I beheld a piece of Tyrian rubble. I would have travelled many a mile for this. Mortar was used by them—and what mortar! But this was not the only architectural point I had to mark this day.

As I sat on the brow of the headland, watching the great waves which went and came over long shelves of rocks, stretching out to the west and southward in the line of the declining sun, and playing under his rays, my eye was attracted to a singular mass immediately below: it was a cone indented all over with deep semicircular cavities, and, therefore, bristling with truncated points. The sandstone hollows out in this manner [9] by the action of the water, and the points which are left are sharp as a knife. The substance is black and porous, like a sponge. When the foam dashed over this rock, the basins filled; the white froth, as the wave retired, poured in cataracts from basin to basin, on every side, and so continued almost till the next long wave came to shroud it in spray, and replenish it with foam. As I watched these changes, familiar forms floated before me, till at last becoming more distinct, I distinguished those singular pendants that belong to the Moorish vault, and the indentures of its arch. The stalactites of caverns might have furnished the type of the last, but could not of the former. The fair creations of art have models in Nature, and here is that of the Moorish. The substance in which it is exhibited lines the whole coast, and must present an infinite variety of such effects. I had few occasions of seeing that coast, but the very next time I reached it, about twenty miles north of Rabat, I saw the same figure reversed, or as we see it in the Moresco vault, depending from the roof like the stalactites in a cave. [10]

I returned to the same place next morning, but the tide was out, and the rock without the foam was a common stone. The ledges of rock which the evening before had been so lashed by the waves, were white (quartz) rock. On them were patches of coarse recent madrepores, looking like gigantic sponges. Further out the rocks were black, and on inspection proved to be so because completely covered with mussels, the largest I have ever seen, and the finest I have ever tasted. Such is the fury of the waves, that beautifully-rounded quartz-stones, some of them three-quarters of a hundred weight, have been cast up into a bank thirty feet above high-water-mark.

Amongst the mass of ruins within the walls of Dar el Baida one building alone could be made out. It was a bath. If London or Paris were laid low, no such monument would survive of their taste, luxury, or cleanliness. The people called it “Roman,” meaning Portuguese. When I was at Algesiras, some excavations were making, and on examining them, the building proved to be a bath. Within the circuit of the walls of old Ceuta, which unquestionably belonged to a very remote period, the only edifice, the purpose of which is distinguishable, is a bath. The vestiges of the Romans, which from time to time we fall upon in our island, are baths. The Romans and the Saracens were the most remarkable of conquerors, and are associated in the relics which they have left-fortresses and baths. The first is of necessity, but how should the second be ever found conjoined, unless it played some part in forming that temper which made them great, or in conferring on them those manners which rendered them acceptable? A nation without the bath is deprived of a large portion of the health and inoffensive enjoyment within man’s reach: it therefore increases the value of a people to itself, and its power as a nation over other people. From what I know of the loss in both respects which those incur who have it not, I can estimate its worth to those who had it.

I now had the opportunity of examining a public bath of the Moors belonging to their good times. The disposition varies from that of the ancient Thermæ and the modern Hamams. The grand and noble portion of the Turkish and the ancient bath was a dome, open to the heavens in the centre. Such a one, but not open in the centre, is here; it was the inner not the outer apartment. The vault has deep ribs, in the fashion of a clam shell, and is supported upon columns with horse-shoe arches spreading between. Instead of a system of flues through the walls, only one passed through the centre under the floor. To get at it, I had to break through the pavement of beaten mortar covering a slab of marble. It was nearly filled up with a deposit, partly of soot and partly of earthy matter, which I imagined to be the residuum of gazule, on the use of which hinge the peculiarities I have noticed in the structure and distribution of the building.

I turned to Leo Africanus, expecting a flood of light upon a matter with which he must have been so familiar. All I found was this:—“When any one is to be bathed, they lay him along the ground, anointing him with certain ointment and with certain instruments clearing away his filth .” The ointment is evidently the gazule; the instrument can only be the strigil . He mentions a “Festival of the Baths.” The servants and officers go forth with trumpets and pipes, and all their friends, to gather a wild onion ; it is put in a brazen vessel, covered over with a linen cloth, which had been steeped in lees of wine; this they bring with great solemnity and rejoicings, and suspend in the vessel in the portal of the bath. This would indicate an Egyptian source, were it not for the absence of all trace of the bath on their storied walls, and among their ruins.

The onion, however, being the emblem of the planetary system, [11] may be a trace of Sabæism. The festival and ceremony savour much of those of the “Great Mother,” and of course preceded Christianity. No original superstition arose here; no original bath appears among the Arabs. The Phœnicians brought their religion and found the bath, and to it the people adapted the new religious practices.

Part of the funereal rites of the Moors was to convey the corpse to the bath. [12] Such a practice is unknown in any other country, and seems to identify the bath with the primitive usages.

The gazule furnishes, however, the strongest intrinsic evidence in favour of my conclusion, which indeed it requires but scanty proof to establish, for the rudest people may have had the bath. The Red Indians are fully acquainted with it, and the means they employ are heated stones and a leather covering. They crawl in and throw water on the stones, and soak till the same effect is produced as the Balnea of Rome obtained. In Morocco they are of primitive and modest structure, and of diminutive proportions. Add to this, the rude simplicity of the process, and the exclusive use in them of natural and native productions. Before coming to this point, I wish to refer to historical evidence.

Augustus borrowed a stool, called duretum , [13] from Spain. Mauritania was inhabited by the same people, so that two thousand years ago the Romans copied the Moors.

Few Iberian words have come down to us—one of them is strigil . It applied to a species of metal; and strigils were made of metal. The early use of this strigil, and its connection with the East, is shown by one of the celebrated bronzes of antiquity—a group of two boys in the bath using the strigil, which was attributed to Dædalus. [14] The Etruscans and Lydians also had it. [15]

The Phæacians, as elsewhere shown, were Phœnicians. Homer mentions their baths at the time of the Trojan war, when the Greeks had none. The term Ἡρακλεία λούτρα seems to identify baths with that people as much as letters were by the term Καδμεία γράμματα ; and as the Greeks got everything from them, the baths of the Greeks are in themselves a testimony in favour of the Phœnicians, my inference being, not that the Phœnicians brought thither the tice, but that they learnt it here.

That the Arabs, when they issued from their deserts, should have adopted the Thermæ and Balnea of the sinking Roman empire, does not necessarily follow; indeed it is rather to be assumed that they would not, and that it was from a people who became by religion incorporated with them, and from whom, indubitably, they derived their architecture, that they had it. This view is supported by the use of the glove, which is not Roman, and the disuse of the strigil, which was so. It would thus appear that Morocco had conferred on antiquity and the East of the present day, the chief luxury of the one, and the most beneficial habit of the other.

There being a bath in the unoccupied house of the Governor of the Province, I made the attempt to complete my investigation by experience, and privately applied to the guardian of the mansion, who, to my surprise, immediately acceded to my request. Soon after, he came to inform me that the Caïd had been very angry, and had forbidden him to let me use it. It was suggested that there were mollifying methods, such as a civil message, a box of tea and some loaves of sugar. While these were preparing, an elderly Moor walked in and seated himself. This was no other than the Caïd. He plunged at once in medias res , and the following dialogue ensued.

Caïd. No Christian or Jew can go to the bath. It is forbidden by our law.

Can a law forbid what it enjoins?

Caïd. It is the law.

Where is that law?

Caïd. (After a pause.) The wise men say there is such a law.

The wise man is he who speaks about what he knows.

Caïd. Do the wise men err?

Have you read the book?

Caïd. I have heard it read.

Did you hear the word—the Jews and Christians shall not bathe?

Caïd. I may or may not have heard.

I have read the book, and have not seen that word, for in it there is no name for bath. The Mussulmans, when they came to “the West,” found the bath in your towns as they are to-day, and here first learned how to bathe, and you were then Christians. How then do you say you have a law which forbids the Jews or the Christians to go to the bath?

Caïd. (laughing). The Nazarenes are cunning. In what Mussulman land do Christians go to the bath?

Missir, is it not a Mussulman land? Stamboul (Constantinople), is it not a Mussulman land? Now, I will ask you questions. Where, except in this dark West, do Christians not go to the bath with the Mussulmans? Why do I want to go to the bath? Have we got the bath in Europe? From whom did I learn it?

Caïd. How can I tell?

I have gone to the bath with doctors of the law (Oulema), and Rejals of the Ali Osman Doulet: I have been shampooed by vizirs. From Mussulmans I have learned how to wash myself, and here I come to Mussulmans, and they say, “You shall not bathe.” This is not Islam, this is Jahilic . [16]

Caïd. You shall not say our faces are black. You shall go, but—only once. To-morrow I will keep the key: it shall be heated when the Mussulmans are asleep. I will come, and you shall go and be satisfied.

He then got up and walked off. Presently a sheep arrived as an earnest and propitiation.

It was so often and so confidently repeated to me by the resident Europeans that I could place no reliance upon his word, that I gave up all idea of it. Next night, as we were disposing our beds and preparing to occupy them, there was a rap at the door, and on its being opened, who should walk in but the Caïd. His abrupt salutation was, “The bath is ready—come.” While I was re-dressing, he told us that he had forgotten, and having business of importance with a neighbouring sheik before sunrise, had started on his journey, when recollecting his promise, he had returned.

Finding he was making dispositions to accompany me, I begged he would not take the trouble; but not staying to answer, he seized with one hand a candle out of the candlestick, laid hold of my hand with the other, conducted me down stairs, lighting me and lifting me through the dirty streets over the different places, as if I had been a helpless child. Arrived at the place, he took the keys from his breast, and opened the doors. I thought his care was to end here, but he squatted himself down on a mat in an outhouse, as if to wait the issue. Every other argument failing, I said, that if he remained there, I could not stay long enough. He answered, “I will sleep. If I went home I could not sleep, for something might happen.” The deputy-governor stripped to officiate as bath-man. But for this weighty matter I must take breath, and honour it with a special chapter—a chapter which, if the reader will peruse it with diligence and apply with care, may prolong his life, fortify his body, diminish his ailments, augment his enjoyments, and improve his temper: then having found something beneficial to himself, he may be prompted to do something to secure the like for his fellow-creatures.

[6] ענפה, Anepha. Ramosa et opaca.— Boch. Pheleg.

[7] The spot is thus described by Apollonius:—

[8] Ireland was anciently known as Fiodha Inis, or the Woody Island.

[9] The “Chaudière Falls” are so called from cavities like kettles hollowed out by stones of harder consistency getting into a hollow, and there revolving by the action of the water. On the Clyde the operation may be seen.

[10] These pensile figures are by all writers on Moorish architecture held to be an imitation of stalactite. Nothing can be more absurd: stalactite is produced by successive coatings or deposits, whereas the process by which they must have been formed is abrasion, the salient points being obtained by the concavity of the intervening surfaces.

[11] The slices representing the orbits of the planets. We have derived our word from On i on ; a reduplication of On , the Sun, in his chief temple in the city, called after him, where the onion, being the symbol, was supposed to be worshipped.

[12] Mision Historial de Marueccos, p. 45.

[13] “Ungebatur enim sæpius, et sudabat ad flammam: deinde perfundebatur e gelida aqua vel sole multo calefacta. At quoties nervorum causâ marinis Albulisque calidis utendum esset, contentus hoc erat, ut insidens ligneo solio, quod ipse Hispanico verbo 'duretum’ vocabat, manus ac pedes alternis jactaret.”— Sueton. in August. , c. 82.

[14] See Pliny’s Catalogue of Celebrated Statues.

[15] Naked youths with strigils appear on a vase.—Mus. Gregor. II. , tav. lxxxvii. —See Schol. Juvenal , Sat. iii. v. 262.

See plates in Fellows’s “Lycia.”

[16] The word means “folly,” but it is applied to the period before conversion to Islam, and here insinuates infidelity.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE BATH.

... Quadrante lavatum,
Rex ibis. Hor. Sat. i. 3.

It is amusing to hear people talk of cleanliness as they would of charity or sobriety. A man can no more be clean than learned by impulse, and no more by his will understand cleanliness than solve equations. Cleanliness has the characters of virtue and of vice—it is at once beneficial and seductive. It is also a science and an art, for it has an order which has to be taught, and it requires dexterity and implements. It has its prejudices and superstitions: it abhors what is not like itself, and clings to its practices under a secret dread of punishment and fear of sin. It has its mysteries and its instincts: it regards not the eye or favour of man, and follows the bent of its nature without troubling itself with reasons for what it does; it has its charities and its franchises: the poorest is not without the reach of its aid, nor the most powerful strong enough to infringe its rights. [17] It is suited to every condition: men and women, the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the hale and the sick, the sane and the insane: the savage can enjoy it no less than the refined. The most polished have prized it as the chief profit of art; the simple receive it as the luxury of Nature—a cheap solace for the cares of life, and a harmless medicament for the infirmities of man.

The philosopher prized it as essential to happiness, [18] the austere to virtue, the dissolute to vice. [19] To corrupt Greece and Rome it furnished a gratification that was innocent; to the rigid sectarians of the Koran an observance that was seductive; multiplying the sensibilities and strengthening the frame, it increased to all the value of life. No sacrifice is required for its possession. Nothing has to be given up in exchange: it is pure gain to have, sheer loss to want. Like the light of heaven, those only walk not in it who are blind. Where not practised, it is not inducements that are wanting, but knowledge: “they don’t know how.” [20]

Our body is a fountain of impurities, to which man is more subject than the beast. [21] The body of man, far more than that of the brutes, is exposed to be contaminated; and by an artificial mode of life and food, he has further multiplied his frailties. By casing his body in closely-fitting clothes—integuments rather than covering—he has shut out the purifying elements. Without the means of cleanliness of the brute, he is also without the guidance of its instinct; what then, if in the culture of his body, he should lose the light of reason? If reason and not instinct be his portion, it is because he is endowed with a mechanism, to keep which in order instinct would not suffice. What if that mechanism receive at his hands not such care as would be bestowed upon it, if it belonged to the beast of the field or the bird of the air!

What filth is to the body, error is to the mind; and therefore if we are to use our reason in regard to the former, we must have a standard of cleanliness as well as of truth; such a rule we can owe neither to freak nor fashion. We must look for one tested by long experience and fixed from ancient days:—this standard is THE BATH . This is no ideal one; it is at once theory and performance; he who has gone through it, knows what it is to be clean because he is cleansed. I shall use as synonymous the words, “cleanliness,” and the “bath.”

I must beg the reader to dismiss from his mind every idea connected with that word: unless I thought he would and could do so, I should persist in speaking of Thermæ , Balneum or Hamâm , but I trust I may venture to naturalize, in its true sense, the word in our tongue as a step to naturalise the thing in our habits.

A people who know neither Latin nor Greek have preserved this great monument of antiquity on the soil of Europe, and present to us who teach our children only Latin and Greek, this institution in all its Roman grandeur, and its Grecian taste. The bath, when first seen by the Turks, was a practice of their enemies, religious and political; they were themselves the filthiest of mortals; they had even instituted filth by laws and consecrated it by maxim. [22] Yet no sooner did they see the bath than they adopted it; made it a rule of their society, a necessary adjunct to every settlement; and Princes and Sultans endowed such institutions for the honour of their name. [23]

In adopting it, they purified it from immorality and excess, and carrying the art of cleanliness to the highest perfection, have made themselves thereby the most sober-minded and contented amongst the nations of the earth. This arose from no native disposition towards cleanliness, but from the simplicity of their character and the poverty of their tongue. [24] They had no fallacious term into which to convert it, and no preconceived ideas by which to explain it. Knowing they were dirty, they became clean; having common sense, they did not rush on a new device, or set up either a “water cure,” or a joint-stock washing company; but carefully considered and prudently adopted what the experience of former ages presented to their hands.

I have said that the Saracens, like the Romans, have left behind them, temples , fortresses , and baths : national security reared its battlements, public faith its domes, and cleanliness, too, required its structures, and without these no more could it exist, than defence or worship. I shall not weary the reader with ground-plans or “elevations,” and shall confine myself to the leading features, in so far as they are connected with use. They are vast and of costly materials, from their very nature. Before describing the Moorish bath, I must request the reader to accompany me through the bath as it is used by the Turks, which, as more complete and detailed, is more intelligible.

The operation consists of various parts: first, the seasoning of the body ; second, the manipulation of the muscles ; third, the peeling of the epidermis ; fourth, the soaping , and the patient is then conducted to the bed of repose . These are the five acts of the drama. There are three essential apartments in the building: a great hall or mustaby , open to the outer air; a middle chamber, where the heat is moderate; the inner hall, which is properly the thermæ . The first scene is acted in the middle chamber; the next three in the inner chamber, and the last in the outer hall. The time occupied is from two to four hours, and the operation is repeated once a week.

On raising the curtain which covers the entrance to the street, you find yourself in a hall circular, octagonal, or square, covered with a dome open in the centre: it may be one hundred feet in height; the Pantheon of Rome may be taken as a model. This is the apodyterium , conclave or spoliatorium of the Romans. In the middle, a basin of water, the “sea” of the Jews, the “piscinum” of the Romans, is raised by masonry about four feet; a fountain plays in the centre. Plants, sometimes trellises, are trained over or around the fountain, and by it is placed the stall to supply coffee, pipes, or nargelles. All round there is a platform, varying in breadth from four to twelve feet, and raised about three; here couches are placed, which I shall presently describe. You are conducted to an unoccupied couch to undress; your clothes are folded and deposited in a napkin and tied up; you are arrayed in the bathing costume, which consists of three towels about two yards long and under a yard in width, thickened in the centre with pendant loops of the thread, so as to absorb the moisture, soft and rough without being flabby or hard, with broad borders in blue or red of raw silk. This gives to this costume an air of society, and takes from it the stamp of the laundry or wash-house. One is wrapped with an easy fold round the head, so as to form a high and peculiar, but not ungraceful turban; the second is bound round the loins, and falls to the middle of the leg; this is the ordinary costume of the attendants in the bath, and appears to be the costume known in antiquity as περίζωμα , præcinctorium , and subligaculum , and which have been of difficult interpretation, as implying at once a belt and a clothing. The third is thrown over the shoulder like a scarf: they are called Pistumal , as are all towels, but the proper name is Futa , a word borrowed, as the stuff is, from Morocco. While you change your linen, two attendants hold a cloth before you. In these operations, which appear to dispense of necessity with clothing and concealment, the same scrupulous attention is observed. It extends to the smallest children. I have been on a bathing excursion to the sea-side, where a child under four years was disappointed of his dip because his bathing drawers had been forgotten. There is nothing which more shocks an Eastern than our want of decorum; and I have known instances of servants assigning this as a reason for refusing to remain in Europe, or to come to it.

Thus attired, you step down from the platform height; wooden pattens,— nalma in Turkish, cob cob in Arabic,—are placed for your feet, to keep you off the hot floors, and the dirty water running off by the entrances and passages; two attendants take you, one by each arm above the elbow—walking behind and holding you. The slamming doors are pushed open, and you enter the region of steam.

Each person is preceded by a mattress and a cushion, which are removed the moment he has done with them, that they may not get damp. The apartment he now enters is low and small; very little light is admitted; sometimes, indeed, the day is excluded, and the small flicker of a lamp enables you to perceive indistinctly its form and occupants. The temperature is moderate, the moisture slight, the marble floor on both sides is raised about eighteen inches, the lower and centre part being the passage between the two halls. This is the tepidarium . Against the wall your mattress and cushion are placed, the rest of the chamber being similarly occupied: the attendants now bring coffee, and serve pipes. The object sought in this apartment is a natural and gentle flow of perspiration; to this are adapted the subdued temperature and moisture; for this the clothing is required, and the coffee and pipe; and, in addition, a delicate manipulation is undergone, which does not amount to shampooing: the sombre air of the apartment calms the senses, and shuts out the external world. [25]

During the subsequent parts of the operation, you are either too busy or too abstracted for society; the bath is essentially sociable, and this is the portion of it so appropriated—this is the time and place where a stranger makes acquaintance with a town or village. Whilst so engaged, a boy kneels at your feet and chafes them, or behind your cushion, at times touching or tapping you on the neck, arm, or shoulder, in a manner which causes the perspiration to start.

2nd Act. —You now take your turn for entering the inner chamber: there is in this point no respect for persons, and rank gives no precedence, [26] but you do not move until the bathman, the tellack of the Turks, the nekaës of the Arabs, the tractator of the Romans, has passed his hand under your bathing linen, and is satisfied that your skin is in a proper state. He then takes you by the arm as before, your feet are again pushed into the pattens, the slamming door of the inner region is pulled back, and you are ushered into the adytum ,—a space such as the centre dome of a cathedral, filled—not with dull and heavy steam—but with gauzy and mottled vapour, through which the spectre-like inhabitants appear, by the light of tinted rays, which, from stars of stained glass in the vault, struggle to reach the pavement, through the curling mists. The song, the not unfrequent shout, the clapping, not of hands, but sides; [27] the splashing of water and clank of brazen bowls reveals the humour and occupation of the inmates, who, here divested of all covering save the scarf round the loins, with no distinction between bathers and attendants, and with heads as bare as bodies and legs, are seen passing to and fro through the mist, or squatted or stretched out on the slabs, exhibiting the wildest contortions, or bending over one another, and appearing to inflict and to endure torture. A stranger might be in doubt whether he beheld a foundry or Tartarus; whether the Athenian gymnasia were restored, or he had entered some undetected vault of the Inquisition. That is the sudatorium . The steam is raised by throwing water on the floor, [28] and its clearness comes from the equal temperature of the air and walls.

Under the dome there is an extensive platform of marble slabs: on this you get up; the clothes are taken from your head and shoulders; one is spread for you to lie on, the other is rolled for your head; you lie down on your back; the tillak (two, if the operation is properly performed) kneels at your side, and bending over, gripes and presses your chest, arms, and legs, passing from part to part, like a bird shifting its place on a perch. He brings his whole weight on you with a jerk, follows the line of muscle with anatomical thumb, [29] draws the open hand strongly over the surface, particularly round the shoulder, turning you half up in so doing; stands with his feet on the thighs and on the chest and slips down the ribs; then up again three times; and lastly, doubling your arms one after the other on the chest, pushes with both hands down, beginning at the elbow, and then, putting an arm under the back and applying his chest to your crossed elbows, rolls on you across till you crack. You are now turned on your face, and, in addition to the operation above described, he works his elbow round the edges of your shoulder-blade, and with the heel plies hard the angle of the neck; he concludes by hauling the body half up by each arm successively, while he stands with one foot on the opposite thigh. [30] You are then raised for a moment to a sitting posture, and a contortion given to the small of the back with the knee, and a jerk to the neck by the two hands holding the temples.

3rd Act. —Round the sides there are cocks for hot and cold water over marble basins, a couple of feet in diameter, where you mix to the temperature you wish. You are now seated on a board on the floor at one of these fountains, with a copper cup [31] to throw water over you when wanted. The tellak puts on the glove—it is of camel’s hair, not the horrid things recently brought forth in England. He stands over you; you bend down to him, and he commences from the nape of the neck in long sweeps down the back till he has started the skin; he coaxes it into rolls, keeping them in and up till within his hand they gather volume and length; he then successively strikes and brushes them away, and they fall right and left as if spilt from a dish of macaroni. The dead matter which will accumulate in a week forms, when dry, a ball of the size of the fist. I once collected it, and had it dried—it is like a ball of chalk: this was the purpose for which the strigil was used. In our ignorance we have imagined it to be a horse-scraper to clear off the perspiration, or for other purposes equally absurd. [32]

4th Act. —Hitherto soap has not touched the skin. By it, however strange it may appear to us, [33] the operation would be spoiled—the shampooing would be impossible, and the epidermis would not come off; this I know by experience. The explanation may be, that the alkali of the soap combines chemically with the oily matter, and the epidermis loses the consistency it must have to be detached by rolling. A large wooden bowl is now brought; in it is a lump of soap with a sort of powder-puff of liff , [34] for lathering. Beginning by the head, the body is copiously soaped and washed twice, and part of the contents of the bowl is left for you to conclude and complete the operation yourself. Then approaches an acolyte, with a pile of hot folded futas on his head, he holding a dry cloth spread out in front—you rise, having detached the cloth from your waist, and holding it before you: at that moment another attendant dashes on you a bowl of hot water. You drop your wet cloth; the dry one is passed round your waist, another over your shoulders; each arm is seized; you are led a step or two and seated; the shoulder cloth is taken off, another put on, the first over it; another is folded round the head; your feet are already in the wooden pattens. You are wished health; you return the salute, rise, and are conducted by both arms to the outer hall.

I must not here omit all mention of an interlude in which Europeans take no part. The Mussulmans get rid of superfluous hair by shaving or depilation. [35] The depilatory is composed of orpiment and quick lime, called in Turkish ot , in Arabic dewa . The bather retires to a cell without door, but at the entrance of which he suspends his waist towel; the bath-man brings him a razor, if he prefers it, or a lump of the ot about the size of a walnut. In two or three minutes after applying it the hair is ready to come off, and a couple of bowls of water leave the skin entirely bare, not without a flush from the corrosiveness of the preparation. [36]

The platform round the hall is raised and divided by low balustrades into little compartments, where the couches of repose are arranged, so that while having the uninterrupted view all round, parties or families may be by themselves. This is the time and place for meals. The bather having reached this apartment is conducted to the edge of the platform, to which there is only one high step. You drop the wooden patten, and on the matting a towel is spread anticipating your foot-fall. The couch is in the form of a letter M. [37] spread out, and as you rest on it the weight is everywhere directly supported—every tendon, every muscle is relaxed; the mattress fitting, as it were, into the skeleton: there is total inaction, and the body appears to be suspended. [38] The attendants then re-appear, and gliding like noiseless shadows, stand in a row before you. The coffee is poured out and presented: the pipe follows; or, if so disposed, you may have sherbet or fruit; the sweet or water melons are preferred, and they come in piles of lumps large enough for a mouthful; or you may send and get kebobs on a skewer; and if inclined to make a positive meal at the bath, this is the time.

The hall is open to the heavens, but nevertheless a boy with a fan of feathers, or a napkin, drives the cool air upon you. The Turks have given up the cold immersion of the Romans, yet so much as this they have retained of it, and which realizes the end which the Romans had in view to prevent the after breaking out of the perspiration; but it is still a practice amongst the Turks to have cold water thrown upon the feet. The nails of hands and feet are dexterously pared with a sort of oblique chisel; any callosities that remain on the feet are rubbed down: during this time the linen is twice changed. [39] These operations do not interrupt the chafing of the soles, [40] and the gentle putting on of the outside of the folds of linen which I have mentioned in the first stage. The body has come forth shining like alabaster, fragrant as the cistus, sleek as satin, and soft as velvet. The touch of your own skin is electric. Buffon has a wonderful description of Adam’s surprise and delight at his first touch of himself. It is the description of the human sense when the body is brought back to its purity. The body thus renewed, the spirit wanders abroad, and reviewing its tenement rejoices to find it clean and tranquil. There is an intoxication or dream that lifts you out of the flesh, and yet a sense of life and consciousness that spreads through every member. Each breastful of air seems to pass, not to the heart but to the brain, and to quench, not the pulsations of the one, but the fancies of the other. That exaltation which requires the slumber of the senses—that vividness of sense that drowns the visions of the spirit—are simultaneously engaged in calm and unspeakable luxury: you condense the pleasures of many scenes, and enjoy in an hour the existence of years.

But “this too will pass.” [41] The visions fade, the speed of the blood thickens, the breath of the pores is checked, the crispness of the skin returns, the fountains of strength are opened; you seek again the world and its toils; and those who experience these effects and vicissitudes for the first time exclaim, “I feel as if I could leap over the moon.” Paying your pence according to the tariff of your deserts, you walk forth a king from the gates which you had entered a beggar.

This chief of luxuries is common, in a barbarous land and under a despotism, to every man, woman, and child; to the poorest as to the richest, and to the richest no otherwise and no better than to the poorest. [42] But how is it paid for? How can it be within the reach of the poor? They pay according to their means. What each person gives is put into a common stock; the box is opened once a week, and the distribution of the contents is made according to a scale: the master of the bath comes in for his share just like the rest. A person of distinction will give a pound or more; the common price that, at Constantinople, a tradesman would pay, was from tenpence to a shilling, workmen from twopence to threepence. In a village near Constantinople, where I spent some months, the charge for men was a halfpenny, [43] for women three farthings. A poor person will lay down a few parahs to show that he has not more to give, and where the poor man is so treated he will give as much as he can. He will not, like the poor Roman, have access alone, but his cup of coffee and a portion of the service like the rest. [44] Such rules are not to be established, but such habits may be destroyed by laws.

This I have observed, that wherever the bath is used it is not confined to any class of the community, as if it was felt to be too good a thing to be denied to any.

I must now conduct the reader into the Moorish bath. First, there was no bath linen. They go in naked. Then there is but one room, under which there is an oven, and a pot, open into the bath, is boiling on the fire below. There were no pattens—the floor burning hot—so we got boards. At once the operation commenced, which is analogous to the glove. There was a dish of gazule, for the shampooer to rub his hands in. I was seated on the board, with my legs straight out before me; the shampooer seated himself on the same board behind me, stretching out his legs. He then made me close my fingers upon the toes of his feet, by which he got a purchase against me, and rubbing his hands in the gazule, commenced upon the middle of my back, with a sharp motion up and down, between beating and rubbing, his hands working in opposite directions. After rubbing in this way the back, he pulled my arms through his own and through each other, twisting me about in the most extraordinary manner, and drawing his fingers across the region of the diaphragm, so as to make me, a practised bather, shriek. After rubbing in this way the skin, and stretching at the same time the joints of my upper body, he came and placed himself at my feet, dealing with my legs in like manner. Then thrice taking each leg and lifting it up, he placed his head under the calf, and raising himself, scraped the leg as with a rough brush, for his shaved head had the grain downwards. The operation concluded by his biting my heel.

The bath becomes a second nature, and long privation so increases the zest, that I was not disposed to be critical; but, if by an effort of the imagination I could transport the Moorish bath to Constantinople, and had then to choose between the hamâm of Eshi Serai or my own at home, and this one of the Moors, I must say, I never should see the inside of a Moorish bath again. It certainly does clear off the epidermis, work the flesh, excite the skin, set at work the absorbent and exuding vessels, raise the temperature, apply moisture;—but the refinements and luxuries are wanting.

A great deal of learning has been expended upon the baths of the ancients, and a melancholy exhibition it is—so much acuteness and research, and no profit. The details of these wonderful structures, the evidences of their usefulness, have prompted no prince, no people of Europe to imitate them, and so acquire honour for the one, health for the other. The writers, indeed, present not living practices, but cold and ill-assorted details, as men must do who profess to describe what they themselves do not comprehend. From what I have said, the identity of the Turkish bath, with that of the Romans, will be at once perceived, and the apparent discrepancies and differences explained. The apodyterium is the mustaby or entrance-hall; after this comes the sweating-apartment, subdivided by difference of degrees. Then two operations are performed, shampooing, and the clearing off of the epidermis. The Romans had in the tepidarium and the sudatorium distinct attendants for the two operations; the first shampooer receiving the appropriate name of tractator ; the others, who used the strigil, which was equivalent to the glove, being called suppetones . The appearance of the strigil in no way alters the character of the operation. They used sponges also for rubbing down, like the Moorish gazule. They used no soap; neither do the Moors;—the Turks use it after the operation is concluded. The Laconicum I understood when I saw the Moorish bath, with the pot of water, heated from the fire below, boiling up into the bath. I then recollected that there is in the Turkish baths an opening, by which the steam from the boilers can be let in, although not frequently so used, nor equally placed within observation. Many of the Turkish baths have, doubtless, been originally Greek. The change in respect to the use of cold water is compensated for [45] by the cold air of the outer room, into which the Turks come, and is preserved in the partial use of cold water for the feet. The hot-water reservoirs, the labrum and solium , are still to be seen in the private baths; they are in those of the Alhambra. When used, the character of running water, an essential point among the Turks, is given to them, by a hole being left below, which is unplugged, and a stream kept running in above from a cock. It would appear that the Romans followed the same method. The piscinum of the Romans is found in the Moorish gardens. In the use of depilatories, or the shaving off the hair, the practice of the Turks is exactly that of the Romans; the parts of the bath appropriated to that purpose being the same. The olearea are alone wanting. The Mussulmans would consider this smearing of the body with oil or ointments not as a part of the bath, but a defilement, for which the purification of the bath was requisite. [46]

The Romans used the bath to excess, taking it daily; the Mussulmans restricted its use to once a-week. The Romans entered the bath naked; the Mussulmans have introduced a bathing costume; the Romans allowed the two sexes to enter promiscuously, the Mussulmans have wholly separated them. Preserving the good, they have purified it from excesses, which, to a people of less discrimination, might have appeared to constitute its essential characters, or to be entailed as its necessary consequences. Our studies and learning have furnished us with no such results. These very excesses have been assigned as a reason for the disuse of the bath by the early Christians. If the explanation were true, the difference between the Christians and the Mussulmans would amount to this, that the first could see and reject the evil, the second perceive and select the good.

There is one point connected with the bath on which I must say a few words, especially as in this case our usages do not present any obstacle to the adoption of a good habit, and I have repeatedly had the gratification of finding that the suggestions which follow were of use.

Those who wash the rest of their body, often except the head;—the practice of smearing it with oil almost universally prevails. The Easterns do the reverse—they shave it. A greater comfort there cannot be than a bald pate. Washing the head is in no case prejudicial. Unless you wash the head, the washing of the body is neither complete nor satisfactory: the refreshment of washing the head may often be procured when it is impossible to wash the body. Soap and water are injurious, not to the hair, but to the hair-dressers. The men in the East have no hair to show, but if soap and water injure the hair, whence comes the luxuriant abundance of that of the women? The hair of the head, like the fur of animals, is made to bear rain and wind, and to be a protection against them. You cover it up! The fur of animals thickens and strengthens when exposed to air and wet. Your hair falls off, and you oil it. If it grows weak, change its habits. If it is not washed, and if it is oiled, begin to wash it, and leave off oiling it.

Every week an Eastern lady has her hair thoroughly washed at the bath. It is first well soaped and rubbed. They are very particular about soap, and use none but that made of olive oil. The Castile soap, which in this country is sold at the apothecary’s, is the soap the least injurious to the skin. This is twice repeated. After the soap, they apply a paste of Armenian bole and rose-leaves. This is rubbed into the roots of the hair, and left to imbibe all the grease of the head; it is then, like the soap, washed off with bowls of hot water, and leaves the locks perfectly clean and silken. From time to time they dye it. On these occasions an attendant mixes up a handful of henna-dust in hot water, and thoroughly smears with it the hair, which is then turned up into a ball and bound tightly with a napkin. In this state they go through the bath. When the napkin is removed, and the henna-paste washed out, the hair, if before black, will have become of a bronze auburn, and if grey, red. The bath occupies from three to four hours, with the smoking, chatting, music, and dancing, which accompany it, in an atmosphere that excludes every unpleasant sensation. The women are not, like the men, contented with the bathing-linen and apparatus, which they find there; but are followed by female slaves, who bear bundles of towels in silk and satin wrappers, boxwood pattens, incrusted with mother of pearl, silver basins and bowls, or sometimes enamelled ones, and aloe-wood and ambergris to perfume both the apartment and their coffee. This finery is less than what they indulge in in their private baths.

The Romans and Greeks, in like manner, were accompanied by their slaves, and did not trust to the service of the thermæ . Each person brought his strigil and his anointing vase (strigilis et ampulla, λήκυθος καὶ ξύστρα ), [47] or sent them by his slave. The practice furnishes the familiar metaphors which express the different conditions. [48] The strigil was the sign of comfort, and also of sobriety and industry. It was, according to Cicero, necessary to the happiness of the Roman citizen; it had to do with the fortunes of the Roman state. Rome was indebted to her strigil as well as her sword for the conquest of the world.

This constant washing occasions, it may be supposed, an enormous waste of water. A Turk uses less water than an English gentleman. It is true, every Turk, high and low, uses the same quantity, and washes in the same manner; but the utensils and conveniences are differently adapted. There are no wash-hand basins and ewers in bedrooms, no foot-pans, hip-baths, shower-baths, &c. They do not dabble in dirty water, defiling a great quantity. They wash under a stream of water, running from a fountain, urn, or ewer. A handful serves to moisten the soap and to rub with it, and a couple more rinse it completely off. The fountains are placed in the passages, staircases, &c. By the mosques, and in the streets, they are so arranged that, by sitting on a step, you can wash the feet and the head. When you wash in a room, one attendant brings the basin, laen , with its pierced cover and kneels before you; another the ewer, ibrik , with its long, narrow neck to pour the water. [49] In the bath, steam and perspiration cleanse, and two or three large saucerfuls suffice for rinsing;—fifty persons may be bathed with the water that serves to fill our trough for washing one.

What a difference it makes in domestic comfort to be certain that every person around you, and every thing you touch and eat are absolutely clean! After this manner of life, the habits of Europe are most painful: you are constantly oppressed with the touch, or sight, or knowledge of things which, by the European, are not considered clean, and submitted to as unavoidable. It would but faintly describe my impressions to say, that I felt as if passing from a refined to a rude condition of society. Neither do we know how to cultivate or handle the body. One of the first thoughts was, “What shall I do in sickness?” All Europe’s seductions and luxuries put together will not make up for this one.

The European is clean, in so far as he is so, for appearance; he has clothes and shoe-brushes, blacking, starch, smoothing-irons, &c.; in these consist his neatness . [50] The clean shirt is put upon the dirty body; the hands and face being alone open to the air and sun and the eyes of the neighbours, are washed. Nothing is filthy that is unseen. [51] The Eastern has no brush or blacking; no care is expended or expense incurred for neatness. He has his religious ablutions for prayer. [52] He will not tell you that he washes for his comfort or his health, but because it would be a sin not to do so.

Whatever proceeds from the body is impure; to touch anything with it is sinful, were it even a beast. To spit on a dog is wicked. [53] If by act or accident the Mussulman is rendered unclean he has to wash himself. The soiling of his carpet may entail the ablution of the whole body; while it remains unperformed he is ipso facto excommunicated—can take part in no ceremony, say no prayer. He is strictly in the scriptural sense “unclean.” All injunctions of the same sort are in like manner enforced. These are the first lessons taught the child, and become a second nature; and, re-acting on the belief from which they spring, give to it that surprising hold over the mind. They pass through life, generation after generation, without probably a single instance of the infringement of rules brought into operation every hour of the day.

Following the instinct of the dog, and obeying the injunction of the ceremonial law, [54] their canon law inhibits defilement of the public roads, the streets, water-tanks and courses, fruit-trees, and any places which serve for resort, shade, repose, or retreat. [55] In “Hadji Baba” is a ludicrous account of the perplexities of a Persian in one of the modern adaptations of civilization to cleanliness—his ineffectual attempts to get at the gushing water, his inability to work the machinery or comprehend the purpose. In that part of their house there is a water-cock for use. The flooring is of marble—the water falls and runs, and high wooden pattens are used. The outer cloth garments are left outside—the ample sleeves are tucked up. If there be no fixed pipe a ewer is at hand, and a servant waits outside with basin, ewer, and napkin. In consequence of the offices attached to every mosque, their cities do not present offensive smells, disgusting filth and revolting indecency. One hand is set apart for noble, the other for ignoble service. The left hand on its dying day has not so much as touched the mouth; the right is in equal ignorance of other parts of the body. This is the natural sense of the words: “Let not thy right hand know what thy left hand doeth.” [56]

I have not hesitated to allude to matters which our false refinement forbids to mention, and thus the sensibility given us to put away what is impure is diverted merely to its concealment. The reader must fill up this faint sketch from his imagination, and when he has done so, he will understand why an Eastern cannot endure Europe, and why Christians amongst Mussulmans are called “dogs.” [57]

Why should the ladies of the East have enjoyments from which ours are debarred, and sensations too of which they know nothing? It may be said the Turkish ladies so make up for their “exclusion from society:”—they have no balls or operas, morning concerts or fancy fairs, and therefore they take up with these merely sensual indulgences. They would no more exchange their bath for your balls, than you would your balls for a Yankee camp-meeting. There is no necessity for exchange. Why not have both? Would it be no comfort, no pleasure, no benefit to an English lady, on returning from a ball, and before going to bed, to be able, divested of whalebone and crinoline, and robed as an Atalanta, to enter marble chambers with mosaic floors, and be refreshed and purified from the toil she has undergone, and prepared for the soft enjoyment of the rest she seeks? The hanging gardens of Babylon were devised by the love of Nature of a Median woman; the palaces and groves of the Azahra laid out by the taste of a Numidian:—why should not England owe to the delicacy of an Englishwoman [58] the restoration of the thermæ ?

Our intercourse with the lower orders is broken off by there being no settled occasion on which we are in contact with them, and by the want of cleanliness in their persons. Here both classes are constantly brought into the presence of each other. Contempt and distaste are removed on one side, degradation and irritation on the other: they know one another: the intercourse of various ranks requires and sustains a style and demeanour which strike all Europeans, who are astonished that the bearing of the peasant is as courtly as that of the Pasha: he is as clean as the Pasha. Think of a country where difference of rank makes no difference of cleanliness! What must Easterns think of us where the difference of condition can be traced—in speech, manner, and washing. The bath is of as great value to the society as to the individual. A political economist, glorifying his age, exclaims—“Augustus in all his splendour had neither glass for his window nor a shirt to his back.” The slave and the beggar in Rome were daily in the enjoyment of luxuries which no European monarch knows.

There is an impression that the bath is weakening. We can test this in three ways; its effects on those debilitated by disease, on those exhausted by fatigue, and on those who are long exposed to it.

1. In affection of the lungs and intermittent fever, the bath is invariably had recourse to against the debilitating nightly perspirations. The temperature is kept low, not to increase the action of the heart or the secretions; this danger avoided, its effect is to subdue by a healthy perspiration in a waking state the unhealthy one in sleep. No one ever heard of any injury from the bath. The moment a person is ailing he is hurried off to it.

2. After long and severe fatigue—that fatigue such as we never know—successive days and nights on horseback—the bath affords the most astonishing relief. Having performed long journeys on horseback, even to the extent of ninety-four hours, without taking rest, I know by experience its effects in the extremest cases.

A Tartar, having an hour to rest, prefers a bath to sleep. He enters as if drugged with opium, and leaves it, his senses cleared, and his strength restored as much as if he had slept for several hours. This is not to be attributed to the heat or moisture alone, but to the shampooing, which in such cases is of an extraordinary nature. The Tartar sits down and doubles himself up; the shampooer (and he selects the most powerful man) then springs with his feet on his shoulders, cracking his vertebræ; with all his force and weight he pummels the whole back, and then turning him on his back and face, aided by a second shampooer, tramples on his body and limbs: the Tartar then lays himself down for half an hour; and, perhaps, though that is not necessary, sleeps. Well can I recall the hamâm doors which I have entered, scarcely able to drag one limb after the other, and from which I have sprung into my saddle again, elastic as a sinew and light as a feather.

You will see a Hammal (porter), a man living only on rice, go out of one of those baths where he has been pouring with that perspiration which we think must prostrate and weaken, and take up his load of five hundred-weight, placing it unaided on his back.

3. The shampooers spend eight hours daily in the steam; they undergo great labour there, shampooing, perhaps, a dozen persons, and are remarkably healthy. They enter the bath at eight years of age: the duties of the younger portion are light, and chiefly outside in the hall to which the bathers retire after the bath; still, there they are from that tender age exposed to the steam and heat, so as to have their strength broken, if the bath were debilitating. The best shampooer under whose hands I have ever been, was a man whose age was given me as ninety, and who, from eight years of age, had been daily eight hours in the bath. This was at the natural baths of Sophia. I might adduce in like manner the sugar-bakers in London, who in a temperature not less than that of the bath, undergo great fatigue, and are also remarkably healthy.

The Romans furnish another example. Unlike the Arabs, who restrict its use to once a week, they went into it daily. The temperature was gradually raised, until in the time of Nero it came to be excessive. Their habits in other respects were not such as to be conducive to health, and must have disqualified them for enduring the bath: if it did debilitate, it served therefore as an antidote to their manner of life, and relieved the excess of the Patrician, as it does to-day the fatigue of the Tartar.

Life is chemical and galvanic, but both these agencies result in, and depend upon, motion: the vessels are constructed for conveying fluids, the muscles for generating power. Thus, shampooing exerts over the human body a power analogous to that of drugs administered by the mouth. A blow which kills, a posture which benumbs;—pressure, which in long disease becomes a chief obstacle to recovery, exercise which gives health and strength—are all evidences of the influence of motion over our system.

Who has not experienced in headaches and other pains, relief from the most unartful rubbing? You receive a blow, and involuntarily rub the part. Cold will kill; the remedy is brandy and friction. The resources of this process surely deserve to be developed with as much care as that which has been bestowed upon the Materia Medica. Where practised, human suffering is relieved, obstructions are removed, indigestion is cured, paralysis and diseases of the spine, &c., arising from the loss of muscular power, are within its reach, while they are not under the control of our medicines. Here is a new method to add to the old. Wherever it can be employed, how much is it to be preferred to nauseating substances taken into the stomach; how much must the common practice of it tend to preserve the vitality of the whole frame! Even if disregarded as an enjoyment of health, it offers a solace which ought to be invaluable in the eye of a medical man, as of course it must be of the patient. We have all to play that part.

Where the practice is familiar, it is used not merely in the bath, but upon all occasions. It is to be found without the bath, as among the Hindoos, some Tartar tribes, the Chinese, and the Sandwich islands:—the latter presents one of the most remarkable of phenomena. The different ranks are those of different stature. The chiefs are sunk in sloth and immorality; and yet it is not they, who, like the grandees of Spain, are the diminutive and decrepit race;—they are shampooed. [59] A practice which our epicures and our stoics, our patients and our doctors, would turn up the nose at, counteracts the consequences of gluttony, intoxication, debauchery, and sloth, and supplies the place of exercise and temperance; and a people which can boast no school of philosophy, whose nostrils have never been regaled by the compounds of Beauvilliers, and whose pulse has never been stretched out to a Halden, is able to combine the health of the Brahmin with the indulgence of the Sybarite, and the frame of the gymnast with the habits of the hog.

Turner in his Embassy to Thibet, ( p. 84), describes the gylong or class of priests, as “more athletic” than their countrymen, although they “lead a life in an extreme degree sedentary and recluse.” They perform ablutions in which their compatriots do not join. The physical superiority of the aristocracy of England may be owing to a similar cause, cleanliness being with us a mark of station.

In Denmark, shampooing has recently been hit upon as a scientific process, and a college has been instituted, as I understand, with considerable success, for the practice of what they are pleased to call medicina mechanica .

What am I to say of our medical science, what of our medical practitioners, what of our philanthropy, what of our selfishness, in not having the bath as a means of curing disease? [60] Never was a people more heroically self-denying or extravagantly insensate. We must love the racking of pain, the flavour of drugs, and the totals of apothecaries’ bills; for with our classical acquirements and love of travel, we cannot be ignorant, that all maladies, with the exception of epidemical ones, were less common in Rome than in modern London, notwithstanding our many advantages from the improved state of medical knowledge; and that several painful diseases common amongst us were exceedingly rare amongst the ancients, and are almost unknown in Mahometan countries. There are those who are of opinion that contagious disorders, “dreadful scourges of the human race, might never have taken root, nor if they had, would now be spread so widely, had the hot bath been in use amongst us.” [61]

The human body is formed for labour, and requires it, and this labour is accompanied by perspiration. It is the safety-valve for the heart, the sewer for the secretions; the scavenger for the skin. Those who are thrown repeatedly into perspiration, possess, however seldom washed, many advantages over those who have not to undergo severe bodily toil, however often they may use soap and water to the surface.

The bath substitutes an artificial and easy perspiration, and this explains the extraordinary fact, that the people who use it do not require exercise for health, and can pass from the extreme of indolence to that of toil.

The functions for carrying on life are of the nature of a steam-engine, and a chemical apparatus: lethal gases are given forth as from a furnace; poisons are produced by every organ; from every function there is residuum, and the body, while soiled by labour, is rusted by repose. This rust, this residuum deposits on the skin.

The extremities of the vessels become charged with unctuous matter; the deadened cellules of the epidermis are covered with a varnish, which is partly insoluble in water, and this internal accumulation and external coating prevent the skin from performing its functions, which are not confined to those of shielding the body, but are essential to the chemical processes within. The skin has analogous duties to those of the lungs, supplying oxygen to the blood at the extremity of its course, and when most completely in need of it. It has to aid at the same time the action of the heart. In its health is their health, and its health is cleanliness. Unlike the two other organs, it is placed within man’s reach, and confided to his care; and curiously interspersed through it are glands secreting peculiar odours, that the touch and sight shall not alone warn, but a third sense be enlisted in this guardianship, crying aloud on every remissness, and charging and reciprocating every neglect. [62]

The Russians come out of a bath of 120° to roll themselves in the snow. This we explained by the fervour of the circulation, which enables them to withstand the shock. If so, the strong and healthy might bear it—not the weak and suffering, the octogenarian and the child. The sudden passage from a Russian bath [63] to a glacial atmosphere, is attended by neither shock nor danger; and far from the oppression that would result from the absorption of vital action in the efforts of the heart to overcome the violent contraction of the circulation, by the cold, there is a sense of ineffable relief. You seem to take in and throw forth your breath in mere playfulness, no longer dependent upon it momentarily for life. In fact, the lungs and heart are discharged in part from the toil of that unceasing labour, which, beginning with the cradle, ends with the grave. Of what service must it not be to aid a machine, the efforts of which, in the most delicate girl, are equal to a steam-engine of fourteen horse-power? [64]

Who can reflect on this, and be content with mere wonder, nor bethink himself of the means by which the purposes of Nature can be aided, and the gifts of Providence enjoyed? [65]

The bath has the effect of several classes of medicines; that is to say, it removes the symptoms for which they are administered; thus, it is a cathartic, a diuretic, a tonic, a detersive, a narcotic; but the effect is produced only when there is cause. It will bring sleep to the patient suffering from insomnia, but will not, like opium, make the healthy man drowsy; and relieve constipation without bringing on the healthy—as aloes would—diarrhœa: it is thus a drug, which administers itself according to the need, and brings no after-consequences.

The opium-like effect has often been remarked, and I have repeatedly experienced after the bath sensations like those it produces. If it has not the same power in relieving bodily pain, it has unquestionably that of assuaging mental suffering. It is quite as natural an impulse amongst Easterns, to seek the bath when they are labouring under affliction as when disposed to give way to gladness. And this may be considered as one part of its curative virtues, having the faculty of calming the disturbed spirit without extinguishing, and indeed while increasing, the dispositions to cheerfulness.

Reader! consider that this is not a drug in a shop, to be exhibited by prescription after a visit to a patient. It would be something if I suggested a new simple, or an improved plan of administering a known remedy in any one disorder. It would be much by such a suggestion to diminish in a few cases the pains of sciatica or of rheumatism, the tortures of gout or stone; what I suggest, is a habit , one which shall become, when adopted, that of the whole people.

A bath might be had for one quarter of the price of a glass of gin; for we have water in more abundance, and at a cheaper rate than at Rome.

To substantiate this estimate, I prepared some calculations, but having visited the baths and washhouses recently established, I find the case illustrated to my hand by practice, and affording an entire confirmation of all, and more than all, that I have said. It is not long since that there was not a hot bath to be got in London under two shillings; what would then have been said if any one had had the hardihood to advance, that hot baths might be got for two-pence? and that bathing establishments, charging from one penny for cold baths up to sixpence, should become profitable concerns? Such nevertheless is the fact. There is here no new idea, no new process, no new demands: it has simply been suggested to build larger establishments, and to throw them open at a smaller sum; so that we have hitherto been deprived of these advantages through the partial blindness of those who have, in as far as they do see, deplored the blindness of others, not thinking that probably other films intercepted their own sight.

I will therefore take the result obtained in these baths and wash-houses, as the basis of the calculation which I wish to establish. For a thousand baths, the charge for water varies from twenty to twenty-eight shillings; the coals for fuel from fifteen to thirty shillings; the other charges from fifteen to twenty shillings. In all these cases, the lower sum is of course above what the charge will be when experience has pointed out improvements and economy. Taking the most economical of these establishments, we have baths at the rate of fifty shillings a thousand, that is, at a little more than a halfpenny a piece. The allowance of water for each bath is forty-five gallons; fuel enters for one-third into the charge: reducing these charges to what would be incurred in the Turkish bath, there would be a saving of eight-ninths for the water, and probably five-sixths for the fuel, and an entire saving for the charge of attendance for the poorer classes, (the σεαυτοὺς βαλνεύσουντες ); thus we should have on the thousand baths, the charge for water and fuel reduced from thirty-five to five shillings; and the charge of attendance being withdrawn from the poorer classes, the expense incurred would amount to one penny for sixteen baths, or four baths for a farthing.

Here I am going upon the data supplied by these bathing establishments, where the water is furnished to them at a very low price, namely, fifteen shillings for the one thousand barrels, of thirty gallons, and where the coals consumed are of an inferior quality, at nine shillings a ton; and these are the points in which England and its capital possess such great advantages. In these establishments they can furnish between one and two thousand baths a-day, at an outlay of 15 l. or 16 l. a-week; and as the experiment has so far so well succeeded, two hundred of them would supply London, at the rate of a bath to each person, weekly, for which the weekly expenditure would be 3000 l. or 150,000 l. per annum, which would occasion a daily use of 126,000,000 of gallons of water. In the Turkish manner, the expenditure of water would be 15,000,000; and taking the proportionate saving in fuel, there would be a saving of one half the outlay, or 75,000 l. a-year; but, as the facility thus afforded, and the habits so engendered, would lead in our climate, and in our circumstances, to a much more frequent use of the bath than once a-week, and as it would constantly be had recourse to by the lower orders, without their going through the whole process, the establishments would have to be proportionately larger, and the expenditure greater. At all events, it is now no longer a theoretical matter: these baths are in use, and are extending; and the question is, whether we shall introduce a perfect instead of a defective method—an economical instead of an expensive one. But, if this new charge be incurred, we have, on the other side, to look forward to the possibility of retrenchments in consequence of the altered habits of the people. The one that first presents itself is the diminution of maladies, doctors’ and apothecaries’ fees and drugs, loss of time from sickness, and attendance;—and here, to say nothing of the different value of life, the saving for London alone will have to be reckoned by millions. Next are temperance and sobriety. At first sight the connection will not appear so immediate; it will, however, be unquestionable to those familiar with countries where the bath is in use. I know of no country, in ancient or modern times, where habits of drunkenness have co-existed with the bath. Misery and cold drive men to the gin-shop: if they had the bath—not the washing-tub, but the sociable hamâm, to repair to—this, the great cause of drunkenness, would be removed; and if this habit of cleanliness were general, restraints would be imposed on such habits by the feelings of self-respect engendered.

Gibbon has indulged in speculations on the consequences for Europe that would have followed, had Charles Martel been defeated on the plains of Tours. One of these effects would have been, that to-day in London there would be no gin-palaces, and a thousand baths.

In London and its suburbs there are nearly two millions of inhabitants; of these, one million and a half at least cannot afford those baths which we use. [66] Deducting a fifth for infants under forty days old, and persons confined to bed, there would remain twelve hundred thousand, so that two hundred thousand bodies, which now carry their filth from the cradle to the grave, would be daily washed. Judging by the scale of prices at Constantinople [67] or Rome, the cost of a bath might begin from one penny or twopence, and range upwards to five shillings; striking the average at sixpence, we should have 5000 l. daily, or 1,500,000 l. per annum. An ordinary bath will accommodate two hundred persons daily. At Constantinople, for a population of five hundred thousand (Turks) three hundred are requisite. In Cordova, there were nine hundred; in Alexandria, when taken by the Arabs, there were four hundred. One thousand baths would be required for London, and each would have for its support 1500 l. a-year. The cost of erection would be provided, as for hospitals, churches, &c., by foundation, donations, bequests, subscriptions, or municipal charges.

The poor of England have never had an opportunity of knowing the comfort which is derived on a cold day from the warmth imparted by such an atmosphere. How many of the wretched inhabitants of London go to their chilly homes in the winter months benumbed with cold, and with no means of recovering their animal warmth but by resorting to spirits and a public-house fire. The same sixpence which will only procure them a quartern of the stimulant, which imparts but a momentary heat, would, if so expended, obtain for them at once warmth and refreshment.

Do not run away with the idea that it is Islamism that prevents the use of spirituous liquors; it is the bath. It satisfies the cravings which lead to those indulgencies, it fills the period of necessary relaxation, and it produces, with cleanliness, habits of self-respect, which are incompatible with intoxication: it keeps the families united, which prevents the squandering of money for such excesses. In Greece and Rome, in their worst times, there was neither “blue ruin” nor “double stout.”

The quantity of malt consumed in former days is referred to as a test of relative well-being. This I do not deny; but there can be no question that pure water is the most wholesome drink, [68] as it is unquestionable, that if London were Mussulman, the operative, as the rest of the population, would bathe regularly, have a better-dressed dinner for his money, and prefer water to wine or brandy, gin or beer. The bath, therefore, would secure at once cleanliness and temperance.

Where Christianity first appeared, cleanliness, like charity or hospitality, was a condition of life. Christ and the apostles went through the legal ablutions. When the relaxation took place at the first council of Jerusalem, in favour of the Gentiles, these points could never have been raised or called in question, for in this respect the habits of the nations were in conformity with the Jewish law. Reference is made to it in the fathers, [69] not as a practice only, but as a duty. [70] In the primitive Church of England the bath was a religious observance: the penitent was in some cases forbidden its use; but then cold bathing was enjoined. Knighthood was originally a religious institution, and the conferring of it is a church ceremony. The aspirant knight prepared himself by the bath . The second distinction which it is in the power of the Sovereign of England to bestow, is entitled “The Order of the Bath.” Now, the Sovereign who confers, and the knights who receive the title, never saw a real bath in their lives. [71]

When tesselated pavements of Caldaria, or fragments of Laconicum and Hypocaust come to light in our streets or fields, the modern Goth gazes with the same stupid wonder, without the same respect [72] with which the barbarians of this land look upon their fathers’ works;—you can tell them the date of their ruins; they could explain to you the use of yours. The Romans could recall the time when their fathers only washed their hands and their feet; [73] the Turks, the time when their fathers washed neither. We have to recall the times when our fathers knew what it was thoroughly to be washed, and to be wholly clean; and, reversing the experience of these people, and combining in our progress their points of departure, we have arrived at washing hands and feet only, or washing neither.

Britain received the bath from the Romans, Ireland from the Phœnicians, [74] Hungary from the Turks, Spain from the Saracens [75] —everywhere it has disappeared. In Greece it was as common as in Turkey. Greece became independent, and the bath took wing. [76] Everywhere throughout Europe the point of departure is cleanliness, the result of progress is filth. How is it that a habit so cleanly, associated with edifices so magnificent, leading to intercourse of the classes of society so useful to the state, and conferring on the poorer orders so large a measure of comforts and enjoyments, should have disappeared, wherever light, learning, taste, liberality have spread? When abstractions have got possession of the brain of a people, you can no more reckon upon its tastes, than upon its acts.

“What ruler in modern times can make a comparison otherwise than degrading to himself between the government over which he presides and those of ancient Greece or Rome? Can he reflect, without taking shame to himself, that the heads of the republics of Athens and Sparta, the tribunes, ædiles, consuls, censors, and emperors of Rome, thought they had not rendered the condition of the poor tolerable, unless they had afforded them the gratuitous enjoyment of baths, theatres, and games, to make them forget for some hours of the day the hardships and privations which poverty brings with it? The boasted happiness of the English common people (if, indeed, any one can be hardy enough to vaunt it now-a-days) is infinitely lower than was that of the plebeians of Greece or Rome.” [77]

The evils of our system do not spring from the violence of passion, but from fallacies. We, of course, cannot grapple with our own fallacies; therefore all that philanthropy and science can do, is to try to heal, one by one, the sores which legislation engenders wholesale. The bath is an idea which the simplest mind may grasp; it is a work which industry, not genius, is required to accomplish. We found hospitals for the sick, we open houses of refuge for the destitute; we have recently been engaged in finding nightly shelter for the homeless; wash-houses have even been established. How many are anxious to find some sort of holiday, or innocent recreation, for the classes, whose commons we have enclosed, and whose festivities we have put down;—how many seek to raise the lower orders in the moral and social scale? A war is waged against drunkenness, immorality, and filthiness in every shape. Here is the effectual weapon!—here is an easy and a certain cure! It is no speculation or theory; if it were so, it would easily find apostles and believers.

The good-will and means that run to waste through our not knowing how to be clean, are enormous. A small town in the New Forest, with Roman daring, planned a bath as a work of public utility, but built it with English coin, of which it took 8000 l. There are steam-apparatus, reservoirs for sea-water, [78] &c. It was a model bathing establishment. It is now selling as bricks and old iron! Close by there are large boilers for evaporating salt, over which, at the cost of a few planks, a Russian vapour-bath might have been had. The use of the vapour was not unknown. There were persons who repaired thither for cutaneous and other disorders, and were cured.

Consider the heat and steam throughout the manufactories of England, which the instinct of a Russian boor, or Laplander, or Red Indian would apply for the benefit of the miserable population engaged in those works, and now allowed to run to sheer waste. The filthiest population exists, with the most extensive means of cleanliness. A nation that boasts of its steam, that is puffed up with its steam, that goes by steam, does not know how to use steam to wash its body, even when it may be had gratis.

The people that has not devised the bath, cannot deserve the character of refinement, and (having the opportunity) that does not adopt it, that of sense. Servility, however, we do possess, and any person of distinction has it in his power to introduce it. That which all despise, when only a thing of use, will be by all rushed after when it becomes a matter of fashion. The sight of a bath of a new fashion, and enjoyed by another people, has impelled me to make this endeavour to regain it for my own. Is Europe ever to remain on the map the black spot of filth? Can she owe the bath only to the Roman sword or Moorish spear? Must she now await the Cossack lance? After ridicule for warning, the day may come that I shall suffer reproach for deprecating the event, and it will be said to me, “ These barbarians, who, Providence-like, have come to compose our troubles; Roman-like, to teach us to be clean.”

[17] A bronze statue of a bather by Lysippus was removed by Tiberius from the baths of Agrippa to his own palace, and placed in his bedroom. The Roman people “infested the emperor with reproaches and hootings whenever he appeared in public, till their Apozymenos was restored to them.”— Pliny’s Nat. His. b. xxxiv. c. 35.

[18] “Nisi ad illam vitam quæ cum virtute degatur ampulla aut strigiles acceperit.”— Cicero , De Fin. l. iv. sec. 12.

[19]

[20] Returning on one occasion to Europe by Belgrade, I brought some Turks by the steamer up to Vienna to show them a little of Europe. After a night on board, my levée proved an awkward business. In a Turkish household all the servants attend their master while he dresses. That is the time to prefer petitions and make complaints. Every one is there, and may say what he likes. On the morning in question, they were mute as statues; knowing the cause, I dared not look at them. They had seen the Europeans wash . Silence being at length broken, they began to narrate what they had seen. Among other jottings for a book of travels they would have mentioned, that a priest had taken water in his mouth, and then slobbered it over his face. I told them that these were not my countrymen, and asked them if they had not seen the two English officers wash (I had observed from the single cabin on deck, which the captain had given up to me, canteen dishes, soap, towels, &c., going down for them); after a pause one of my Turks said, “ Zavale belmester . The unfortunates! they don’t know how!”

[21] Under the Jewish dispensation the body of man was held unclean, but not that of beasts. The observances of the ceremonial law were directed to awaken our sensibilities to expel the impurities attendant on every function.

[22] In the Jassi of Tchengis Khan, washing of the clothes was forbidden, and of the hands or person in running water: he denied that any thing was unclean.

[23] Pliny, urging on Trajan the repairing of the bath of Brusa, says, “The dignity of the city and the splendour of your reign require it.”— l. x. c. 25.

[24] The Turkish is the poorest language in vocables; the most powerful in construction. The verb not rules only, but sustains the sentence: it is dramatic philology.

[25] One of the luxuries of the Roman baths consisted in their brightness, the command of the prospect around, and in various strange contrivances. By one of these, the bather, while swimming in warm water, could see the sea; by another, the figures of the bathers within, were seen magnified without. “They were not content unless they were coloured as well as washed,” says Seneca ( Epist. 87).

This excess of light in a bath, savours of indecency (See Suedon. Apoll. lib. ii. epist. 2). It was not the early practice of Rome, nor certainly of those from whom the Romans took the bath. “Our ancestors,” says Seneca, “did not believe a bath to be warm unless it was obscure.”

“Redde Lupi nobis tenebrosaque balnea Grilli.”— Mart. i. 60.

[26] The Roman expression, “quasi locus in balneis,” was equivalent to “first come, first served.”

[27] The bathing-men give signals for what they want, by striking with the hand on the hollow of the side.

[28] “Let the air of all the rooms he neither particularly hot nor cold, but of a proper temperature, and middling moist; which will be effected by plentifully pouring temperate water from the cistern, so that it may flow through every room.”— Galen. Therap. Meth. lib. x.

[29] “Percurrit agili corpus arte tractatrix manumque doctum spargit omnibus membris.”— Mart. iii. 82.

The tractatrix was the female shampooer.

[30] “Et summum dominæ femur exclamare coegit.”— Juvenal , Sat. vi. v. 422.

[31] These basins are the pelves of the Romans.

[32] “The strigil was used after bathing, to remove the perspiration . The hollow part was to hold oil to soften the skin, or to allow the scraped grease to run off.”— Dennis , vol. ii. p. 426.

[33] Whenever our writers touch on these matters, they fall into inevitable confusion.

“In the baths of the East, the bodies are cleansed by small bags of camels’ hair woven rough, or with a handful of the fine fibres of the Mekha palm-tree combed soft, and filled with fragrant saponaceous earths, which are rubbed on the skin, till the whole body is covered with froth. Similar means were employed in the baths of Greece, and the whole was afterwards cleansed off the skin by gold or silver strigils .”— Manners and Customs of Ancient Greece , J. A. St. John , vol. ii. p. 89.

[34] Nut of the palm, and consequently hard and not fit to use on the person. The Moors, though they do not use soap in the bath, always use their soft liff with their soft soap, which practice the Turks have imperfectly followed.

[35] “Toutes les femmes Mahometanes sont dans l’habitude de s’épiler, et cela encore par principe religieux. Elles y emploient une argile très fine (oth) d’une qualité mordante, les hommes en font de même. Le plus grand nombre cependant se sert du rasoir.”— D’Ohsson , vol. ii. p. 62.

[36] The Romans had the same practice, “Pilos extirpare per psilothri medicamentum.”— Pliny. The terra Media was used, Dioscorides tells us, for depilation.

[37] The duretum introduced by Augustus at Rome: “On trouve alors des lits delicieux: on s’y repose avec volupté, on y éprouve un calme et un bien-être difficiles à exprimer. C’est une sorte de régénération, dont le charme est encore augmenté par des boissons restaurantes, et surtout par un café exquis.” — D’Ohsson , t. vii. p. 63.

[38] “Strange as it may appear, the Orientals, both men and women, are passionately fond of indulging in this formidable luxury; and almost every European who has tried it, speaks with much satisfaction of the result. When all is done, a soft and luxurious feeling spreads itself over your body; every limb is light and free as air; the marble-like smoothness of the skin is delightful; and after all this pommelling, scrubbing, racking, par-boiling, and perspiring, you feel more enjoyment than ever you felt before.”— Chapman and Hall’s Library of Travel .

[39] Galen ( Method. Therap. l. x. c. 10,) says, “Let then one of the servants throw over him a towel, and being placed upon a couch let him be wiped with sponges, and then with soft napkins.” How completely this is the Turkish plan, one familiar with the bath only will understand: explanation would be tedious.

[40] If you desire to be awakened at a certain hour, you are not lugged by the shoulder or shouted at in the ear; the soles of your feet are chafed, and you wake up gently, and with an agreeable sensation. This luxury is not confined to those who have attendants, few or many; the street-porter is so awakened by his wife, or child, or brother, and he in turn renders the same service. The soles of the feet are exposed to a severity of service which no other muscles have to perform, and they require indulgent treatment; but with us they receive none.

[41] Motto of the Vizir of Haroun el Raschid, when required by his master to find one which should apply at once to happiness or adversity.

[42] Volney once entered a Turkish bath, and in horror and dismay, rushed out, and could never be induced to enter one again. Lord Londonderry was more submissive, and endured its tortures to the end; but rejected the coffee, and pipes, and civilities then proffered. He has given us a detail of his sufferings, which appear to have been notional. Sir G. Wilkinson, in his work on Thebes, cites them at length, and this is all that he deems it requisite to tell the strangers who arrive in Egypt, on the subject of the Hamâm.

[43] The charge at Rome was a quadrat, or one farthing; children paid nothing.

In some baths it would appear that even grown persons were admitted gratis.

“Balneum, quo usus fuisset, sine mercede exhibuit.”— Jul. Capit.

[44] A poor man will go to the shambles and cut off a bit of the meat that is hanging there, and the butcher will take no notice of it. If he goes to have a cup of coffee, and has not five parahs (one farthing), he will lay his two or three on the counter, instead of dropping them into the slit; the next customer will lay down ten and sweep them in together.

[45] “On entering, they remain in the hot air, after which they immerse themselves in hot water, then they go into cold water, and then wipe off the sweat. Those who do not go from the sudatory at once into cold water, burst out on returning to the dressing-room, into a second sweat, which at first is immoderate, and then ceases and leaves them chilly.”— Galen , Method. Med. l. x. c. 2.

[46] While it is essential to cleanliness to clear away the oily matter that exudes from the skin, the oil afterwards applied to the cleansed body, seems to be beneficial, and to keep open instead of closing the pores.

[47] The two instruments were slung together. The guttus was round, and from its round flat orifice, the oil distilled. Guttatim tenticulari forma, terite ambitu, pressula rotunditate. — Apuleius. On coins, vases, and bas-reliefs, it has been mistaken for the pomegranate, for a bulbous root, or a lustral vase. A curious Greek papyrus, in which a reward is offered for a runaway slave, or Lechythophoros, has cleared this matter from all ambiguity. Mr. Letronne has restored and translated the papyrus. It is also to be seen in the Lycian tomb, of which a cast is in the British Museum, and one of the groups given in colours in Fellows’s “Lycia.”

[48] Αὐτολήκυθος , signifies a poor man.

Οὐδ’ ἐστὶν αὐτῇ στλεγγὶς οὐδὲ λήκυθος .— Aristophanes .

Ἐμαυτῷ Βαλανεύσω , was equivalent to “I am my own butler.” “Have you dreamt of Lechyth, or Xystra? that is the sign of a woman that attends to her household ( οὐκουρὸν ) or of a faithful handmaid.”— Artemid. Oneiroc. i. 64.

[49] I find the most convenient substitute, a vase holding about two gallons of water, with a spout like that of a tea-urn, only three times the length, placed on a stand about four feet high, with a tub below: hot or cold water can be used; the water may be very hot, as the stream that flows is small. It runs for a quarter of an hour, or twenty minutes. The Castilian soap should be used in preference to the made-up soaps of England. Of English soaps, the common yellow washing soap is the best. N.B. A clean sheet on the dressing-room floor and no slippers.

[50] “Neat,” and “proper,” are two words which we have changed from their original sense to cleanliness.

[51] “Granting that the English are tolerably clean in the matter of their faces and hands, their houses and clothes, it must be confessed that they do not seem sufficiently impressed with the importance of keeping their whole bodies clean. Suppose the English were the cleanest people in the world, it would be fearful to think, when we know what they are, how dirty the rest of the world must be.”— Family Economist , p. 40.

[52] The abdest of the Mussulman consists in washing hands to the elbow, feet, face, and neck, five times a day in cold water without soap. The wadhan of the Jews is only three times, and does not extend to the feet. The priests washed feet and hands.

[53] Spitting, blowing the nose, weeping, or perspiring, do not entail as acts , the necessity of ablution, which follows every other secretion. While a sore runs, they are defiled and cannot pray. If they have not spoiled their abdest , the washing before prayers need not be repeated, but the abdest is spoiled by a tear, or by perspiration.

[54] Deut. xxiii. 12.

[55] See D’Ohsson, vol. ii. p. 8, 57, 58.

[56] The defilement attached to the secretions is conveyed in the natural sense of the antithesis used by Christ ( Matt, xv. , Mark vii. ), between “what proceedeth from a man,” and “what entereth into a man.”

[57] I was desirous to bring to Europe a young Turk, and he was nothing loath: his mother, however, made objections, which I could not get from him. At last, he said, “You must talk to her yourself.” I went consequently; and when I introduced the subject, raising up her two arms before her face as they do when depressed or abject, with the hands turned down and wringing them, she exclaimed: “Vai! Vai! are not your ships made fast under my windows, and do I not see how the Franks wash?”

[58] A plan has recently been successfully adopted for drying horses after hunting. Two men, one on each side, throw over him buckets of water as hot as he can bear it: he is then scraped and rubbed with chamois leather, the head and ears carefully dried with a rubber, and his clothing put on. In twenty minutes he is perfectly dry, and there is no fear of his breaking out again: the old plan of rubbing him dry took from one to two hours of very hard work, and he generally broke out once or twice, and would often be found in a profuse sweat at twelve or one o’clock at night. The bath might be adopted for horses. The Muscovites used to mount from the dinner table on horseback; at present we shampoo our horses, and clear off the epidermis, while we bestow no such care on our own bodies.

[59] “The chiefs of either sex are, with very few exceptions, remarkably tall and corpulent. For this striking peculiarity various reasons may be suggested.... But in addition to any or all of these possibilities one thing is certain, that the easy and luxurious life of a chief has had very considerable influence in the matter: he or she, as the case may be, fares sumptuously every day, or rather every hour, and takes little or no exercise, while the constant habit of being shampooed after every regular meal, and oftener, if desirable or expedient, promotes circulation and digestion, without superinducing either exhaustion or fatigue.

“Whatever may be the cause or causes of the magnitude of the Patricians, the effect itself so seldom fails to be produced, that beyond all doubt, bulk and rank are almost indissolubly connected together in the popular mind, the great in person being, without the help of a play upon words, great also in power.”— Sir George Simpson’s Voyage round the World , vol. ii. p. 51.

[60] “Balneis calidis constitutis, ut remedium ægrotantibus et lenimen labore defessis afferantur, quæ sanè curatio longè melior est quam medici parum periti medela.”

[61] MS. of Dr. Meryon, the only practical and really useful essay which I have seen on the bath, and which, I trust, will not be left on the shelf.

[62] “Rectè olet ubi nihil olet.”— Plautus.

[63] In the Russian bath the heat is obtained, like that of the Mexicans, by stones heated in a furnace, and on which water is thrown. They have seats at different heights, and by ascending increase the temperature (the concamerata sudatio , as painted in the baths of Titus). They have a cold douche, which descends from the top of the chamber, and is repeated twice during the bathing. They do not shampoo, but with a bunch of birch, with the leaves on, thrash the body all over, laying it along, first on the back and then on the face.

[64] The vessels running through the skin, would extend in a straight line twenty-five miles: the respiratories coming to the surface of the body, and opening through the epidermis, amount to seven millions.

[65] “The heart at every contraction expels about two ounces of blood, and at sixty in a minute one hundred and sixty ounces are sent forth; in three minutes the whole blood (about thirty pounds), must pass through the heart, and in one hour this takes place twenty times. Who,—reflecting on the tissues to be permeated, the functions to be discharged, the secretions to be formed from, and the nutritious substances to be taken into the circulating fluid; and reflecting upon how soon each particle, each atom of blood, after having been deteriorated in its constitution, and rendered unfit for the discharge of its important duties, is again driven through the lungs, and again aerated,—can retire from the investigation without feelings ennobled, and the whole man rendered better!”— Dr. Robertson.

[66] The trough full of hot water called a bath, used to cost in London at least one shilling and sixpence, so that persons with less than 200 l. a year could not afford to use them. In Paris, with fuel and water so much dearer, baths can be had as low as one-third. The recent washing-houses are something, but only as a commencement, and an earnest. Such contrivances will not change a people’s taste.

[67] Everything is dearer in England than in Turkey, except those things which are wanting for the bath: fuel is at a third of the cost, water is infinitely more abundant, and we have the same advantages over every other capital of Europe. When the charge for the bath was at Rome a quadrant, the price of wheat differed little from what it is at present in England.

[68] “Two patients in adjoining beds, one seventy-five, the other fifty, father and son, were suffering from diseased liver, and other effects of intemperance. The attention of the party (the governors, inspecting the Bedford Infirmary) being drawn to these cases, I observed that the elder would recover, and the younger would not. On being asked the grounds for my opinion, I said, the one is the son of a beer-drinking, the other of a buttermilk-drinking father. The event confirmed my anticipation. During the youth of the elder, he had never tasted beer or tea,—milk and buttermilk were then the people’s drink.”

[69] No one entered a church without washing the face and hands.— Tertull. de Orat. cap. ii.

Clemens Alexandrinus, prescribing rules to Christians for bathing, gives four reasons; cleanliness, health, warmth, pleasure.— Pædag. l. iii. c. 9.

[70] The Mussulmans say, “the physician is before the Imaum, for if your bowels are disordered you cannot play.” Like the Romans, they have superseded the physician by the bath. The Brahmins hold disease to be sinful.

“What worship is there not in mere washing! perhaps one of the most moral things a man, in common cases, has it in his power to do. This consciousness of perfect outer pureness—that to thy skin there now adheres no foreign speck of imperfection—how it radiates on thee, with cunning symbolic influences, to thy very soul! Thou hast an increase of tendency towards all good things whatsoever. The oldest eastern sages with joy and holy gratitude had felt it to be so, and that it was the Maker’s gift and will. It remains a religious duty in the East. Nor could Herr Professor Strauss, when I put the question, deny that for us, at present, it is still such here in the West. To that dingy operative emerging from his soot mill, what is the first duty I will prescribe, and offer help towards? That he clean the skin of him. Can he, pray, by any ascertaining method? One knows not to a certainty; but, with a sufficiency of soap and water, he can wash. Even the dull English feel something of this: they have a saying, 'Cleanliness is near of kin to godliness:’ yet never in any country saw I men worse washed, and, in a climate drenched with the softest cloud water, such a scarcity of baths.”— Sauerteig.

[71] Being present with a Mussulman at one of the most splendid ceremonies of the Catholic church, I was anxious to note the impression he received. As he was silent, I put questions to him; called his attention to the incense, the chants, the dresses, the white lace over the coloured vestments—but all in vain. I afterwards asked him what had been passing in his mind. He replied, it was very magnificent, adding, “I could only think of their feet.”

[72] The Duke of Wellington, notwithstanding the remonstrances of the clergyman of the parish, had the pavement of a bath, discovered at Silchester, filled in, because his tenant was annoyed by people crossing a field to look at it.

“D O M. The walls, which stranger, you behold, are the remains of the baths which the city of Pisa anciently used. Of these, consuming time has destroyed the rest, and left only the Sudatorium, which, overturned neither by an innumerable series of ages, nor by the injuries of barbarians, allures the eye studious of antiquity. Approach and contemplate, and you will see the beautiful form of the edifice, you will observe the plan of the lights, and how the heat is sent through tubes. You will have to complain of no concealment, nor will you affirm that anything of this kind can be found more perfect elsewhere. And you will return thanks to the great Duke Cosmos III. ; who, lest, this illustrious monument should altogether perish, made it his peculiar care and custody.”— Inscription on the Roman bath at Pisa.

[73] “Nam prisco more tradiderunt brachia et crura quotidie abluere quæ scilicet sordes opere collegerant.”— Seneca , Ep. 87.

[74] By the merest accident I made this discovery. A lady mentioned to me, “a practice of sweating,” which she had heard of in her childhood among the peasantry. I subjoin an extract of a letter written in reply to inquiries.

“With respect to the sweating-houses, as they are called, I remember about forty years ago, seeing one in the island of Rathlin, and shall try to give you a description of it:—It was built of basalt stones, very much in the shape of a bee-hive, with a row of stones inside, for the person to sit on when undergoing the operation. There was a hole at the top and one near the ground where the person crept in, and seated him or herself; the stones having been heated in the same way as an oven for baking bread is; the hole on the top being covered with a sod, while being heated; but, I suppose, removed to admit the person to breathe. Before entering, the patient was stripped quite naked, and on coming out, dressed again in the open air. The process was reckoned a sovereign cure for rheumatism and all sorts of pains and aches. They are fearful-looking things, as well as I remember.”

[75] In the fifteenth century, baths were still in common use in Spain; for a law of Castile forbids the Moors and the Jews to bathe with the Christians.

[76] A Greek sailor once sat down to eat with me with dirty hands; observing my look of astonishment, he said, flourishing them, “No one will accuse me of being Τουρκόλατρος (worshipper of the Turks).” What kind of people must that be whose enemies make their patriotism consist in filth!

[77] Dr. Meryon.

[78] That horrid sea-water in which a savage will not bathe unless he has fresh water to rinse himself, is one of the infatuations that utterly bewilder one. Bathers of course in the sea get air and exercise, but do not imagine that there is virtue in impure water, or sense in exposure of delicate forms to cold and chill.

CHAPTER IX.

THE HELOT.

Three days which I spent at Dar el Baida were occupied in a hot contest with my soldiers, and every person in the town seemed to have got involved on the one side or the other. They insisted on my returning straight by the sea-road to Rabat. The ingenuity and perseverance they displayed was of the highest order, considering that every step they took was a failure. Their object was to get back as soon as they could; but, as they dared neither leave nor constrain me, I successfully opposed the vis inertiæ to all their devices. At last they gave in, declaring they were ready to accompany me when, where, and how I liked; but, just as we were setting forth, and were all assembled on horseback near the only gate, I discovered a fresh plot to frustrate a boar-hunt, which I had fixed for the following day.

I slipped off my horse, and gliding round a corner, and otherways deceiving their vigilance or observation, I got away without being observed by any one, for the whole of the inhabitants were collected to see the start. There was but this one gate; but in my archæological researches I had discovered a part of the wall which was scalable: I made for it, got over, and dropped on the other side. After sitting on their horses’ backs for better than an hour, and fatiguing their poor necks, they got alarmed, instituted a search, ransacked the town, and were at their wits’ end, when a gardener entered the gate with his ass, bearing a load of mussels, which, he informed them “the Nazarene” had gathered on the rocks off the “point.” They now started in pursuit, accompanied by every person in the place who could muster a horse or mule. I was seated on the top of the promontory as they galloped up. I was prepared for a frantic scene, but the first glimpse, as their faces came in sight over the cheek of the hill, satisfied me that they had passed into a new phase. I had entered on the hereditary privileges of a saint or madman. I was adjured and entreated, and suffered myself to be lifted on the horse brought for me, and from that hour experienced nothing but affability, and the readiest assent to whatever I proposed. At the boar-hunt next day they mustered on foot, stripped off their sulams and haïks, ready to join in the sport, and one of them sent a bullet through a boar’s heart.

After a few days spent in hunting, we were at our last bivouac before entering Rabat; and again amongst the Ziaïda, we entered a douar without parley, trusting to Sheik Tibi’s authority, but were bluntly told that they had “no room.” After some talk, our men marched out of the circle, and commenced unloading the camels fifty yards off. I was delighted at the thought of a quiet night away from the cattle, dogs, and “Lancasterian method;” but this was only a ruse. Presently a chief came out, and seized in his arms the pole, with the pendant roof ready to be stretched. Our people, after a simulated attempt to pitch, yielded, and tent and baggage were carried into the centre. Some of the tribe inquiring who and what we were, a grotesque attendant, with a face like a mask, and a mouth like a cavern, replied instantly, “This,” pointing to me, “furnishes the Sultan with guns, gunpowder, and balls, for he is a great friend of his. This,” pointing to Mr. Sernya, “is the representative of the seven kings of Christendom, and I am Abd Rachman of Sus.” I asked how it could come into his head, to say that I furnished guns and gunpowder to the Sultan? He answered, “I wished to make them know that it was good for us that you were here, and I spoke what they could comprehend.”

Here was a living hieroglyphic, exactly the manner in which the old Egyptians took, to figure things in lines and drawings. What they looked to, was the phantasm produced upon the mind. Hanno, in his Periplus, the moment he turned Cape Spartel, comes upon flocks of pasturing elephants, and these elephants were unknown to the Egyptians, as they were unknown amongst the Greeks, until Alexander sent one home. Consider then the enormous prices paid for ivory; how completely the Phœnicians kept the ancients in ignorance of the sources of the supply even in their neighbourhood. But I refer to this, not on account of the ancient quadruped population of Mauritania, or the commerce of the Mediterranean, or the traffic of the Phœnicians, but as illustrating the hieroglyphic method of introducing me by my Breber attendant. The first notice that we have of the elephant, is amongst the Ethiopian tribute to Tothmas the Third; that is to say, I find there the elephant, though there are no signs of it in the figures. There are two bulls with curious little heads of Blackamoors between the horns, which at the extremity are divided as if they were antlers. [79] Now in this I read “Elephant.” The tusk in all ancient languages was called horn , the trunk hand . The painter had to represent a “bull with horns and hands.” [80] But as bulls had already horns, there was nothing remarkable therein. How to give a bull a hand was a matter of some difficulty. By placing the little human head upon the centre of the forehead, the symbolical character of horn and hand was achieved.

During the discussion respecting our admission to the douar, the word “Helot,” was shouted out by a sharp lad, who insisted on taking me under his protection. This was the gist of the matter—we were Helots, and I wondered if it was some Spartan mode of expressing contempt. It was the very Spartan word, and the Helots of Laconica and the Kabyles of Algeria are derived from the distinction—of which I was now made aware—between the Ziaïde el Gaba and the Ziaïde Helots , and which I suppose would be more accurately rendered Ziaïde el Gabal and Ziaïde el Loto .

Marmol speaks of them as a tribe; he says, “The whole country between Fez and Morocco is peopled with Beribas and Helots, who are a mixture of Africans and Arabs, besides other powerful Arab tribes who possess the country, and pasture their flocks between Fez and the sea. The two most powerful races of Mauritania and Tangitana, are the Ibue Maliks Sophean, and the Helots. They furnish 11,000 horse to the Sultan.”

In our boar-hunting expeditions, we constantly stopped to gather blackberries from a tree between the olive and the myrtle, which, afterwards, when I had the opportunity of consulting authorities, I found to be the very Lotus . [81]

Add to Loto the Arabic article, and you have at once Heloto, Helot. Unless I had been particular in my inquiries, I should have imagined that Heloto was the name of a people. A descriptive term derived from the tree may have therefore been applied in Greece, and mistaken by travellers in Sparta, or commentators at Athens, just as this has been mistaken by Marmol and Bochart.

The turpentine-tree had also the same name, eloth , and it is curious that the same learned critic has derived the names of the two Jewish roots, from exactly the same distinction as that which prevails between the two branches of the Ziaïde. Eloth from the tree, Ezion Gaber from the rocky nature of the country. [82] He traces the etymology by a different process, which I will not follow. I content myself with the coincidence of results.

There was a plant of the name as well as a tree. The Egyptian Lotus was a stock that came up by the water with a head like a poppy, containing grains like millet. They were allowed to ferment, and then dried and pounded. It was the lightest and pleasantest of bread when eaten warm; but, like Indian corn, became heavy and indigestible when cold. Those who lived on it suffered from no diseases of the stomach. It was therefore considered a cure for all these.

The tree was the object of religious veneration, and was brought to Italy at a very early age. [83] It was planted in the temenas of temples. The deities so distinguished were those peculiarly Asiatic. One at the temple of Diana Lucina , was four hundred and fifty years old in the time of Augustus: it was called Capellata, because the Vestal Virgins brought them and concentrated their hair. Another, equally remarkable for its enormous roots, stood by the temple of Vulcan. The word lotophagoi was derived from the tree, not the plant, for Pliny applies to the tree what Homer has said of the lotus and its fruit. The plant has played a part in nomenclature, such as no other can aspire to, not even the laurel, cedar, myrtle, platanus, or oak—giving its name to a people in Homeric time, and continuing to do so after thirty centuries. It may not therefore be so extravagant to look for traces of the name, to the north of the Mediterranean, whither not only the Phœnician rites, but the tree itself had been transplanted.

The origin of the Helots is a mystery: the Doric conquerors of Laconia subjugated the original inhabitants, and these are distinguished into two classes, the Perioikoi, and the Helots; the Perioikoi, or “Dwellers around,” was a general term applying to the Messenians, and Laconians. The Helots being distinguished from them, must have been of a different race. [84]

The fables, which strangers coming to Sparta report of their manners, and their introduction into public festivals, preserves to us distinct features and characters which, as Müller suggests, identify them with those people of Asia Minor who worshipped the Great Mother.

Such a connexion might in some degree account for that very extraordinary event, the colonization of Cyrena by Spartans, which is the reverse of the current of ancient colonies. It furnishes also a key to the idea of the people of Judæa, of their relationship with the Spartans. When the Jews sent ambassadors to Rome, they directed them to go and salute their brethren at Sparta.

Commentators and etymologists have endeavoured to explain the fact away, but the shout of the child in this sheepfold, while pointing, “There Helots;” [85] and “Here El Gaba!” seems to me to throw light upon portions of Greek history, which Thucydides has not elucidated, and which Potter and Fuller have not explained, and on passages of the Maccabees and Josephus, which Michaelis has amended and explained into nonsense and confusion.

As to the name Helot, we are left equally in the dark. That it was not their own name for themselves is shown by the etymology suggested, and no one would accept it, but because he can find no other. The derivation from the town Helos is ungrammatical, and would only shift the difficulty of admitting its derivation from the participle of the verb “to capture;” the word, however, occurs in another shape. There was a festival called Heloteia—the Helotean—the festival of the Loto. It was held in Crete (a Phœnician settlement). It was to commemorate the rape of the Phœnician Europa. Here is a new puzzle. Again is introduced the easy expedient of the participle; then it is supposed that the Phœnicians called a virgin Helotes. Bochart exposes the absurdity of these suggestions, and remarks that Europa was no longer a virgin when she came to Crete. He derives it from Halloth , Hebrew for epithalamium , forgetting his own objection of the minute before, and moreover that her marriage could not well be celebrated after her death; besides, there was another festival called Heloteia at Corinth, where there was no question of “virgin,” or of “capture,” or of “marriage.” It was held to commemorate the staying of a plague. Having then swept away all these suppositions, let us see what the Heloteia was. It was a festival in honour of Europa. The boves were carried in procession, and surrounded by an enormous wreath or garland, thirty feet in circumference. This garland had a name: it was Hellotis , Ἑλλωτίς .

It was not uncommon to designate festivals after the garlands which surrounded the objects of veneration. That for the return of the Heraclidæ was called Stemmataïa , from the garlands round the figure of the rafts upon which they came into Peloponnesus. It is said, indeed, that the Hellotis was a garland of myrrh. The Loto is very like myrrh. The Greeks adopted the myrrh itself from the Easterns. It was appropriated to funeral ceremonies. It is mentioned by Nehemiah as one of the four trees used in the festival of the tabernacles, and classed with the palm, the olive, and the fir. In the traditions of Arabia, Adam fell from Paradise with three things—“A branch of myrrh, a date, and an ear of corn.”

The word is found, little altered, scattered all over Greece. There is the district of Elatea in Epirus, Elatea city of Phocis, Helos in Laconia, Helos again in Macedonia, Laitæ on the Sperchius, and Hellopia is so often repeated, that it must have been a generic term. It applies to one third of the island of Eubœa. It is also a town there. It is found again to the south-east of the Pindus, and it is the name given to the district of Dordona. But it does not stand alone. The multitude of Phœnician and Hebrew names could never have been found there, unless it had been inhabited some time by tribes speaking the one or the other language; as for instance, the Laleges, the Bryges, and the Helots. The twin term to Loto has played a not less important part. It has penetrated into all the languages of Europe, and is spread over a large portion of what to the ancients was the known world. It is still to be traced in the name of the mountains, which were the limit between the Phœnician and Celtic races. We have it in Gabii of the Etruscans; we have it in the centre of Africa; we have in the Holy Land, Gaba , Geba , Gabala , Gibeon , [86] Gibbethon , Gibeah , [87] Gebal , [88] the Gabenes . The Solymi in Asia Minor (who we are told spoke Hebrew) are called by Strabo ( Καβάλλεις ) Cabailes , [89] from the rugged nature of their country. Gabatha was a Hebrew term for rugged countries, [90] also for stones, thence for building, and thence Gebil was builder; this was then used as an epithet of God—the “master-builder.” [91] Thus, Gavel-kind [92] and Gibelee , tobacco (lotchia), Cybele with her crown of towers, [93] the Gabelles of France and Cabals , Caballus, Cheval, Cavalry, &c.; the strength of the Cabyle is estimated at the number of horse. [94] As the Ziaïda are called Heloto from the woody country, so were their cognate tribes in Laconia; and as the Ziaïda are called Gaba from the rocky country, [95] so were their cognate tribes, the Solymi, in Asia Minor.

The numbers of the tribes were given me as follows:

The province of Shonayea contains the

The province pays 70,000 ducats. Tedlu pays the same, and is composed of

• Beni Heran.
• Ismala.
• Beni Calif.
• Ouled Efkar-Kiber.
• Beni Efkar Segir.
• Beni Zamia.
• Ouled Smir.
• Oniti Urbah.
• Beni Mousa.
• Beni Sepkdan.
• Beni Melal.
• Beni Madan.

Ducala without the Brebers pays the same.

[79] This group may be seen in plaster, full size, in the British Museum.

[80] Heeren quotes the hand-like horns, in support of a theory of his, that the Africans artificially trained the horns of cattle, and he infers from the absence of the elephant in this procession, that that animal had not then been rendered serviceable to man.

“Long-horned cattle, whose heads are ornamented with the hands and heads of Negroes, probably artificial. They would scarcely have decapitated their own people to adorn their offering to a foreign prince.”— Wilkinson’s Thebes , vol. ii. p. 224.

[81] Ὁ δὲ καρπὸς ἡλικὸς κύαμος πεπαίνεται δὲ ὥσπερ οἱ βότρυες, μεταβάλλων τὰς χροιάς. Φύεται δὲ καθάπερ τὰ μύρτα παράλληλα, πύκνος ἐπὶ τῶν βλαστῶν, ἐσθιόμενος δὲ ἐν τοῖς Λωτοφάγοις καλουμένοις γλυκὺς, ἡδὺς, καὶ ἀσινής .— Theophr. l. iv. c. 4.

[82] “Nomen Elath etiam Eloth est a terebinthis, quæ arbor est frequens, &c.”— Chanaan , lib. i. c. 43.

“A vicinia talis alicujus ῥαχίας dicta est Azion Gaber .”—Ibid.

[83] The wood was used for the handles of swords and daggers, and for musical instruments; the bark served to colour leather, the root to dye wool.— Pliny , Nat. Hist. l. xxi. c. 21.

Virgil speaks of the myrtle as furnishing weapons for war, and the Swiss still use it for dyeing and tanning.

[84] By submitting to Spartan discipline, Helots became Spartans.— Zeles apud Stob. Florileg , 40, 8.

In the Messinian war, a Helot was taken to replace each Spartan who had fallen. They were called Epunactæ .

[85] Chrest. Arabe vii.-xi. p. 285.

[86] “A city situated on a hill.”— Dennis.

[87] There were two places so called. “It is certain there was a place called Gibeah on a hill near Kerjath Jearim.”— Onnon.

[88] The same name occurs in Josephus: Gibalene —Gabale—Pliny. From the same place Solomon had his stone cutters, Giblites .— Brown. See Wilson’s “Lands of the Bible,” vol. ii. p. 40.

[89] Derived by Bochart from גבליה Gabala .

[90] Φοῖνιξ δὲ γλῶσσα Γάδαρα λέγει τοὺς λιθοστρώτους, ὡς οἱ Ἑβραῖοι Γαβαθὰ τοποὺς λιθοστρώτους. — Tzetzes , Chil. 8 Hist. 216.

[91] Master-builder, algabil אלגאבל; whence Heliogabalus.

[92] Gavel-kind , a word Arabic and Teutonic, signifying what it is, “tribe-children.”

[93] The name is attempted to be derived from κύπτω , because she made her followers bow their heads. This is nonsensical. I have shown elsewhere that kupto and tupto come from the Moorish term tapia . Gaballa , in the old Spanish dictionaries, is given for market-place . The alcavala was ten per cent. imposed at the market on all sales.

[94] From the Arabic we have hack , nag , and horse . Haca , a camel in the seventh year; naga , a she-camel; hors , an epithet of fleetness; whence also, perhaps, hoarne .

[95] The country they at present inhabit is neither woody nor rocky. I at first took the word gaba for garb , west.

CHAPTER X.

THE ARABS OF THE DESERT.

The Moors divide their country into four zones, running north and south. First, the Zahel , or sandy, unwatered, and level ground; secondly, the Tiersh , or deep black land, without trees or mountains, and composing the centre and chief portion of Morocco; thirdly, the Gibellu , or cultivated portion on the side of the Atlas; fourthly, the Tell [96] (the earth), on the other side. Beside these, there is the subdivision into Heloto and Gaba .

Mr. Parke heard the name Zahel in the interior, and thought it meant “north country.” Mr. Jackson corrects him. “Zahel,” he says, “signifies an extensive plain . Thus, the plains south of the river of Suz, and the low country on the coast near Walhadia, are called Zahel; and if an Arab were to pass over Salisbury Plain he would call it Zahel.” Mr. Jackson is as much mistaken as Mr. Parke. The word means a thing that is easy . The wealth of the Zahel tribes consists in cattle and flocks: their sole culture is grain. They produce corn, wool, butter, hides and skins; they buy nothing except arms and fruit; they treat their money as they do their corn. This year a fine imposed in consequence of the recent troubles was paid without difficulty, though equal to several years of their customary taxes.

The Zahel is one half the year exposed to scorching heat; it is destitute of trees and water, and could scarcely be cultivated by people having fixed habitations. The Arabs shifting their domicile to find pasturage for their cattle sow as they proceed, and return in like manner to reap. They sow from November to March. The harvest soon follows. The summer is, so to say, their winter, for the sun is their Boreas. The seasons are reversed. The flowers that were budding only on the plains, I found in full blossom on the hills: under the genial influence of cold, vegetation had re-commenced. Their culture consists in scraping the light soil in opposite directions with a primitive plough; a pointed piece of wood unshod with iron and a single handle, which the ploughman carries a-field upon his shoulder. They do not even clear the ground of the palm shrub, but plough round it. Sometimes, indeed, you see the land in very good order, for there are no weeds.

The first idea suggested is that of depopulation. On closer inspection, one is astonished at the numbers of the people. They subsist on little. They draw comparatively a great deal from the soil, and the rudeness of their implement is not unadapted to its lightness. The tribe does not cultivate in common, but the families do: the daughters have half portions: they average a plough per tent, some having four or five, or more, others not even a pair of cattle, but managing one with another, so that each shall cultivate a plough land. Oxen are generally employed, but horses are so also: you may see pairs of horses driven by the reins. Some of their teams are grotesque enough. I have seen a camel and an ass ploughing together. Whatever animosity there may be amongst the tribes, whatever insecurity for their cattle, even in the midst of their encampment, common necessities have consecrated the standing corn, and every tribe respects its neighbour’s landmark.

They have as little trace of limits, as the dogs of Constantinople, which maintain their bounds so well; or of laws, as a community of bees. I have had, however, a terminus pointed out to me between the Ziaïda and their neighbours. It was a plant of the Silla kind. They have the custom of “beating the bounds,” and understand it in a literal sense. The children are taken out and thrashed at appropriate places, that they may recollect them well. On the other hand, they run no risk of flogging for a false quantity in a dead language. Behind these zones, Zahel, Tiersh, Gibellu and Tell, lies the Zahara. Along the Medelmah the zones run east and west, following the direction of the coast; but here the first three are wanting; there is only the Tel, and behind it the Zahara. The regularity, however, of the distribution is disturbed by the great mountain block of the Cabylie, which lies in the rear of Algiers, and which is nearly insulated by the Desert.

Adjoining the Moorish Tell, and deeply encroaching on the Desert, is the Beled-el-Gerid, or oasis of Tafilelt, the inner Moorish kingdom; and, so to speak, its fountain. This is the land of dates and of Morocco leather. Here is the inaccessible retreat to which in all dangers the Moorish princes retire, and from which they issue to recover their lost power. Here are deposited the treasures accumulated during seventy years by two thrifty monarchs, and which are estimated at tens of millions sterling. It is a little world within Morocco, entrenched behind the Desert and the Atlas. It takes ten days across the Desert to reach it from the nearest point of the regency of Algiers.

To the south of the neck of the Atlas which runs out to the cape of St. Cruz, lies the fourth kingdom composing the empire; the parallel zones are here arrested by the Atlas. The country partakes of the nature of the Beled-el-Gerid, and is a great oasis, exceeding, indeed, all the others in richness and variety of produce. [97] It is entirely inhabited by Shelluk, or southern Brebers, over whom the authority of the Sultan is held by a very precarious tenure: it was there, however, that the dominion of the shereffs was first set up, and from it they issued to conquer Morocco and Fez. Suz and Tafilelt are said to possess resources not inferior, though hardly different, to those of the other two.

The population has been rated as high as sixteen millions. It is half Arab, half Breber. The climate is admirable, being tempered by the westerly breezes and the snows of Atlas. The middle region is composed of alluvial plains of inexhaustible fertility: the two capitals lie in tertiary basins resembling those of Paris and London. The fruits and produce comprise all those of the tropics and the temperate zones: harbours alone are wanting, but this deficiency is more than compensated to this people, by the security which the difficulties of the coast afford.

The first thought on setting foot upon the land of Africa is, of course, the Desert. When starting on my first journey, I indulged in the fancy that I was approaching it;—what was my surprise on asking one of my companions to describe it, to be told, “Look round, this is the Desert.” Our notion of a moving sea of sand is a delusion; there is no considerable district where, as in the insulated points in the Indian and Pacific oceans, man has not found an abode. Africa is not a vacant and a useless space. Extending from the valley of the Nile to the Atlantic, and from the narrow slip along the Mediterranean down to the kingdoms of Guinea and Bourno, &c., it has its mountains and plains, its valleys and forests, and even its streams and rivers. One of the men who were with me described the road from Fez by Suz to Tafilelt, round by the south, a journey of about a thousand miles, as through a rich, well-watered—or if not well-watered, well-wooded—country, with the olive, oak, arar or date. On the road from Tafilelt towards Timbuctoo there is the great oasis of Tuat, which is distant about two weeks’ journey. There are either trees or brushwood the whole way. “The map of the Sahara,” says M. Revon, “will be one day covered with rivers, hills, and an immense number of names of wells, stations, and countries. The Desert being entirely inhabited, or traversed by nomade people, they require to designate by particular names the places that furnish subsistence for their flocks during half of the year, the countries that they are obliged to avoid and to pass round, the wells so indispensable to their existence, and the beds of the rivers, which at certain seasons of the year furnish them with water.”

This unique country, taken together with that character of the people, which they must have in order to be able to inhabit it, has preserved a class of the human race in its primitive state. There are nowhere resources, so that there should be large accumulations of people to pass through the various phases which in other portions of the world humanity has presented. There is not the sea to divide or to conjoin; they cannot muster in strength (save as dependent upon the northern country) so as to be formidable abroad, and they are so movable within, that they are not liable to domestic oppression. Pasturage and rapine are the two avocations. Culture is not unassociated with the first, and rapine, as managed here, is not incompatible with traffic and good faith. [98]

There are four methods of travelling; the regular trade caravans, small companies on fleet dromedaries, single messengers on foot, and the peregrinations of the tribes themselves. Of the first, or the cafileh . These are periodically fixed, and connect the three regencies in the north with the Negro countries of the south, taking in the two great bases, the Fezzan and Tuat, with Timbuctoo. Their speed is about twenty to twenty-five miles a-day, and, laden as they are, they have often to avoid the shortest roads, and to make great circuits in order to obtain supplies of water.

It is quite a mistake to suppose that the traveller in the Interior is reduced to dependence upon these caravans. On the dromedary fifty miles can easily be performed. A tract of three hundred miles without water, at least where there is insecurity as to finding it, imposes on a cafileh the necessity of carrying ten days’ supply to a party which can traverse it. During four days it presents little inconvenience: being all mounted, they can easily carry water and provision for themselves for the distance which the dromedaries can travel without water.

Their provisions consist in barley, roasted and bruised, and, if they are luxurious, honey and butter. The meal is mixed up with any of these, that is to say, with either honey and butter or water, the first being used as the morning meal and the latter for the evening; and this food not only enables them to do their work, but also to support thirst.

The cafileh must be strong enough to fight its way. Solitary travellers, or small companies, can only pass by one of two methods, having with them a saint, or the relative of a saint, or having a friend or a hired guide, mehri , belonging to the tribes through which they have to pass. These they exchange from tribe to tribe. [99]

Messengers and couriers on foot carry with them their skin of meal, and, when requisite, their skin of water; and with a similar protection, will traverse these vast regions at the rate of forty miles a-day.

Lastly, comes the most interesting of all these movements—a tribe in march, which is then called nafla . Some of these, on the northern side within the regency of Algiers, where more is known of their movements, yearly perform a journey of six hundred miles backwards and forwards, from the date-growing region to the Tell, carrying down dates, and bringing back grain, and pasturing their flocks as they come and go. The season so corresponding, they have to come down to the lowlands for their pasturage at the time of the harvest of grain, and to return to the south at the time of the harvest of dates. Nothing can exceed the interest of these ambulatory cities, which carry everything with them; where are commingled signs of domesticity [100] and circumstance of war. They are merchants and soldiers, shepherds and manufacturers, cultivators and wanderers; they carry with them their children and their law—their judge in peace, their chief in war; they may be called at any moment to traffic or to fight; they are on the alert for a verdant plain, sending forth scouts to discover a fountain or a hostile camp. If suspicious signs appear, then every man falls into rank, knows his place, and it is a regiment that advances or encamps. There is the council of the elders, to determine whether it is war or peace; and a treaty may be signed or a battle engaged. By these necessities certain proportions are given to these bodies. They must never be too weak to defend themselves, nor too strong, to devour the pasturage, or drink up the water.

We know only the discipline of men, but the discipline of the Zahara extends to the family. The utensils, the home itself, everything is compact, and all as ready as the people are alert. Our armies are liable to lose themselves at once, either with the people they subdue or with the people through whose territories they pass. An invading Arab carries with him, and plants his home, as we do a standard; and where it comes it is not a victor’s banner that is reared, but a hostile roof that is upset. The idea of resisting the shock of such a horde, could it be let loose on a European community, is not so much as to be entertained. But M. Thiers thinks the Arabs very bad soldiers. [101]

Thus is the surface of Africa converted into a plain, covered with lines along which move, and circles round which revolve, these planetary bodies. Man lives where it appeared a wilderness, and order rules where it seemed a chaos. There is no land that is not owned; there is no pasturage that is not assigned. The fields may appear deserted, and the space vacant; but, with the times and seasons, they return, traversing the same vales, drinking at the same fountains, cultivating the same valleys, and as indestructible in their race as they are regular in their motions. Like the ocean which guards them, they will fill, as they have filled, their space; and, like the seasons they resemble, they undergo the changes of the year; and summer and autumn will find them again and again at their appointed task and place.

With the beauty of order is associated the drama of life, as if the planets were moved in their sphere with love or hatred, and propelled and attracted, or connected with each other. The chords of sympathy are so stretched, that the dissensions of the most insignificant members of this vast community in the centre of the Desert may be felt and responded to on the borders of the Mediterranean or Atlantic. [102]

The people of the town are a distinct nation. On the face of the land alone is to be seen the stretched canvas of the fleeting sons of the Desert. From the tent reared and displaced in an hour, what an age is passed, as you cross the city gateway! [103] In the Arab dwelling there is no sense of age; there is no mark of newness, nor sign of mouldering decay.

The soil on which they tread, and from which they feed:—carved by no fosse, confined by no bound, and bearing no load, is a nature—subdued indeed, but untravestied—and presents the wildness of the Desert without penury, its freedom without solitude: the gifts it gives are favours rather of Providence, than fruits of toil.

Pass the yawning barbican and ruined walls—enter the city, the work of Cyclops or Titan—of Philistine, Hebrew, Lybian, Roman, Goth, Vandal, Saracen, Portuguese, or Spaniard—and there is man! nothing but man! It is not, as in other cities, the men and things of to-day, but of old times and ages. Thinly scattered, these are each a nook in the stream of time, when the wrecks of successive storms are cast up—a Bantry Bay in the Atlantic of eternity.

Zahara means resplendent. Zeara, in Hebrew, is round. The first was an ancient epithet of Venus; the second, a name for the moon. [104] Thus, the region of death and terror, of the Zamiel and the locust, appears to them a place of light and splendour. It has the charm of battle for the brave—of ocean for the rover—of rocks for the mountaineer. But what need comparison? it is the Desert to the Arab.

It is not the ambition of visiting the mud huts of Timbuctoo which has led so many European adventurers to peril their lives, and to lose them in that vain attempt; but it is the indescribable charm of the Desert life of which they have felt the influence, or caught the contagion. Without the protection of constituted governments, despite all obstructions, danger, distance, thirst and hunger, commerce is carried on nowhere in the world with more regularity, integrity, and security. There are no internal fluctuations, no international barriers; exchange presents no difficulty , although they have a standard of value. This is an ideal money, or a coin of account. In the south it is the “bar,” in the north it is “Pezetta;” in other districts, “Naia,” &c. A piece of iron, a Spanish coin, a measure of dates—any other object would serve equally well to constitute this unit, which represents value with absolute perfection, precisely because it is a measure—as an inch or a pound.

They do not say a bar is so many pounds, so many ounces, and so many grains; and this quantity of metal shall be the standard of value; that is, the value of all things shall be changed to meet the accidental fluctuations in this quantity of metal; for, according to their barbarous notions, that would be not an ingenious device to facilitate business, but a piece of knavery too barefaced to be dangerous. If iron becomes cheap, two bars of iron go to “ the bar;” if it becomes dear, half a bar of iron goes to “the bar.” The ideal standard is preserved because it is ideal. Yet, here are barbarians! This subject is at once the most practical and scientific,—money, arithmetic, commerce, property! Well may Solomon exclaim, “God made man, but he has found out many inventions.”

Ebn Khaldoun has a passage which seems at once to throw light on the origin of the term and the antiquity of the practice. “In the times of ignorance the Arabs counted by various dirhems; the tabori was the weightiest, the bagli the lightest.” The Mussulmans fixed a middle term, and adjusted to it fines, &c. A discussion then arose on the ancient value of these coins, and as to whether they were, or were not, known in the time of Mahomet. Ebn Khaldoun decides as follows: “The valuation of the dirhem was known, but there was no corresponding coin; nevertheless, judgments were regulated according to the valuation of that money.”

If any one is curious to know the meaning of the words “currency law,” he will find it all in this sentence of the late Lord Ashburton: it is a process by which, “in the event of a deficient harvest (or any other internal disturbance), a few shrewd capitalists can so control the supply of gold as to enrich themselves and ruin the nation .” This is all that it requires to know on this subject, to be perfectly happy and content; for, as to doing anything, that is out of the question. The “press,” and “public opinion” may upset ministers, and substitute theory for theory; but, against any deep purpose or design, they can avail nothing, even supposing that they were not the blind instruments of the designing, and stormed and ranted against them from Land’s End to John o’ Groat’s. A pasquinade, stuck at night to a pedestal under the papal government of Rome, had more effect on the affairs of that government than all the free press of England thundering together could have on its government—at least, when the really important points are concerned, viz. the profits of the capitalists or the service of the Czar.

[96] This word I at first thought to be a trace of the Romans, but the word is spread over Asia and Africa, far out of Roman reach. “ Tel is generally used for village in the Delta; kom , in Upper Egypt.”— Wilkinson’s Thebes , vol. ii. p. 76.

[97] “The country is completely cultivated: it is backed by four regular rows of limestone hills, which serve as a kind of embankment against the Desert. They are now cutting the corn, which produces more than one hundred fold, most of the seeds throwing out four stems, and some five.”— Davidson’s Journal , p. 83.

[98] “Mirum dictû ex innumeris populis pars æqua in commerciis aut in latrociniis degit.”— Plin. Hist. Nat. vi. 32.

The Arab enjoys the benefits of society, without forfeiting the prerogative of nature.

[99] “Up to the time that you have reached the point determined upon, the mehri is responsible for his companion. Before whom? Before God, without doubt, who reads the hearts of men. The faithfulness of a guide is a virtue innate amongst the Arabs.”— Carette.

[100] “If any people can be justly called happy, the Arabs on the borders of the Sahara are so. Confident in the power of their religion to gain them paradise, creating for themselves no artificial wants, and perfectly satisfied with what nature provides for them, they calmly resign themselves to the will of Providence, and are strangers to all cares. They are more wild in their appearance, but far more cultivated than the Arabs of Asia: nearly all of them can read, and a great many write.”— Davidson’s Journal .

[101] “Vous dites qu’il faut que tout le monde soit soldat à son tour. Savez-vous quelles sont les sociétés où tout le monde est soldat? ce sont les sociétés barbares. Chez les Arabes, tout le monde est soldat, et mauvais soldat. (Interruption.) Oui, dans les sociétés où tout le monde est soldat, on n’a que de mauvais soldats.” — Speech , October 21st, 1848.

[102] “Often a quarrel in the streets of Algiers is the echo of one between two tribes in the sand, three hundred leagues distant, and when the quarrel becomes animated between the mother tribes, the distant colonies can no longer inhabit the same district.”— Carette , p. xlvii. Introduction .

[103] “Divina natura dedit agros, ars humana ædificavit urbes.”— Varro de Re Rustica , lib. iii. 50.

[104] Deuteronomy iv. 19.

CHAPTER XI.

RETURN TO RABAT FROM SHAVOYA.

During my absence two daring crimes have been committed: a Shereff stole one of the Sultan’s horses from the midst of the camp. The Sultan sentenced him to lose his head. He then put in the plea of his birth. “Then,” said the Sultan, “cut off his right hand, that he may be disabled from disgracing his blood in this way in future.” There is no executioner: the butchers are bound to perform this duty. [105] The chief Jewish and chief Mussulman butcher being called, they offered for a substitute by a sort of public auction, the crier commencing in this way:—“Who will cut off a head” (or a hand) “for a dollar?—one dollar offered,” and thus they ran up and down the street. No one offering, they increased the bid to two, three dollars, &c. When they had arrived at two doubloons (7 l. 10 s. ), a tall black stepped forward and said, “That is my price.” A tub of tar was brought: the black hacked off the hand in a hurry, and on dipping the stump into the tar it proved to be cold. He had, however, bound the arm before the amputation, and they ran to the neighbouring blacksmith’s shop for embers, which they threw into the tar, and, setting it on fire, the stump was then plunged in, and so scorched and burnt. The Shereff was then let go.

In the other case, the culprit, a man from the interior, had killed a lad who was ploughing, and carried off his cattle. The Sultan said to the mother of the lad, “Excuse his life, and take one hundred dollars:” she said, “I want the life of him who took the life of my son.” The Sultan three times repeated his question, doubling his offer: she said, “I ask what the law gives me, and that law you are Sultan to execute.” The culprit was led out to execution: the head, as we returned, was on the market-gate, and the dogs swarmed round the carcass.

The news of a change of ministry in England was conveyed to me in a letter from Gibraltar, without any explanation: I sent to notify the fact to the government. Mustafa Ducaly came to learn the particulars, none of which I knew; and I explained to him what I supposed to be the cause and circumstances, viz., the corn laws; and I added that I expected the next news would be that Sir Robert Peel was again in office with more tractable colleagues. This greatly damped the excitement which the news had created, for they expected, on the return of the former foreign minister to office, a war with France. They were, however, interested in this event on other grounds, namely, the admission of corn into England. I did not repeat to them a long-formed conclusion, that Sir Robert Peel would be the man to open the ports, as the reduction of the price of corn, without a relaxation of the currency laws, was merely an augmentation of the value of money.

The Sultan is to remain here the winter, which I look upon as ominous for the town, as, besides the inconvenience of his abode, there are no resources in the place for this assemblage; and it is not in the memory of man that the Court of Morocco has held the festivities of the Baïram, or spent the winter out of one of the capitals, except in time of war. The explanation given is, the disturbed and disaffected state both of Morocco and Fez; but this is no explanation, for the presence and not the absence of an Emperor of Morocco is the remedy against disaffection. Fez is entirely commanded by the fortifications, and in Morocco the Sultan is himself fortified. If there were danger from either capital, the troops would be sent there, not kept here. [106]

The rumour of the discovery of mines had reached Rabat with speed and exaggeration. Full of childish impatience, the Emperor sent immediately for the specimens I had brought. Twenty camel-loads of the ore were ordered down, and messengers were despatched to Rif to bring some of the best workmen in iron. I asked for such workmen as they had to erect a furnace, and we commenced operations in a little court behind the consulate; but the furnace they made was only good enough for copper, with the smelting of which they are familiar: we had, therefore, to turn masons and bricklayers ourselves. We got what they assured us were bricks of fire-clay; and we succeeded so well with the furnace and the blast that we melted, like water, not the ore—but the bricks. However, we did fuse a portion of the ore, and thus saved our credit. After expeditions in search of fire-clay, and various renewed attempts, I had to dissuade them from proceeding thus recklessly; and told them that they might find as rich mines more conveniently situated, or mines of some other metal better worth working; or iron, if not so pure, more malleable (for on this their present instruments could make no impression), or, in fact, coal and iron in juxta-position. They answered, “No! no!—the tribes where these mines are, are submissive: we don’t want to make the others fat.” Nothing would do but the new hobby. They proposed to form a company of all the merchants. They were bountiful in offers: one half of the proceeds of the mines in Shavoya, and of that which they already worked in the Rif should be mine if I would undertake to send proper persons to conduct the enterprise.

I thought this a favourable moment to press my request to be permitted to go to Fez: I was told that if the Sultan were there, there would be no difficulty, but at present it was impossible. I have therefore determined on returning to Gibraltar, and visiting, if possible, the mountainous district lying to the eastward of Larache, called Serser, where sulphur, lead, and salt are already known, and there are indications of coal.

The smelting is not the only business in which we have been engaged in the back-yard. I had brought two camel-loads of boars, the produce of our last day’s sport, before re-entering Rabat, with the design of curing the hams. Our first construction of furnaces was for boiling water for pig-scalding, in which, in consequence of the time that had elapsed, we failed. The saying about a “pig coming to be shaved” occurred to me, and I got a Jewish barber to do that work—and a strange sight it was! It was hot work, between the smelting and the boar-shaving, and we got more assistance in the one enterprise than the other. Inexperienced in jointing and paring hams, I think we made very sightly work of it. I was more at home at a ragoût de Sanglier , of which an enormous cauldron figured among the operations of that court-yard, to the high applause of all the Nazarene population that chanced to be at Rabat. It was not, however, very easy to get at it when cooked; for to all the plates, knives, and forks, saucers, and tea-cups, &c., it was taboo.

While these operations were proceeding in the court-yard, the other parts of the consulate were equally put in requisition for the purposes of science. We had constructed a hydraulic blow-pipe, and the Moors were delighted to behold spinning glass and little men, ships, &c., and no doubt many of these records of our visit will be treasured up for future times. The kitchen was the scene of other labours—the preparation of the wonderful majoun , made from the plant well known as hashish , which is here grown as any other crop, and of which the consumption is next to universal.

HASHISH.

This plant seems to have been known and used, as at present in Morocco, in very ancient times, from the confines of China to the Western Ocean. It appears as the potomantes of the Indus, the gelatophylis of Bactria, the achimenes of the Persians, the ophisnu of Ethiopia, the nepenthes of the Greeks. The apparently contradictory qualities ascribed to these may all be found in the hashish: like the ophisnu, it recalls consciousness of the past and inordinate fears, on account of which it was given as a punishment to those who had committed sacrilege; but, above all, it brings too that forgetfulness for which Helen administered to Telemachus the nepenthes, and which no doubt she had learned in Egypt. Equally does it become a poison which absorbs all others. It will explain the incantations of Circe, and the mysteries of the cave of Trophonius. When taken without suspicion, its effects would appear as the workings within themselves of the divinity. It goes some way to account for the long endurance of a religious imposture, so slightly wove and so incessantly rebelled against. Here was a means at the disposal of the priest, diviner, and thaumaturgist, and beyond all appeals to the mere imagination. The epithets which the Hindoos apply to their bangue might equally serve for the hashish —“assuager of sorrow,” “increaser of pleasure,” “cementer of friendship,” “laughter-mover.” Bangue, however, when often repeated, “is followed by catalepsy, or that insensibility which enables the body to be moulded into any position, like a Dutch jointed doll, in which the limbs remain in the position in which they are placed, and this state will continue for many hours.” [107]

It seems from an early period to have been used in China medicinally. Fifteen hundred years ago, it was employed there as chloroform recently has been in Europe; so that it may truly be said, “there is nothing new under the sun.” The following passage occurs in “The Compilation of Ancient and Modern Medicines,” published in China at the beginning of the sixteenth century:—

“If the complaint is situated in parts upon which the needle, the moxa, or liquid medicaments cannot produce any action—for instance, in the bone, stomach, or intestines—there may be given to the patient a preparation of hemp ( ma-yo ), and in a very short time he becomes so insensible that he seems intoxicated or deprived of life. Then, according as the case may be, the operations are performed, of amputations, &c., and the cause of the malady is removed. Subsequently, the tissues are brought together by sutures, and liniments are employed. After some days the patient is restored to health, without having felt, during the operation, the least pain.” [108]

Among the ancients of our part of the world, it appears to have been employed by the mystics only, and not to have been in common use; whereas, in China there was no more mystery attending it than in the exhibition of any other drug; consequently, from China and from India the Saracens may have got it. The term hashish [109] means plant in general, but the preparation is called majoun —perhaps from the Chinese ma-yo .

It was in Egypt, between the tenth and the fourteenth centuries, that hashish was in its glory. He who wishes to know to what excess of passion the use of this narcotic can inspire, may find his curiosity gratified in an account, by Makrizi, of the “Herb of the Fakirs;” and the notes appended to it by Mr. Silvestre de Sacy. [110]

In Mr. Von Hammer’s History of Hassan Saba, hashish figures as nerving the arm of his followers to strike at ministers in the midst of their guards, and at monarchs in the centre of their capitals. [111] The terror with which these fanatics inspired the nations reached even to this island, and the Commons of England obtained, as an antidote for the hashish, [112] the serjeant-at-arms and the mace.

To this sect was given the name of Assassins. According to the highest authorities, it comes from ashasheen , or eaters of hashish. But a real existence is now denied to those enchanted gardens of Alamoot, and they are explained as merely the visions created by the intoxicating plant. [113] Visionary speculation! The preparation requisite for such deeds was not opium or alcohol, far less a plant, the effect of which exceeds intoxication, and approaches insanity.

The Ismalian departed on his journey of death alone . He followed his victim for months and years; he traversed deserts and sojourned in populous kingdoms and cities. It was an intoxication of the spirit, not of the senses, that could so dare and so endure; neither softened by intercourse, nor dismayed by solitude, and proof alike against the virtues and the vices of our nature. If such deeds were the product of this drug, they would appear when it was used.

Hassan Saba was one of those men, who being incomprehensible, is the source of fables, devised by those who do not understand the results they would account for. He combined leadership of men with the priesthood of a sect, and inspired his followers with that boundless awe and affection, which made them appear under the influence of a supernatural agency. When he answered the demands of Malik Shah by ordering two of his followers to cast themselves from a precipice, he prepared them by no drug. The Ismalians, acting as men out of their senses, would be called hashasheen, just as we would say Bedlamite. If any set of men in Barbary were so conducting themselves, they would be called hashishlee, though they had never tasted majoun.

I was led to take an interest in this plant from the following circumstance. A lady, suffering from spasms, arising from an affection of the spine, had obtained some years ago a small portion of hashish (at the time a name unknown), when all other narcotics had failed: it afforded her an almost miraculous relief. Medical men had been applied to in India to procure the bangue, but it failed. The hemp of England had been tried in vain. I wrote to Mr. Lane, then in Egypt, requesting him to obtain some, but he found it a disgraceful thing to make inquiries on the subject. All these endeavours ended in disappointment. Still I remained satisfied that there was such a plant. At Tangier I observed a diminutive pipe, about the size of a thimble; I asked what kind of tobacco they were smoking. I was answered, kef (literally, enjoyment),—it was the hashish. I found that it was also taken inwardly. Either the leaves are swallowed with water, after being crushed, or it is prepared, and boiled with sugar or honey, and butter, like horehound, a great variety of seeds and spices entering into the composition, which is thus said to vary in its effects, and to be gifted also with medicinal powers. This preparation is the majoun. Its effects were described as those of the laughing gas, except that, instead of a few minutes, it lasts for many hours. Some cry, some laugh, some fall into drowsy listlessness; some are rendered talkative and funny. They see visions, imagine themselves reduced to poverty, or become emperors and commanders of armies, the natural disposition predominating in the derangement. Men under its influence were pointed out to me in the streets. They walked along with fixed eye, heedless of all around them. Some take it daily in small quantities, producing, as one of them described it to me, “a comfortable state of mind,” without appearing to impair the general health. Under its influence the mouth is parched; it is not in their power to spit. Their eyes become red and small. They are ravenous for food. Everything that one hears of it has the air of fable; and I should have been inclined to treat it as such, but for the evidence of my own senses.

Finding that I could not understand from description either the mode of preparing it, or the effects, I determined to get those who were accustomed to make it to bring the materials, and prepare it before me, and then to try it myself, and on as many others as I could. I was so engaged for a week after my return to Rabat, for I had successively the three most noted confectioners to try their skill against each other. They have not a regular or uniform process, and the majoun is consequently of very unequal strength and efficacy. Our first attempts were failures. The first proof of the success of our preparation was in the case of a young English clergyman, to whom some of it had been given as a sweetmeat. Some hours passed without any visible effects, when a musician, who had the faculty of strangely distorting his features, came in, dressed as a mummer. The Englishman took him for the devil, and a most laughable scene ensued. Next morning, on inquiries after his health, he said he had slept soundly and agreeably, “as the windows and doors were bolted.” Later in the day the effect disappeared entirely, and he seemed to recollect the circumstances with a confused pleasure, describing various things that had never happened.

The first time I took it was about seven in the morning, and in an hour and a half afterwards I perceived a heaviness of the head, wandering of the mind, and an apprehension that I was going to faint. I thence passed into a state of half trance, from which I awoke suddenly, and much refreshed. The impression was that of wandering out of myself. I had two beings, and there were two distinct, yet concurrent trains of ideas.

Images came floating before me—not the figures of a dream, but those that seem to play before the eye when it is closed, and with those figures were strangely mixed the sounds of a guitar that was being played in the adjoining room: the sounds seemed to cluster in and pass away with the figures on the retina. The music of the wretched performance was heavenly, and seemed to proceed from a full orchestra, and to be reverberated through long halls of mountains. These figures and sounds were again connected with metaphysical reflections, which also, like the sounds, clustered themselves into trains of thought, which seemed to take form before my eyes, and weave themselves with the colours and sounds. I was following a train of reasoning; new points would occur, and concurrently there was a figure before me throwing out corresponding shoots like a zinc tree; and then, as the moving figures reappeared, or as the sounds caught my ear, the other classes of figures came out distinctly, and danced through each other.

The reasonings were long and elaborate; and though the impression of having gone through them remains, every effort has been in vain to recall them. The following scene was described by me, and taken down at the time:—

A general, commanding an army, and doubting whether he should engage the enemy, consulted the oracle. The oracle answered, “Go with the fortune of Cæsar.” He gave battle, and was beaten; his king ordered his head to be cut off, but the general accused the oracle: the king said, “The oracle is not in fault; it did not tell you that you were Cæsar; you were twice a fool to mistake its meaning, and your own worth.” The general answered, “Then is the fault his who sent a fool to command his armies.” “Nay,” answered the king, “thou shalt not twist one phrase to thy benefit, and another to my loss.” This scene seemed to pass before me, and in the region of Carthage, which was all familiar, though I had never been there. The general was an Abyssinian, the king a white man with a black beard.

The next time I tried it, the only effect was to make me lose a night’s rest; the first time, it had given me a double portion of sleep: on both occasions it enormously increased my appetite. It was followed by no depression. The third time I took it, at half-past four, and after it, a liqueur glass of caraway spirits to hasten the effect. An hour afterwards, walking on the terrace, I began to experience the effects. I did not feel cold, while those who were walking with me, and wrapt in mantles were complaining of it. They profess to be able to prepare it, so that it shall serve a man instead of clothing. Then came an unsteadiness of gait—not that of one who fears to fall—but of one who tries to keep down, for I felt as if there were springs in my knees, and was reminded of the story of the man with the mechanical leg, that walked away with him. I sat down to dinner at half past six o’clock. There was a glass between me and the rest of the company, and an inch or two interposed between me and whatever I touched. What I ate, or how much, did not matter;—the food flowed like a river through me. There was a wind going by, blowing over the table, and carrying away the sounds, and I saw the words tumbling over one another down the falls. There is a dryness of the mouth, which is not thirst. The dryness radiated from the back of the throat, opposite the nape of the neck. It was a patch of dark blue colour; the food, as it reached this point, pouring down, and taking the colour of the patch. I was under the impression that I described all this at the time, but was told that I would not say anything about myself, or describe what I experienced.

I should have been relieved if some one present had been under the same influence. The bursts of laughter to which I gave rise were not at all pleasing, except when they were excited by any observation I made which was not connected with myself. I never lost the consciousness of what was going on; there were always present the real objects, as well as the imaginative ones; but at times I began to doubt which was which, and then I floated in strange uncertainty. It came by fits at—as I thought—hours of interval, when only minutes could have elapsed. Sometimes a week seemed to pass between the beginning and the end of a word. I fancied my head an inverted pendulum, which it cost me a great deal of labour to keep straight, when I could resist no longer, and let it go, and it went back as if a blow had been discharged. I struggled against each relapse, out of a sense of politeness towards the company, of which I did not fail to inform them, notwithstanding their roars of laughter. The back of my neck was the pivot; there was a heavy upper weight on the top of my head, and the pendulum was swinging between my legs; but the pendulum was attracted upwards to the table, and I had to struggle to keep it down by keeping my head up. The swinging fit was accompanied by bursts of laughter. I derived great pleasure from allowing my head to go back; but the laughter was unlike any mortal merriment; it seemed as never to end, and to press me, and to lead up to a mountain-top. When any one put his hand behind my head, fearing the effect of the jerks, or that I should throw the chair over, I was very much annoyed, because it disturbed, as I said, “the isochronism of the oscillations.”

I afterwards saw a similar effect produced on a European who did not know what he had taken. He was constantly throwing back his head and looking at the ceiling, and exhibited no other symptom, which only made this the more ludicrous.

After keeping the party for four hours in a state of continual convulsion, I became irresistibly drowsy, and was moved away to bed. This operation sickened me, and brought on a slight vomiting. The instant I was in bed I fell asleep, and slept without intermission for nine hours; I then awoke, perfectly recovered, and fresh, with a feeling of lightness, and in high spirits.

One of the most remarkable effects was, that it seemed to lay bare your inmost thoughts, and to present a mirror, on which was reflected every act of your life, and that you were constrained to reveal and confess it all; which exactly agrees with effects attributed to the ophisnu.

The Jews are in the habit of taking hashish on Saturday, as it ensures, they say, their doing no work on Sunday. A party of them will agree to take it together, and go out to a garden. One of them, being asked to describe a scene of that kind, said, “We were eight, and seven took to laughing, and one to crying, and the more he cried the more we laughed, and the more we laughed the more he cried, and so we spent the night, and in the morning we went to bed.”

After being satisfied with my preparation, I devoted a day to the trying of the experiment on a number of patients. Two or three took it in the morning, and each as he had taken it became exceedingly anxious to administer it to others, so that patients were sought in every place and by every means. Many who took it went away, so that I did not see the effect on more than a dozen. On the whole I was disappointed: there was not one interesting case, though there were not two alike.

The master of a Portuguese vessel, to whom it was given without his being aware of its nature, thought himself bewitched, and his crew were on the point of securing him as deranged. He saw a ship stranded on the bar, and ordered out his boats to her assistance; he then saw the devil cooking in the caboose, and with the demeanour of an insane person, was all the while reasoning on the evidences of his insanity.

Having at one time been in the habit of taking opium, I am able to compare the effects. The idea of a strong resemblance has been generally admitted; but in this I cannot agree. In De Quincy’s “Confessions of an Opium-Eater,” there are passages which might pass for a description of hashish, but they do not appear to me to be descriptive of opium: opium does not give the double identity, and the hashish draws towards insanity: the hashish does not affect either the nervous system or the viscera. The length of time that elapses before it begins to act, shows that it has first to be taken into the blood. I have witnessed its effects in relieving pains and spasms, which differ from those of ordinary narcotics. [114] It is an anodyne and an anti-spasmodic, producing intoxication without its consequences, and dispelling its effects.

The French have become intoxicated with hashish. A number of works and essays have been published on the subject in Paris. Multitudes of experiments have been made, and endless visions seen or described. From these I select one specimen, which to him who has eaten hashish bears intrinsic evidence, pour le fond , of being genuine. “It appeared that his body was dissolved, that he had become transparent. He clearly saw in his chest the hashish which he had swallowed, under the form of an emerald, from which a thousand little sparks issued. His eyelashes were lengthened out indefinitely, and rolled like threads of gold around ivory balls, which turned with an inconceivable rapidity. Around him were sparklings of precious stones of all colours, changes eternally produced, like the play of the kaleidoscope. He every now and then saw his friends who were around him disfigured—half men, half plants; some with the wings of the ostrich, which they were constantly shaking. So strange were these, that he burst into fits of laughter; and to join in the apparent ridiculousness of the affair, he began throwing the cushions in the air, catching and turning them with the rapidity of an Indian juggler. One gentleman spoke to him in Italian, which the hashish transposed into Spanish. After a few minutes he recovered his habitual calmness, without any bad effect, without headache, and only astonished at what had passed. Half-an-hour had scarcely elapsed before he fell again under the influence of the drug. On this occasion the vision was more complicated and more extraordinary. In the air there were millions of butterflies, confusedly luminous, shaking their wings like fans. Gigantic flowers with chalices of crystal, large peonies upon beds of gold and silver, rose and surrounded him with the crackling sound that accompanies the explosion in the air of fireworks. His hearing acquired new power: it was enormously developed. He heard the noise of colours. Green, red, blue, yellow sounds reached him in waves. He swam in an ocean of sound, where floated, like isles of light, some of the airs of 'Lucia di Lammermuir,’ and the 'Barber of Seville.’ Never did similar bliss overwhelm him with its waves: he was lost in a wilderness of sweets; he was not himself; he was relieved from consciousness—that feeling which always pervades the mind; and for the first time he comprehended what might be the state of existence of elementary beings, of angels, of souls separated from the body: all his system seemed infected with the fantastic colouring in which he was plunged. Sounds, perfume, light, reached him only by minute rays, in the midst of which he heard magnetic currents whistling along. According to his calculation, this state lasted about three hundred years; for the sensations were so numerous and so hurried, one upon the other, that a real appreciation of time was impossible. The paroxysm over, he was aware that it had only lasted a quarter of an hour.”

The Moors have long been in possession of Dr. Hunter’s idea, [115] that certain qualities are conveyed by certain kinds of food: his notion is, however, limited to corporeal effects. Thus, a person with an affection of the liver should eat the liver of animals—the heart, &c. The Moors imagine that the mind can in like manner be affected, and that the quality of the animal is conveyed to the eater. The flesh of the fox gives cunning, the heart of the lion inspires courage. Probably it was to improve her complexion that the African Cleopatra ate pearls. To designate a stupid person, they say, “He has eaten the head of a hyena;” and as the hyena is very fond of hashish, his fixed eye and stupid look are attributed to the effect of that plant, for he will sit in the bottom of his den and allow it to be entered by a man who shoots, stabs, or nooses him. They give it also to horses, as it was told me first, to make them fiery; but on further inquiry, I found that it was given to them as a purge, and that afterwards they leave them in repose like men, as they are unable to keep their feet.

There are several other plants which they employ for producing similar effects—that which I afterwards found at Medea, and which is there described as the surnag , [116] which is found in the Atlas, and which is used for the same purpose; also the nuts of a species of the Palma Christi, which they mix with food, and the effect of which lasts but a few hours. This is said to be used to make people speak the truth, and discover their inward thoughts. [117]

Extensive as is the use of this drug, it is not used by the gentleman. On him observances are heaped which the vulgar escape, and indulgences denied which they enjoy. A Moorish gentleman is more constrained and more observed than the same class in any other country: he must be punctual in the discharge of his religious duties, which are neglected by the mass of the people; he must pay the regular alms to the poor; he abstains from all kinds of fermented liquors: he does not smoke or take snuff.

[105] “The butchers, that they might not be compelled to execute this sentence, took sanctuary. A stranger, and a ruffian, was found, who consented to perform the service. The gates were shut to keep the people in meanwhile. When over, and the gates were opened, the soldiers refused to protect the executioner. He was then chased like a mad dog by the children into the country, and then shot by a relation of the deceased.”— Hay’s Western Barbary .

[106] I may here anticipate the event which occurred a fortnight afterwards. One morning the leaders of the revolt, amounting to eighteen, were secured, Mike Brettel, of course, among the number. The whole was considered a master-stroke of policy, dexterity, and dissimulation: however, it failed in one point. By such influences as Walter Scott exhibits in the opening of the Tolbooth of Glasgow to Rob Roy, some of the chiefs who belonged to clans , escaped the Sultan. He thought it needless, and perhaps imprudent, to proceed against the mere citizens.

[107] Dr. Thompson’s Notes to M. Salvert’s Occult Sciences, vol. ii. p. 10.

[108] Kou-kin-I-Tong, as quoted by M. S. Julien, in a recent memoir to the Academy of Sciences.

[109] The proper name in Morocco is shazar . The young plant just sprouting is called nucla .

[110] Chrest. Arabe, tom. i. p. 210. See also Sonnini, Voyages, vol. iii. p. 103; Kiempfer, Amœnit. Exoticæ, Fasc. iii. ob. xv. p. 638.

[111] Hassan Saba founded the Ismaelians of Persia at Rudbor in 1090.

Their most illustrious victims were, Ameer Billah, Calif of Egypt, A.H. 524; Mostarschid, Calif of Bagdad, A.H. 529; Nezam al Mulk, the celebrated Vizier of the Seljucks, 485.

[112] See “Merchant and Friar,” by Sir W. Palgrave.

[113] “L’effet du hachich étoit de leur procurer un état extatique, une douce et profonde reverie, pendant laquelle ils jouissaient, ou s’imaginaient jouir de toutes les voluptés que embellissent le paradis de Mahomet. Les jardins enchantés, où le Vieux de la Montaigne fasait porter les jeunes gens, étaient un fantôme produit par l’imagination de ces jeunes gens enivrés par le hachich, et qu’on avait long temps bercés de l’image de ce bonheur.”— Silvestre de Sacy.

[114] In an interesting article in Chambers’s Magazine of November 1848, the writer says:—

“It is the nervous system that is affected, no other part of the body being acted upon; hashish thus materially differing from opium, whose power is marked upon the muscular and digestive systems, retarding the action of the organs, and leaving them in a complete state of inaction. The circulation does not seem to be affected; but it is not with impunity that the brain becomes disordered with frequent indulgence in the delicious poison: it becomes incapable at last of separating the true from the false.”

[115] See his Cookery Book.

[116] Marmol, vol. iii. p. 4.

[117] In Hunter’s “Captivity” there is an interesting account of the plants used by the Red Indians for smoking, inhaling, and also for sweating.

CHAPTER XII.

THE HISTORY OF MUFFINS.—THE ORIGIN OF BUTTER.—THE
ENGLISH BREAKFAST.

The day we landed at Rabat we heard a little tinkling bell through the street, just like the four o’clock muffin-bell in London. One of the party asked if it were tea-time amongst the Moors, and the others laughed, thinking it a good joke:—there was no joke in the case. These cockney cakes are just as common here as within the sound of Bow bells, and served for breakfast in Barbary when Queen Elizabeth’s maids of honour had for theirs beefsteaks and ale, or herrings and bread and cheese. They are a little larger than those in London, and exactly the peiklets of the midland counties.

To find muffins and crumpets here is, indeed, in the language of modern philosophy, a “great and a twofold fact.” [118] It is, however, one which great men have overlooked; because, although a cook must be a philosopher, it is not required that a philosopher should be a cook.

The incident set me upon considering the nature of the muffin, and opened to me a large field of speculation, culinary and historical. I first perceived that there were combined in the greasy accompaniment of our tea-tables characters so diverse, that it must have a history, and an eventful one; that it must have undergone vicissitude and persecution in the course of its wide career, the range of which in space and time could not be doubtful, from the place in which I found it.

Let me dispose first of the word crumpet : it is clearly a recent one. Peiklet is still used in the interior of England, and one name is given to both by Moors and Jews, sfen ; I shall, therefore, equally employ for both the word “muffin.” [119]

The muffin is bread , cake , and dish : [120] like the first, it is fermented; like the second, baked or toasted on a griddle; like the third, it requires to be cooked before it is eaten. Our method of cooking, by toasting first and then softening by butter, appears at the first glance the travestie of some lost method. The use of the toasting-fork could not have preceded coal-fires and grates with upright bars, an invention not earlier than the Georges; nor could it have preceded the use of butter, which cannot be traced beyond the Dutch stadtholder. In America, they do not toast and butter muffins, but eat them hot, as baked. They were, therefore, originally a part of the regular cookery of the country, and, indeed, could not belong, as at present, to “breakfast” and “tea,” which meals are of recent invention. Morocco presents the original practice: here they are simmered in oil or butter, and then dipped in honey. I did not see them used in dressed dishes; but Marmol, writing two centuries ago, describes them as employed in this manner. He says, “In Morocco, there are two ways of making bread—baking in an oven, as we do in Europe, and preparing it in pans to be eaten hot with honey and butter, or with oil. These cakes are sometimes stewed with the flesh of goats, for that of sheep is difficult to be got at, and that of cattle they do not consider wholesome.” [121]

The Moors and the Jews cook them differently, the former using butter, the latter oil: they thus connect baking and cooking, and illustrate differences between Judaism and Islam, or, perhaps, between Jew and Gentile. With these data it may be worth while to endeavour to find traces of them in ancient times.

Baking in Greece had attained to the highest perfection, as exhibited in separating or bolling the flour, [122] and in kneading the dough. [123] The art of baking, as connected with religious festivals, possessed an importance which, to us, is inconceivable. Among the Greek states, Athens was most distinguished for its bread; yet there were there foreign bakers—and these Lydians. [124] There was bread known by the name of Cappadocian, and the Phœnicians were held bakers of first repute. This people was said to possess as many kinds of bread as there were days in the year: their merit, however, does not seem to have consisted in baking, properly so called, but in combining preparations of flour with other viands; and in the Old Testament we have constant references to the mixtures of flour with oil and honey, all which approach to the Moorish sfen.

The names of only three out of the three hundred and sixty-five kinds of Phœnician bread have been handed down: the three resemble one another. This must have been the kind of bread for which Phœnicia was celebrated, and the descriptions apply to the muffin and the sfen, still preserved in countries which they colonized. The three kinds are lackmar , chebrodlapson , and maphula : lackmar is evidently derived from lackma, to swallow (whence lick ), and must have been remarkably soft. Athenæus calls it “ἄρτον ἁπαλόν.” It was prepared with milk and oil: the Syrians were celebrated for making it. That it was known to the Jews is proved by the word lachmanigoth , which occurs in the Talmud. [125] It was known to the Arabs, and is described by Mininski as a fritter of flour, dried grapes, oil, and fresh wine: of chebrodlapson, we only know that it was prepared with honey. How these were baked is not stated; but the third, maphula, was not fired in the oven, but on the hearth, or on a griddle. In the three collectively, we have all the ingredients and the methods at present in use in Morocco, [126] viz. flour, milk, oil, honey, and a griddle for firing them.

In maphula, we have the word employed in England. Taking away the final vowel added by the Greeks, and changing l for its cognate n , maphula or mufula becomes mufu n . [127]

These names have puzzled the most learned. Bochart avows his perplexity; Casaubon avers that “we ought not to be ashamed of confessing our ignorance of what we do not know, and, ipso facto , confesses his own.” Their difficulties disappear, as usual, before the knowledge of habits. Flour, milk, oil, and honey mixed up together would, indeed, form a sorry dish; as the critics, not being cooks, could not devise the process by which they could be converted into a palatable one. Bochart, with his usual sagacity, has detected the union of cooking and baking, and also that the Jews and Arabs cooked the muffin differently. He has, however, mistaken the distinction; he makes the Jews use oil or butter, the Arabs fat: the Jews cook it in oil only, the Arabs prefer butter.

The griddle on which muffins are baked in London, [128] is precisely the same as that used in the East, and fixed in the same manner over the fire. It serves for a variety of other dishes and preparations of flour. [129] On it is made the pastry of the East, which all travellers have tasted, which many have pronounced exquisite, and yet which none have described, or suspected, perhaps, to be different from that of Europe.

The secret of French pastry consists in bringing the butter and the dough to exactly the same consistency: this is effected by temperature for the butter, by water for the dough, cooling down the one or softening the other. When so adjusted, the butter in one mass is covered in; [130] it then spreads under the rolling-pin equally as the dough spreads, each in its own plane. Folded over and over again, the two keep distinct, and thus are obtained the flakes.

The butter of the East is fluid, and runs like oil; how, then, can they have flake-pastry? It was this difficulty which spurred their invention, and produced the unrivalled method which I shall now describe.

Wheat is steeped till it sprouts; it is then rubbed down, or pounded in a mortar, till it acquires the consistency of cream. In this state it is poured in ladles on the griddle, rubbed with butter. Instantly hardening, it is tossed off, sheet after sheet: the name is youfka . [131] It is then strung, and hung up: when wanted, a bundle of it is laid into the dish, or taien , [132] for the under-crust; the contents, sweet or savoury, of the pastry, are then put in, and the upper-crust in the same manner laid on. By this process are attained, in the highest degree, all the objects of French pastry—fineness of flour with a certain agro dolce flavour, softness in the substance, fineness and equality in the flake. It has the advantage, also, over our pastry, of facility and economy of time.

Old Arabic writers mention two kinds of food prepared by making Khebes , which are compared to the banana and Neïdeh described by Abd Allatib, as follows: “Wheat is soaked until it sprouts; it is then boiled until its whole substance passes into the water; the water is then clarified, and boiled down until it gets thick; at this point a little flour is thrown in, and it sets; it is then taken from the fire, and sold at the price of bread.” This is Neïdeh Albousch ; but when no flour is added, and it is boiled until it coagulates, it is better and sells for a higher price, and is called Neïdeh Makoudeh . [133]

Soyonti speaks of it as one of the things in high estimation in Egypt, and quotes an old writer, who says that it was discovered by the Virgin Mary. Being without milk, she was inspired with the idea of preparing it for the Infant Jesus. P. Sicard saw this dish at Meuschieh, and thus describes it: “The grain is steeped for several days till it sprouts; it is then dried, pounded or ground, and boiled for use. A sweet and agreeable confection is then made without sugar, and the people of the country esteem it much, and are very fond of it.” [134] In the time of Sonnini it had disappeared from Meuschieh. Here we have the steeping of the grain, the grinding, and the diluting of it in water, as in the present Eastern pastry. Although we have not the toasting of it on the griddle, more cannot be wanted to carry this process back to ancient times, and to those celebrated baker-cooks of Tyre and Sidon.

The neïdeh is still preserved in Britain under the name of Frumenty or Furmity . The method of preparing it is now in the hands of a few persons only, and has become a secret; and, probably, in another generation it too will have died out, under the crushing roller of subdivision of labour. Where still used, it is only on one occasion in the year, Mid Lent Sunday . When brought to market it is of the consistence of thick gum. Those who have eaten it describe it as an excellent dish. The festival when it is used may have some connexion with the Arab tradition concerning Mary’s milk. [135]

In the Highlands there is at once the neïdeh, the cadaëf, and the youfka; not, however, by malting, but by fermentation. Oat seeds are steeped for ten days till they ferment, the water is then boiled till it thickens. This is sowans ; [136] or it is poured on the griddle and made into scons , [137] which are used on festal occasions, but chiefly at Christmas. [138] That the Highlanders understood malting is shown in their whiskey, which they did not wait for Paracelsus to teach them to distil.

The first step in preparing flour or meal for food, is the ashes on the griddle; the next and last is, the oven. The peculiarity of bread resides in the baking in the oven; fermentation is called in as an auxiliary: the process is elaborate and complicated. When first invented, the oven and its produce, the baking and the bread, would be known by the same name. In early times words had to do severe duty. A soft flat roll, resembling the common bread of Barbary, is called in Scotland, bake . If so called because it is baked, it must have been so at the origin of baking. “Bake” would thus belong to the earliest ages, and go back to the first discovery of an oven, which, by one peculiar and horrid ceremony, we can trace to Sabæa. [139]

Now, this very word is written in a book two thousand three hundred years ago, and then as an old one—as one of the oldest in use among men. [140] There we learn that the Phrygian name for bread was bake ; bake was, therefore, asked for three thousand years ago, by Pelethite or Cerethian at Escalon or Gorja, just as to-day by the barefooted callant of Paisley or Linlithgow. It may be objected that the word, if in use in Canaan, would not have been mentioned as Phrygian; but the colony may have retained an ancient word which the metropolis had lost, [141] or the metropolis may, without losing the one, have introduced new names for new inventions. The Phœnician words which have been preserved are of that description. Lackmar, Chebrodlapson, are fine terms, such as would strike strangers more than the homely one in common use. The Egyptians, besides, were not given to travel; and with shoals of travellers and clouds of books, see how difficult—nay, impossible, it is to get at the simple things of any country.

However, “bake” and “muffin” do not stand alone: they are accompanied by a goodly array of emigrants from the Holy Land. I adduce them, not to prove any affinity of Hebrew and Celtic, or of Indo-Germanic and Semitic, but to establish the intercourse of our forefathers with those countries. Thus have come to us cake , [142] bun , [143] scon , [144] sowans , [145] bread , [146] broth , bear [147] (old Teutonic for grain), beer , barley , and I may, perhaps, add ham [148] and meat , [149] which, with those given before, make a baker’s dozen.

I will now leave it to the antiquarian to determine whether sfen came hither with the “diggers” for tin, or with those later “Afers,” whose persons and wares increased in the eyes of William the Norman, as the author of “Harold” narrates, the attraction of the capital of England. But anyhow, this remains certain, that muffins and crumpets were served at Hiram’s table.

A stranger from Europe is little surprised to find butter in Morocco. I had spent years in the East, and never had seen butter. I had myself introduced it both in Greece and Turkey; what, then, was my surprise to find it here. You may see in a boy’s hand a roll sliced—yes, sliced bread in a Mussulman’s hand, with a lump of butter inside for his breakfast, just as in England. It is pale, sweet, cowslip-flavoured, and smelling of the country [150] —I mean the country of England. To us butter comes so naturally—it is so necessary—that we cannot imagine ourselves without it, nor call up the difficulties in the way of its first discovery, which is one of the latest of uncivilized articles among the barbarous.

We read of butter in ancient times, but it was gee . The merit of ours is its being made from cream thrown up cold. The milk of kine alone has that property; and that milk during many centuries was unknown to man as food.

The great event of primeval society was the employment of cattle in tillage. To preserve and increase the breed was the first care of legislators: this they effected by consecrating the cow, [151] and its milk was surrendered to its own offspring. The practice outlived the occasion; and it was not till horses came to be substituted for oxen in the flat lands of the north that cows’ milk returned into general use, [152] as it had originally been among nomade tribes. Cream was unknown to all antiquity. There is not even the word in any ancient language. This statement will appear extraordinary, and may, perhaps, be set down as contrary to reason and unfounded in fact, for reference to cream in so many authors will immediately recur. The fact is, that none of those who have illustrated ancient manners and language have noticed this point, and they and travellers have not been conversant with the dairy; consequently they have transferred their own ideas to the languages they translated, the usages they described, or even the very things before their eyes. [153]

Up to the time of this discovery the diet consisted, as in the East, of a repetition of the same meal twice in the day. The breakfast differed not from the dinner, except that it was a smaller meal—the dishes were the same. Butter revolutionized the kitchen. About the same time two remarkable adjuncts to our diet were introduced from China and Arabia, tea and coffee. In their native countries they were no part of the people’s food, and furnished forth no meal; they were only used as a slight refreshment. In our adaptation of them they lost their flavour, [154] and no longer served their original purpose. Our coarse preparation required to be mellowed by cream or milk, and sugar. With the aid of butter, they assumed the consistency of a refection, and with eggs, in the shell, [155] of a meal. This did not, however, suffice as a substitute for both meals. Beef ruled the evening repast: the road diverged; two distinct meals came into existence, and the “English breakfast” assumed its dignified station in the domestic world. It has spread far and near, but only where preceded by the discovery of cream, and accompanied by the manufacture of butter. Morocco having butter, has the two descriptions of meals.

They make their butter without churn or cream. A goat’s-skin, with the hairy side in, is filled two thirds with milk; four poles or reeds, six feet long, are set up like a triangle. The skin is slung between them, a leg stretched out to each reed. A woman, seated on the ground, pushes and swings it, and presently the butter is churned. This is the simple imitation of what accident first taught; and in the desert the butter is, to this day, churned by the camel, not by the dairy-maid. [156]

The variety of its forms is wonderful. It sours , it ferments , it becomes sugar —it may be distilled into alcohol . It changes to curd ; it becomes cheese ; it hardens to stone , [157] or acquires the tenacity of cement ; [158] it leavens into yourt ; it dries into paste ; [159] it is separated by heat into caimah ; by greater heat into gee ; by repose it gives you cream , by agitation butter .

The peculiarity of the compound resides in the mode of mixture of the oil and water. These are not chemically united, for the oil is obtained without a reagent. Globules, as in the blood, have been detected. These by agitation cohere, probably by atomic polarity. Heat causes oil to appear, by bursting them. This is the difference between gee and butter. The globules being congested in a granular state, in butter and cheese, these when melted cannot be restored, like wax or lard, to their original condition. The cases of these globules are the part contributed by the animal; and, generated in the udder, must be the caseine, which is acted upon by the rennet, and becomes curd. However, as these compounds are not to be imitated by art, so have they not been as yet explained by science.

From this diet of milk has sprung the invention of butter. In the Zahara the animals are milked once a-day. All the kinds of milk are poured in together, and the distribution is made round and round to a family in the same cup or bowl. This is the whole meal. [160] What remains over is left for the old men, and poured into a skin, and put on the camel’s back, that it may be given to them at the next encampment. On their arrival it is churned, and thus butter becomes their perquisite, and is forbidden fruit to the younger portion of the community.

There is no mention of butter in Homer. Herodotus [161] and Hippocrates mention it as a Scythian word. But it is not satisfactory to me that butter is meant. The most particular description is by Hippocrates. [162] He introduces it as an analogy, to show the effect of disturbance on the humours of the body. He makes in that case the bile, as the lightest, rise to the top; the blood remains in the middle, and the phlegm falls below, just as the Scythians, by agitating mare’s milk, get three substances-the βούτηρον , on the top, the ὀῤῥὸς , in the middle, and the ἵππακα , at the bottom. Milk is never so treated, and produces no such substances. We accept the description, because of the manner of treating it, which resembles churnin and the word butter. That butter should have been used among the primitive Scythians, while yet pastoral, would concur with what we see elsewhere, but it is not proved by the passages in question. The word butter may have been known to the Greeks, as used by some barbarians, and therefore used for all oily preparations from milk, on this occasion. The agitation, or churning, is the chief link; but this again becomes very slight, when we know that the Tartars to this day employ that process in preparing milk for distillation, [163] and get from it their kermis.

In the domestic economy of the Zahara, milk assumes an importance which to us is scarcely credible. Periodically throughout that vast region—and among some of its tribes constantly— [164] it constitutes the sole and entire food of the population. “Impossible!” the animal chemist will exclaim. “Man requires a pound of nutriment; milk contains seven per cent., or say one ounce to the pound. He would have to drink sixteen pounds of milk, that is, two gallons, for the supply of mere waste of muscle. But milk does not supply the chemical ingredients for the animal laboratory. We want carbon for the great furnace of the lungs to supply heat and life.” I can only allege the fact. I have myself lived for months almost entirely on milk, curds, and cheese, and have not found the animal heat decay. On this diet the frame is able to support labour and privation, and to last long.

If we are to credit a fraction of the tales that are told of the age to which the Galactofagi attain, we should have to set it down as the perfection of food. [165] Nor are the effects of this diet confined to our species: milk is provender for cattle. It is given to horses where grain cannot be procured, and, together with dates, is the ordinary food of those fabulous steeds, the “Breath of the Desert.”

Milk contains nothing that is superfluous, to impose toil on the digestive organs, or to produce disturbance in the animal laboratory. It is, properly, neither an animal nor a vegetable substance. It is not dead flesh, of which we make our stomachs the sepulchre; nor is it the cold vegetation of the earth, for the decomposition of which we make them a trough. It is generated in the body of one animal, in order to be adapted for the food of another. It is drawn from the blood, and undergoes a change, which brings it near to chyle, so as to fit it to pass readily again into blood. [166] It is a food prepared, and a dish cooked, by Nature’s own hand, and served, if not hot, warm. It is adapted to the stomach before it can bear anything else, being the first transition from the blood circulated into the animal without the intervention of its own organs, and conveying into the body all that is requisite for its growth and development. [167] Like death, it equalises all ranks, all races, nay, even brings to the same level different orders of creation. It is the only food which the prince and the beggar, the tiger and the lamb, the Jew and Gentile, have in common; and, in common with other special favours, of which we are the objects, we least appreciate where we are most indebted.

Men may accustom themselves to a fetid atmosphere, and even to poisonous food, and they are then unable to appreciate what they lose, or what they suffer; but the simplest pabulum must best serve the purposes of life, and in proportion as any other is substituted, must there be a dissipation of vital power, and a consequent curtailment of existence; [168] and thus it is that, amongst the Koords and Zaharans life is sustained by an amount of nutriment which, according to our calculations of expenditure and waste, is wholly insufficient. No nation understands so little the use of milk as the English. To one familiar with the cookery and diet of other countries, nothing can be more afflicting than to visit the abodes, and inspect the food of those classes amongst ourselves who cannot afford meat. The fashion of tea, and the mania for baker’s bread, have expelled popular knowledge in the culinary art, together with the use of this natural diet, which is also proportionally diminished by the enclosure of commons, the methods of agriculture, and the disuse of ewes’ milk, even when the number of flocks increase.

Pliny derives the Latin word from the Greek βόος τύρα , without explaining how butter could ever come to be called cows’ cheese, or observing that mares, not cows, furnished it. What he tells us of butter refers to “the barbarians, who,” he says, “use it instead of oil, to anoint their children, and hold it to be the daintiest of meats. It is forbidden to the inferior classes; they employ it as a medicine, and esteem it the more, the stronger (more rancid) it is.” The two latter points exactly coincide with the practice in Africa. For higher classes, read old men. They use butter medicinally, and for that purpose keep it till it becomes rancid. The commentators, however, would amend Pliny by substituting minus for majus ! The Roman naturalist in all he says refers to oiled butter or gee, and not to butter produced by agitation or churning. He is astonished that the barbarians possessing butter are ignorant of cheese; but is by no means surprised at his own countrymen, who, liking milk and cheese, could neither make butter nor adopt it. The words cheese and butter , supposed to be derived from the Latin, were, as will presently appear, derived by the Romans from the barbarians.

Butter is mentioned in the Old Testament. The commentators, however, are agreed that it is a mistranslation. I admit that it does militate against its antiquity that it should be so seldom mentioned there. The imagery of the Scriptures is drawn from the most homely objects. The worthies of Israel were as good cooks as Crœsus or Patroclus; the high-priests were butchers by profession; and all the prophets did not live on locusts and wild honey;—probably there was not one who had not used the basting ladle. If, therefore, they had possessed that delicate and valuable substance, with which we have become too familiar for its just appreciation, is it possible that it should occur but eight times from the beginning of the Old Testament to the end of the New?

The explanation is furnished in the aversion of the Jew to butter, to which I have already adverted. The same distinction between the Jew and the Philistine, no doubt, held in the time of David.

The Jews interpret the injunction “Thou shalt not seethe the kid in the mother’s milk,” to mean, that butter be not mixed with meat; [169] consequently they do not allow it to touch any pan, dish, platter, knife, spoon, or dresser used for their ordinary food. “Antagonism” being thus established between butter and their common diet, butter does not make “progression,” nor even hold its own. It is to be inferred, that the butter they knew contained,—in part at least,—the milk of goats, as would be the case in the Zahara method of churning.

It is first mentioned when Abraham entertains the angels. He took “butter and milk, and the calf he had dressed.” [170] Four centuries later, we have “Rivers of honey and butter;” [171] and butter compared with oil for “washing one’s steps.” [172] It then occurs in Moses’s song: “ Butter of kine , milk of sheep , and fat of lambs.” It next appears in Deborah’s and Barak’s song: “He asked for water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish.” [173] It is brought for David when he is fleeing from Absalom. [174] The wise man speaks of it as a wise man ought: “The churning of milk bringeth forth butter.” [175] The last mention is the most remarkable; it is Isaiah’s prophecy respecting Christ: “Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse evil and choose good.” The word translated butter is imae , [176] which Calmet explains as “the scalded cream in use in the East.” Gesenius says, “Butter by the ancients, as well as by the orientals, was only used medically.” By others it is interpreted “curdled milk,” “cheese,” &c. In a word, the commentators have been as much put out by Jewish butter as the scholiast by Phœnician bread. Had curds or sour milk been meant, the proper name would have been given. Had Calmet known anything of the scalded cream “in use in the East,” he never could have supposed that it would be employed to wash with. None of these could be obtained by churning . Then it is answered, that the Jews had no churn. There is no such word in Hebrew: the passage of Solomon is, “As the churning of milk bringeth forth butter, so doth the wringing of the nose bring forth blood, and the stirring up of wrath bring forth strife.” The same word is employed throughout— mitz . But the word which could be translated “churning,” “wringing,” and “stirring up,” seems most happily adapted to describe the jerk and swing of the skin full of liquid on the camel’s back, or the process by which it was imitated.

In none of these passages, save the last, is butter spoken of as in use among Jews after the promulgation of the Ceremonial Law. Abraham and Job are anterior, so is the period to which Moses refers when he speaks of the good things which they had abused, and thereby incurred God’s displeasure. When brought forth in a “lordly dish,” it was by a Midianite offered to a Hazorite. [177] There was much conveyed to the Israelite in the epithet given to a dish in which butter could never be placed by him. When brought to David it is offered indeed to a Hebrew under the Ceremonial Law, but it might be for the Pelethites or Cerethian, who accompanied him; it is presented too by “one of the children of Ammon.” Solomon might be describing the practice of the neighbouring Arabs or Canaanites. In both the cases in which it is mentioned by Isaiah (ch. vii.), viz., that Christ shall eat it, and that the people shall be reduced to eat it, no reference is made to a present practice, and in both cases the sense of breaking the law may be conveyed.

The Old Testament thus entirely establishes the present usage of Morocco, and its identity with Palestine. There, as here, butter was made, and then, as now, the Philistine fried his muffins in butter, the Jew in oil.

One of the forms in which milk is most generally used, and of all, perhaps, the most healthful and agreeable, is unknown in Europe, and has no name amongst us: it is a curd (yumed) without rennet. It is used fresh, but may be drained of its whey and kept a considerable time. In travelling, it is hung in a bag, and, when very dry, rubbed down with fresh milk or water. This is the leben [178] of the Arabs and the yourt [179] of the Turks: it is also made in India, and called tyre . It is made as follows:—the milk is heated to the point of boiling, and then allowed to cool down until the finger can be kept in it while you count three: a spoonful of the old yourt, mixed first with a little of the milk, is then poured in. It is put in a warm place (the temperature must not be under 70°), and in two or three hours it will have set. The process is one of fermentation: the milk is leavened. The first leaven of yourt, they say, was brought by Gabriel to Abraham. They, however, profess to be able to make it anew by repeating the above process during a fortnight, using on the first occasion a crab pounded in vinegar, or a silver spoon or button: I have succeeded in obtaining it without either the crab or the spoon. Milk after being brought to the boiling point, was allowed to sour; a spoonful of it was mixed on the second day, that again on the third, and so on till the fourteenth, when perfect yourt was obtained.

When staying at Lamlin in Hungary, I used to have yourt sent over from Belgrade: the Germans were very glad to get it, but had no idea of making it for themselves. So travellers from all countries of Europe have become acquainted with it, and learn its value as an economical food and its qualities as a healthy diet. Most of them like it, some of them give it the preference over everything else; yet no one has thought of introducing it at home. In Greece, before and during the revolution, it was, like baths, common use. “Civilization” came, and a wholesome food and a healthful practice were straightway expelled.

This species of curd, without the aid of the liquid found in the rennet of young animals, offers the explanation of practices of the Greeks, and suggests the possibility of unknown uses even of milk. The Greeks had cheese—or substances to which they applied that name—not made with rennet, and of which the description applies equally to yourt. [180] Their name for cheese, τυρὸς , is supposed to be derived from Tyre: the Indian name for yourt is tyre . The Hindoos would not touch anything prepared with rennet. The Greeks made curd by vinegar, [181] pepper, burnt salt, the flowers of bastard saffron, and the threads on the head of the artichoke. [182]

Next to yourt comes caïmac : it is not, however, to us equally a stranger. The first day I spent in Devonshire was occupied in a discussion respecting the Phœnician settlements. It was maintained by several learned natives that of these there was no direct proof. The next morning, walking with one of these gentlemen, we entered a cottage. “There,” I said, pointing to the fire, upon which some Devonshire cream was preparing, “is what you wanted last night.” There was an Eastern dish made in an Eastern manner—the earthenware pots and wood-fires: [183] the cottage was built of tapia . The name of the adjoining village was Torr ; direct proof why every second name is Hebrew. Besides the village there is Tor quay, Tor bay, Tor Abbey. To the eastward there is Sud bury; and, if that name be not derived from the ancient metropolis of Phœnicia, no one will dispute the derivation of Marazion (Great Zion) from the Jewish metropolis. Beer -Ferrers and Beer Alsten are Hebrew for the Well of Ferrers, the Well of Alsten. Then there is the Menar rock, the river Camel , and so many more. [184] Sir Richard Carew describes, in his day, mattings for hanging upon the walls : [185] they are precisely so used in Barbary. The Moorish house is the fac-simile of that of ancient Judæa; we may expect, then, to find a Phœnician dish in villages which retain Phœnician names, and are built according to the Phœnician fashion, and were covered, as late as the seventeenth century, with Phœnician matting.

Devonshire cream is made by heating the milk in a pan upon the fire, then allowing it to stand; the creamy and caseous parts collect on the top, and the watery part is drained off below. It may then be churned into butter: the “scalded cream of the East” is made by a similar process. The milk is poured into small shallow earthenware basins, which are put in the oven with a slow heat: the lighter part rises, and crusts. Gradually it hardens and thickens, until, by gathering up the whole substance, it forms a little dome. It is then lifted off like a cake, and a little colourless fluid remains at the bottom. This cream derives its name from the process of making it, caïmac , which means burnt . [186]

“Cream” has in Latin the same meaning: it could not, therefore, have been originally applied as at present, and the first cream the European nations who employed the word had seen must have been “burnt;”—that is, caïmac. It was probably invented during the Crusades. All the nations of Europe use this word. It follows, that none of them could originally have had it; for, in that case, they would have had an original one. Spain is, however, an exception: the Spaniards did not take part in the Crusades.

Professor Ritter has made use of this art in tracing the ancient Scythians, and W. Von Humboldt has in like manner employed it in his remarkable work on the Basques. This is high tribute to the value of cookery in the profoundest inquiries; but the results show that, before it can be safely or successfully employed, philosophers must be cooks. Ritter confounds cheese and butter; [187] assumes, on the strength of the passage of Hippocrates, [188] on which I have above commented, butter to be a Scythian name, and butter to have been made by the Scythians. He then connects the Scythian compound from mares’ milk with the butter used as a medicine in Greece, which we know was made from cows’ milk, and the source of which I have already given. He does not trace any of the parallel words, or show a Scytho-German origin for “cream,” “milk,” “cheese,” &c.

Humboldt considers his case to be fully made out, and says that the same thing holds with the Iberians; [189] but, as to whether we are to infer that the Iberians were Scythians or Germans, he does not explain. He refers to no one term in use, or to any practice. We have seen that cream has no native name in any European dialect; that the name for butter in every land expresses gee, not churned butter; and the same thing holds even of the Tartars and Chinese, who, like the Slaavs, call it “cows’ oil.” The Spanish peninsula is an exception, and exhibits, not only one, but two systems of its own.

The Spanish has original words for cream and butter; the first is nata , [190] the second manteca . Manteca means also fat, so that it could not have been with them primitive: they do not use it now, save as an imported habit.

In the Basque provinces it is indigenous, as among the tribes of the Zahara, and for the dairy, in all its branches, they have original terms: milk is eznea , butter guria , and cream bicaño . These terms are wholly distinct from Aramean, Greek, Scythian, German, or Celt. Between the north and south of the peninsula the difference in practice coincides with the difference of its terms; and both prove that two distinct people anciently inhabited it. It was next to impossible that such primitive terms should have been lost. The things were unknown to the Romans, and the words introduced to supplant them were not Roman. ( Nata is an adaptation of the Latin natare .) More is not wanted to confirm the statement of Strabo, that the “ Hispani restrict the term Iberia to the portion bounded by the river Iber.” The two races were Hispani and Iberi.

Connected with this subject is another peculiarity worth mentioning. The Greeks had two names for bread; the one the vulgar name, which I have already traced to the Brebers, and which is preserved in the modern dialect of Greece and of Andalusia, in ψῶμι and acemite . The other is artos ( ἄρτος ). Now this word is pure Basque, and is found in a variety of compounds in their tongue. They have two words for bread, artoa and oguia : the first at present applied to maize, the second to barley; but the first is the primitive, being derived from “grinding with a stone;” [191] and as supplying the word for “dough,” artaoria ( orea , mass). They have artochiquia , artopella for different preparations of flour. Now it may be asked, could the Greeks derive so primitive a word as “bread” from the Basques? [192] The explanation is given, by Socrates: “The Greeks had many words from the barbarians who were before them ;” and the Basques were not always confined to the north of Spain. We know that they colonized Sicily, and traces of the language are to be found on the shores of the Euxine.

The settlement of the Celts in Italy was coeval with Rome. If they had known cream and used butter, the Romans must have had them: their ornaments, their bedding, the square and lozenge patterns, their soap, &c., are known to us. The words and usages are thus not to be considered as belonging to their common race, but as derived from the incidents of their own adventures.

In Gaelic, or more properly Erse , [193] the word for butter comes nearer to that of the Old Testament than the word employed by the Moors and Jews in Barbary. It is fin : in the genitive case it is the same as the Hebrew, fine . They have a second word which approaches equally to the Semetic gee. It is ce . This appears to be the oiled butter which has now fallen into disuse. [194] Like the ancients they used it medicinally, and kept it till it was rancid. This is the third kind of butter known; and they have a third name, butter . This word they got where they got fin and ce . The medicinal use of butter has in these days been reduced to one spot of Africa—that is, Suz; and thence a traffic in it is carried on to Negroland, just as formerly it must have been exported from the whole coast of Barbary to Europe. This preparation is known to-day in the interior of Africa—precisely in the region where neither European nor Roman, nor Greek, could have spread it—as Budra . The word is given, and the substance described, in Jackson’s Vocabulary of the Shelloh dialect.

I have already shown that Pliny did not know whence the Romans had the word, and they never had the thing. The clans derived it directly from Barbary or Judæa hundreds of years before Pliny wrote. I need not here repeat what I have elsewhere said regarding the transposition of cognate letters. D and T are such. In adding, according to the Greek and Roman fashion, their termination, they would for euphony say, Butyron for Budron.

Cheese in Erse, is Caise , [195] pronounced Caishee. This, too, is supposed to come from the Romans, and the probability of this derivation is increased by Pliny’s statement, that the barbarians had no cheese; but we know that the Greeks had their cheese from the Phœnicians, since the word τύρον is explained at least, as Tyrian. Phrygia exported even cheese of asses’ milk. [196] The old Arabs had a cheese of goats’ milk, not learnt from the Romans, for it had another name, Raïb . It is clear, then, that the Semetic races did not know the use of cheese, though, perhaps, as at present, they were not partial to it, and did not excel in making it. In the interior of Africa they do make cheese, and in the dialect of the great interior tribe extending from Morocco to the Red Sea, the name is agees . It is given in the French and Breber dictionaries. [197] The nearest approach the Romans could have made to agees would be acaseus : their word is caseus . There is no need of the intervention of Rome to bring caise to the Celtic tribes.

In respect to the manufacture of butter by the clans;—even without the aid of etymology we must carry it to times long antecedent to its use in Europe. It is associated with their superstitions [198] —that is, their mythological era. They make it by the process still in use in Barbary from the whole milk, [199] as well as by that now employed in the north of Europe, from cream thrown up cold. They eat it mixed with sweetmeats and honey; and this practice is no less peculiar still in some parts of the East than in the Highlands. [200] Preserves may be traced back to the immediate progeny of Abraham. Jacob sends down to Egypt a present for Joseph. It is the choice things of the land, of course, and things not common in Egypt. The first is balm, the second honey; [201] but honey could be no rarity in Egypt. The word in Hebrew is dipsi . That is the name still in use for preserves made of grapes; and in Shaw’s time, the village of Hebron alone exported annually three hundred camel loads of it to Egypt. [202] There being no grapes in the Highlands, the clans took to other fruit, not forgetting the oranges they had been accustomed to in Spain. Butter—that I mean in present use—being a preparation of cream, and cream being, as I have shown, of very recent invention, and not yet traced to its source; the principal evidence of the originality of butter among the clans, must rest on the proof of their having been in possession of cream, and this, I think, I can establish most satisfactorily. I have said that the word cream is not known to them. Now, they have for it two rare names: hachdar , which, like the nata of the Spaniards, means the “part that swims,” and barr , which signifies “top.” Skimmed milk they call bainne lòm , or milk “bare” or “naked;” they have also a term for “milk under cream,” which is bainne ce , or bainne fo che . It is impossible that so many, so comprehensive, and such descriptive terms, all of them ancient, should have been in use, if the substance to which they apply was not known, and if the invention had not been original. And this is remarkable, that while the names of the preparations in use in Judæa may etymologically be traced to domestic tongues, all the names for this one, which is not to be found in the east, are pure Celtic. Cream is a constituent part of the national food, and is so general, that the very dishes of the dinner-service have been modified to suit it. Dessert plates are like small soup plates, as it is the necessary accompaniment of every sweet dish.

They have the Eastern caïmac in the shape of Devonshire cream. It is known as “Carstorphine cream,” but it is going out of use. In the village which has given to it its Lowland name, it is no longer to be found, although the last generation of Edinburgh citizens used to repair thither on festal days to regale themselves all unconsciously on this Phœnician dainty. [203]

In Turkey neither of the Semetic words for butter has been adopted: they have an original one,—like the mantica of the Spaniards. It is yagh . It applies equally to butter, fat, and oil; the last they call zeïtin yaga , “olive-butter;” and butter they sometimes qualify by jost , or “milk-butter.” They, therefore, had none of their own; but I refer to their word from a singular coincidence with the Erse, in which language “tallow” is igh . It is at present pronounced ce , but the orthography is a record of a more ancient pronunciation. The great Sclavonic family is in like manner without a word for butter. They call it oil. [204]

The last point of identification with the East which I shall adduce, is the name of the substance which is the basis of all these compounds— milk . In Erse, it is bainne ; in Arabic, chaleb . Here are not two consonants the same; to the ear there is no trace of resemblance, yet they are from one root, from which also come gala , [205] lac , and milk . Bainne is derived from the Gaelic, ban , white. Lebanon (without the Greek termination Le ban ), is known to have been so called from its colour, white. Leben is sour milk in Arabic, and from the same root as chaleb.

The clans are indebted to no one for their cheese; for their name for coagulated milk is derived from the maw , in which the rennet is found. It is called a bhinnbeach . The stomach, or rennet, is binid . They have a variety of other dishes [206] and names— [207] so extensive, indeed, as to lead to the inference that at some time they must have been essentially, if not like the tribes of the Zahara exclusively, pastoral, and restricted for their food to the produce of the dairy.

The Highlanders have the greatest variety of dishes made from milk. They have the richest dairy, and the richest vocabulary: the words are partly derivative, partly original, as might have been expected from a practical and pastoral people, taking service amongst the different nations with whom these preparations were in use. They learned the usages of each, and retained them, with their names, so that the usages and the words show the Highlanders to have been in communication with the people who had Turkish caïmac , Hindoo gee , and Moorish simin ;—in other words, that they had been in the Holy Land before Phœnician usages had been extinguished, or, that when they were in Morocco the present habits were to be found.

“It often happens, that in seeking for the origin of a word a much wider field of inquiry opens, and if carefully pursued, leads to unexpected conclusions, bearing on the history, belief, manners, and customs of primitive times, and so as to leave no doubt of the occurrence of particular events, or of the existence of peculiar customs, respecting which history is entirely silent, and of the falsity of other things, handed down undoubtingly in her pages. Etymology is the history of the languages of nations, which is a most important part of their general history. It is the lamp by which that which is obscure in the primitive history of the world will one day be lighted up.” [208]

It is, indeed, the lamp, but not the light. The wick must be touched by living flame before it ignites. That flame is custom. The pursuit of mere sound—the affinities of roots—are but landscapes in the clouds, until you get things substantial, with which they are associated, and on which the light of etymology may be brought to shine.

A distinction between the use of butter and oil for simmering muffins and crumpets in Morocco, furnishes a link between those eaten in the Temple of Solomon and those sold in the streets of London, and thereby supplies evidence to fix the Cassiterides, while incidentally, it disposes of a great historical and ethnographic question, the wanderings of the Celts.

An admirable product has been used for thousands of years in this region, and no Jason has come to carry it away. Yet Julius Cæsar and Count Julian, Sartorius, and Belisarius, Charles V, , with many other shrewd persons, have tasted Moorish butter. The Andalusians are delighted to get a little pot of it, but as to learning how to make it, that never entered into their philosophy. So yourt, made in every tent or hut, from the Yellow Sea to the Adriatic, is unknown in Europe. A magic line defines the domain of chops, of boiled potatoes, of chocolate, of coffee. One race can boil, another cannot: e.g. the English. [209] One race can roast, another cannot; and each is utterly incapable of comprehending the faculty conferred on the other. There is a land congenial to pilaff, another to kuskoussou, another to mutton-broth. Devonshire cream, polecuta, poi curry, have, like an insect on a moss, their zone. You may transplant trees, and transfer royal houses, carry forth religions, and distribute all around slips of constitutions—but a dish!—no!—as there is more in a costume than covering the back, so is there more in a dish than filling the belly.

There yet remains one term unexamined. Whence comes dairy ? There is no such word on the Continent; it is neither Latin nor Teutonic. It has no Celtic root. I have been describing the douar, which is indeed a camp; but the features which forced themselves upon my attention belonged to the sheepfold. The people are shepherds. In every tent the chief utensils are the milk-pails, leathern churns, and butter-pots; the chief produce and food, milk and butter. Why is the Arab camp a circle? It is to fold the cattle. Thence the name, douar and deïra. The exploits of Abd-el-Kadir and his Deïra have made the word familiar to us in Europe. It is the very word we apply to the fold’s produce. [210] From the same root is gadeira , gadir , an enclosure—the name of Cadiz, the only city upon earth in which the cow or ewe is not to be found, nor any animal whatever giving milk! How, it may be asked, could the word come to us? Tally ho! is in English an unmeaning word. The rallying cry of the Arab in war is Talla hu! Tally ho! doubtless, was brought by the Crusaders. Dairy may have been learnt then, or many a century before.

The pursuit of a word is like “hunt the slipper.” It is here, it is there. There would be no game unless it were slipped under. There was Babia , the goddess of infants, in Phœnicia; there are babies in England. No doubt it is the same slipper, though we cannot tell under what petticoat it has slipped.

Sheeps’ heads, with the skin left on, are in Morocco, as in Scotland, carried to the smithy to be singed. “Singed heads” were never twice invented in the world. [211] Things that are worth anything, are only invented once. The crop is sown, the weeds only come up of themselves. There is nothing without its history, if we only knew it. Whatever is, had a beginning. That only is worth looking for which we do not know.

[118] See “History of Civilization,” passim.

[119] The Americans call crumpets muffins, so that the latter must have been the common name at the time of the early emigration westward.

[120] In the culinary language of our country, I use this term to supply the place of “plat,” and “met.”

[121] Africa, vol. ii. p. 4.

[122] Poll. Onomast lib. vi. 74.

[123] Ὁ δὲ σιτοποιὸς χειρίδας ἔχων καὶ περὶ τῷ στόματι κημὸν ἔτριβε τὸ σταὶς ἵνα μηδὲ ἱδρὼς ἐπιῤῥέῃ, μήτε τοῖς φυράμασιν ὁ τρίβων ἔπνέοι .— Athen. , lib. xii. 70.

[124] Athen. lib. iii. 77; Idem, lib. xiv. 54; Poll. lib. vi. 32; Idem, lib. vi. 75; Schol. Aristoph. Archar. 86.

[125] Rabbi Solomon translates it “wafer.”

[126] Abdul-melich asked the old Mechyumian, what meat he liked best; he answered, an ass’s neck well seasoned and well roasted. “What say you,” says Abdul-melich, “to a leg or shoulder of a sucking lamb, well roasted and covered over with milk and butter?” Abulpheda remarks on this passage, “the Arabians had not then changed their cookery from what it was in the time of Abraham.”

[127] The Crusader, Baldwin, is known to the Arabs as Bardui l . Portugal they make Portgu n . Labunitus of Homer, is written Nabunitus by Berosius. The exchange of b and m is so common, as almost to be a rule; and thence, perhaps, that strange word biffin for baked apples, resembling in shape the muffin.

Mr. Layard mentions, that the Yezidis, who abhor all imprecations, will not use the word naal , “horse-shoe,” because it approaches to l aa n a “curse.”— Nineveh , vol. i. p. 296.

[128] The Dutch have one of the best sweet dishes, which they peculiarly honour by decorated booths at their fairs, set apart for its preparation. Like the muffin, it is flour and water set for three hours to ferment: it is then poured, not on a griddle, but on heated tongs with deep bars, so that it comes out with the shape of a portcullis; it is then eaten like the sfen, with sugar or honey.

[129] The Turks call the muffin Gassi Cadaëf . This is also run on the griddle through a tin mould with holes, and so forms coils of thread like vermicelli. This is called Tel (wire) Cadaëf . These dainties are described in a Turkish cookery book; Genek Rizalisè, by Negib Effendi, A.H. 1259, A.D. 1842.

[130] The English roll out the dough and then put dabs of butter on it, and then roll it again. The fee for learning to make flake-pastry, as described above, is five guineas.

[131] They also use rice for the same purpose, reducing it by boiling. The pastry prepared from it is called kuladj .

[132] The round copper dish in use in the East, and which is carried hot from the fire and placed on the sofra , or table, the τήγανον of the Greeks.

[133] Khalil Dhaheri mentions it also. The passage is quoted by Volney, and he translates it indigo . May there not be some connexion between the Egyptian name, and the old goddess Neith, and also with the English word knead ?

[134] Nouv. Missions, t. ii. p. 73.

[135] On making inquiries respecting it, I have received the following reply from Cirencester.

“I cannot tell how the wheat is prepared, as we procure it in a state of jelly from an old woman who knows the secret. A pint of this jelly is melted in a quart of milk; it is slightly boiled, lemon peel, and cinnamon, and sugar being then added; the yolks of five eggs beaten up, are mixed in, and it is served in a tureen. Raisins and currants, all stewed well, and plumped out with hot water, are served up separately; they are cold, a spoonful or so being added to each helping. The name is frumenty ; this shows perhaps the antiquity of the dish, and is an interesting specimen of etymology. It is only made at Easter.”

[136] The Breber “Assowa.”

[137] Carscones , pancakes, “Redemption cakes,” are eaten on Easter Monday.

[138] These facts throw new light on the knowledge of the ancients, respecting the fermentation of liquors and brewing. They did malt grain, and indeed they seem to have been aware of the advantage of so treating it, for fattening animals. We know that Penelope steeped the grain which she gave to her geese.

[139] Hollinger de Rel. Sabæ. b. i. ch. 8.

[140] Herodot. l. ii. c. 2.

[141] “Their learned Rabbis were quite at a loss for the meaning of that text of the prophet Isaiah, 'I will sweep thee with the besom of destruction,’ till they heard accidentally an Arabian maid-servant call a broom by that same name, which was common to the Hebrew and Arabic tongue, the meaning of which was quite lost in the Hebrew, and only preserved in the Arabic.” Ockley.

[142] The Passover bread Khak .

[143] Bunuclos, Spanish for crumpet.

[144] This word I have before explained.

[145] Assowa , a preparation used by the Shellahs, similar to that called sowans in Scotland.—See Jackson’s Vocabulary.

[146] The Teutonic Brod , made broth, broze, is contained in Chebrodlapson .

[147] Barr , whence the three words in the text.

[148] Ham in Arabic is beef, but it is applied to dried flesh.

[149] Zumeita (Breber), Zimita (Shellah), Azamotan , mentioned in Glass. Hist. of the Canaries, and described as “barley-meal fried in oil,” is the preparation used in crossing the Zahara. It is toasted barley-meal mixed with water in the corner of the haïk, exactly as the Highland drovers used to mix it in the corner of their plaid. It is also mixed with butter or with honey, and in this form it constitutes the early meal. “ Meat ,” and the French met , which signifies every kind of food, are going a begging for an etymology. From Zimita come ζυμίται (Poll. lib. vi. 32), ζυμὸς, ζυμὴ, ψῶμι (leaven broth and bread), and Zimid , the Turkish bread baked with butter, acemiti , Spanish.

[150] Dr. Forbes, in his “Physician’s Holiday,” has given some valuable suggestions on this matter:—

“In looking at the horrid compound sold in England as salt butter—at least, the cheaper sorts of it used by the poorer classes—I cannot but believe that its supersession by the boiled butter of Switzerland would be advantageous, both to the comfort and health of a large proportion of our countrymen. It can hardly be believed that such an offensive, briny, and semi-putrid mass, as the cheaper sorts of our salt butter, can be without serious detriment to the health of the consumers, any more than the salted meat formerly issued to our seamen was so.”

He describes a melted butter used in Switzerland, and earnestly recommends the adoption of the same practice for culinary purposes. It consists in boiling it slowly after it is made: the process takes six hours, two to heat it, two to cool it, and two to simmer it. There is a white, hard cheesy sediment which has carefully to be removed. He also describes a process, by which the whole of the butter of these Alpine pastures is preserved sweet, without salt. “On a board, four or five inches wide, wooden pins two to three feet in length, are fixed upright; the butter is placed daily around these pins, beginning at the lower end, in a mass not exceeding the width of the board. Every day, as more butter is added around the pin, the diameter is gradually enlarged, until the upper part overhangs the base, like an inverted bee-hive. When one pin is filled, another is proceeded with. The exposed surface of these masses gets soon covered with a sort of hard film, which effectually excludes the air.”

[151] “The cause why the idolaters magnify the kine, is their use in agriculture—as much as to say, it is not lawful to slay them.”—(Talmudists on the eleventh chapter of Leviticus, apud Hollinger de Religion. Sab. l. i. c. 8.) A Roman citizen was once indicted and condemned by the people for killing an ox. “For this beast,” says Pliny, “is our companion, and labours together with us in ploughing the field.” Yet in Rome everything was based upon pasturage, not tillage: libations of milk were used in sacrifice. Pecunia was money, and the public revenues Pascua .

For laws against the slaughter of cattle used in husbandry, see Ælian, Var. Hist., l. v. c. 14; Athen. l. ix. ex Philloc.; Varro de Re Rustica, l. ii. c. 5.

The Hindoo code, of course, forbids the killing of cows at all ages. The Mussulman code forbids the killing of calves.

[152] A line of Euripides might appear conclusive against me;

καὶ τορὸς ὀπίας ἐστὶ καὶ βοὸς γάλα .-— Cycl. v. 136.

But he is speaking of the food, not of common men, but of Silenus. However, Athenæus will no way admit the thing, or even the word. He corrects it ( l. 14), Διὸς γάλα , or milk fit for Jupiter, meaning goats’, not cows’ milk; so unnatural did the latter seem. Consult Eustath. in Odyss. δʹ . Homer calls the Hippomolgians galactophagoi, and otherwise commends them, ( Il. νʹ . 6). He only twice mentions milk, and both times speaks of it as that of ewes or goats;—- πίονα μῆλα ἔμελγα , Od. ιʹ . 237; δ’ ἔμελγεν ὄϊς καὶ μηκάδας αἶγας , Od. ιʹ . 244. He mentions cheese twice ( Od. κʹ . 234; Il. λʹ . 638): on the last occasion, he calls it goats’ cheese, αἴγειον τυρὸν , and it was hard, for it was raped with a bronze rape, κνήστι χαλκείῃ .

[153] Chandler ( vol. ii. p. 245) describes the process of making butter in Greece, by putting cream in a goat’s skin, and trampling on it. The method referred to I shall presently describe: no cream is used.

Silvestre de Sacy translates the title of Kholil Daheri’s work on Egypt; “ Cream of the Exposition.” It occurs in the taunting letter of Shah Rock to Timour; he says,—

“Your expressions are the Zebed of language.” The word is translated elsewhere foam (caïmah).—Cf. Chresth. Arabe, t. ii. pp. 11, 76.

“That they skimmed the milk is evident, whatever they may have done with the cream. Philostrates mentions vessels filled to the brim with milk, on which the cream lies rich and shining.”— St. John’s Ancient Greece , vol. ii. p. 286.

The passage referred to has not a word about cream; it is as follows; ψυκτῆρες γάλακτος, οὐ λευκοῦ μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ στίλπνου. καὶ γὰρ στιλβεῖν ἔοικεν ὑπὸ τῆς ἐπιπολαζούσης αὐτῷ πιμελῆς .— Icon. i. xxxi. p. 809. “Vases of milk, not only white but shining, for they appeared to shine from the floating fat.” The shining skin which covers boiled milk is here accurately described.

[154] The art of making tea consists in pouring the water on and off immediately, so as to get the flavour. Coffee-making is a more intricate affair, and cannot be conveyed in a recipe. A docile spirit, that will dismiss every received idea, and not reason, may make something out of the hints I now submit. The fire must be very low, half embers (wood), half ashes; the cup of coffee small; and a small pot so as to make it cup by cup. The coffee must be slowly roasted, not burnt, and brought only to an umber brown; it must be roasted day by day. The flavour dissipates in a few hours; it must be reduced by pounding to an impalpable powder. These are the conditions under which coffee can be made. In making it, two opposite and apparently incompatible ends are to be secured,—strength and flavour; to obtain the first it must be boiled,—by boiling, the second is lost. The difficulty is surmounted by a double process; one thorough cooking, one slight one; by the first a strong infusion is obtained, by the second that infusion is flavoured. Thus, a large pot with coffee-lees stands simmering by the fire; this is the sherbet : when a cup is wanted, the pounded coffee is put in the little tin or copper pan and placed on the embers; it fumes for a moment; then the sherbet is poured on; in a few seconds the froth (caïmah) rises; presently an indication that it is about to boil is made manifest, when the coffee is instantly taken from the fire, and carried to the apartment, and turned into the cup and drunk.

[155] There is one thing new under the sun, and that is an egg cup: no egg cups are to be found in Etruscan sepulchres, in Egyptian pyramids, or Assyrian palaces; eggs were only boiled hard in the shell. Small spoons, egg-, or tea-, or salt-spoons, are also a modern discovery, and all pertain to the new meal.

[156] One of the four-and-twenty romances of the Arabs before the times of Mahomet, turns on a jar of butter. Zouhaji pushes with his bow an old woman who brought it. Thence arises a tribe-encounter, in which the chief loses his life. There have been handed down a lament by his son, and a pæan by his conqueror, which Antar soon turned to an elegy.

[157] The discus of the ancients, as that used by the modern Italians, was supposed to be cheese.

[158] It is an ingredient in Vancouver cement.

[159] The recent attempt to preserve it for use at sea.

[160] A pastoral scene in Homer comes near this;

which in substance is;—he milked the ewes and goats, and divided the milk into two parts: the one he turned , and laid the curd to drain in wicker baskets, the other he kept for supper.

[161] L. iv. c. 2.

[162] Ἐγχέοντες γὰρ τὸ γάλα ἐς ξύλα κοῖλα σείουσι. Τὸ δὲ ταρασσόμενον ἀφριεὶ καὶ διακρίνεται, καὶ τὸ μὲν πῖον βούτηρον καλέουσιν, ἐπιπολῆς διΐσταται, ἐλαφρόν ἐόν· τὸ δὲ βαρὺ καὶ παχὺ κάτω ἵσταται, ὃ καὶ ἀποκρίναντες ξηραίνουσιν· ὁ δὲ ὀῤῥὸς τοῦ γάλακτος ἐν μέσῳ ἐστίν. Αὕτως δὲ καὶ ἐν τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ ταρασσομένον, κ.τ.λ. — De Moribus , l. iii. sec. 5.

[163] “The Tartar tribes prepare a spirit from milk, by allowing it to ferment with frequent agitation. This agitation converts the milk sugar into lactic acid, and another portion into grape sugar, which becomes converted into alcohol. Animals that live entirely on vegetable matter, produce the largest quantity of spirit.”— Fownes.

[164] Richardson meets a few Touanez women in the Desert by themselves; the men having gone to Fezzan, he asks them why they have not gone also; one of them asks, “Why should I go away? what better shall I find in Mouryuk of Ghat? can they give me more than milk! God is everywhere!” They bring him milk, he dwells with pleasure on the hospitality and modesty of his entertainers: “Nothing was given for the milk for we had nothing to give. But if offered, it would not be accepted by the laws of hospitality among these desert Arcadians.”— Sahara , vol. ii. p. 204.

[165] The ancients used it largely as a medicine. Cows’ milk was for this purpose not only used, but preferred as more aromatic. It was applied externally for all diseases of the skin, abstinence from animal food being at the same time enjoined. It was prescribed at Rome for ague; in Arcadia it was given for atrophy and gout; it was considered an antidote to various poisons, and a specific for hardness of the spleen. Uncooked, it was held to be unwholesome; a prejudice still subsisting in the East.

[166] One other food resembles it, and that is eggs.

[167] All the blood, the muscular fibre, cellular tissue, nervous matter, and bones, derive their origin from the nitrogenized constituent of milk, the caseine—the butter and sugar containing no nitrogen.

[168] In the life of Cornaro it is stated, that up to the age of forty he laboured under various diseases, which made his existence a burden to him. He then commenced a diet of bread and milk as drawn from the animal ; he became robust, vigorous, and enjoyed perfect health, for one hundred years. Had he omitted the bread, and drunk the milk alone, he might perhaps have drawn out his lease of life to the fabled limit of the patriarchs of the Zahara.

[169] There is a work by Maimonides upon this subject. The title, as translated, is “Carnis cum lacte non commedenda.”

[170] Genesis xviii. 8.

[171] Job xx. 17.

[172] Job xxix. 6.

[173] Judges v. 25.

[174] 2 Samuel xvii. 29.

[175] Proverbs xxx. 33.

[176] המיאח.

[177] There is an Arab counterpart to the story of Sisera, and a fact. Shanfara asks a woman of the Salamana tribes for water; she gives him agit and raïb —salt cheese and spirits—from milk; he is thus driven by thirst, in the dead of night, to a well where his enemies are lying in wait for him.

[178] Leben also signifies butter-milk, &c. See Burckhardt’s Notes, vol. i. pp. 239, 241.

[179] Among the Tartars, the districts are termed “Yourts,” as the Armatobo Greeks used to term their districts, Psomi , bread.

[180] Καὶ τρυφαλὶς ἐφ’ ἑτέρου φύλλου νεοπαγὴς καὶ σαλεύουσα .— Philost. Icon , p. 809, i. 31.

A celebrated cheese of goats’ milk made at Tromileia, called ὀπίας , was curdled not by rennet, but by the sap of the fig tree.— Athen. lib. xiv. 76; Eurip. Cyclop v. 136.

The Dutch cheese called Gouda is turned by muriatic acid.

[181] Devonshire Junket is made by pouring gently a spoonful of vinegar into a bowl of milk; the top is then brased. Pounded sugar-candy is dusted on and brased again; this is several times repeated. It may also be made with rennet, and seasoned with brandy.

[182] See St. John’s Ancient Greece, vol. ii. p. 288.

[183] Copper pans and coal fires are common in the North of Devonshire; but probably in twenty years, all recollection of pottery and wood will have died away.

[184] Tamer , Philleg (Pheleg), Cuddan , Chynhals , Barrak , Lieber , The Mozins , Zeinior , Carracks , Stam , Oaz . Search the rest of England through, and you will not find two names in one county that could be strained into Phœnician.

[185] These have not long gone out. Pope in describing the death scene of the Duke of Buckingham, says:

[186] That of Erzerum is much esteemed: it is sent to Constantinople.

[187] “This Aristæus, the companion of Zeus, according to Diodorus, was called the augur, the inventor of the art of healing, and father of bees; according to Aristotle, the inventor of the olive (as Buddha in India, and Hercules among the Greeks); according to him and Appian, he was the discoverer of the ART OF MAKING BUTTER ( τὴν τὲ τοῦ γάλακτος πῆξιν ), which, hitherto unknown to the Greeks, was, according to Herodotus and Hippocrates (who found it of great service as a medicine), known to the Scythians, to the north of the sea of Pontus, by the native name of butter, and made from mares’ milk. This name was consequently northern, and has remained German, and probably from the name, is of Buddhistic origin,” &c.

Πῆξις is from πήγνυμι , to coagulate, and means cheese. Cheese is not known to the Hindoos; nor butter to the Buddhists.

[188] Hippocrates introduces it in various unguents and emulsions, with a certain produce of Arabia, oil of cedar, and other strange and rare ingredients from the south; one of these is “the liver of the sea-serpent dried in the shade.”

[189] “Compare the profound and astute observations of Ritter (Vorhalli Euro. Völler, p. 357) on the source of the preparation of butter (buttervercitung), which came from the barbarians to the Greeks, and has remained a distinguishing character of the northern and German people. That it belonged to the Iberians demonstrates the source of that people.” Dendit auf den Ursprung des Volkes kin; Prüfunz uber die Überv der Urbewohnu.

In the same page he says, “butter is only mentioned among the mountaineers of the north.” For this statement he does not quote his authority. That it was used by them and only by them, is sufficiently attested, by the subsisting habits and language, but it would be interesting to find the statement in an ancient writer.

[190] Brocense, Aldrete, &c. describe nata as the part of the milk thrown up by boiling ; in the seventeenth century, the Spaniards were still unacquainted with cream.

[191] Humboldt derives this word from acorn. “If the edible gland is formed in the north of Spain, and if this name (artea) is there given to the oak that bears it, then it may be supposed that the Basque artoa , comes from this and from the ancient habit of acorn bread,” referred to by Juvenal ( Sat. vi. 10), “glandem ructante marito,” this is nearer than Aratu to plough, or the Greek ἄρτος . I cannot answer for the three suppositions, but when acorns are eaten, they are not made into bread. Juvenal speaks of acorns, not of bread. Larramandi in his introduction, gives the etymology I have quoted in the text; as to deriving a Basque word from the Greek, as well might you so derive a Hebrew or Egyptian one.

[192] Elephas (in the genitive, elephantos) in Greek applies to “ivory,” and the “elephant,” the etymon of it, as accepted in our dictionaries, is the “el fil,” of the Arabs; but in Basque it is Elefandia ; Elia , “great,” Andia , “bull,” or “beast.”

[193] This is the name given by the clans to their tongue, as distinguished from the Celtic.

[194] In corroboration of the former use of gee, I may cite the following words. Blathach is “butter-milk,” from blath , “warm,” “curds and cream,” are Gruth 'us ce , as if Devonshire cream was meant, which is the first stage to gee, or to caïmac, the difference being, that greater heat is used in the first case, and a slow one in the second: they have a mixture of curds and butter , but for that there is another name, crowdy in Scotch, fuarag in Erse.

[195] In Welsh it is Ecaus , butter menin , cream hefen .

[196] Anat. Hist. Animal. l. iii. c. 20.

[197] The following words are from the same dialect, agroumi and ikfee milk, dahan butter, swaag beaten milk, agroumi bread.

[198] “They give new-born infants fresh butter to take away the miconium , and this they do for several days.”— Martin’s Western Islands ( p. 195). In the western islands there was a supposition that cream could be charmed away to another churn. The use of butter must have extended far beyond the period when it was first known in Europe. They have a proper name for churn muidhe .

[199] In Ireland they churn the whole milk. The striplings (the last milk from each cow, which is the richest) are put together in a deep crock, morning and evening till full. Any cream or whole milk which has remained over is added, it is not churned till it has become quite thick, this takes two or three days in summer, but in winter more, unless the temperature is kept up. The butter milk that remains, is far more nutritive than that from the churned cream, and is used for various domestic, culinary, nursery, and poultry-yard purposes.

[200] “One of the ladies of the dwelling brought a plate of fresh and exquisite honey, and a small plate of fresh butter, as part of our meal, and instructed us how they were to be eaten together.”— Carne.

[201] Gen. xliii. 11.

[202] Travels, vol. ii. p. 144.

[203] Crock, obsolete Irish for butter, may apply to this dish.

[204] Maslo originally meant oil, and does so yet in certain Sclavonic dictionaries. Butter is a secondary signification—Durick, apud Lindi Polish Dic.

[205] The Greek term γάλα is a form of the Arabic. In the genitive, it is γάλακτος (galactos) hence the Latin lac ; by transposition the verb ἀμέλγω , to milk, is held to be formed, whence the Latin mulgere , we, from the verb, have re-formed a substantive, mulg, mulk, milk, which is spread over the north of Europe as the derivatives of lac are over the south; in the Polish and Russian it is mleko .

[206] A remarkable preparation is hatted kit , in Erse, Bainne ce . Buttermilk is put into a kit with a spiket, and left to stand for twenty-four hours: warm milk is poured on twice a day, for three or four days; the top is then a sort of coagulated cream; the lower part is let to run off. It is now, like Carstophine cream, falling into disuse. It is mentioned in the Gowrie trial, two centuries and a half ago. “Ane fyne hattilkit wt sukar, comfietis, and wyn.”— Pitcairn’s Trials , part iv. p. 285.

Crowdy butter is made as follows: The milk is yearned, and then placed on a dish, and left till the whole of the whey has run off. The curds are then worked up with butter or cream, and it will keep for a month: it spreads soft like butter, and gets softer the longer it is kept.

[207] For instance, curds gruth , whey miog , curds and whey slomban , frothed whey adhan , kinds of syllabub chranochan , bainne-cobhar-bhar , bainne sadte , biestings, nos .

[208] Talbot’s Etymologies, Introduction.

[209] I must make a reservation in favour of Northumberland, where I have fallen upon persons who did know how to boil. They spoke of “seasoning” the water, and of things being spoilt that were “knocked about” in the pot. Here was the apprehension of the two points to be kept in view, that the water be not hungry so as to exhaust the meat, that the bubbles should not be generated at the bottom of the pot so as to scorch it and harden the fibre. Any one born with the instinct of a cook, will, however bred in prejudice, from these two hints, gain all that is requisite. He who has not these instincts, will not learn how to boil if a waggon load of cookery books were shot over him. Strange it is, that the only people who have not a conception of boiling, should alone persist, generation after generation, in sending up to table vegetables and fish plain boiled! Fish, however, differs from flesh in this, that the hotter it is boiled the better; thus oil or butter, which rises to 600° before boiling, is best for it.

[210] Thence also the Greek word δαῆρες .—See Eur. Phœn. v. 90. The convents in Syria are called derr .

[211] The peculiarity of the “singed head” is, that the skin is left on, which of course is connected with the manner of slaughtering and flaying animals. The Egyptians, as Herodotus mentions ( l. ii. c. 38), “cut off the head and then skin the body.” He says that no Egyptian will eat the head of any animal, which Wilkinson contradicts (Thebes, vol. ii. p. 232), because a mendicant receives one: this rather confirms than confutes the assertion.

BOOK IV.

EL GARB.

CHAPTER I.

DEPARTURE FROM RABAT.

I never had greater difficulties of the kind to encounter, than in getting away from Rabat. Ali Bey, in the narration of his pilgrimage, mentions that, after starting from some place, the whole caravan commenced a violent dispute about the loading of the animals; after lasting about two hours, it suddenly ceased. On inquiring the cause of this phenomenon, it was told him, that from such a place to such a place, “the Arabs dispute.” Our dispute had no limits, save those of the journey. A large party accompanied us across the water to the Salee side, and a slave of Mustafa Ducali’s privately suggested that it was a great pity that I should go away, that it was better to stay at Rabat than to go. “If you stay,” said he, “you will have a nice house like my master’s, and two or three pretty wives, the daughters of caïds.”

We left the beach about two o’clock, turning to the right to avoid Salee: we passed through one of the gates of its old walls, enclosing the ancient harbour; turning again to the left, we passed between the gardens and the back of the city. When opposite one of the gates, we sent in for corn to carry with us, and I was much tempted to enter the forbidden city, but contained myself, not to commence dissensions with the guard at the very moment of starting.

Rambling on while the guard awaited the messenger, we came on a cleft in the rock, the bottom occupied by an orange grove, most inviting, with its green lustre and deep shadow, cool, damp, dark, and fragrant. To this retreat, many a seafarer has returned to enjoy the fruits of his industry: how many a tender “Rover,” has been here formed by listening to his sire’s tales of Maltese galleys, Christian argosies and Andalusian maids. While we were looking from the backs of our horses over the wall that ran along the edge of the cliff, the proprietor came up, and invited us to descend: there was nothing piratical about him, so we yielded. The first flight of steps brought us to a small tank, covered with a trellis of vines, surrounded by a little walk, through which there were grooves for the water to circulate, without wetting your feet, and it fell from all sides into the tank in little cascades. At one side there was a little kiosk with a window opening upon the orange grove below. Here we found a party of Moors seated in one corner, and the inseparable tea-things in the other. My host hurried me down, and walked me all over the grounds, gathering sweet and bitter lemons and oranges, and seemingly anxious to stock me with a supply of every variety. Suddenly, having got me alone, he stopped, and with ominous signs and emphasis, pronounced the word Serser ! I was now in my turn anxious to know what he had to say, and wished to call a Jew I had got as an interpreter; but this he would not suffer, and seemed to expect to succeed in making me understand by speaking very close to my ear:—he was much opposed to the working of mines, and apprehensive of my safety. When I admired in one place the culture of the garden, he said, “this is the ‘Madem’ (mines) of the Arabs;” he then asked me to stay some days at Tangier, and he would come and see me there. On taking leave, he insisted on walking with me a quarter of a mile, till I was outside of the aqueduct, and in the open country, and gave me the name of a person at Larache, to whose house he desired me to go. This person was absent on my arrival there.

Towards sunset we entered a douar, without asking anybody’s leave, and pitched in the middle of it without a question being asked us by any one: the change was as great as if one had fallen through from one century into another, yet all external objects were precisely the same. There were, however, only so many cottagers living in tents: we had entered a village, not a douar. Had I gone from Tangier to Rabat by land, I should, by passing through these successive changes, have become gradually familiarized with them; fortunately I had seen the southern country. Everything in this douar was for sale at extortionate prices, each bargain accompanied by great squabbling. The Sheik did come, and did bring, as a present, a jar of milk. This was all that recalled to me the tribes to the south.

Early the next day we arrived at Medea. Lying on the edge of a ravine, we were almost at the gate before we saw it. Like the other towns, it is built at the estuary of a river, which descending through a chasm, has carved out through the rock and sand, its way to the ocean, where, met by a heavy surge, it heaps up a bar, which the waves incessantly lash.

The fortress is a parallelogram. The contents in people, and in value, could not be equal to a douar. Below and between the town and the river, there is an enclosure of walls in the form of a rectangle, and about four hundred yards long: the walls are in Tapia, and vary from twenty to forty feet in height, and from five to seven in thickness. Seen from above, it appears like a labyrinth; there are large square spaces and passages running round them; the interval between the walls is at times not greater than their own thickness; there are no windows or doors, or the spring of arches for covering in. Bare dead walls compose the vast chambers, or narrow passages; a small aperture is seen here and there, by which a man might creep through. There is a Moorish gateway, but it is a modern addition. Being outside the fortress, and under it, this building could not have been intended in any way for defence. It was neither a reservoir for water, nor a store for merchandize. The deputy governor who accompanied me was perfectly certain that it was built by Christians: when I expressed doubts, he became angry, and vociferated loudly, “Eusara,” “Romani.” It was so fresh, that the walls might have been just finished or still in process of construction.

I found the caïd superintending the mending of an oar. He reiterated his salutations of welcome at least a dozen times (it has to be repeated three times) and pressed me to stay that night, or at all events to dine. We, however, were anxious to get on, and the cattle were conducted down to the boat, while the caïd sent his deputy—who, like himself, every inch a Moor, is a negro in complexion, but whose features are European—to conduct me over the building I have already noticed.

We intended here to get if possible fresh horses, not less on account of the wretched quality of those we had, than of the annoyance we suffered from their owners. After they had received their money, they wanted to decline performing the journey, and when I expressed surprise, they answered, “We have no law—we have no flag: we are neither Mussulmans, Jews, nor Christians.” This answer I comprehended, knowing them to be Oudaïas, a tribe broken and dispersed, and holding no ties with the world, its enemy—a Poland of the Desert.

The boat in which we crossed was about forty feet by ten, pulled by a couple of oars. Their ingenuity had not arrived at making a platform for embarking cattle. The camels stride in fastly enough, and stow easily: they are made to crouch down head and tail, and a row of their strange heads projects over both sides. Getting in the horses is a laborious operation: they have to be unladen, and then walked into the water, and beaten until they spring in, first getting their fore-legs into the boat, and then with a second spring their hind-legs: some of them, however, are very expert. Our horses had to perform this operation four times between Rabat and Tangier—at Rabat, Medea, Larache, and Arzila.

Just as we had got our cattle embarked, the caïd was seen on horseback winding his way down the rock. We put back to take him in; and he came into the stern, where we were seated upon our baggage, carrying in his hand a handkerchief containing a large provision of hard-boiled eggs. He said, “As you would not stay to eat, I had these boiled that you might not be hungry on the way.” One of the packages of majoon appearing amongst the baggage, the conversation turned upon that composition; and he told me that he was then going, in consequence of an order he had received that morning from the Sultan, to gather for him roots, from which another and superior kind of majoon was made, and which were only to be found at an hour’s distance from whence we were, and if we would wait for him at a certain well, he would himself bring a specimen of the plant. As soon as we reached the indicated place, he appeared on the hill above, coming towards us at full speed, and presented me with one of the roots, which was like a large parsnip: it appears to be the plant called surnag by Leo Africanus. He had also the consideration to bring some of the leaves, that I might recognise it again. I forgot to ask the mode of preparing it, which I have since been unable to ascertain, as it is not used by the people; though the most strange stories are told of its effects. It is said to have been discovered by the Emperor Ismael, and to its use is attributed the numerous progeny of that sovereign, reported at sixty births per month.

The Seboo is the largest river of the kingdom of Fez; it is here about half a mile in width: the bar is so fierce as to be wholly impassable. It rises in the Atlas, and passes near Fez and through Mequinez. A branch of it passes through the city of Fez: it is there termed the “river of pearls,” and was formerly called the “river of gold.” It was once navigable as far as Fez, and it still has all the appearance of being so; yet the corn is carried thither to be ground at an expense of transport exceeding its value, and then the flour is carried back again, for at Fez they seem to have good mill-stones, and do not use the common sand-grit. But, probably, the navigation of the stream has been purposely disused, in pursuance of their standing policy of closing the door against Europeans, and sacrificing the advantages of the present to security for the future.

The Seboo, more than any other river in Morocco, abounds with the shabel; that of Azimore is the finest in quality. It is about the size of a salmon, which it resembles: the flesh is soft, fat, and delicate, and those who have tasted the kiran of the Lake of Ochrida have eaten something that recalls it. The Seboo bore signs of passing through a chalk country, showing that the region around had still all the aspect of the Zahel. The river, while we crossed it, was covered with bees that were dropping in. There are thousands of hives in the neighbourhood: the bees were perishing in great quantities from its being a foggy morning.

A broad and level beach of sand bordered the river, and exhibited a beautiful pattern in colours, resembling that Moorish ornament which is at once the richest and the commonest. On pointing it out to one of those who were with me, he exclaimed, “That is the figure on the Tower of Hassan.” It is so remarkable that it must have been imitated in their buildings. It is produced by there being sands of different colours, which also vary in size and specific gravity. Each warp of a wave sets them in motion, and then deposits them with mathematical precision. The river abounds with black sparkling grains of iron, which they use for dusting on their writing: this was the first time we had seen it. To the south there was no lime: the iron on the surface is red, being oxide: here the chalk commenced, and the iron is carbonate. Besides this, there are three or four sands of different shades of yellow and red, falling into different portions of the patterns. There is the blue, [212] brown, and yellow figure, as if laid on with a touch or stamped with a block. This beach presents at once the origin of the peculiar Moorish tracery and colouring, with which no other style has anything to compare.

That night we encamped in a douar, which was near the southern extremity of the long marsh or lake, El Marga, which runs parallel to the sea. As we passed along its placid waters, we had on the left the incessant roar of the ocean, which we never saw. From the sea, the country must appear a perfectly barren waste; and yet, at the back of the cliffs, there was a vale of forty miles thickly peopled and well cultivated. The lake seemed very shallow, and was so covered with waterfowl that they might have been rained upon it. We saw some boats, not pulled with oars, but punted. The lake varied in width from one mile to five. The douars were close to each other all along its banks on both sides; but, on the side on which we were, the tents might be seen in lines, or irregularly scattered. They had seines and cast-nets, and the fish was chiefly a very fat but flavourless barbel. They did not shoot the water-fowl, but caught them with gins of horse-hair, into which they ran their necks while swimming. The swans, in one place seen from a great distance, appeared like a white streak: we could scarcely believe they were birds till we came near. Next to that on the Lake of Mexico, I imagine that this is the largest collection of waterfowl on earth.

That night, when our people were at supper, there was an attempt made to carry off one of our horses. The alarm was given, not by the dogs, which only barked as usual, but by the women, who set up a frightful yelling—the classic ululatus . We had pitched a little way from the tents to avoid the noise. After this, men were drafted from the douar to sleep and watch all round us. The robbers were suspected to be of the tribe of Azamor, near Mequinez, two of which tribe were sitting at supper with our people at the very time.

The whole of the next day we travelled along the shore of the lake. We had in sight before us a range of hills, one of which was covered with snow; and here snow upon a mountain in the middle of winter is the sign of a greater height than it would be with us in the middle of summer. I performed most of the journey on foot, wearing only shirt and drawers; and I got away from the party that I might have a better chance of seeing the people, and I always met with the utmost kindness. They were always surprised that I was on foot, but never that I was alone. I was invited to their tents; or they would come running from a distance, bringing milk. I was amused with the alertness with which they always set to work to teach me Arabic words.

About sunset, and after travelling ten hours, we came to the head of the lake, and chose for pitching, a sward on a projecting angle running into it, and some hundred yards from a douar. This was the first time that we got away from the tents, and I revelled in recalling the night’s repose of Eastern travel. The Arabs came and helped us to pitch; brought us all we required, and then made a blazing fire of cork-bark. As the night closed in, the water-fowl near us in the angle of the lake, came swimming in to a clump of bulrushes not fifty yards distant, just as tame ducks might do. There is abundance of boars in the neighbourhood; and the Sheik offered to turn out with all his tribe if I would stay or return for a day’s hunting.

Next morning, while the animals were lading, I strayed along the water’s edge, and was suddenly assailed by a rush of dogs from the tents. With my back to the water, I defended myself with a stick for some time. [213] Presently, a woman and a girl ran down from the tents to the rescue; and after belabouring the dogs, and setting me free, they seemed overjoyed with their exploit, ejaculating incessantly, “Eh, Nazarene!” examining me all over, feeling my hair and skin, and bursting into fits of laughter. Our conversation, if not spirituelle , was lively. When the interpreter came up, I learnt that my deliverer was the wife of the Sheik: she was a comely middle-aged woman, with a head to delight a phrenologist. She said she had a question to ask me, if I would answer her. On my promising to do so, she resumed: “You have come to our country, and seen it: now, tell me which is best, your country or ours?” I answered her, “God is the father of all men, and the maker of all lands, and he has given to his children the land that best suits each: your country is good for you, and ours for us.” I in my turn proposed a question:—“In your country, which is a good country, tell me what is the best thing?” She reflected, and said, “We have no good things.” I then asked, “What are your bad things?” She answered, “God’s evils.” The explanation was, “old age and bad weather.” I told her that, if she had seen my country, she would know that with them the one was rare and the other late. She then asked how much I had seen of their country; and having told her that I had been into Shavoya, and amongst the Ziaides, she began to expatiate on her own tribe. “God,” she said, “has given us a fertile and a pretty land; he has given us plain, and forest, and marsh; he has put a sea beyond the hills, that no one should harm us; we have a lake that has fish and birds; we have cattle, sheep, milk, and butter; we have reeds, honey, and firewood; we have corn in store, and gold and silver; and, if we live under tents, and not in the city, it is because we choose it.” Our conversation was put an end to by the rest of the tribe thronging around us; and an old woman entertaining, or pretending, great alarm, a little pantomime was suddenly improvised. The Sheik formally announced that they had in their tents a slave escaped from England, whom it was their intention to deliver up that I might take her away, upon which they recounted her services and merits to show how useful a slave she was that they were giving up—and one of her services was to supply the douar with wild sows’ milk. On this the old woman ran for her life, and all the children after her: she was, however, caught, brought back, and delivered up, and by this time our horses were laden and we took our leave.

Nothing can exceed the richness of the women’s hair—it falls like clusters of black grapes or knots of snakes: it is plaited on both sides of the head, and falls behind. They increase its volume by silk or worsted cords; and I could not help thinking that the hair of the women of Carthage was not so despicable a substitute for standing rigging, especially if they used, as the Jewesses to-day, a turban of silk thread ( shoualif ) made to imitate it.

I here saw one of the boats. It was certainly the great grandfather of skiffs; the hollow tree, or monoxyllo, is to it a modern invention. It was simply a bundle of rushes tied together, and raised at the point like an Indian canoe, with “thwarts,” to keep it hollow: it was open at the stern, and floated merely by the buoyancy of the rushes. It had nothing in the form of fastening; no rulucks; and was propelled by a pole. I now saw the “basket” [214] in which the mother of Moses placed her child, and which does not exactly tally with the notions of Poussin and Guercino. The name of the rushes is scaif , and that is the Arabic for ship. When I heard it before, I thought it must have been derived from the Greek σκάφη , which again is derived from σκάπτω , to hollow out; whence also σκαπτὴζ , a digger, σκάφη , a ditch. If this be so, then the Arabs, in borrowing their word from the Greeks, proceeded to call by the same name a plant spread over the whole land; displacing the ancient name—which it must have had, as also the roots made from it, a thousand years—and before the Greek islands were visited by Cadmus. If this is too absurd, then the Arabs called the boats after the reed, and the Greeks, adopting from them the name, constructed out of it this root, their verb to hollow , and all its derivatives. The modern Greeks have not this word, but have taken the Arabic one for caravan ( καράβι ). The Arabs have the same word for boat and camel, merkeb , not because it is the “ship of the desert,” but because it is “mounted.”

The Highlander calls a beehive scape , the French, ruche : the English “skiff” and “ship,” the German “schiff,” come all from skaff . The Portuguese preserve the old Greek word naus . Bastimento and bâtiment are from beit , a house or building; and our sea-terms generally come from the Arabic. The aloe is called kordean , which applies equally to the plant and to the fibres extracted from it. Thence we may have got the Gordian knot. At all events, it is good as an etymon for cord . Their word for cord is kenab , from which the Greeks and Romans took their name for hemp. The continental name for pitch ( alkitran , Spanish; goudron , French) is from kitran ; hammock, from hamaca (Hebrew); cable, from habl (Arabic). The Greek word for boat-fare, ναῦλος , is from the Arabic naulbabi , mother of harbours. [215] Frigate is mentioned as a Moorish name for longboats by a writer at the beginning of the last century, who says, “We call them brigantines.” [216] Brigantine or breck, seems to come from coffee-pot ; ibrek , a coffee-pot. Corvette is also Phœnician. [217] An Arab sailor mentioning the different winds, called the sirocco, shiloh. The same term is applied to the southern Brebers, which therefore designates the country from which they came, and makes the sirocco a derivative from the Arabic. Again, dabét , which they give to compasses, their compasses being made like our boats’ davits. The new French dictionary of the dialect of Algiers has the following words: spaolon , twine; dmane , helm; saboura , ballast. The Greek for twine is σπάον . The French, Italian, Greek, Spanish, &c., for helm is timon or timoni , and the common Levant term for ballast is savoura .

After quitting the lake we ascended a hill, and passed by a saint’s tomb. I had not been so close to one before, and was surprised at their not leading me away from it. There were quantities of rushes lying around for sleeping on, and I found that it was a common practice for travellers to sleep there, as in the Heroa of Greece, where they were always secure. They even asked me if I had ever slept in one, so that the fanaticism of the towns is here unknown.

The snow-white saints’ tombs are very beautiful, seen across the lakes, and reflected in them. The resemblance was striking with the Mussulman tombs of India. The half-globe is placed on the cube, and within the spandril the Gothic arch. Whether was the Indian building derived from the Moorish, or this from the Indian; for as yet, as in the other parts of Moorish architecture, I had not seen any natural type or human work from which it could be derived. The tents, however, had now assumed a new form, and looked like cottages, being closed in at the bottom by mats of reeds, made into hurdles, over which the tent itself stood, like a roof. The population is here more stationary. In the centre of the circle the mosque, instead of being a tent, was constructed with reeds, like a tall beehive; and, as they have no carpenters, the entrance was by a round hole, three feet from the ground, to prevent the entrance of pigs, cattle, sheep, or poultry, which might defile it.

As we advanced, we found numbers of these beehives, sometimes one to each tent, and used as dormitories for the children. [218] While I was considering the origin of the tombs, I observed one of these cones, against which a square hurdle had been placed to close the orifice, and there was in rushes the perfect model of the stone building.

The round hole is the origin of the horse-shoe arch, which is a circle slit down. The walls of the tombs are finished off with the ornaments, to represent the obtruding ends of the reeds in the hurdles. I was confirmed in this supposition when, on asking the name of the reeds, I was answered, Kasob , which is the name of a fortress, Kasaba . The first fortresses, or stocades, were of course constructed of reeds. I beheld in these shining edifices on the borders of this marsh, the rudiment of the swelling dome on the banks of the Tiber, and the type of the mausolea of Akbar and Jhanju, on those of the Indus. In their substance they are the very root of all building, as in their forms they are of all architecture.

I must refer the reader to what I have said elsewhere on Moorish and Gothic architecture.

From our early studies probably no more pleasing impressions remain than those connected with the funereal solemnities of the ancients. The feeling they convey goes home to the mind, and the manner in which it is expressed, and the ceremonies, rites, and laws connected with it, take possession of our youthful imaginations. Indeed, funeral rites constitute in a great degree our idea of the life of antiquity, as funeral monuments furnish the largest proportion of its records. But, if we are thus moved in reading of what existed thousands of years ago, and are made to partake in the, to us, strange veneration that consecrated the tomb into a temple [219] —that converted it into a sanctuary for the criminal—that made it sacrilege to tread upon the grave [220] —that enjoined the utmost cleanliness in the arrangements and preservation of sepulchres, and (among the Jews) imposed the yearly white-washing of them—how much more so, in seeing those very practices amongst an extant people! Treading the Continent that bears the load of the Pyramids, the sight of these tombs suggests other reflections: the connexion of the honour of the dead with judgment on his acts—with recompense and punishment, and therefore with an after-existence—with a Creator of man, the Giver of life, the Receiver of the soul. [221] They prepared for the belief in a future state by creating for themselves a future here; and in the treatment of their mortal remains lay punishments and rewards, that surpassed any that present things, except in this anticipation, could furnish.

In after times there was a superstitious veneration for the dead—not so in early times. The corpse was judged by those who had witnessed its life, before it received the honours of sepulture. Until this sentence was pronounced, the body was an uncleanly thing, and polluted those whom it touched. And thus the denial of sepulture remained for ages the direst of misfortunes that could befall a man, and the darkest dishonour that could be inflicted on his kindred. We have instances amongst the Jewish kings of both extremes;—a sepulchre raised for a good king above all the rest, and the ashes of a bad one cast out from the tombs of his ancestors. [222] And thus those wonderful structures which, of the earliest ages, will survive all that has since been constructed on the earth, are but evidences of the reverence paid to judgment at their death upon the lives of men. The height of the Pyramids assumed a scale in rating human conduct, and thereby conveyed the transcendant worth of those whose ashes they concealed.

The first, the greatest structures thus rose, not to shelter the living, but to receive the dead. I am describing what I see around me. This land contains no houses but for the dead. The few cities are formed of edifices that resemble tombs, being built upon their model, in the forms that mourning piety had devised, and by the arts that sepulchral edifices have preserved.

So also have the arts sprung from their hallowing and judging the dead. Painting and sculpture have their origin in the art of embalming. The covering presented the human form; the resemblance was completed by colour. The case that contained it was in like manner fashioned to preserve the likeness; and thus, in the first of solemn duties and ceremonies, in the cerement (wax-cloth) itself, were united, in primeval times, painting, sculpture, and carving. A step further was, to present, instead of the corpse, the man as alive, as reposing on, or rising out of his tomb. These we have in Etruria, calling into being or adopting a new art—that of the potter.

In the centre of Africa it is a custom among some of the tribes for mothers who have lost young children, to carry about with them little wooden dolls to represent them; and to these they offer food whenever they themselves eat. Have we not here the origin of the imagines of the Romans, derived from the Etruscans, derived by them from the Egyptians, as by these from the Abyssinians,—beyond whom we cannot ascend; and that people was the fellow race to the Lybians. And here we have uninterrupted the traditions which have floated down the Nile, crossed the Mediterranean, and flourished so long in ancient Europe.

In a region where Islamism universally prevails, we might expect few traces of pagan ceremonies, and here Islamism was the successor of Christianity, so that there had twice been the sweeping away of the old land-marks; but here, at all events, it is not a thousand years that have made any difference—the differences are only in so far as positive change has been effected by some event—there has not been a perpetual process of change going on. This people is a true society:—the man perishes, but the society is deathless.

In Barbary there are no longer the judges of the dead, or the scales and feather. There are no longer the games in their honour, the embalming of their bodies, or the sacrifices to their manes. No longer are mountains of granite piled on high, to signify their worth, nor caverns burrowed in the rock to prevent their dust from desecration; but still there is on the houseless waste the house of the dead, not of the common and vulgar, or the mighty and proud—but of the venerated, the saint by the decree of public judgment, whether misguided or not. There it stands in the form of ancient days, with its shady olive or locust grove—the only green spot that greets the eye, with its well or fountain for the thirsty to drink, where the weary may repose, or the devout may pray—here are safety for the wayfarer and sanctuary for the guilty.

And meaner sepultures have not lost their all. Tread not where the dead repose; it is holy ground! not consecrated for their use, but hallowed by their presence: there the sorrowing festival is kept, there are gathered the mourners with the revolving sun; there the feast of the dead is prepared and left for the stranger to partake, and bless the memory of the departed. Is not this a record of ancient days?

I cannot dismiss the subject without pointing to the strange contrast, in merely worldly sense or wisdom, between the careful attention, which marks all antiquity, to render the dead innocuous to the living, and our negligence in this respect. This negligence has cost more lives and suffering than probably all the swords of all the conquerors. Epidemics, endemics, slow fever or rapid plague, ever present in deep vengeance or savage fury, are the produce of our enlightened contempt for superstitions, and mark the imbecility of that intellectual presumption which blights in our hands the fruits of science, the impulses of benevolence, and the benefits of freedom. There was no plague in ancient Egypt, thickly peopled as it was—they embalmed their dead; elsewhere, when numbers rendered such precaution advisable, they were burned. But, where neither embalming nor burning was practised, they took care at once to remove the dead from the dwellings of the living, in apprehension of the evil consequences, and through respect for the repose of the departed. The scenes that may daily be witnessed in the metropolis of England, it would have been impossible for an ancient to have conceived, save as existing among some race of hitherto undiscovered savages destitute of the common instincts of nature. [223]

We are now striving to remedy this evil by legislative means. It may not be cared about, but its enormity no one will dispute, and it fills with astonishment and disgust those who are induced to examine into it. But here, as in so many other instances, the work is done and the evil prevented by some simple and ancient habits, which are entered in the traveller’s note-book as at best interesting curiosities, or amiable weaknesses.

The superstition of the Mussulman lies, however, the other way, and hence the plague that ravages at present most other Mussulman countries, and which we shall see again in Europe—or rather in England—unless the condition of our London cemeteries be ameliorated. They do not, indeed, bury in the towns; but, in making the grave, they leave a hollow space above the body, in the belief that it has to sit up finally, to surrender the soul to the angel of death. Boards are then placed two feet above the body, and over this but a slight covering of earth. Thus the gases from the decomposing flesh are collected, and escape; and being heavier than the atmospheric air, flow around, seeking the lowest level, and pour downwards, so that when the cemetery is above the dwellings, these are periodically subject to the plague. I have observed this so constantly, so regularly, that, on merely glancing at the position of a town, I can tell whether it is or is not subject to the plague, in what quarters it is so subject, and, judging by the winds that prevail, at what season. I do not speak of those vapours as immediately and necessarily producing the plague, but as favouring its extension. Our typhus, a low plague, is never wanting in cities peculiarly exposed to the vapours from overstocked grave-yards. In fact, as decomposed vegetable matter gives us intermittent fevers, so does decomposed animal matter furnish, according to the climate and atmosphere, putrid fever, typhus, yellow fever, and plague.

[212] The iron sand gets a bluish tint from the yellow.

[213] The plan adopted by Ulysses, as described by Homer, has the effect of stopping an onslaught of dogs. Squat down and drop your stick—the dog will crouch too; but he will immediately rush at you, if you move or take up your stick.

[214] The rushing of these boats is represented in tombs of the fourth dynasty.

[215] Marmol, t. i. p. 4.

[216] Boyd’s Algeria.

[217] “Tardiores quam corbitæ sunt in tranquillo mare.”— Plautus.

[218] Highland cottages are divided into “but,” and “ben.” The first is the kitchen, the second the sleeping apartment. They say “Come ben ” or “I am going but .” I know not whether this usage is connected with the practice here, but it is singular that the names should run so close.

The Hayme here assumed the form of the beit, or house, and the reed hut by it is occupied by the children— beni . It is constructed, like a beehive, of scaff . There are in the Highland home, but, and ben, and scape.

[219]

[220] Treasure also was placed in them, and used perhaps centuries after, as a last resource, in the necessities of state. Thus in the tomb of David, opened in the siege of Jerusalem by Antiochus, 3000 talents were found, which served to avert the storm.

[221] Diod. Sic., p. 17.

[222] Ahaziah was not suffered to be buried in the tomb of his fathers.—2 Kings viii. 16-21; 2 Chron. xxi. Joash also was denied royal burial.—2 Kings xii. ; 2 Chron. xxiv. Hezekiah had a tomb raised higher than the rest.—2 Chron. xxxii. 33. The high priest Jehoiada was honoured with a royal burial.—2 Chron. xxiv. 16.

[223] “It is one of the most odious and debasing features of civilization, that death is habitually desecrated, and the grave ceases to be a refuge.”— St. John’s Greece , vol. iii. p. 430.

CHAPTER II.

SHEMISH, THE GARDENS OF THE HESPERIDES.

We very soon came upon another lake which has no regular opening to the sea, though the bank of sand is occasionally moved. It must have been here that Don Sebastian projected making the entrance for his internal harbour; but the lake with which this entrance communicates is of small extent, apparently of no great depth, and separated from the long lake by a neck of land of no great elevation, but which from its sandy nature it would be a great enterprise to cut through. We passed over a good deal of flat ground, like Hungary, completely under cultivation, and the fields perfectly clean: the douars had the look of villages, and we could scarcely believe that there were not built houses amongst them.

Towards evening we came upon a country of a new aspect—broken ground, aluminous shale, covered with a straggling oak forest. Herds of cattle were pointed out to us, which were said to be turned out there to multiply without the care of man; and we came upon a douar in the midst of this forest, where I was very much tempted to bivouac for the night. It was like a scene in one of the wooded vales of Western Greece: however, we pushed on for Larache, the gardens of which we entered long after it was pitch-dark. The road between them was sand: there was no possibility of getting water either by fountain, stream, or well—such is the site of the Gardens of the Hesperides! I had to postpone the satisfaction of my curiosity till the morrow’s light, and entered the capital of the King of the Giants with that sort of reverence and awe which I had felt in approaching the ruins of Stonehenge.

We were led through a labyrinth of strange and precipitous streets, till we came down to the lower wall on the side of the harbour: the houses looked like the little tombs at Pompeii by the wayside. We were received by the English Consular Agent, a Genoese, whom, notwithstanding his European habiliments, we might have taken for a Moor by his quiet demeanour, and his unobtrusive attention to all our wants. A scene rose next morning such as deserved to shine on the groves of the Danaïdes. Before one sweeps with many a bend the stream, on whose tranquil breast reposes the wreck of the navy of Morocco—a corvette, two brigs, and a schooner. A high bank of sand shuts out the sea, save at the narrow bar. In front of the town a verdant plain is spread; all round it flows the river, and beyond it rises an amphitheatre of broken hills of a lively mountain aspect, and with other forms and other colours than those of the Zahel. Over these were scattered gardens; but the gardens of Morocco, which, unlike those of any other land, are embellished by the bank of cactus, that serves them for a wall, and painted with the leaden green of the aloe.

To the east, and opposite the sea entrance, there is a detached hill, like that upon which are situated the ruins of Epidaurus, a spot which must be ever green in the memory of travellers in Greece. Considering this to be a last chance of finding a Phœnician city, I commenced inquiries, and was told that the hill was covered with ruins which had been deserted from the memory of man, and that the hill was called Shemish . I at once determined to delay my journey in order to devise means to visit it. This was no easy matter, and I thought the best plan was to try and get into a boat without my guards, and then trust to chance and perseverance for being able to push on.

Having no suspicion, they allowed me to get into a boat, accompanied by a soldier of the town. We embarked at a jetty, close to which lay in tier in a strong tide-way, four tolerably-sized European vessels, laden with corn, bark and wool, waiting for an opportunity of getting over the bar. We kept close to the bank of sand thrown up by the sea, behind which lay the dismantled and perishing vessels I have already mentioned. The water was much discoloured; and, like that of the Seboo, bore traces of chalk. I observed something white on the bank: pulling to the spot, I found it really to be chalk, an outlyer standing on its edge. It was harder than the common chalk of England. The flints were large masses, and there was a coating on them of crystals of carbonate of lime. The masses of flints were evidently the same as those which had become gasule. Close by there was a hill like an artificial mound, and on it the regular sheep-walks of our chalk ranges. Under it we landed, as it adjoined Shemish and was connected with it by a low neck. The rocky eminence of Shemish is sandstone, not that which encrusts the Zahel, but a compact and ancient rock, and sometimes approaching to granular quartz.

From the top of Shemish the prospect is striking, from the extraordinary windings of the river to the south and east: it turns back upon itself, more like the windings of a serpent than the meanderings of a stream. Hence it derives its name of Elcos , or the boa; hence, too, the fable of the dragon. There was no fable in the guardianship. The protection was not in his folds, but in his foaming head—the bar that closed the entrance.

In Pliny’s time the little plain was only partially formed. “At thirty-two thousand paces from this place (Tangier) is Lixos, of which the ancients relate so many fables, and which was made a colony by the cruelty of Claudius Cæsar. There was the kingdom of Anteus; there his strife with Hercules; there the gardens of the Hesperides. An estuary, with a meandering course, communicates with the sea, over which the dragon is said to have kept watch: an island is embraced within the curves of the water, which, though but slightly raised above the surrounding land, is never covered by the tide. There is a temple to Hercules, and some wild olives that are found there are all that remain of its groves, said to bear golden fruit.”

He then proceeds to speak of the “portentosa mendacia” of the Greeks in respect to this site; and it reminded me of the “quicquid Græcia mendax audet in historia” of Juvenal, speaking of the canal of Xerxes, which, disbelieved by the Roman satirist, may be seen and traced at this hour. So, in like manner, the golden fruit of Lixos blossoms and ripens to this day, despite the incredulity of the Roman naturalist.

These ruins have not been hitherto described; they will soon be demolished. Walls which, I was told, had been some years ago continuous, and much higher than at present, surround the crest of an irregular hill: the circuit may be three miles. Where I first came upon them I found walls in tapia and mortar, and stones, having entirely the Moorish character. I began to apprehend the repetition of the disappointment I had so often experienced.

The rolled fragments of stone and lime would not alone do. I wanted some chiselling, and something to resemble the bulwarks which Nonnus tells us Cadmus ( i. e. the Phœnician) gave to the hundred cities he planted in this border:—-

And I did come on evidences indisputable. These were hewn stone, neither Roman, Hellenic, nor Cyclopic. They were large, not in regular tiers, nor polygonal, and joined with cement. One stone which I measured was ten feet by three. The angles were thus constructed. The walls were in rude work of stone and lime, which, but for the connexion in which I found them, might have passed for recent. They exactly resemble the ruins which are called “Old Tangier.”

I now at length did see a Phœnician wall, and knew what it was. On the summit of the hill a more ancient building seems to have been converted into a magazine: [224] it is roofed in and terraced over. Near it there is the circular end of a building, standing about twenty feet in height and thirty in diameter. There were long, vaulted chambers, in pairs, like congreve locks, arched and double, twenty feet long, six feet wide, and twelve feet high. They were scattered all over the place, within the walls and without. I went into nine or ten of them. There was no mark of water on the sides. I hardly think they could have been cisterns. I could not imagine to what use they were destined. [225] This was all I could make out by scrambling through the thick brushwood for the greater portion of the day.

The emblem of peace is busily engaged in upturning these precious remains. The branches of the wild olive are rounded like the oak, and do not, like those of the grafted tree, adjust themselves to the form of the buildings in which they have struck root, as in the ruins of Greece and Italy. They are here thickly planted, and their roots and branches are so many wedges driven into the walls. I observed a stone, which could not be under ten tons, lifted up from the top of a wall, between the branches of a tree, which again was yielding under its weight. It reminded me of the admired, but false, metaphor of Lamartine, when he compares the heart, early love-stricken, to a tree that bears aloft the hatchet-head, which had been buried in its stem.

The rock was covered with a variety of plants, which would have presented a rich harvest to a botanist: I can notice but some belonging to the times of old. Hesperus, fresh leaping from the ocean, here found in every season all flowers for his wreath; the lotus, the myrtle, and the palm; the pine, the arar, which represents the cypress. The acanthus covered the ground with its deep green, glossy, and spreading leaves. The ivy, instead of crawling over stones or trunks, spreads over the boughs of trees, and hangs in festoons between them, with a thin cord-like stem, and delicate leaves studding it upon either side. The berries are in clusters, like diminutive bunches of grapes, and the image of the vine is completed by spiral tendrils. I now saw why it was that the ivy had been appropriated to Bacchus; it was the image of the vine fitted for a crown. I took one of its long shoots, and wreathed it into a chaplet, and placed it on the head of one of the wine-denying Moors, a boatman who had accompanied me, and he was no less delighted at the implied courtesy than I at the real beauty of the object.

Perhaps, however, the connexion of the ivy and Bacchus may be no more than a pun. To him were consecrated a plant and a bird, and both had the same name, κίσσα and κίσσος , the magpie and the ivy. Bochart makes out the proper name of Bacchus to have been nearly the same, and himself the chief of the first of the wine-growing countries, the founder of an empire which conquered India, and which has left behind monuments to substantiate any fable which Greek fancy could create. In fact, Bacchus is no other than Chus, or Bar Chusii , whom we call Nimrod, and the Greeks Nebrodes, being a great hunter, and therefore painted with the skins of wild animals—chiefly the tiger, or nimra —the spoils of which cover the shoulders of Bacchus, while the captive animal is yoked to his car.

The crown for the festivities of Apollo, I now saw was neither our laurel nor the bay, the branches of which never could have been used for such a purpose, as any gem or statue will show. At Shemish a plant luxuriates which possesses all the qualities requisite for this ornament. It is a bush, standing four or five feet high, which sends up yearly twigs, round, smooth, green, and pliant. The leaves are set along it alternately, and these are soft, glossy, delicate in texture and elegant in form, and yet of extraordinary durability; and the twigs are just the length required for a chaplet: a red berry hangs to the leaf by a fine thread, while simultaneously it bears the flower, which is a small star of six fleshy points, of the palest green, with an amethyst cup in the centre. [226]

The tree of Minerva, in all its stubborn and unsubjugated vigour, here flourishes in scorn on Neptune’s border, and the oak of Jupiter, presenting food for man, completes the assemblage of these leafy reminiscences of time gone by, veiling the grey ruins that the elements had not yet destroyed, nor man laid low. Here were the things of Nature, which they in their time admired, leaf for leaf, and line for line; bright, gay, verdant, with their shining dewdrops, and their buzzing insects; and there, after thirty centuries, lay the stones they had chiselled, and the mortar they had mixed. The air of such a place breathes of nepenthes,—the poppy of memory, not forgetfulness. It is covered with a mirage of recollections, on which the spirit floats, and with which it mingles. Its solitude invited the busy throng of other times. There was the work of their hands, the place of their choice, the field of their labour, the haven of their traffic. There the horizon they looked upon; the plants they gathered, the trees they cultivated, the sun that awoke the wind that refreshed them. I saw them in the choice they had made, and lived amongst them, in seeing what they saw, and feeling as they felt. As an angel that has conversed with man, they have taken their flight—they have disappeared, as if, like the sun, to visit other climes. Their western-bound prows, perchance, followed his course, flying from the Chaldean or the Macedonian; their last glances may have rested on this height, where I first beheld walls which their hands had reared. Or this might have been the end of their pilgrimage. They were beyond the reach of the conqueror and Libya, which had offered an asylum to the fugitives of Jericho, and Moab might have yielded one also to those of Tyre.

I had been astonished at finding no fragment whatever of marble. I cannot say but that this raised some doubt in my mind; but on getting down to the bank of the river, to the southward, I came upon nine lime-kilns . There was a little commerce established, a landing-place for the boats, and large sugar-casks for the lime. They have now exhausted the quarry. The quantity extracted must have been immense, for they have been at work for two years. The contents of one kiln had been drawn out, and they were about to slake them. I pulled out entire one morsel, which resembled the front part of the Egyptian Pshent. [227] The lime is used for a new palace of the Caïd, for government stores, and the repairs of the batteries, suggested by the French bombardment.

Thus have been disposed of relics that might have thrown light on the early history of this portion of the world, and supplied in some degree the loss of the libraries of Carthage and Alexandria. To add to the provocation, close by they had an inexhaustible store of material, more easily calcinable, had they but known. I have been informed, however, that it was with the purpose of destroying an object of interest to Europeans that the order was sent. If so, this is one of the effects of the journée or déjeûner of Isly.

“Sit ne aliqua super spes,” exclaims Eckhel, “fore ut plus lucis his Phœniciorum reliquiis adfundatur? Aio superesse exiguam nisi ex terræ sinu proferantur monumenta copiosiora.” How many, alas! since he wrote have been plastered into walls. Strange fate, that of these explorers of the land and sea—these instructors in all art and science—every trace should have disappeared! There remains no shred of their tissues, no tint of their dyes, no limb of their statues, no corner of their palaces, no stone of their temples: no annalist has noted for us their facts; no epic has been built up from their story; no Sophocles replaced their heroes on a mimic stage; no Pindar prolonged the echo of their chariot wheels.

But though until I visited this place I did not know even where to go to look for a wall of this construction, from the scanty fragments that have been gleaned we learn, that all that Greece and Rome could boast are nothing more than monuments of their greatness, [228] and of a greatness in which they have no compeers. All other dominations have extinguished what it overshadowed, and devoured what it covered.

Is not this the interpretation of the fable of the Phœnix?—a bird perishing in fire; a new life springing from its ashes. It was not the procreation of the breed; it was not the colonies that had gone forth from its loins. The parentage was spiritual, and the type revived in new matter. There was but one Phœnix. There has been but one Phœnicia, and all that we have of light and letters to this day has come from her. Her name, that of a bird, and a tree—the palm of Judæa, and the wings of her sea-faring sons.

It occurred to me that Larache, as the city of Antæus and the giants, must have been that belonging to the original population, and Shemish the Phœnician settlement. This would explain that remarkable expression, “Libo-Phœnician cities.” It was not Phœnician or Carthaginian territory: it was their cities . It was not their cities among an uncultivated people; the Libyans had cities too. The cities of both were linked together, and here they were. Nor is it at this place alone. At Tangier it is precisely the same: the old city, which now I know to be Phœnician, is on the opposite side of the bay. At Arzela there are ruins of the same kind across the river; at Dar el Baida they are on the neighbouring headland. The still existing cities I, of course, take to be the original ones. They are in couples: in none of these cases could the one have supplanted the other. They owe their conjoint existence to the peculiar nature of the Phœnician settlements: they lived together, each requiring his own establishment, but neither encroaching on or displacing the other.

Carthage, in the height of her power, paid ground-rent. It was not till the latter time, and in her struggles with Rome, that she sought to govern and possess, according to our present notions; and it was in Sicily and Spain that she set her hands to this craft, and brought down her own ruin.

The greatness of Carthage was founded on the confidence that the native population had in her integrity. Punica fides could not have been turned to a reproach, had it not at first represented a truth. Had she, like the English or the French, the Spaniards or the Portuguese, been even suspected of being a grasping power, she must either have become mistress of Mauritania, or been expelled from its border, or shut up in useless rocks upon its coast; and the word “Libo-Phœnician cities” would never have descended to our time.

We are without any direct and positive information respecting the internal management, or the external relations of those cities, or their ties with the parent state; but a city, in every respect similarly situated, has been described by ancient authors, in a sufficiently distinct manner to put what I have said on more secure grounds than that of mere reference. The city I refer to is Emporiæ, one of the great settlements of Spain; the only one, then, not Phœnician, but founded by that branch of the Ionic Greeks which drew nearest to them in character and enterprise, and with whom alone of the Greeks they had made friendship on the field of battle. [229] It was the counterpart in Iberia of Marseilles in Gaul, and completed the range of Phocæan traffic. It was exactly what the Libo-Phœnician cities were, as its name alone suffices to show; for Emporion is not, as is supposed, a Greek, but a Phœnician word, and all these cities had the generic name of Emporiæ, having their proper name besides.

Like Tyre, Emporiæ was originally on an island: on being abandoned, it was called in like manner Palæopolis . The colonists then joined with the Hispani in the same town, which seems to have been called Indica; the tribe was called Indigetes. They were received as guests, and allowed to join their city to that of the Hispani: [230] it was thence called Dispolis . The part belonging to the Greeks looked to the sea, the other to the land: the first was four hundred paces in circuit, the second three thousand. Each people preserved its laws and customs. Intercourse, except for purposes of commerce, was forbidden; and thence, according to Livy, no dispute ever arose to interrupt the harmony of their neighbourhood during the ages of this common habitation. So unwearied was the watchfulness of the Greeks, that one-third of the male population nightly mounted guard.

This vigilance—the striking contrast between those really living communities and our heaps of sand—was not peculiar to the Phocæans; nor was the disposition to grant sites for cities, and the privileges of self-government to settlers, peculiar to the Indigetes. Here is a picture of the times; and, with such modifications as circumstances cast over the delineation, we see all the other Emporia on the coasts of Libya or Iberia.

I have said that Emporion was not a Greek word. The Chaldæan paraphrase (Genesis xxv. 3) has Emporius for merchants, Emporioth for merchandise. Leptis is mentioned, both as one of the Emporia and one of the Lybo-Phœnician cities. [231] Livy says that Scipio spent his time between the “ Punica Emporia gentemque Garamantum.” He went now to visit the natives, now the commercial establishments, which, instead of bolts, had fortresses for their defence.

Scylax couples the cities and Emporia. “The Carthaginians,” says he, “spread from the Syrtes to the Columns of Hercules.” The words are singular, and seem to mark a difficulty of expression, such as occurs when describing habits so foreign: cities along a coast, forming a nation and government apart—an empire, as it were, standing on points. [232]

But so far from the πολίσματα [233] and the Emporia subjugating the native population centuries afterwards, and when the Roman sword had been thrown into the scale with the Tyrian trinkets, it was not the city that overspread the plain with its shadow, but the people of the wilderness that had assimilated to themselves the urban system, defying alike the imperial power and the metropolitan civilization.

Severus, on attaining the imperial purple, sent for his sister from Leptis , and was much ashamed of her that she could scarcely speak Latin. [234] Was it, then, Phœnician she spoke?—not at all. Sallust has told us, in his time, that the language was changed by intermarriages with the Numidians . [235]

Was it a disadvantage to Rome that there was no uniformity? Had Rome been possessed with the mania of uniformity, she could at best have remained only a small state on the Tiber.

The Carthaginians kept their cities distinct from the cities of the Lybians: the Romans kept their laws distinct from the customs of the country. Rome could even unite provinces, strange as it may seem with our experience, without convulsing them or throwing them into rebellion, for the union was judicial, not administrative or legislative. This reserve, which was the secret of the power of Carthage, became the source of the prosperity and tranquillity of Roman Mauritania, amidst the convulsions of the rest of the empire down to the invasion of the barbarians, which—in Africa at least—were uninvited by the provincials.

THE HESPERIDES.

A garden is not hot-houses to force fruits, or conservatories to preserve flowers: it is forest and fountain, affording shade and water; to these you may add flowers and fruits. An Eastern goes to his garden to enjoy nature, not to study art [236] —goes to it for shelter in the sultry hours, or to regale himself in the even-tide. Thus says Solomon:—“A garden enclosed is my sister, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. I am come into my garden, I have eaten my honeycomb, and have drunk my wine and my milk.”

The world began with a garden. Of the first one, it is said, “the Lord planted it.” The botanist, who considered that the greatest compliment ever paid to his science was, when Christ said, “Consider the lilies of the field,” must have forgotten the workmanship of the first of orchards, for it was trees which constituted that garden. “Every tree that is pleasant to the sight or good for food,” and immediately after there are the rivers enumerated that spring in it. The garden was the first special work of Providence: it was the habitation appointed for our undefiled nature. Its culture was the first task allotted to man,—and it is sometimes the last, when all that life can yield or fortune bestow has been tried and exhausted. Tamerlane, when he had conquered the world, turned gardener at Samarkand.

They can fit up any place into a garden. I have spent an evening amongst a bed of leeks, which had suddenly assumed all the pretensions of a parterre and kiosk; a few plants to lay the cushions and carpets on, a couple of glass balls for the lights, a little tin wheel, on which a jet of water was conducted, some jessamine plants detached from a wall to form a canopy over our heads, the leeks pulled up in front to open a way for the supper. This kind of garden is a sort of out-of-door existence, and essentially belonging to a people with tents, and has its conveniences and luxuries adapted for transport.

There is no botany, no horticulture; their taste is ignorant. Their love of flowers is not as they are arranged in classes, multiplied in leaves, or varied in colours—it is for themselves—their natural forms, their pure colours, and their sweet odours. It is unobtrusive and silent, or vocal only as in the verses of Solomon and the songs of the Troubadours. “A man may be a good botanist,” said Rousseau, “although he does not know the name of a single plant.”

The Easterns do not like to come empty-handed, and the commonest, as the fairest, flowers suffice. But it is not a nosegay or a bouquet , but a flower that they present. The leaf and stem are to them just as beautiful as the blossom; and a bundle of heads of flowers would appear to them much like a heap of human heads. In the numerous Chinese figures and ornaments that encumber our tables and rooms, it may be observed that, wherever there are flowers, they are single, each by itself in a vase. A piece of pottery has recently been brought to England from the Greek Islands: it is unique, and no description has been discovered of its uses. It is a vase about four inches in diameter, surrounded with two circles of very small vases, which stand out from it: it is evidently for flowers, and so placed that each should have its own stalk and vessel. The Moors also have a flower-dish for the room: the top in pierced pottery, so that each stands by itself. One of the things which in Europe have shamed me most in the presence of an Eastern is the bouquet, or painted cauliflower head, in the hand of a lady. Alas! that perversion of taste should always fasten on her fairest subjects!

Their weeds, stunted in our hot-houses, are their chief embellishments; the cactus, for instance, and the aloe. Here the one bears flowers like a standard, and the other fruit like a flower. Without science, numbers of plants, or skill in rearing and combining delicate and diverse natures, a garden rises to something infinitely beyond our ideas, whether of use or grandeur. So may it be traced on the Nile in the palmy days of the Pharaohs, on the Xenil in those of the Abderachmans, no less than at Jerusalem and Babylon.

The Hanging Gardens were the least like what a European would expect: the authenticity of the concurrent testimony of Diodorus Siculus, Quintus Curtius, and Josephus has consequently been questioned. There was no assortment like Kew—no show like Chiswick. Flowers are no more mentioned than cabbages or carrots.

The land was intersected with canals, carrying water field by field over the Doab of the Tigris and Euphrates; beyond this region spread dead levels, which, as Xenophon says, resembled the sea. From the city’s lofty walls stretched on all sides, far as eye could reach, flatness and luxuriance. What, then, could taste divine and power accomplish—if not the rivalling of wild nature—to transport thither a primeval forest, and to pile up coctile mountains to place it on. Such was the design of the Hanging Gardens; and, when accomplished, doubtless they were a wonder.

The forest-crowned battlements of Lucca, diminutive as they are, and in the midst of wood and mountains, nevertheless please the eye. A palm-tree on one of the towers of Arta often recurs to my memory as one of the most attractive and picturesque features of that lovely region. The sculptures of Nineveh present the same thing: on the towers of cities are planted palm and other trees, confirming the accounts of the Hanging Gardens. They afford, no doubt, protection; for, if not useful in time of war, they would have been cut down. [237] The walls of these ancient cities were broad enough to bear a forest band, and might have had a stream or river running along for their nourishment.

In the gardens of Azarah [238] we have the same theme in a different mode. Around were mountains; these were all planted with fruit-trees and cultivated with flowers. The palace, as it were, walked forth into the garden, and its glory consisted in Mosaic walks, fountains, kiosks; and there, of course, in their excellence were to be seen those peculiarities of gardening we can still trace in Morocco and in Spain and Portugal, which I have already mentioned in describing Kitan and Ceuta, and which those who visit the Peninsula get some idea of by the fortress of Lisbon, and especially by the courts of the convent of Bellem, and—though travestied—in the Alcazar at Seville.

We know more of the domestic manners of the Egyptians than of those of any people who have preceded us; and I should imagine that the pictured walls of the Memnons furnish the best delineation, however unsuccessful the Egyptians were in painting flowers, of what those gardens were [239] which the Saracens constructed in Spain, and how they arranged and assorted together verdure and architecture, flowers, trees, land, and water. In the Middle Ages, nothing more excited the wonder of Europe than the gardens of Andalusia; and that that exquisite gardening is of the highest antiquity is clear, from “heaven” in all languages being called “paradise.” [240]

The Hesperides, the seats of the blessed, were orchards. [241] A garden being the abode of the dead, a tree came to be the symbol of death in that of life. On the sepulchral monuments, the tree of the Hesperides and the strigil are the most constant emblems—the one representing immortality, the other purity. At Nineveh, the tree of life is associated with the living, not the dead. As the sun set in the west, and as the west was considered to be the place to which the spirits repaired, their abode, Hezperi, came to mean the evening, or Hesperus. The site of the Hesperides can admit, therefore, of no doubt or ambiguity; and the name given to another part of Africa in the neighbourhood of Carthage can only be understood as figuratively expressing its excellences and beauty.

Their gardens may still be described as copses of fruit-trees, as is naturally to be expected in the country of the orange, lemon, and citron, when flower, foliage, verdure, shade, and fruit were all combined—not evanescent in an hour, or exchanging their merits, but combined in one, and enduring nearly throughout the year. The orange, in a hot country, is the very excellence of fruit; and, if we were not familiarised with its form and flavour, the aspect of a Moorish garden of that description would prompt all that the same sight prompted to the Greeks of old.

A peculiarity of their gardening is, that they do not mix the different kinds. The Jews were forbidden to mix the olive and the vine; and Solomon speaks of a garden of nuts (it should be almonds). This is the fashion here: the garden is a square—it is again laid out in squares, in the way that we dispose a farm for rotation crops. Thus, the gardens of the Sultan at Morocco are divided off into almonds, pomegranates, figs, pears, cherries. The square divisions are separated by alleys of the dimensions of streets, but some greater than others. Columns run along; and above these, and partly down the sides, there is a fret-work of bamboo; over these are trained vines, the clusters depending through the trellis (as seen in the Egyptian tombs). Jessamine (the large white and yellow flower) and other plants are trained up the columns, and festooned around them. Through these alleys you ride on horseback; and at the intersections there are vast halls, like that I have described at Kitan, of bamboo fret-work: the portals and openings imitate windows, and are twined and matted with various creepers.

On both sides of the alleys flow the rivulets for irrigation; and, there being no weeds or under-verdure, you have the refreshing coolness without the effects of rank vegetation. The style of the private gardens is the same.

Oranges and lemons are, however, classed by themselves. They are planted together, and in certain proportions, viz. the orange sweet and bitter, the lemon sweet and bitter, the citron large and small—in all, nearly a dozen varieties. A garden of this kind is called quorce . The common orange has evidently been a graft from the East, for it is called chin : in lim and rungh may be found the root of our lemon and orange. To the eastward, the Arabs call the orange Berdkou . Portugal is so called by the Greeks, &c.; and probably that general name which it has acquired in the Levant comes from the Portuguese traffic when they were in possession of the ports of Barbary.

So recent is the introduction of these plants in the East, that I have been shown the stumps of the two trees first planted in the island now most celebrated for their growth, and where the gardens resemble those of Barbary, having the three varieties mixed together. This island is Naxos: the two trees are called Adam and Eve, and they say they were brought by the Venetians. That, of course, is a mistake, but it shows that they came from the West.

Throughout the country the trees are generally evergreens—the olive, wild and cultivated, the cork, oak, the arar, the locust, the palm, the palmetto, the orange and lemon, the lotus and myrtle, and, finally, the Barbary fig and aloe, which give to the land its tropical and ideal character. The whole country is covered with what are our garden flowers; so that now, in the depth of winter, there is no sign of the hoary monarch save in the gardens, where the fruit-trees are naked; but these leafless copses did not suffice, under a glowing sun and with a verdant landscape, to cool, even in thought, the summer breath into a winter chill. They merely looked like withered trees, and the gardens were the only spots that did not smile. I speak of those that were scattered along our road, not of the septs of pale blue fantastic vegetation enclosing the dark shining groves of quorce (orange and lemon) that grace the banks of the Lixus.

It is not without reason that the cactus is called the Barbary fig. It grows so abundantly and luxuriantly, and is so well adapted to the soil and climate; flourishing in the arid sand, covering it with a grateful shade, fertilizing it with its thick succulent branches as they fall, fostering other plants by its shelter, and furnishing in abundance a healthy and refreshing crop of fruit, which fringes or studs its gigantic leaves. [242] The fig has a thick rind, which is pared off: this, in Spain, is treasured up for the pigs. Like the Turkey, the prickly pear, though cherished, is repudiated, every people calling it by the name of some other people: we call it Barbary fig, the Moors call it Christian fig— kermus ensare . The Spaniards call it Tuna , as having been imported from Tunis; the Shillohs of Sus call it Tacanarete , as if it had come to them from the Canary Islands. There is but one people who have boldly adopted it, and that is the Mexicans, who have taken it as their national emblem, and have associated it upon their coins with the shashea, or Barbary cap, intended to represent Liberty. It is doubtless from the word “karmus” that we have taken “kermes,” [243] the name of the insect growing upon it, and one variety of which furnishes the cochineal. The people of the Canary Islands call it “alcormas,” [244] which, in fact, is the kermus, the common term of the Arabs for fig. This, I think, suffices to vindicate the claims of Barbary to its prickly pear; for the people of the Canaries were driven from Africa at a remote period, and were of the race of the Shillohs, as their language, names, and customs, noted at the time of their discovery and conquest, can leave no doubt.

The aloe bears no fruit: the stalk of the blossom serves for the purposes of light timber. It blossoms about the seventh year, and then dies: it rises from the seed that falls. They are not acquainted with the liquor, like soured milk (yourt), which the Mexicans draw from it (pulke) by tapping. The Moors do not convert its fibres into the same beautiful work as the Mexicans, or the inhabitants of the Eastern Archipelago, but they use them for sewing. An Arab woman, when she has needlework, goes into the garden to gather her thread: the thread, like the plant, is called “gorsean.” I have been told that some of the very old lace made by the Jews is of this fibre.

The kitchen-gardens surround every town like a suburb, and in them we have, no doubt, the “gardens of herbs” of the Jews. The distribution of land for a town under the Jewish system required a space sufficient for a garden for each household; and, beyond the ground so appropriated, there was the common land or pasturages. The same rule prevails here; and there is a common shepherd and cowherd who comes for the cattle in the morning and brings them home at night. The gardens are small squares, divided off internally with rows of tall reeds. There is a plank door with lintels; all the rest of the enclosure is of growing plants. The soil is generally sand: here in the gardens above the town, and through which I passed last night, it is nothing but sand, and its fertility depends on the shelter afforded it. The tall reeds fence it round; there is then a path on the four sides, on the inner side of the path fruit-trees; and the centre, between the trees and the path adjoining the reeds, is covered with a trellis, over which vines are trained. The smaller ones are without trees; so that, as you peep into them, they look like large rooms or corridors.

They say that the smell of the cistus cools one: I fancied I experienced the same effect in looking at the mirage-like colours of the cactus and aloe. But what is to be said of their forms?—can anything be more antithetical than the straight lines and the sharp points and daggers of the aloe, and the distorted contorted lobes and projections of the prickly pear? Mingled together, as they generally are, they keep the mind occupied with their strangeness and their contrasts. More than once I have heard Europeans express themselves angrily about them, and revile their “monstrosities.” As seen in our hot-houses, the form may be known, but that is all; no idea can be formed of the cavern-like alley with which, when they rise fifteen or twenty feet, they cover the ground. The aloe is the outer fence, or chevaux-de-frise , the cactus rising higher within: through these are mingled the tall slender reeds, as if to unite in one bond the three most dissimilar things in nature. Together, they form a fence which might delay an army, and present to the archer Phœbus a testudo which defies his shafts.

On the coast, the heat is tempered by the sea-breezes at the hottest times of the year and day; but the influence of these winds is lost as they pass inwards, and in three or four miles they become themselves heated. Along the Zahel their cooling breath is expended on the barren sand. Here the sands cease and the rich soil commences. There is no languid autumn and benumbing winter, no trying spring or scorching summer, but unceasing verdure and ever-springing plants.

To the south fertility is wanting; to the north there are the heavy vapours of the easterly wind. Sheltered from the blasts of the sea, though inhaling its health and freshness, and from the damp wind that sweeps through the Gut of Gibraltar and infects the shores of Spain and Morocco,—this region enjoys the richest soil, the most fortunate site in a clime where barren sand upon a mountain-top can bear the choicest fruits and the fairest flowers; a clime which combines the charms of every other, and preserves throughout the year the luxury of every season.

This climate is adapted to pulmonary invalids. During the latter days of November, the whole of December, and the half of January, we have had but three bad days: there has been but one day not splendid during our excursion. The want of trees along the coast—whatever the effect in summer—leaves in winter no masses of decomposed leaves to affect the air. The trees, where abundant, are evergreens; and the vines had not lost their leaves, which were coloured a deep red. The new figs were formed, and some of them as large as walnuts; the flowers were all in blossom; and, though it was cold at night, it was hot during the day. We have here the latitude of Madeira, without the exposure to its storms or sudden changes; nor does the barometer fluctuate even in storms. It has not fallen below “change.” I have seen pulmonary diseases, but it has been in the Jewish quarter, where they live in blocks of houses with the passage for the air below; sleeping on the floor, or even below the level of the court, twenty sometimes in a room, and with barrels of fermenting raisins in every house, from which they distil their spirits. Except under such circumstances, I have observed no trace of affection of the lungs; and, to all these advantages for a pulmonary patient, there would be added the bath.

[224] The Spaniards occupied Larache under Philip II. , and lost it under Philip III. (1689).

[225] It has since occurred to me that they might have been baths.

[226] The Ruscus aculeatus . It is the plant which the Spaniards prefer for adorning their patios, or courts; but in Spain the growth is not so luxuriant.

[227] At the moment that I discovered this trace of Pharaotic sculpture, I was struck with the attitude of the men around me. The Moors do not squat down like the Easterns, tailor-fashion, but they sit with their knees up, and on them rest their arms; and shrouded in their Gilabras, they are exactly like the sitting figures of Egypt.

[228] The Phœnician coins found in this neighbourhood, or in Spain, present the originals of the whole of the mythology and the arts of Greece. The plates to Don Bathagin’s (infant of Spain) edition of Sallust’s Jugurtha alone present the following list.

Laurel crowns. Ivy crown, with the bunch-like grapes. Ceres crown of corn-heads. The Mural crown. The star and crescent. The trident and dolphin. The sun and the sun and moon. Winged Pegasus. The palm-tree. The palm, lion, and the horse’s head. The Zampti, represented by four columns surmounted by a pediment. The winged Cupid and the winged Genius. The Genius and torch. The diadem and circlet. The helm and galley beak.

The art of coining they borrowed from the Greeks, and it seems to have been the only mention of that people; but the emblems represented were the ancient ones.

The mythological terms and names of Greece, in like manner may be cited.

Æolus, עעול, aol , storm.

Elysium fields, עליז, aliz , happy.

Erebus, the west, as used by Homer, Odyss. μʹ 12. Chaos, כהות ערב, chaüth ereb , evening darkness.

Myth, מות, muth , death.

Pan, פן, pan , “attonitus stupet.”

Thyrsus, תרזה, thyrza , pines.

Phallus, פלצות, phallasuth .

Orgy, רזא, rza , wrath.

Mystery, mistur , a thing hidden, Landseer.

Siren, שיר, sir , to sing.

Hero, חורים, horim , princes ( Eccl. x. 17).

Hades, חדס, hades , or hadasso , myrtle, whence Edessa, &c.

Satyr, satur , disguised.

Faun, פנים, phanim , a masque.

Tartarus, tara , warning (redoubled).

Cyclops, chem slub , lay of Selab (Chon. l. i. c. 80).

Hephæstos, ab father, af fire, whence also Vesta, usta, &c.

Persephone, peri fruit, sophon lost.

Triptolemus, tarop break, tel earth, telens furrow.

Golden apples, μήλα , golden fleece, μάλλον , malh , riches.

Toison (French), tson sheep.

[229] The most desperate sea-fight ever known. The whole of the vanquished fleet was destroyed, and if I recollect right, only three of the victors escaped.

[230] “Jam nunc Emporiæ duo oppida erant muro divisa: unum Græci habebant a Phocæa unde et Massilienses oriundi, alterum Hispani.”— Livy.

[231] “Emporia vocant eam regionem ... una civitas ejus Liptis.”— Livy l. 34.

[232] Carthage when it fell, was the richest, the most peopled, and strongest city in the world. It had seventy thousand citizens, and three hundred cities in Africa.

[233] Ὅσα γέγραπται πολίσματα καὶ ἐμπόρια ἐν τῇ Λιβύῃ .

[234] “Viro latine loquens, ad illa multum imperatore rubesceret.”— Spartianus.

[235] “Ejus civitates lingua modo conversa connubio Numidarum.”

[236] “Inelegant as they may appear to the cultivated taste of an Englishman, they afford a voluptuous noon-tide retreat to the languid traveller. Even he, whose imagination can recall the enchanting scenery of Richmond or of Stowe, may perhaps experience new pleasure in viewing the glistening pomegranates in full blossom. Revived by the freshening breeze, the purling of the brooks, and the verdure of the groves, his ear will catch the melody of the nightingale, delightful beyond what is heard in England; with conscious gratitude to heaven, he will recline on the simple mat, bless the hospitable shelter, and perhaps, while indulging the pensive mood, he will hardly regret the absence of British refinement in gardening.”— Dr. Russell.

[237] Layard’s Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 393.

[238] These gardens have been the occasion of preserving a trait of Moorish character: an old woman having had a portion of ground taken from her to complete the enclosure, appealed to the caïd,—

“The magistrate mounted his ass, taking with him a sack of enormous size, and presented himself before Hisham, who happened to be then sitting in a pavilion on the very ground belonging to the old woman. The arrival of the caïd, still more the sack, which he carried on his shoulders, surprised the caliph. Ibn Bechir having prostrated himself, entreated the monarch to allow him to fill his sack with some of the earth on which they then were. The request was granted, and when the sack was full, the caïd desired his master to help him to lift it on his ass. This strange demand astonished Alkakem still more, and he told the caïd that the load was too heavy. 'O prince,’ replied Ibn Bechir, 'this sack which you find too heavy, contains but a very small portion of the earth which you have unjustly taken from a poor woman; how then at the day of judgment shall you bear the weight of the whole?’”

[239] The valley of Jordan was like the garden of Eden and the land of Egypt.— Gen. xiii. 10.

[240] “The Assyrians were probably also the inventors of the parks or paradises which were afterwards maintained with so much sumptuousness by the Persian kings of the Archimedian and Sassanian dynasties. In these spacious preserves various kinds of wild animals were continually kept for the diversion of the king, and for those who were privileged to join with him in the chase. These paradises were stocked, not only with some of every kind, but with various trees, shrubs, and plants; and were watered by numerous artificial streams. The Persian word has passed into various languages, and is used for the first abode of man before his fall, as well as for the state of eternal happiness.”— Layard’s Nineveh , vol. ii. p. 432.

[241] עז פרי hez peri , fruit-tree.

[242] The leaf, besides, is one of their great specifics in medicine; it is used for hæmorroids. It is applied as a cataplasm for every kind of external disorders, and even to the buboes of the plague. The thick leaf is roasted in the oven, and then laid on hot.

[243] We have borrowed from them many other words.

Botany, from batmore , turpentine-tree.

Herb, erbie , which signifies not only plants, but their season of appearance.

Wood, wood .

Lozenge, loze , almond, whence also Lusitania.

Bane, as in hen bane .

Wort, as in cole wort , from wurde , rose; whence also “order,” the rose being the emblem of the order, whence, “under the rose.”

Lupin, signifies bean.

Artichoke, korshof .

Flower, flour , cauliflower.

Dalia, this is their word for vine.

Cabbage; they call a bunch of vegetables as brought to the market, habba , from it a portion may be snipped .

Truffle, their name is terfez .

[244] Vide vocabulary in Glass’s History of the Canary Islands.

CHAPTER III.

ARZELA.

It was evening before we returned to Larache. The city, which looked so beautiful under the morning sun, was concealed from us as he set behind it; but the gardens on the opposite hills received his declining rays. The ancient cities, which I had visited at these outlets, are placed on the western side, and therefore with the evening sun at their back. At Constantinople it is considered in the rent of a house whether its view of the Bosphorus is with or against the setting sun. A garden was pointed out to me which, it was said, produced the finest oranges in the world: its produce was reserved for the Sultan. I afterwards had time to visit the Spanish fortifications from the land side, which present the peculiar features of that age—sharp angles, lofty bastions and curtains, massive walls, and deep moats. I saw some beautiful jars, quite antique, the manufacture of Casar, ten miles from this.

When I was passing the gate, a Moorish gentleman accosted me in good English, but with a strong Scotch accent; he volunteered information about mines, and promised to visit me in the evening. He came accordingly: he had been three years in Gibraltar, and had been on board our fleet during the war. He began to expatiate on the advantages of European civilization, and expressed his anxiety to have it introduced into Barbary. I said to him, that would be all very well if they could discriminate, but that men were like Adam in Paradise; that they had to balance their present state with all its evils against change with all its chances; that for them change involved one of two consequences—slavery or pauperism.

He asked me, to my great surprise, for news about Nadir Bey. This is an adventurer of Russian origin, who has been going about Europe and Turkey representing himself as cousin of the Sultan, and claiming his throne. He had come to Morocco, where he had succeeded better than elsewhere, obtaining money and honours, and a firman recognising him as legitimate sovereign of Turkey! I took occasion from this incident to show him how perfectly unqualified they were for dealing in any foreign matter, being so shamefully hoaxed in such a case as this; upon which he abruptly jumped up and took his departure. I thought he had been taken suddenly ill; but I afterwards learnt that he had been Nadir Bey’s patron, and had introduced him to the Sultan.

The baggage having been sent across the river in the evening, next morning at day-break we found the horses ready laden. The beach-road is practicable only when the tide is out, and in any case only for persons well mounted. The tide was not very favourable, and we were very ill mounted, but I insisted on going by this road—the sea was so grand, and I wished to look out for architectural phenomena. But the bank of sand is here interrupted, and the cavernous and stalactitic effects were not to be observed. There were, however, the patterns of the coloured sands. The river of Larache brings down the bluest-black iron sand, which indeed is strewed all along the coast from Meden to Cape Spartel. The distance to Arzela is only five hours; but, what with the drag of the sand on the beach, and getting bogged when we struck into the interior, and wandering backwards and forwards from the hills to the beach, and from the beach to the hills, we made it a long and fatiguing day’s journey.

The country was here as unlike as anything could be to that which we had passed: it changes suddenly in appearance and character. At one moment it would be completely bare, being either cultivated or fallow, and a few miles on it would be covered, hill and valley, with brushwood; at one time the palmetto and ordinary brushwood, and presently a crop of broom occupying every inch of ground within sight, covering it with a mantle of brilliant yellow, and perfuming the air with its sweet odour; then it would be all as if under snow from the white broom, that most airy and delicate of shrubs; then would succeed the gum cistus, with its mingled flowers of white and red, and its cool refreshing scent.

The odour from the cistus does not lose its savour: by being exposed to it, it is a gentle refreshing breeze, of which the nose is conscious, rather than an odour. The gum from it, the ladanum, is much esteemed as incense, and is also mixed with mastic to flavour the breath by chewing it. It is not collected in this district. The ancient story of its being scraped from goats’ beards does not seem improbable; for in breaking through the copses one’s head and clothes become quite clammy.

The odour is not from the flower, but from the leaves of the plant: the flowers are of the slightest texture, but make a lively show, bespangling the bushes with stars of white or red. They look like roses, and I was constantly reminded of York and Lancaster. These flowers live but for a day; and, constantly tempting the eye and inviting the hand, the prize is relinquished as soon as reached, and never was a cistus blossom twined into chaplet or gathered for a nosegay. Yet, when it clothes the rocky steep, or mantles the swelling slope, there is no plant can rival it in the pleasure it gives and the attention it awakens. It is shrub and flower; the frailty of its blossoms, the down of its waxy leaves, the balm of its fragrance, are so unlike the glancing foliage of other shrubs—the hot-house forms, the dyer tints, and perfumer scent of other flowers,—that it makes them look children of art and care: wild and tender, it is to other flowers as a shepherdess among women, and to other shrubs as an Arab among the races of men.

Shrubs with their sturdy life, flowers in their fleeting passage, serve to embellish the scene, and to adorn the actors. This one rather shares in our humanity: as our generations go to the grave and are renewed again, so it knows vicissitude, and joy, and mourning. It spreads forth its birth of blossoms with the early dawn, and strews with the fallen leaves the earth of eve. Was it from this that the Greeks called it “flower of the sun;” because, like the rainbow, it drew its being from his rays? Like the peri, its life was in a charm, and it died when that charm was gone.

The name “flower of the sun” ( helio-anthemum ) reminds me of the grossest of Flora’s daughters—a garden Cleon, too gaudy for a vegetable, too meagre for a shrub, too thick and hard for a flower. And to this—the very contrast of the cistus—do we abandon the name selected for it by the Greeks!

There is a variety of the broom which might be esteemed a garden flower; it is a miniature plant, eighteen inches or two feet, and—so to speak—one incrustation of yellow blossom. While underwood is reduced to the size of a garden-flower, the common daisy is raised to the pretensions of one, with its large head on a stalk of twenty inches. All the plants were our garden tribes, or what would be wild with us, and were well qualified for a garden—the broom as I have said, the ivy, then the ranges of cactus and aloe, hyacinths, jonquils, irises with the petals coloured green.

About five miles from Arzela, upon a rising ground close to a douar (here they begin to be stationary), the palmetto occurred in a new form. It is a bush two or three feet high, and showing no stem. Here it rose to ten feet, with snake-like stems carrying the sharp spicular masses of fans of glossy or glittering green. I several times made an endeavour to stop, that I might pass the night in one of the villages, as I should now call them; not only seduced by the amenities around, but also partly out of consideration for our jaded cattle and scarcely less exhausted self: but guides and guards were inexorable. It was a settled thing that that night we should sleep at Arzela; so we pushed or dragged along, as it seemed, in chace of it, for it never could be in the map the distance we found it by the road. At last we descried its lines, tinged by the last reflected light, against the leaden mass of the Atlantic. We soon after entered “The Gardens,” and then approached the castellated gate, where, to our infinite surprise, an anxious people awaited us.

For several days we had been expected. Rumour had preceded us, and dealt kindly by us; and we were gazed at with eager countenances and smiling eyes, and some of them bright ones. By some process, strange and capricious, we were no strangers, and the denizens vied with each other in doing us any good turn which fell in their way, in expressing their delight at our arrival, and in welcoming us to their town. The crowd was hurrying us in a direction which they had evidently settled in their minds we should take. I having some voice, as I thought, in the matter, made bold to ask, “Whither away?” “To Abraham’s! to Abraham’s!” was shouted. On this I reined in—I mean, I ceased thrashing; for the memory of sleepless nights among those conversational Jews, and some other discomforts which need not be repeated, and a habit of looking somewhat higher than an Israelite’s abode, with a disinclination to step down in the world, came all upon me, and prompted the emphatic declaration, “We will pitch without the walls.” No sooner had the words passed my lips than I could have bitten my tongue off. My eye had fallen on a countenance of singular amenity, and—although that of an aged man—of grace: a long white beard hung down his breast, giving to the figure the patriarchal cast, which his lineaments vindicated as legitimately their own by blood as well as bearing. A cloud passed over his features;—the impress was so slight that I cannot say I saw, but I felt it. So recovering, as it were, my sentence, and inclining to him, I added to the interpreter in Spanish, “unless we are to go to my father’s house.”

We entered a small court: the floor was red, the walls were pure white. There was no window. Four Moorish arches opened to four separate chambers: two sons with their wives occupied two, his brother and uncle the third, and himself the fourth. Whether these were houses or apartments it was not easy to determine: our words cannot explain. Notwithstanding many attempts at description, no one who has not seen these houses has any distinct idea of them. The same holds with respect to the descriptions left us of ancient dwellings. The one explains the other: perhaps, by making them serve mutually for this purpose, I may be in some degree successful.

This court and hall, for which we have no word, is the patio of the Spaniards, the woost of the Arabs, the hyroob of the Hebrews, the μέσον of the Greeks, and the impluvium or cavadium of the Romans.

The patio is covered with an awning, which the Moors call clas ; they have also a covering for the floor, which they use on festivities, and which they call yellis : the clas , the same as the velum , which the Romans spread over their atrium—in Greek it was τέγη . The roof was τέγος , hence the confusion respecting the paralytic man being let down “through the roof” τέγη , which was simply the removal of the tent or awning to let him down, not into the house, but into the court. They ascended to the roof among the tiles, [245] and unroofed the roof, [246] and so let down the bed into the middle. Here are all familiar words, and nothing can be plainer than the words, however incomprehensible may be the thing conveyed; for how should a roof be unroofed ( ἀπεστεγάτην τὴν στεγὴν ), and how should the people below have remained quiet under the tiles and rafters? But, translate the passage by the aid of the Moorish house, and all difficulty is removed: “They ascended to the top of the house, among the tiles ( ἀναβάντες ἐπὶ τὸ δῶμα διὰ τῶν κεράμων ); and then, removing the awning which was spread over the place where he was, they let him down into the patio.” The tiles were for flooring the terrace-top, and coping the parapet walls. Thus the centre of the house remained, as it were, the tent, and explains the passage, “the tabernacle of my house;” as also that one, “Thou spreadest out the heavens as a curtain;” and again, “He stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in.”

The French word maison comes from the Greek μέσσον , architecture . The French house is a solid figure, the ancient house a hollow one. The building of the house in Greek is οἶκος : the court in the middle is called μέσσον . The families of the poor inhabit different apartments: the court becomes the common place of resort, and its name will stand for that of the whole dwelling, as “hall” in English is, in the country, used to designate a gentleman’s seat. But here it is the abode of the lower orders, which would undergo the change, and the word would become vernacular: οἶκος becoming μέσσον , we have at once maison . In Spain, common courts are called meson coral . Coro , coral , corte came, in like manner, to signify residence of the monarch: thus, the Court of Madrid. (“ Solo Madrid es corte. ”) [247]

Architecture spread in France from the Phocian colony of Marseilles, and through Europe from the peninsula, and so the one word spread in France, the other through Europe. It is curious that the French word for a house should mean the same thing as the English word for a chamber, both being in direct contradiction to the thing conveyed, which is not “space,” but “enclosure.”

This form of Canaanitish building is preserved in our monasteries, cloisters, and colleges. Spain and Sicily preserve some beautiful specimens of the passage of Moorish into Gothic forms, where the luxury and gaiety of the woost is associated with the sombre severity of the cloister,—the stone-framed and fretted Gothic arches and windows—the Moorish tiles—the gloomy corridors around, and flowers smiling in the centre amidst water and refreshed by fountains.

To the apartment of the chief of the establishment there was an entrance-hall twelve feet square and sixteen to eighteen feet high; the floor red like the court, and the walls white. A balcony at one side, reached by a ladder, served for two or three persons to sleep, and gave entrance to a small “chamber on the wall,” such as that of Elisha in the house of the Shunamite. The “upper chamber,” such as David’s, “over the gate,” judging from what we at present see, was a building on the roof, being reached by a ladder or external staircase:—a ladder is a common domestic instrument. The chambers built there are strictly beit ; but to the westward it receives the name from the Arabs of olea , which is the word in the Old Testament translated “upper chamber.” It was the hyperoon of the Greeks, in which Homer places Penelope to avoid her suitors. The Lacedemonians called the same apartment oon ; and Athenæus explains by it the fable of Helen born from an egg. The gynaicum of the Greeks was the upper story; and at present, amongst the Moors, who have no harem for the women, the tops of the houses are appropriated to them, and no man can ascend to make repairs, or for any other purpose, without proclaiming aloud three times that he is going up to the roof. David, in the story of Bathsheba, was clearly where he ought not to have been, and where no man was expected to be, and had neglected to give the customary warning.

But this door, or archway, led to the inner apartment,—one of the ordinary long Moorish rooms, about seven feet wide and thirty feet long, and receiving light only from the door. The floor was covered with their beautiful mats, and the walls all round, to the height of four feet: the rest was white. The entrance to these rooms is by the centre, and they thus form separate apartments to the right and left, at the end there being generally a raised bed divided off by hangings. When I first saw the bedsteads, I took them for an imitation of us, for they are altogether repugnant to Eastern ideas. In the East a bed-room is unknown: even in the harem there is no apartment so appropriated, far less is there a bed-stead. Where “bed-rooms” are mentioned, what is meant is a place for stowing beds. Large presses are filled at the “lower” parts of rooms for this purpose. The bed, when made, is taken out and raised three or four mattresses, one over the other. In the centre of the oda it looks like a long ottoman. The pillows are composed as a “formation” of very thin, broad flaps or cushions of cotton, so that you get exactly the required height, and they fit into the neck, and do not require a head-board to keep them in. No standing post is required; and all this is from the matrix of the tent. Here it is exactly the reverse, and might well surprise at first. The matrix here is the fortress, the walled cities of Canaan. Here every apartment is a bedroom: not only are the beds composed of standing posts, but they are the standing parts of the rooms, divided off by hangings, like those of the Temple, for it is not curtains round them, but hangings that are before them. The room is built of the width requisite for them. There is sometimes a standing top, which serves as a balcony, and also to sleep on. The bed is called farash , the hangings numasia , and there are generally behind two square holes through the wall, for light and air.

Mittah is the word used in Scripture: it is spoken of as a standing thing, and the expression going up , exactly corresponds with what we see here. The standing bedstead of Og King of Bashan is referred to in testimony of his gigantic dimensions. At a feast the Moors place the honoured person in the bed. On marriage-feasts the bridegroom, amidst his party, and the bride amidst hers, recline on the bed. When a fête is made in honour of any person, he is placed on the bed, looking down on the parties assembled round the trays, the whole length of the room. It might, in fact, be translated rather throne than bed.

So also at a Jewish wedding, you may see in one bed three tiers of blooming virgins, sparkling in gold and jewels, with their shot green and red silk handkerchiefs—and within the hangings of one curtain, one bouquet, presenting more beauty than you could select from any European court.

In the Highlands a strange piece of furniture is the bedstead, which is of wood, with doors like a press, and standing enclosed and against the wall: it is, doubtless, derived from the customs I describe. The Highlanders used to make these bedsteads themselves, as Ulysses did his.

A peculiarity of the Moorish room is, that the beams are visible, being ornamented with either carving or colour, or both: this we have preserved in the grander Gothic architecture. So it was among the Jews: “Ceiled with cedar and painted with vermilion.” Vermilion is the ground of their patterns, and predominates. The colour is neither laid on with oil, nor in fresco, but with white of egg; it works well and lasts long. The beams are of the arar, which in ancient and modern times has been confounded with cedar.

In the Roman and Greek house, as in the Hebrew, the rooms were entered from the centre court; but the former had their greatest extension in the length, that is from the court; the latter, in the breadth, that is parallel to the court. The same contrast holds between the Turkish and the Moorish. The former has not the Impluvium , but the Divan houé , or central hall of the house, corresponds to it; out of this you pass to the rooms, which are squares, exactly as Vitruvius describes the Triclinium , with a rectangle added, the top being opposite the door and giving the light, being nearly an unbroken side of window. [248] The Moorish is the most complete antithesis, having an extensive breadth; having two “tops” opposite each other; having no window, and receiving its light from an enormous door. An apartment may be thirty feet by seven feet, or in length nearly five times its breadth. We have had at Nimroud the perfect confirmation that this was the ancient form in the East: the same proportions are there observed in far grander dimensions. [249] Mr. Layard accounts for the form by the want of timber to construct wider roofs; but that would not give the inordinate length; and, besides, they were acquainted—as he shows—with the arch. The form being adopted to suit the settled manner, and with reference to the bed, then of course the heavy roof could be laid on with short beams; and that the same masses of pounded earth for the terraces were there employed as in Barbary, the condition of the Assyrian ruins plainly shows. The Greeks had a mixed architecture. They had the Phrygian tombs; and they must have had also roofs made in this fashion—at least, at an early time—as is recorded in the story of Melampus; who, being confined by Iphiklos, for attempting to carry off his cattle, heard the worms in the roof discoursing on the unsafe condition of the beams.

They have such gates as Samson carried from Gaza, or Lord Ellenborough sent for to Cabul, and are traced on the sepulchre of the kings at Jerusalem: they do not fit into the wall, but lie against it. They are not shaped to the arch; they close, but rectangularly and folding; they cover it as the hurdle did the orifice of the rush mosques I saw along the lake. There is no hinge, but the joints of the door descend into a socket in the stone, and in like manner the door is secured above in a projecting bracket of wood. In the smallest buildings it is colossal. To exclude the air or the cold they close the folding doors, and open a small wicket as in the gate of a fortress; above it there are small apertures through the wall to let in the light when it is closed, and these are arranged in a figure or a pattern. Every corner of a Moorish house is ornamented, although merely in the form that is given to the whitewashed wall: there is no glaring oil paint upon the doors; they are scrubbed with ochre, which is left upon them.

In the apartment of a single old man there was but one farash at one end; a European sofa occupied the other. The floor was flush; and as I was examining and admiring the building, he said to me, “It is of my own construction. I don’t mean that I made the plan, but that I hewed the stone, and carried the mortar with my own hands.”

I paid a visit to this patriarch’s uncle; he was, of course, very old, and though bedridden, had lost none of his faculties. The whole family and a good many of the neighbours were soon assembled around us, and he unlocked the stores of his memory. He recollected the accession of Soliman, the uncle of the present Sultan, who reigned half a century. He then went back to Mahmoud, whom he claimed as his “friend.” I launched out in praise of the dignity of his reign, and the justice of that of Soliman. He related various anecdotes of both.

A governor brought presents of one hundred of everything that the country contained: horses, oxen, mules, sheep, slaves, quintals of silver, packets of gold-dust (about a pound weight each), measures of corn, oil, butter, &c. The Sultan asked him whence came this wealth. He said from the government which his bounty had conferred upon him. He asked him if the people had not paid their tenths. The governor said they had. The Sultan then said, “I sent you to govern, not to rob,” and gratified him with the bastinado and prison.

The grandfather of Ben Abou, the present Governor of Riff, when Caïd of Tangier, made a great feast at the marriage of his daughter. One of his friends, Caïd Mohammed Widden, observed a poor man in mean attire in the court, and ordered him out; and, he not obeying, pushed him so that he fell. That same night the keeper of an oven (there are no sellers of bread, every one makes his own bread at home and sends it to the oven) had barred his door and retired to rest, when some one knocked at the door. He asked, “Who is there?” and was answered, “The guest of God,” which means a beggar. “You are welcome,” he said, and got up and unfastened the door; and having nothing but some remnants of the koscoussou from his supper, and the piece of mat upon which he lay, he warmed the koscoussou in the oven, and after bringing water to wash his guest’s hands, he set it before him: he then conducted him to the mat, and himself lay down on the bare ground.

In the morning when he awoke, he found the door unbarred, and the poor man gone; so he said to himself, “He had business and did not wish to disturb me, or he went away modestly, being ashamed of his poverty.” On taking up the mat he found under it two doubloons; so he was afraid, and put the money by, and determined not to touch it, lest it had been forgotten, or lest the poor man had stolen it, and put it there to ruin him.

Some time afterwards an order came from Fez for Mohammed Widden and the baker to repair thither. They were both conducted to the place before the palace to await the Sultan’s coming forth. When he appeared they were called before him, and, addressing the first, he asked him if he recollected the feast at the marriage of the daughter of the Caïd of Tangier, and a poor man whom he had pushed with his left hand, and kicked with his right foot. Then Caïd Mohammed knew whom he had thus treated, and trembled. The Sultan said, “The arm that struck me, and the leg that kicked me, are mine: cut them off.” The baker now said to himself, “If he has taken the leg and the arm off the caïd, he will surely take my head,” so he fell down upon the earth, and implored the Sultan to have mercy upon him. The Sultan said to him:—“My son, fear not; you were poor, and took in the beggar when he was thrust forth from the feast of the rich. He has eaten your bread, and slept on your mat. Now ask whatever you please; it shall be yours.” The caïd returned to Tangier maimed and a beggar, and his grandson was lately a soldier at the gate of the Sicilian consul. The baker returned riding on a fine mule richly clothed, and possessed of the wealth of the other; and the people used to say as he passed by, “There goes the oven-keeper, the Sultan’s host.” [250]

The old man, however, went further back than Mahmoud, and spoke a great deal of Ismael, who, though doubtless a sanguinary monster, was one of the most extraordinary men that has sat upon the throne of Morocco. He constantly said of him, “Govenaba mucho,” he governed much; and illustrated this disposition as follows: “If a man spoke to a woman in the streets he was immediately put to death.”

The conversation falling on the Brebers, I asked if they were really the people of Palestine driven out by the Jews; upon which there was a general exclamation of surprise, and even of anger. “Must not we,” said the old man, “who are Jews, and the Brebers, who are sons of Canaan, know what we are and they are?” and then they all vociferated together: “Have we not known them, and do we not know them—the Yebusee, the Emoree, the Gieryesee, the Hevee, the Perezee, the Canaanee, the Hytee, the Hurchee, the Sunee, the Aarvadee; and are they not known amongst their tribes to the present day? and of the seven nations driven out, are there not four still here? and did not Joshua drive them out, and did not Joab the servant of David pursue them even to the mountains above Fez?” And then one ran for the Old Testament, and they commenced reading passages, and giving names as used by them and the corresponding names as used to-day amongst the Moors, and explaining how the nations that had been lost, had remained in the Holy Land and been confounded there with the remnant of the other people.

I must not here omit the honourable mention made of the late British consul at Tangier, Mr. Hay. They spoke of him with enthusiasm: his integrity and affability were illustrated by anecdotes. Nor was less said or felt towards Mrs. Hay,—her charity to the poor, her attention to the sick. Repeatedly, when Moors have been expressing to me their indignation at England for inciting them to resist the French, and then betraying them, they have paused to say that it brought Mrs. Hay to her grave.

We spent a great portion of the night in conversation on these subjects; but my host was constantly turning to a matter that had the mastery of his thoughts. He had two daughters-in-law: both were barren. As I had been questioning him about the hashish, and various other plants, nothing would satisfy him but that I was deeply versed in such matters, which the people of Morocco believe Christians to be thoroughly acquainted with, and to be able to control by charms. [251]

He brought down a volume on physics, by Tudela, a Jew of Adrianople, and insisted on having my opinion on various fragments, which he translated. Familiar as one is in this country with the longing for children, [252] I never saw it so exemplified. Next morning he called his two daughters-in-law, and presenting them, said, “Now, look at them, and tell me if they will have children.” I turned away to relieve them, saying, “I know nothing of such matters;” but they had no mind to be so relieved, and came themselves right round before me.

[245] Luke v. 19.

[246] Mark ii. 4.

[247] Ford, in the “Hand-book of Spain,” quotes this sentence as if it were a presumption of the Spaniards, that there was no other court in the world save their own.

[248] See the chapter on “the Oda,” in the “Spirit of the East.”

[249] “The great narrowness of all the rooms, when compared with their length, appears to prove that the Assyrians had no means of constructing a roof requiring other support than that afforded by the side walls. The most elaborately ornamented hall at Nimroud, although above one hundred and sixty feet in length, was only thirty-five feet broad. The same disparity is apparent in the edifice at Konyunjik. It can scarcely be doubted that there was some reason for making the rooms so narrow.”— Nineveh , vol. ii. p. 255.

[250] An oven-keeper of Tangier, from whom I sought the verification of this story, told me that it was not an oven-keeper who had received the sultan, but a worker in iron named Mallem Hamet. Mallem designates his calling, an honourable one here, but so despicable among the wandering Arabs, that a conquered foe has his life spared if he stretches out his arm as if beating with a hammer: degraded by the act, his enemy will not condescend to shed his blood.

[251] The women will try to get a bit of a Christian’s clothes, or a button, to wear as an amulet to confer fruitfulness.

[252]

CHAPTER IV.

THE JEWS IN BARBARY.

The conversation reported two or three pages back respecting the origin of the Brebers, was among the most interesting incidents of my trip. What would it be to open a tomb, and find the sling of David or the arrow of Jonathan, the bones of Joshua, or the sword of Gideon? But what is it to find the very people, firing as they spoke of the Jebusite and the Hittite—not the traditions of the Holy Land, but of what were ancient days to Jeremiah and Ezekiel!

The Jews that inhabit the sea-ports are the remnants of those expelled from Spain at successive periods during the last twelve hundred years, and they are but a step by which to approach the Jews of the mountains, who have undergone less change, but have become savage and illiterate. Amongst them lie concealed treasures of ancient lore, and by them are presented varieties of human existence worthy of inviting adventurous research.

A lady at Tangier told me of a Jew who some years ago had come to inquire his way at the door, and who was quite unintelligible to either Jews or Arabs. He was from the mountains above Tâfilêlt, wore a different dress—which she could not describe, but said it was black—and had upon his feet sandals, tied in the antique fashion, the cords passing between the toes. I found in the journal of Mr. Davidson, sent here after his death, and who crossed the Atlas to the south of Morocco, and spent six months in Sus, some slight but interesting details.

“I went in the evening to dine with the Jews, here called the sons of Yehúdi: they are a most extraordinary people. I never met with such hospitality, or such freedom of manner in any Jews. They had dancing and music, and the ladies mixed in society without the least restraint.”—( p. 58.)

“I received a visit from some Jews, who stated, that they have here the tombs of two rabbis who escaped from the second destruction of Jerusalem. Over the mountain opposite there is a valley equal to the plain of Morocco, where dwell, say the Jews, those who escaped from Nebuchadnezzar.”—( p. 61.)

“In both Riff and Sus the Jews go armed; they are, however, the property of the Moors, who arm, and send them out as a sort of substitute, and by whom they are supported, and allowed a greater liberty than at Tangiers. In the mountains in the neighbourhood of Tangiers, the Jews act as guards to conduct the Moors. They have a master, whose shoe they carry, which serves as a protection. They pay tribute, not in money, but in work, the Moors finding the former. The principal trade is in grain and oil. The masters are Brebers, all of whom ride mules. Every douar has its sheikh and caïd, who are Moors, and possess each a jurisdiction, but not the power of punishing in all cases. Their religious worship is the same as the other, but little cared about. In the whole valley there may be about five hundred. They have their sacred books, synagogue, and rabbis; and they make a pilgrimage to the tombs, distant two and three days’ journey. All the douars have large vineyards, and manufactories of haïks, carpets, &c., which are sent to Tangiers. They do not speak Arabic, but Breber or Shelluh.”

“He (a rabbi) informed me, that in this place (Coubba) there are no less than 3000 or 4000 Jews living in perfect freedom, and following every variety of occupation; that they have mines and quarries, which they work; possess large gardens and extensive vineyards, and cultivate more corn than they can possibly consume. That they have a form of government, and have possessed this soil from the time of Solomon; in proof of which he stated, that they possess a record bearing the signet and sign of Joab, who came to collect tribute from them in the time of the son of David; that the tradition of their arrival here runs thus:—

“‘ Crossing the great sea to avoid the land of Egypt , they came to a head of land with a river; that here they landed, and following the course of this, leading westward, but going towards the south, they came to a spot where they found twelve wells and seventy palm-trees. This, at first, led them to suppose that they had by some means got to Elim; but finding the mountains on the west, they were satisfied that they had reached a new country. Finding a passage over the mountains, they crossed, and took up their dwelling in this valley, first in caves, which exist in great numbers, then in others which they excavated; and after this began to build towns. That, at a distant period, they were driven across the mountains by a people that would not acknowledge them, and that some remained at Diminet, Mesfywa, and other places on the western side of the range.’

“Looking at the map, and following this man’s observations, it is perfectly easy to trace them. They must have reached the Gulf of Tremesen, and taking the river Muluwia, or Mahala, have reached Tâfilêlt, where, to this day, are twelve wells, planted round with seventy palm-trees, and which many of the Jews call Elim; and from this they must have taken the pass, to which I attempted to get.

“I was most anxious to know the meaning of the names of some of the towns. He told me, that what the Moors call Mesfywa is Oom Siwá, the mother of Siwá, one of their families which crossed the mountains; that Ouríka of the Moors, distant thirty miles, was Rebka (Rebecca), founded by one of their daughters, and that most of these places had originally Hebrew names. At Ouríka he left me. I continued for eight days to visit the towns inhabited by the Jews, to the number of above one hundred, and I should say, that on this side there are more Jews dwelling with the Brebers in the mountains, than resident in Morocco. They have all the same account of Coubba, and have a great belief in the Cabalists, who, they say, still exist, and who receive direct communication from heaven.”—( p. 193.)

Here the Jews are an agricultural, industrious, and warlike race. Here is each township distinct, preserving its distinct traditions. Here are the settlements at successive periods. There are the emigrants after the second destruction, as distinguished from those of the first. Then there are those who came by sea, and those who came through Egypt, who “did not go to the Babylonish captivity.”

When Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, he was compelled by the Egyptians to retire, and the Jews looking to Egypt for support, and fearing the return of the Chaldeans, Jeremiah denounced the vengeance of Heaven against them, and prophesied that those who went to Egypt never should see their own land again. [253] Jeremiah himself was taken to Egypt. He again announced the destruction of that country by the Chaldeans, which he typified by burying the stones over which the throne of Nebuchadnezzar was to be raised. On the invasion of Egypt by the Chaldeans, the Jews would naturally have fled a second time. It was from the “north country” that fear was coming. They must have fled towards the west. The prophet had announced that they were not to see the land of their fathers again; and the Jewish peasants inhabiting Mount Atlas, at a distance of two thousand four hundred years, tell us, that they left Jerusalem before the Babylonish captivity. While this is a remarkable confirmation of the accuracy of the Jewish records, and of the fulfilment of a prophecy the accomplishment of which had not been recorded, it gives at the same time to the traditions of these people the weight and force of historical record.

One of their traditions is, that Nebuchadnezzar invaded Spain, attacked the Tyrians at Cadiz, and carried with him in his armies many Jews to Spain, who were afterwards colonized in these countries. This account has hitherto been disregarded because there is no historical evidence for it. The tradition is, however, confirmed by the name of the ancient capital, Toledo—Toledoth, or the generations with Ascalon, so often repeated in the names of old Spanish cities, Jaffa, and the others enumerated by Mariana. The translator of A1 Makhari mentioned to me the discovery at Toledo of an old manuscript, in Jewish character, but not Hebrew, and which he supposed to be a sign of the Jews, who had settled in Spain previous to the Carthaginian conquest, having adopted the original language of Spain, as their successors have the Spanish. Mr. Davidson found great disinclination to speak on the dispersion of the tribes. I have also remarked it in a Jew from Fez; and it suggested to me a new explanation of the supposed loss of the ten tribes.

The Barbary Jews all profess themselves to be of the tribe of Benjamin. When I asked the Jew, how a tribe almost extinguished, and the least of the tribes of Israel, should, to the exclusion of all the rest, have supplied the whole of the Jewish population now in the west, he answered by referring to the promise to the seed of Benjamin, and, as if inwardly recurring to the other promise to the tribe of Judah, he added, “But we are also of the tribe of Judah, and the two are mixed together.” It immediately occurred to me, that they made a point of asserting the tribe of Judah still to exist, as preserving the future application of the prophecy regarding the Messiah, and that they brought in the kingdom of Judah, and the two tribes of which it was composed, as the source from which they sprang, and that thence arose the habit of speaking of the ten tribes as being lost. There can be no doubt that the successive emigrations to Spain and to Barbary while the two kingdoms still remained distinct, were composed of all the tribes, but in the loss of their several inheritances and separate governments, they had become confounded in their new settlements.

When this Jew was asserting his descent from Judah, it occurred to me to ask him to say shibboleth . He was confounded, but attempted again and again, and could not accomplish it. He was very angry.

The resemblance to ancient Canaan is thus described by the illiterate master of a vessel, shipwrecked upon the coast and carried into the interior:—

“After leaving the Great Desert, and coming to the country of Sus, we entered on an extensive plain; and we were struck at the same moment with the sight of several villages, surrounded with high stone walls, with gates and towers; and I was told that each of these was an independent state, and under the command or government of its own chief, who generally gave himself the title of Prince. When I learnt the destruction of Widnoon, and the other devastations of the wandering Arabs, I could not help reflecting—and I made the remark to my companions—that the province of Sus was what Canaan must have been in the time of Joshua, in respect to its numerous walled towns, the fertility of its soil, and several other respects; and that the eruptions of the Arabs of the Desert resembled much the conduct of the ancient Israelites when they came out of the Desert into the cultivated country.”

[253] “When ye shall enter into Egypt, ye shall be an execration, and an astonishment, and a curse, and a reproach, and ye shall see this place no more.” Jeremiah xlii. 18.

CHAPTER V.

TANGIER.

From Arzela to Tangier there are two roads, one by the interior and one by the beach. Not far from the former are the Druidical remains. I, however, preferred the shore-road, not to lose the sight of that splendid tumult of waters. We started a little before full-tide. Here there were no cliffs or rocks along the beach, but flat, open, sand; and in advance of the shore, at about a quarter of a mile, there was generally a bank, along which I walked the greater part of the day barefoot, having now and then to fly before the sudden sweep of a larger wave. I learnt the difference between walking with the foot that God had given us, and stumping in the cases constructed by man. Nothing could be more beautiful than the bank of foam seaward. The waves began breaking about a mile off, and there were generally three permanent cataracts, stretching as far as I could see, this way and that, but at times I could count seven or eight successive lines of surf, which, constantly rolling, appeared nevertheless permanent waterfalls: beyond, the sea was smooth, calm, and there was no wind. This was the coast in its mildest mood, and under its most favourable aspect. In the middle of the day the sea-breeze came in at about ten knots an hour, and swept before it with each wave sheets of foam, radiating with prismatic colours. The coast is strewed with fragments of ships and bones of sharks. The Arabs will sometimes burn large masses of timber merely to get the nails that may be in them. To the south it often happens that whales are wrecked on the coast.

Within about five miles of Cape Spartel, I observed one of the most beautiful effects of the pattern figures of the sand, and I mention it as being within the reach of a ride from Tangier. There appeared to be a stream rising along the ground: it was the fine sand carried inland by the wind; and in this neighbourhood it has since been observed to me by persons who had themselves marked the change, that the sand was gaining upon the cultivated land. It is this, I imagine, that has led to the belief prevalent amongst the Europeans in this country, that the sand along the coast of Morocco has been thrown up by the sea; but the sand thus carried inward is but dust in the balance compared with that enormous stratum which constitutes the maritime border of the country, and which is battened down by a skin of rock. The edges of this mass of sand are worn by the waters, and a slight portion is blown inwards by the wind; but the mass itself has been the load of an ocean, and carried to where it now rests, from the interior of Africa itself.

I may here mention the caves of Cape Spartel, which I subsequently visited. A couple of miles southward of the Cape there is a flat, projecting rock, about sixty feet high: it is composed of a hard and porous conglomerate, which forms excellent mill-stones; and it seems to have been used from all antiquity for that purpose. The summit bears towards the land the remains of Phœnician walls; the rock is in all directions burrowed for the mill-stones; they are cut about two and a half feet in diameter. They chisel them all round; then break off the part with wedges; and this scooping out has a most singular effect. The rock is so hard that parts are left standing only a few inches thick, and, like open trellis-work, over which you may scramble. Forty feet above the surf, and projecting over it, there are two large caves open to the sea, into which the waves dash with fury. These, though greatly extended by the scooping for the mill-stones, were natural caverns, and no doubt one of them must have been the cave of Hercules. Even within the last few years a considerable portion of the rock has fallen away. There is in one a dome, with a circular aperture in the centre. The rock is all pierced through like a large warren: it contains cavities filled up with sand and bones, like the Kirkdale caves of Yorkshire.

It was dark when we reached Tangier: the gate of the city was already closed, though I had sent one of the soldiers in advance. The gate of the citadel was, however, opened for our admission. On issuing from the gate of the fortress, we came in sight of the city below us, shining like a congregation of glowworms. There was not a light to be seen—yet all was light, shaded, mellowed, and phosphoric. There were here no lamp-posts in the streets, and no windows in the houses, through which their lights could be seen: the white walls of the interior courts were illuminated with a blue reflected light, which produced an optical delusion; from the want of a direct ray to measure the distance, the lighted surfaces seemed remote, and the town swelled into magnificence of proportion. It was, indeed, but for a moment, for the sun soon corrected the error of the eye.

I reached the door of Miss Duncan, who renders Tangier habitable for Europeans, in such a condition that, when it was opened and light brought, it was about to be closed against me as a mad santon, my scanty habiliments, a shirt and drawers, being torn with briars and disfigured with mud, while the arms and legs fared no better. Great was the surprise when from such a body proceeded an English appeal for shelter, and within an hour I was seated on a chair at a table, before a fire of sea-coal, with grate, fender, and fire-irons. On the table stood cruet-stand, knife and fork, Staffordshire plates, and Scotch broth. While marvelling at the sight, in rushed Hamed with a steaming dish—“Me know you like Moors’ kuscoussoo.”

The journey from Rabat, a distance of one hundred and twenty miles, had taken me a week of toil and fatigue. The difficulties, from the season of the year, were, however, the charm of the trip; the weather was mild and beautiful, but the roads—if they can be so called—were heavy and deep. This, comparatively speaking, would have mattered little, if we had been well mounted; our animals were, I think, the worst I ever journeyed with, and the charge the most exorbitant I ever paid. I could have bought them outright for one-third more than the sum I gave for the week’s hire. The charges for the soldiers were in proportion, and I found that this journey had cost me in time and in money, the same as posting from Calais to Naples. Each soldier received for his week’s journey, the price of an ox.

Coming from the south, Tangier was a very different object than when I crossed the Straits to visit it, as a specimen of Barbary. In fact, it is a place equally foreign to both. The Moors designate it, “Infidel,” like the Giaour of the Turks. It is the only place where Europeans reside, and there is here a mixture of all classes, Brebers, Moors, Jews, and Europeans, living promiscuously together.

On the cession of the place by the English, it became the property of the Sultan, who offered it to the Brebers, thinking by that means to fix them in the towns. Some hundred families accepted the offer, but their example has not been followed by the rest. They seem originally to have enjoyed a very free government, by their own municipal body, which consisted of twelve, and who each in turn was governor of the city for a month.

The fortifications present a strange jumble of the structure of all ages, but the only chiselled remains that I saw were Roman, being capitals, and shafts of Corinthian columns.

The town stands on a deep mass of the relics of former habitations. The Danish consulate has recently been rebuilt, and in some places they dug twenty feet below the present level. Twelve feet below the surface there were found Roman tombs, and eight feet below these, round black jars containing fragments of burnt bones similar to those which have been found in mounds in Denmark. I could see none of them, as they had been all sent to Denmark to the king. A portion of a fine Roman bridge still stands, leading from Tangier across the river, in the direction of the northern coast. It resembles the Flavian bridge at Rome, and is fifteen feet broad between the parapets: an old engraving of the city, when in possession of the English, represents the port crowded with vessels. It was in form nearly triangular, the apex being at the entrance three hundred and fifty fathoms from the base. Two moles were run out, one protecting it from the north-east, the other from the north-west: these were destroyed when we surrendered the place.

From here you command a perfect view through the Straits. It is impossible not to be struck with its superiority over Gibraltar, while the moles existed. Here you are to windward: with easterly winds you may work through with the current’s aid, and with westerly winds you are far enough out of its draught to be able to get away to the westward. There is, however, a position close by, which is superior to it. It is a cove two miles to the westward, and at the point of the cape. It would require, indeed, some clearance out of the sand, and the addition of a breakwater at each of the horns: there is good anchorage before it, and nothing more to be feared than from the north. The coast of Spain terminating at Trafalgar breaks the sea from the north, and the northerly wind never blows home, as the various influences of the Straits change it here either into an east or a west wind. The Americans some years ago cast their eyes on this position, and wished to obtain it as their Mediterranean emporium, and they offered a large sum of money for it to the Government of Morocco.

Above this cove is situated a house that has been constructed by an English gentleman. It had been several months untenanted, and though there is a road passing close behind it, nothing had been touched. There was on the steps of the door a child’s toy—a cart—just as it had been left weeks before; some of the panes of glass were broken, but this had been done by the pigeons. Garden implements were lying about. During two years that the proprietor has resided there, he had locked nothing up, and lost nothing. There are in the neighbourhood several villages, and no stipendiary magistrate, or rural police.

There is here a restricted but agreeable society of the foreign agents, and a most imposing assemblage of flag-staffs—or rather masts—which are struck and housed in bad weather, and which exhibit fore and back stays, cross-trees, rigging, rattlings, halyards, &c., giving to the flat roofs of their habitations the appearance of decks, and making them look like so many vessels, wanting only their yards to be crossed, and their sails to be bent. In their nautical pretensions, they are, however, beaten by the English consul at Cadiz, who hoists a pendant, and whose porter pipes a guest up the stairs with a boatswain’s call.

Amidst the consular masts with their floating standards and streaming pendants, which make the town look from without rather like a dockyard than a city, there is not one that bears the blue cross of St. Andrew. There was the agent of the young republic of the West at work trying to involve France and Morocco with a view to the settlement of the Oregon question against England, while the profound cabinet of the North is so heedless of Morocco as not to have even a consul there. Nay, Russia is positively so ignorant of the commonest facts connected with this country, that, when appealed to recently in an affair concerning it, she replied that she considered it as a portion of Turkey .

The circumstances attending the appointment of the present American consul are curious. He had been consul here formerly, and on no good terms with the authorities. The Moors are very particular in seeing to whoever embarks from this place, and the foreign agents, of course, always give previous notice of their intention. The American consul on taking his departure, not only gave no such notice, but announced his intention of not doing so. The Pacha, therefore, sent orders to the Porte to prevent the embarkation of any one without permission. He was, consequently, stopped at the gate, on which he drew his sword, and a very violent scene occurred. An infraction of the law of nations in his inviolable person, &c.—protest, commotion—the learned consular body sign—all nations, all Christendom was attacked—and the farce would have been enough for a war, had it occurred in Turkey or Mexico. The United States had, however, as yet no mission of civilization in Morocco, and took no notice of the affair; but, upon the accession of Mr. Polk, the bearing of Morocco upon England and France was to have been reconsidered, and the discarded consul sent back without any previous settlement of the quarrel. When the news reached Morocco, the government was greatly troubled, and after enlisting the good services of the French agent, transmitted a statement of the case to the government of the United States, waving the right of the Emperor to refuse to admit their agent, and leaving it for the American government to judge whether such a person was fit to be the channel of intercourse between two friendly governments; and this representation was to be backed by the French minister at Washington.

In the meantime, Mr. Carr arrived at Gibraltar. The Moorish government resolved to say to him, that they would receive him as a private person, but could not admit him as consul, as they had submitted the case to his government. But the part had been rehearsed also on the other side, and to better purpose. Mr. Carr came with two frigates. On the Pacha’s making his concerted speech, he was answered by the naval commander: “I don’t know anything about the matter. I have orders to bring here the consul of the United States; will you receive him or not, yes or no?” on which the caïd said, that he was ready to receive him, if the naval officer would give him a paper, saying that he constrained him to do so. This was the same functionary who had negotiated with the French, under the threat of having a pistol ball through his head, and signed the treaty of Tangier without ever having read it; this is the person, in whose hands are placed the foreign relations of Morocco; who has property transferred to France, and who is openly charged with giving bribes to foreign agents, and receiving bribes from foreign governments.

There is a beautiful walk from the upper part of Tangier, along the crest of the hill to the cove, so coveted by the Americans. It retains the name it had when the English were here, of Marchand; the boys appropriate it for a game which is evidently the origin of billiards; it is played with two balls of iron, and a ring, which just admits them. The object is to pocket the ball through the ring; they play several on a side. Instead of cues they use a piece of wood, of the form of the old sacrificial knife, with which they impel the ball by a sweeping motion, drawing its edge along the ground.

The ball is called bola , the ring Arabi . This game flourishes particularly at Tangier, where the boy population has profited by the liberal distribution of grape made by the French. The children in Morocco are distinguished for their games;—I have seen leap-frog performed in a manner which would not have disgraced an English clown in a pantomime. They are dexterous in the use of the single stick, and they have a mimic imitation of the powder game of the men, which resembles the French game called barre . They have blindman’s buff, and hunt the slipper, which must be Moorish; and hunt the slipper and blindman’s buff are combined in one, for they must strike the ground with a slipper, and having done so, must not leave the spot if the blinded man approaches them. At the entrance of all the towns we found, it being holiday time, whirligigs. No inconsiderable portion of Moorish art is expended on toys: there are drums of pottery-ware, a tube covered with parchment at one end, with the other open, such as were used amongst the Jews, and may be detected among the Egyptians.

The habits of children are not to be neglected in the history of nations, for they are a primitive and original community transmitting their mariners to their successors, distinct from the nation of adults, and flowing as a pure source into the turbid stream, and age after age struggling against it.

I must enumerate the peculiarities of this land before quitting it, although, indeed, every thing that exists in it is a peculiarity; for when they do things like other people, they have no more taken it from them than one man borrows from another the way to breathe.

They have a form of room, tesselated and open court, vermilioned and cedar beams, lofty arch and thick-set column conjoined, carving of wood, fretting of walls, colouring in patterns and assortment of colours, doors, windows, brackets, stables, kitchens, store-houses, water-closets, and tomb-stones,—all unlike what is to be seen east or west, north or south. They have carpets like other people, but in their own style; they have mats, but the figure is Moorish; they have caps, the form is their own; they have shoes, again, as unlike Eastern slippers as European boots; they have towels (our name comes from them) but they are unlike ours; so they have pottery, embroidery, and even the use of the needle. Using the same letters as the Persians and the Turks, the Moors have an entirely distinct set of their own instruments of penmanship. They have one national dish. Unlike any thing else that is practised amongst men, so is their costume. It is a nation living under tents, and yet excelling all others in the composition of materials for fortresses and the structure of gigantic walls. It is a people that has combined nomade habits with the settled distribution of property. Jewelry is, again, their own; so are their toys and their children’s games, the head-dresses of the women, the plaiting of the hair, their cosmetics, the substances with which they wash; and if they have, in common with Easterns, the bath, it here, again, assumes a style that is Moorish.

What is chiefly remarkable, is the absence of all things that are not in taste. There is no repetition of chintz patterns used for adornments of wall or floor; there is no glazed or glaring oil paint; there are no pictures or prints hung for ornament sake; no gilt and gaudy frames round these unsuited to the apartments in which they are placed. Upon their persons there are no repetitions of figures, no interminable variety of tints, and no false ones. Some centuries ago, I might have increased the list of the peculiarities of Morocco, such as the use of candles for giving light; of bells to call servants; of knockers to announce visitors; of straw hats to shade off the sun; of a different sort of meal in the morning and in the evening; tambourine and crochet work and lace, to occupy ladies’ fingers or adorn their persons; of patches for their cheeks; of that beautiful leather of various colours known by this country’s name, of inlaid leathern patterns; of vases of ancient figure.

The Moors, with the art requisite to produce works admirable and exquisite, are in the rudest stage of early craft, and have no less avoided adopting from us any process or any improvement than they have been careful to exclude our corruptions of style and manners. They have not got our plough or our wheel, or our roads, or even the common pump: they have not got a turning lathe or a shuttle; though they have Morocco leather , they have no tanning vats; they make the most exquisite silks without a throwing machine; and with the most admirable woollens they know not the manufacture of cloth. They have never drawn the metals from their rich mines; they still preserve the incantations and divinations of the earliest times; they have perfumes and incense, secrets and mysteries, yet in use in every house. Their maladies are their own—elephantiasis and biblical leprosy; the travelling scourge of plague visits them not, and yet they have a plague of their own. And, finally, they have an intoxicating drug differing from all other people; they have neither recourse to wine, spirits, nor opium; they have a plant, the produce of their own country, presenting to them, when so disposed, delusions and forgetfulness. Their permanency—as their peculiarities—may be compared to, but exceed, those of China. The Tartars are masters of Chinese, amounting in numbers to half the human race, to whom they have not given their religion; the same Tartars have not been able to subjugate fifteen millions of Moors, of the same religion. In the midst of the world of conquest, enterprise, commerce, and letters, they have repelled the invading arms of Christians and Mussulmans united; they have been overawed by no superiority of strength or display of science, and neither has fallacy of speech or temptation of gain seduced them into courses which their simple instinct told them might ultimately compromise their independence. The stranger from Europe is welcomed in every tent, and kindly treated by every Moor. The things of Europe are eschewed by the community. They are a people of thirty centuries, before whom we, with our institutions and our ideas, are as insects of yesterday. This people has outlived the Phœnicians. It has seen in its rise and passage, decline and fall, the star of Rome. It has shaken off, after having bent before, the Gothic yoke and the Vandal scourge; conquering, it converted Spain into a garden; beaten, it retired home. It arrested on its shores the following tide of invasion; it has kept out modern change—may it not yet be destined to survive and to see, too, to their end, the things even of our proud day?

Elsewhere, the records of antiquity are to be sought in characters traced on marble or on brass; but here they are to be found in the living men;—not the traces of their early antiquity as that of the Chinese, because they have not changed, but of ours. Coming from a common source, flowing from a common fountain, the streams of our waters have been mingled and overcharged, and here we see what with us was in the beginning—the key to the legends of Mythology, the original of the pictures of Homer, the source of the metaphors of the prophets, the people of the old covenant reserved to our day, and the source of the religious practices accompanied by which Christianity appeared and settled itself in Europe.

CHAPTER VI.

DRUIDICAL CIRCLES NEAR TANGIER.—CONNEXION OF THE CELTS WITH THE ANCIENT POPULATION OF MAURITANIA AND SPAIN.

By taking the sea-road, I missed the Druidical circle, and although I stayed some time at Tangier, I was too constantly engaged to make an excursion so far. Mr. Davidson has mentioned them in his journal as follows:—

“Coming round the side of a hill, you perceive several stones forming a circle, of which one, called the Peg, is much higher than the rest: there is likewise a second circle. The whole neighbourhood is full of similar circles of stones, but smaller: many of the latter have been worked artificially. The entrance to the circle, which is fifteen feet wide, faces the west; on the north and south of the Peg are two openings at equal distances. At about the distance of two hundred feet, there is a stone placed at an angle of 45°, intending, it is said, to mark the opening; it is six feet high, and by lying on the back, one can see directly through the circle.”

Discoveries of a similar kind have been made in the regency of Tunis, [254] and cinerary vases have been dug up at Tangier, in sinking a well at the Danish consulate, at the depth of twenty feet, being eight feet deeper than Roman tombs. These have been sent to Copenhagen, and it is said, identified with pottery found in the North of Europe. A cromlech has also been discovered on the banks of the Jordan, [255] and in the vicinity of Tyre. [256]

I was not aware of the existence of this monument, when it first occurred to me that the clans must have visited Barbary. It has therefore, at present, all the greater weight as testimony; so much so, indeed, as to induce me to advance a new theory as to the derivation of the Scots, who, towards the period of the Roman conquest, reached Ireland, and finally settled in Scotland. In tracing that people to Barbary, a new field of peregrinations is opened, and in pursuing it either up to that point, or subsequently from that point, we must be satisfied of their presence and sojourn here. This monument would give that assurance, were it not for two explanations that have been offered, either of which would deprive it of value as an historic record.

Rude stones, it is said, are the first beginnings of architecture: those called Druidical, need not be referred to any particular people, and cannot, when found, be adduced to prove the presence of the Celts. [257]

The simple answer is, that Druidical remains have as decided a character as Egyptian; and as to the argument [258] that they are found in Asia and Africa, where the Celts never have been, history teems with evidence of their presence in those very places. Had the cromlechs and Druidical circles belonged to the original races of Africa, they would surely be found in more than two parts of its surface.

The other explanation is not so easily disposed of, as it involves no less intricate a question than the ancient peopling of the peninsula. It is, that Spain and the West were inhabited by Celts.

Three theories have been advanced respecting the early races of Spain. First, that it was colonized from Judæa. This was founded on the names of men and places,—the Hebrew roots in the Spanish, and tradition,—and is sustained by Mariana, Florez, Capmany, Alderete, &c., also by Scaliger and Bochart, Selden and Gesenius. It has been exploded by modern criticism; or it has been admitted, by identifying the Hebrew and Celtic . [259]

The theory which now seems to prevail is, that the Iberi were Celts. [260]

The third is a jumble rather than a theory, resulting from the ethnographical generalization at present in vogue. It seems to point to the Basques as being the same people as the ancient Iberians. [261]

Ethnography, that very hypothetical science and suspicious word, deals chiefly, if not exclusively, with language—not its metaphysical, but its mechanical part—and as the end and means of science are order, the human race is methodized into genera, and distributed into species, as if minerals or plants were dealt with, so that out of the very speech of man proceeds this classification, which disposes of him as of the dumb beasts of the field, and fishes of the sea. The feat of reducing the populations of Europe, Celts, Slavs, Basques, and Goths, to one denomination, has been accomplished just at the time that a hitherto unheard-of hatred and repulsion has been engendered between races, threatening society with convulsions as lamentable in their results as in their causes. They are fantastic and absurd, and the age most versed in the knowledge of the events of other times, exhibits itself as the least capable of any that has ever existed, for managing the affairs of its own.

In all other investigations of a similar description, the point of departure is a known language ; here it is an assumed one, just as if, at a future time, out of some remnants of English, preserved in Yorkshire, and some Celtic names in Wales, a British language were to be constructed.

The same fallacy has equally pervaded the three theories. The assertors of the several origins have each commenced by assuming one people . Each has indubitable proofs in hand, as to the existence of his people, but each will extirpate the others, and so present vulnerable points to his antagonist.

Larramendi sees nothing in Spain that is not Basque; Risco nothing that is not Celtic; Mariana nothing that is not Hebrew; and each is justly ridiculous in the eyes of his opponent.

In the opening of any field, whether of modern discovery or of ancient research, we commence by assuming as many people as we find names, and only on proof do we admit that two or more belong to one tribe or race. Proceeding by this simple method, and applying to Spain the rule undeviatingly adopted everywhere else, the ancient population will present no difficulty. We hear of Hispani , of Iberi , of Keltoi ; unquestionably, then, there were three races distinct in their tongue, time, and habitation. Each of the theories would annihilate two of these to establish the third. As soon as we accept the names handed down , the theories fall to the ground.

I commence, therefore, by denying the authority in this case of “Philology,” “Sprachenkunde,” “Glottology,” [262] or whatever other name the science may rejoice in; and notwithstanding the contempt to which I may thereby be exposed, [263] I cannot put aside Herodotus and Strabo, Cæsar and Pliny. Persisting in the old notions, I cannot see, in the Iberi, Asiatic-Europeans, or Indo-Germans. I must hold the Gauls to be Gauls and the Basques Basques, as I should if there never had been a Babel of bricks or a Babel of philologists—if there were still but one tongue for man, as but one bark and one bray for the dog and the ass, and Iberian, Celt, and Basque, preserved in common the tongue of Edom as they do the limbs of Adam.

The conclusions which I hope to be able to establish are, that the original inhabitants of Spain were the Hispani, that the next in date were the Iberi, who entering not as an irruption but peaceably, came from the south, and by sea, and spread themselves through the western and southern region; finally, that the Celts made their appearance there, also, and that, like their predecessors, they were neither invaders nor conquerors: that as the Iberi won their way by commerce and cultivation, so did the Celts by arms and discipline—not used against the Iberi and Hispani—but for their protection against the dreaded encroachments of the Carthaginians, Romans, and Gauls, beyond the Pyrenees: that these tribes were sojourners only, entering Spain by the south and departing from the north: that the Hispani are preserved in the existing Basques; that the Iberi belonged to the colonising races of Canaan, and that the Celts were the forefathers of the clans who at present dwell in the Highlands of Scotland.

Ancient as are the people which inhabit Brittany, Wales, Ireland, and the Highlands, they are modern when compared with those settled in the north of Spain. Whence the former came we know—the course they followed we can trace. But the Basques are like a plant found on some single hill—its solitariness gives to it its interest, and we call it indigenous. Such are the pretensions of this people. They are the only people in Europe who claim to be autochthonic.

That a people not settled on a remote island or in a far oasis, but in the midst of us—in the country which has ever been the battle-field of Europe—should preserve a tradition which belongs to times anterior to history, is a fact calculated to instruct as well as to astonish. The Basques have lived through the mythology of Greece, the wars of Carthage, the dominion of Rome, the devastations of the Vandals, the sway of the Goths, the arms of the Moors, the usurpations of Madrid, and the opinions of Europe, keeping themselves all the while distinct, and recollecting themselves alone. It is impossible to present stronger titles to priority of occupancy.

Nor is this retentiveness of tradition exceptional in their character: they have preserved their laws, nay, more, they have maintained their rights. [264] While the other people of Europe clamour for change and untried experiment, or, at best, seek to recover a lost or abandoned privilege, they alone hold to what they possess; and who can say that what they have got they did not already possess while the pyramids were building, and before the laws of Tages were proclaimed or the Vedas composed, and what they possess is what they have kept immutable from the beginning? Why should not a Basque peasant tell us what happened in the olden time, before Homer or Orpheus sang, when they exhibit to us in their daily life how primeval communities lived?

Nor has their gratitude been less long-lived than their freedom, or their memory shorter for favours than pretensions. They acknowledge to-day as benefactors the descendants of strangers, whose fathers two thousand years ago aided them in their struggle with Rome.

But traditions and rights do not stand alone. They have a language—one which has defied every attempt to classify it, and which persists in utterly denying all acquaintance with Indo-Celtic or Syro-Phœnician. It has nothing in common with the languages which, migrating westward, have passed to the north of the Caucasus, nor with the Semitic and Japhetic tongues, that have spread through the maritime regions of Europe and over the Western districts of Africa. It is no mosaic work, made out of the wreck of former tongues; and, Titanic-like, it disdains Greece and her gods, Phœnicia and her myths.

The Basque language bears intrinsic evidence of having passed through the Greek and Roman period wholly uninfluenced by them either in structure or in terms. And by its structure, its terms, its numeration and calendar, it ascends as high as it is possible for any language to ascend: it is as primitive as any of the tongues of the Indian Archipelago; it expresses the same astronomical conclusions as Sabæism; and while in richness of vocables it has not to fear a comparison with any of those languages which have not borrowed from others in constructiveness, in the causal power of the verb it excels in their various excellences the Hebrew, Russian, and Turkish. The Basques say that Adam spoke Basque in Paradise; from which it appears that they imagine that the excellence of a language is a proof of its antiquity. [265]

That there existed an aboriginal population prior to the emigrations from Canaan, both in Spain and along the coasts of Africa, is to be inferred from what we know of Italy, which the Etruscans found well-peopled. The most remarkable feature of their first colonization was the drainage of lands, and other works and arts, which would appear to belong to old states and periods of redundant population.

The traditions which antiquity itself listened to and recorded, are everywhere of an anterior and abundant population, occupying the Peninsulas and Islands of the Mediterranean. Whether Umbri and Itali, Spani and Siculi, Osca and Escara, [266] be from one source or not, it was never doubted that Sicily, Italy, and Spain had received their original population the one from the other, [267] before the arrival of Pelasgi, Etruscans, or Phœnicians. This was believed two thousand years ago, and was equally reported by the colonists and by the remnants of the original people. Nor were these people rude and savage: witness the Latian polity, the Samnite state, the two thousand towers of Sardinia, the still existing Fueros of the Basque. The Noraghi, and the “Sepulchres of the Giants,” in Sardinia, are no less distinct from any known architecture than is the Biscayan from any known tongue.

That the Basques were a great people is proved by their names being spread all over the Peninsula, even to the sea-board or limit, which in the Basque furnishes the etymon of the word, Spain . [268] That they inherited the southern shores and were a seafaring people, is proved by the asserted colonization of Sicily: that they retroceded—that they abandoned the Southern country and the coasts; that they withdrew in the direction of the strong and remote country, is indubitable—and such is the case with every original population encroached upon. It has happened to the Britons, the Welsh, and the Highlanders. This second wave of population did not burst over the Alps; it was not a horde or a conquest; it came from the sea and the south; it could only be Phœnician or Aramean; its name was Iber—Hebrew. It gave to the south country the name of Iberia, [269] which name long afterwards was made general for Spain by the Romans. Along the two great rivers they strewed the arts of irrigation and canalization, originally derived from the plains of Mesopotamia, and equally practised by the Etruscans [270] in Italy. These rivers they named, the one Iber —in Italy there was the Tiber [271] —to the other they gave the name of the law-giver of the Etruscans, Tages , who might be the common and Eastern ancestor of both people. [272]

We have in Spain the Volsci, the Cæretani, Cære, Suessa, Ausa, Urgel (Virgil), Roma, Alba, &c. We have the proper names, Andubal, Tagus, Hamilce, Isbal, Caras, Indebal, Lucius, Baal, Telongus, &c. These identify not merely the tongue of the Iberians with that of the maritime colonists of the Mediterranean, but the colonies themselves, with those of Etruria, and separate them entirely from the Northern people, whose language subsists, and affords us the opportunity of comparison.

The Iberi had so identified themselves with the Romans, that the Latin became the common tongue. Already in Cæsar’s time he addressed them in Latin—that is, without interpreters—as he mentions when speaking of Gaul. They called the Latin “Lingua Paterna.” A Spaniard, Antony-Julian, first opened a school of rhetoric in Rome: he was a rustic who had tilled the glebe; he never changed his costume or manners, and disdained to discourse in a walled apartment. His successor was Quinctilian, also a Spaniard. Possibly, “had it not been for the invasion of the Goths and Moors, Latin would now be the speech of the Spaniards (Iberians), as it was of the Romans in the time of Tully.” In the Arab times the struggle was not between the Gothic, but the Latin and the Arabic. “ Eheu! ” exclaims the Gothic Alvarus, or Alaric of Cordova, “ Latini linguam propriam ignorant .”

Sicilians, Africans, Greeks, and the whole people of the East, preserved their own tongue; the Spaniards, who made resistance above all others, alone adopted that of Rome. Does not this confirm the inference, which is inevitable from the names of Etruscan colonies in Spain, that the Iberi and the people of Latium were of the same race? Thus also do we find the Latian rights conferred on cities in Spain, while no such favour was accorded to Sicily or Greece, to Macedon or Britain. It may be traced wherever the Etruscan colonies extended.

If, then, the Basque has survived, it is because there were two languages in Spain, and spoken by people whose character was as different as their tongues.

The Basques still retain a method of culture which is neither the plough nor the spade. An instrument like a prong is used, each of the labourers having two: they work in gangs, and turn over the soil with one-half the labour that is requisite for spade culture. These prongs are called laias ;—they are as peculiar to the people as their tongue.

I have elsewhere pointed out the distinction between the two races in respect to the use of butter, and the names connected with the dairy; the use of tapia for building, and the ancient armour. In these matters of the first importance—agriculture, food, building, and warfare—there is a clear line drawn between the Hispani and Iberi.

The Greeks and the Romans were not philologists, neither were they ethnographists. In no classical writer is the consanguinity of the Iberians and Numidians asserted. We have to come down to the Fathers of the Church to learn, by statement , that the Hebrew and Phœnician, that these and the Arabic were sister-tongues. When the Romans became acquainted with Spain, a period of time had elapsed from the first settlement of the Iberians, equal to that from Alfred to our days, and the Basques or Eskora had been cooped up in the north-east. It is the least likely of all things that they should have been noticed by the Romans as a distinct, or have been suspected to be an original people. Nor can we wonder at such an oversight at that time, when the same thing has occurred in modern Spain. Learned men have been writing profound disquisitions on the origin of the Spanish language, and compiling lexicons and etymologies without the slightest reference to the existing people of Biscay.

The same thing may be said of St. Isidore, Antonio De Nabrissa, P. Guadix, Diego de Urrea, &c. A stranger a century ago would have found in the philologists of modern Spain no more notice of the existence of the Basque, than of the Chinese language, although at the same time the Basque writers were enumerating nearly two thousand Basque words in the Spanish dictionary.

The strangeness of Iberian words to Roman ears confirms this view. Volsci, Suessa, Cere, Roma could not be strange to them. It could only be some of the names that were so—that is, the names of places [273] that had remained from the early occupation of the Basques.

To us, Hispani and Iberi, Hispania and Iberia, mean the same thing. They belong to two people, and are terms of a different order: the one is the name of a country applied to a people, the other the patronymic of a tribe applied to a country. You have in Africa the name Garb in general use for the country, and for the people Moslemin. No other words are known there, and our terms for their country would be as unintelligible to them as theirs are to us. Now suppose that a conqueror occupied Morocco, ignorant and contemptuous of foreign tongues: hearing “Garb,” and “Moslemin,” he would, adding his own termination, take these words as the general names for the country, and we should have Morocco called “Garbia” or “Mosleminia” (to make the analogy complete we must suppose Moslemin to apply to a tribe, not to a faith). If then, after fifteen centuries, and when the people had undergone great vicissitudes, philosophers should arise to investigate, they might be nonplused by these two fictitious terms, and could not possibly see their way until they had discovered that Garb was a geographical, and Moslemin a tribe name, and that the ignorant conquerors had not only mistaken the value of these terms, but had made each general, and had simultaneously employed both. One nation may govern another as well under a wrong as a right name, and, perhaps, much better; but it does not follow that a philologist will indifferently well theorize under the like mistake. Now, what I have supposed is exactly what has happened. A sentence of Strabo tells the whole story:—

“The Spaniards restrict the name of Iberia to the part within the Iber; the Romans call the whole country Iberia , dividing it into hither and thither Spain ,” which is equivalent to calling Great Britain “Scotland,” and then dividing it into “England on this and on that side the Tweed.” [274]

Having thus ascertained the existence of Hispani and Iberi, the Celts present no difficulty,—they are neither the one nor the other; and if it were requisite to establish still more distinctly the originality of the Iberians, we might do so by citing the contrast between them and the Gauls, which ancient writers have left us. Yet, in the present times, the opinion prevails that the ancient Spaniards were Celts. Of the two people, contemporaneous portraits have been sketched by different hands at various periods. They represent two people wholly different;—there is not one line of the picture of the one applicable to the other.

The Iberi were a quiet inoffensive race; the Gauls a warlike and a restless people. The Iberi began to feel their strength “only after they were subjugated;” the Gauls were subjugated in consequence of their overweening confidence in their own strength. The Iberi gave weapons to the Romans; the Gauls learned from the Romans the art of war. The Iberi had short, well-tempered swords which they used with remarkable agility; the Gauls, long, unwieldy swords, which turned and bent with their own blow.

The Gauls had their Druids. The Iberian temples—those of Hercules—were venerable structures when the Carthaginians approached the walls of Saguntum, the Romans those of Numantia. The Gauls and Iberians acknowledged no kindred with each other. The Gauls claimed no blood-relationship, like the Iberians, with Rome or Carthage. The Gauls were never called Iberians, nor the Iberians Gauls; and the Romans, familiar as they were with the Gauls in Italy, when they first invaded Spain, would certainly have called its inhabitants by that name had they belonged to that race. If the Iberians had been Celts, there would be Druidical remains, and some record of the last stand of the Druids, as in England and Gaul.

At the period of the foundation of Rome, the word Gaul might be considered synonymous with European. The Gauls had flowed from the eastward like an inundation; the middle regions of Europe, which they filled, became insufficient for them; they passed into Britain; they descended upon Greece; and they crossed the Bosphorus. Their adventurous spirit was not arrested by the Alps, nor their courage daunted by the martial bearing and concentrated power of the lordly people who then flourished in the peninsula. They were not, however, able to overrun Italy, though they colonized many parts, remaining a distinct people. They never crossed the Pyrenees; the Vascones and Aquitani spread even in advance of that barrier far into Gaul. [275] The Gallic emigration was arrested there by those already in possession, whether Hispani or Iberi, who were able, by the confession of the Romans, to contend with them after the fall of Carthage for the mastery of the world.

But the name of the Gauls is found in the Peninsula. Is not this conclusive as to the community of the races? By no means; it only proves that there were Celts in Spain. The word is Celt-Iberi—the Celts and the Iberi. [276] The compound term marks two people , just as Medo-Persian, Tyrreno-Pelasgi. Besides, the people mixed with the Iberi were Celts ( Κελτοὶ ) not Galli, [277] as they would have been called had they crossed the Pyrenees as they did the Alps. The Celts of Spain must, then, have come across the sea.

The two southern peninsulas of Europe were anciently known by the same name. They are the only regions of the south that resemble each other. They both have the same form, stretch in the same direction, adjoin the same continent, lie on the same internal sea, spread in the same latitude. Both are shut to the north by a barrier of rocks, and lined on the Mediterranean shore by a chain of harbours. They bear the same fruits and grow the same grain. They have been within the range of the same migrations and subject to the like vicissitudes. Their mythology and traditions are interwoven; they had the same gods, the same founders, the same heroes.

In Italy, we have three distinct waves of early population—the first the Itali, the second the Tyrseni, the third the Galli. Shall we not look for them in Spain? We have them there, Hispani, Iberi, and Celts, and thus will be accounted for the threefold affinities which connect Spain, not with Italy only, but with the whole of the coasts of the Mediterranean, and even the shores of the Propontis and the Euxine—the Hispani with Siculi, Itali, Osci, and, perhaps, with the people of Thrace; the Iberi with Etruscans, Lydians, Phrygians, Brebers, and Jews; the Celts with the Gauls of Gaul and Italy, and the roving Galatai and Keltoi of Asia-Minor, Syria, and Africa. This difference, however, must be borne in mind. The Gauls in Italy were invaders; in Spain they were not, but on the contrary, allies of the natives against the foreign invasion which always threatened them from the first irruption of the Gauls to the final pacification under Augustus.

These affinities have, in modern works, been generalized and applied to one people or another according to the theory of philologist or ethnographist. The confusion arising out of the habit of observing facts through the medium of systems has been then transferred back to ancient writers, who, without being analytical, are correct, and, without being systematic, intelligible.

Having now proved that Spain was not Celtic, the Druidical circle at Tangier becomes an evidence of the presence there of a body of Celts of considerable importance, and while indicating the point of entrance of those Celts who had not crossed the Pyrenees, will serve, also, as a landmark to trace the wandering of the Highland clans.

NOTE ON W. VON HUMBOLDT’S WORK ON THE BASQUES.

The preceding pages were written before I had an opportunity of consulting W. Von Humboldt’s work. The title is, “Test of the Inquiries respecting the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Spain, by means of the Basque Tongue.” The points which, judging by the references to it in other writers, are assumed or established by it, are, that the present Basques are the ancient inhabitants of Spain, and that these ancient inhabitants were the Iberi. I consequently opened it with extreme curiosity, to find by what arrangement of data, or what sophistry of argument, he could arrive at such a conclusion. Great was my surprise to find no conclusion whatever arrived at, and extreme care taken to avoid appearing to express an opinion. He has not perceived the distinction between Hispani and Iberi; and had it been pointed out to him, he would necessarily have hailed it as a light which cleared all doubts away:—he has not seen it himself, because he has started from the assumption that the Iberians were the ancient people, and, consequently, every reference to, or mention of, Hispani was taken as applying to them; and the only question, as regards distinction of race, arises with the Celts, viz., whether they were the same as the Gauls, and in what they differed from or resembled the Iberi or Hispani? All he says is interesting; there is nothing which controverts the view opened out in the foregoing pages, and much that adds strength to it.

Starting from the point above-mentioned, he proceeds to find, for every name recorded in ancient writers, a word in Basque by which to explain it. When the name is nearly Celtic, Roman, or Carthaginian, or quite so, he drops it. By such a process the names of any and every country may be made to belong to any and every other.

M. Von Humboldt having expressed his own inability to decide, earnestly invites the investigation of the learned, and he suggests to them a thread by which they may advance securely through the imagined labyrinth;—this is no other than the study of coins. As well might he have suggested the investigation of Assyrian antiquities by the books printed at Babylon and Nineveh. [278]

[254] Possibly the term Mogadore recalls another Celtic monument. It has no Arabic or Breber etymon. In O’Brien’s Irish Dictionary, the word Magh-adhair is given and explained as, “a circle of pillars or stones.”

[255] Irby and Mangles, vol. i. p. 99.

[256] Described by Maundrell.

[257] Mr. Dennis, after attempting to identify the tombs of Saturnia with Celtic cromlechs, says, “they (cromlechs) are also to be found in Sardinia, (?) the Balearic Islands, (?) on the shores of the Mediterranean, in Spain, in the Regency of Tunis, on the banks of the Jordan, and other places, and therefore it is impossible they should be restricted to the Celtic race.”— Etruria , vol. ii. p. 321.

[258] King’s Munimenta Antiqua.

[259] “The original language of Spain was the old Celtic; a language which bears so vast an affinity to the ancient Hebrew, that to those who are masters of both, they plainly appear to be dialects of the same tongue; or to speak perhaps more properly, the Celtic is a dialect of the Hebrew, or language of Noah.”— Univ. Hist. , vol. xviii. p. 363.

[260] “Celtic Spain.”— Moore’s History of Ireland , vol. i. p. l.

“The Celts covered with their settlements, and perhaps even simultaneously possessed a space of country extending from the Pillars of Hercules to Asia Minor, and beyond the Caucasus, and from the banks of the Tiber to the Ultima Thule of Scotland and Greenland.”— Dr. Meyer , Report of British Association , 1847, p. 303.

“The Celts were known to the Greeks only by name, and they included under it, all the people between the Oder and the Tagus. Even the Romans * * included the Iberians , &c.”— Brown’s History of the Highland Clans .

Prichard says, “Of the Asiatic European stock, the first great family is the Celts, once spread over Asia Minor ( Galatia ), Spain , France, Belgium, Helvetia, a great part of Germany, and throughout the British Isles.” He includes under this one head, Thracians, Armenians, Asiatic Iranians, Greeks, Romans, Slavonians, Lithuanians, and Germans.

[261] “The Basque, or Iberian,” Bunsen.

[262] Suggested by Prichard.

[263] “These propositions no one will doubt, who has a right to speak.”— Bunsen.

[264] At the convention of Bergara, these were recognised. They indeed passed sub silentio the claims of Don Carlos; but with these, they had nothing to do, the de facto sovereign of Spain being Lord of Biscay.

[265] “There are two kinds of richness; the one of form, the other of material. The former consists in the variety of precepts, the certainty of rules, the harmony of syntax; the other in attributes which belong to the invention of a tongue. In these attributes, there is not one foreign tongue which may not be esteemed poor when compared with the Basque.”— Larramendi , Intro , ix.

[266] Humboldt, ( pp. 55, 58), considers Osca the same as Basque, and holds it to have been a generic name of the whole people. Pliny speaks of sums brought by the Roman Generals as Argentum Oscense ( xxxiv. 10, 46, xl. 43).

[267] Thucyd. l. viii. ; Dion. Halic., l. i. Timæus, as quoted by Diodorus Siculus, l. vi. ch. 2.; Strabo, l. vi. Ausonius, Lucan, and Silvius Italicus, all concur in deducing the population, or a population of Sicily, from Spain.

Seneca (de Consolatione) calls these colonists not Iberi but Hispani , and says their descendants were like the Cantabrians, who had a distinct costume and language—distinct of course from the Iberi—and inhabited in his time the north-eastern part of the Peninsula.

“Transierunt et Hispani , quod ex similitudine ritus apparet; eadem enim tegumenta capitum, idemque genus calciamenti, quod Cantabris est, et verba quæedam.”

[268] “ España is the name by which the Spaniards have known their country from the earliest times, down to the present day. This word is Basque, without dropping or adding a letter, and signifies border or extremity. The analogy is beautiful, and gave rise to the ne plus ultra of the columns of Hercules. The letter n is moreover wanting in Celtic, Hebrew, and Arabic.”— Astorloa , p. 194.

[269] The Iberia of Herodotus was only the coast, l. i. c. 163. In the time of Polybius, the name Iberia did not extend to the part lying on the ocean.— L. iii. c. 37, §. 10.

[270] “The Romans stand in close connexion with the Basques, the intermediaries being the Etruscans. The languages show a similarity in agriculture, and in political institutions. Nevertheless I am far from asserting that the Etruscans were the parent stem of the Iberians, or the contrary.”— W. Humboldt , Prüfung , p. 117.

[271] T is the article in the Breber.

[272] Aristides ( Orat. in Bacch. ), compares the Etruscans in the west, to what the Indians were in the east, which must be understood of space and limit, as well as numbers. He therefore included the Iberians.

[273]

Not knowing Celtic or Iberian, he made a mistake, which the following lines explain:—

“Cantabrorum aliquot populi amnesque sunt, quorum nomina nostro ore concipi nequeant.”

Pomp. Mela , l. iii. c. 2.

[274] L. iii. c. 2.

[275] “The Aquitani differ not merely in their tongue, but in their bodies, and resemble the Hispani rather than the Galli.”— Strabo , lib. iv.

“Rousillon is Spanish , Gascony is Basque , rather than Castilian. The Bretons are more Celtic than the Gascons are Basque.”— Ethnological Outlines of France , by M. de Vericourt .

[276] “Profugisque a gente vetusta Gallorum, celte miscente nomen Iberi.”— Lucan , l. iii.

[277] Humboldt (“Prüfung,”&c., sections 41, 43, 44), admits a great contrast between the Celts and the Gauls, and not that difference between them and the tribes of the Peninsula, which might be expected from people of different origin. The union he supposes must have been of great antiquity, and could not have taken place by violence. He is not clear that we can call the Celts Gauls at all, and yet he imagines that there must have been emigrations from Gaul; then he supposes them mixed autochthonically with the Iberi, and afterwards pressed together by foreigners occupying the coasts.

Astorloa ( p. 199), denies this mixture of Celts and Iberians, and explains away the word: if Celts had crossed into the Peninsula, they would have been settled, he imagines, close to the Pyrenees, and would have left traces in the present people.

Neither of these writers suspects the possibility of their having come from Africa, and having again quitted the Peninsula.

[278] Coins, as other monuments, have supplied a few names of cities, but are of far posterior date to the migrations of even the Phœnicians, and are of no service in the investigation of events anterior to history.

From the coins of Spain several alphabets have been made out; but of course they belong to the Iberian times and races.

CHAPTER VII.

THE CLANS IN BARBARY.

“Scoti per diversa vagantes.”— Am. Marcellinus.

From things which only a Highlander could have observed, I learned that my forefathers had visited Barbary. I perceived the intercourse of the two people in their baking and cooking, dairy, dress, ornaments, superstition and words. If this connexion were with the Celts in general, it would be a matter of mere ethnography, but it is one of history, for the coincidences are with the clans alone.

The kirtle, plaid, bonnet, eagle’s plume, family cognisances are unknown in Brittany; nor do the Bretons call their farm-steads, gabhail , or their greyhounds, sloghie . The dress of the clans is not that of the ancient Gauls: those who advocate its antiquity are much puzzled to find a source for it, and content themselves with supposing it to be derived from the Roman. No supposition can be more groundless: that branch of the Celts which never did submit to Roman domination could not be the only one to adopt the Roman dress. [279] The Scots, during the period of Roman power in Britain, never came in contact with them, and under the empire, the Toga itself had been laid aside; at least, corpses [280] and statues only wore it.

The costume of the Highlands, then, carries us back beyond Roman times, and beyond all written record; it alone remains in Europe, a monument of this order,—that of Barbary alone remains among a people derived from the East. I have already shown that they are the same; which carries both back to the plains of Mesopotamia, or the banks of Jordan.

Mr. Layard’s researches above, as well as under ground, have furnished further evidence in many points of resemblance between their manners and the scenes carved on the alabasters of the Assyrians, and the customs preserved by the mountain-tribes in the neighbourhood.

The clans crowned their king on a stone, and threw down their plaids before him. One full statue only has been found at Nimroud: it is that of a king, and he is seated on a square stone: [281] doubtless the Assyrians threw down their mantles before him.

The eagle’s plume is worn in the bonnet by the Tigari. [282] The King at Nimroud wears a cap standing up in front like the Scotch bonnet; the straps and ribbons flow behind. [283]

In several bas-reliefs, the kilt appears, and is pointed out by Mr. Layard: [284] the mountaineers wear a long shirt dyed of one colour, as was formerly used among the clans.

The chief and impregnable fortress of the Kurds is called the “Castle of the Cymri,” [285] and, as if to return the compliment, the Celts have given the name Carne serai , [286] to the place in Argyleshire, where, on a sculpture of the thirteenth century, the long plaids (philemore) [287] with the double-folds, may be seen, exactly as they are worn by the Jewish women in Morocco.

In Nineveh there was no bath. The mountain-tribes indulge, in all ways and in all places, in washing and dabbling in water, without the slightest regard to the sense of delicacy which is so strong in all other Eastern people. The clans were formerly remarkable in like manner for the use of water;—new-born infants were plunged in cold water. [288]

The clan system hinges on the distinction of the different families by “sets” of colours. In this they differ from all the people of the West, who have colours in a flag, and not on their persons. The Yezidis, called the worshippers of the devil, have in like manner their colours, black and red, [289] which they wear, and with which they adorn their habitations. The clans passing through these countries, and engaged in the wars (as I shall presently show they were), of necessity must have also so distinguished themselves; and being neither a horde migrating, nor a nation in possession, but serving as mercenaries under distinct leaders, each of these would adopt distinguishing badges, and thence the “sets” and tartans of the different clans, and the common name adopted by them.

The discoveries of Nineveh, and the modes of dyeing among the population which still lives in the neighbourhood of those ruins, confirm to the letter what I have said elsewhere respecting the selection of a standard of colour, and the preservation of it in the tartan.

The tartan existed only by the art of dyeing: without perfection in it, the idea of distinction by colours could not be entertained. This was not a mere difference between black and white, as the ak and cara coïnjolou , or white and black fleeces of the Turks, which was obtained by natural wool; nor was it the colour of a cap or a slipper which might be purchased ready dyed: proficiency in one colour did not suffice, but in all. They had to be dyed in every cottage, or under every tent. They were applied to the coarsest substances, for the rudest wear, and to be recognizable so long as the material held together. This was to be achieved by a migratory and erratic people, in times when no lac or indigo, no chromates or phosphates were to be found at every apothecary’s. The dyes were to be sought in the fields or on the mountain sides; [290] and each emigration involved a new series of experiments, to be rewarded by new triumphs of unaided industry and untutored taste. How deeply planted in their natures must have been the instinct of colours, thus to preserve those tints in daily wear, which at Nineveh have been saved by being buried in the bowels of the earth. It was not the colours most easily obtained that they selected: they had a rule, to which circumstances were made to bend.

Brown is the natural colour of a large proportion of the fleeces; it is dyed with a moss (crottle) by simple boiling: the colour is beautiful and indelible. They like brown as a common wear: shepherd’s coats, plaids, and trowsers, are made of it, but never was brown seen in a Tartan! The clans learnt this art where they had occasion to adopt the badge.

“Dyes of the finest quality, particularly reds and greens, which even European ingenuity has been unable to equal, are obtained by the inhabitants of Kurdistan from flowers and herbs, growing abundantly in their mountains. The art of extracting them is not a recent discovery, but has been known for ages to people living in the same country; as we learn from the frequent mention of Babylonian and Parthian dyes by ancient authors. The carpets of, Kurdistan and Persia are still unrivalled, not only for the beauty of their texture, but for the brilliancy of their hues. From the ornaments on the dresses of the figures in the Assyrian sculptures, we may conclude, that similar colours were extensively used, either in dyeing the garments themselves, or the threads with which the material was woven.” [291]

On asking a gentleman well acquainted with these countries, [292] if he perceived any resemblance between their customs, and those of the Highlanders, his answer was, “It strikes every one, especially in respect to their chiefs and clan government: The different tribes may also be known by the stripes of colour on the shalvar, as the Highland clans by the stripes on their tartan; and they have the tradition, that Europe is peopled by tribes that emigrated from their country.”

My informant connected this tradition with the recognised Eastern origin of the people of Europe, but it cannot refer to these emigrations. That the Celts came from the East all history attests, and philology has confirmed its verdict; [293] but the waves of emigration which flowed westward passed all to the northward of the Caspian Sea. A physical necessity determined their course; and from the Himalaya to the Carpathian Seas deserts or mountain barriers extend, which prevented their overflowing the south, and set them on Europe. The Turks are an exception, being enabled to cross the desert regions between the Sea of Aral and the Hindoo Cush by means of their horses, and their pastoral habits. To the southward, therefore, of this line no tradition of this peopling of Europe could subsist; and I might have set this one aside, as some uncertain reverberation of the great Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic emigrations, had I not recollected the name which the Jews of Morocco apply to Europe—“ Erse dom .” They then were acquainted with the “Erse,” [294] or Gaelic tribes, and must have known them to have gone to Europe, and called it by their name. This explained at once how the Koords should have a similar recollection of the peopling of Europe by tribes who emigrated from their country.

Many coincidences might be added to these. For instance, among the Irish Scots a higher class of Druids, unknown among the British, was called Ollama , evidently the “Ulema”—the learned—of the East. The name of fairies in Erse is shechyan , the Arab sheik . Moore remarks, that these beings seem to record some lost class or people, which he supposes to be the Druids. The blood-fine was, for a prince, a thousand oxen; in Arabia it is a thousand camels. It was commuted in the Highlands for a coin, which is designated by the Spanish word oros . The soldier’s allowance in the East is called “tain,” whence timariot , the feudal tenure of Turkey. A Celtic poem, attributed to the sixth century, and “claiming respect as exceeding in antiquity any production of any vernacular tongue of Europe,” [295] is entitled Tain Bho , which is translated “Spoil of Cattle.”

The Irish Scots are the only people of Europe who have had their language, not through the Greeks and Romans, but directly from the first inventors. But I do not lay any stress on this coincidence, as their letters probably were—or at least may have been—in use in Ireland long before the arrival of the clans, having been taught by the Phœnicians.

The peculiarities which distinguish the clans from the Celts in general, may thus be traced to the countries lying upon the Euphrates and the eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean. On the other hand, in Judæa and the coast of Africa, are to be found cromlechs and Druidical remains, which attest their passage through these countries. With the inference thence to be drawn, their own traditions concur.

Great Britain and Ireland were inhabited from the beginning by Gauls. The Scots, though Gauls, were a distinct and a military body, and they entered at a subsequent time from a different direction. We trace them from Scotland to Ireland, where for a time they were the dominant race. They had reached Ireland from Spain: they had not reached Spain, however, from Gaul but from Barbary ,—such were their traditions when first recorded. [296]

In Westminster Hall there is a stone on which the Kings of England are crowned. It was carried thither from Scone, where the kings of Scotland had been crowned upon it; and had been placed there by Kenneth, son of Alpen, after his victory over the Picts in 843. To Scone it had been transported from Dunstaffnage, where the successors of Fergus had been crowned upon it. To Dunstaffnage it had been brought from Tarah, [297] where the Scottish kings of Ireland had been crowned upon it; and Ireland had been named from it Innisfail. To Tarah it had been brought from Spain, [298] and to Spain, it was said, from the Holy Land. [299] It emitted under the rightful prince a sound like that of the statue of Memnon, [300] and remained dumb under a usurper. The importance attached to it was such as to make its removal to England to be considered in the time of Edward I. a necessary step towards the subjugation of the Scottish kingdom. They called it the stone of fortune, and the stone of destiny (Lia fail). [301]

Tradition, among the other people of Europe, is an inventor of fable, rather than a recorder of facts; but its value is very different among these races. Supposing that our books were swept away—not one ancient name could be found in Europe: the Gaul of the North alone would be able to restore them. He would tell you the names of the islands of Britain and Ireland which Aristotle used twenty-three centuries ago—they know no others, [302] therefore are their traditions valuable.

Although I think I have established my proposition without the aid of history, I can boldly appeal to it. Historical works of authority are dramas performed by some great people, who are ever on the stage and in front; and events are assorted so as to wind in and conceal, if not to disguise and suppress, whatever does not belong to them. In Livy’s pages the earth is a chess-board, and the players sit in the senates of Rome and Carthage; but if we go to the sources from which he drew, and refer to authors who have dealt with special subjects, we find other actors and other passions. We then see the honour of one battle transferred from the devotion of a consul to the docility of quadrupeds, and the glory of another from legionary valour to fameless barbarians. [303] Roman history is a conspiracy to rob of their fame the Elephants and the Gauls. What were the conditions imposed by Rome—what the fate incurred by Carthage? the surrender of her ships, her elephants, and her Gauls . Such was the importance of tribes which Roman writers exhibit as warlike, yet undisciplined as brave; but unmanageable, with long unwieldy swords, and rash and aimless impulses. Here were they in Africa the prop of Carthage . They had “learned from long military service to speak Phœnician,” [304] and yet remained so distinct a body as to require “interpreters to disclose to the Carthaginians their decrees.” [305]

Further to the east, a century before, during the convulsions which followed the death of Alexander, and preceded the great contest between Carthage and Rome, the part they played is thus described by Justin:

“So powerful at this time was the race of the Gauls, that they filled all Asia, as if with a swarm: neither did the kings of the East carry on any war without a mercenary army of Gauls; nor when driven from their throne did they seek refuge elsewhere than amongst the Gauls. Such was the terror of the Gaelic name—such the unconquered fortune of their arms, that dominion was not deemed securely possessed, nor lost greatness capable of recovery, unless by Gaelic bravery.”

The Gauls are here measured against Greeks, [306] with the art of war carried to the highest point, and strategy raised into a science, amongst the general-kings, disputants for the relics of Alexander’s army and dominion. Here were Gauls—but how different from those of Gaul! here were Gauls as thoroughly conversant, and as essentially imbued with the knowledge of all the systems of the East and South, as those of the North were ignorant of all habits foreign to their own. Here then is the people to furnish the emigration from the Holy Land to Spain, and to the Highlands, which their own traditions report: here are the circumstances to fashion them into that peculiar discipline which up to this day they have preserved.

According to their own tradition they had crossed into Spain from Barbary. They were not originally in Africa; they must then have come all the way round the Mediterranean, and then must they have derived their origin from those Celts who, six or seven centuries before the Christian era, having been repulsed from Italy and Greece, crossed the Bosphorus and settled a large kingdom in Asia Minor: such is the account given of them by the writers of the period. They wandered through Asia Minor—as the Arabs and Patans do in India, or the Albanians in Turkey—before they settled in Galatia, and to this settlement they were constrained. But probably they did not all so settle when the Romans conquered that country, and in a manner waged against them a war of extermination: their wanderings were resumed, and it must have been to the South that they directed their steps. Already were they familiarized with these regions, and probably entertained a peculiar relationship with the most remarkable of its people.

“Galilee,” and “Galilee of the Gentiles ,” can only mean a Celtic colony or settlement. [307] The Gauls are of as frequent occurrence in Josephus as in Cæsar’s Commentaries. The “Gentiles” of Galilee were not the ancient inhabitants, for it was the land of the Gergesenes, who never could become Jews, as the Galileans were in the time of Christ. The expression “of the Gentiles [308] ” must apply to strangers admitted within the Jewish pale. It was this country that Solomon had desired to give away, and that Hiram would not take.

This would be the most likely place for a settlement of Gauls. The name is given at a period which would coincide with the hypothesis; nor is there anything extraordinary in the Galileans being Celts, seeing that in the time of Jerome the language of Treves was spoken in nearly its primitive purity in the centre of Asia Minor. [309]

The idea which we have formed of the barrier between the Jews and the Gentiles, arises from the extermination of, and the constant denunciations against the nations of Canaan—the Gibeonites alone excepted—an exception obtained by fraud. There was no obstacle whatever to the admission of any stranger to full participation and entire identification with the Jewish people. Whenever there was an exception it was in consequence of transactions between that people and the Jews. The Jew resembled a man whose life is prolonged some thousand years with a memory unimpaired. He had been enslaved by the Egyptian—he was ever after shy of him. (The Egyptian became a Jew only in the third generation.) Amalek had smote him on the way of the Desert, and he hated him. [310] The exceptions were the Canaanite among the children of Esau, Amalek and the Egyptians: any other stranger had only to be circumcised. [311] From the time of the Grecian Conquests, the Jews themselves attempted to efface this distinction, that they might appear in the Palestra like the Greeks.

This explains perhaps why Galilee was the chief field of the labours of Christ, and how his disciples were principally from that people, who were most untainted by the prevailing superstitions, not ranked amongst Jewish schisms, and free from the servile imitation of the Greeks. Thus may we claim for our race a share in the first fishing for men; and it is not an extravagant stretch of the imagination to picture the listeners to “the Sermon on the Mount,” decked with the eagle’s plumes and girded with the sporran and dirk. [312]

The sagacious Ptolemies gathered from Syria all the scattered elements of strength: they turned elephants to account: they collected Jews and attracted them into Egypt—they could not have neglected the Gauls. In common with the Jews, they must have suffered in the convulsions of Egypt, and those who abandoned Egypt left it always for the West. Down that slope of the Barbary shore—like so many other races—they must have slid, and, arriving at the bourne of the wandering Arab, they too raised their pillar opposite the stones which Hercules placed. This stone no local tradition consecrates, no ancient belief confirms, no contemporary monument explains, no people claims. It is their own. The Arab, as he tents beside it, calls it a “ peg ,” and on it hangs the history of the Highland clans. Arrested by the ocean—like the Saracens a thousand years later—they turned to the North, and crossing the Straits, got back again to Europe.

Thus, by the aid of history and monuments have we brought them down to Spain, up to which their own traditions had carried them. They appeared in Spain to continue that contest with Rome which the exterminations of Galatia had commenced, and their breasts might have been animated by the remembrance even of Brennus and the capitol. At last, after all the world had been subjugated by the final conquest of the Asturians and the Vascones, they took ship to seek new settlements. Gauls were in great numbers in Asia, Syria, Africa, and Spain: no trace of them is to be found in the present day, nor any record of them after the first centuries of the Christian era downwards: they were not a people to become confounded with the native populations: they passed, then, out of these regions. Let us see if Spain preserves any record of the event.

To this day the Irish and Scotch are entitled, on setting foot in Biscay, to every privilege and immunity of the natives;—they have the rank of nobles, can be elected to any magistracy, and have the right of holding land. From these privileges Spaniards are excluded. In the whole range of history no more interesting record will be found of the friendship of two races divided by 2000 years. This isopolitan league, recorded in the institutions of Biscay, is a monument of the passage through Spain, of our mountain clans, not less remarkable than the Usted of Tangier; and we may be as certain of the event as if the day of departure and the numbers of the vessels [313] had been chiselled on granite or engraven on steel.

Driven from Spain by the advance of the Roman arms, where should they have taken, or where could they have sought refuge? Gaul was occupied, America not open, Africa and Britain were provinces of Rome; the North of Europe, if not Roman, distant or difficult of access—there remained only Ireland. The Romans were in possession of Britain for 400 years; why did they never set foot in Ireland? They had fleets at their command; a few vessels collected on the coast had sufficed to cross to Britain—that coast was difficult. Ireland invited their approach; they had forces to dispose of, even for the conquest of barren lands; they could send 50,000 men to the North, and support the expedition by sea; they could circumnavigate the island, push commerce, spread agriculture, pierce forests with roads, fix on stations, and fortify camps. Ireland was then green as she is now; wooded as she is no longer; rich in her produce, refined in her industry. Science and learning were there; strangers had settled on her soil, and adventurers from the Holy Land had, perhaps, for a thousand years exported her produce and worked her mines. Ireland was then every way attractive;—no British parliament had yet passed an Irish law;—why then did not the Romans cross from the Severn and the Mersey? The Scots were there.

The Roman historians do not mention them; they were not in Caledonia to meet Agricola or Severus; their first passage into Scotland coming within the range of history, occurred only A. D. 258, and it was centuries before they established their dominion in the North.—The “Stone of Fate” accomplished its pilgrimage to Argyle. A century after their first passage (368), an incursion into England is the first recorded instance of collision with the Romans. [314] And are they not even as we see them—or at least such as they made themselves felt but a century ago—a people who must have had some such history, whose adventurous spirit must have been disciplined by long peregrinations—the Ulysses of nations, seeing the cities and observing the manners of many people, and having an eye to mark what was profitable, and a hand to hold what they had thought proper to select? What other people brought a flag to every breast? in its vestment conferred upon the humblest the blazon of heraldry, and the insignia of kings; selecting emblems and signs from the fairest objects of nature, or the most imaginative inventions of man: primitive colours, flowers of the field, plume of the sky? Alone in Europe they retain a stamp, a memory, and a name. After discomfiting the remnant of a line of false princes, the British parliament feared to dwell in the same island with the Kilt, nor deemed itself secure where the “battle colours” were dyed with the heather, spun on the soil, and worn by the clans. [315]

All that remains is the last flickering of the light of a land extinguished, not by the blast of battle, but by the breath of her sons. Had Scotland’s chiefs been true to the noblest station in Europe, she would have held her own and saved England.

[279] Some of them took service, but not before the fourth century.

[280] “Nemo togam sumit nisi mortuus.”— Juven. Sat. iii. 171.

[281] Nineveh, v. ii. p. 52.

[282] Ibid. vol. i. p. 194.

[283] The resemblance appears most in the oldest sculptures: it is not rendered in the plates to the work. The same figure is also found in the Toshr—lower part of the Egyptian head-dress—called pshent .

[284] Also in the Xanthian marble, E. ix. No. 45, 50, 157.

[285] Kalah Kumri.— Layard , v. i. p. 118.

[286] Carni is also a name in Galilee.

[287] It is figured in the large work of the Stuarts, they were of course not aware of the meaning of the double fold.

[288] “The children are bathed night and morning in cold or warm water.”— Hunter’s Western Islands , vol. i. p. 194.

“The practice still with those who wear the kilt, is to wash their limbs every morning as a preventative against cold.”— Brown , vol. i. p. 100.

[289] Nineveh, vol. i. pp. 300, 522.

[290] Ordering some stuff from a Highland woman, and having fixed the time for its being sent to me, she ran after me to say, that I must not have the yellow stripe, or I could not have it till next year. Inquiring the reason, she said, “for the yellow I must wait till June, when the heather is in bloom.”

[291] Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 311.

[292] Mr. Ross, the companion of Mr. Layard.

[293] I need only refer to Prichard’s work entitled, “On the Indian origin of the Celts.”

[294] Erse is the name which the clans give to their language: it includes Irish, Scotch, and Manx, and excludes Armorican, Welsh, Cornish, and Carniolan.— Brown’s Highland Clans .

[295] Report of Highland Society on Ossian.

[296] “The Scots were a nation of Kelts, who came from Asia along the African shore, into Spain, and thence into Ireland, which they fill,” says Nennius, sec. 13, 14, “even to this day.” Afterwards he says, “other Scots came from Spain, and, by little and little possessed themselves of many districts in Ireland. A Scottish colony from Ireland planted itself in Argyleshire, then called Dabriada, or Dabreta, where,” says Nennius, “they dwell to this day; another in the Isle of Man, and the parts adjacent.”— Anstey’s Laws and Constitution of England , p. 38.

[297] Teamhuyr, in the oblique cases Teamhra, whence Tarah. This is evidently the Temorah celebrated by Ossian as the Irish capital.

[298] Moore’s Ireland.

[299] “The names of the stone are both of them derived from a persuasion the ancient Irish had, that in what country soever the stone remained, there one of their blood was to reign.”— Toland’s History of the Druids , p. 152.

[300] Sir G. Wilkinson found a stone in a statue, sonorous, and that in its top while concealed from below, he could by striking it produce a sound. Referring to this incident, while standing beside the Assyrian statue, mentioned a few pages back, I struck it in illustration of the method used. It instantly answered in Memnon’s voice, with the clear sound of bell-metal.

[301] Harris, Antiq. of Ireland, c. i. p. 10. O’Brien gives this as two words “Lia fail,” the fatal stone, otherwise cloch na cinncamhuin , an ominous accident or destiny, genit. cinncamhua . Both concur in the great veneration in which it was held by the ancient Irish, on account of its “miraculous virtues.” Antiquities ut sup. p. 10, 124. See also Ledwich’s Antiq. of Ireland, p. 308.

[302] Grant’s Origin of the Gauls p. 262. Ptolemy’s names of the tribes can still be nearly all identified, and he only edited the old work of the Phœnician mariners.

[303] Compare Livy and Polybius on the battle of Zama, and these with Ælian on the last struggle of Macedon for the part played by the Gauls and Elephants. From the latter it appears, that by an “Elephant and Castle,” Cæsar crossed the Thames, and won Britain.

[304] Πάλαι στρατευόμενος ἤδει διαλέγεσθαι Φοίνικ εσι .— L. i. p. 80. Ταύτῃ δὲ πῶς οἱ πλείστοι συνεσαίνοντο τῇ διαλέκτῳ διὰ τὸ μῆκος τῆς προγεγενημένης στρατείας .

[305] Δι’ ἑρμηνέως τὰ δέδογμένα παρ’ αὐτοὺς διέσαφε τοῖς ὄχλοις — L. iii. p. 197.

[306] Sir W. Scott, in the “Legend of Montrose,” says that the clans have an ancient order of battle, which seems to be derived from the Macedonian phalanx.

[307] The names of Golan , Galaza , Garne , Yara , have also been preserved.

[308] “Harosheth of the Gentiles,” see Judges, ch. iv.

[309] “Galatas excepto sermone Græco quo omnis Oriens loquitur, propriam linguam eandem pene habere Treveros.”— Epist. ad Galat. Proem. l. 2.

[310] “And thou shalt not forget it.”— Deut. xxv. 19.

[311] Exodus xii. 48.

[312] In the Nineveh marbles, the king wears two daggers in one case, side by side. The Circassians wear a smaller one on the case of the largest, as the dirk.

[313] The bards do enumerate the vessels of different expeditions.

[314] They were, however, expelled by Theodosius. In the fifth century from the Notitia Imperii , large bodies of them appear to have taken service in the empire: one corps was stationed in Illyricum, one at Rome, one in Italy.

[315] “Their peaceful glens were visited with the scourge of a licentious soldiery let loose upon the helpless inhabitants, and every means taken to break up the peculiar organization, and consequent power of the Highland clans. The disarming act, which had been passed after the insurrection of the year 1715, was now carried into rigid execution, and with a view to destroy as much as possible any distinctive usages of this primeval race and thus to efface their nationality, an act was passed, proscribing the use of their ancient garb. The indignity inflicted by this act was perhaps more keenly felt by the Highlanders, attached in no ordinary degree to their ancient customs, than any of the other measures resorted to by the English Government: but at the same time it must be admitted, that it effected the object contemplated in its formation, and that more was accomplished by this measure, in destroying the nationality, and breaking up the spirit of the clan’s-men, than by any of the other acts. The system of clanship was also assailed by an act passed in the year 1748, by which heritable jurisdictions were abolished throughout Scotland, and thus the sanction of law was removed from any claim which Highland chiefs, or barons, might in future be disposed to make upon the obedience or service of their followers.”— Skinner’s Sketch , vol. i. p. 145.

BOOK V.

SEVILLE.

CHAPTER I.

THE ISLAND OF ANDALUZ.

The emporium of the new world and the port of the Western ocean, has become an inland town; but the shade of orange groves, the white marble of Moorish halls, the dance, the bull-fight, the garb of the Andalusian, still attract the wanderer and detain the guest. No where on the soil of Europe is there so much that is beautiful with so little that is familiar. The Tower of our metropolis claims the honour of having for its founder Julius Cæsar. The dictator appears only in the list of the benefactors of Seville: pressing forward to the bounds of human memory, she proudly asserts a founder among the gods. Existing when Rome was founded, and Carthage built, she has witnessed their catastrophe and survived their decay. From the earliest peopling of the earth to the present hour, Seville has endured a mother, if not a mistress, city, and has never known sack or desolation. Italica was the first Roman colony beyond the Alps—Seville was the capital of the Goths. Two kings were canonized; the one for its capture, the other for its defence.

This single provincial city possesses the tradition of the Phœnicians; traces of the Romans; tombs of the Goths; monuments of the Saracens; a cathedral that has no equal. It has the highest tower, the purest air, the longest plain, and the richest soil in Spain. It contains the masterpiece of Spanish sculpture, and a whole school of unrivalled painting. It may be true of Spain, if of any country, that

But, according to the old proverb on the lips of every peasant, Seville herself is the marvel, and nevertheless, she is a truly Spanish town—a village, not a city.

A noble bust stands in the orange grove of the “House of Pontius Pilate.” It would appear to be an effort to conjoin the most opposite qualities, and to represent under one head the distinguishing attributes of the sexes, strength and daring, voluptuousness and grace. The head is large, the brow ponderous, the eye full and grave, while the cheek and lips are robbed from Hebe. It is hard to say whether the martyr’s palm, the veil of Cythera, or the club of Hercules is the emblem befitting it. On inquiring where it had been discovered, I was surprised to learn that it was a head of Cleopatra, a present from a Roman Pontiff. It must have been sent to the Queen of Guadalquivir, as the prototype of herself; sensual and heroic, faithful and capricious, wanton and warlike—handling with equal dexterity and equal grace, the faggot and the fan; the castanet and navaja; the champion of the Catholic church against Arianism, the bulwark of Spain against the Northmen, the first pupil of the Saracens in art, the first rebel against their power; [316] the competitor of Florence, Venice, Bologna, and Rome, in design, painting, and architecture; the mother of the Inquisition; claiming as her founder the representative of force, and selecting as her patrons two spotless virgins. From her port was embarked the gold that in former ages adorned the temples of idolatry, and on her beach has been in modern times landed the gold of Mexico and Peru, that has left Spain bankrupt and Europe rich in corn and poor in worth.

A Spaniard, in describing her, commences in these terms: “In the part of Spain towards the South, in the rich and fertile province of Andalusia, on the oriental bank of the river Guadalquivir, stands the beautiful Sevillia, capital and metropolis of four kingdoms, first court of the Spanish monarchy, and primacy of the churches of Spain.”

Andalusia to the Moors was the Atlantic Island—the garden which they found wild, and which they filled with new plants, flowers, and fruit. “God in his justice,” said they, “having denied to the Christians a heavenly paradise, has given them in exchange an earthly one. It is a garden where the high places are battle-fields, but whose vales are free from famine.”

So sang one of those Sevillian poets who were so numerous that “Africa would not have held them, if it had been divided out in portions among them,” and whose praises had such charms that “had they been bestowed on the Night they would have made her fairer than the Day.”

The Easterns represent the world as a bird, the East being the head, Europe the body, the North and the South the wings, and the West the tail. Haroun-el-Raschid told an Andalusian that he was from the world’s tail: the Andalusian replied, “the bird is a peacock .”

Al-bekir-Al-andalusi thus sums up the excellence of his native country: “It is equal to Sham (Syria) for purity of air and sweetness of waters; to Yemen, for mildness of temperature; to Hind (India), for drugs and aromatic plants; to China, for mines and precious stones; to Aden (Arabia), for the number and security of its coasts and harbours.”

To that stock of knowledge known to us under the general name of Saracen, Morocco contributed probably that dexterity in the distribution of water, and the perfection of agriculture and taste in gardening, which so enriched and embellished Spain under its dominion. These arts could not have been furnished by the Nomade tribes of Arabia Petrea; and they were to be looked for in the descendants of that people, who for four centuries had made their country the granary of Rome and the world, who inherited the agricultural science, which had aided Carthage to extend her dominion. The Tribe government of the Douar, still subsisting, arose amidst patriarchal manners, and science triumphs without obscuring the charms of nature, or the taste of man. This country and its stories are the “Arabian Nights”—not read, but seen.

Ibnir Ghalib entitles one of his chapters, “Contentment of the soul in contemplating the ruins of Andalusia.” For us this contemplation suggests any thing but contentment. The Moor needed no lessons from the past [317] —the traces of Carthaginian wealth and Roman power were useless to him. He required no maxims, for he cultured no fallacies. The Arabs united the two systems of the ancient world—the tribe and colony. The results in public riches and individual well-being, neither predecessors nor successors have rivalled or conceived. Such are the lessons which we may learn in the city of the fandango and guitar, whither we may have strayed only to bestow a passing glance to Lydian steps, or a listening hour to Teian measures.

In regard to Moorish ruins, Seville disappointed me. The great mosque has been demolished: the cathedral, indeed, occupies its site, but why should the other have been destroyed? The Alcazar is by the Sevillians extolled above the Alhambra; but, excepting the entrance, it can be admired only as a copy by those who have seen the works of the master. Originally it was a Moorish edifice, but it was remodelled under Spanish kings, and is now undergoing repairs and painting in the deplorable style of the specimens of Moorish plaster hung up in the Museum of Madrid. [318] The term Cazar, or Cazaria, is derived from the palace of the Cæsars; it was then associated with the Moorish god, and thus acquired an impress of grandeur. A petition from a township, imploring the Queen to take the government out of the hands of the Cortes, places in antithesis Alcazar and “ club !”

The house of Pontius Pilate pretends to be nothing more than an imitation; as such it is a splendid work. Its chief value is, in recording the thought of the chieftain, who, after his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, endeavouring to transfer to his native city the type of Palestine—took the model of a Moorish palace for the habitation of the Roman governor of Judæa.

Seville has been well chosen by Corneille as the scene of his “Cid.” This title, and the reasons he puts in Ferdinand’s mouth for conferring it on the young hero, show that he looked on the Moors as models for a soldier and a knight. The character of the contest is pourtrayed with no less accuracy than is preserved the simplicity of the ballad. The Spaniards are inflamed against the Mussulman with none of the fanatic spirit of the Eastern struggles and crusading times; yet the feelings which naturally suggest themselves in a war between Infidels and Christians, seemed needful for the purpose and the colouring of his picture.

A street named Calle de la Moreria , or street of the quarter of the Moors, is the record of the different treatment of that people by Ferdinand the Saint,
and Ferdinand the Catholic.

“Ferdinand, after the capture of Seville, divided the quarters of the city among the various nations, provinces, and tribes:—one called Aduaress , was inhabited by the Moors, who remained in the city after the Conquest, or who came from Granada as auxiliaries to St. Ferdinand. After the Conquest of Granada, these Moors were obliged to send every year a certain number, to take part in the honours paid to St. Ferdinand on the 30th of May; and they had to assist at the Vigils and Mass , in capuzes , with green caperotes , with their crescents also green, and they stood round the tumulus with white torches burning in their hands. The Moreria existed down to 1502, when, by an order of the Catholic king, all the Moors, inhabitants of Seville, were expelled the kingdom, which order and the mode of execution are sufficiently curious to be published here, as they have not been given by any author.

“The King and the Queen.—D. Juan di Silva, Count of Cifuenti, our Alferez Mayor, and of our Council, and our Assistant for the very noble city of Seville: We have agreed to order all the Moors to quit our kingdoms, and we order you, that you cause this paper (carta) to be published, and that you place in sequestration the mosques and other common property of the Moors, and to see that the said mosques are cleaned and shut up, and therein use the diligence that we know in you. From the city of Seville, the twelfth day of the month of February, one thousand five hundred and two. I, the King. I, the Queen. By order of the King and the Queen, Miguel Perez de Almazâ.

“The Conde de Cifuenti, with his lieutenant, the Licenciado Lorenzo Somero, with the public writer, Francisco Sigura, repaired on the same day with a competent number of aguacils to the quarters of the Moors, and having here assembled and being present Maestre Mohammed Recocho, Maestre Mohammed Daiena, and Maestre Mohammed Saganche, and Ali Faza, and Maestre Alunlie Aguja, and Ali Nuyun—Moors—showed to them and read the royal order, which they kissed, and placed upon their heads in sign of obedience.” They then opened the mosque, and proceeded to the sequestration, and made oath that these were the whole of the bienes communes , by God the all-powerful Creator of the heaven and the earth. Then they passed all out of the city, and took possession of the Æsario, adjoining the field of Santa Justa. And this was accomplished with such expedition, that the expulsion is protocoled as completed on the same day, 15th February, 1502. [319]

One of the canons of the cathedral remarked, “Whenever you disturb the ground you come upon turbans: everywhere do the signs appear of the heads of the Moors, above as well as below the earth, and in Andalusia are their hearts still buried.” [320] But it is not in the midst of joyous Seville that the image of such a contest can be called up: you require ruins in loneliness—these you have a few miles distant, at Alcala. There is the stamp of that fierce border war of many centuries. It is, besides, a perfect study of military architecture. There may be seen double tiers of guns, as on the broadside of a ship, the lower embrasure no wider than the muzzle, having a slit above, in the form of a cross, to aim by. There is also outside the walls, and all round, as at Gibraltar and Malaga, an advanced work, on which guns were mounted, at once multiplying the means of annoyance and protecting the base of the walls from the enemy’s shot. This place has three distinct internal defences, with deep ditches traversing them. It seemed all hollowed out; cisterns or mattamores for corn occupy the centre. Close to one of the walls, and at a part where the ground is low, there is a large square opening, which must even now be fifty feet deep, though a great quantity of rubbish has fallen in. A solitary tower at the opposite point from the village projects beyond the circuit of walls: the stories of halls or vaults, with large embrasures or windows in the three sides, combine the light and airy prospect of a kiosk, with the gloomy grandeur of a fortress. There the traveller that would muse should go, and go alone, and ponder long.

The first object that meets the eye in approaching Seville, is the Giralda, and it stands first in the estimation of the inhabitants. Notwithstanding—or because of—an incongruous Spanish superstructure, [321] an enormous bronze figure, fourteen feet high, with a shield on the extended left arm, and a lance in the right hand, is placed on the top—at once a statue and a weathercock—its apparent inclination, as it revolves, gives to the tower a certain manner, a gait and gesture, as it were, unlike any other, and makes it look like a great cypress bending to the breeze.

During the siege, the Moors proposed to pull it down, as too sacred to be left; but were prevented by the threat of St. Ferdinand, that if they touched one stone, or rather brick, of it, he would not leave one man alive. The singular name that belongs to it, is brought forth deep from the Sevillian’s breast, and its tones linger on his lips. It rivals the Immaculate Conception as an emblem and an ornament; it is seen in the painted windows of the churches and cathedrals; it is embossed on the chairs, embroidered on the dresses; prints of it are suspended on the walls; it is to be found in the pictures of the altar-pieces and the slabs of the pavement; it is copied in the steeples of the surrounding towns; and, finally, it has given to Seville her two patron saints. Two potter girls of Triana, martyrs in Roman times—Santa Justa and Santa Rufina—were seen in a vision only three centuries and a half ago, supporting the Giralda during a storm and earthquake, and were enshrined as the tutelary saints. This event is the subject of one of the most incongruous, though not the least beautiful, of the pictures of Murillo.

This tower claims for its architect the supposed inventor of Algebra, and it was raised by one of the most powerful of monarchs, Jacob the Second, of the Almohades. It has been spared alike by the Vandalism and fanaticism of conquest, the ravages of war, the lightning that hath struck, and the earthquakes that have shattered the humbler edifices around. It is the embellishment of Seville; her pride, her standard-bearer, her nightly watch-tower, the plume of her mural coronet, first caught by the eye of the stranger, and last seen. The Giralda is said to be superior to the towers of Rabat and Morocco; but there is no comparison either in the materials, the ornaments, or dimensions.

On reaching the gallery, the clangour of bells strikes one, as replacing the Muezzin call, “God is great. To prayers.” “Prayer is better than sleep.” There are a dozen great bells, which send forth the most discordant and unceasing peals, and the ringing of them is a strange exhibition. They are swung round and round; the rope is allowed to coil itself round the stock, or is jerked on the lip of the bell, and the ringer springs up by stanchions in the wall to get a purchase, and then throws himself down; or he allows himself to be carried by the rope as it swings round outside. As I entered the gallery, I saw one of the ringers thrown out, as I imagined, and expected, of course, that he was dashed on the pavement below; I saw him the next moment perched on the bell, smiling at my terror.

The belfry does, however, discharge as a steeple, several of the functions to which it was appropriated as a minaret: the day, as in Mussulman countries, is divided by prayer. When you ask in Morocco, at what hour you are to arrive at such a place;—if they mean at sunset, they will answer, “at Assar.” So other hours are marked by the first prayer, or the mid-day prayer, and this is made known to all, not only by the muezzin’s call, but also by a flag hoisted on the minaret,—called alem . The Spaniards, in like manner, divide the time by the prayers, the oracion, the animas, &c., the period of which is announced generally, in the south of Spain, from the towers that the Musselmans built for the same purpose.

The view from the Giralda invited me to ascend it daily during my stay. Whether it was calm or windy, whether in sunshine or shade, the charm was the same in its diversities: the lightness of the atmosphere in every change, justified the saying of the Sevillians, “Our climate is fit to raise the dead.”

From this height it requires no great effort to replace, in imagination, the dead level by an arm of the sea; the tide still rises four feet in the river, though fifty miles from the sea. [322] It is only thirty years since it has been deprived of the monopoly of the commerce of the New World; the caravels and argosies of Santa Fé deposited upon that bank their precious freights, as is still recorded in the name of the round tower by the water,— sorride oro .

HOSPITAL DE LA SANGRE.

This is a noble edifice, composed of several grand courts and of two stories, the lower one for summer, and the upper one for winter. I think I may say that to each patient is allotted at least four times as much space as in any similar European establishment, and the very troughs in which the dirty linen is washed are marble: the patients have two changes of clean linen in the week. The kitchens are all resplendent with painted tiles and cleanliness, and there seemed abundance of excellent food. In these institutions, in Spain, the inmates are completely at home. Soft and blooming girls, with downcast look and hurried step, were attending upon the poor, the maimed, and the suffering. The Lady-Directress had told the servant who accompanied me, to bring me, after my visit, to her apartment, which was a hall in one of the corners of the building: she said she had heard that England was celebrated for its charity, and asked if our poor and sick were better off than in Spain. I was obliged to confess that the reverse was the case. She was, however, better informed than I at first suspected. She asked me if it was not true that we hired mercenaries to attend on the sick and abstained from performing that duty ourselves; and if our charity was not imposed as a tax? She told me that there were eight hundred of her order in Spain; that it was the only one that had not been destroyed; that none were admitted but those of noble birth or of gentle blood; and that they took all the vows except that of seclusion, and in lieu of it took that of service to the poor and sick. The St. Isabelle, of Murillo, painted for them, was the model of their order. The Hospital de la Sangre was founded by a woman.

THE CARTUJA.

This interesting convent is across the water. It is now a pottery, and the property of an Englishman, who very obligingly accompanied me over the works. I never saw the Spanish people to more advantage: they were models, in both sexes, of classic and Andalusian beauty. Their costume was peculiarly well-preserved; and the work—itself cleanly—was carried on in the midst of noble structures, surrounded with the finest chiseling, the grandeur of vaults and the gorgeousness of azuleos. I inquired for the sepulchral stone of St. Hermangildo, and after some search, and the removal of a heap of stones, we found it let into the wall at the east end of the church. The proprietor, on my urgent entreaty, promised he would have it conveyed to some place of safety.

I was anxious to get at the feelings of the people working in this sacred edifice. Although familiarity had destroyed any strong impressions, they all seemed to regret the splendour of their domicile, and expressed gratitude to their master for fitting up one of the chapels for public service. He himself told me that he had at first preserved the church of worship, but finding that it excited the congregation that the monastery should have been so disposed of, and have become the property of a heretic, he deemed it prudent to exert his rights and convert the church to the uses of the manufactory. As they were drawing a distinction between the church and the monastery, he thought the time might come when they would reassert their claim to the possession of the monastery as well as to the church. If I had had no other occasion to judge of the prospect of future tranquillity for Spain, this would have sufficed to assure me that, while this intrusion upon the monastic property endures, no settlement will be made. In England and in France, church confiscation was accompanied with a change of belief, and those possessed either of hereditary influence or of political power were the acquirers.

No influential body has profited by the confiscation, or risen to power by the possession, of this wealth. The wealth itself has disappeared—it was the reaction from the sale of church property that restored France to the community of Rome. The sale of the property of a church not upset; the penury and suffering of its clergy (a clergy which sits in the confessional and administers the viaticum, doubtless exercises its power of quickening the religious sense of Spain, especially as the manifestations of it are suppressed)—may in like manner produce a reaction.

The Cortes receives no petition upon the subject of church property, and the Crown listens to no prayers against the Cortes.

The tithes never were supposed to be appropriated to the church by the State. The tithes in each spot had a special and chartered origin. [323] The church was the continuation of the Mozarabic worship, and was supported by obtubia and not by tithes. It was not the tenth but the twentieth part. The tithe was in fact legally fixed at five per cent. of the gross produce.

From this tithe the clergy paid a revenue to the State of their annual cures and professions; it amounted some years ago to 180,000,000 reals. The church now figures in the budget as a charge of 140,000,000; the difference amounts to one half the entire revenue of Spain, and the property itself has been wholly swallowed up. This country suffers at present only from the central government. The clergy, as a corporation, presents a check: the dues paid by the church would have been sufficient for all the purposes of government.

These unfortunate proceedings are laid at England’s door, as being the patron of the minister who introduced the change; she is also charged with supporting antinational governments with loans; which, while giving a temporary triumph to a hollow faction, impose permanent obligations and disgrace. Nor is it one of the least evil consequences that Spain, like other countries similarly situated, is considered in England as under an obligation to her.

[316] She was among the first to rise against the French.

“To an acute but indifferent observer, Seville, as we found it on our return, would have been a most interesting study. He could not but admire the patriotic energy of the inhabitants, their unbounded devotion to the cause of their country, and the wonderful effort by which, in spite of their passive habits of submission, they had ventured to dare both the authority of their rulers, and the approaching bayonets of the French.”— Doblado’s Letters , p. 441.

[317] Burkhardt characterizes the traditional institutions of the Desert as “so well adopted, so natural, and so simple, that every nation not reduced to slavery, if thrown at large on the wide desert, might be expected to adopt the same.”— Notes on the Bedouins , p. 214.

Burkhardt has here so forgotten the European, as to identify freedom and sense. Knowledge is to God, what science is to language, or mud to water. The fountain in each is pure, each step in “advance,” brings corruption: the last point, unless where there is a return upon itself, is always the worst.

[318] The Duke and Duchess de Montpensier took up their abode in the Alcazar, with the design of restoring it. Furniture was ordered from Africa. One generation more and the Alhambra will be scarcely traceable, and the bastard fashions now springing up, will be to subsequent times the type of the Moors!

[319] Historia de Sevilla Gonzales de Leon, p. 367. It appears from the same work, that the Jews came and lived with the Moors.

[320] See Gonzales de Leon, p. 519.

[321] “The rich filigree belfry added in 1568, by Fernando Ruiz, is elegant beyond description.”— Handbook , vol. i. p. 248.

[322] Heeren, in discussing the claims of Seville to be the original Tarshish, or the earliest settlement in the West, says, “as it was not likely that these traders should have ventured so far inland.”

[323] Origen de los Rentàs, p. 192, 217.

CHAPTER II.

THE CATHEDRAL.

This building has neither façade, spire, nor dome; it gives no external signs of grandeur, is surrounded by no open space to exhibit its dimensions; there is nothing to raise or satisfy expectation,—following the plan of the Mosque, which it has replaced, and which rose on the ruins of the Roman temple, its predecessor. The cathedral externally is lost in the mass of buildings which forms a parallelogram of 600 by 500 feet, across which it runs; the remainder being made up of a parish church, a parterre of orange trees, the Giralda tower, the sacristy, and offices. As seen from a distance with its flat roof, it appears like a large house in a village; for in the clearness of that sky distances are lost. When it is pointed out as the cathedral, any anticipations you may have indulged in are sobered down. The mind of the spectator is thus artfully managed, and the majesty of the building is veiled.

Till you stand within its vaults—I entered not by its own portal, but by the parish church which opens into it—I thought I was in the cathedral, and looked around in surprise and disappointment. I presently perceived an opening, and wandering in the direction, I thought I was advancing up the nave—it was the width that was before me! Now the tower-like pilasters opened all around; but the limit I could not see, for the view is intercepted by the built-up choir. There is no one point from which all is to be seen—you have the sense of the vastness of the whole wherever you look, but which is nowhere paraded for you to admire. You wander around to look for what is to be seen,—to find what is to be admired—as you would through a forest of trees.

Raised upon the lines of a mosque and a temple, this building differs wholly from Gothic churches;—there is no lengthened nave—no cross;—it is a parallelogram supported by rows of pilasters, like the Temple of Phyle. The scantling of a church is only to be found in the distribution of the roof, ascending higher in the nave and transept, so as to make the cross. Six rows of pilasters traverse it in length, which support seven rows of roofs or vaults. The nave and transept are 120 feet in height; the two aisles adjoining it on each side are 100; and the two outer aisles are lower, and divided into chapels. The centre vault above the high altar is 142 feet. At the eastern extremity it opens into the Lady Chapel, itself a spacious church; while another, the sacristy, adjoining it to the south, is reached by a passage. The chapels conceal the altar and shroud the paintings, and their gratings seem to close in dens; so that the edifice, excepting the choir, is as a cavern. The stone is without carving or monument; there is no line save what belongs to the construction:—the pillars ascend, the arches join as if the rock had thus fashioned itself; the only exception is the slight tracery of the balustrade of the triforium, and the fret-work of the graining of the central and adjoining vaults. But, contrasting with their grey dulness, the floor is in slabs of marble, alternately black and white in squares and lozenges.

The chapels have their own windows. The body of the church has two clerestory rows, one in the nave, one in the second side-aisle above the chapels, besides a Catherine wheel in each corresponding gable. They correspond: there is one to each vault—their lines are in perfect symmetry with the vaults and columns; they are deeply coloured and furnished with curtains, by which the light is regulated, and, when requisite, the sun on the eastern and southern sides excluded. What we all feel regarding the “management” of the light of a painting I now saw in an edifice. How improved its merits—how magnified its vastness—the effects of colossal magic lanterns played around!

Here presided the spirit of the Moors; the gloom in which they delight; the deep colour of the admitted rays, repeating the figures and tints of their gorgeous walls, and streaming with a sweet yet solemn beauty on their graceful ornaments. These last, indeed, were wanting, and their Sevillian pupils were determined to show what colour and the sun alone could do. As he travels round, looking in from the different sides and windows, a thousand beauties reveal themselves with all the changes of breaking or departing day.

Within this living rock of Gothic grandeur, one feels the nearest approach to the sublimity of the conception of the mosque, imitated by the Arab from the Desert, and the heavens between which his lot has been cast. The high altar has no gorgeous canopy, as in St. Peter’s; there are no gems, as in the chapel of the Medici; neither mosaic nor painting nor gilding meet the eye;—it is surrounded on the sides and in front by a lofty iron gilded grating, through which you can distinguish a screen filling up the width of the chancel, and rising seventy or eighty feet above the altar. This space is divided into compartments by four horizontal and five perpendicular lines, each of which contains a group of figures, in alto and basso relievo, diminishing as they ascend, the four figures coming fully out, and the accessories being traced in slight relief behind. Of these groups there are thirty-six, the principal figures two-thirds the size of life, and over each a Gothic canopy: they are separated by Gothic spaces, with niches and statues of various sizes. The cusps are enriched and enlivened with fine branches and foliage. Over the whole projects a cornice composed of the Twelve Apostles in niches, and the descent from the cross in the centre. These figures are the size of life. This cornice is a frame-work of Gothic niches for holding the statues, while branches are interlaced through its dentated spires and cusps. It fails only in the curve beneath the projection to a corridor which sustains the Twelve Apostles, and which correspond with hexagons. Here would have been peculiar scope for the adaptation either of the Gothic pendants, or the Moorish stalactite.

On the top, in the centre, is Christ on the cross, and the two Marys kneeling. These are a little larger than life. The groups contain between 300 and 400 figures. There are 200 small statues on the Gothic pinnacles dividing them: seventeen statues the size of life are on the cornice and in the group above. The whole space, which is above 4000 square feet, is about equally divided between groups and statues, and tracery and foliation. The ornaments display the beauties of the pointed Gothic style, with the richness of the Moresque white, serving as the frame-work to the exquisite Italian groupings. During three generations it passed from master to pupil, and from father to son, and the design was unbroken; and, with the one exception I have mentioned, the whole is perfect as if it had been dreamt by a Cellini at night and executed in the morning. When you look upon it, you forget even the cathedral.

I was able to get the great doors opened at the period when the cathedral is closed, and thus see the whole mass at once, and unimpeded. The most distinct sight is from the organ-loft, between twelve and one o’clock, when the side-light falls on the left wing, and slightly illumines the heads over the screen, and you may trace the wonderful minuteness of the ornaments. But all these glimpses are nothing to be compared to the unearthly effect of the setting-sun, when the light through the St. Catherine Wheel over the great door streams full upon its different shades.

I was about to say that ten minutes on this spot, at this hour, is worth a journey to Seville; but it is vain to rate the worth of what stands alone, and which furnishes a new standard to rate the resources of art, the genius of man, and the beauty of nature. All are here combined within the majesty of a temple consecrated to the highest aims of life, and the hopes of eternity. This effect of the evening sun I thus described in a letter, at the moment of witnessing it:—

“I was passing the cathedral nearly at sunset. I went in intending merely to pass through: it was very dark—the light from the western windows streamed like a phantasmagoria. I got the sacristan to let me into the choir, and I sat down on the archbishop’s throne at the bottom of the chancel, opposite the high altar, with my back to the light, which, passing over the choir, fell full on the upper part of the screen. It was not white light, but deeply-coloured, and the distance from the window blended the tints, so that it came like a rainbow-cloud, and the groups passed through every variety of hue. The light shifted as it changed; it moved, ascending always to other groups, and in the gloom they shone like visions in the sky. The birth, fall, and redemption of the human race, was the story of that wall. The rays then ascended, and caused to shine forth the Apostles, and finally the Calvary was brought to light. The kneeling Marys appeared, not cased in tracery or canopied in Gothic fret-work,—the depths of the temple were beyond them;—then the sacrifice of the cross, limb by limb; came forth, and just as the light reached and showed the outlines of the Saviour’s head and face, averted from its glow, a peal of a distant organ echoed through the roofs, and a moment after voices, as of angels in the clouds, supplied the tones of praises which the overpowered lips of the beholder refused to utter. The light was for a moment lost in the intervening space, and then struck on the groined ribs of the arches above, changing them to rainbows. The orb of the sun touched the horizon; the rays glowed fiery red and remotely yellow, and then all was grey—the vision was gone—the natural light brought back the earth. But I am not recovered, and write now, still tremulous under the unearthly glow of that departing sun—the sudden burst of that choral peal.”

It was days before I could deliberate. I was distracted between the effects it presented and the thoughts it inspired. The vistas of aisles upon aisles; the beauteous curves; the tall aspiring lines; the dark embrowning shades! There was light, but it was enshrined in gloom, and was ever undergoing change as the sun went round, or the clouds flitted across,—I went there to expose my mind to its influence, as we set plants in the sun that they may grow. It is sublime—there is nothing for display; it is simple—there is nothing for effect; it is harmonious, for it is all alike and true to itself. Its vastness would not be grand without its symmetry, nor its beauty harmonious without its size;—magnificent in its simplicity, manifold in its unity, it is but man’s performance, yet it elevates our conception of God’s chief work. Yet our “advanced age” can only gaze with stupid bewilderment [324] on achievements such as these, whether of art or polity.

This glorious cavern, during the Holy Week, is decked out in crimson brocade. In the centre of the nave the monument itself, an imposing structure, is reared; and the high altar, dark and solemn throughout the remainder of the year, presents a blaze of light before a shrine of silver: and then within these walls and from that temple, the bell tolls and the horn echoes, and before the altar is heard the click of the castanet, and seen the solemn dance of Jewish and classical antiquity.

This cathedral is unrivalled in several other respects. It possesses the finest organ, vestry, and sacristy in the world; the largest amount of silver plate and jewels: the paintings are of greater value and number than in any other church; the largest work, or rather monument, in silver, in the world, is the Gloria , placed behind the high altar in the Holy Week: it is twenty-five feet in height; it was made from the first-fruits of the mines of America, and saved during the war from French sacrilege.

I did not fully estimate this cathedral till I entered that of York. The nave of the one is not equal to the aisles of the other. At York there is but one aisle, and the flat wall stops the sight immediately beyond it. The double side-aisles at Seville are equal in height to the nave and transept at York. Three cathedrals of York might stand, as to width, in that of Seville. In York there is more glass than wall, and these are whitewashed: its windows are its glory—their absence is the splendour of Seville. The vastness of the one is increased by its gloom, the size of the other diminished by its glare: the one may excite admiration, curiosity—the other inspires awe. The want of uniformity in the building and arches at York, brings into evidence the harmony of the Seville church; for the perfect Gothic [325] reigns throughout, although four centuries elapsed between its foundation and completion. In York, the windows and the arches are more acute, the vault more obtuse. The difference indeed is slight, but is quite enough to shock the eye when fresh from the unblemished symmetry of the other.

In the lower part of the screen separating the chancel of York from the nave, the fifteen British kings, from William I. to Henry VI. , are placed in niches under Gothic canopies. Suppose this row of figures with infinitely more luxurious embellishments, extended a third in length, and expanded upwards by four or five additional stories, and you would then have an idea of the retablo high altar of Seville.

When we look on the tombs, the Nile, the heaps of Babylon, the symmetry of the Erectheum, or the pillared precipices of Syracuse, we are lifted into the times of those who have left these traces of skill and greatness. Had the Sevillians disappeared from the earth, in what rank should we have placed them? The ancient claims of Britain rest on Westminster Hall; the revived aspirations of the fatherland of Germany clusters around Cologne; the glory of the Church of the West is St. Peter’s, as St. Sophia was of that of the East; yet are each outdone and all surpassed by the work of a provincial corporation, who chanced one day to resolve they should “build such a cathedral that future ages would call them mad.” No monarch ordered the plan, no empire furnished the means. This masterpiece was planned and reared by hands unknown; the wealth was furnished by hard-earned gains and persevering parsimony. Well may the Andalusian speak of his “kingdom,” not his province. What means “ great nations ” when a province can accomplish such works? [326] When the arts flourished in Italy, there were great men and small states; so in Spain, the age of art reveals the independence which belonged to her provinces. What was the universal monarchy of Philip II. , when the Cabildo (the Arab tribe) which raised the cathedral without his aid, existed despite his power?

A modern English traveller [327] regrets that so much wealth should thus lie unproductive, and suggests its employment to put an end (he wrote at the time) to the civil war—that is, to extinguish the liberty of the Basques! Was an Englishman alone to be found to propose the robbery of one of these provinces to aid in the treacherous design against another ?

[324] “Ici l’œuvre seule de l’homme suffit pour écraser l’homme.”— A.
Dumas.

[325] The perfect Gothic is the arch composed of two segments of a circle described from the spring of the opposite arch, as a centre; and the proportion of the span to the height—a point not noted in any work upon architecture—is at Seville in the diameter of the circle from the impact of the arch to the floor.

[326] “Aujourd’hui, parce que nostre France n’obéit qu’à un seul roy nous sommes contraints, si nous voulons parvenir à quelque honneur, de parler son langage; autrement nostre labeur, tant fut-il honorable et parfait, serait estimé peu de chose on peut estre totalement mesprisé.”— Rousard , Abr. de l’Art Poet. p. 1628.

[327] The author of “A Summer in Andalusia.”

CHAPTER III.

SPANISH PAINTING.

One is accustomed to think of Spanish artists as pupils only, even when rivals of the great masters with whom we are familiar. Such, at least, was my impression, and accordingly, no less was my surprise and suspense than delight, at the first glance at the “Murillo Chamber,” at Seville. The picture which faced me, as I entered, was Christ bending from the cross to embrace St. Felix, of Cantalicio—I might have taken it for Vandyke: next came a St. Joseph, equally admirable, yet different; then a San Leandro—the one might have been from the pencil of Dominichino, the other of Titian; and so I turned, from picture to picture, finding new rivals to every standard and style of excellence. The question then arose of comparison between the Spanish, the Italian, and Flemish schools. Afterwards, at Madrid, I visited repeatedly the Spanish collections, to possess myself thoroughly with them before visiting the Italian and Flemish galleries. A severer test I could not apply, for the gallery of the foreign schools, at Madrid, is the richest in the world. Here are the grander compositions of Vandyke. One of Raphael, the Spasimo , might, if in the Vatican, displace from its throne the Transfiguration. Three or four masterpieces, besides ten others, are from Raphael’s pencil, and form a collection of his works equal to that of the Vatican. Of Titian, there is a gallery in itself—no less than forty paintings all on a large scale. Amongst these is the celebrated one of “Fruitfulness;” a flock of cherubs, just as you may see chickens collected under an inverted basket in the streets of any Spanish town, and which, if anything, would eclipse or rival Murillo in the gracefulness and variety of his infantine conceptions. The result of the comparison was to relieve me from the restraint of habit, and I could, with conviction and boldness now assert, that in painting, Spain has no rival.

The Spanish school is most various; but in all its varieties it is natural. It has no particular manner:—manner is no more than systematic or constitutional failing. [328] It is the error to which a man is liable, and which, when he founds a system and instructs others, is more readily caught by his pupils than his merits,—a colourless and unblemished glass is invisible. We become sensible of its presence by its changing the hue or distorting the ray. And so manner in painting either perverts or obscures nature.

Nature, in her varieties, has a counterpart in the Spanish school. She is represented darkly in Ribera and Roelas, mildly in Cano, richly in Morales, boldly in Zurbaran, brightly in Velasquez, divinely in Murillo.

The school of Spain is solemn. The subjects which were alone worthy to be immortalized, were those which pertained to immortality, and art was dignified no less in its application than its powers. Painting was a religious exercise. The enthusiasm of art was linked to fervour of faith. The studio was an oratory, and “each work was commenced and prosecuted with fasting and prayer.” [329] The lords were the convents; the inmates were sons at once of the founder and of the peasant. For these Spanish art exercised her calling, not to please the caprice of a virtuoso, or to tapestry the walls of a Sybarite. Seville or Cordova presented no Flemish pot-houses. In the productions of their masters, there was none of the extravagant mythology of a Rubens, or the more finished lasciviousness of a Titian; no dissecting-room of a Michael Angelo; none of the finery of a Paolo Veronese. There were neither allegories, portraits, nor giants wrestling with the rocks.

The stranger who visits only Madrid will be surprised at such a description, for he has there seen what is called the “Spanish Rooms,” filled with portraits, allegories, extravagances, dwarfs, heathen gods, and historical compositions, and these constitute in his eyes the masterpieces of Spanish art. The reason is this; that at Madrid are collected the paintings of Velasquez, who is so far Spanish only as the want of manner makes him so. Born in Seville, he became a Madrileño, and a parasite. His pictures are all at the capital, and in the style suited to the taste of foreigners. The Spaniards of the capital esteem their painter, and are reacted upon by the estimation in which he is held by foreigners.

The thought in all things comes before the execution. What would the work of him who chiselled the Apollo Belvidere have been, if applied to the person of a Souter Johnny? So the art of Velasquez was expended on Philips and abortions. His paintings are common-place domestic scenes, or they are classical, and there he parodies the poets of Greece and travesties their gods. His chief works are beautiful caricatures in oil, without satire and without fun. Before returning to Murillo and Seville, I must say a few words of his chief works.

Vulcan’s Forge is an exquisitely finished group of naked Spaniards, with arms, breasts, shoulders, and loins developed. They are heavy below, as if trampers, not blacksmiths; nor have they been hardened and bronzed by exposure to the air, the furnace, or the sun: they have had their clothes taken off within the hour: the shirts must have been filthy; the bodies are unwashed. The picture is an exposure of nakedness. The walls of the place, and the manners, and the countenances, would appear rather an effort to unidealize the Greek, than to raise the modern to a conception of ancient poetry. In it there is the genius of painting, not the painting of a man of genius.

The Belidores. Drunkards; or, Bacchus among his Companions.—These are Castilian peasants engaged in a most un-Spanish debauch. One naked, and bearing a classic wreath, personates Bacchus, with a maudlin solemnity on a sensual countenance. Another presents a full face of coarse and stupid laughter, and wears on his head something between a Spaniard’s sombrero and an Irish hat. This is the picture Wilkie selected from out the treasures of Madrid, to admire, to study, to imitate; copying and recopying it, and so fixing in his own mind the physiognomy of the laughing drunkard with the Irish hat, as thence to bring forth a numerous progeny, sometimes with a hat more, sometimes less, the worse for wear.

The Spinners. A Flemish picture, as seen through a magnifying glass: the scene such as Teniers or Ostade might have selected. Two women, a young and an old one, are sitting spinning at the wheel. Between them the back shop is seen with customers and tapestry exposed for sale—and, therefore, this is a painting highly admired by the English. The back-ground is remarkable for its light, or rather for the shades; for painting, like the magic lantern, produces brightness by shutting out the light. Wilkie said of Velasquez, “he paints the very air we breathe;” just so a clear and perfect mirror might be described as glass. One of the pictures of the same master has been called “The Theology of Painting,” and another, “The Philosophy of Light.” His perspectives and distances are not rendered by lines, or by any peculiarity of construction or drawing. He put on the canvas what he saw.

If it is wonderful to see a limb or a figure, even when all the picture is consecrated to that effort, break forth, as it were, from the dead surface and rise towards you, how much more to behold that canvas fly open and spread back, so that by the aid of a tremulous ray, breaking across it here and there, you may see around and distinguish things, places, and persons! This is the triumph of the art of painting, and here Velasquez stands alone.

The Studio. —Here, like one of those vaudevilles, in which the wings of a stage are represented, and you hear the plaudits of another audience “within”—the artist is seen at the corner of his picture, the back of it being towards you. There are a dog, dwarfs, and a lady-in-waiting in attendance on an infantine Infanta, who is standing for her portrait. The presence of the royal parents is signified by another stage-claptrap—their reflection in a mirror. All the figures are splendid as separate parts, but there is no dignity in any expression, or any purpose in the whole. When Philip saw this picture, he said, “One thing is wanting,” and taking the palette and the brush, he traced the cross of St. Jago on the artist’s breast.

The Surrender of Breda —or the Picture, as it, is called, of the Lances,—from the number and the thickness of the forest of these that appear to the right. This is indeed a grand composition. It owes its power to its being a portrait and a history of the chief figure. The noble and chivalrous Spinola, with an expression of courteous grief, is bending down, and laying his hand upon the shoulder of his commonplace and stern, though vanquished, opponent. The exaltation of triumph is subdued. The victor’s thoughts are with the unfortunate. What a representation of victory! Here, for once, the correctness of the eye has supplied the place of the sight of the mind, and his pencil, like Allan’s in the Polish Exiles, was above himself.

The last I shall notice is his Christ upon the Cross,—the only picture of this description, with one exception, which I have found among seventy. It is an immortal work.

I cannot quit the Gallery of Madrid without some notice of an incident which fixed two pictures especially on my memory in the description of the Gallery. The two subjoined pictures will be found in Murray’s Hand-book, “No. 121,— Prometheus , a finely painted picture of GORE and BOWELS ; such alone as could be conceived by a bull-fighter , and please a people whose sports are blood and torture . How different from the same subject by the poetical Titian, See No. 787.” “No. 787, Prometheus ,”—compare the poetical treatment by our Italian , with 121, the BUTCHER PRODUCTION of the practical Spaniard, Ribera: it is “Æschylus to Torquemada.” I fancied, having examined the two pictures, that the writer had mistaken the one for the other; I therefore returned to the Museum, Guidebook in hand, and remained satisfied that it was the deliberate purpose of the writer to represent the pictures as he has done.

The Prometheus of Titian (121), lies on his back on the earth, with the heels in the air: the top of the the spectator ;— the face is consequently not seen . The hero of Æschylus first endures reproach in silent scorn, and then bursts forth in indignation, claiming unbounded merit for his works. [330] He stands, his face to his accusers and to heaven. Here is a man lying on his back! was thought or suffering to be expressed in a head of shaggy hair? How treat with paint a subject poetically without action and without feature? This, Prometheus! the fore-thinker —this, the stealer of fire from heaven! It is a corpse revived and cast upon the rocks; and the picture, if that of a poet, must have been designed to represent the deluge. The only animated portion of the composition is the eagle—he is] the predominating figure perched upon the body; for by the manner of the fastenings, the man, if not quite dead, could easily have driven him away. The Prometheus of Æschylus is bound so that the winged dog of Jupiter may come undisturbed to his uninvited daily feast. This is no eagle; it is a vulture feeding on carrion: the colouring is from the dissecting-room—but not the anatomy. The bird has laid bare an enormous surface of the putrid flesh, somewhere about the breast, where there could be no such exposure of muscle, and to which, moreover, the eagle’s commission did not extend. Such is “the poetical treatment by our Italian.”

In No. 787, the Spanish master has painted a man full of life, not lying where he has been tossed, but held where he is bound. His body writhes; one hand supports him off the ground, the other is raised either in agony or supplication. The drawn lineaments of the face and the expanded mouth, make you listen for the cry it is about to utter, or which has died away. The tormentor is without his reach, and is unseen —you may distinguish where he is, but you have to strain the sight to penetrate the gloom in which he broods;—there is no doubt of the presence of the one, or of the cause of the agony of the other; for from the slightly gashed side , [331] a filament is being drawn away. This is the “blood-battered subject,” the “butcher production of gore and bowels” of our Spaniard.

Ribera’s Prometheus would not stand were a Daniel brought to judgment, for the eagle takes a Shylock’s share, having no more right to the entrail, which he is suffered to pilfer by the Spaniard, than to the carrion on which he is gorged by the Italian.

Who ever painted such children as Murillo?—the cherubs of Raphael are statuettes; those of Rubens, fœtuses; Murillo’s are children and cherubs. The brood is as prolific as the type is beautiful—golden, rosy, dimpled, sporting in troops, or flying in flocks, and then gathered into his canvas—light as the air; bright as the rainbow, yet of flesh and blood; full of life and grace, of vigour and ease, of health and gladness.

Who ever painted such virgins? The Madonnas of Italy are matrons and mothers. Mary holds her Child, or she gazes on Him as she shows Him,—it is maternal love. The Marys of Murillo are scarcely past the verge of childhood; the cheeks are full and ruddy; the form is plump. There is the ethereal, but it is in the expression: the face is upturned, the large eye raised, and the mouth half open, the hands pressed across the breast. The figure is erect—the size natural. They are never the same to look upon, and yet each can only be described in the same words as the rest. These bright Virgins in the sky, these laughing cherubs in the clouds, fill the canvas of Murillo with joy and innocence.

The gallery of Seville consists of a convent and its church. The rooms, cloisters, and corridors are all lined with paintings; the church is, in like manner, filled with them, high and low and all around. One chamber is set apart for Murillo: in it eighteen or nineteen of his chief works, nearly all the size of life, are collected. In reviewing them at an interval of nineteen months, it is impossible for me to say to which I would give the preference. One he used to call “ my picture.” It is the St. Thomas of Villanueva, Archbishop of Valencia, distributing alms. It draws neither on the tender nor the ideal, and the selection indicates not the judgment of the artist, but the disposition of the man. “The Adoration of the Shepherds,” is, in colouring and conception, not unlike the “Repose in Egypt” of Correggio, at Parma.

Santa Justa and Rufina sustaining the Giralda, is beautifully executed, but incongruous and out of nature, and has neither the pure tints nor the deep dyes of the painter. The celebrated Señora de la Servilleta is a gipsy woman of Triana. I have mentioned these two as the pictures which pleased me the least; although in the St. Felix receiving the Child from the Virgin, how charmingly are infancy, young womanly beauty, and ripe old age grouped and pourtrayed! It is three pictures, not one. That of St. Antonio is fervour without fanaticism. Leandro is majestic and triumphant prelacy, in Venetian brocade, under an oriental sun. Like to it are the two ideal portraits, or rather real portraits, under the names of Leandro and Isidore in the sacristy of the cathedral. There are three Conceptions— una de diversâ —blooming maidens in the same attitude, arrayed in white and blue, with angels in the clouds; and yet there is no monotony. They have the serenity of beauty of the Sevillian maidens, by whom Murillo’s pencil was inspired; but the fulness of the lower part of the face reminded me of the women of modern Rome—the grave, dark-eyed, thoughtful Romans. The Saint Joseph with the Infant Jesus is a high-minded Jew, and the child, a prodigy. This picture recalls one in the cathedral which I may here notice, as in speaking of that building I could think of nothing but itself. The picture I mean is, the “Guardian Angel.” An angel leads a child and points to heaven: the figures are less than life. The picture is dark, the tints are not clear, the outline not distinct: there is no grace in the form of either, no beauty in the face; yet in this consists the triumph of the master—the inward mind shines through the veil, and you are sent at once to the inspiration that has descended, and to the innocence that looks up. This picture is an admirable exponent of the imaginative temperament of Murillo. He could revere, and hope, and wonder, to bring forth by pencil-strokes, the compassionate calm, with the benevolent anxiety of the angel’s face and the trustingness of that of the child—mingled with the searching expression that follows the angel’s finger, as to find the heavenly realms which those alone like it, can seek or see!

The church at the Museum contains the St. Thomas of Zurbaran—held by some to be the finest picture in the world; the St. Dominic, a remarkable carving in wood, by Montañes; and masterpieces by almost all the Sevillian school. I had visited it several times, scarcely noticing two or three pictures by Murillo, placed there as not worthy of admission to the “Murillo Chamber.” One of these, however, haunted me after leaving the Museum. Next morning, and at the earliest hour admittance could be gained, I went to examine it. It was a Virgin, but of a different order from his other Virgins—colossal, looking, not up to heaven, but down on earth; the hands joined and raised, not crossed upon the bosom; the eye cast down, the ball covered. It is not the full front figure upstretched; the left knee rests upon a cloud, yet the right foot is planted with the firmness of a statue. The dishevelled hair flows not on the shoulders, but streams wildly; and the dark blue mantle is whirled about and carried away. The picture is divided into two zones,—the upper one of gold—the sun; the lower one frigid and pale. She floats between heaven and earth. The picture is placed high in the apse. As you approach and recede, she seems now to ascend and now to descend. You cannot tell whether it is an angel coming down to men, or a saint rising to the sky.

His other Virgins are beautiful;—this one is heroic: his other figures are flesh and blood, this one is of marble. His other Marys are timid, hopeful, innocent; this is one of consciousness. The others are absorbed and ecstatic; this is a youthful Juno—the Spanish form. The Andalusian features give way to the ideal lines of the Greeks. His other Virgins wear the outward expression of some mental character associating the weakness of humanity with the beauty of nature. Here there is no part you can singly grasp; no feature you can separate, explain, or admire;—fleeting like the cloud, it dazzles like the sun. The vision enters as the tones of music, and returns on the memory like a vessel’s track in the night.

Such was the vision which Petrarch beheld when he exclaimed, “Beautiful Virgin! clothed with the sun, crowned by the stars, and so pleasing to the sun that his light he has hidden in thee!” No wonder that the Andalusian peasants’ salutation should be, “Santa Maria purissima,” or the reply, “Sin peccado concebida.” [332]

The “Virgin of the Franciscans” is amongst pictures what the Apollo Belvidere is among statues—a constellation of heavenly graces. I felt that it must have a history. I turned over such books as were within reach, but found no mention of it, except in one recent publication, where it is noticed as an extravagant production that had corrupted the taste of Seville; but, on inquiring among the Sevillians, I found that my anticipations were not vain.

Imagine Murillo in the fulness of his years, and still in the height of his power, called upon by the corporation of the Cathedral to paint a Virgin for that edifice, to crown at once that unrivalled work, and his own unequalled fame. Imagine him pacing that hall, raising his eyes to its vault, and his mind to the effort. This was not to be a picture to be placed on a wall, enclosed in a chapel, or screened on an altar-frame: it was to be an emblem of descending charity and ascending prayer, radiating through its vastness, and filling its space. Go then to the Museum and contemplate the “Virgin of the Franciscans,” and you will understand why she looks down—why her joined hands are raised—why she is colossal—how she is sublime.

When the picture was finished, the Cabildo proceeded to judge of it, and exclaimed: Ayach che mamarachio , “Oh! what a daub.” Murillo made a present of it to the Franciscans, the advocates of the essential purity of the Virgin. It was suspended under the dome of their church: all Seville poured forth to behold it, the Cabildo among the rest.

The Cabildo was personified in a Sevillian connoisseur, who was offended at my admiration. “If you saw it close,” said he, “as I have, you would think nothing of it.” It was useless to tell him that it was designed for the other side of a gulf—that it was painted to represent the heavens; to be seen from—not to touch—the earth. The critic pointed to the contradictions of the cloak flying on the right side, and the hair on the left;—in vain I answered that it was not a ship, and that in that distraction of the elements, in which she stands motionless, consisted the poetry of the work. Murillo has filled the Caridad; and hence his pictures have been less scattered. There are, however, five vacant spaces. Of two the robber still retains possession; two he has sold to an English duke, who has hitherto mistaken the pleasure of possessing a good picture for that of performing a good deed; the fifth, on its way back from Paris, was detained at the Academy of Madrid. Taste being as good a plea for plunder as philanthropy: sense or anger suggested to the Sevillians to leave the place of these pictures vacant—they have hung curtains on the empty spaces: seven still remain. Two of these are the largest he has painted, and represent multitudes—the Distribution of loaves and fishes, and Moses striking the rock;—two are Annunciations, in very different styles, the one bright and beautiful, the other large, dark, and solemn; in this one the Virgin is the beau idéal of a Sevillian in her mantilla;—two are gems in size as well as worth,—a John the Baptist and an infant Christ: the former is especially beautiful:—the seventh is a St. Juan di Dios, the founder of hospitals—a dark picture. The saint is carrying a sick man to the hospital, and an angel, a tall youth with outspread wings, is supporting him. Opposite to it hangs a curtain—let me raise it.

In the vesture of a nun, with the halo of a saint and the crown of a queen, Isabella stands over a boy whose head she is laving. The boy bends over a large silver vessel, from which the reflected light illumines his flushed face and winking eye, leaning on the stool which supports the basin: he is suffering, but patient, under the hands that perform the office. How the soft fingers hold—yet scarcely touch—the head!—how gently they apply the napkin! Beside her stands a maiden with a golden jewelled ewer; she watches till the cloth is dry;—an elderly lady looks from behind to counsel and aid her mistress. A second attendant carries a tray with ointment, and over her shoulder, in eastern fashion, hangs a lace embroidered napkin. The service is regal, not dramatic. There are other patients ready to be served. An old man in front is unbinding his leg; another is limping in on crutches from behind: there is no crowd, but there is work prepared for these lovely hands. The queen’s eyes are averted from the sores beneath her touch, and rest on an old woman below, whose upturned face reveals awe and gratitude. The sores on the boy’s head show the blush of granulation; but the care of the queen is still required. Who said the painting made him smell the sore? [333] —it is clean and washed and healthy.

There are here no forms of unnatural beings—no forced images—no angels’ wings: it is Isabella in her palace, amidst her ladies, at her ordinary work—nothing that is not simple; nothing that is not true; nothing pictured except that which has been; and pictured that it may prompt others to do the same—nothing that is not common, save that such deeds are as rare as the hands by which they are here performed.

Amongst living beings I have seen one whose life is told in this picture—and it is her portrait. Murillo must have known some such one; from her life derived the thought, and from her face the model. She bears no resemblance to his Virgins. There are here no ideal lines—no blushing tints; no childlike innocence is here—that face is mild and solemn, and full of care and tenderness. He must have seen it in a sister. [334]

This picture is now in the Academy at Madrid, with two of his masterpieces,—the Dream of the Roman Patrician. The Virgin appeared to him, directing him to build the Church of St. Maria Maggiore. The second represents him narrating his dream to the Pope. This head is the original, which Wilkie has copied for his great picture of Columbus. He was painting it when I first saw that artist, and I was struck by it as singularly inappropriate. I now saw how he had selected it—here it was masterly because suited to the character represented. It is without power, elevation, or resolution; but is noble, soft, pious, and munificent. Wilkie admired it as the founder of a Basilicon, and placed it on the shoulders of the discoverer of America.

The Isabella pourtrays charity; the “sleeping Patrician”—rest. The one abstracts the soul from surrounding things; the other subjects you to them:—you lighten your step and fear to tread. The Roman is seated in a chair by the table, on which lies his closed book; he has gently dropped asleep, his head resting on his hand. Nothing is recumbent, but all is still: it is the rest of the spirit rather than the slumber of the frame: the spirit is elsewhere; the sleep so light, yet the abstraction so deep, that you watch for a breathing. The light falls on his reclining head from the vision of Mary and her child above. On the floor near his feet, seated by her work—the work laid down and her head reclining on a cushion—his daughter lies in profound slumber: her dog, curled at her feet, is asleep too. The picture—no, the chamber—is otherwise in darkness. By what door did he enter? Hush! lest they awake!

To see this picture, close the windows.

I took leave of Murillo. This was the last of his great works that I looked upon; its tone the last to dwell on mine eyes, mingling with those of the St. Isabella and the Mary of the Franciscans, which constitute it in my mind the ideal of painting.

I cannot suppress my indignation at such masterpieces being kept and shown in gilt gaudy frames, and huddled together like the wares of an old curiosity shop. The eye is tortured by the glare, and the mind oppressed by the numbers. They were painted for altar-pieces; they were designed to dwell in the glare of the Temple; to be gazed upon by the kneeling penitent on the floor. How is it that, with our virtuoso faith, our religion of sentiment, no one dreams of replacing them on their thrones or pedestals, where, with nothing to distract the thought or oppress the eye, they may, if no longer fitted to inspire devotion, at least fill and raise the heart.

Our age has produced a descriptive epic, of which Italy is the scene and heroine. Her fortune, ruins, arts, monuments, are the incidents; the works of her genius are transmuted into verse; and if the marble perished, the Venus and the Gladiator in Childe Harold, would live. But where are the St. John, the Holy Family, the Transfiguration, the Last Supper, the Flight into Egypt, the Descent from the Cross, the Last Judgment? How is it that sculpture’s rainbow-sister has claimed no tribute, and inspired no strain—that all things in Italy are there but Raphael, Titian, Guido, and the Caracci? After seeing Murillo I understood this blank. Byron in his portraits of statues, enters upon no artistic disquisitions—they were to him the subject they represented, as if seen in life, or conceived in fancy; and he brings back from the marble to flesh and blood, and discovers as such the struggle of the Trojan father and the disdainful majesty of the archer-god. The failing head of the Dacian awakens the scene and circumstances of his end, and the great and beautiful grief of the Phrygian mother recalls the desolation of the mother-mistress of cities and of the world. Where was the painting in Italy possessed of such a spell?

I may now confess that in Italy I never saw a picture that satisfied my judgment, however much it may have excited my admiration. In admiring one or more, there was an internal struggle to impose upon myself a standard of excellence, in what was the most excellent of known works. The canvases of Murillo reconciled me to myself, by presenting a higher level, or at least a more perfect adaptation. Other masters may have been in artistic powers superior to Murillo, but he excels in a perfect knowledge and judgment of himself in reference to the ends of art. What mortal power or genius could present a Transfiguration so that it should be natural? What truth could there be in the struggle of the Giants and Jupiter? Could you be transported in spirit to the foreground of Purgatory, of the Last Judgment, of a beleaguered Fortress, or a contested Field? What art could render simple an assembly of the gods? The painting might be exquisite, but the attempt would overpower the master, or the subject would be beneath his power.

It has been remarked, that when a person becomes an admirer of Murillo, he is wholly fascinated and incapable of all discrimination, admires his master’s defects and despises all others’ merit. I feel that fascination—if fascination it be—where you clearly see the cause. No other painter ever awakened in me curiosity. In him there is the metaphysician no less than the artist. In other painters you may admire the painting—in other pictures the painter. In Murillo it is the poet. Colour is his verse, light and shadow his metre; and his were dreams rather than poetry; or he dreamed as a poet and painted when he awoke. There is no drama in his scenes—it is ecstacy or thought. From the metaphysics of the mind he passed to the psychology of the face: he painted no portraits, and yet every head is one. He selected the head as pourtraying the character, and the character to suit the picture. It is not the beauty of form, but the innate connexion between mind and form which nature herself has traced in making the face the mirror of the mind which he stretched forth his hand to grasp. His own portrait I therefore inquired after, to see if I could recognise the man: it is painted by one of his best pupils. I have already said that I have recognised his “Isabella.” When I meet his “Patrician,” I shall recognise him in like manner. When I saw his own picture I was startled most; for it is the portrait of one who of all living men has exhibited, in the same qualities—that of judging of himself in reference to his work—Lord Metcalfe. Ordinary men resemble not their parents but their age. Extraordinary men of every age are those who can preserve their own likeness, and having a likeness of their own to preserve, resemble each other.

[328] “The Spanish artists usually endeavoured to produce an exact imitation of material nature; while the Italians aimed at, and attained higher results . The object of the Spaniards being less difficult of attainment, the perfection with which they imitated nature, passes conception. To that they devoted all the energies of their genius; while you may search in vain in the best productions of Italy,—not excepting the school of Venice, one that most resembles the Spanish,—for anything approaching their success in that respect.”— Wells’s Art. Antiquities of Spain , p. 361.

[329] These words apply specially to Vicente de Juanes, founder of the School of Valencia.

[330]

[331] In fact Ribera might have taken greater license.

[332] That the Virgin was born without sin, is a dogma of the Catholic church. The disputes with reference to this subject bear on the mode, viz., whether by retractive grace, or by an original miracle. I mention this, in consequence of the extravagances on this head, which are introduced into Murray’s “Handbook.”

[333] Murillo said of the picture of the Dead Prelate, by Valdez, and which stood next to this picture at the caridad , that he “could not look at it without holding his nose.” It represents putrefaction.

[334] I find in Mr. Stirling’s work on “Spanish Artists,” that Murillo had a sister. I find there nothing to contradict, but everything to confirm, the history of Murillo which his brush had taught me.

CHAPTER IV.

PELEA DE NAVAJA.—THE OLD SPANISH SWORD.

A Sevillian whom I was questioning about the frequent assassinations, astonished me by denying that there were any. “What you hear of,” said he, “as murders are duels.” I objected the knife ;—he said, “Well, the knife; that is our weapon; we fence, we do not stab; the duel has its laws, the weapon its science.” I thought this must be a figurative manner of describing some rude point of honour, and asked him to show me in what consisted the science. “I am not expert,” he said; “but if you are curious I will take you to a friend of mine, whom you can engage, as he is the best player in Seville; and, since the death of Montez, in all Andalusia.”

I begged immediately to be conducted to the yueçador , and was introduced to the inner apartment; which—as he united the calling of contrabandist to that of fencing-master—was filled with bales of tobacco. The subject was broached as a matter of business. He was willing to give me lessons, but would not undertake to teach me. If I had natural dispositions I might learn “to play” in three months, taking Time by the forelock. I proposed commencing at once; and next morning he came to me by day-light, at the inn—for it required a large room. A wooden dagger is used for a foil: it is about eight inches long, and in form like the old sacrificial knife: it is held by the closed fingers, the thumb stretching along the blade, and the edge turned inward. Round the left arm is wound the jacket as a shield. My teacher, putting himself in attitude, at once reminded me of the fighting Gladiator. He thus commenced: “You must hold your right hand down upon your thigh; you must never raise it till sure of your blow . Your feints must be with the eye—the eye, hand and leg must move together. When you look here, you must strike there, and spring when you have cut, corta y huya . The left arm must be kept high, the right hand low, the knees bent, the legs wide, the toes forward, ready to spring back or forward. There are three cuts and three parries; one point,—the point is low and at the belly—St. George’s au bas ventre : the cut must be across the muscle on the shoulder or the breast, or down well into the groin, so as to let out the bowels. Unless you know how to cut , it is of no use knowing how to fence.”

He knew nothing of our fencing, and was much surprised when I made application of it, and attributed the advantages it gave to a natural instinct for the art. The result was, that in a week he had gone through the whole course, and the last day of my stay at Seville, he brought two of the proficients, and we had a regular assault d’armes , the guests at the hotels being spectators. He honoured me at the introduction by saying, that he feared me more than either of his two compeers, because I sprang better than the one, and cut better than the other.

The attitudes are a study for an artist. There are not the stiff figures and sharp angles of our fencing; but the rounded limb, the gathered-up muscle, the balanced body:—instead of the glance of the steel there is that of the eye. The weapon is concealed under the hand, and pointing down, so that not a ray betokens it. There is no boxer’s fist or cestus, no crusader’s helm or hauberk, no Roman’s sword or shield. It seemed as if the hands and the eye of the man were equal to the claw of the tiger, or the tusk of the boar. It was a combat of beasts rather than a contest of men. There was the ambling pace, the slouching gait of the panther or the lion, or, rather, it was a mixture of the snake and the frog; gliding like the one and springing like the other. This is the war of the knife, the Pelea de Navaja , falsely interpreted war to the knife.

After missing a blow with the right hand, the knife, by a dexterous player, may be jerked into the left; but this, if unsuccessful, is inevitable death. To jerk [335] it at your antagonist is not permitted by the rules of the game. By a sudden spring an adversary’s foot may be pinned after he has failed in a blow. The most deadly of these feints is to strike the foot of your adversary sideways and so bring him down. A celebrated Juccador named Montes (not the Torero ), killed in this manner eleven men, and was at last so killed himself.

The mantle or jacket round the left arm is used, not for the purpose of catching the blow, but of striking off the adversary’s arm so that he may not reach. The guarding arm is always within reach, but always avoided; for to strike at it would leave your side open, and the safety consists in keeping under your adversary. The arms of the players were all scarred; but that was in “love fights.” The edge of the knife is then blunted, or a shoulder is put to it, as in the case of the lances which they use with the bulls.

The Sevillian was right. This is not simple assassination: it is not the stab given in the dark, though of course we could only so understand a man being killed by a knife. A popular song at Seville is, the lamentation of a man imprisoned for “stabbing” another:—he exclaims against the wrong; justifies his legitimate defence of his maja ; calls upon the gaoler to testify to his treatment; and, failing to obtain sympathy, rushes to the grates and appeals to the people:—

“Si venga gente pora aca!”

There is no song sung with more fervour by the ladies.

This is the most deadly weapon I know; the dirk, the cama, the dagger, are grasped in the hand, and impelled by the leverage of the arm. The navaja may be so used, or plunged right on end like the Hindoo dagger, and also by the motion of the wrist alone: it more resembles mowing with the scythe than thrusting with a poniard: it is accompanied by the action of the sword, in which, as in fencing, the limbs come into play, and thus serves the purpose of a defensive weapon. It is the origin of our fencing; and against adversaries not acquainted with that art, or not armed for it, it still retains all its ancient superiority:—in all cases it would be a valuable accessory to other weapons, without being an incumbrance, and serving for all the ordinary purposes of a knife.

The navaja (pronounced navakha ) is a clasp knife,—those worn by professed players are a foot long when closed. There is a spring to catch it behind, to prevent it closing on the hand. When opened there is the click as in cocking a pistol, and the sound is said to delight Andalusian equally with Irish ears. The art of fencing with it is called pelea de navaja . Pelea has been derived from πελέα , or πάλλος , of the Greeks; but I give it a higher origin. The Pelethites and the Cerethites served in the armies of Judæa; and though these were the names of two people, Hebrews seem to have borne subsequently that name. One of these passed into Greece as Cretan, and Creticus became synonymous with bowman. The Pelethites, doubtless, used some other weapon, and what it was the πελέα of the Greeks and the Pelea of the Spaniards plainly show. Not that the navaja came from Judæa: the word is Basque, an original term signifying to make smooth, as with a knife. Had it belonged to the Iberi it would have been Etruscan in all probability, and the Romans would not have called it Spanish. Manlius Torquatus, indeed, used it when the Romans had no connexion with Spain: so that it was in Italy, and of course amongst the remnants of the Siculi and Itali—if these, as I have supposed, were the same as the Hispani. It must have been preserved in the same manner as the Spanish cap and shoes of which Seneca speaks.

The single combat between Manlius Torquatus and the Gaul, occurred nearly two hundred years before the Romans set foot in Spain. The appearance of this barbarian in his armour appalled the Romans; and the champion, when found prepared for the combat, by laying aside his Roman armour, was armed by his companions with other weapons. The historian describes the combat as if—without understanding its peculiar feature, the mode of grasping the weapon —he were describing a Palea de navaja . “The Roman,” says Livy, “held his sword close to the thigh, with the point raised , getting under the Gaul’s shield, and too close for the stroke of his long sword; he then with a cut forwards and back, slit his belly and let out his bowels.” [336] This would have been impracticable with a sword held in the common manner, or with the “mucrone surrecto:” thus held it would merely have been plunged in; whereas it is the slicing of the navaja that he describes in the wound it made.

Livy, writing four hundred years after, explains in the ordinary language, the use of an instrument with which he was unacquainted. It may be objected that a Roman must have been conversant with the sword of a country with which the Romans had been so long at war, but with our armies in Spain, with so many military and scientific men, artists, and philosophers studying its customs, the “Pelea di navaja” has not been so much as noticed, even as a curiosity. Elsewhere Livy says, that the Spanish sword was more fitted to wound by its point than its edge: from its shortness sprang their agility. This is incompatible with the ancient sword, or modern fencing.

In the description of battles with the Spaniards, the sword is never mentioned as a weapon used by them, when attacking a heavy-armed body, or resisting its attack. On more than one occasion their defeat is attributed to their spears being broken, when they would be expected to draw their swords: no mention is made of their drawing swords, and having only the “navaja” and spear. They could not after the loss of the latter, stand against the united mass of the legion with their short swords, nor defend themselves against a charge of cavalry; but they appear to have been superior, man to man, to the Romans, [337] as these were to the Greek phalangite.

It was not an exchange of one sword for another, but adopting the Spanish knife as a supplementary weapon. Machiavelli remarks, that by the distribution of the Roman legion into three ranks, it had three times to be beaten before a battle could be won; and thus it would seem that it possessed three kinds of weapons, and three manners of using them to be employed before any one of the ranks could be ultimately broken.

This explanation meets all the difficulties of the case. The Spanish sword was adopted, yet the Roman is not laid aside, nor are these two swords spoken of conjointly. It accounts for the distinction between sword and knife, and explains the Greek term, as used by Polybius, and supports Dr. Arnold’s persuasion that in latter times the Pelites had a sword. A sword in the ordinary sense, they could not have had, for a sword requires a long shield, and then constituted the difference between the heavy and the light-armed. The nature of their tactics made swords superfluous. The Pelites advanced to skirmish and retreated through the intervals of the maniples, and formed again behind the legion. It was quite another thing to carry, as a protection for their persons, the Spanish navaja.

I do not imagine that this “Spanish sword,” as adopted by the Romans, was the clasp-knife. It is likely that the model of it is preserved in the lath foil still used in teaching, and which is the sacrificial knife. [338] No instrument can be better conceived for ripping up the bowels of a man, or for cutting the throat of an animal.

On my return to England, I was one day in the room of the British Museum, when Mr. Warshaw, of Copenhagen, brought some bronze instruments from a Celtic cairn; one of these I at once recognized as the “Spanish sword,” although the form was new to me. Symptoms of incredulity, as was natural, manifesting themselves, I asked the gentlemen present to handle the weapon. It was tried all round, and no one could grasp it so as to use it, in consequence of a sharp-turned hook from the hilt which prevented it from being held, either as a sword or a dagger; but which left space for the points of the fingers, as the Spaniards hold the navaja. I showed it to be what I said it was, by taking hold of it in the manner in which it had to be used. There are now four at the British Museum: they are of the Roman period, in bronze—in case 46, of the Bronze-room. One of them is fitted to go into a wooden socket, or handle, and is but one step from the clasp-knife.

Now at last, knowing what the Spanish sword was, I looked to the coins, and found one of the Carisia family, which, in the plates of Florey and Morel, have, together with other armour, an instrument resembling it. Fortunately, this coin is in the British Museum: it is in beautiful preservation, and there is the very weapon with the strange handle, which had been discovered by Mr. Warshaw. Here it is given as a Spanish weapon; and on the same coin are the other two distinguishing arms of Spain, the Lance and Cetra . The name of the former was taken by the testimony of the Romans, from the Spaniard: the second is mentioned as a Spanish weapon, and Cæsar uses it as a distinguishing sign. The name also is Spanish. [339] On this one coin we have the complete ancient armour of the Hispani.

In the centre of the cetra is a star with seven points. The Basque names for the days of the week show also the division by seven.

[335] “Taking the poniard, called Puntilla, by the blade, he poised it for a few moments, and jerked it with such unerring aim, on the bull’s neck, as he lay on his bent legs, that he killed the animal with the quickness of lightning.”— Doblado’s Letters , p. 156.

[336] “Pedestre scutum capit, Hispano cingitur gladio ad propiorem habili pugnam.”

“Ubi constitere inter duas acies, Gallus velut moles superne imminens projecto lævâ scuto, in advenientis arma hostis vanum, cæsim, cum ingente sonitu ensem dejecit. Romanus mucrone surrecto, cum scuto scutum imum perculisset, totoque corpore interior periculo vulneris factus, insinuasset se inter corpus armaque, uno alteroque subinde ictu ventrem atque inguina hausit, et in spatium ingens ruentem porrexit hostem.”— Livy , vii.

Τῶν δ’ Ἰβήρων καὶ Κέλτων ὁ μὲν θύρεος ἦν παραπλήσιος, τὰ δὲ ξίφη τὴν ἐνάντιον εἶχε διάθεσιν, τῆς μὲν γὰρ οὐκ ἔλαττον τὸ κέντημα τῆς διαφόρας ἴσχυε πρὸς τὸ βλάπτειν, ἡ δὲ Γαλατικὴ μαχαῖρα μίαν εἶχε χρείαν, τὴν ἐκ καταφόρας, καὶ αὐτὴν τὴν ἐξ ἀποστασέως .— Polyb. iii. 15.

[337] The author of Murray’s “Handbook” makes the Spaniards such dastardly foes, as to fly from the Romans, before they come in sight , and he quotes authorities too. “The very aspect,” says Seneca, himself a Spaniard, “of a Roman Legion, was enough, ' Hispani antequam legio visetur cedunt.’”— Handbook , p. 312.

What Seneca says is, that the Spaniards slaughtered the Germans before the Roman Legion came even in sight.

“Germanis quid est animosius, quid ad incursum acrius? Hos tamen Hispani Gallique et Asiæ Syriæque molles bello viri, antequam legio visatur cœdunt, ob nullam rem aliam opportunos quàm ob iracundiam.”— De Ira , lib. i. c. 11.

[338] In playing at lawn billiards, the Moorish children use the same for driving the ball, and hold it as the Spaniards do the navaja.

[339] The Spanish (Castilian dictionaries) do not give the word. In the Basque, it is claimed as their own.

“ Cetra , voz antigua Española y por esso Bascongada, aunque oy se ignore sa raiz. Cetra significaba broquel de cuero.”— Larramendi , Dic. Triling.

CHAPTER V.

THE DANCE.

Fourteen days at Seville sparkled through their course, but I neither counted hours nor felt fatigue. Time seemed to stand still, though the greater and lesser lights rose and set. In constant haste, yet in unbroken abstraction, the diversity of objects seemed to create fresh senses, and to feed exhausted strength. I knew no sleep, but was in a dream that never broke while I sojourned in this city—no, not city—this sea-shore—this forest of cedars—Alhambra—Island of the Cyclades—Vale of Tempe,—for such sort of habitation is fitted for such golden memories.

Its marvels were many; its mysteries were one, and that the dance. It was not the bolero of the streets, or the ballet of the boards, but a dance of reserve and tradition. I had not heard of it, and went not in search of it;—it broke upon me, and in a series of surprises.

“Would you like to see the Sevillian dances?” was asked me in a whisper, and, assenting, I found that it was no public performance to which I was recommended or invited, but a representation, in private, of dancers who did not appear on the stage. My natural question was, “Are these dances indecent?” The reply was,“No.” “Why, then, are they not performed in public?” and the answer, “The people would go mad.” I was told that they might be seen but could not be described, and a dancing-master would get the dancers and invite some friends.

At the time appointed, I was conducted up a crazy flight of stairs to a low-roofed room, some fifteen feet by thirty, paved with square, coarse, and ill-laid tiles; lighted with three or four common lamps, stuck in the plastered walls. There was a narrow bench all round, on which were seated men, women, and children of homely appearance. Though called a ball, none were to take part but the attired dancers—four girls, one of them a child—all bespangled and bedizened in white and pink, in satins and flowers. In Spain no preparation has to be made for music: the Greeks dance μετὰ στόμα , “with the mouth;” the Spaniards dance with mouth and palm, or castanet, which, if not in the dancer’s hand, vibrates in those of the spectators: they beat time with their hands and sing the choruses. Our music consisted of a single guitar. I was not without suspicions and misgivings respecting the nature of the performance; but although there was in the decked girls that conscious slouching gait of a wild animal that has a nature of its own, the gloom of the place, the meanness of the apartment, and the ungainly aspect of the morose assembly, discouraged the expectations that had been raised, and I would gladly have retreated.

The twang of the guitar was heard, the space cleared, and two of the dancers were balancing their bodies and wreathing their arms, and retreat was impossible. But it only was the fandango—no dexterity to astonish, no excesses to shock, no blandishments to seduce.

The fandango done, a mesclo succeeded—a sort of olla podrida or ballet, composed of gallegada, back to back, the Hola Aragonese, the seguadilla marchega with its strathspey time and step; the couples setting to each other, and the Highland snap and shout. This, too, was decorous, and I began to wonder what all the mystery had been about, and when would arise the madness we were to witness, and perchance to share.

The assembly had gradually fired—that fluid power which matter will, by motion, engender: the dancers gathered and discharged, and shock by shock the spectators vibrated to their motion, and trembled with their pulse. As speech is not teeth or tongue, but all the features; so is the dance not legs, but all the figure. We indeed look out on it by the eyes alone, and are pleased to be surprised with an effort, charmed with an attitude, enchanted by a form. There is here nothing of the sort, nor is it an “epic.” There is no “poem:” there may be a story; there is poetry; but it is neither our pantomime nor our ballet, any more than it is our zephyr groups or poses . These constitute our dancing, and if I were conveying my impressions by word of mouth, I would pause here, nor proceed until we had got at all the sources of gratification, which we either experience from dancing, or conceive to belong to it. Then I could show that the dance in Spain calls into play another set of nerves. Its fascination may be exerted without beauty, agility, or grace. Now I knew that ours was only prose, for I had learned metre.

With us the limbs move hither or thither, lifting the body about; the triumph of art is to veil the mechanism. The limbs are indeed exposed in their outline, but our ideal would be achieved if the body were to appear to rise and descend without their aid. The Spanish dance is an inward action; the limbs only manifest it. It is deep as a fountain—now sealed, and still now bubbling up with tremulous motion; now overflowing in devious courses, now bursting forth in wild contortions, then arrested, and returning to its source. Gesture is its voice, movement its sound: it fills the air, settles on the beholder: it is felt not seen, and might be perceived with the eyes shut, if you could but close them. The ecstacies it produces, and which astound the stranger by their vehemence and delicacy—by a frenzy that has rules, and a passion that glows but does not burn, arises from this, that the performance is not witnessed but shared. Compared to our dancing, it is as expression to grimace—the living countenance to a pasteboard mask. The Spanish—no, the Iberian—the Phrygian—dancer before me sought not to float in air: she belonged to earth, and envied neither the bird his wing, nor the cloud its texture. She could pause, stand, stamp, plant herself—then defy. This is no part pantomime, but all dance: the earth, not the air, was her element: it was to her what it is to the wrestler, to the statue, to the antelope, to the tree.

But I anticipate.—What I have said was suggested by two dances which were reserved—the ole and the beto , and which are no more to be conceived by the fandango, than that is by a pas de fascination in a ballet. Borrowing a hat—the Spanish broad-brimmed, high-peaked, festooned hat—the dancer places it on her head, tosses and shifts it; beats with her foot, toe, heel; squares her arms: as a snake’s, her body undulates: she looks round, watches, tosses her head again, snorts, sniffs the air. Is it instinct—is it passion—is it a foe—is it a rival? will she fly—will she charge—are they weapons she prepares, or charms?

That figure, which at the distance of the remote seats of a theatre, would have appeared motionless and, by its grotesque attire, might have awakened merriment—has now riveted every glance. The guitar’s tones partake of the disorder, and give forth—so to speak—a sympathetic provocation. She starts, wavers, selects, and springs upon her foe. It is the bull in the arena! One by one, she runs at Picador and Chulo, falters, swerves, and runs upon another. Peals of merriment follow each feint. When her choice is fixed, the contortions, as she approaches, subside, the limbs are subdued, defiance changes to fascination, and the bull becomes the woman. A handkerchief is spread on the ground as she advances: she places her foot on it; stooping, the knee is bent; she pauses, then slightly raising the heel, moves it to and fro, while pinching, with forefinger and thumb, the bosquina at the knee, and lifting it twice or thrice. Heads and shoulders press forward to witness this ceremony, and as she bounds away, hats and jackets are cast upon the ground, amidst a burst of intoxication, and a chorus of “Salero! Salero!” whilst the happy swain, the object of these attentions, gathers up the handkerchief, on which her foot has been placed, and treasures its dust in his bosom.

Here is a history—here are rites and rules, mysteries to me and to themselves. It was the bull, but it was something more too. Is it the horned Isis or the Minotaur? But the ludus did not end here. After skipping around and between, and avoiding or sparing the sombreros (hats), [340] she suddenly rushed at one of them, and,—what shall I say?— gored it ;—she sprang upon, and pounded it with her feet—left it—returned to it again, to toss the prostrate foe: approaching its owner, her victim, as the bull,—as the woman, taking from her head the hat which she had worn, and crowning him with it—“King of the lists.” This was the dénouement of the dance—or game, or ceremony, or orgy, or myth, or combat—call it which you will.

“Salero” thrilled through me. The interpretation was unknown. It is inexplicable, and like the “hugmeneh” of the Highlands—the Phrygian cry of which I had found in Barbary the interpretation—of what could “salero” [341] remind one, if not the Salii ?

That the motions of animals should have suggested primitive dances is but natural; and what animal could more entrance the Spanish spirit than the bull? It is not a passion of yesterday: we have the bullring on early Etruscan vases. I have since found a confirmation of this idea in the dances of New Holland so striking, that I subjoin a description from an eye-witness. [342]

In contrasting Spanish and European dancing, I have put gesture aside, as no part of the former; but, in fact, we have no gesture. There is more in the turn of a gipsy’s head, and the wave of her arm, than in all the practising of the ballerinas.

The Andalusians have a peculiar manner of rendering “the body’s gait.” They say, “ Aire e meneo ;” the nearest approach to which is, “air and mien:” but the nearer the words the farther the sense;—meneo (from meneh , the Sabæan festival,) is not our processional gait, but the cadenced flow of the long and graceful line as it undulated over strewed flowers, between lifted palms and burning censers.

The Reformation is attributed to the study of the classics. The classics themselves must have been still more rational. How, then, did the old worship stand so long, shamed by the life of the Christian, and stained by the blood of the martyr? The world then was neither devout nor ignorant: the sceptic taught in the schools, the scoffer entered the sanctuary. The phenomenon was now explained, or rather—comprehending somewhat of the spell which bound the senses of Greek and Roman—I perceived the problem by the solution. Seeing what dancing could be, even as divested of all pomp, circumstance, and honour, I could imagine what in all its branches must have been that religion of art, that “worship of the beautiful,” which we hold at once to be the glory and the shame of Greece.

We only understand vice as the antagonist of Christianity: assailed by vice, it was itself the assailant of “art;”—thus did Mars and Jupiter reign long as statues, if not as gods.

But an esthetic life of sentiment was not alone engendered. These excellences were part of the institutions of the land. The songs of Tyrtæus had their chorus; from the games of Elis the Greeks repaired to Marathon, nor had they lost the Pyrrhic phalanx, had they saved the Pyrrhic dance. The interval is not great with the patriarchs and worthies of Israel. What would sound more Pagan, if we listened for the sense, than David dancing before the ark? We read it with an awkward feeling—half ridicule, half reproach. [343] It is we who have reduced the dance to an amusement, or an exhibition; we have chased away every thought not trivial or mercenary; we have left to it no occasion to be grave, and suffer it in no ceremony that is solemn. Nowhere, but here, is there a rent in that heavy veil, which has for nearly two thousand years shrouded the memory of that wonderful union of the harmonies of sound and gesture, which was the charm of the ancient world.

The descriptions of mythological ceremonies, the investigation of ancient history, the turning over the pages of poets for seductive images, the pacing of galleries for noble forms, the indulging in the reveries of the sea-shore, or the mountain-side—all these could not furnish what that Sevillian room, floored with brick, supplied.

Seville preserves the Hebrew ceremony as well as the Pagan orgy. On the Saturday evening before Easter, and during the following se’nnight, a dance is performed in front of the high altar, by youths in the old Spanish dress, sky-blue satin and white muslin, high-crowned hat of blue, with a white and flowing plume. The music of the cathedral is replaced by an orchestra, by the rails of the altar. The dancers are seated facing each other, on each side the altar. The music of the cathedral ceases. After a pause, the band of worldly instruments strikes up a valtz or a cachouca; presently the voices of the boys join; then they start to their legs. The song is a lyric composition: they sing and dance together, moving solemnly through a variety of figures. The music is in two or three metres, like the Greek chorusses. The first act completed, they return to their seats. The second is more animated, for by word of command they place their hats on their heads, and then the rattling of the castanets, which hitherto have been silent and concealed in their hands, is heard through the aisles, and this terminates a performance solemn and impressive to the Andalusian, which to our ideas would be nothing short of sacrilege or insanity.

In the midst of another scene—a bull-fight—the dance is thus described by M. Quinet:—“Scarcely had the mules dragged out the carcasses, when the sound of castanets was heard; the barrier was opened again, and a long train of dancers entered, divided into groups according to the provinces of Spain: each wore the costume of their own province: the Basque with long flowing hair upon their shoulders; the Valencians (half Arabs) with a plaid; the Catalonians with their large embroidered belt; the Aragonese with their dark mantles; but the most brilliant and gorgeous are the Andalous, with their large hats and light jackets, embroidered in a thousand colours, and with intermingled points of steel. The troop pass along with pomp; the people gaze on them with pride; and on the still warm and bloody earth the dance commences. The fandango and bolero balance each other with a characteristic monotony, recalling the noble simplicity of the ancient vases. From carelessness to gravity; from gravity to languor; from languor to intoxication and the exhaustion of passion. There is the moment at which the whole assembly is struck. Each Andalous dancer stoops to the earth, as if to gather flowers for the head of his partner, and immediately after he leans his head upon his hand, his elbow on the shoulder of the Andalusian—and he remains immoveable. I know not if this is one of the ordinary features of the dance, or if it was a sudden thought; but this single movement seized instantaneously the ten thousand spectators: they rose at once, and a burst of enthusiasm came forth such as I have never before heard. There was not one man of the people who did not feel to the bottom of his soul this poetry without words; and all the provinces of Old Spain were again confounded together in that instant. The crowd disappeared and I remained alone in the vast amphitheatre, fixed to my seat. This mixture of murder and of grace—of enchantment, of carnage, and of dance, have left me overwhelmed with stupor: I still see this blood, these smiles, these horrible gashes and odious agonies, the thrill of the fandango, and that Andalusian that stops to dream.”

Of what other country of Europe could such things be written? To admire or to comprehend is quite enough at one time; and it is seldom that we can at once enjoy both these gratifications. Let those who can admire Spain be content, nor spoil that pleasure by the hopeless attempt to comprehend her.

[340] A Matadore is in like manner complimented, by hats being thrown into the arena.

[341] When I asked the meaning of it, all they could say, was, that it meant “salt.” Mr. A. Dumas, who has given, if not an accurate description of the dance, at least a vivid delineation of his own sensations, has, from thinking salero to be nonsense, written salado , and makes the performers be gratified by being called “ très salées .” He is the only writer who has published this mystery.

[342] “After rest and refreshment, they began another dance, in which a portion of them, taking tufts of grass in their mouths, imitated the actions of the kangaroo. After quietly feeding and hopping about for a while like the kangaroos, they were followed by the rest of the party, who in their real characters began to creep after the kangaroos to surprise them. The ludicrous bounds and manœuvres of pursuit and escape were quite astonishing, and the act ended by the pretence of putting one of the representatives of the captured kangaroos on the fire to be roasted. This they called the kangaroo dance: they then gave us the emu dance, in which—with one arm raised to form the neck of the bird, the hand twisted to represent the head—with the body stooped, they went through all the actions of this bird, and with the most amazing effect.”

“I asked the king what this dance meant, and he pointed to the moon then full above our head, and said, ‘good to black fellow.’ No doubt he would have proceeded to acknowledge that the ceremony was in honour of the moon, had not one of the others who had stood his grog better than king Caboa, stepped up and said, ‘New Zealandman’s dance.’ He meant the name to mislead, for they are very secret in all their religious ceremonies.”

[343] In the synagogues of Morocco, the congregation, when the name of God occurs, spring up and down on their toes in token of rejoicing. The first time I saw this I was utterly confounded.

CHAPTER VI.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF CANAAN AND MOROCCO.

What we consider in architecture is form or order. The masonry of Rome and her teachers, the Etruscans, of the Pelasgi, the Cyclopes, the Druids, and the Egyptians, present us with colossal and imperishable monuments. These depend entirely on mathematical principles and mechanical adjustments, because stone alone was used, nor have we any idea of another manner of building. There was, however, still another race than these, which delighted in lofty towers and massive walls, who, without stones, built Babel and Babylon.

The first point in architecture is, therefore, the material, and by that originally used must its subsequent forms and order have been established. We have, indeed, kept this primary condition in view, and carried our application of it to the most extravagant excess. The cave of the Trogloditæ, the timber origin of the Hindoo, Ancient Persian, and the Greek, the essentially rock origin of the Cyclopic, have been fully illustrated; and applying our rule in every case whence we had not a natural original, we created it. We have caused the Gothic to spring out of the interlacing branches of the forests of the North. Warburton [344] was, I think, the first who put forward this extravagance, supporting it by historical suggestions which consisted in anachronisms; but the same proposition recurs over and over again, as it furnishes a theme for that sort of stilted composition which has become the staple of the recent trade of book-making on art. [345]

Architecture moulds itself into the shapes of things in use for building ; it does not copy the independent works of nature. The column and entablature, the volute, abacus and plinth, are imitations in stone of the woodwork of primitive huts; they are not copies of the growing tree. The origin of the Gothic is still to find; an earlier material than stones is to be looked for; and if we would go back to the origin, we must figure to ourselves the art of building as devised for defence, before descending to embellishments, or to the lowly habitations out of which those temples arose, which have been distributed into and constitute the five orders of architecture.

The Arameans, the elder branch of the human family and the inheritors of early light, first occupied and permanently retained that fertile and well-watered region, which lies between the great limbs of the earth and the subdivisions of the ocean. There, neither strong positions were to be found, nor stones to be procured for the construction of defences. Their very existence depended upon the invention of a process by which the earth itself could be converted into walls. The soil containing a large proportion of alumine, durable walls might be made from it without the aid of any art, save that of beating and ramming down. Factitious stones might be obtained, or the mass formed at once by cases into a wall. Against injury from rain they had ready to their hand a preservative, in the bitumen with which the country abounded, and with which they cemented the bricks and besmeared the walls. [346]

These walls, whether made in pieces (brick) or in blocks, were however soft and perishable without the aid of fire, which gives brick (burnt) and lime two compositions, of which, like air and water, we do not know the value, by enjoying constantly their use. These discoveries I imagine to have been connected with the sacrifice as practised by the early Arameans. The Jews were forbidden to make an altar of stone, and when they set up stones, they were forbidden to raise on them a tool of iron . [347] They were, moreover, ordered to make the altar of earth , [348] and traces of this practice are to be found elsewhere, as among the Phrygians [349] and the Greeks.

The varieties of soil would thus expose to the fire, in various combinations, alumine, silex, carbonate and sulphate of lime (selenite). The blood flowed on it, and—as in the case of Jupiter Olympius—it was plastered over with the ashes. In the alluvial plains of Mesopotamia, these altars must have been of brick in the mountainous districts, where alabaster as well as limestone abounded—gypsum and lime. At once would the substance of plaster be known, and the manner of using it, and, probably, lime was similarly treated, and thence the strength of ancient mortar. Vitruvius directs it to be mixed with ashes, [350] as it must have been in the plastering of these earth-altars.

Having thus obtained lime, it was used as the discovery suggested that it should be; that is, to harden the earth-walls themselves—not to cement stones. They would soon discover that gypsum had to be set up in moulds, hardening at once of its own accord; but that lime, mixing with the earth, or with gravel, acquired consistency by being rammed down. The varieties so presented are infinite, from the rudest, the cheapest, and the most perishable walls, to the most costly and durable ramparts; and these could so be raised without machinery or science, yet affording a strength to resist the besieging operators of those times, of a height to surpass all means of assault, and of a durability that has defied Time itself. The Devonshire cobwalls and the Normandy pisé afford examples of the first;—common earth bound together, in default of lime, with chopped straw; while in the old Moorish tower of Gibraltar is a specimen of the last, a concrete possessing greater power of resistance to shot than any discovery which has been made since the introduction of artillery.

When I first saw the ruins of the Phœnician city of old Tangier, which is a rough-looking wall (the opus incertum of the Romans), such as might be built by a very rude people in our times, I could not believe it to be Phœnician; but upon further examination of such ruins, and when I came to consider the nature of the soil where these structures were raised, and the merit attached to the first application of this most important material— lime —I found in that very coarseness an evidence of the high antiquity of these walls, and of the ingenuity of this people; and felt that we were indebted to them for a substance become of primary necessity.

A captive, employed as the Jews in Egypt were, has thus described the task of the Christian slaves in Morocco:

“Our work and daily labour was continually building of houses and walls: the material and method is so very foreign, and will appear strange to my countrymen. Here there are boxes of wood, of dimensions according to pleasure: these we fill with earth powdered, and lime and gravel well beat together and tempered with water ; and when full, we remove the box according to order, and withdraw the box planks, and leave this matter to dry, which will then acquire an incredible degree of hardness and is very lasting, for we have seen walls of some hundred years’ standing, as we are informed, and all that time has not been able to do them any prejudice. The king himself (what reason for his humour may be we never had the curiosity to ask him) will sometimes vouchsafe to work in the lime and dirt for an hour together, and will bolt out an encouraging word to the slaves there, viz., as I remember, 'God send you to your own countries;’ but I judge he either does not speak from his heart, or else he hopes God will not answer the prayer of such a wretch as himself.” [351]

Livy mentions the Wall of Saguntum as similarly constructed; and Pliny speaks of the “forms” which they used for ramming down the materials in constructing them. He confines the practice to Mauritania and Spain. In these two countries it has still one and the same name, Tapia . In Hebrew and in Egyptian teb is the word which we translate “brick;” it also signifies “box.” The name has been derived from the mould. The hieroglyphic for teb is a foot and a hand.

No doubt from this word the name of the great city of Egypt, Thebes, is derived. I am aware that Sir Gardnor Wilkinson derives it from ap , or ape , meaning the head or capital of the country; but tab is much nearer to Thebes than ap or ape ; and I am not aware that any city ever received its name from the head; whereas the most common of etymons for cities—at least among Arameans, is the defences which distinguish them from the inhabitants of the Tents. [352]

The derivatives from this word are extraordinary from their number, and the languages through which they spread, and vouch for the importance of the object to which it was applied, and the antiquity of the language in which it was used. The Turkish has taken from it its word for fortress —“ tabia ,”—and for mound ,—“ tepe .” The Arabic preserves it in its pure sense—the Spanish derives from it tapar to close, and tapeti a covering;—whence in the French we have taper and tapis ;—in English we have tapestry , tap , which has been probably derived from the original teb ; we have [353] tub and tube . The Greeks have taken from it τύπος , and thence τύπτω ; whence the string of European derivatives, type , typify , &c., ταπεινὸς , humble, i.e. beaten down; also, ταφὸς , tomb, from the association of this mode of building with that of tombs. [354]

About the time that the Hebrews were taking Jericho, the Phœnicians were carrying on their commercial enterprises to the west. By this irruption into Canaan, an immense mass of colonists was placed at their disposal; and to this event in all probability is to be attributed the number and importance of their settlements. They are supposed to have reached the Northern Ocean, and especially to have had their settlements in Britain, as is indeed proved by the names still preserved in Devonshire and Cornwall. In those two counties the tapia of Morocco is still used in building, though the species is of that inferior order in which lime is not used; or if used at all, merely for the coating—the tempering with lime of Ezekiel. In deriving it from the Phœnicians, difficulty presents itself in the name: it is called cob :—this word is neither Teutonic, nor Celtic, Greek, nor Latin, Hebrew nor Arabic. It was after long research that the origin of it occurred to me in a word that I was in the daily habit of using, and which is the common name given in Morocco to a tomb—which is Cubbe. Many English derivatives show that cob meant both “wall” and “beating.” Cobweb , the web and the wall; cobden , hole in the wall; cobler , one making frequent use of the hammer; cobbing , a school-boy term for thrashing with a knotted handkerchief, besides many others— Cobbett — Cobham ,— cob as applied to a breakwater—Lyme cob .

Cubbe designates indeed a tomb; but it might equally be rendered, building, or wall: for the cubbe are the only buildings which appear throughout the Western regions of Africa. Although the word will be found in no Arabic dictionary, it is not likely that cob , the Devonshire name for the material from which the Moorish cubbe is built, should have been given by mere chance. As the dictionary affords no clue, we must endeavour to trace them back constructively.

Bochart accounts for the story of a tomb of Hecuba, in Sicily, by supposing that the Greeks, seeing some Phœnician tomb, and inquiring what the building was, were answered, “ Beth Hacub , suprema domus .” The meaning of Beth they could not mistake, and Hacub could only be the unhappy consort of Priam. Sir W. Hamilton does justice to this explanation in a rigid criticism of the author. If Beth Hacub were so employed, the contraction to the last syllable is quite natural; and as the tombs in Britain would be built of Tapia, the natives would call that substance by the same name—Cub—cob; as the Phœnicians themselves may have contracted it. The contraction has remained in Britain applicable to walls when built of this material—in Africa to the tombs which are their buildings.

As each promontory in Sicily had its fable connected with a tomb, the interpretation of which forms one of the most interesting chapters of “ Pheleg ,” the tomb must have been, as here now, the feature of the landscape. The figure, at once the most simple and complex—the cube, the dome, the arch, and spandril, all combined, doubtless has remained unchanged. Such, then, were those tombs scattered through Greece, and which we hear of as “Phrygian,” a people which I think I shall be able to prove to be identical with the ancient inhabitants of Morocco; and to them Solon must have referred when he forbade tombs to be built with “ arched roofs .”

The dominant form is the cube; but this is the very word! It has been attempted to derive cube from Caaba. Here is a distinction without a difference. [355] From the Greek κύβος we have the term all the way downwards in every western language. Thus, the building has supplied the general name to Europe for its figure, to Devonshire for its substance, and in Morocco has remained with its primitive meaning, substance and figure.

The mistranslation of the Greeks respecting Hecuba, receives a curious confirmation from a grotesque mistake of the French: they call these buildings marabouts , and speak and write about marabouts as if it really were either an Arabic or a French name for Cubbe. [356] Marabouts are men, and they are sometimes honoured with such a tomb. [357] The Greeks, hearing the name of the building, applied it to a supposed inmate; the French, being told the name of the inmate, applied it to the edifice.

Pisé evidently comes from πιέζω , [358] to squeeze or break; and the Phoceans, the allies of the Phœnicians, monopolised the commerce of Gaul. It is to be inferred that Cob is Phœnician; but the word is at present unknown, nor are there traces of it in the ancient language.

Moors, like the Jews, as shown in Ezekiel’s parable, “temper” the earth with lime. The durability depends upon the amount of beating, and the quantity of lime; and the expense is, of course, in proportion. No ancient buildings of mere earth remain; but still in Africa, though rarely, earth alone is used: in one very important portion of their architecture the three methods are all employed together, namely, earth—earth and lime mixed, and pure lime. This is for the flat roofings of their houses, and is a matter of the greatest difficulty; in fact, the very word architecture is derived from the process of roofing; and they celebrate the covering-in of the houses with ceremonies analogous to those which we employ in laying the foundation stone. Over the wood-work earth is first beaten down, then a layer of earth and lime, and then the pure lime: each layer is separately beaten. They use a small paviour’s mallet: they work by gangs, and strike in cadence with short stroke, singing in concert, and producing a strange melody, that resounds through the neighbourhood of their silent cities, startling the echoes with a melancholy, but not unpleasing note, which recalls the tones of “Adria’s gondolier;” but the words convey simpler thoughts, and a more devotional spirit. One strain runs thus:

They also apply their incantation to the case, as it may be. The traveller in Spain is often greeted by a change in the metre and words of the song, and the salutation is conveyed in their simple and pleasing extempore verse. The owner of a house visiting the work may in like manner be welcomed with such a strain as this:

The distinction between the Aramean and the other primitive races seems to have been maintained for a couple of thousand years; but at the mixture of nations by the great conquests of the Macedonians and the Romans, we find the use of lime extending to the others, and the chiseled stones adopted by the Arameans. It is in the works of the western or Moorish branch that has been preserved the type to our day; and they have excelled all other people in the grandeur and durability of their military architecture; and, with the exception of the polygonal and cyclopic, they have embodied with their own every species of ancient building. [359]

We thus identify with the Arameans, block walls, plaster of Paris, bricks and lime; and while it is to be expected that these various processes should be carried by them whither they emigrated, or taught by them to the people among whom they established colonies, or whom they instructed in the arts and sciences, still are we not to look for these as combined in one general system, but as severally or partially adopted according to the character of the surface of the country, or the nature of its soil, or as associated with the kinds of masonry already in use. In one country, however, the whole of the processes which I have noticed are still to be found. Not one is wanting; and they still possess that excellence of early structure which we have lost in Europe. In the villages round Tangier the walls are built of sunburnt brick exactly of the shape and dimensions of those of Babylon.

We have united in the origin as one whole, thick tapia walls, lofty towers, and tesselated pavements. Pliny mentions the introduction of the tesselated pavement after the third Punic war. The Greeks had before them employed pavements; and this word which we associate with stone [360] comes from pavire , to ram down, and could have no reference to stone, but must have been the tapia of Canaan.

When these artificers removed to countries where the soil was no longer aluminous, they would doubtless, although there were stones to build with, cling to their own fashion, as their buildings and the apertures would of necessity depend, not on the adjustment of the blocks, but on the adhesion of the walls. They clung also to their lofty towers even when they could build on strong and naturally defensible positions. Thus we find the Jews gratified by being permitted to build lofty towers, and these have been the work of predilection of the sovereigns of Morocco and of Spain.

This ramming into cases explains also the rectangular forms of all their buildings: round towers are very ancient and very Eastern: those of the Hindoo were round. The primeval architecture, still preserved in Sardinia, delighted in round towers, so also those of Ireland were round. The vitrified forts [361] were round, so that this form distinguishes the Arameans from the Hindoos on the East, the Celts on the North, and the Aboriginal population of Europe on the West. The early Mussulmans borrowed in the minaret the Minar of the Persians, but in the Sma [362] of Barbary the original form was maintained. The two are seen struggling and combined in the mosques of Cairo, as in the early cathedrals of Europe. In Morocco bricks are used of all the shapes, and in all the varieties in which we find them in the East. At Carteia I found the grooved bricks of Ancient Arabia. Plaster of Paris is in like manner used for building; and in Suez large portions of the houses are set up at once, cast in moulds; and, lastly, there is the block wall in all its varieties, from the earth rammed to the concrete of mortar and earth, and of mortar and stones, exactly like that which, constructed two or three thousand years ago, still stands as fresh as upon the day of erection. In fact, these block walls are to-day as perfectly Moorish as the horse-shoe arch, the arabesque ornament, or the haïk.

The reason assigned by Herodotus for the selection of brick by Asychis, the successor of Mycerinus, for building his pyramid—namely, that it was more honourable than granite, as showing the power of earth, has occasioned in our times no small astonishment, and has received no explanation. After what I have said the explanation will be self-evident; and it is not absolutely decided whether these structures were raised by princes of Egyptian or Semetic blood. I think that the inscription [363] and the story go further than any positive statements of the Greek historian could have gone to give a shepherd origin to them.

When the Hebrews returned to Canaan, the first obstacle they met with was the walls of Jericho, an obstacle such as to baffle their natural means and acquired skill; nor is it to be supposed that they were destitute of the means of attacking such defences; but the walls of Jericho were remarkable in a country of walled towns, [364] and the name of “moon,” which Jericho signified, might have reference to their height, [365] which a special interposition was required to overthrow. The Jews built with stones, and with enormous ones, as the siege of Jerusalem and ruins still extant attest; and they had also, as well as the Canaanites, burnt bricks. David burnt the Ammonites in their own kilns [366] at Rabbah. Ezekiel says, [367] “And one built up a wall, and, lo, others daubed it with untempered mortar. Say unto them which daub it with untempered mortar, that it shall fall. There shall be an overflowing shower.” These words have to us no meaning, but they prove that building in tapia or cob was the common practice of Judæa.

The great event in the early history of the Jews is the Egyptian captivity. The representatives of the Arameans were here in contact with the most remarkable builders of the other races. The task of the Jews was building: it was not masonry—it was not hewing in quarries or adjusting blocks, but building with earth: the expression used in Scripture may be interpreted as applying either to small or larger case-bricks, or entire walls. In the Egyptian paintings we see Jews [368] or Arameans occupied in the performance of their task, and the red men, the Egyptians, the task-masters over them. Here, however, it is burnt bricks we see: the clay is weighed, beaten into moulds, carried to the furnace blue, and brought back red. The Jews, therefore, had introduced this method. The soil of Egypt was not adapted for the block wall or sun-burnt brick, whilst the silex fitted it for burning.

Thus having got the materials, let us see how they were used in the construction of their ordinary dwellings. The Greek Triclinium-room was copied by the Romans. The Moors have also a form of room, but the method is different. The Greek house, as the Turkish, was a variable aggregate of integers, which were invariable. No light came from the door or from the side in which it was, and by which the room adjoined to the body of the house. From the side opposite to the door—that is the top—came the light from contiguous windows, as in the oriel windows of the Middle Ages. The rooms were, therefore, struck out to catch the light, and the house was like a bunch of crystals, united at the base, no account being taken, in building it, of the exterior form, which depended on the accidental arrangement and size of the rooms, the proportions of which were invariable.

With the Moors it is exactly the reverse. Their building was a square of dead walls: the rooms were made to fit that form, and their light came by the door and the door alone: the door is in the length of the room, and divides it into two equal parts. Under the tent they were encamped always ready to march—in their houses they were fortified, ever in a state of defence. Their breccia they struck out into archways, or pierced with open works; but windows were as little known to them as stirrups to the Greeks or Romans. From this court, in the centre, come the lights. I need not repeat what I have already said respecting it, which the reader will find in the account of a Jewish house at Arzela.

A Moorish house was made in the style of a cavern or grotto, and its pendulous interior fret-work strikes every one as something resembling the stalactites of a cave ( πετρήρεφες, αὐτοκτίτ’ ἄντρα ). The weight, therefore, of the roof, and the deficiency of timber, conjoined to maintain that original structure of long narrow rooms adjoining the court-yard, which originated in the materials of their building and the necessities of their defence, and which were admirably adapted to their climate, and suited to the habit which it engendered of living in community.

As the room of the Turks presents to us the Triclinium of the Greeks, so do the houses of Morocco the dwellings of the Hebrews, and furnish the explanation of obscure passages in the Scriptures: to the Moorish houses as exactly applies every term having reference to houses or buildings, as those having reference to clothing do to the Moorish dress.

The Hebrews originally dwelt in tents. When they returned from Egypt they found the Holy Land filled with fenced cities. They came from the wilderness as the Arabs now do into Suez from the Sahara. They adopted the settled manners of the people, but tribes identified with them, such as the Kenites and Rechabites, continued to live under tents. The domestic architecture of the Jews was thus properly Canaanitish, and is in Morocco what it was in the Holy Land when the Jews entered.

The Arab under his tent, and the Breber in his solid house of tapia, with its square towers, picture to the life the period of Caleb and Joshua. This architecture, transferred to Morocco nearly three thousand years ago, has here continued to subsist, while it has been extinguished—utterly blotted out in Judæa. It required the protecting mounds of ruins to preserve the fashions of the chambers of the Assyrian kings, which have lived through all this course of ages unharmed by the breath of heaven or the hand of man, in Tetuan and Tangier.

Spain had not her tapia from the Saracens, as already shown; she received it, and with it her architecture, from the same sources as Morocco. We are informed by St. Isidore that, in the fifth century, the Goths had adopted the same mode of building—of course from the Iberians, who are the source of most things which we are so fond of calling Saracenic in Spain, whether architecture, blood, manners, or words. Like Judæa, Spain—though not to the same extent—had lost her original type, and Morocco remained, at the time of the Saracen conquest, the treasure-house of the ancient world, and the museum of human history.

That Morocco did continue in the usufruct of this inheritance, may be seen in the buildings they immediately commenced in Spain, and in the accounts handed down of the splendour of the buildings of Morocco, in the first days of Islamism.

If this architecture of Judæa can be understood and explained by the existing buildings in Morocco, does the converse hold? Would the description of Moorish architecture apply to the buildings of Judæa? Do we, in fact, in looking upon the Alcazars and Alhambras, behold the image of the Palace of Hiram or the Temple of Solomon? That question I cannot answer in the affirmative. There is nothing described of the buildings of Judæa that is not to be found in those of Morocco; but there is that in those of Morocco which, had it existed in Judæa, could not have failed to have been described. The descriptions of the buildings in Spain, if they disappeared, would not correspond with those of Judæa. The architecture of Canaan has undergone a change in the West.

That which attracts attention to the Moresque and awakens enthusiasm, is the tracery upon the walls, the pensile figures of the arches, and the domes with their colours. To these no reference is made in ancient writers, and of them no trace has been preserved; yet are they embellishments too striking not to be observed, and too beautiful to have been lost in such an age. Had there been an Alhambra at Jerusalem or at Tyre, we should have found something like it on the banks of the Nile, where the Jews raised their rival temple; in the Baths of Lucullus or in the Palaces of Antioch. Greek Virtuosi then were spread over all these regions, and there were the Ptolemies collecting all the stores of art and literature, who garrisoned fortresses with the Jews, and who were spurred on by envy of Tyre and rivalry with Carthage.

We have, then, two points most distinctly made out—first, that the substance of the walls, and the structure of the edifices, the roofing, the wood-painting, of Judæa, corresponded with those of Morocco. Secondly, that the embellishments of vivid and varied colours, and the delicate lace-work, known as Arabesque, did not exist in Judæa.

The latter constitutes, to our eyes, the Moorish architecture, but, from what I have said, it will appear that it is but a garment over it. When, then, was it added thereto? by whom was it invented? where was it first applied? It is one of the greatest efforts that has been ever made; it is enough to make an epoch. We must look for it in some period of greatness, of some seat of empire, under some prince pre-eminent in all the attributes which can command the admiration of men. We turn to Damascus—to the Caliphat: we have no traces of it there, and no relic. The earliest monuments eastward are found at Alexandria, and then only in fragments; and there is neither the thing nor the type. Did it, then, spring up on the soil of Spain, in that favoured region? No. We find it in the very earliest monuments of the Moors. When they entered Spain, it was already formed and complete.

It was, therefore, in Morocco, that the architecture of Judæa underwent those changes, expanded into those graceful forms, and robed itself in those rainbow colours.

There are natural features and primitive habits which suggest or account for each of these modifications—features so striking that they could not fail to be observed, and so beautiful that they must have been copied: these I have described as they presented themselves to me. The types which I found in nature or in practice are of the stalactitic, dome, and arch,—the horseshoe arch, the tracery on the wall, the diversified colouring of that tracery, the half-globe dome upon the cube; and these, in fact, are the modifications that the architecture of Judæa received, and by which it has been converted into the Moorish.

On the material the system of architecture depended, and it is wholly different from the classic. The great styles of antiquity depended, not on the adhesion of the stones, but their form and weight, and by science alone they obtained arches. Thus the perpendicular key-stone of the Egyptians, Etruscans, and Romans, the horizontal and narrowing circle of the Pelasgi, the massive rocks carved and transported by the Egyptians, the inclining jamb of the Cyclops (Tyrius and Lamos), the column and entablature of the Greek, all depended on mechanical science, and, therefore, the form of the passage through a wall, became a distinctive feature of a race. The tapia, by its adhesion, constituted as it were a rock in the form of a dwelling; they required no mechanical adjustments to obtain the openings,—they could make them at pleasure; square, or with a semicircular or pointed arch or a horse-shoe. They dug through the walls; so, in like manner, could they carry them to any height, and build them for any number of ages. Hence, the square, massive solidity of the Moorish structure; hence, the absence of all exterior lines of architecture for embellishments; hence, the ornaments of the material itself; hence, the bold facility and the endless variety which they gave to their arches; hence, the rich decorations and lightness of the interior contrasted with the exterior rudeness and gravity; hence, the adornment of that interior by tesselated pavements and variegated walls.

Here was architecture in its essence: the covering-in of the top, the erecting of the wall, was the work of barrow-men. The carpenter, the craftsman was required for laying on the beams, and making the terrace water-tight. Within, the roof is as important as without; for as it is upon the roof that depends the durability, and I may say, solidity of the structure, so in the roof consists the chief embellishment of the apartment.

Nothing is weak—nothing frittered away. Simple, but never rude; unadorned, but never base; severe, and yet in the highest degree attractive; the Æschylean Majesty of the Doric order is the very highest conception that even Grecian art could realize. The contemplation, even in the meanest engraving, of one of its matchless porticos, in all the stern grace of the column, capital, and cornice, is absolutely overwhelming. And this climax of pure dignity, this expression of heathendom in its noblest form, this embodied καλὸν , such as the Hellenic mind only could compass, we are gravely told was borrowed from the hideous and unmeaning monstrosities of the race who paid divine honours to the lowest vermin, and whom their gardens supplied with appropriate objects of veneration! [369]

Coleridge, by transferring into our language something of the verbal chemistry of Kant, prompted combinations of terms as if they had been compounds of simple elements; he did not give new substances, but conferred the facility of travelling out of reality. Wordsworth, using the objects of art and nature as suggesting devotional thoughts, diverted the mythology of the Greeks to the service of the faith, and thought it a conquest. Thus by peopling the forest, the cave, the vault, and the spire with mystic beings, and supplying them with hidden meanings, he contributed his part to theirs.

[344] “The Goths who conquered Spain in 470, becoming Christians, endeavoured to build their churches in imitation of the spreading and interlacing boughs of the groves in which they had been accustomed to perform their pagan rites in their native country of Scandinavia, and they employed for this purpose Saracen Architects, whose exotic style suited their purpose.”— Warburton .

[345] “The soaring nave of a Gothic minster, in the clustered and banded stalks of its lofty pillars, the curling leaves of its capitals and cornices, the interlacing arches of its fretted vault, the interminable entwinings of its tracery, the countless hues that sparkle from roof, and chapiter, and wall, and window, recall no work of man, indeed—no tent, or hut, or cavern, but the sublimest temple of natural religion, the awful gloom of the deep forests of the north; the aspiring height of the slender pine, the spreading arms of the giant oak, rich with the varied tints of leaf and blossom, with the wild birds’ song for its anthem, or the rustle of the breeze in its waving branches, for the voices of the mighty multitude, or the deep notes of the solemn organ.”— Freeman’s History of Architecture , p. 15.

[346] The walls of Megalopolis in Greece were so defended.

[347] “Thou shalt set thee up great stones, and plaster them with plaster, and thou shalt write upon them all the words of this law.... Thou shalt not lift up any iron tool upon them.”— Deut. xxvii. 2-5. The stones were to be covered, and were not to be touched with iron tool; and yet all the law was to be written on them: it must, then, have been on the plaster.

[348] “An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me.”—Exodus xx. 24.

[349] The Teucrian Girghis was, as I have shown elsewhere, a colony of Gergashites. See also Selden, Diis Syriis: Syntag. l. ii. c. 2.

[350] “Ex sabulone et calce et favilla .” — Vitr. l. vii. c. 4. In the Highlands of Scotland it is a tradition, that the old lime, which stands so well, was used unslaked: the very same thing has been told me in Andalusia. Recently in England they have fallen on this process for building under water.

[351] Captivity of T. Phelps. London, 1685.

[352] “The name Thebes is corrupted from the 'Tápé’ of the ancient Egyptians and Copts, which, in the Memphitic dialect, is pronounced Thaba, easily converted into Θῆβαι , or Thebes. Some writers have confined themselves to a closer imitation of the Egyptian word; and Pliny and Juvenal have both adopted 'Thebe’ in the singular number as the name of this city. In hieroglyphics it is written Ap, Ape, or with the feminine article, Tápé, the meaning of which appears to be ' the head ,’ Thebes being the capital of the country.”— Wilkinson , Thebes , vol. ii. p. 136.

[353] Barrel is also derived from the Arabic— bar , earth; barril , made of earth; which the Spaniards still apply to an earthen vessel.

[354] The lexicographers derive ταφὸς from θάπτω , and then they derive θάπτω from ταφός .

[355] Cybele is derived from κυβήβειν , i.e. κύπτειν , for she made her servants bow. Kύβη , the head, is derived from κύπτω .

The word cupola is directly from the Arabic, Cobbal , which from the form was likewise applied to the whole building, and also to an umbrella: thus, the Mosque of Cordova was known as Cobbal al Malik, or the King’s Cupola; and an office under the Mameluk government in Egypt was entitled Cobbal u Thaïr, this functionary carrying an umbrella, and bearing on his fist a hawk.

[356] I find in Richardson’s Sahara the word marabit . This may, indeed, be a local term for tomb. In Richardson’s Dictionary “marabet” is set down as place of rest . It has, however, no connexion with “marabout,” or, properly, amarabout , from amr , to command; whence emir and admiral .

[357] Tomb, in Arabic, is mukburea, medfanè gáber turbè . In Breber it is agekka .

[358] It was natural that the Phoceans should have adopted the art, and given a name to it, as was their wont, from their own language. The resemblance is too close to be accidental with “Piazza.” Piso , in Spanish, is to stamp: it is also the floor of a house, formerly made by ramming down, just as the walls were— Pistor in Latin. Their bread was better kneaded than ours; so piston , pestle , &c.

[359] At Shemish, the most remarkable Phœnician ruin that I visited, the Phœnician lime and mortar are conjoined with the Hellenic blocks.

[360] The Carthaginians first used stones for paving their streets and roads, so that from them was derived one of the monuments that has mainly perpetuated the idea of Roman grandeur and magnificence.

The same practice is of course used for floors in passages, and leads naturally to the ornamenting of these in colour, and to paving them in brick and pottery, as these arts took the place of the rammed-down clay, or the sun-burnt brick.

[361] Vitruvius condemns square towers, as affording protection to the besiegers rather than the besieged. The Moors first invented flanking walls.

[362] An old Etruscan tower at Tosconella, is exactly of the same make as the Moorish Sma.

[363] “ Do not despise me , for when compared to the stone pyramids, I am as superior as Jupiter to the other gods. For men, plunging poles into a lake, and collecting the mud thus extracted, formed it into bricks, of which they made me.”

There is here a contempt apprehended, and the highest estimation expressed. The shepherd-king deprecates Egyptian censure, in following his country’s fashion. Sir G. Wilkinson says:—

“Dr. Richardson justly asks, in what could this superiority over stone pyramids exist? and suggests, that it points to the invention of the arch that roofed its chambers, which, provided Asychis lived prior to the sixteenth and eighteenth dynasties, may possibly be true.”

“The primeval builders of Egyptian stone pyramids must have previously been earth-mound builders elsewhere, probably in Asia.”— Gliddon , Otia Egyptiaca , p. 36.

[364] “The cities are great and walled up to heaven.”— Deut. vii. 28. “Thou art to pass over Jordan this day, to go in and possess thirty cities fenced up to heaven.”— Deut. ix. 1.

[365] So “moon sails,” “mountains of the moon.”

[366] 2 Samuel, xii. 31.

[367] Ezekiel, xiii. 10-11.

[368] Not indeed those in captivity in Goshen, and delivered by Moses. The period is that of Thothmes III. of the fifteenth dynasty.

[369] Freeman on Architecture, p. 106.

CHAPTER VII.

GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE FROM SPAIN.

That the grandest of styles should be known by the name of the rudest of people—that architecture should be called after dwellers in tents and tenants of huts—that the Goths should have ceased to exist before the Gothic was invented is, indeed, a phenomenon. The word, nevertheless, has served during many centuries all the purposes of a name, and does not appear until these latter days to have been the object of criticism or cavil. At last the word “Gothic” became a field of literary debate, and immediately of religious discussion. Some articles in a magazine, on the architecture of the Middle Ages, connecting incidentally therewith contemporary practices and dogmas, was the first symptom of the hallucination, out of which arose two schools of mystagogues, theologians materializing dogmas, and mathematicians idealizing forms. In these transmutations the gross did not become ethereal, nor the airy, grave; but the solid melted into air, and the spirit was turned to mud. Under this double perversion of piety and science we had the progressive developements for the structure of conscience, and an arch. [370] Gothic art and Christian faith were deduced from Paganism by a “series of conversations”—suppositions regarding the centre of a vault, were called “tenets,”—the change of an ornament was a “manifestation”—finally a cathedral was a “petrifaction of religion”— Art was called “ Christian ,” and then, of course, the Reformation could be re-argued upon the plan of an architect.

It was truly a Pagan thought to call art-religions the appropriation of art; it was the very life of Paganism, and justly did Quintilian say, that the Minerva and Jupiter of Phidias “added something to religion.”

But these things were for those without the veil. The initiated were untaught art and its symbolism, and to them was revealed the immaterial existence of the Godhead, his solitary being, and omnipotent power. “That which was at first a gross symbol,” says De Quincy, “became a sublime metaphor, because invested with the poetry of art.” With us the external expressions of the feelings of a devout age have been changed by the pedantry of a learned one into objects of idolatry; and Christians direct Christians back to the mysteries of Pagans unteaching the truth which Pagans knew, and pretend to reform their own worship by transferring to the sanctuary the external images in which the Pagans presented natural religion only to the uninstructed crowd.

In the religions of the ancient world, Fetichism lay at the bottom: the gods of the country were raised into deities, or these were brought down as patrons of the spot. It was an honour and a security to address them; there was no idea of proselyting the arts; the wealth of the votary or the stranger was expended on their service. Christianity presented a new character, the reverse of all that preceded it; men were to be saved from craft and its devices, from art and its enchantments, from vice and its seductions, from the world and its wisdom. It was a religion of proselytism, repentance, and abnegation. It was preached by fishermen and addressed to babes. It thus stood the very antithesis of Polytheism, and the association of art and religion was as essentially an un-Christian, as it was essentially a Pagan thought.

Architecture has given rise to these aberrations only because its history is unknown. The architecture of Europe, as revived subsequently to the eighth century, was from the Saracens: they communicated to Europe the impulse which retrieved her from that lethargy, or, as M. Guizot calls it, that death by the extinction of every function which came upon her after she had made experience of Rome and her greatness—Christianity and her light—the Barbarians and their vigour. They furnished also the models and the first workmen. Had it been known that ecclesiastical architecture came from a Mussulman source, surely we should not have heard of “the Gothic springing from the Bible,” and like foolish speeches.

Of kinds of excellence, or periods of greatness, architecture has furnished the fewest. How many are the admirable languages, systems of government, and epochs of splendour! The whole human race, during thousands of years, have brought forth scarcely more than two or three distinct styles of architecture. Language is learnt unconsciously; it survives under every vicissitude. A political system a founder may plan. In science, by the discovery of one, all benefit,—painting or sculpture arises when a few excel. Architecture belongs to the circumstances, no less than the genius of a people, the climate under which they live, the soil on which they dwell, their customs, and their belief. The knowledge or taste from which it springs must be universal, so also the habits it engenders.

Buildings are raised for man’s necessities, by his labour: they are the creatures of his hand; they are the most permanent, the most essential of the types of his race; they have embraced and protected the lowliness and weakness of his origin; they have expanded with his growth, hardened themselves in his danger, swelled into magnificence in his pride, or arisen to sublimity in his adoration. Architecture has laboured itself into life by long trial and patient progress. Like no other art, it is within the grasp of no individual genius: the materials are of the rudest kind, the labour is conducted in the people’s eye, the poor man is the workman, and the embellishments are of the commonest nature. Architecture is as identified with the people, as the nest with the bird, or the honeycomb with the bee.

How, then, should architecture have come into being in the midst of an unlettered race, without a previous traceable conception and gestation; and how should it at once be applied on the grandest scale to the noblest monuments, without previous practice and adaptation in private uses to common life? Yet this must have been the case, had an original architecture arisen among the inhabitants of the North, whether Saxons or Normans. Nor is it a science standing by itself; it is the application of many other sciences previously pursued and thoroughly understood. Mathematics and dynamics must prepare the way, by calculation of the pressure of weights and the power of supports; and above all is such preparation requisite in that style which combines height, solidity, lightness, and symmetry, depending upon the proportioning of shafts, the inclination of buttresses, the curve of arches, and the groining of vaults. How should perfection in all these have been attained, by tribes emerging from their forests, or landing from their hide-covered boats? To-day, amidst the wonderful progress of all other sciences—with models before us—with the greatest zeal and opportunities—seeing the enormities which result from every architectural plan—shall we suppose that it should have sprung at once to perfection among a people inexpert in other arts and ignorant of every science?

There were, indeed, before the tribes that overthrew the Roman empire, the models of classical antiquity; but they, when they began to build, built in another style. It is very easy in the varieties of times and places, to trace here and there coincidences and adaptations, which theorists, by the aid of analogies and similes, may connect. It is easy to draw scales of lines and forms, which shall show an insensible progression from the Erechtheum to Westminster Hall; but the style that then arose was as distinct from the Greek and Roman, as these from the Egyptian, the Chinese, or the Hindoo. But had they restored the classical, would the mere existence of the models explain the fact? They had Cicero and Homer, without being orators or poets, and, though England was filled with Roman masonry, the making of bricks was a new discovery a thousand years after their departure. The sight of masterpieces does not suffice, even for copying them—that is a new invention. Man requires living teachers, and these were no more to be found in the organic remains of classical architecture than in their own unfashioned thoughts and uncultivated faculties.

Independently of these à priori reasons, we find this architecture not springing up at any definite moment, or at any particular spot, but arising simultaneously amidst a variety of tribes, such as would occur if derived from a foreign and a common source. Where, then, are we to look for that source, if not amidst the almost fabulous people, which at that very time appeared in the South?

It is no novel idea that Northern architecture was derived from the Saracens; but our supposed intercourse with that people is confined to the Crusades, which, coinciding, indeed, with, or shortly preceding, the Gothic style, followed by centuries the Saxon and the Norman; and as the three are so intimately associated that they do in reality constitute but one style of architecture, the admitted obligation is reduced, so to say, to nothing, by the great effort of the first invention being attributed to ourselves: or rather we lose sight of the greatness of the effort by supposing it to have been made where faculties equal to it had no existence, and we fall into this necessity by not seeing how, if not of our own invention, we could have borrowed the first steps. [371]

But the intercourse of Northern Europe with the Saracens preceded the Crusades by four or five centuries, and the intercourse of England with Africa preceded Islamism. The first architectural movement in England, in the age of St. Winifred, followed by half a century the erection of the mosque of Omar at Jerusalem, one of the noblest monuments in the world. The Lombard style arose in the south of Italy after these people had come in contact with the Saracens, and learnt their arts, and employed their artists. The second architectural age in England was that of the Normans: it was preceded by their conquests in Calabria and Sicily, inhabited by the Saracens, who excelled—as the ruins left behind them attest—in the very highest branches of this art. The Gothic arose in Europe, when the Goths of Spain were regaining power in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and they could emulate the arts and command the services of their Moorish competitors; and the Spanish peculiarities of the style passed into Europe with their name, precisely in the same manner as that of the Norman or the Lombard before them.

The most common and primitive style of Moorish arching is the flat wall cut into the semicircle, supported without entablature on wall or column. That is exactly the Saxon: it was only known to them after they had crossed the seas: they did not find it in England—they must have acquired it in the course of their maritime enterprises; and they were familiar with Western Africa, then inhabited by Christians. Hadrian, the counsellor of Alfred, who first brought Greek letters to England, was from Africa. African Christians, as recorded in old Spanish charters, built churches in the north of Spain, where the Mussulmans never penetrated. By Domesday Book we find Africans settled in England at the time of the Conquest. Constantinus Afer was founder of the school of Salerno; and the old British bards mention African princes as the allies of their Saxon invaders. [372] The Saxon race came in contact with the Saracens in the earliest times of Islam by pilgrimages to the Holy Land—they served in the armies of the Greek emperors. From the time of Constantine, an uninterrupted connexion of the Arabs and Northmen, during four centuries, is attested by twenty thousand Saracenic coins in the Cabinet of Stockholm, found in Gothland and along the eastern coast of Sweden.

Having thus established the improbability of an original architecture among our Northern forefathers; having shown in the previous chapter the existence in western Barbary of the style which had descended from the earliest antiquity, and having now indicated the channels through which it might have passed thence to Europe, and the links between Africa and each of the races who were distinguished for any of its varieties, I shall now proceed to the internal evidence the buildings themselves afford.

The present buildings of Africa are doubtless exactly what they were in the time of Mahomet, and before the conquests of the Saracens. They contain the rudiments of the Gothic, Saxon, and Roman styles. The tomb is a cube, surmounted by a half-globe vault. The door-way is an arch, horseshoe form, semicircular or pointed; it is shouldered by a spandrel. Exactly the same are the tombs of India—the great monuments of Jehangir and Akbar, which by some, from a mistake in the date, have been considered as the type and the model of the Gothic.

The building next in importance is the tower, which is composed of these cubes placed one above the other: the inner tower rises at the top higher than the outer one. In their domestic architecture they use flat roofs; but in the mosques they employ rows of gable roofs, supported below by columns and arches. There are sometimes double rows of arches, and intersecting arches. Their dwelling-houses are enriched with a great variety of details, which may be compared to miniature representations of the embellishments of our religious edifices, such as niches, small pointed windows, pierced spandrels, mouldings, and cornices. The same style pervades every kind of building, ornament, and utensil,—their tombstones, their cushions, the wood-work of their apartments, their trays, their stools, the latter of which might be taken for small models of Gothic buildings.

It was impossible to behold daily these objects, and not perceive that Morocco, whence issued the people who raised the great monuments in Spain, [373] had been the native country of the Gothic. The long vault and taper spire, indeed, were wanting; nor were there any buildings to which, as a whole, the title of Saxon, Norman, or Gothic could be applied. But then it occurred to me, that these modifications might be traceable through the Saracens, and in their various settlements in Europe, down to the historical period of the art in its European sites. To pursue such an investigation appropriately would require a lifetime. However, I have examined buildings in sufficient numbers to trace, and I think establish, the connection.

The Saracens were established, not in Spain only, but also in the important island of Sicily, and the southern extremity of Italy. These were conquered at an early period by the Normans, and the Saracens continued for half a century under them, working for them, building chapels, churches, palaces, and cathedrals. [374] These Normans were in continual intercourse with their native country on the British channel. Passing constantly through France, they soon afterwards conquered England. It was this people who gave the great impulse to architecture in the eleventh century in England and France; and thus arose the style known by their name; not merely raising those buildings by the wealth they possessed in Normandy, or acquired in England, but even by contributions made from the booty of Calabria, and the spoils of Sicily. It is a remarkable fact, that a connexion so well authenticated between the Normans and the Saracens, should be passed by unnoticed by the writers upon architecture. For my own part, when I stood within the north transept of the Cathedral of Winchester, where the Norman portion has remained undisturbed, I should have been sure of that connexion, had no records of it been preserved.

Theophilus cites the Arabs (of course of Sicily) as excelling in a branch wherein we have least acknowledged their merit—the working of metals: he particularizes its various branches, casting, hammering, and chiseling.

“The Arabs,” says Vasari, “have given their name to a species of ornament, which they have invented in obedience to the precepts of their Prophet, and which is composed only of fruits and flower foliage, and embranchments.” May not this description, so unlike the Arabesque as we know it in the Peninsula, be derived from the chased works of the Arabs in Sicily, where, out of their alliance with the Greeks, a character sprang very distinct from that to which their union with the Moors gave birth in the West?

The oldest of the specimens we have in Sicily, is the Capella Palatine, built, soon after the conquest of the island, by Roger. It approaches to that square form adopted by the Eastern churches, to which Sicily then belonged, after there had ceased to be catechumens, and so consisted of the solea and meroi, to the exclusion of the elongated naos or nave. [375] The chapel is small, but it is one of the most perfect—if not the most perfect—pieces of workmanship in the world. The floor, roof, and walls, are completely inlaid, or incrusted, with marble or mosaic. There is a wide band running round the apse in Arabic characters. This led to its being supposed to be a mosque. The inscription, however, is a long string of honorary epithets applied to Roger. [376]

From the succeeding reign we have the Cathedral of Cefala, the Church Dell, Amigralio, that of Jerusalem, the Royal Chapel of St. Peter’s, and the splendid Hall of William I., all in like manner the work of the Saracens. There is no single instance among them of a horse-shoe arch. There is no vaulting of the roof; but in the Cathedral of Cefala there is a perfect Norman arch, bevelled or chamfered, and exactly the same as we see them in the north of Europe. This edifice bears a Latin inscription attributing to a Saracen the honour of the construction, “ Hoc opus musei factum est ;” but these buildings were greatly surpassed by the Cathedral of Montreale, erected by William II. It is adorned with arches, traced upon the walls without, and they are all Gothic; the floor of the Solea is laid down in marble in Arabesque figures; the walls are encrusted with marbles or mosaics, or covered with paintings; the gates are in bronze chased; the doors and windows—many of them, at least—are in the old classic style of Greece; the outline of the building is also classical and rectangular, but ornamented with intersecting Gothic arches, which spring from the jamb unbroken by cornice, capital, or entablature. On the whole it presents in dimensions, height, richness of material, elegance of design, variety and adaptation of styles, an object of art unique. It is singular that this greatest work of the Normans in the South should have in it no trace either of that style which we call Norman, [377] or of that which is the peculiar feature of the Moor, the horse-shoe; and the two styles that are there united, and which nowhere else are so found, are the Greek and the Gothic. At the time of its erection this cathedral was esteemed the masterpiece of architecture, and as surpassing at once St. Sophia, and the St. Peter’s, of that day. Pope Lucius says of it: “ Simile opus per aliquem regem factum non fuerit ab antiquis temporibus. ” The Duke di Sara de Falco, who published at Palermo, in 1838, elaborate and beautiful engravings of it, has collated with some of its ornaments, fragments from Owen Jones’s “Alhambra;” but it is as Moorish as the Alhambra itself. The towers are divided into stories, and each is somewhat smaller than the one beneath, so that they have the appearance of buttresses without being really so. The Sicilian author and artist says:—

“While this temple was building there arose in Palermo the magnificent Duomo, and the Church of the Holy Ghost in Messina, the Cathedral and the Church of St. Mary, at Raudazzo, and so many others that it is needless to cite. We have ascertained that the artists employed at Montreale were neither Italian nor Greek, but Sicilians; and that is rendered more manifest by the Mosaic work, and the details of ornament and construction so largely drawn from the Arabs, which certainly did not come from the Greeks of the East, but from those who, long familiarized with the Saracens, had imitated their manner; and that a school of these workers in mosaics existed in Sicily is demonstrated by the variety of composition, the fertility of genius, and the power of design in those days, and they all agree with the workmanship of Montreale.”

He then proceeds to claim for his country the honour of introducing chasings and carvings into Italy, and Gothic architecture into Europe: the former he deduces from the ancient Greek arts of Sicily, the second from the Saracens.

In Spain the Goths were as entirely the pupils and followers of the Saracens as were the Normans in Sicily. The variation of style from the Moresque to the Spanish, or Gothic, was connected with the difference of the social habits of the people. The Moors in Spain remained constituted by tribe,—as much so as in the Desert, although without its space. The feuds of the different tribes of Yemen were transferred to Cordova and Seville; and a fray between two uleds bordering on the Great Desert might suddenly produce bloodshed in the narrow lanes and thick villages of Andalusia. There were also the frequent ruptures and the permanent animosity between Brebers and Arabs, and thus their buildings of necessity retained externally the ponderous and castellated form, while their perfection in the various arts of decoration embellished them internally with stuccoes, carvings, gildings, paintings, enamel and mosaics. The Spaniards, as they recovered the country, were on the one hand, relieved from these sources of continual alarm; and, on the other, were destitute of those arts of interior decoration: hence a more aspiring exterior, and a more gloomy interior; and upon the stones was concentrated the care which the Arabs had to give to so many other materials.

There has been a great destruction in Spain of Moorish buildings. We do possess, indeed, but two remarkable ones; the one the fragment of a palace raised within latter days, the other a mosque, the first in fame, but also the first in date, being now 1300 years old. It does not, therefore, afford us the opportunity of judging of the progress of the art. There subsist, however, some smaller specimens of a later date, which might almost be taken for Gothic buildings. [378]

The characteristics of the Gothic are—the pointed arch; the arch resting on the column without entablature; vaulting; arched gateways; splayed windows; buttresses; the spire tower, or belfry. These may severally be traced to the Saracens.

THE POINTED ARCH.

This is to be found from the first moment of the appearance of the Arabs, in countries the most remote from each other, and in structures destined to the most diverse purposes. I may instance:—

The Mosque of Omar at Jerusalem, the first building of the Saracens, commenced A.D. 637. [379]

The Mosque of Amrou, at Cairo, the first Mussulman building in Africa, commenced towards A.D. 650. That of E’Naser Mohammed, A.D. 698. [380] The Nilometer (lancet-niches), A.D. 700. Shella, in Morocco, date uncertain, probably anterior to the Mussulman era. [381] The Tower of Alcamo, in Sicily, the earliest Mussulman building in Eastern Europe. [382] The Tower of Gibraltar, A.D. 745, which contains a regular Gothic church window, though now built up. The Cathedral of Montreale, A.D. 1174, where the arch springs unbroken from the jamb. In fact, whenever the Saracens appeared, they brought the arch we call Gothic. It is found in universal use by them, and was so used by no people before them. When used by any people, the connexion with them may be traced. In Morocco or Spain may be found all known arches—the elliptical, the four-centred, the horizontal, the surbased, the lancet, the angular—if I may so describe one unknown to us, and formed like a truncated triangle. They had the stilt arch, the ogee, and, at Seville, is to be found a specimen of our recent invention, the skew arch; they had the trefoil, the pentifoil, as ornaments, with a multitude of unclassed and unnamed forms, which may, in our terms, be characterized as pensile, stalagmitic, serrated, cusped, fanned, dentiled. These may be studied in Jones’s Alhambra.

CHAMFERING OF THE ARCH.

I am not aware that this modification exists on the soil of Africa to-day, unless in a fragment described in the Pentapolis, by Dr. Shaw: this is the modification of the Norman upon the Saxon, and is to be found in the Cathedral of Cefala, and the tower of Gibraltar.

VAULTING.

This portion of modern architecture is Roman; but it in no way suffices to say that the Roman had vaults to account for our having them: the models of a dead people do not introduce a new art; the Saracens did not copy the classical models. The Moors had, indeed, the half-sphere, as the Romans; but they had not the elongated vault. The pointed and elongated vault, with its intersections, was, therefore, original in the Gothic, and may have been constructed by the Saracens, in Spain. To it there was the closest approximation in their pointed arches, doorways, and windows. The gable form of their mosque roofs would suggest the pointed and not the semicircular vault. Whenever they covered these in stone, here was the point—where their original material, the tapia, failed, it could rise from four sides into a dome; but elongated vaulting, and its intersections and groinings, depended upon the mechanical adjustment of the separate stones. When they came to build in this fashion in Spain (as in Egypt, Syria, Sicily, &c.), their mathematical skill would be called into play, and they must, of necessity, have thrown stone roofs over the large churches and cathedrals which they were employed by the Christians to build. [383]

ARCHED GATEWAYS.

This is one of the most remarkable features of the Gothic, so unlike the doors of any other style, giving such grandeur to the edifices, and suggesting, even at once, its whole designs. And here the identification is complete—the entrance to every Moorish room is like the porch of a cathedral, and the massive portals that close them with the wicket, presents in every Moorish court the gateway of a monastery or a college .

WINDOWS AND STAINED GLASS.

From the want of windows in Moorish houses and mosques, and from the great dimensions, elaborate structure, and important office of windows in our churches and cathedrals, it might be supposed that here we should be at fault in tracing the connexion; but the Moors afford us the most interesting rudiments of the stone-framed figures of our window, and the painted glass with which they are embellished.

Above and beside the door in Moorish rooms, there are small apertures for air rather than light, generally narrow, with a trefoil head. Two, four, or more of these may be placed side by side, and over them a circular figure pierced in like manner. In some of the Spanish cathedrals—and I again quote Toledo—there are windows which represent these openings in the wall, and are glazed . In the Alhambra, the Alcazar of Seville, and every other Moorish structure in Spain, there are to be seen the pierced work in stucco, in the form of Gothic windows;—the patterns of these correspond with the tracery on the walls, which being in colour, it was natural to continue the patterns in colour to the open spaces; and to effect this, where the exposure required it, bits of painted glass are stuck into the plaster while fresh. A colder climate would suggest the extension of the glass, the reduction of the stucco, and the substitution of stone for stucco. Glass for windows was peculiarly a Spanish art; it was already known in England and France in the seventh century: [384] the staining of glass commenced in Spain, though it was carried to the highest perfection in France. Two of the colours and substances were designated Spanish at a time when few original colouring matters were employed. [385] The Saracens were, besides, proficients in the making of glass, whether transparent or coloured. The first I accidentally fell upon in the Mosque at Cordova—they used coloured glass for the mosaics; but it was opaque;—they also understood enamelling, and in encaustic tiles they were unrivalled. Stained glass is, to this day, of universal use among the Easterns, who have spread more to the northward, and have adopted external windows. A Turkish room is a miniature cathedral, with its ascending floor; its entrance opposite to its lights, and its clerestory windows,—for there are two rows of them—the lower one rectangular like ours, and furnished with curtains, the upper one of every variety of shape, and in stained glass, and made to correspond with the ornaments of the corresponding panels of the apartment.

The apertures in the Moorish tapia thus became Gothic windows, and the pierced patterns of the stucco mullions and transoms, with cusped trefoils and foliage in stone, with the intervals glazed in stained glass: the adjoining portion of the wall must then have been pared away and bevelled out. The Moors were the first people to adopt this process, as applying it to military architecture: they adopted it for their loopholes and embrasures, while bows and arrows were yet in use. Their first external windows were embrasures—churches were built for defence as well as devotion. The bevelling in their walls is on both sides less without than within, exactly as it is practised in Gothic windows.

BUTTRESSES.

Next to the arch itself the buttress has been considered essential to the Gothic. [386] This member is supposed to have its origin in the North, and to have been requisite for the passage from the Norman to the Gothic, and from the tower to the spire. The buttress is to be found among the Arabs, as early as the pointed arch, and as universally known, though not so commonly used.

The square building at Gibraltar, used as a magazine, and with a sort of pyramidal roof, is strengthened by powerful and expanding buttresses, irregularly placed on the angles, A.D. 749. Specimens are abundant at Jerusalem, in Cairo, and in Sicily.

I have met with no instance of flying buttresses: these, however, may be seen in Spain, carried to a width unknown elsewhere;—as for instance, in the Cathedral of Seville.

THE TOWER AND SPIRE.

The early English towers are copies of those of Morocco. The Moorish tower stands apart from the Mosque: so do our early belfries and the Campanile of Italy. The spire has been naturally suggested by the minaret, which may be connected with the obelisk, being the only instance of the kind in the ancient world; and the minaret having been first adapted to Saracenic buildings in Egypt, where it was engrafted on the Sma or square tower of the Moors—together they constitute our spire, as seen in the half tower, half minaret of Egypt.

If any one will turn over successively the pages of Roberts’s Holy Land, Costes’ Egypt, Hope’s German Churches, Sara de Fulco’s Sicily, and Gally Knight’s Italy, he will recognise the features of the one in the other, and trace the resemblances just as if turning over the grammars of various languages derived from a common source.

CLOISTERS.

The quadrangle with the columns sustaining the advanced building of the first story, over an open corridor below, is as Moorish as if the models had been sent from Morocco. [387] The court of the Monastery of Bellem at Lisbon, is the most beautiful specimen I know. It is at once purely Gothic and purely Moorish; each style seeming to have taken something from the other to heighten its effect. In the centre is a fountain, and on each side lines of tanks for water, intersected with stages for plants, which are lined with coloured tiles around: there are Gothic arches, filled with the screen or stonework of windows—without the glass, as in the Campo Sancto of Pisa. In the angles of the quadrangle, the limbs of a projecting and wider arch seem to embrace and protect a sharper arch within. This may be seen in Moorish works, and also in the porch of the Cathedral of Rouen. The church belonging to this monastery presents an interesting field for studying the influence of the Moors upon European architecture, and it is in every way a building not less original than beautiful.

A connexion between Africa and England is traceable in a point where we might least expect it, and at a very early period—and that is fire-places. “Chimneys,” says Mr. Hallam, “which had been missed by the sagacity of Greece and Rome—a discovery of which Vitruvius never dreamed—was made perhaps in this country by some forgotten barbarian.” [388] He refers to Coningsby Castle, supposed to be of a date prior to the Conquest, to prove the existence of chimneys, before the alleged date of the discovery in the fourteenth century. Had he inspected the chimney in question, he must have perceived a peculiar and unique method of joining the key-stones of the flat arch that supports the front in lieu of a mantelpiece. This process, unique in Europe, is common amongst the Moors.

Whoever has visited the East must have been struck with the original character of the fireplaces and chimney-pieces; they are an embellishment to the room, in what we should term the Decorated Gothic style. Whoever has looked down upon the city of Lisbon from its garden-fortress, cannot fail to observe the contrast between the small neat rows of apertures that serve for chimney tops, and our unsightly and grotesque expedients for the same purpose. Whether in the mode of placing the fire, in the embellishment of the portion of the room appropriated to it, or in the elegance of chimney tops (so as to change them from a blemish to an ornament), we have yet to learn and borrow from the Moors. These chimney tops and appliances are not to be seen indeed in Morocco; but the traces subsist further north, where they adapted themselves to the necessities of the climate. The general resemblance of feature is also to be traced in the names, many of which I have already mentioned, such as, house-door, barbican, dairy; but and ben, and cabail of the Highlanders; roof, stable, gypsum-house, garret, and even burgh, which we have been content to take from the Greek πύρος , is after all an Arabic word, in common use for pigeon-house, when built in the form of a tower. [389] In conjunction with these we must take so many terms and usages, exhibiting an intimate connexion between Africa and England, dating from the decline of Roman power.

In these observations I neither propound a new theory nor agitate a settled question. I present the good and valid reasons upon which our ancestors adopted a title, which we use with disgust and are endeavouring to discard. I trace our architecture back to the people to whom it properly pertains, and through them to an antiquity venerable in itself and deeply interesting from its association with the inspired writings. But it is more particularly the means of its introduction into Europe that it is useful to establish; for this, if anything, might diminish the odium theologicum which has sprung from this source. A more perfect antidote there cannot be than that this “Christian” art, this weapon of proselytism, by which no religious community achieves conquests, but by which all faith is smitten, should be itself Mussulman, and that we should owe the architecture (if there were any ratio between the supposed cause and the effect) which we attribute to the Bible, to the Koran.

What would have been the reply of the early Christians, had such a mania then prevailed, to those who argued the truth of polytheism, from the temples that had been raised in its honour, or the statues with which they were adorned? [390] What, again, would those have said, whose works are now taken as models, had they been told that in a future age of light and freedom their walls and arches should become steps in the ladder of conviction, shibboleths in polemics and lists of orthodoxy! [390] In the long and vehement contests between the Christians and the Mussulmans in Spain, both reciprocally used the temples of the other, which were sometimes even divided between them.

“Men have before now been led to adopt Romanism by its fancied connexion with poetry, or painting, or Gothic architecture; and if such men had lived while the mythologies of Greece or of Rome were living systems, they would with equal reason have forsaken Christianity for heathen religions, in which art had arrived at its highest conceivable excellence. The adoption of religious views, merely because they are in some way connected with what is gratifying to our senses or our feelings, and without primary reference to the evidence for their truth, is a proceeding which seems indicative of a practical disbelief in the evidence of any revealed truth, or of any religious truth whatever.” [391]

The inhabitants of England, who first introduced it in the North, did not call themselves Goths, but Saxons: nor were the followers of William, Goths, but Normans. The Gothic name had disappeared from Europe as the designation of any country, and the later modification of the style appeared, and the epithet was applied. But there was one country in which the name of the Goth was still preserved, and that was Spain. That name would have disappeared in Spain as elsewhere, had it not been for the Saracen conquest. The Goths had not originally appeared in Spain as ravagers or conquerors; they came in the name and with the authority of the Roman empire to drive out the Vandals, to put an end to anarchy, to protect property, and to sustain the laws. The people of Spain had evidently been disinclined to espouse the quarrel of the Goths against the Saracens; but, in subsequent attempts to throw off the Saracen yoke, the Goths must have been their leaders; and in fact to be a Goth was to be a freeman, and no longer tributary to the Mussulmans. As the Christians reacquired strength, they could neither take the title of Andalusians, nor of Murcians, nor of Castilians, far less of Spaniards, for these names belonged as much to the Mussulmans as to themselves. They took, therefore, that of Goths, an ancient and a noble name, and associated at once with their national independence, the traditions of Rome, and the authority of the Christian Church; and to this day the peasant of Spain, when he points out a great monument, will say, “ Obra de los Godos .” Gothic is to them synonymous with heroic—the Gothic times, the Gothic kings, Gothic courts, Gothic laws, Gothic glory. It marks in Spanish history the period of struggling and triumphant freedom. It is the period which contrasts in all things with that known as “Catholic.”

[371] “The Anglo-Norman cathedrals were perhaps as much distinguished above other works of man in their own age, as the more splendid edifices of a later period. The science manifested in them is not however very great , and their style, though by no means destitute of lesser beauties, is upon the whole an awkward imitation of Roman architecture, or perhaps more immediately of the Saracenic buildings in Spain.”— Hallam , Middle Ages , vol. iii. p. 431.

As we become philosophical—that is, as the habit grows of accounting for everything—we must of course deny what we cannot account for.

[372] Gormound, who fell at the battle of Derham, on the borders of Gloucestershire, about 570; Gulfred, Ranulph, and others.

[373] “Has the attention of architects, or of writers on architecture, been directed sufficiently to Spain? A comparison of the genuine Saracenic remains in the Peninsula, with the earliest specimens of Spanish architecture, in their details might do more to illustrate the connexion of the two schools, and the history of the pointed style, than has been effected, or is likely to be effected by elaborate theories on the subject.”— Foster’s Mahometanism Unveiled , vol. ii. p. 252.

[374] For instance, the Cathedral of Coutances, finished twelve years before the battle of Hastings.

[375] I cannot help referring to that new absurd term Naology, so perfectly pagan that it was even excluded by the Greeks, in adapting their own terms to the Christian worship (see Simeon of Thessalonica), (Leon, Allazzi, De Solea Goar, Rituale Græc.). Whewell is at the same time endeavouring to exclude the term “nave,” where we have got the thing, substituting for it, “ centre aisle.”

[376] Ugon Falcandus, in Carusi Bib. Sicul., b. i. p. 487. This inscription corresponds with that upon the Dalmatic, which was supposed to have been the imperial robe of Charlemagne. Tyschen has, however, made it out to be the work of the Arabs of Palermo, A.D. 1132. A baptismal font at Caltabellota bears an Arabic inscription, which is interpreted by M. Lanci—“Office (workshop) of Ben Messid, son of Nain.”

[377] In the Norman buildings the pointed arch occurs. Mr. Whewell, observing the fact, instead of concluding that the various styles were contemporaneous, gets rid of the fact, as usual, by a theoretical explanation.

[378] “At the place where we breakfasted to-day (Naval Carnero) there is a really beautiful church of the Arabesque order. It has two Moorish towers, with the sphere and globe: the interior is most devotional. I thought the Moorish arches of the nave quite equal for devotional effect to the Gothic, which it much resembles. Nothing could be more chaste. The interior besides was very neatly kept, which, in these days of revolution and robbery, is no slight matter. If it had not been in Spain, I should have thought that I was in a Gothic church.”— Extract from a MS. Journal.

[379] “A large square plinth of marble extends from the top of one column to the other, and above it there are constructed a number of arches all round, which support the inner end of the roof or ceiling, the outer end resting on the walls of the building. This is composed of wood or plaster, highly ornamented with a species of carving, and richly gilt.”— Russel’s Palestine , p. 500.

Dr. Richardson speaks of it as the most beautiful building he had ever beheld; but gives no description.

Ali Bey observes, that “the great centre nave of the mosque Al Aksa is supported on each side by seven arches lightly pointed, resting upon cylindrical pillars, in the form of columns, with foliaged capitals, which do not belong to any order: the fourth pillar to the right of the entrance is octangular and enormously thick, called the Pillar of Sidi Omar.”—P. 501.

On the conclusion of this work, there was a letter from the architects to the calif, as given by Jellal Addin, which may be read in our days with perhaps some profit, or at least surprise:—

“ God hath brought to an end that which the Commander of believers hath commanded us respecting the erection of the chapel of the sakhra, the sakhra of the Holy City, and the mosque Al Aksa. And there remains not a word to be spoken about it. Moreover there remains some surplus above the money granted us by the Commander of believers to that end, after 100,000 dinars have been expended thereon. Let the Commander of believers convert it to the object he likes best.”— Temple of Jerusalem , p. 186.

[380] “It is remarkable for an elegant doorway, with clustered pillars in the European or Gothic style, such as might be found in one of our churches, and therefore differing in character from Saracenic architecture. Over this door is an inscription, purporting that the building was erected by the Sultan Mohammed, son of the Sultan El Melek El Munsoor E’deen Kalaoón E’Salehee. The date on the lintel is 698 A.H. (or A.D. 1299), and on the body of the building, 695. The minaret which stands above this Gothic entrance is remarkable for its lace-like fretwork, which calls to mind the style of the Alhambra and of the Al Cazar at Seville.”

“The pointed arch was evidently employed in Egypt previous to the accession of the Fatimite dynasty, and consequently long before it was known in any part of Europe.”— Wilkinson’s Thebes , vol. ii. pp. 241, 288.

[381] It is supposed to have been the capital of the Carthaginian colonies. It is held a place of peculiar sanctity, and no Christian or Jew was allowed to enter it. It has been in ruins since the twelfth century.

[382] The pointed arch is here merely in the substance of the wall, placed to strengthen it above the windows, with a low or four-centred arch. The same is to be found in the gates of Jerusalem.

[383] “An entire side of a chapel of the cathedral of Toledo, opening out of the southernmost nave, is ornamented in the Arab style, having been executed by a Moorish artist at the same period as the rest; and not (as might be conjectured) having belonged to the mosque, which occupied the same site previously to the erection of the present cathedral.”— Wells’s Antiquities , p. 128.

[384] Du Cange, v. Vitrea.

[385] The fine colour then given to stained glass in Europe was derived from the old mosaics, which were pounded and laid upon the glass, and thus passed into the furnace. See Theophilus Divers, Artium Cedula . Immense must have been the destruction of ancient relics through this practice, to which the Moorish mosaics were subject, as well as those of Rome and the glass of the Phœnicians.

[386] “In Gothic works the arch is an indispensable and governing feature; it has pillars to support its vertical, and buttresses to resist its lateral pressure: its summit may be carried upwards indefinitely by the jamb thrust of its two sides.”— Whewell on German Churches , p. 20; 3rd edit.

[387] In one of the faces of the old font in Winchester Cathedral, belonging to Saxon times, there is a representation of a building which might be taken for a Moorish house.

[388] Middle Ages, vol. iii. p. 425.

[389] Wilkinson’s Thebes, vol. ii. p. 18.

[390] The Wickham brotherhood, an association of Catholic Mystagogues, headed by Pugin, voted those uncatholic, in an architectural sense, who did not believe in the Gothic of the thirteenth century.

[391] Palmer on the Doctrine of Developement and Conscience , p. 86.

THE END.

LONDON :
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Transcriber’s Note

This book was written in a period when many words had not become standardized in their spelling. Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. These have been left unchanged.

Footnotes were renumbered sequentially and were moved to the end of the chapter. Footnote [390] has two anchors.

Obvious printing errors, such as backwards, upside down, missing or partially printed letters, were corrected. Final stops missing at the end of sentences and abbreviations were added. Duplicate words were removed.

Two pages of advertisements were moved from the front to the end of the book. Transliterations are provided as inserts for words or phrases in Greek.