The Fire of Desert Folk/Chapter 2
THE HEIRS OF PHOENICIA
AS the first pale, gray outriders of the dawn began to charge and scatter the black forces of night, we came upon some feluccas, which in the distance appeared like large birds, rising for flight but with only one wing, the other being maimed and motionless. It was nearly eight o'clock, and after the struggle I had had to obtain a cup of coffee and a microscopic breakfast, which was quite inadequate for me under the bracing influence of the sea, that I saw from a distance the golden shore of Africa, bathed in the rays of the morning sun. The cliffs, the mountain-range raising itself farther away, the white buildings and the fortress wall were all flooded with the same rosy, molten hue, making a beautiful canvas with a background of pale, blue sky.
"Melilla," volunteered my officer acquaintance of yestereven.
As we approached the entrance to the harbor, I made out with ever-increasing distinctness dull noises and rumblings. Taking my powerful field-glasses, I began to examine the city and the shore of this new continent. Soon the reason for the noise became apparent in the work which the Spaniards were doing to enlarge and improve this harbor which is so important for both their commerce and their navy. They were building a new breakwater to enclose a suitable anchorage for their ships, and already the wall of immense rocks and great blocks of cement was protruding far into the sea. At short intervals carloads of material were run out to the end of the new construction and were dumped into the water, making the dull, thundering reports that carried out to us on the deck of the Balear. Yet over and above this other sounds, distant rumblings and roarings, were distinctly heard. Unable to catch any indication for the reason of them, I turned to the officer to ask what they might be.
"It is the booming of cannon and the bursting of shells behind that naked range of mountains," he explained. "Abd el-Krim, who has raised the war against us in the Rif, has succeeded in stirring up our eternal enemies, the Berber tribes of Gwelaia and Kebdana, whose lands lie near Melilla; and now we are compelled to subdue them to maintain free communication with the central portions of our colony."
Meantime we slipped into port. The first object that attracted our attention was an unkempt-looking tramp, smothered under a deck cargo of baled hay that ran half-way up the masts and, for some reason, gave her a bad list to port. Her crew were frantically throwing overboard this cargo that seemed to be threatening her. In the eastern sector of the port lay several men-o'-war and two big transports unloading artillery, small-arms ammunition and endless cases of provisions for the soldiers. After fulfilling certain customs formalities, our Balear crawled close to the shore and grappled Africa with four strong cables.
Now that the pitching and rolling had ceased, Zofiette rose from her deck-chair of unhallowed memories and went to the cabin, from where she soon emerged freshly gowned and quite herself again. As we had three hours in port, we went off in search of a good restaurant, found what we were seeking, enjoyed our breakfast with that inimitable gusto of a first meal on shore and then sallied forth to visit the town.
The city is made up of two distinct sections, the old town, built in the sixteenth century, where we found fortified houses clustered together without order along the top of the cliff and enclosed within a powerful wall; and the new town, stretching away from the foot of the cliff, built also without form or plan but indicating wealth and a spirit of enterprise. This new town of Melilla is one of the principal centers of the military power of Spain in Africa and a place of much commercial importance.
Officers and soldiers swarmed the numerous restaurants, cafés and bars, eating and drinking, smoking and talking loudly, revealing clearly by their manner that we were in the war zone. Arabs, swathed in bournouses, threaded their way through this crowd of uniformed men, looking into every corner, observing and listening to everything that was going on. Surely Abd el-Krim, the mad chieftain of the Rif, had here in the streets of Melilla many of his spies and intelligence officers. A great contrast to these Arabs in their desert costume was blatantly present in the sumptuous cars that rolled up before the houses of the local industrial potentates.
Centuries ago the Phoenicians, lured by the riches of the peninsula, founded the colony of Rusaddir, which afterwards became a possession of the Carthaginians, only to pass in time to the Berbers. With the turning of Fortune's wheel, Spain wrested Melilla and its riches from the Berbers, paying for this deed with the regular tribute of her blood. Through all ages it has been the deposits of iron, zinc and lead ores that have lured outsiders to the peninsula.[1] It is said that the Phoenicians, after the founding of Rusaddir, made from this base bold expeditions farther to the west and reached the southern shore of Spain, where they found deposits of quicksilver and sulphur, which they carried back with them to the East, the first for the priests and magi, the second for sale to pirates, who prepared from it flaming arrows to set fire to the enemy's ships.
Before going back on board, we visited the large Hernandez Park, filled with beautiful palms of many varieties and some fine specimens of Araucaria. But the burning heat drove us to seek shelter in a café behind ices and iced drinks until it was time to return to the Balear.
We were hardly under way when we heard a great uproar in the steerage. It turned out that one of the passengers, who had been spending the hours on shore, had forgotten her little son and daughter and had just waked to the fact that they were not on board. The rattle-headed mother was finally consoled by the assurance of the officers that the next ship, leaving two days later, would bring them safely to Oran.
The wind had subsided and the weather was clear, so that the Balear lost her playful character of a shuttlecock of the waves and drove rapidly and proudly eastward with the seriousness and measured movements of a great liner, carrying us close to the sandy shores, behind which we saw for a moment Mar Chica, a small landlocked arm of the sea, separated from it by a long, sandy spit. Then we passed between Cabo del Agua, which is the most northerly flying buttress of the range of Jebel Kebdana, and the three islands of the Zaffarin group, which call to mind the terrible Turkish pirate, Jafar. According to one of the legends of the Kebdana tribe, Allah, whenpassing judgment upon Jafar after his death, sought to know how many tears the victims of the pirate had shed and asked the angel Azrael to give him some measure of these. To do this the angel separated Mar Chica from the sea and bade His Master look. As a sea it is not of great dimensions; but as a reservoir of tears it typifies ineffable grief and crimes enough to condemn the doer of them to endless hells of burning pitch and sulphur.
The Zaffarins have no water and consequently no vegetation. The supply for the inhabitants is brought out by a special tank-ship. The Spaniards have joined two of the islands by a sea-wall and have thus made an excellent harbor, well sheltered from the open sea and of great strategic importance, as it lies exactly opposite the mouth of the Muluya River, which is the frontier between the Moroccan territories of France and Spain. The house of the governor, the barracks of the garrison, the church, the hospital and the fishing hamlets are on these two islands. On the third is the cemetery.
To the starboard we were now passing Cape Milonia, which is already within the bournes of the Algerian territory. Soon the low, flat shores disappeared and yielded to the towering wall of the Tajera range, which dominated the horizon.
As night wore on, we had a glimpse of the beacon on Rashgun Island, and later, with the coming of dawn, we skirted along the rocky, bay-indented isles of Habibas, carrying great scars from their struggles with the waves, and entered the strait between the two capes, Falcon and Mers el-Kebir, whose powerful beacons had guided us forward through the last hours of the night. To the eastward of the southern point the Bay of Oran cut its way into the line of the shore, deep and always calm. But Oran itself was not visible for some time, only clusters of small houses here and there dotting the mountainous shores. These surely could not be Oran, one of the largest French towns in Africa with a population of some two hundred thousand souls.
I was about to phrase this question in my mind to a fellow-passenger when suddenly a high mountain with rocky, precipitous sides came into view. On a naked rock at the top of a precipice overhanging the sea a church, surmounted by a statue of Our Lady, stood out in bold relief. It was erected during a devastating cholera epidemic brought here in 1849 by Arabian pilgrims from Asia Minor, who wanted to round out their pilgrimage to Mecca by a visit to the tomb of the sage and saint, Sidi Abd el-Kader el-Jilani, in the neighborhood of Oran. The rock on which the church is built is a part of Mount Murjajo, whose summit, Aidour, is crowned with the walls, pinnacles, bastions and towers of the powerful Spanish castle of Santa Cruz. A forest of Syrian pines covers the whole mountain, whose sides are cut by excellent roads for motor cars and by numerous trails for lovers of mountain climbing and are dotted with many vantage points, from where, as we later learned, one unfolds views of the sea, the bay and the town, each more lovely and enthusing than the last.
We continued for some time with the towering Santa Cruz to starboard, until suddenly from behind a headland appeared a large town, dazzling white under the rays of the August sun and set with emerald oases of parks, squares and palm-lined avenues that climbed higher and higher to the residential district with its mansions, church steeples and dome-crowned mosques.
A strange peace, a faith in the future and a sense of gaiety reflected out from this silvery white town, so strongly that, as I chanced to turn and raise my eyes to the fortress of Santa Cruz, my mood of pleasant expectation gave place to a strange, uncongenial chill. I pondered for a moment over this unusual impression and was soon able to clothe it in a logical form.
I realized that I had before me two cultures, two psychologies, two systems of colonization—Spain with her severe, intransigent Catholicism of the Inquisition, with her proud kings, her bloody conquistadores, her mob despising people of another faith or color; the Spain of violence, of bloodshed and destruction; the ancient Spain, of which nothing remains save tradition, story and the hatred of the peoples whom she had formerly conquered. This Spain had her abode there on the summit of Murjajo, and she died and is buried there in the lowering sarcophagus of Santa Cruz, while beside it France smiles gaily and enticingly to the sea and to the neighboring Arab hamlets, to the whole world, laughing from the whiteness and brilliance of her silvery town with its colored crowds, its green, inviting lawns and its lovely parks and squares.
France does not care for the eternal walls and towers of Santa Cruz. She seeks only to assure to the coming generations a happy life in this sunny land; and, when natives grumble and threaten, the Frenchman answers, with a smile and an innate, unfeigned gaiety:
"Gentlemen, we spend lavishly and we bring you a true civilization and culture without which your 'liberty' would be that of the animals that roam your forests and would result in the same strife that is their lot."
And having said this, he turns away to sing a snatch of some gay Parisian song.
References
- ↑ In 1923, roughly 330,000 tons of various ores were exported from Melilla. The iron ore of the place, a hematite, carries 56% of iron, 3 to 10% of silicon dioxid and about 2.25% of phosphorus. The lead ore, galenite, yields approximately 75% of lead. Zinc ore is found as calamine, a very convenient form for metallurgical processes.