Tangier

“ For Tangier swarms with people in European clothes, there are English, French and Spanish signs above its shops, and cab-stands in its squares; it belongs, as much as Algiers, to the familiar dog-eared world of travel—and there, beyond the last dip of "the Mountain," lies the world of mystery, with the rosy dawn just breaking over it. The motor is at the door and we are off.
The so-called Spanish zone, which encloses internationalized Tangier in a wide circuit of territory, extends southward for a distance of about a hundred and fifteen kilometres. ”

“ Right before you is a high tower or minaret, not white but curiously painted, which belongs to the principal mosque of Tangier; a black banner waves upon it, for it is the feast of Ashor. A noble beach of white sand fringes the bay from the town to the foreland of Alminàr. To the east rise prodigious hills and mountains; they are Gibil Muza and his chain; and yon tall fellow is the peak of Tetuan; the grey mists of evening are enveloping their sides. Such was Tangier, such its vicinity, as it appeared to me whilst gazing from the Genoese bark. ”

“ The whole life of Tangier seems to be lived in the streets. The market is a perfect babel of strange tongues. Veiled women seated on the ground sell queer flat loaves of bread and great bunches of violets. The stalls are piled with golden tangerines, tiny limes, mammoth lemons, scarlet peppers, purple eggplant—every fruit or vegetable you ever saw and many you never heard of!
The children are very handsome with enormous eyes and skins of bronze velvet! The Moorish is the best Oriental dress I have seen, save that of the Bedouins of the Pyramids, which it resembles. ”

“ Hardly has the rock of Gibraltar turned to cloud when one's foot is on the soil of an almost unknown Africa. Tangier, indeed, is in the guide-books; but, cuckoo-like, it has had to lays its eggs in strange nests, and the traveller who wants to find out about it must acquire a work dealing with some other country—Spain or Portugal or Algeria. There is no guide-book to Morocco, and no way of knowing, once one has left Tangier behind, where the long trail over the Rif is going to land one, in the sense understood by any one accustomed to European certainties. ”

“ From the tents Renfrew and Claire saw the trains of camels and donkeys passing slowly along the high road towards the steep and stony hill that leads up to the lower city gate, the white-washed summer palaces of the wealthy Moors, nestling in gardens, among green fields and groves of acacias, olives and almond trees, the far-off line of blue water on the one hand and the fairy-like and ivory town upon the other. Clouds of brown dust flew up in the air, and the hoarse cry of “Balak! Balak!” made a perpetual and distant music. Far more strange and barbarous was this city than Tangier. ”

“ Although enjoying constant communication with foreigners, and only eight leagues from Europe, the people of Tangier retain the same prejudices, the same aversion to mental advancement, as have ever characterised them for ages past, and they still continue to act upon their old creed, "What was good for our fathers is good for us." ”

“ Notwithstanding its proximity to Gibraltar, and the constant intercourse and commerce kept up with Europeans, Tangier preserves its primitive appearance and bears the stamp of a thoroughly Moorish town. Like most Moslem cities it is surrounded by beautiful gardens, and the ride of a few miles will reward the tourist with some very pretty scenery. There is work, too, for the antiquary round about Tangier. Ruins of cities, remains of a Roman aqueduct, traces of the Portuguese dominion, strange tombs of warrior saints who fell in battle, are to be visited. ”

“ On leaving the Moorish houses and passing into the streets, one cannot but be struck by the contrast presented between the show, the glitter, and the elegance within, and the plainness, dirtiness, and even squalor, of all that one sees without. The streets in Tangier scarcely deserve the name, for they are merely narrow lanes, with nothing in the way of architectural display on which they eye can rest with pleasure. ”

“ Tangier is not a town where one can move about much at night. There is also a place where the guests tell you that you can see Moorish women dance the dance which so startled Paris in the Algerian exhibit at the exposition. As I had no desire to be startled in that way again, I did not go to see them, and so cannot say what they are like. But it is quite safe to say that any visitor to Tangier who thinks he is seeing anything that is real and native to the home life of the people, and that is not a show gotten up by the guides, is going to be greatly taken in. ”

“ Tangier is a foreign land if ever there was one, and the true spirit of it can never be found in any book save The Arabian Nights. Here are no white men visible, yet swarms of humanity are all about us. Here is a packed and jammed city enclosed in a massive stone wall which is more than a thousand years old. All the houses nearly are one-and two-story, made of thick walls of stone, plastered outside, square as a dry-goods box, flat as a floor on top, no cornices, whitewashed all over—a crowded city of snowy tombs! ”

“ Cairo is Oriental, but Tangier is much more so. Here we seem at one step to have passed from modern civilization into barbarism. There is no European quarter in Tangier; every evidence of the proximity of the opposite continent disappears; the distance might be immeasurable. It is Moorish from one end to the other; the very atmosphere and prevailing odors announce it. It has little, narrow, dirty, twisted streets, through which no vehicle could pass, and only accessible for donkeys, camels, and foot passengers; there is no such thing as a wheeled vehicle in the place. ”

“ Tangier, Spanish or French Tanger, Arabic Tanja, capital of the Moroccan province of El-Fahs or Fahass, the largest commercial town in the whole country, and the seat of legations from the great powers, lies picturesquely on the hilly W. bank of a shallow bay of the Atlantic. Of the 46,270 inhab. 25,000 are Mohammedans, 12,000 Moroccan Jews, and 9270 foreigners (incl. 7000 Spaniards) . The rough and extremely dirty streets of the old town, above whose white sea of houses peeps here and there the minaret of a mosque, afford a genuine picture of Oriental life. ”

“ In Tangier he is given straw and an opening in the roof. To be fair, you must compare a prisoner's condition in jail with that which he is accustomed to in his own home, and the homes of the Moors of the lower class are as much like stables as their stables are like pigsties. The poor of Tangier are allowed, through the kindness of the Sultan, to sleep on the bare stones around the entrance to one of the mosques. For the poor sick there has been built a portico, about as large as a Fifth Avenue omnibus, opposite this same mosque. ”

“ A treaty which had been signed by the Emperor of Morocco and the British Government inspired the hope of a humane reception in Tangier. More than a hundred of the privateersmen were drowned when the Inspector drove against the rocky coast, and the rest of them, wounded, half-naked, and exhausted, were discovered by the Moors, who threw them into a loathsome jail of Tangier. ”

“ The beauty of the eyes and colouring and the originality of the costume of the Jewish girls at Tangier delighted me, but not to the extent of chasing a certain melancholy from my heart, which had clung about it ever since the beginning of my cruise, through the long night watches, and even amidst the amusements of our stays in port. I was thinking of HER! There always is a HER when one is only twenty! ”

“ It was as if the calendar had been put back for centuries, and the half-forgotten personages of the "Thousand-and-One Nights" were revivified and had their being around us.
Tangier is a walled and fortified town; but Vauban had no hand in the fortifications, and it is my private opinion the walls would go down before a peremptory horn-blast quicker than those of Jericho. It swarms with a motley population much addicted to differences in shades of complexion. The Tangerines exhaust the primitive colours and most of the others in their features. ”

“ Tangier had a population of from four to six thousand. Grabert estimates the population at 10,000, including 2,500 Jews, who live intermixed with the Moors; 1,400 negroes, 300 Berbers of Rif, and about 100 Christians. The Consuls-General of the European Powers reside here; and most of them have commodious houses. The Swedish Consul has a splendid garden, which is thrown open to the European residents. There is but one good street in the town; and the transition from Europe to Barbary, at so short a distance, is striking to the stranger. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As a class of men, they are far superior in civility and kindness to the Moorish population of Tangier. So much for the foolish and absurd stories about the place, which tell us that it is the only city of the Empire in which Christians can live with safety and comparative comfort. These tales must have been invented to please the Tangier diplomatists. The contrary is the fact, for, whilst the Moors of Tangier consist of camel drivers and soldiers, there are a good number of very respectable native merchants in Mogador ”

“ Government has again approved of all I have done and am doing.
When war begins you will probably see me; but be assured I shall not be in Tangier when bombardment takes place. I shall either be on board a ship or safe inland amongst my hunters on ‘Mount Washington [40] .’ No imprudence shall I be guilty of, for your sake. As to the Moors, they are ready to do anything for me. I will not trust the Spaniards, nor go amongst the ‘Kabail.’
Sultan’s brother (Mulai Abbas, in command of the troops) and I are good friends.
Tangier is deserted. Nothing but armed men: not a woman, not a child. ”

“ In 1683 the Merry Monarch caused the works of Tangier to be blown up, and abandoned the place, declaring it was not worth the cost of keeping. The Merry Monarch was not prescient. A century afterwards Gibraltar was indebted for a large proportion of its supplies, during the great siege, to the dismantled and deserted British-African fortress. For many reasons Tangier was not to be missed.
By a happy coincidence a party of three in the Club-House Hotel—a retired army captain, his wife, and a lady companion—were anxious to take a trip to Africa. ”

“ The Romans at one time substituted this place for Tangier, as a provincial capital; yet it has neither a harbour nor road, being at the extreme point of the land, and shut out by a range of mountains from a fertile and peopled country, while Tangier is at the bottom of a bay, surrounded with rich lands, and is on the highway from Spain to Mauritania, from the ocean to the interior.
To us a capital is different from what it was to the Romans: we have a mass of organization and administration, which requires that it should be placed at the head in respect to the members. ”

“ What nature has done for the distant views artifice has graven upon the immediate surroundings. Pipes laid down to the little River of the Jews, which babbles below the knoll, bring up water to irrigate the lawns which surround the verandahs. Nowhere in Tangier is there such a carpet of living green. ”

“ Tangier is possibly the most cosmopolitan city in the world. In native costume you'll see Berber and Rif, Arab and Blue Man, and occasionally a Senegalese from further south. In European dress you'll see Japs and Chinese, Hindus and Turks, Levantines and Filipinos, North Americans and South Americans, and, of course, even Europeans—from both sides of the Curtain. ”

“ Beyond the very small European society, composed chiefly of the various Representatives and their families, residence in Tangier offered no occupation for the leisure hours of a young and active man. Thrown therefore on the resources of sport, he mingled constantly with the wilder natives of the hills as well as with the less uncivilised farmers and agricultural peasantry of the plains. ”

“ Ben Abdelgrim Nacasis, governor of Tetuan, in answer to his letter on behalf of Sabio Jacob Aboab, the physician, “cuyo pleito estuviera ya ajustado antes de aora sino pidiera cosas injustas”; Tangier, 30 Nov. 1666 ibid.
102. The same to Cidi Cassum Shat Shek (xeque y governador de Angera) ; that a small yacht belonging to an officer of the garrison of Tangier has gone on shore close to Old Tangier (Tanger la Vieja) . Begs him to order his men to help her afloat, and they will be duly remunerated for their work (translated into Moorish, and sent by a Jew on purpose with the said translation) ”

“ The stranger, who knows that Tangier is one of the most important towns of Marocco, and the residence of the representatives of the chief civilised States, is apt to be shocked when he first sets foot within its walls. ”

“ He told one of them a couple of our gunboats could come here and knock Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea!
At this present moment half a dozen of us are taking a private pleasure excursion of our own devising. We form rather more than half the list of white passengers on board a small steamer bound for the venerable Moorish town of Tangier, Africa. Nothing could be more absolutely certain than that we are enjoying ourselves. One can not do otherwise who speeds over these sparkling waters and breathes the soft atmosphere of this sunny land. Care cannot assail us here. ”