Thus, in a week, I had met three Arabs all representative of their several classes, and, as usual, liked the man best who had been least influenced by European ways. Mulai Othmar disdained the idea of European protection, saying it was fit for Jews and slaves, but not for men, and that, for his part, sooner than ask for protection from any European power, he would return into the desert and follow a nomadic life. I took my leave of him with a feeling of real regret, such as one feels occasionally for those one sees but for an instant, but whose features never leave one’s mind. If there are, in the Sahara, many such as he, there is regeneration yet for the Arab race, so that they resolutely refuse all dealings with Europeans; reject our bibles, guns, powder, and shoddy cottons, our political intrigues, and strive to live after the rules their Prophet left them in his holy book. If they forsake them, as in some measure the inhabitants of Morocco certainly have done, slavery, sure and certain, is their lot; and in the time to come our rule, or that of the French or Germans, will transform them into the semblance of the abject creatures who once were free as swallows, and who to-day lounge round the frontier towns in North America calling themselves Utes, Blackfeet, Apaches, or what not, ghosts of their former selves, sodden with whisky, blotched with the filthy ailments we have introduced, and living contradictions of the morality and the religion under which we live.
By noon next day we had almost dropped the Atlas out of sight; the enormous wall of rocks rising straight from the plain had vanished; the tall snow-peaks above the chain alone remained in sight, and they appeared to hang suspended in the air. The vegetation changed, and once again the ground grew sandy. The white { 285} broom bursting into flower covered it here and there in patches, as with an air of snow new fallen and congealed upon the branches of the plants. Again we passed a range of foothills, rocky and steep, from the top of which, like a blue vapoury haze, we saw the sea; and as we led our jaded animals down the abrupt descent, a Berber shepherd standing on a knoll was playing on his pipe. He stopped occasionally and burst into a strange, wild song, quavering and fitful, the rhythm interrupted curiously, so as to be almost incomprehensible to ears accustomed to street organs, pianos, bands, sackbut, harp, psaltery, and all kinds of music which we have fashioned and take delight in according to our kind; but which I take it would be as void of meaning to a Berber as is our way of life. I checked my horse, and sitting sideways for an instant, tried to catch the rhythm; but failed, perhaps because my ears were dulled by all the noises of our world, and less attuned to nature than those of the brown figure standing on the rock. But though I could not catch that which I aimed at, I still had pleasure in his song, for, as he sang, the noise of trains and omnibuses faded away; the smoky towns grew fainter; the rush, the hurry, and the commonness of modern life sank out of sight; and in their place I saw again the valley of the N’fiss, the giant Kasbah with its four truncated towers, the Kaid, his wounded horse, the Persian, and the strange entrancing half-feudal, half-Arcadian life, which to have seen but for a fortnight consoled me for my failure, and will remain with me a constant vision (seen in the mind, of course, as ghosts are seen); but ever fresh and unforgettable.