THE PASSING OF MOROCCO
Frontispiece.
A SAINT HOUSE.
THE
PASSING OF MOROCCO
BY
FREDERICK MOORE
AUTHOR OF ‘THE BALKAN TRAIL’
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAP
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN, AND COMPANY
1908
TO
CHARLES TOWNSEND COPELAND
INTRODUCTION
For several years I had been watchingMorocco as a man who follows the professionof ‘Special Correspondent’ always watchesa place that promises exciting ‘copy.’ Formany years trouble had been brewing there.On the Algerian frontier tribes were almostconstantly at odds with the French; in thetowns the Moors would now and thenassault and sometimes kill a European;round about Tangier a brigand namedRaisuli repeatedly captured Englishmen andother foreigners for the sake of ransom; andamong the Moors themselves hardly a tribewas not at war with some other tribe or withthe Sultan. It was not, however, till Julyof last year that events assumed sufficient[viii]importance to make it worth the while of acorrespondent to go to Morocco. Then, asfortune would have it, when the news camethat several Frenchmen had been killed atCasablanca and a few days later that thetown had been bombarded by Frenchcruisers, I was far away in my own country.It was ill-luck not to be in London, five daysnearer the trouble, for it was evident thatthis, at last, was the beginning of a long,tedious, sometimes unclean business, thatwould end eventually—if German interestcould be worn out—in the French dominationof all North Africa west of Tripoli.
Sailing by the first fast steamer out ofNew York I came to London, and thoughlate obtained a commission from the WestminsterGazette. From here I went first toTangier, viâ Gibraltar; then on to Casablanca,where I saw the destruction of anArab camp and also witnessed the shootingof a party of prisoners; I visited Laraicheagainst my will in a little ‘Scorpion’ steamer[ix]that put in there; and finally spent someweeks at Rabat, the war capital, after AbdulAziz with his extraordinary following hadcome there from Fez.
Of these brief travels, covering all told aperiod of but three months, and of events thatare passing in the Moorish Empire this littlebook is a record.
Six letters to the Westminster Gazette(forming parts of Chapters I., IV., VI., XIV.,XV., and XVI.) are reprinted with the kindpermission of the Editor.
I have to thank Messrs. Forwood Bros.,the Mersey Steamship Company, for permissionto reproduce the picture whichappears on the cover.
March 15, 1908.
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