North Africa

   The Spanish hills to the north of the strait are a tawny lion color, scored with deep ravines and stony gullies, treeless and without habitation except for a few solitary, earth-tinted cottages.

   On the southern shore the Moroccan mountains are pale blue, and recede through seemingly infinite distances to the ridges of the Beni Hasan.

   A few ruined castles still cluster around the foot of lofty Djebel Mousa, the African Pillar of Hercules, which rears its bare and rounded head opposite lionlike Djebel-al-Tarik, now Gibraltar, on the Spanish side.

   Here the strait is less than nine miles across, although opposite Tangier it broadens out to nearly twelve and beyond that into the wide Atlantic, where Capes Trafalgar and Spartel signal to passing ships the last messages of land.

   Lovely Algeciras with its gardens of jasmine and bougainvillea is left behind, and Morocco holds one in its grip.

   Morocco is at once the sentinel at the ocean gates of the Mediterranean and the corner doorway to all North Africa.

   People have come away from Tangier with no more lasting memories than of a beach and a dancing girl, or perhaps of a prearranged quarrel in a dimly lighted Moorish cafe out of which they are rescued from certain death by the faithful guide-a tale which is so often repeated that I have come to believe that it is written somewhere in a book.

   I stood on the deck of the Gibel Mousa, newly appointed Charge d'Affaires of the American Legation, accredited to His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Morocco, Prince of True Believers, Vice Regent of God on Earth, religious as well as civil head of a country whose interior is less known to Americans than the fastnesses of Tibet.

   Then and there I vowed that I would try to become an understanding envoy to western Barbary. Crossing the strait is not merely a transition from Europe to Africa; it is a reversal of time, of ages even, from one civilization to another and from conceptions fundamental as life itself to others totally different. Similar changes are met with elsewhere only after thousands of miles of travel.

   Inland from the city of Tangier are the same yellow mountains, the same treeless hillsides, the same absence of life as on the Spanish shore.

   But suddenly, where there was nothing but hillside and blue sky and white glare, is a white-and-blue metropolis, with domes and slender minarets, a battlemented castle, and terrace upon terrace of gray-pink crumbling walls, emerging as by magic from the desert hills.

   The great white city lies on a curving blue bay, with a beach 200 feet wide encircling it as far as to the watchtower on Malabata Point, below the hills of Andjera.

   My first glimpse was a panorama of irregular whiteness, pierced by slender mosque towers glittering with multicolored tiles and enlivened by the flags of a dozen nations interested in the future of this gateway city of the Mediterranean. Among them was the American flag.

   The pier was crowded with picturesquely garbed Moors, and at the shore end, as might be expected in Barbary, a riding horse, not an automobile, was waiting for me to mount.

   By the horse's head stood a Legation soldier, robed in a flowing garment of midnight blue edged with gold embroidery, belted with a broad red girdle, and exhibiting a spotless white sleeveless garment known as a sulham above his bare legs and yellow slippers. On his head was the customary white turban, red fez, and blue tassel.

   His countenance was that of a wise and benevolent baby. He spoke the necessary English with a cheering smile, said his name was Mohammed, and led me to the Legation.

   Tiny shops lined each side of the narrow way. The owners squatted cross-legged in the center, seemingly unperturbed by the passage of possible buyers. As I passed through the market place, a Moor rushed from between two or three companions and, stooping, kissed my boot. At the same time he held up both hands in supplication.

   Now, I had but lately left Oxford, where…"