THE landing at Mogador, where they next went ashore, is only less difficult than at Saffi. However, the Moors know just where to run the boats in between the reefs, and Nora and Elizabeth and other passengers from the Razila found themselves safely landed on the rocks. There were plenty of natives waiting to carry them over the rough places, not this time pick-a-back, however, for here each one was grasped in a pair of strong arms. Elizabeth's man in his kindness carried her so far that she became frightened and called out, "Put me down, put me down!" thinking he might be carrying her off altogether.
The two friends wished to keep with Mr. and Mrs. Eddis, but one of the guides, an old Jew, willed otherwise, and they had to follow him. If they had stopped to argue the point they might have missed both guides.
The little party they were now with included Mrs. Phillips and Major Lambert, and together they visited the Danish Consulate, where they climbed up what seemed to them a great many stairs, and came out upon the roof. But the view quite rewarded them for their toil, though the rocky, surge-fringed coast was bathed in sunlight so intense that they could not look at it for many moments at a time. In the other direction the city itself stretched out before them, a city of whiteness, of mosques and minarets, which the Moors themselves have called, "El Sûirah," which means "the little picture.”
The guide did his work well, he pointed out the "Seven Arches," and the meat market, horrible to view; but neither Nora nor Elizabeth found them specially interesting. What they liked to look at were the shops and workshops, the people, and the animals in the streets.
They were much entertained in watching a potter at his work, one of Ham's descendants, with a wheel so primitive that they thought it must be very like the first ever used for making pots. But it answered the purpose well, and they left the clever potter rejoicing in a sixpence which Major Lambert gave him as reward for the deft way he handled his clay.
In another quarter they saw two merry old men weaving a blanket; they threw the shuttle back and forth to each other between the threads, but at the slow rate they worked that blanket would be long in the making.
Brasswork, too, is done in Morocco, and they saw at least one workshop which proved to them that all so-called Moorish work is not made in Birmingham.
But by this time the old guide felt he had earned his pay, so he took them down to the little beach and left them there. And then their troubles began, for beggar boys crowded around begging for pennies.
One of the guides had tried to teach them a couple of Arabic words meaning "Go away," and when one of these poor boys, who was covered with sores, touched Elizabeth's clothes with his dirty fingers, she said them in her crossest tones, but without any effect, for the beggar boys would not go. Oh! how she longed for the man with a stick, who had of his own free will accompanied them on one of their expeditions, driving away all troublesome boys. And to add to their perplexity there were a lot of men with carrying chairs, shouting and gesticulating and telling them to "Sit down!”
However, sitting down proved to be the right thing, for oh! the relief of it! when their chairs were picked up, each by two men, and carried off right out into the sea, away from the beggars with their polluting touch, through a stretch of gradually deepening water, till they reached the boat. But how indignant they all felt with a passenger who had joined them, when he refused to pay his bearers the usual fee, and put them off with a few pence instead of the shilling they were expecting. It was of no use for them to complain, for by that time he was safe in the boat, and they in deep water.
Perhaps he thought that he was doing a clever thing in defrauding them, but if so he must have forgotten that "the righteous Lord loveth righteousness," and that "he that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker.”
Meanwhile the waves had begun to break into the boat, and every one was glad when a start was made for the Razila. Nora and Eliza Beth felt they were saying good-bye to Africa, but the visit to Mogador had not been a pleasant part of their Morocco trip, beautiful as the city is, especially as seen from a distance; and even a good wash with clean-smelling carbolic soap failed to remove the unpleasant impression.
The beggar boys certainly had been very persistent, but what troubled Elizabeth more than anything was the thought that she had shown no kindness or compassion to the poor child with the dreadful sores; her one idea had been to get rid of him because he annoyed her. She felt she had been altogether unlike the Lord Jesus, who always showed compassion to the afflicted. He never said, "Go away," but when a leper came to Him "beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.... Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean." And to-day, though He is in heaven at the right hand of God, crowned with glory and honor, and exalted far above all principality and power and every name named, He still says, "Come" to every poor, needy one. "And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely," for Jesus has said, "Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.”