II
PHENICIANS, ROMANS AND VANDALS
Far to the south of the Anti-Atlas, in the yellow deserts that lead to
Timbuctoo, live the wild Touaregs, the Veiled Men of the south, who ride
to war with their faces covered by linen masks.
These Veiled Men are Berbers, but their alphabet is composed of Lybian
characters, and these are closely related to the signs engraved on
certain vases of the Nile valley that are probably six thousand years
old. Moreover, among the rock-cut images of the African desert is the
likeness of Theban Ammon crowned with the solar disk between serpents,
and the old Berber religion, with its sun and animal worship, has many
points of resemblance with Egyptian beliefs. All this implies trade
contacts far below the horizon of history, and obscure comings and
goings of restless throngs across incredible distances long before the
Phenicians planted their first trading posts on the north African coast
about 1200 B.C.
Five hundred years before Christ, Carthage sent one of her admirals on a
voyage of colonization beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Hannon set out
with sixty fifty-oared galleys carrying thirty thousand people. Some of
them settled at Mehedyia, at the mouth of the Sebou, where Phenician
remains have been found, and apparently the exploration was pushed as
far south as the coast of Guinea, for the inscription recording it
relates that Hannon beheld elephants, hairy men and "savages called
gorillas." At any rate, Carthage founded stable colonies at Melilla,
Larache, Salé and Casablanca.
Then came the Romans, who carried on the business, set up one of their
easy tolerant protectorates over "Tingitanian Mauretania,"[A] and built
one important military outpost, Volubilis in the Zerhoun, which a series
of minor defenses probably connected with Salé on the west coast, thus
guarding the Roman province against the unconquered Berbers to the
south.
[Footnote A: East of the Moulouya, the African protectorate (now west
Algeria and the Sud Oranais) was called the Mauretania of Caesar.]
Tingitanian Mauretania was one of the numerous African granaries of
Rome. She also supplied the Imperial armies with their famous African
cavalry, and among minor articles of exportation were guinea-hens,
snails, honey, euphorbia, wild beasts, horses and pearls. The Roman
dominion ceased at the line drawn between Volubilis and Salé. There was
no interest in pushing farther south, since the ivory and slave trade
with the Soudan was carried on by way of Tripoli. But the spirit of
enterprise never slept in the race, and Pliny records the journey of a
Roman general--Suetonius Paulinus--who appears to have crossed the
Atlas, probably by the pass of Tizi-n-Telremt, which is even now so
beset with difficulties that access by land to the Souss will remain an
arduous undertaking until the way by Imintanout is safe for European
travel.
The Vandals swept away the Romans in the fifth century. The Lower Empire
restored a brief period of civilization; but its authority finally
dwindled to the half-legendary rule of Count Julian, shut up within his
walls of Ceuta. Then Europe vanished from the shores of Africa, and
though Christianity lingered here and there in vague Donatist colonies,
and in the names of Roman bishoprics, its last faint hold went down in
the eighth century before the irresistible cry: "There is no God but
Allah!"
