The Passing of Morocco — Text and Context

A Correspondent’s Unlucky Itinerary

Moore frames his travels as a sequence of near-misses. He was in America when the French bombarded Casablanca; he sailed past Rabat on the very day the Sultan entered the town; he was forced to stop at Laraiche against his will. This pattern of thwarted expectations becomes a structural device, allowing him to describe places he did not plan to see and events he witnessed only by accident. The narrative moves from Tangier to Casablanca, then down the coast to Laraiche and Rabat, following the route of the “little Scorpion steamer” that carries him and his companion Weare. Each port offers a different facet of Moroccan life under pressure from European interference.

The Castle at Laraiche and the Red Mountain

Moore’s description of Laraiche is the book’s most sustained set piece. Approaching at twilight, he sees a “great white castle, silent, to all appearances deserted, and overgrown with cactus bushes.” The next morning the city reveals itself in “all manner of colour”—blue, green, orange, yellow—unlike the usual grey or white Moorish towns. He notes the ancient fortress with Spanish guns whose muzzles bear “designs of snakes and wreaths of flowers,” and mortars shaped “like squatting gnomes.” Beyond the sand dunes rises the Red Mountain, made famous by the brigand Raisuli. The passage balances enchantment—moonlight, phosphorescence—with the practical business of loading crates of eggs bound for England.

The Business of Protection and Gun-Running

Moore repeatedly observes how European consular protection shields Moroccans who engage in dubious trades. In one pointed passage, he notes that a protégé “may now exploit his fellow-countrymen with certain safety, or he may direct the profitable business of gun-running.” The system, he implies, makes villains harder to prosecute. This observation recurs in different forms: the captain who hugs the coast to pick up freight, the officials who look the other way, the European residents who profit from the chaos. Moore does not moralize at length, but his accumulation of such details builds a picture of a country where legal protections have become a cover for exploitation.

Movement Between Sea and Shore

The book’s rhythm is set by the movement of ships, lighters, and small boats. Moore describes great lighters “rowed by fifteen, sometimes twenty, turbaned men” bringing cargo, and smaller craft ferrying country people and their animals. The sea is often calm—“like a painted ocean”—but the bar at river mouths makes landing treacherous. This constant shuttling between ship and shore mirrors the larger transition Moore documents: the old Moorish world, with its colourful cloaks and ancient guns, giving way to a new order of European control. His own position as a late-arriving correspondent, always just missing the big story, becomes a metaphor for the difficulty of capturing a moment that is already passing.

Moore’s account is best read as a series of impressions rather than a comprehensive history. He does not pretend to have seen everything, and his honesty about what he missed gives the book an unusual candour. Readers interested in the texture of daily life in early twentieth-century Morocco—the look of a castle at dusk, the feel of a crowded lighter, the smell of eggs in the hold—will find more here than in many official reports. The map included in the original edition helps trace his coastal route, but the real journey is through the details he chose to record.

I remembered sitting in a shuttered library once, reading about Frederick Moore’s Casablanca, that dust of another century. Then I thought of Pausanias' description of Greece, Volume I. — Themes and Context, and how he too walked among ruins that were still breathing, recording what would soon slip away.