i88 Bombardment of Casa Blanca [1907 



At first he continued coming to Newbuildings every day for luncheon, 

 but as he grew weaker I had to send a carriage for him, and then he 

 gradually ceased coming; the incident of the wasps he took very 

 seriously. The last fortnight he was at Rascall's he gave himself up 

 entirely to taking laudanum, and David and his wife were alarmed at 

 his condition. The drug was sent him by post from London, and I 

 heard that he took as much as six ounces of it daily. The last time he 

 came to see us at Newbuildings he was so weak that he had to be 

 helped back into the carriage. 



" Father Tyrrell has written me an interesting letter in answer to 

 mine, in which I had expressed a hope that he would not allow himself 

 to be driven out of his ground, on either side (as a Liberal Catholic or 

 as an obedient member of the Church). He writes: 'As you may 

 imagine, the air is full of missiles directed at my head, and I am 

 busy dodging them. It is not pleasant, yet to my Irish blood not 

 wholly unpleasant.' Also, in allusion to what I had said about the 

 influence such teaching as his might have had on me forty-five years 

 ago, ' Yes, had Knowledge been welcomed earlier, many might have 

 been saved to the Church, but she (Knowledge) has had to force her- 

 self in, and the result may be rather destructive for her unwilling 

 hostess, yet the gain of Rome to the cause of reason and humanity 

 would be so great that one is loath to abandon the effort, at all events 

 I can never admit that I am beaten.' 



" 20th Oct. (Sunday). — Rivers Wilson has been here with Neville 

 and Cunninghame Graham and a friend of his from Morocco, one 

 Fernan, an Anglo-Belgian merchant of Casa Blanca, who was there 

 during the recent bombardment by the French. Fernan tells me the 

 bombardment was without sufficient excuse. Trouble had arisen 

 through the opposition of the native Moors to the new harbour works 

 being constructed by a French company, and especially to the ap- 

 pointment of Frenchmen as revenue officers to the Custom House. 

 This had led to excitement, and four or five Europeans had been killed 

 by roughs ; arrests, however, had been made by the local authorities, and 

 there was no real danger in the town when the French man-of-war 

 arrived. The commander of the vessel had promised to give three 

 hours' warning before taking steps, but chose to give it at 2 o'clock in 

 the morning, and began firing at 5, the pretext being that a single rifle 

 shot had been fired on the French landing party. Fernan is a strong 

 partisan of the Moors, or rather against the French. Between the 

 reigning Sultan, Abdul Aziz and Mulai Hafid, he thinks there is not 

 much to choose, but he has only seen the latter once some years ago 

 when he was a provincial Governor. The French, he thinks, are 

 hampered in their projects against Morocco by the difficulty of provid- 



