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The National Geographic Magazine 



to the foreign legations, with all their 

 ministers and family establishments, of 

 being obliged to follow the court in its 

 continual migration from one capital to 

 the other, across the country where there 

 are no roads and many dangerous rivers 

 to be traversed. Therefore the foreign 

 consuls who would not have been safe in 

 the interior remained at Tangier, and the 

 Sultan appointed officers and delegated 

 ministers of foreign affairs and of finance 

 to treat with them at Tangier. Hence it 

 is only occasionally, when some question 

 of great importance has to be negotiated, 

 that special missions are sent to the 

 capital where the Sultan happens to re- 

 side. It is a very great affair, the de- 

 parture of these special missions with 

 their numerous guards. Great prepara- 

 tions are required, and it is quite an im- 

 posing sight to see the minister with his 

 secretaries and attaches and his own le- 

 gation guards, together with the imperial 

 escort and standard in front, leaving 

 Tangier on one of these expeditions. 



The name by which Tangier is known 

 to the Arabs is Tanja. Tanja means clay. 

 It also means a little clay vessel for cook- 

 ing that the natives employed. Curi- 

 ously enough, the classic name was 

 Tingis, which is not very far removed 

 from the term Tanja. I suppose we got 

 our expression Tangiers from an attempt 

 of the English geographers to make the 

 name conform to Algiers. Now Algiers 

 itself is quite a misnomer, because the 

 Arabic name for Algiers is El Gezire, 

 meaning the city of the isle, from an 

 island off the coast. They called the 

 province itself "Ber El Gezire," the Land 

 of the Island. The Roman name of the 

 province about Tangier was Tingitania, 

 established during the reign of Emperor 

 Claudius. 



TANGIER AT ONE TIME BELONGED TO 

 ENGLAND 



In 1580 Alphonso of Portugal oc- 

 cupied Tangier, and in 1662 it was ceded 

 to England as a part of the dower of the 



Princess Catharine Braganza when that 

 princess married Charles II of England. 

 Another part of her dower was Bombay, 

 which was the origin of the great Anglo- 

 Indian Empire. The Moors were just as 

 well armed as the British in those days, 

 and, owing to the improvidence of Char- 

 les II, they were a good deal better fed, 

 because the garrison which occupied Tan- 

 gier was left so unprovided with food 

 that upon some occasions the men were 

 obliged to sell their armaments and shoes 

 and clothes in order to get a little money 

 to buy bread. In those days the arms of 

 the Moors were probably superior tO' 

 those of the English, and the latter were 

 not able to hold the place long, owing to 

 the constant attacks of the Moors. There 

 are, however, some very well-known 

 names that appear on the register during 

 that English occupation of Tangier. We 

 have the Earl of Teviot, Lord Dartmouth, 

 Pepys, notable for his diary, and the Rev. 

 Launcelot Addison, the father of Charles 

 Addison, the writer ; and in a work which 

 is extremely interesting, by Lieutenant 

 Colonel Davis, "The History of the 

 Second Queen's Royal Regiment" (now 

 the West Surrey), it is stated that John 

 Churchill began his military service in 

 Tangier under the command of Colonel 

 Kirk, who played such a sanguinary role 

 in the Cromwellian wars of England dur- 

 ing Jeffreys' sanguinary assizes. 



In reading John Morley's life of Oliver 

 Cromwell I found to my great surprise 

 that one of the regicides, General Fleet- 

 wood, who married Oliver Cromwell's 

 daughter, was confined in the Moorish 

 castle at Tangier ; and there is a letter on 

 record from his wife petitioning that he 

 might be removed to some establishment 

 in England, where she might provide him' 

 with the necessities which his station re- 

 quired. This particularly interested me, 

 as my youngest stepson, who has fre- 

 quently resided with me in Tangier, is a 

 direct descendant of this same General' 

 Fleetwood. 



Another little incident that amused me 



