This audacity of a Jew filled the Moor with alarm. "How could a Jew, who
was not a devil, propose such an insult to the Commander of the
Faithful, as to presume to take the charge of his invincible warriors!"
Nevertheless, the little fellow weathered the storm, and got appointed
"captain of the port of Mogador," with the liberal salary of about
thirty shillings per month; but this did not prevent our aide-de-camp,
now metamorphosed into a sea captain, from wearing _an admiral's_
uniform, which he obtained in a curious way on a visit to England. He
met in the streets of London with an acquaintance, who pretended to
patronize him. The gentleman jokingly said, "Well, Phillips, I must give
you an uniform, since you are appointed captain of the port of Mogador."
The said gentleman received, a few months afterwards, when his quondam
protégé was safe with his uniform strutting about Mogador, to the
amazement of the Moors, and the delight of his co-religionists, a bill
of thirty pounds or so, charged for "a suit of admiral's uniform for Mr.
Phillips, captain of the port of Mogador;" and found that a joke
sometimes has a serious termination.
Phillips, on his first arrival in this country, entered into a
diplomatic contest with the Moorish authorities, demanding the
privileges of a native British-born Jew, and he determined to ride a
horse, in order to vindicate the rights of British Jews, before the
awful presence of the Shereefian Court! About this business, the
Consul-general Hay is said to have written eleven long, and Mr.
Willshire about twenty-one short and pithy despatches, but the affair
ended in smoke. Phillips, with great magnanimity and self-denial,
consented to relinquish the privilege, on the prayer of his brethren,
natives of Mogador, who were very naturally afraid, lest the incensed
Emperor might visit on them what he durst not inflict on the
British-born Jew.
Of the achievements of Phillips in the way of science (for he assures he
is born to the high destiny of enlightening both barbarians and
civilized nations) I take the liberty, with his permission, of
mentioning one. Phillips brought here a pair of horse-shoes belonging to
a drayhorse of the firm of Truman, Hanbury, Buxton, and Co., to astonish
the Moors by their size, who are great connoisseurs of horse-flesh. The
Moors protested their unbelief, and swore it was a lie,--"such shoes
never shod a horse." Phillips then got a skeleton of a head from
England. This they also scouted as an imposition, alleging that Phillips
had got it purposely made to deceive them. "Although they believed in
the Prophet, whom they never saw, they were still not such fools as to
believe in everything which an Infidel might bring to their country."
Phillips now gave up, in despair, the attempt to propagate science among
the Moors.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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