n the
hill above; the goat-herd called to another far-off brown-clad figure,
and the echoes filtered down to us: a rabbit dashed up out of a
palm-bush and scuttled away: and then there was silence profound, and
we paced on eastwards, talking and singing a song sometimes, while the
sun climbed right-handed.

There is no life like it--that life of the open air and its absolute
freedom. Monotonous it would certainly be to many people: small and
uneventful matters, and a palette set in greys and browns, charm but a
few, for whom solitary rides and waste places are "things in common," and
chance meetings and little incidents by the way suffice.

Two or three miles outside Tangier stretch rich undulating lands between
low hills: a few divisionless fields bear witness to both primitive and
erratic farming, and give that regretful air to the landscape which land
not "done well by" always imparts.

The writer has lately read a somewhat pessimistic letter upon the state
of Morocco. Morocco is a decadent empire, it is true: primarily, because
the two races to whom the country belongs live, and have always lived
from time immemorial, under a tribal system; and secondarily, because
those same races, Arab and Berber, hate one another with a racial
hatred. These two reasons by themselves augur badly for the land they
live upon, implying a state of armed neutrality, no cohesion, and no
settled peace.

Under a tribal system the tribe is the unit, not the individual--"one for
all, and all for one": it follows that transgression and retribution are
both upon a wholesale scale, and alike disastrous towards the
consolidation of a united nation.

The government in a country cursed by the tribal system must in the very
nature of things be despotic: lawless tribes need the tyrant's hand of
iron. To the fact of his being a despot the Sultan owes his security,
coupled with one other reason. Arabs and Berbers alike are fanatics:
religion is the air they breathe, the salt of life. The Sultan is
descended direct from the One Great Prophet; consequently the Sultan is
acknowledged as lord. His policy is an Oriental one: tribe is played off
against tribe, one European power against the other European power; the
empire is isolated; innovations are prohibited, lest European
civilization should oust Moorish eccentricities. So much for the Oriental
policy of "the balance of jealousies."

Despotism breeds despotism. While every Moor below the Sultan