in
fighting one another. So long as there were ancient scores to be wiped
out at home, so long as under cover of a missionary zeal they could
continue intertribal feuds, things went well for the victors; but as
soon as excuses for this grew scarce, it was needful to fare afield.
The pretty story--told, by the way, of other warriors as well--of the
Arab leader charging the Atlantic surf, and weeping that the world
should end there, and his conquests too, may be but fiction, but it
illustrates a fact. Had Europe lain further off, the very causes which
had conspired to raise a central power in Morocco would have sufficed
to split it up again. This, however, was not to be. In full view of
the most northern strip of Morocco, from Ceuta to Cape Spartel, the
north-west corner of Africa, stretches the coast of sunny Spain.
Between El K'sar es-Sagheer, "The Little Castle," and Tarifa Point is
only a distance of nine or ten miles, and in that southern atmosphere
the glinting houses may be seen across the straits.

History has it that internal dissensions at the Court of Spain led to
the Moors being actually invited over; but that inducement was hardly
needed. Here was a country of infidels yet to be conquered; here was
indeed a land of promise. Soon the Berbers swarmed across, and in
spite of reverses, carried all before them. Spain was then almost as
much divided into petty states as their land had been till the Arabs
taught them better, and little by little they made their way in
a country destined to be theirs for five hundred years. Cordova,
Seville, Granada, each in turn became their capital, and rivalled Fez
across the sea.

The successes they achieved attracted from the East adventurers and
merchants, while by wise administration literature and science were
encouraged, till the Berber Empire of Spain and Morocco took a
foremost rank among the nations of the day. Judged from the standpoint
of their time, they seem to us a prodigy; judged from our standpoint,
they were but little in advance of their descendants of the twentieth
century, who, after all, have by no means retrograded, as they are
supposed to have done, though they certainly came to a standstill,
and have suffered all the evils of four centuries of torpor and
stagnation. Civilization wrought on them the effects that it too often
produces, and with refinement came weakness. The sole remaining state
of those which the invaders, finding independent, conquered on