land--not exactly an El Dorado, though
certainly as full of promise as any so styled has proved to be when
reached--favoured physically and geographically, but politically
stagnant, cursed with an effete administration, fettered by a decrepit
creed. In view of this situation, it is no wonder that from time to
time specious schemes appear and disappear with clockwork regularity.
Now it is in England, now in France, that a gambling public is found
to hazard the cost of proving the impossibility of opening the country
with a rush, and the worthlessness of so-called concessions and
monopolies granted by sheikhs in the south, who, however they may
chafe under existing rule which forbids them ports of their own,
possess none of the powers required to treat with foreigners.

As normal trade has waned in Morocco, busy minds have not been slow in
devising illicit, or at least unusual, methods of making money,
even, one regrets to say, of making false money. Among the drawbacks
suffered by the commerce which pines under the shade of the shareefian
umbrella, one--and that far from the least--is the unsatisfactory
coinage, which till a few years ago was almost entirely foreign. To
have to depend in so important a matter on any mint abroad is bad
enough, but for that mint to be Spanish means much. Centuries ago
the Moors coined more, but with the exception of a horrible token of
infinitesimal value called "floos," the products of their extinct
mints are only to be found in the hands of collectors, in buried
hoards, or among the jewellery displayed at home by Mooresses and
Jewesses, whose fortunes, so invested, may not be seized for debt.
Some of the older issues are thin and square, with well-preserved
inscriptions, and of these a fine collection--mostly gold--may be seen
at the British Museum; but the majority, closely resembling those of
India and Persia, are rudely stamped and unmilled, not even round,
but thick, and of fairly good metal. The "floos" referred to (_sing._
"fils") are of three sizes, coarsely struck in zinc rendered hard and
yellow by the addition of a little copper. The smallest, now rarely
met with, runs about 19,500 to L1 when this is worth 32-1/2 Spanish
pesetas; the other two, still the only small change of the country,
are respectively double and quadruple its value. The next coin in
general circulation is worth 2_d._, so the inconvenience is great.
A few years ago, however, Europeans resident in Tangier reso