ed their armies to Spain, and their successors in North
Africa, though less powerful, were generally able to keep up a number
of vessels for offensive as well as commercial purposes.

During the later Middle Ages the relations between the rulers of the
Barbary coast--the kings of Tunis, Tilims[=a]n, Fez, &c.--and the
trading nations of Christendom were amicable and just. Treaties show
that both parties agreed in denouncing and (so far as they could)
suppressing piracy and encouraging mutual commerce. It was not till
the beginning of the sixteenth century that a change came over these
peaceful conditions, and the way it happened was this.

When the united wisdom of Ferdinand and Isabella resolved on the
expatriation of the Spanish Moors, they forgot the risk of an exile's
vengeance.[1] No sooner was Granada fallen than thousands of desperate
Moors left the land which for seven hundred years had been their home,
and, disdaining to live under a Spanish yoke, crossed the strait to
Africa, where they established themselves at various strong points,
such as Shersh[=e]l, Oran, and notably at Algiers, which till then had
hardly been heard of. No sooner were the banished Moors fairly settled
in their new seats than they did what anybody in their place would
have done: they carried the war into their oppressors' country. To
meet the Spaniards in the open field was impossible in their reduced
numbers, but at sea their fleetness and knowledge of the coasts gave
them the opportunity of reprisal for which they longed.

Science, tradition, and observation inform us that primitive man had
certain affinities to the beast of prey. By superior strength or
ingenuity he slew or snared the means of subsistence. Civilized man
leaves the coarsest forms of slaughter to a professional class, and,
if he kills at all, elevates his pastime to the rank of sport by the
refining element of skill and the excitement of uncertainty and
personal risk. But civilized man is still only too prone to prey upon
his fellows, though hardly in the brutal manner of his ancestors. He
preys upon inferior intelligence, upon weakness of character, upon the
greed and upon the gambling instinct of mankind. In the grandest scale
he is called a financier; in the meanest, a pickpocket. This predatory
spirit is at once so ancient and so general, that the reader, who is,
of course, wholly innocent of such reprehensible tendencies, must
nevertheless make an effort to underst