stop their boats from sallying forth. But the Moors had still more
than one strong post on the rocky promontories of Barbary, and having
tasted the delights of chasing Spaniards, they were not likely to
reform, especially as the choice lay between piracy and starvation.
Dig they would not, and they preferred to beg by force, like the
"gentlemen of the road." So they bided their time, till Ferdinand the
Catholic passed away to his account, and then, in defiance of the
Penon, and reckless of all the pains and penalties of Spanish
retribution, they threw up their allegiance, and looked about for
allies.

Help was not far off, though in this case it meant mastery. The day of
the Moorish pirates was over; henceforth they might, and did,
triumphantly assault and batter Spanish and Venetian ships, but they
would do this under the captaincy of the allies they had called in,
under the leadership of the Turkish Corsairs. The Moors had shown the
way, and the Corsairs needed little bidding to follow it.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See S. Lane-Poole, _The Story of the Moors in Spain_, 232-280.

[2] Algiers is in Arabic, Al-Gezair ("the Islands"), said to be so
called from that in its bay; or, more probably, Al-Gezair is a
grammarian's explanation of the name Tzeyr or Tzier, by which the
Algerians commonly called their city, and which is, I suspect, a
corruption of the Roman city _Caesarea_ (Augusta), which occupied
almost the same site. It should be remarked that the Algerians
pronounce the _g[=i]m_ hard: not Al-Jeza[=i]r. Europeans spelt the name
in all sorts of ways: Arger, Argel, Argeir, Algel, &c., down to the
French Alger and our Algiers.

II.

THE LAND OF THE CORSAIRS.

It is time to ask how it was that a spacious land seemed to lie vacant
for the Corsairs to occupy, and a land too that offered almost every
feature that a pirate could desire for the safe and successful
prosecution of his trade. Geographers tell us that in climate and
formation the island of Barbary, for such it is geologically, is
really part of Europe, towards which, in history, it has played so
unfriendly a part. Once the countries, which we now know as Tunis,
Algiers, and Morocco, stood up abruptly as an island, with a
comparatively small lake washing its northern shore, and a huge ocean
on the south (see the map). That ocean is now the _Sahra_ or Sahara,
which engineers dream of again flooding with salt water, and so
forming an inland African sea. T