en--that instability was the dominant note of social and political life.
I recalled my glimpses of the Arabs who live in Algeria and Tunisia, and
even Egypt under European rule, and thought of the servility and
dependence of the lower classes and the gross, unintelligent lives of the
rest. Morocco alone had held out against Europe, aided, to be sure, by the
accident of her position at the corner of the Mediterranean where no one
European Power could permit another to secure permanent foothold. And with
the change, all the picturesque quality of life would go from the Moghreb,
and the kingdom founded by Mulai Idrees a thousand years ago would become
as vulgar as Algeria itself.

There is something very solemn about the passing of a great kingdom--and
Morocco has been renowned throughout Europe. It has preserved for us the
essence of the life recorded in the Pentateuch; it has lived in the light
of its own faith and enforced respect for its prejudices upon one and all.
In days when men overrun every square mile of territory in the sacred name
of progress, and the company promoter in London, Paris, or Berlin
acquires wealth he cannot estimate by juggling with mineralised land he
has never seen, Morocco has remained intact, and though her soil teems
with evidences of mineral wealth, no man dares disturb it. There is
something very fascinating about this defiance of all that the great
Powers of the world hold most dear.

One could not help remembering, too, the charm and courtesy, the simple
faith and chivalrous life, of the many who would be swallowed up in the
relentless maw of European progress, deliberately degraded, turned
literally or morally into hewers of wood and drawers of
water--misunderstood, made miserable and discontented. And to serve what
end? Only that the political and financial ambitions of a restless
generation might be gratified--that none might be able to say, "A weak
race has been allowed to follow its path in peace."

Salam disturbed my meditations.

"Everything shut up, sir," he said. "I think you have forgot: to-morrow we
go early to hunt the wild boar, sir."

So I left Morocco to look after its own business and turned in.

FOOTNOTES:

[51] Sidi is a Moorish title, and means "my Lord."

[52] It is related of one Sultan that when a "Bashador" remonstrated with
him for not fulfilling a contract, he replied, "Am I then a Nazarene, that
I should be bound by my word?"

TO THE GATE OF THE