Morocco is unique among the countries of the world in that it has four capitals—Fez, Mequinez, Marrákesh, Rabat—and the names of all save the last, which is the seat of the French administration as well as one of the imperial residences, are spelled in various ways and have various pronunciations. Take, for example, the case of the second city I have mentioned. If you are English you will call it Meknes; if French, Mekinez; if Spanish, Mequinez; but the Moroccans themselves speak of it as Miknasa.

Seen from a distance, Mequinez—which is the orthography which I happen to like best and to which I am accustomed—gives promise of being an Arabian Nights sort of city, a place of mystery and enchantment; for its crumbling walls, mellowed by years and weather to a lovely reddish brown, broken at frequent intervals by massive, foursquare towers, and pierced by nine imposing gates, rise abruptly on the east from the edge of a broad ravine, which separates the ancient native city from the modern town which has been erected by the French. Towering above the flat-roofed houses, like fingers pointing toward heaven, are numerous beautifully proportioned minarets, their faces inlaid with mosaics of blue-green-and-yellow faience tiling; and in the outskirts white palaces and villas peep coyly from amid the gray green of the olive-groves and the more vivid foliage of the orange-gardens. Yet within the walls disappointment awaits the visitor, for the buildings are, on the whole, quite unimpressive; there are no mosques which can compare with those of Tunis, Kairouan, and Tlemcen; and the place is wholly lacking in the picturesque and colorful street scenes which constitute the chief charm of Fez. The sights of Mequinez may, indeed, be numbered on the fingers of a single hand, the finest of them, perhaps, being the panorama of the city as viewed from the terrace of the Hôtel Transatlantique, on the eastern bank of the ravine, in the early morning or at sunset.

Most of the nine gateways which give access to the city are quite mediocre; but one, the Bab Bardain, has some fine old tilings, and the decorations of another, the Mansour Gate, are superb. The latter, one of the most imposing city entrances in all Morocco, consists of a colossal ogive arch flanked by huge square towers into the bases of which are set marble columns appropriated by the Moorish builders from the Roman ruins at Volubilis. The façades of both gate and towers are set with lustrous jade-green tiles overlaid with amazingly intricate arabesque designs in blue and yellow, so that the structure, when the sun strikes upon it, seems to be incrusted with enamel. On a sort of frieze above the arch a pious Arabic inscription stands forth in bold black characters. It is just the sort of a gate from which, to complete the picture, should come riding Harun al Rashid or Suleiman the Magnificent; but the first time I set eyes upon it an enormous yellow autobus, crowded with frowzy-looking native passengers and piled high with their heterogeneous possessions, was en panne beneath the arch, defiling the air with the noxious fumes from its exhaust and completely blocking traffic.

Five minutes of brisk walking through the narrow, abominably rough streets of the inner city bring one to the weed-grown cemetery which contains the venerated tomb of Mohammed ben Aïssa, patron saint of Mequinez and founder of that strange mystic fraternity known as the Aïssaoua, whose members, scattered throughout North Africa, emphasize their piety by eating broken glass, swallowing live serpents, gashing themselves with knives, and indulging in other such-like pleasantries. From the cemetery the controleur civil, who had constituted himself our cicerone and guide, conducted us to a salesroom which has been established by the French for the encouragement of native handicrafts, where we purchased a few specimens of Miknasa embroidery and leather-work which were superior to anything we saw in the extremely mediocre souks. He also promised to introduce us to a very holy man, a “living saint,” who has won a great local reputation by refusing to accept alms, but the saint was not at home. This was very disappointing, as my acquaintance with saints is confined to those who have been planted for some centuries under several feet of earth and marble, and I certainly had never had the privilege of meeting a Moslem holy man who not only did not ask for money but actually declined it when it was offered to him. No wonder that this unique character enjoyed the honor of canonization while still living!

The one outstanding feature of Mequinez, however, is the enormous ruined palace commenced in 1634 by Sultan Mulai Ismail and never completed, and the adjoining mosque, which serves as the royal builder’s tomb. Ismail the Bloodthirsty, as he was dubbed by his terrorized subjects, was one of the most remarkable figures which the shereefian dynasties have produced. A man of wonderful vitality, as was proved by the many hundreds of sons and countless daughters who were born to him in a harem surpassing that of Solomon, his reign lasted for five-and-fifty years, during which his fierce grasp on the empire never relaxed and his lust for blood and women never slackened. Having, as he supposed, driven the English from Tangier, he besieged the Spanish stronghold of Ceuta for more than a quarter of a century in the hope of driving the last infidel from the soil of Morocco; but otherwise his military operations were confined to the extermination of internal enemies, which he accomplished effectively and bloodily with the aid of his negro household troops, the Bokharis—a Moorish version of the Turkish Janizaries—and of a foreign legion composed of renegade soldiers of fortune and adventurers from many countries. With his negro guards and foreign mercenaries ready to execute unhesitatingly his every behest, Ismail ruled with an iron and bloody hand an empire which stretched from the shores of the Mediterranean to Timbuktu and from the coast of the Atlantic to the frontiers of Egypt.

Perhaps the most picturesque incident in a life which was filled with wars, intrigues, and amours was Ismail’s infatuation for the Duchesse de Montpensier, niece of Louis XIII and cousin of Le Roi Soleil—La Grande Mademoiselle, as she was called—then at the height of her fame and loveliness and the greatest catch in Europe. His interest in the princess was aroused when the French ambassador at the shereefian court showed him a miniature of her. Charmed by her delicate and patrician beauty, the sultan, whose slightest wish was law within his own vast domains, determined to add her to his matrimonial establishment, which was at the time somewhat short of blondes. Even Louis XIV hesitated to antagonize a monarch so powerful as Ismail by bluntly refusing his request for his cousin’s hand, while the princess herself, though amused and doubtless intrigued by the imperial proposal, had no intention of exchanging the luxuries of the Louvre and Versailles for the uncertainties of a harem in Barbary.

“Tell your princess,” the sultan instructed the French ambassador when informed of her misgivings, “that here in Mequinez I will build her a palace compared with which your boasted Versailles shall be a pigsty.”

The Prince of True Believers lost no time in making good his word. Thousands of Christian slaves, captured by the Sallee rovers, provided the labor; rare marbles were ready to hand in the ruins of Volubilis a few miles away; the richly tiled walls and exquisite carvings were executed by the most skilful Moorish craftsmen. Before the work was completed, however, Ismail passed to the Moslem paradise, but the ruins which remain testify to the stupendous size of the palace which he was erecting for the Roumi princess who would not have him. The outer walls of the building, which are twenty-five feet thick and four miles in circumference, inclose a bewildering congeries of palaces, kiosks, offices, barracks, passages, courtyards, arcades, and gardens. Hard by stood the imperial stables, with accommodations for eleven thousand horses, which surely would have put the écuries of the king of France to shame. As for the Grande Mademoiselle, she eventually married an impecunious young Gascon named de Lazun, whom she left, however, when, upon his return from the hunt, he threw himself into a chair and shouted at her, “Pull off my boots, Louise d’Orléans!”

A mile or so beyond the ruins of Ismail’s palace is a military school established by the French for native princes, a sort of miniature West Point, where the sons of caïds, pashas, emirs, and sheikhs are fitted for commissions in the army. It is a small but beautifully kept establishment, though I imagine that those who have slept on the narrow iron beds allotted to cadets at the great military university on the Hudson would be somewhat astonished at the pillow-heaped divans on which the young nobles rest from their arduous exercises; but the discipline is very rigid, and those who successfully complete the course are fully qualified to take their place at the head of squadrons of spahi cavalry. Connected with the school is a haras and remount depot, where horses imported from France, Ireland, and Hungary are crossed with that hot-blooded desert breed, the Barb, to which Barbary gave its name. It is interesting to note, by the way, that a very large proportion of the horses now on the English turf trace their descent from the Godolphin Barb, the famous sire which was brought into England from Morocco during the reign of George II.

Less than an hour by motor-car to the north of Mequinez, by a steep and winding road which can be perilously slippery in wet weather, is the ancient and curious town of Mulai Idris en Zarhon, which might be described as the Mount Vernon of Morocco in that it is the burial-place of Mulai Idris ben Abdallah, founder of the Moorish Empire and first ruler of the shereefian line, around whose highly venerated shrine the place has grown. Because of its extreme sanctity, which annually draws thousands of pilgrims from all corners of the Islamic world, it was forbidden to unbelievers until the French occupation; and the only European who is known to have entered its gates before 1912 was an English traveler, James Jackson, who managed to pay it a hurried visit in disguise in 1801. It is one of the most picturesquely situated communities in all North Africa, its square white buildings, crowded together and dominated by the shrine of the sultan-saint, clinging to the precipitous slopes of a spur of the Zarhon Range, which here runs down into a wild and romantic glen. The town is walled, and access to it is through an extremely narrow gate, the last few hundred yards of road being so extremely steep that I questioned whether even our powerful Renault would be able to make the grade. There is little of interest in the place save the shrine itself, which is considered so sacrosanct that non-Moslems may not even approach, much less enter it. There are no Europeans in Mulai Idris, and we did not remain there very long, for the inhabitants are extremely fanatical, and the atmosphere was anything but friendly. This attitude of intolerance was unpleasantly illustrated when, at a bend in the road, half a mile outside the gate, I ordered Tomine to stop the car in order that I might obtain a photograph of the city, which, perched on its lofty crag, with the purple masses of the Middle Atlas for a background, looked very lovely in the golden glow of late afternoon. But a group of natives, who had hurried up when I unslung my camera, became so menacing that in order to avert an unpleasant episode I continued on my way—not, however, until I had surreptitiously snapped a picture.

Twice yearly, in the spring and in the fall, Mulai Idris is the scene of great religious festivals, when the town is thronged with eager pilgrims, many of whom come from as far away as Turkey and the Red Sea countries. On these occasions take place the revolting performances of the Hamadchas, an African order of dervishes, who, after working themselves into a state of religious frenzy during which they are supposed to be unconscious of their actions and insensible to pain, bite off the heads of living serpents, handle red-hot iron, gash themselves horribly with knives, and hold glowing coals on their tongues. I have witnessed similar exhibitions many times during the course of my wanderings in Western and Middle Asia, but I remember most distinctly one which I saw a good many years ago in a small town near Tetuan. After the usual program had been completed, one of the fanatics, a half-demented creature with sunken eyes and a great shock of long hair, whose finger-nails had been permitted to grow until they were as long and sharp as knife-blades, took his place in the center of a circle formed by his rocking, moaning colleagues, and proceeded to pluck the flesh from his lower legs in chunks until the muscles and ligaments were laid bare and the bones themselves showed white and ghastly through the welter of blood and mangled flesh. At length, weakened by loss of blood, he sank senseless amid the widening pool of crimson.... It was not a pleasant sight.

If you visit Mulai Idris you will, of course, keep on to the ruins of Volubilis, which are barely a mile away, on the lower slopes of the Djebel Zarhon. Personally—I might as well confess it frankly—I am rather bored by ruins, unless, of course, they are on the grand scale, like those of Carthage or Timgad, where enough remains to give one an adequate idea of what the living city was like. But Volubilis, which was the westernmost outpost of the Roman Empire, demands more of a strain on the imagination, for here all that remains above ground is a score or so of shattered marble columns, some stones which are said to mark the site of the forum, and a massively constructed triumphal arch, in a fair state of preservation, which was erected about two centuries after the Crucifixion in honor of Caracalla, who, you will recall, built a bathing establishment of imposing size in Rome. The only work of art of importance thus far unearthed at Volubilis is a very fine bronze figure of a dog, now kept in the little museum at the entrance to the ruins.

Mequinez is separated from Rabat, the third of the great imperial cities, by just a hundred miles of smooth, hard highway, and Tomine, who was fond of stepping on the gas whenever I would permit him, covered those hundred miles in just two hours. One of the pleasant features of motoring in Morocco is that, once outside the cities, you can travel as fast as you please, for the great trunk-roads are nearly straight, there are little traffic and no traffic cops, and the villages are few and far between.

Long ere the buildings of Rabat came in view we could see the red-brown bulk of the Borj-el-Hassan, the splendid but uncompleted tower erected by Sultan Yakub, or El Mansur, as he is better known, rising from beyond the intervening plain, its red-brown bulk—for it is a little too heavy to be truly graceful—silhouetted against the Atlantic’s shimmering expanse. There it has stood, majestic and aloof, for upward of seven hundred years, a fitting monument to the creative genius of those fierce Berber kings, the Almohades, who, in the Alcázar, the Giralda, and the Alhambra, left such glorious reminders of their rule in Spain.

When, in 1184, Yakub el Mansur founded Rabat at that point on the western seaboard of Morocco where the waters of the Bou Ragrag enter the Atlantic, Salé, on the opposite bank of the little river, was already an ancient city and one of evil repute, notorious throughout the length and breadth of Christendom as the stronghold of the dreaded Sallee rovers. Until very recent years Salé was a far larger town than Rabat, but since Rabat became the seat of administration of the French protectorate the situation has been completely reversed, Salé having only about half as many inhabitants as its younger sister. The combined populations of the two towns now probably number not far from seventy-five thousand, ten per cent of whom are Europeans. Though the French are dredging the bar which obstructs the mouth of the river and are making other efforts to improve “the port of the two banks,” it can never be anything save a third-rate harbor; yet in pirate days it must have afforded a much safer haven for shipping than it does at present, or, as is more likely, the bar permitted the passage of the shallow-draft galleys employed by the corsairs while proving an insuperable obstacle to the larger war-vessels which pursued them.

Rabat consists of two parts: the old walled town beside the sea, whose dilapidated ramparts, now used as promenades, inclose the kasbah, the souks, and most of the mosques; and the mushroom modern city which has sprung up under the ægis of the French on the slopes of the low hills to the east. By no means rich in historical monuments, and possessing few really fine examples of Moorish architecture save the Hassan tower just mentioned, Rabat nevertheless has a fascination all its own. Of the palace of Sultan Yakub only the foundations remain, but its spacious walls inclose an admirably arranged if small museum and a school of native art, where, under French supervision, instruction is given in dyeing with vegetable colors, wood-carving and painting, and illuminating on vellum—arts for which Rabat was once famous, but which are now almost lost. Perhaps the most beautiful feature of the city is the famous Blue Gardens, within the precincts of the former palace, where flowers in every shade of blue, from deepest indigo to palest cerulean, form rectangles of glorious color against the rose-brown tapia of the ancient walls. Forming a pleasing relief to the prevailing blue of the blossoms are the broad pathways of rolled red sand, the effect thus produced being equaled by few formal gardens in the world and surpassed by none.

A few paces from the Hôtel Transatlantique, by a narrow lane which winds down between high blank walls to a mysterious green door, is a little Moorish café, tucked away on a narrow terrace formed by an angle of the ancient fortifications, whose ramparts here fall sheer away to the waters of the Bou Ragrag. It is much frequented after sunset by natives of the upper class and by Europeans of discrimination, for its mint tea, thick black coffee, and meringue-like pastries are the most delicious in all Morocco; native musicians draw soft, haunting melodies from instruments of reed and string; and even on the sultriest nights it is swept by cooling breezes from the broad Atlantic. Here Romance walks o’ nights, for the tea-tables are set in bastions from whose embrasures the culverins of a Moorish despot once defied the sea-power of England, France, and Spain; across the river, not a pistol-shot away, is Salé, long the seat of pirate power; the lean black galleys of the rovers swung at anchor in the harbor in between; and a few score rods to the west, where the river broadens out to meet the sea, the great combers come sweeping in from the Atlantic to break in foam and thunder on the bar. Scattered here and there about the gardens, cross-legged on the cushioned benches, are wealthy Moors, their white garments showing ghostly in the purple velvet darkness, the dull glow of their cigarettes lighting up the grave aristocratic faces framed by the snowy hoods. When the full moon casts a broad bar of silver athwart the darkened waters, when the palm-fronds whisper softly in the gentle night breeze, when the scents of jasmine and orange-blossom rise in waves of fragrance from the gardens just below, when the African night throbs to the strains, half plaintive, half barbaric, of zither, flute, and viol, then this Moorish pleasure-garden is quite the most enchanting spot I know. Were I a bridegroom I should take Her there, of all the Lovely Places, on the honeymoon.

The souks of Rabat, though by no means so extensive or picturesque as those of Fez and Marrákesh, contain certain characteristic articles which are not to be found elsewhere, at least in any variety. Such, for example, are the Rabat scarfs and curtains—lengths of white and filmy muslin heavily embroidered at the ends in barbarically hued silks. Here, too, and nowhere else, is to be had the carved and painted woodwork for which the city is noted—low tables, bookcases, wall-shelves, gun-racks, decorated with elaborate arabesque designs in the mellowed reds, blues, greens, and yellows employed in the adornment of Moorish mosques. The carpets of Rabat likewise enjoy a wide reputation because of the thickness of their pile, the softness of their colors—usually browns or grays—and the fact that they are colored with the ancient vegetable dyes.

On the slopes which rise gently from the landward side of the native city to the summit of a low range of hills, in an environ which might be designated for the sake of convenience as New Rabat, the French have established the seat of government of the protectorate. Here is the administrative center of all Morocco, and here the various branches of government, including the treasury-general and the ministries of war, agriculture, and public instruction, as well as the Shereefian Scientific Institute and the Institute of Higher Moroccan Studies, are housed in brand-new, commodious, and stately buildings. All these are grouped about the imposing palace of the French resident-general, while set on a little knoll, a quarter of a mile away, are the great white buildings of the imperial palace, one wing of which contains the offices of the ministry of the interior.

New Rabat is a made-to-order capital, and in building it the French followed the example of the South Africans at Pretoria and of the Australians at Yass-Canberra by starting with the bare site and building from the ground up. Hence there are none of the ugly and incongruous buildings which mar the beauty of so many capitals, including our own. Instead, everything is fresh, harmonious, and strictly up to date. The dull and depressing style of architecture which characterizes so many public structures in France, the rococo ornateness of others, and those fantastic and atrocious vagaries in which French architects have indulged along the Riviera are all happily absent from New Rabat, whose buildings are all in a modified Moorish style, of reinforced concrete, with white or tinted walls and tiled roofs. The first impression is that it is all a trifle too theatrical—a Florida land development and the Oriental section of a world’s fair combined—but this is doubtless due to the newness of the place, for it was not commenced until after the Armistice. With due allowance made for this, however, the general effect is singularly pleasing, for the situation, with the Atlantic and the old walled city in the foreground and with the mulberry masses of the Middle Atlas looming in the western distance, is superb; the architecture, though exotic to Western eyes, is on the whole restrained; the Moorish note which has been introduced suits the setting and provides the needed color; and in a few years crudeness will be relieved by masses of foliage, for the soil responds quickly to hose and hoe.

Dotting the pleasant slopes beyond the administrative buildings are numerous charming villas, embowered in flowers and strongly reminiscent of southern California, in which the officials of the French administration and the officers of the garrison dwell. Running through the town in every direction are broad avenues planted with young trees which will eventually provide an abundance of shade; thanks to the lavish use of water and unremitting care the broad stretches of greensward are able to defy the fiery African sun; and masses of scarlet geraniums and purple bougainvillea provide splashes of vivid color. With its white-walled, red-roofed houses set amid blazing gardens, with its cypress and eucalyptus trees, with the sparkling sea in front and the bare brown hills behind, the residential district of the new city bears a striking resemblance to Santa Barbara.

Set high on the hillside, dominating all else, is the French residency, flanked on either side by low, rambling office buildings, with which it is connected by pergolas smothered in flowers. It is an enormous structure, somewhat too suggestive of an exposition building, perhaps, or of a Florida hotel, but quite imposing and, on the whole, in excellent taste. The state reception and dining rooms have some effective mural paintings depicting various phases of Moroccan scenery and life, as well as a magnificent collection of Moorish weapons presented by various caïds and chieftains to the former resident-general, Marshal Lyautey; the cozy and homelike private apartments, occupying the upper floors, command entrancing views of mountain, plain, river, and sea. The residency wholly lacks the dignity of Malacañan, the palace of the governor-general of the Philippines in Manila, but it fulfils its purpose admirably, though I doubt if it impresses very deeply the descendants of the men who built the Alcázar and the Alhambra.

Though Sultan Mulai Yusef has palaces in Fez, Mequinez, and Marrákesh, not to mention numerous kasbahs in the Atlas, at all of which he stays for longer or shorter periods each year, his favorite residence is at Rabat, doubtless because it is there that he receives the flattery so dear to his Oriental soul, and also, perhaps, at the suggestion of the French resident-general, who likes to have his imperial protégé where he can keep a paternal eye on him. While the sultan, as I have explained in an earlier chapter, is head of both church and state, his temporal power is merely nominal under the restrictions imposed by the French protectorate, whereas his influence as the spiritual leader of his people, who venerate him as a descendant and successor of the Prophet, has to be reckoned with. Thus, while certain of the Berber tribes, including those of the Riff, steadfastly refuse to recognize his claims to the sultanate on the ground that he is an Arab and a usurper, they nevertheless bow to the spiritual authority which he possesses by virtue of his position as khalif. It is easy to understand how the spiritual influence exercised by the sultan-khalif makes him a highly useful instrument of government in the hands of the French as long as the protectorate is conducted as it is at present. This explains why they surround him with all the pomp and ceremony traditionally associated with the shereefian throne, and see to it that his prestige, which is vitally essential to the success of their policy, is scrupulously respected and safeguarded.

When Mulai Yusef moves, as he does frequently, from one of the imperial residences to another, he travels in truly Oriental state, accompanied by a vast entourage of ministers, officials of the court, religious functionaries, guards, slaves, and concubines. Of the latter he is said to have upward of half-a-thousand, but he naturally does not take the whole of his enormous harem establishment with him—only a favored few. He and his glittering court are transported in a great number of high-powered, luxuriously fitted cars, the imperial procession tearing along at terrific speed between rows of salaaming subjects while the traffic looks out for itself.

Foreigners can always obtain at least a passing glimpse of the sultan on the occasions of the three great religious festivals of the Mohammedan calendar—the birthday of the Prophet, the Grand and the Lesser Bairam—as well as every Friday, which is the Moslem day of worship, when he goes to mosque in state, the one which he usually attends while in residence at Rabat being only a few hundred yards from the palace. The ceremony of going to mosque corresponds to the selamlik of the Turkish sultans, though it is a tawdry and insignificant affair as compared with the impressive military spectacle which was staged weekly at Yildiz Kiosk when Abdul Hamid sat on the Ottoman throne and Turkey was still Turkey. Nevertheless it is a picturesque and colorful show, an interesting survival of the splendor which once surrounded Oriental rulers but which has now almost disappeared; for King Fuad of Egypt goes to the weekly prayer in a limousine, and Mustapha Kemal, the president of Turkey, wears a bowler-hat and swings a Malacca cane when he attends mosque, if he attends at all.

But in Morocco the French, in order to enhance the dignity of their puppet in the eyes of his subjects, signalize Mulai Yusef’s hebdomadary devotions by a display which is a cross between a circus procession, a parade of Shriners, and the Lord Mayor’s Show. The cortège is headed by a battalion of the famous Black Guard, with its field music, the gigantic negroes who compose this corps of household infantry wearing the fantastic uniforms associated with the zouaves, but with certain embellishments of their own, including a waistcoat of canary yellow and a small, tightly rolled turban which looks like something between a piece of striped peppermint candy and a doughnut. By way of according equal respect to the two branches of the dual government, the band plays French and Moorish airs alternately. Immediately behind the foot-guards, on gray horses perfectly matched, comes a squadron of spahis, beturbaned and becloaked, riding beneath a forest of lances from whose steel-shod tips flutters a cloud of green and scarlet pennons. Next a string of magnificent Barb chargers, riderless and richly caparisoned in trappings of red and gold, each led by a groom in the livery of the imperial household. Another squadron of spahis, this time on gleaming bays, and at last, guarded by slaves and eunuchs, the khalif himself, seated in a miniature brougham which was presented to one of his predecessors by Queen Victoria. At the carriage door walks the imperial almoner, whose business it is to increase the popularity of his master by distributing alms in the form of small pieces of silver to the poor who line the route. Bringing up the rear of the procession is a whole cavalcade of ministers of state, officials of the household, and religious dignitaries, some on horses and some astride of beautiful Andalusian mules, with negro slaves trotting at their stirrups.

After the services in the mosque, which are usually of brief duration, the sultan makes his selection from the led horses, whereupon a quartet of brawny Nubians fairly boost him into the high-peaked scarlet saddle. An attendant raises above his head the great green umbrella which is the symbol of the shereefian power, the drummers beat the prescribed number of ruffles and the long roll, the buglers sound a fanfare, the native onlookers salaam until their turbans touch the ground, and his Imperial Majesty Mulai Yusef, Emperor of Morocco, Prince of True Believers, Vice-Regent of God on Earth, Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, Grand Cross of St. Michael and St. George, thirty-sixth lineal descendant of Ali, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, rides slowly back to his great white palace to amuse himself with his wives and his concubines until another Friday rolls around. And at a desk in the residency, a quarter of a mile away, a quiet-mannered Frenchman, who detests ceremony and never puts on a uniform if he can help it, is directing the affairs of the empire.

Though there is nothing of particular interest to see there, one should pay a brief visit to Salé, the ancient corsair city on the north bank of the Bou Ragrag, directly opposite Rabat, with which it is connected by a bridge a mile or so up-river. Its renown is due to its association with the Sallee rovers (Sallee is the medieval spelling; the English call the place Salli and the French Salé), who were even fiercer and more daring than their colleagues of the Mediterranean. It is well to keep in mind that while, from the European point of view, the pirates of the Barbary coast were a set of bloodthirsty robbers, from the standpoint of the Moors they were pious warriors battling for the faith, who had volunteered to punish the Nazarenes for their rejection of the teachings of the Prophet, and, incidentally, for having ejected their coreligionists from Spain. The honor in which their memory is held may be better realized by comparison with that of the Crusaders, in which the positions were exactly reversed. Nor, despite the glamour in which we have enveloped the Crusaders as champions of Christendom, were they appreciably more chivalrous than the rovers or more humane. Unlike the buccaneers of the Spanish Main, who fought only for themselves, the rovers approached as nearly to an organized navy as anything Morocco ever possessed, and their vessels were at times fitted out at the expense of the state, to whom their prizes therefore belonged. Whereas the corsairs of Algiers and Tunis confined their operations mainly to the Mediterranean, the sea-adventurers of Sallee harried the Atlantic coasts of Spain and France and even ventured as far north as Devon and Cornwall, carrying off the populations of whole villages.

The rovers attained the zenith of their power in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, during which period hundreds of thousands of Christians suffered captivity, unspeakable tortures, and death in Morocco rather than abjure their faith, the sole condition on which a measure of freedom within the empire was offered to them. All Christendom was horrified by the tales of cruelty and outrage brought back by captives who had been ransomed or had managed to escape, and collections were made at church doors throughout Europe for the purpose of purchasing the freedom of Christian slaves in Barbary. Frequent missions for that purpose were undertaken by devoted members of religious brotherhoods, not a few of whom themselves became martyrs to the cause. It must be remembered that the lot of the Christian slave in Morocco was infinitely worse than that of the negro, who indifferently embraced Islam, and was at once admitted to equality in all matters save that of freedom; for the Christians were generally employed under the lash of the taskmaster in the construction of fortifications and public buildings—it might be said that the mortar used in some of the grandest structures in Morocco was mixed with Christian blood—or as rowers shackled to the benches of the galleys, thousands of them dying in their chains. But for those European women, often of gentle birth, who fell into the hands of the Moors, was reserved the most awful fate of all.

If, by this time, you have had enough of Barbary, you may leave us at Rabat and motor northward—a long day’s journey—to Tangier, whence there is a triweekly service of small and abominably dirty Spanish steamers to Algeciras. At present, on account of the somewhat disturbed condition of the Spanish zone, Tangier is isolated from the rest of Morocco, but when the Riff has been pacified for good and all, and when the railway from Tangier to Rabat is in regular operation, the former city will become one of the principal gateways to Barbary, being particularly convenient for those who disembark from the transatlantic steamers at Gibraltar or who come down from Spain.

As the seaport nearest to Europe, Tangier was the town in the empire in which, until the coming of the French, the effects of progress were most marked; and it is still the place of residence of the ministers and consuls-general accredited to the shereefian court by the foreign powers, these forming the nucleus of a highly cosmopolitan society which has expanded into an influential community enjoying privileges and immunities unknown to natives who do not enjoy foreign protection. Here, by virtue of the rights conferred by early treaties, foreigners continue to enjoy an extraterritorial status, as they still do in China and as they did until very recently in Turkey and Siam. Thus, foreigners in Tangier who are accused of crimes are tried by their own ministers or consuls-general; and, if convicted, they are either confined in consular prisons, or in the case of serious crimes, sent home to serve out their sentences.

As might be expected, this arrangement has resulted in some curious situations. They still tell the story over Tangier dinner-tables of a certain foreign minister—for obvious reasons I shall not disclose his nationality or name—who became infatuated with a very beautiful woman, whose snowy purity, however, was slightly tinged with lavender. One night the wife of the minister died in great agony—the result of poison in her coffee, it was said. It was common knowledge that she had been poisoned by her husband and his paramour—but who was going to prove it? And, even if it could be proved, who, pray, was empowered to try the case? The Moorish courts had no jurisdiction over foreigners, and the foreign ministers had no jurisdiction over one another. And the minister in question could hardly be expected to sit as judge upon himself! So nothing ever came of the matter, for Tangerine morals are as easy as an old shoe. Having inherited his wife’s fortune, the minister promptly married the other woman and retired from the diplomatic service. The last I heard of the pair, they were living, outwardly quite happy, somewhere on the Riviera.

Tangier, which has a population of about fifty thousand, more than half of whom are Christians or Jews, nestles between two eminences at the head of a spacious bay, which forms the best harbor in Morocco, though vessels of any size have to anchor a mile or so offshore and disembark their passengers in small boats, which in rough weather is an extremely unpleasant, not to say hazardous, proceeding. Viewed from the sea, the town presents a very picturesque appearance, its white houses rising from the harbor’s edge like linen-covered seats in a theater, with the citadel, the remains of the mole built by the British during their occupation in the seventeenth century, and York Castle to the right, the commercial quarter in the central valley formed by the two hills, and at the left the road which runs along the shore to Tetuan, with the European hotels above and a crescent of sandy beach below. As in all Eastern towns, the streets are exceedingly narrow and crooked, lined by cupboards in lieu of shops, and with cafés, wine-shops, and drinking-dens at almost every corner, for the foreign population of Tangier has an unquenchable thirst. Formerly the city was intolerably filthy, poorly lighted, and none too safe at night; but since the establishment of an international control, modern sanitary, water, and lighting systems have been introduced, and its narrow ways are vigilantly patrolled by an efficient gendarmarie under French and British officers.

Like the gateways to all barbaric countries—Djibouti, the port for Abyssinia, is another case in point—Tangier is a hotbed of plot, conspiracy, intrigue, and gossip, much frequented by those engaged in shady international transactions or who otherwise sail close to the wind. In the old days, when the extradition laws were not recognized by Morocco, it was a favorite refuge for fugitives from justice from Europe and the two Americas, the terrace of the Hotel Cecil being dotted at the tea-hour with beautifully groomed men and women of the most engaging manners who had left their own countries under a cloud and quite abruptly because they had been too quick on the trigger, because they had signed to checks names that were not their own, had departed with other people’s money or other people’s husbands or wives. Here they dwelt in comfortable if not contented exile, dining at the legations if they were not too notorious—for a hostess cannot be unduly exclusive in a place where society is as limited as in Tangier—playing poker in the cool seclusion of the Cecil’s card-room, or riding into the back-country on picnics or pig-sticking expeditions, but ever and anon turning longing, homesick eyes toward Gibraltar, where liners from America and England swing at their moorings beneath the shadow of the Rock. Until very recently, at least, life in Tangier was seldom dull, being punctuated by such episodes as the theatrical visit of the kaiser, Raisuli’s abduction of Ion Perdicaris, numerous naval demonstrations, and the unofficial negotiations with the envoys of Abd-el-Krim, while the presence of gun-runners, smugglers, rebel emissaries, war correspondents, and concession-hunters lent a pleasant atmosphere of romance and adventure to the town. But, now that the war in the Riff has ended and the international status of the town has been definitely fixed, it is to be presumed that Tangier will settle down to an uneventful and prosaic existence, dwelling contentedly enough in the memories of its stirring past.

If, as I have already remarked, you are weary of African travel, if you are surfeited with Moors, and mosques, and minarets, and marabouts, and mosaics, and places whose names begin with M, then you can board a steamer at Tangier which will land you a few hours later at Algeciras, whence the Sud Express will bear you in some six-and-thirty hours to the boulevards of Paris. But I trust that you will see fit to stay in my company a little longer, for I would take you south to Casablanca, the amazing city into which the French have transformed a squalid Spanish settlement in less than a decade; to Mazagan and Mogador and other coast-towns with magic names; to red Marrákesh; to the country where the Grand Caïds rule in feudal splendor; to medieval castles tucked away in the fastnesses of the High Atlas; and over the ranges to the forbidden Sus.