We Americans pride ourselves on being an exceptionally well informed people, yet it is curious how erroneous are the opinions which we hold on many subjects, and how tenaciously we cling to our misconceptions. The great majority of our people believe, for example, that the foreign missionary is a sanctimonious, psalm-singing, hypocritical individual, with a sun-umbrella under one arm and a Bible under the other, who seeks to force on the heathen clothing and Christianity, neither of which they want, and who is regarded as a meddler and a nuisance by the officials of the country in which he is stationed. Another case in point is that of the French colonial, whom we picture as an unkempt, miserable being his bare feet thrust into slippers, his soiled white suit several sizes too large for him, who passes his time sipping absinthe in a café, perusing “La Vie Parisienne,” and counting the days until he can return to la belle France. These are not merely misconceptions; they are caricatures, as unjust as they are untruthful.

Whenever I hear some one remark, “Well, we must admit that the British are the only really successful colonizers,” I feel that I should like to show him Casablanca. When the French bombarded and occupied it in 1907, Casablanca was a filthy, backward, and ill governed Moorish coast town with a population of barely twenty thousand. Yet in less than two decades of French rule its population has increased more than six hundred per cent, and it is to-day one of the cleanest, best governed, and most progressive cities in all Africa.

Indeed, there are few cities of its size in the United States which can surpass Casablanca in point of municipal improvements, for it has miles of broad, paved, tree-planted streets; thoroughly modern lighting, water, and sanitary systems; an excellent telephone service; stores which are counterparts in miniature of the great magasins in Paris; several luxurious hotels; restaurants whose cuisine is vastly superior to anything found in most American cities; a state opera-house; a municipal theater; numerous beautiful parks; and a whole series of imposing public buildings in the neo-Moorish style, which is harmonious, colorful, and pleasing to the eye, if nothing more. In short, Casablanca epitomizes the great work which the French have accomplished in Morocco, where they have hauled the native out of the slough of ignorance, indolence, and superstition, in which he has been wallowing for centuries, set him upon his feet, and are teaching him to become a decent, law-abiding, progressive citizen. What was formerly an open roadstead, dangerously exposed to northwest winds, has been transformed by the construction of a huge breakwater into a safe and spacious harbor which provides anchorage for vessels of all save the largest size. There is still noticeable, of course, an air of crudity and incompleteness, such as is characteristic of all communities of rapid and sensational growth, notably those in Florida and along the Pacific coast, for steam-shovels, road-scrapers, and scaffoldings are much in evidence; streets are being broadened, straightened, and surfaced; hundreds of crowded and insanitary native hovels, hotbeds of disease, have been torn down and the sites not yet reoccupied; ramshackle Oriental structures still stand cheek by jowl with steel and concrete office-buildings.

The commercial life of the city focuses in the spacious square known as the Place de France, from the center of which rises a lofty Oriental clock-tower. Starting at the clock-tower, an extremely broad thoroughfare, lined by banks, steamship agencies, curio shops, restaurants, cafés, and consulates, runs down to the débarcadère, where passengers land who arrive by sea. This east and west thoroughfare divides the commercial city into two sections. To the north lies the European business quarter, with its banks, stores, office-buildings, and hotels, nearly all of modern construction. Immediately to the south, surrounded by an ancient crenelated wall, are the souks, which here consist not of covered passageways, as is the case in most Moroccan cities, but of a tangle of narrow, crooked, cobble-paved streets, just wide enough for two carriages to pass, the trash-filled shops being kept for the most part by Greeks, Syrians, Armenians, and Indians. Though here are to be found none of the charming examples of Moorish art which make bazaar-shopping in Fez and Marrákesh so delightful, the curio dealers, who appear to have imported their stocks from Japan and Germany, drive a roaring trade, particularly when war-ships and tourist-steamers are in the harbor.

At the back of the business quarter is the new town, devoted in the main to public buildings and apartment-houses, with numerous pleasant parks and fine, broad streets. Conspicuous on a busy corner is the new post-office, an enormous mosque-like building which looks more like a Moorish place of prayer than a place for handling letters. On the steps are native letter-writers, ready to serve the illiterate by writing epistles of love, sympathy, business, or abuse for a small consideration; while at a desk just within the door sits a youth speaking a dozen languages who is supposed to be a human postal-guide, supplying any information which may be demanded of him—usually incorrectly. The various bureaus of the local French administration are pleasantly housed in a long, low building of white plaster which might have been transported bodily from southern California; and in the park close by is a really fine equestrian group, depicting a French cavalryman grasping the hand of a Moroccan spahi, which commemorates the aid given to France by Morocco during the Great War. It is good art, and, what is more important, it is good diplomacy.

Perhaps the most striking and significant of the reforms which the French have effected in Casablanca are illustrated by the lengths to which they have gone in safeguarding the health of the native in matters concerned with food and women. The great public market is the largest, best arranged, and cleanest I have ever seen; for the noise, odors, dirt, and general confusion which are such unpleasant features of many of our American market-places, and of nearly all European, are here wholly absent. The whole place is as immaculate as the operating-room of a hospital, and the public health is further safeguarded by a vigilant corps of sanitary inspectors, who ruthlessly order into the garbage-pails any tainted meats or over-ripe fruits and vegetables.

In the northern outskirts of the city is the abattoir, its tiled decorations giving it a Moorish atmosphere hardly to be looked for in such a building, which has been constructed on the most approved lines under the supervision of slaughter-house experts from Chicago and Kansas City. I didn’t visit the upper floors, where the killing is carried on, because in my life I have witnessed more than a sufficiency of bloody scenes; but the lower floors were so scrupulously clean, even though it was a busy day, as the decks of a war-ship. What with the thoroughly scrubbed concrete floors, and the white tiled walls, and the neat white smocks of the butchers and their assistants, it is a place where a beast of any discrimination should positively enjoy being slaughtered. The animals which are here transformed with neatness and despatch into steaks, chops, and cutlets consist of cattle, sheep, and a few mules and horses. Such few pigs as there are in Morocco die of disease or old age, never by the knife of the butcher, for pork is anathema to all Moslems. In the words of Mr. Armour—or was it Mr. Swift?—every portion of an animal which enters the Casablanca slaughter-house is utilized save the squeal; and it would not be surprising were the French, with their well known reputation for thrift, to conserve even that in the form of phonograph records!

Somewhat further to the east, and more convenient of access from the town, is a community dedicated to the practice of the oldest profession in the world. It is what would be known in America as a “red-light district”—the quarter of the prostitutes. Instead of attempting to stamp out vice, which would be utterly impossible in an Oriental country like Morocco—there is a native proverb to the effect that the Moorish temperament consists of five parts, and that four of them are passion—the French have wisely decided to isolate it and, by official supervision, keep venereal maladies down to a minimum. Like the Yoshiwara of Yokohama, the prostitute quarter of Casablanca is a self-contained community, with its own bazaars for the sale of food and merchandise, the whole encircled by a wall with police goumiers at the gate. The “daughters of pleasure” are of every Mediterranean nationality—Berber, Arab, Moresque, Ouled-Naïl, Senegalese, Egyptian, Greek, Spanish, Syrian, even Circassian. You pay your money and you take your choice, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that you make your choice first and pay the lady afterward. The range is amazing. Every sensual whim, every national taste, is catered to. Here you can find mountains of female flesh from the Jewish quarter of Tunis and visions of slim brown loveliness from the mountains of the Ouled-Naïl; hard-faced hussies from Tangier and lustrous-eyed houris from Marrákesh; strapping, coal-black negresses from the Niger country and dainty damsels from Mogador and Saffi, their Spanish blood betraying itself in their pink and olive skins and their bewitching eyes. It should be understood, of course, that this quarter is patronized almost wholly by Europeans and natives of the lower class, particularly by the soldiery, the more well-to-do finding their lady-loves among the hordes of French, Spanish, and Italian filles de joie who carry on their trade within the city. The regulations governing the quarter are very strict. Each girl is examined at frequent intervals by a government physician, and, if she is found to have contracted a venereal disease, her “ticket”—that is, her license—is taken away from her until she is cured. The whole town is new from the ground up, the narrow lanes, whose cobbles are scrubbed until they shine, being lined with quaint, charmingly decorated little houses, which might be the studios of artists, with tiled roofs, blue or bright-green doors, and softly tinted walls of rough-cast plaster. The French architect whose creation it is evidently put his heart into the task.

Because of its excellent communications by sea, land, and air, Casablanca is the commercial, just as Rabat is the political, capital of Morocco. It is four days from Bordeaux by the steamers of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique; overnight from Tangier and about two and a half days from Marseilles by the vessels of the Paquet Line; and it is a port of call for the Belgian mail-boats which ply between Antwerp and Matadi, in the Congo. (When Mrs. Powell and I came up from Central Africa and Senegal in 1925 we disembarked at Casablanca, that being my third visit to Morocco.) A service of fast trains is now in operation between Casablanca and Rabat, fifty miles away; and the narrow-gage line to Marrákesh is shortly to be standardized, if it has not been done already. Excellent motor roads run northeast to Rabat, Mequinez, and Fez; southeast along the coast to Mazagan, Safi, and Mogador; and south to Marrákesh, which can also be reached by a longer and poorer but very interesting road via Kasbah Tadla, which cannot be taken, however, without special permission from the military authorities. Telephonic communications with the other cities of Morocco, and the cable service with France, are good and remarkably inexpensive. There is also a daily airplane service between Casablanca and Paris via Málaga and Toulouse, letters bearing an air-post stamp which are dropped into the box at the general post-office in Casablanca in the morning being delivered in Paris on the afternoon of the next day. I forget the price of an airplane ticket from Casablanca to the French capital, but, if I remember rightly, it is no more expensive than first-class travel by train and boat.

Should your stay in Morocco be limited, you had best take the great trunk highway which runs from Casablanca almost due south to Marrákesh, a distance of 160 miles; but, if time is no particular object, and you can spend a night or so en route, I should advise you to follow the coast road through Azemour, Mazagan, Safi, and Mogador, glimpses of these picturesque and interesting cities amply compensating the traveler for the additional distance and fatigue.

Azemour, in turn a Carthaginian colony, a Roman outpost, and a Portuguese trading-station, and containing remains of all three occupations, lies half a hundred miles to the southwest of Casablanca and a mile and a half inland, where the Um-er-Rabi’a, here wide, deep, red, and rapid, comes swirling down from its birthplace in the High Atlas to meet its mother, the ocean. The impetuous Um-er-Rabi’a—the name means Mother of Grass—the second most important river of Morocco, is as long and wide as the Thames, but quite unnavigable because of the bar at its mouth and its numerous waterfalls. Azemour, the Arabic for “wild olives,” which stands on its southern bank, once marked the southernmost outpost of the sultanate of Fez, but in 1513 it was captured by the Portuguese; Ferdinand Magellan, the first circumnavigator of the globe, who was an officer of the expedition, was wounded during the assault on the town and lamed for life.

Just beyond, set on the edge of a curving bay, unusual on this coast, is Mazagan, the port of Marrákesh and the outlet for the products of the rich region known as the Dukála. It was built at the beginning of the sixteenth century by the Portuguese, then at the height of their sea-power, but they abandoned it to the Moors in 1769, the settlers moving to Brazil, where they established another colony, New Mazagan, on the banks of the Pará. The massive ramparts and crenelated battlements raised by the Portuguese give to Mazagan a very un-Moorish atmosphere, which is accentuated during the hot season by the thousands of Europeans who flock there for the sea bathing, its splendid plage of pearl-white sand being dotted with hotels, casinos, bathing-cabins, and gaily colored umbrellas. Incidentally, Mazagan is noted throughout Morocco for its oysters, crabs, and lobsters, so those who are fond of seafood would do well to stop for lunch at one of the restaurants perched on stilts above the sands.

Next, as we push down the coast, comes Safi, the principal outlet for central Morocco’s wool and grain. It has no harbor worthy of the name, vessels being compelled to anchor in the open roadstead, whence communication with the shore is very difficult and dangerous when a northwest gale is blowing. The most conspicuous building in the town, and the only one worth visiting, is an old palace built by one of the Filali sultans—I think it was Mohammed XVII—whose beautifully tiled courtyards justify a brief inspection.

By far the most beautiful and interesting of the Moroccan coast towns, however, is Mogador, capital of the province of Háhá. Its dazzlingly white houses, encircled by an ancient wall, crown a little rocky peninsula jutting into the sea, which, when the wind comes from certain quarters, almost turns the place into an island, as in the case of Mont-Saint-Michel. On the landward side is a broad belt of gray-white sand-dunes—a miniature Sahara were it not studded with frequent patches of fragrant broom—and beyond, far as the eye can see, stretches the green mass of the Great Argan Forest, a densely wooded area one hundred and fifty miles long by thirty wide. Approached from this side, Mogador bursts on the view like a magic city hovering between sea and sky, which has led the Arabs, with their addiction for romantic nomenclature, to name it Es-Sueira—the Picture City. The name by which it is known to Europeans is a contraction of Sidi M’godol, a local saint who won a wide reputation by his ascetic piety. It is one of the cleanest towns in the empire and has one of the best harbors, driving a profitable trade in almonds, gums, olive-oil, and goatskins with England, France, and the Canary Islands. Mogador, in fact, provides a novel and most interesting gateway to southern Morocco, and one of which those in quest of the picturesque and unusual might profitably take advantage, for it has a weekly service of British cargo steamers, clean and comfortable, coming direct from London by way of the other Moorish ports.

From Sidi M’godol’s city we turned sharply inland, the hood of the Renault now headed toward Marrákesh, due east and, as the road runs, something over a hundred miles away. For the first half-dozen miles our way wound amid a wilderness of sand-hills, their wind-smoothed surfaces casting an intolerable glare beneath the African sun; and our minds harked back to when, long weeks before, we had pitched our tents amid just such dunes in the Grand Erg Oriental of the Sahara. Here, however, the dunes were of but brief duration, and then our road plunged abruptly into the cool green depths of the Great Argan Forest. The argan, which is found nowhere else in the world, belongs to the Sapotaceæ family and is a distant cousin of the gutta-percha tree. Its fruit, which ripens between May and August, is a nut somewhat resembling an olive and is a favorite food of camels, mules, goats, sheep, and cattle; from its kernel the natives extract an oil much used in the cookery of southern Morocco. But horses, like Europeans, refuse to touch the fruit in any form because of its nauseous flavor. Horses are highly intelligent animals.

And so, after a few delightful hours in the forest, and many hot and tiresome ones upon a dusty plain, dotted with clusters of conical thatched huts, called nuállas, like those of Central Africa, each village encircled by a zariba of thorn-bush to keep off marauders, we topped a little rise just as the sun was dropping out of sight beyond the horizon’s rim, and looked down upon red Marrákesh. There are certain cities which cannot be approached for the first time by a traveler who has any imagination in his soul without a feeling of solemnity and deep anticipation. Such are Rome, Athens, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Damascus, Baghdad, Samarkand, Delhi, Peking; and to that list Marrákesh may fittingly be added. The Morocco City of our childhood, as the school geographies of those days erroneously called it; built nine hundred years ago by Yusuf ibn Tashfin and until very recent times all but inaccessible to unbelievers; the seat of monarchs whose splendors rivaled those of Harun al Rashid; associated since its beginning with cruelty and oppression; long notorious as a center of the slave-trade; its hectic history written with sword-points dipped in blood; it has ever been a city of mystery and high romance, beckoning alluringly to the adventurous traveler.

It lies in the center of a spacious plain—Bled el Hamra, “the Red”—barely a dozen miles from the underfalls of the High Atlas, whose mighty ranges sweep round it to the south and southeast in a tremendous arc, purple-flanked and topped with snow. As befits an imperial city—for it is one of the four capitals of the empire—Marrákesh is surrounded by a lofty wall, broken at regular intervals by huge square towers, wall and towers alike now crumbling into ruin. The city is encompassed and interspersed by luxuriant orange-groves and gorgeous gardens, and both within and without the walls are numerous broad open spaces of sun-baked earth, like Indian maidans. Rearing itself majestically above the expanse of crowded, flat-roofed houses, few of which are more than two stories in height, forming a landmark which can be seen from afar, is the Kutubia tower, a striking memorial of the architectural genius of the early Moors and one of the most famous monuments of its kind in the world. Without the town, forming a broad band of vivid green between it and the encircling plain, are acres of date-palm groves; hidden amid the greenery are low-walled gardens from which rises the fragrance of apricot, pomegranate, and orange blossoms; little rivulets, grandchildren of the Tensift, meander amid the stately trees; and from their nests atop the roofs and walls and towers white storks gaze benevolently down upon the passer-by.

It is fitting that Marrákesh should be called “the Red,” for, with the exception of the Kutubia mosque and a certain gate brought in pieces from Spain, there is not, it is asserted, a single stone building in the city, and even bricks are sparingly employed. The almost universal building material is a rammed concrete of red earth and stone called tabiya, and consequently everything in the city and its immediate vicinity—houses, walls, mosques, towers, ramparts, even the soil itself—is of a deep red-brown hue which changes beneath the afterglow to a gloriously rich and rosy shade of coral.

In Marrákesh, as in Fez, the Transatlantique has two hotels; one in the heart of the city, the other in the southern outskirts. The former, made over from an old Moorish palace, leaves much to be desired in the way of comfort, at least so far as the rooms are concerned; but the latter, known as the Mamounia Palace, recently completed and open only during the “high season,” is a really magnificent establishment, in fact the best application of the Moorish style to modern purposes that I have seen, which in beauty of decoration and completeness of equipment is the equal of any of the great tourist caravansaries of Florida or California.

The most conspicuous object in the city, dominating and dwarfing all else, is the splendid minaret of the Kutubia mosque already mentioned, both it and the similar but inferior Tower of Hassan at Rabat being of the same type as the contemporary Giralda at Seville; and, if tradition may be trusted, the same architect, Jabir, was responsible for all three. Its massive walls are of hand-hewn stone, mellowed by time and weather to a lovely shade of terra-cotta; inlaid in the upper portions of the four façades are enameled tiles of the “lost” shade of Persian blue, the equal of which for loveliness of color I have never seen save only in the Ulug-beg at Samarkand. Its cupola is thatched with very ancient glazed tiles of a beautiful jade green; and impaled on the slender spire itself are three glittering balls that, according to the Moors, are of solid gold, though the French controleur civil assured me that they are but gilded copper. The mosque to which the Kutubia belongs is a large brick structure, the interior a forest of marble columns, which was built by Abd-el-Mumin, the first of the Almohade rulers, under whom the Moorish Empire reached the zenith of its fame and glory at the close of the twelfth century.

The life of Marrákesh, which has not far from one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, focuses in the great central market-place, still called the Sinners’ Concourse, because there, within the memory of men still young, were held the wholesale executions by which the sultans punished revolt and put fear into the hearts of their subjects. It is the scene of that well known painting entitled “The Justice of the Khalif”—I think it is by Gérôme, but I am not certain—in which a Moorish ruler is depicted seated on his white horse, beneath the green umbrella, surrounded by his viziers, chieftains, and slaves, while stretched in long rows on the bloodied ground are the headless corpses of those who dared oppose his will.

To my way of thinking, the souks of Marrákesh, which comprise the district known as the Kaisariyeh, are the most interesting in all North Africa, and this despite the fact that the city, unlike Fez, has only one manufacture of importance, that of Morocco leather, which is here dyed in every color of the spectrum and made up into articles of every conceivable kind. The workmanship is generally inferior, however, and I should strongly advise any one in quest of leather goods—pillows, portfolios, and the like—to visit the studio of a well known French artist and his charming wife (I forget their names, but every one knows them) in the little house they have built just outside the western gate of the town. The house itself is a gem of modern Moorish domestic architecture; and the garden, with its masses of brilliant flowers, its pool, and its kiosks, is a place of sheer delight.

Hard by the street of the leather-merchants, just beyond the souk where are manufactured the vividly colored cords of silk or wool used to support the leathern pouches which all Moors wear slung over their shoulders in lieu of pockets, is the armorers’ bazaar. Here weapons of every sort—rifles, pistols, simitars, and daggers—are displayed in bewildering variety. During a preceding visit to Marrákesh I had invested somewhat heavily in the short curved knives, with damascened blades, ivory or jeweled hilts, and sheaths of embossed silver, which are the favorite weapons of the Southland. Being a collector of blade weapons, I am not particularly interested in fire-arms, however, or was not until a Syrian acquaintance showed me a pair of long-barreled Moorish rifles which had been offered for sale that day by a tribal chieftain from the Sus. The barrels were nearly eight feet in length, bound with countless bands of hand-wrought silver, each of which was exquisitely arabesqued or bore an Arabic inscription. The stock of one was of some rare old wood, incrusted with silver and inlaid with ivory; the other was even richer, being set with colored enamels and semiprecious stones. Such pieces seldom come upon the market, for they were family heirlooms which had been handed down through many generations. The asking price was exorbitant, but I was determined to become their owner even if it necessitated my returning to America second-class. The negotiations, conducted by my obliging friend the Syrian, consumed the better part of a week, but the night before our departure he brought them to me at our hotel, having succeeded in beating down their owner to the limit I had fixed. To-day they repose in a glass case in an American museum, but of the hundreds who view them daily I suppose there are few indeed who pause to think of the desperate affrays in which they spoke with tongues of flame, of the unbelievers against whom they were leveled, of the turbaned sheikhs who once bore them on their red saddle-bows as they rode on their raids across the desert. To the unimaginative they are, I suppose, but queer old guns.

By reason of its situation at the mouths of the passes which lead through the Atlas to the Sahara, Marrákesh was for centuries an important center of the slave-trade, in fact the greatest market in northwest Africa for the “black ivory” brought across the desert by caravan from the Niger country and the Sudan. This accounts, of course, for the great number of coal-black faces seen in the city’s streets and for the negroid features of so many of the southern Moors. With the coming of the French the open traffic in human beings was perforce abandoned, but that should not be taken as meaning that slavery in Morocco no longer exists, for the institution still survives, though in a restricted and less ostentatious form. Most of the wealthy Moors own slaves, as do all the great caïds and pashas, a fact of which the French are perfectly aware, though for reasons of policy they close their eyes to it. They have, however, succeeded in effectually breaking up the trans-Saharan slave-trade, and, with the sealing of this great source of supply, slaves are becoming increasingly difficult to secure and have advanced enormously in price.

There are several dealers in Marrákesh—and the same is true of Fez—who are always in a position to supply trusted customers with negro slaves, both male and female, at a price, though I was told that the Circassian slave-girls, always at a premium because of their beauty, can no longer be obtained. The prospective purchaser tells the slave dealer what he wants, and the latter goes about the business of supplying his customer’s requirements just as an employment agency supplies its patrons with domestics. When I was in Marrákesh in 1925 a French official of the Bureau Arabe told me that the market price for a young girl of good physique was about three thousand francs, which was equivalent to about one hundred and fifty dollars at the rate of exchange then prevailing. Many American men, it might be remarked, spend as much as that on one of their lady-friends in the course of a single evening—and usually get less value for their money.

Let me make it amply clear, however, that the conditions described in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” do not now exist in Morocco, whatever may once have been the case. A slave who is dissatisfied with the treatment she (or he) is receiving can always demand to be sold, and, furthermore, can refuse to be sold to a prospective purchaser of whom he does not approve. All this is, of course, very exasperating to the old-fashioned Moors, who were brought up to believe, like the planters of the pre-war South, that their slaves were as much their property as their horses and their dogs, and that they were at liberty to treat them as they pleased and to dispose of them as they chose.

“Allah only knows what the world is coming to,” they complain bitterly, “when a slave-girl begins talking about her ‘rights’! In our fathers’ time, when a girl talked thus, she got a touch of the bastinado. Why, if this sort of thing keeps on, Morocco will soon become as impossible a country to live in as the country of the Frangi, where, it is said, a cook actually has the insolence to demand that she be permitted to go out on Sunday afternoons. By the beard of the Prophet, we Moors are coming to a pretty pass when we permit such a state of things!”

This seems as good a place as another to speak of the position occupied by Moorish women. To begin with, it should be explained that polygamy is by no means as universal in Morocco, or, for that matter, in any other Oriental country, as is commonly assumed, for, though a man may legally have four wives and as many concubines as he pleases, the size of his harem must of necessity conform to his financial condition. And, even if a man can afford to maintain the full quota of wives permitted him by Koranic law, he generally prefers to spend his substance on concubines, for these do the work of the house, and, if they bear their master no children, they may be sold like any other chattels. Polygamy, generally speaking, is confined to the rich, or at least the comfortably well-to-do, for the facility of divorce makes it much cheaper for a man to change wives frequently than to keep several at the same time. An American, by way of illustration, finds it more economical to keep only one motor-car, and turn it in every year or so for a new one, than to keep his garage filled with machines which stand idle a large share of the time. The age-old question of feminine jealousy also proves a deterrent to the maintenance of large matrimonial establishments, for a man who does not treat all of his wives with equal generosity is not likely to lead a very tranquil domestic life. The sultan, who is said to have upward of five hundred women in his harem, must have his troubles!

In Morocco girls frequently marry at ten or twelve, and a man is looked upon as a confirmed bachelor if he has not entered the state of matrimony before he is out of his teens. Old maids are virtually unknown, for a woman, be she ever so unattractive, is useful for doing the household chores, though a girl of slender figure stands a far slimmer chance—if I may be permitted the pun—of making a good match than does a fat one. For flesh is considered a prerequisite of feminine beauty in Morocco, and, writers of fiction to the contrary, a Moor wants no slim and dainty damsels lying around his harem. To obviate so unfortunate a physical defect, a young girl, upon approaching the marriageable age, is, like a Strasbourg goose, subjected to a systematic course of stuffing. After each meal an ambitious Moorish mother compels her daughter to swallow a dozen or so of sausage-shaped boluses compounded of flour, honey, eggs, and butter, thus producing the corpulency which the Moors consider essential to a truly lovely woman. Because of this process of fattening, and of total lack of exercise, a woman’s avoirdupois increases with her years, so that by the time she has reached her middle twenties she is, if Allah has been kind to her, a series of fleshy billows, waddling and rolling along like a four-master under full sail.

When a man marries he gives the bride’s father a money present, but this does not amount to a purchase of the girl, as some have asserted, for she always brings to her new home furniture and household utensils worth considerably more than the bridegroom’s gift, and, in case of divorce, she retains possession of them. Until a woman becomes a grandmother—usually at about thirty—and loses her beauty, she is forbidden to so much as speak to any of the opposite sex save only her husband, sons, father, and brothers; even an uncle or a cousin would not dare to salute her on the street should he be able to recognize her beneath her swathing of burkha, haik, and barracan. And the husband who, upon returning home, finds a pair of women’s slippers outside the anderun, may under no consideration enter, because he knows that some one else’s wife or daughter is within.

Thus encloistered, with no outside interests whatsoever to occupy their minds, it is not surprising that the thoughts of these prisoners of the harem should turn to sensual things. Nor should it be assumed that, by reason of the constant surveillance to which they are subjected, Moorish women are invariably chaste, for husbands sometimes are called away, slaves may be bribed or cajoled, windows may be reached by ladders, and every door has its key. Where there is a will there is usually a way. The truth of the matter is, as Mr. Budgett Meakin has remarked, that nothing short of the unexpurgated edition of the “Thousand and One Nights” can convey an adequate idea of what goes on within those whited sepulchers, the high, blank walls of Moorish homes.

All women save the wives of the rich possess sufficient skill in sewing or embroidery to be able to support themselves in case of need, for, strictly speaking, a husband is required to supply his wife only with a head-kerchief and slippers. As a rule, Moorish wives have very little money, and it is a common thing for wives to steal from their husbands in order to purchase clothes and even food. Candor compels me to admit, however, that such incidents are not unheard of in more highly civilized countries.

In Morocco divorce is a very simple matter—at least for the husband. When he tires of a wife all he has to say is, “Woman, I divorce thee! Get thou hence!” whereupon she has no option but to return to her own family. In theory, it is true, she may get a divorce from him, but this is extremely difficult in practice. All women, divorced or otherwise, are regarded as widows, and may remarry six months after the death of a husband or three months after a divorce. The husband may repent and take his wife back a first and a second time, but after she has been divorced three times he may not marry her again until she has been wedded to some one else and divorced. The Moors, who are an impulsive, hot-tempered race, frequently divorce their wives on the flimsiest grounds. For example, when a man swears by the haram—that is, by the forbidden—and does not fulfil his oath, he has to divorce his wife. Miss Sophie Denison, the English medical missionary in Fez of whom I have already spoken, told me of a young Moor of her acquaintance, newly wedded and genuinely in love with his wife, who, while strolling with a friend one day, took his oath over some trifling matter. Unable to keep his vow, he returned home and divorced his bride of a few weeks. The story does not end tragically, however, for when the prescribed interval had elapsed he remarried her.

A short distance without the splendid Aguenaou Gate of Marrákesh, one of the finest in all Morocco, are the gardens of the Aguedal, the pleasure-place of the Moorish sultans. It is in reality an enormous orchard, two and a quarter miles long and a mile and a half wide, surrounded by a lofty, bastioned wall, its fruit-trees—oranges, lemons, figs, and olives—set out in ordered rows. In the center is a reservoir, or tank, as it would be called in Persia, about six hundred feet square and edged with a marble coping. Toward one end of the inclosure is a second pool, somewhat larger than the central one. On the edge of the smaller of the two pools is a Moorish pavilion with a spacious marble terrace, where, on hot summer evenings, the women of the imperial harem sometimes come to bathe and to enjoy the comparative coolness, for during the summer Marrákesh becomes unendurably hot, the mercury frequently rising to 110° in the shade. Personally, I think that the Aguedal is vastly overrated, for, when we were there, the buildings were in a state of disrepair, the roads leading through the gardens were deep in dust, and the lake reflected the scorching rays of the African sun like a sheet of burnished copper. Toward nightfall, however, when the heat of the day has passed and the pavilions and the trees are mirrored in the peacock-tinted waters, it must be very lovely.

Journeying south from Casablanca the observant traveler can hardly fail to note the steady decrease in the numbers of French soldiers, until, by the time Marrákesh is reached, the European fighting-man has almost disappeared. For, as has been remarked, the whole of the Southland is under the rule of the Grand Caïds, and its towns are garrisoned by their own soldiery—ruffianly looking nondescripts, for the most part, though the well drilled household troops of El Glaoui, the most powerful of the native chieftains, wear uniforms which vie in gorgeousness with those of the Shereefian Guard.

The military forces in Morocco consist normally of twenty-two regiments of infantry, six regiments of cavalry, and twelve battalions of artillery, which, with the special service organizations, give a total of 22,000 French troops and 47,000 Moroccans. To these must be added a force of native auxiliary troops, including the Shereefian Guard, having a strength of approximately 24,000 men, so that it will be seen that even in peace-time some 93,000 soldiers are employed to garrison the country, though this number was trebled, if not quadrupled, during the fighting in the Riff. Two divisions recruited from native Moroccans served with marked distinction in the Great War and are now quartered on the Rhine, where they have been a cause of much dissension, the Germans claiming that they are colored troops, to which the French retort that the Moroccans are Berbers and, therefore, Caucasians. That France has found in Morocco a valuable source of man-power goes without saying, and this the French intend to exploit to the fullest degree; but to assert, as has one American writer, that “the population of Morocco could furnish her [France] possibly a million of glad and willing defenders in case of need” is, of course, absurd. The total population of French Morocco, as estimated by the French themselves, is something under five and a half millions, yet Belgium, with a population nearly half again as large, even when fighting for her very existence, was never able to place anything like a million men in the field. Though such statements are doubtless good propaganda they are grossly misleading.

Though in Marrákesh there is a French garrison—composed almost wholly of spahis and Senegalese—and a considerable staff of army officers and civil officials, pains are taken to see that the military are in evidence as little as possible. This is due, no doubt, to a desire to conciliate El Glaoui, the great overlord of the Southland, who wields a power which is almost despotic. If a native jeweler has a gem which he covets, he takes it, and pays for it or not as he pleases; if he hears of a beautiful girl, he sends his slaves to her home and without so much as a by-your-leave has her brought to his harem, and her family do not dare to voice a protest; if a man defies him he has him bastinadoed or thrown into the terrible dungeons of the prison called Hib Misbah; if the tribes under his jurisdiction revolt, as occasionally happens, he drowns the rebellion in a sea of blood. Like all great Moorish gentlemen, El Glaoui is a charming host, gracious, generous to a fault, and thoughtful of his guests’ comfort, but there is that in his smoldering eyes and relentless mouth which warns one that it would not be safe to cross him.

It may be asked, in this connection, whether the people of Morocco, as a whole, are really contented under French rule and desire to see it continued. I do not think so, though in saying this I realize that I am taking issue with the opinions so loudly expressed by the members of several self-styled “American missions,” who have been invited to Morocco by the French government for purposes of propaganda and who have been flattered with free motor trips, reviews, dinners, and decorations. It is true that the agricultural population of the country is awakening to a realization that French rule means for them strict justice and freedom from oppression; the merchant class views the protectorate with favor because it spells peace and increased prosperity; the Grand Caïds will remain loyal to France just so long as they find it profitable to do so. Yet among the mass of the people, particularly in the hinterland, there exists, if not actual discontent, at least a feeling of sullen resentment that the land of their fathers should be ruled by foreigners and unbelievers. That the people of Morocco are vastly better off under the rule of France than they were under their own sultans, no fair-minded person can deny, but the same may be said with equal truth of Egypt and the Philippines, where England and the United States respectively have conferred enormous benefits on the native populations. Yet both the Egyptians and the Filipinos want to rule themselves, and the Moroccans, unless I am very much mistaken, want the same. For colonial powers have found, over and over again, that to impose their rule on native peoples, no matter how just and kindly and beneficial that rule may be, is to incur, as Kipling puts it,

Sultan Mulai Yusef was in residence in Marrákesh during my last visit save one to that city, and through the courtesy of the French authorities it was arranged that I should meet him. The audience was to take place in the imperial palace, a huge, wall-encircled congeries of buildings near the Aguenaou Gate, at ten o’clock in the morning. I was accompanied by the Vicomte de Trémaudan, an official of the French civil administration who had volunteered to act as interpreter, and by an American friend.

“The etiquette of the Shereefian court is very strict,” explained de Trémaudan, “and must be punctiliously observed. Upon entering his Majesty’s presence we are expected to stop and bow, to advance a little way and bow again, and then to move forward a few more paces and bow a third time.”

“I’ve met quite a number of kings and emperors in my time,” I remarked, “not to mention a whole raft of shahs and sultans, and with all of them one bow was quite sufficient; but if the sultan insists on his guests performing the Daily Dozen as they approach him, why, I have no objection.”

Alighting from our car at the entrance to the palace, where a detachment of the Garde Noire presented arms, we were conducted by chamberlains through an interminable series of courtyards, corridors, and anterooms, between rows of saluting soldiers and salaaming slaves, emerging at length into a vast marble-paved courtyard bathed in the hot African sunshine. Assembled on a terrace at the farther end of the court, and evidently awaiting us, was a group of white-clad figures, one of them, apparently a person of importance, standing somewhat in front of the rest.