and their towns to intercourse, so likewise Great Britain appears now to be glad to avail itself of the help of France to open the Yang-tse-Kiang to commercial navigation. If Great Britain failed to avail itself of the opportunity presented in the opening of the Euphrates and Tigris, why should it oppose the undertaking of an interoceanic canal by others? If the latter project is not feasible, the failure will, at all events, lay at another door; all that we have to do is to avoid an unsafe investment. As to preponderance of power to be obtained by such an undertaking, it is so remote a result, and one that could be so readily counterbalanced, that it is not worth the ignominy which is entailed by perseverance in a petty and vexatious policy of opposition.

So again with regard to Morocco. Great Britain has held the incomparable fortress of Gibraltar for now upwards of a century and a half, and if she has failed in rendering the passage of the Pillars of Hercules safe, if the piratical rovers of the bold Rifians still scour the Mediterranean and the industrious denizens of Tangiers, Tetuan, Al Araish, and of all the other towns and ports on the coast or in the interior, have never known what are peace or security in the pursuit of life, it is not at all surprising that other suffering nations should take up the cudgels to chastise, and the arms to subdue, such a nest of long-tolerated impudence, vagabondage, and misrule. We are happy to find that Captain Cave, an African traveller, in his introduction to "Richardson's Travels," takes nearly the same view of the subject as ourselves:

Let us, however, suppose, that the present action of France and Spain should result in the subversion of the atrocious system of government practised in Morocco: a guarantee from the conquerors that our existing commercial privileges should be respected, would alone be required to ensure the protection of our interests, and what an extended field would the facilities for penetrating into the interior open to us! We must also remember that Napoleon III., in heart, is a free-trader; and, should Destiny ever appoint him the arbiter of Morocco, the protectionist pressure of a certain deluded class in France would be impotent against his policy in Western Barbary, a country perhaps more hostile to the European than China. Sailors and others, who have had the misfortune to be cast on the inhospitable shore of Northern Africa, have been sent far inland into slavery to drag out a miserable existence; and, at this moment, there are many white Christian slaves in the southern and eastern provinces of the empire.

Should the war not result in conquest, the least we have a right to expect is, that toleration should be forced upon the Moors, and that European capital and labour should be allowed a free development throughout their empire. A flourishing trade would soon spring up, nature having blessed Barbary with an excellent soil and climate, besides vast mineral wealth in its mountains; lead, copper, and antimony are found in them. The plains produce corn, rice, and indigo; the forests of cedar, ilex, cork and olive-trees are scattered over a vast extent, and contain antelopes, wild-boars, and other species of game; Barbary also possesses an excellent breed of horses. The principal manufactures are leather, shawls, and carpets.

England has, but a short time since, succeeded in emancipating her Jewish brethren from their few remaining disabilities; an opportunity may now be at hand of ameliorating the condition of those in the empire of Morocco, who are forced to submit to a grinding persecution, and are merely tolerated because they are useful. They supply many wants of the Moorish population; are the best, and in many handicrafts the only artificers, and are much employed by the government in financial occupations. They are compelled to occupy a distinct quarter of the town they inhabit; are permitted only to wear black garments,

are forbidden to ride, the horse being considered too noble an animal to carry a Jew, and are forced to take off their shoes on passing a mosque. Even the little Moorish boys strike and ill-treat them in various ways, and the slightest attempt at retaliation was formerly punished with death, and would now be visited with the bastinado. They are more heavily taxed than any other class, and special contributions are often levied on them.

Alas! why should we respect the national existence of any community of Mahometans? Have we effaced from our memory their treachery and inhuman cruelty in India; their utter worthlessness in Turkey; their neglect in taking advantage of the richness with which nature has blest the countries in their possession; and their conquest from Christendom of one of the fairest portions of Europe.

Civilisation cries aloud for retribution on a race whose religion teaches them to regard us as "dogs." Surely, far from protecting and cherishing, we should hunt them out of the fair lands they occupy, and force them back on the deserts which vomited them forth on our ancestors ten centuries ago. Brief periods of glory at Bagdad, Cairo, and Granada, should not protect those who are now slaves to the lowest vices that degrade human nature. No administrative reforms are at all practicable; their moral maladies have attacked the vital element; the sole cure is conquest, and the substitution of Christian governments in northern Africa, and Turkey in Europe and Asia. Russia, France, Austria, Greece, and Spain are weary of the excesses of their savage neighbours; none can be honestly inclined to stay their avenging swords.

Mr. Richardson himself, also, after describing at length the excessive exclusiveness and the suspicious distrust of the Sherifian court, the sullen and unquenchable spirit of revenge engendered by the battle of Isly and the bombardment of Tangiers and Mogador, and the loss of influence entailed by the neutrality of Great Britain, concludes, "Islamism will wear itself out-the crescent must wane."

This country has ever been the high court of turmoil and trouble,* as part of Numidia, Mauretania, rose in insurrection against Ptolemy, son of Juba, and was subdued by Claudius Cæsar, who divided the land into two prefectures, Tingitana, from Tingis, now Tangiers, and Mauretania Cæsariensis, from the port of that name now in Algeria. When the Roman Empire was dismembered by the Northern hordes, Mauretania fell to the share of the Goths, in whose power it continued till the year 600, but the land of Satyrs was never doomed to know tranquillity: the Goths yielded it to the Vandals, the Vandals to the Greeks, and the Greeks, in their turn, were expelled by the Saracens.

Nor was this debatable frontier between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, the narrow strait between Europe and Africa,

Herculeo dirimente freto,

less a land of trouble under the ascendancy of the followers of the Prophet than it had been under the rule of Europeans. The dynasty of the so-called Aglabites, whose original seat of empire was fixed at Kairwan (the name of which is still preserved in that of a tribe, Kirruwan, pronounced Kirwan), and that of the Edrisites, or Edristes, whose capital was Fez (789-908), were both subjugated by the Fatimites, so called after the pearl-like Fatima, and who, being afterwards occupied with the conquest of Egypt, allowed the Zuheirites, or Zeirids, to usurp their western possessions (972). The latter were again succeeded by the

"Numidasque rebelles" (Ovid.) They were also vagi, fugaces, indomiti, belligeri, and feroces, with the Romans.

Moravedi, or Marabuts, who rose into military consequence in A.D. 1069, under Abu Bekr, Ben Omar Lamethuni, a celebrated reformer of the Muhammadan religion, who created a sect, marked, in the first instance, by furious zeal, and which, issuing from the desert like a fiery hurricane, threatened by turns Africa and Europe. They not only, under their emir, Al Mumenim, or "Prince of the Faithful," conquered a great part of Barbary, but they even carried their arms into Spain, where they defeated the Christian forces in the great battle of Sala, A.D. 1086. But the ecclesiastical and political sway even of this enterprising sect only lasted for eighty years. In the middle of the twelfth century, they gave way before the Almohades, supposed to have been of the Berber nation. These, in their turn, became masters of Mogribu-l-Aksa, or the great empire of the west, and their princes assumed the title of Khalifs. After the lapse of a century, intestine discords laid the Almohades open to the successful inroads of rival tribes; about 1250 the Merinites seized Fez and Morocco, but made no effort to re-establish the great empire of Moghrib. Their power was overthrown by the Oatagi, or Oatazi, which circumstance gave an opportunity to a sherif (Aulad Ali), or descendant of Muhammad, settled at Tafilet, to seize the sceptre, which he left to his family. The present sultan is of this family, which, notwithstanding frequent revolutions, and sundry acts of reprisal on the part of European powers, has, owing to the international jealousy of those very powers, been enabled to hold its sway over a nation of bandits and pirates, with a small number of commercial centres from whence to derive a revenue, for nearly three centuries.

The Orientals have attached many pleasing and poetic names, full of significance, to the physical features of the country, as also to localities. Mountains are chiefly named after the tribes which inhabit them, but there are many exceptions to this, such as Adral (Deren in Berber), or Atlas; Aïdu-Agal, the great mountain, or Western Atlas; Al-Alem, the landmark or standard; Ayyanah, country of springs; Bahrein, the mount of the two seas; Jebelu-th-thelg, the snowy mountains; besides many others. Tribes in Morocco are variously designated by the Berber designation of Kabileh, plural Kabayil, whence our word Kabyles, erroneously used to express a people or nation; by the term Aith, Berber, for "children" and "sons;" by Weld, the Moorish for the same, Aulad in the plural, and by the old Arabic word Ben, also sons or children, plural, Beni. The so-called Berbers, a name supposed to be corrupted from the Roman "Barbarian," designate themselves as Amazigh, "the Great," and their language Tamazigh and Shilah, which, in the plural Shulub, is also the name of one of their chief tribes. Thus, we have the well-known port of Mazagan, properly Mazighan, the abode of the Amazighs. One of the primitive tribes of the same people is designated by the simple term of Beranis, plural of Burnus, or cloak, equivalent to the cloak-wearers.

The names of tribes are, in other instances, more significant. Sometimes they are patriarchal, as in the instance of the Aith Is-hak, or children of Isaac, and Aith Yakub, the children of Jacob. With the Arabs the associations differ, as in the case of the Beni Ali, or sons of Ali; and the Hoseini, or descendants of Husain. But we have among these, also, the Beni Ibrahim, or sons of Abraham; and even the Aulad

Isa, or children of Jesus. Some tribes take their names from physical peculiarities, as Al Audiyah, inhabiting valleys; Aulad-bu-ris, children of the father of feathers-i. e. snow; others from their occupations, as Mezatah, oil vendors; Thawulalin, herdsmen ; Zerarah, graziers; and Rahalah, travellers: others, again, from the vegetation of the districts they inhabit, as Arkan, tribe of the Elæodendron, or Moorish olive; Aulad Duleim, children of the sycamore; Aulad Talhah, children of the gum-tree; and Beni Tamarah, sons of dates. Some names bear testimony to attributes, as Aulad-abu-Aziz, the excellent or exalted; Lahanah, the hospitable; Zoheir, the splendid; and Sadratah, the astonished. Others record reminiscences of a less flattering character, as Beni Garir, sons of the unskilful; Beni Meskin, sons of the poor; Beni Felil, sons of the ejected; Zawaghah, seducers; Mishboyah, the stung by scorpions ; and Aits-i-sim, the sons of the passing winds.

The names of provinces and districts are, like those of mountains, in main part derived from the names of the tribes that dwell in them. But there are many exceptions; for example: Tedlah, the rising country, and Sus, the limitrophal or border country. Then, again, we have Bilad-eshShurrefa, the country of the sherifs; Bilad-es-Sukkur, the sugar country; Biladu-l-Ahmar, the red country; and Biladu-l-Jerid, the land of Javelins.

We

The names of towns and villages are almost always significant. will not refer to the former here, as we may have to return to them. Among the villages, we have Hulwan, sweet or pleasant; Tabulawant, the abode of the ferrymen; Abdun, village of servants; Dhu-Kasal, the master of the sharp sword; Kalha, hovels; and Zehbel, dung. Then we have peculiarities derived from vegetation, or other circumstances, as Naranjah, village of oranges; Tomara, fruit-trees; Zerah, where reeds grow; Bohayim, cattle; Daimus, den or cave; and El Khaimah, the tent. Other names are equally significant, as Idaultit, mines; Sakiyah, water-wheel; Tefuf, smoke; Thamuda, boar; Zerku, sand-hill; and Zeinat, the ornamented. Many villages, as all over the East, are designated as Sok, market-plural, Aswak. To this name is often superadded the day of the week on which the market is held, as Sok-el-Arba, or Wednesday market; or of the tribe, as Sok Dar Aith Thanah, market of the Thanah tribe. Some villages, and even towns, are designated after one house, or Dar, a practice much in vogue with the Syrians of old, whose Beits have become classical, as in Bethelem. Thus we have Dar Mubarek, blessed house; Dar-el-Beida, white house; Dar Ummus-sSultan, house of the sultan's mother; and Dar Jedidah, new house-a part of Fez. Still more characteristic are Ummu-l-Jauibah, mother of the camel's loads; Ummu-l-Heffan, mother of the young ostrich; and Ummu-l-Hudaja, mother of the camel's shriek. We have in the East mother of bugs, mother of mosquitoes, and mother of thieves, as warnings to wayfarers.

The names of plains are almost always characteristic, as in Adahsun, plenty of corn; Halin, grassy; Samirah, well-watered fields; and Wulgah, a watering plain. So also with regard to valleys, as Fahs-urRihan, myrtle valley; and Ghut Sedamah, "the low valley of adversity." Passes and defiles are, throughout the East, designated as old men, old women, aud the bearded, from the slow and cautious manner in which

the youngest must wend their way through them. In Morocco, we have Thaguth, "the old woman;" El Kheuk, the strangler; Rukbah-dhi-lJemel, the camel's neck; Kunagh-el-Gherban, passage of the ravens ; Bibawan, the two gates; and Buris, father of feathers, or snow, all significant names.

The names of rivers are not less so, as Abu Fekrun, the father of tortoises; Afzarah, sandy, or running in sand; Bat, something that dwindles into nothing; Dernah, dirty; Khandaku-r-Nyan, thirst-quenching torrent; El Knus, a bow; Muluhat, salt river; Nihah, quiet river; Tamsukht, the moistener; Tanin, full of reeds; Wad-el-Arsah, river of the orchards; Wad-el-Ayyashah, the life-giving; and Wad-el-Mahsan, the benefactor. So also with regard to the names of springs (Ain, plural Ayun), as Ain-el-Berdat, the cold spring; Ain Nalu, the sweet spring; Ayun-el-Esnam, idol springs; and Ayun Muluk, the sources of the kings. Many of these names also indicate villages. Ras-ul-Ain, or head springs or waters, also abound. Wells, in a country where water is of first importance, are not less favoured. We have Suweïniyah, the small wells; Tansur, the well-defended-both villages; Abu Harayah, place where the ostriches deposit their eggs; and Miat Bir, the hundred wells. Fords have also their peculiar designations: Meshra Halluf, ford of the wild-boar; Meshrat-esfa, ford of the lighted mules (deep ford); and Halif-wa-Ghuss, "swear and pass on."

Islands have all significant names, as have also the headlands and capes, however much disfigured in our maps. One or two examples will suffice: as Jezairu-l-Ja'farin, islands of the Beni-Jafar, our Zafarines and Chaffarines; Jezairu-l-Ghanem, sheep islands; Jesairu-l-Habib, friends' islands; Cape Mulai-abu-Sellum, father ladder; Ras-ush-Shakkar, end of the vineyards, our Cape Spartel; and Baba, or "father" promontory.

Among the more remarkable castles are: Al Kasr Kebir, the great castle; Aksabei-sh-shurefa, the castle of the sherifs; Kasbat-aith-usi, the stronghold of the tribe Aith-usi; Kasbat-ali-ben-Hasan, palace of Ali, son of Hasan; Kasbat-ez-Zettat, castle of the bridal ornaments; and Kasbat Juzulah, castle of the Gezula (ancient Gætulians).

Among some of the more remarkable edifices are the Kutubiyah, or the library; the chief mosque at Morocco, two hundred and twenty feet high; and the Sauma'-ah-Hasan, a tower at Rabat, two hundred and fifty feet above the sea. There are no end of Kobbehs, or saints' tombs. The most notable are those of Abdu-n-nebi, or of the Prophet's servant; of Abu Nasir, the protector or defender of Mojahidin, or of the warriors of the faith (three tombs near Tangiers); Shellah; "end of journey," near Sala. Then, again, we have Sherradi, a sanctuary for fugitives; Sidi Kuskusu, a saint's tomb, where Kuskusu was given to travellers; besides several Zawiyah, plural Zawaya, retreats in which devotees retire from the world, as Zawiyah-ben-Sheradi, a noted sanctuary on the banks of the Wad Nefis.

Contemplated in a physical point of view, Morocco is a strip of land which stretches down from the Atlas in three great terraces (Morocco itself, at the immediate foot of the mountains, being one thousand four hundred and fifty feet above the level of the sea), down to the Atlantic -the Bahru-l-Dolmat, or sea of darkness. From the Straits of Gibraltar (Boghaz) to the latitude of Fez, excepting the northern spur of the