My journey was well nigh over.  I had leisure now to recall all seen and heard in the past few weeks and contrast it with the mental notes I had made on the occasion of previous visits.  And the truth was forced upon me that Morocco was nearer the brink of dissolution than it had ever been—­that instability was the dominant note of social and political life.  I recalled my glimpses of the Arabs who live in Algeria and Tunisia, and even Egypt under European rule, and thought of the servility and dependence of the lower classes and the gross, unintelligent lives of the rest.  Morocco alone had held out against Europe, aided, to be sure, by the accident of her position at the corner of the Mediterranean where no one European Power could permit another to secure permanent foothold.  And with the change, all the picturesque quality of life would go from the Moghreb, and the kingdom founded by Mulai Idrees a thousand years ago would become as vulgar as Algeria itself.

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

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

Salam disturbed my meditations.

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

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

FOOTNOTES: 

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

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

TO THE GATE OF THE PICTURE CITY

[Illustration:  A MOORISH GIRL]