e ivory and slave trade
with the Soudan was carried on by way of Tripoli. But the spirit of
enterprise never slept in the race, and Pliny records the journey of a
Roman general--Suetonius Paulinus--who appears to have crossed the
Atlas, probably by the pass of Tizi-n-Telremt, which is even now so
beset with difficulties that access by land to the Souss will remain an
arduous undertaking until the way by Imintanout is safe for European
travel.

The Vandals swept away the Romans in the fifth century. The Lower Empire
restored a brief period of civilization; but its authority finally
dwindled to the half-legendary rule of Count Julian, shut up within his
walls of Ceuta. Then Europe vanished from the shores of Africa, and
though Christianity lingered here and there in vague Donatist colonies,
and in the names of Roman bishoprics, its last faint hold went down in
the eighth century before the irresistible cry: "There is no God but
Allah!"

III

THE ARAB CONQUEST

The first Arab invasion of Morocco is said to have reached the Atlantic
coast, but it left no lasting traces, and the real Islamisation of
Barbary did not happen till near the end of the eighth century, when a
descendant of Ali, driven from Mesopotamia by the Caliphate, reached the
mountains above Volubilis and there founded an empire. The Berbers,
though indifferent in religious matters, had always, from a spirit of
independence, tended to heresy and schism. Under the rule of Christian
Rome they had been Donatists, as M. Bernard puts it, "out of opposition
to the Empire"; and so, out of opposition to the Caliphate, they took up
the cause of one Moslem schismatic after another. Their great popular
movements have always had a religious basis, or perhaps it would be
truer to say, a religious pretext, for they have been in reality the
partly moral, partly envious revolt of hungry and ascetic warrior tribes
against the fatness and corruption of the "cities of the plain."

Idriss I became the first national saint and ruler of Morocco. His rule
extended throughout northern Morocco, and his son, Idriss II, attacking
a Berber tribe on the banks of the Oued Fez, routed them, took
possession of their oasis and founded the city of Fez. Thither came
schismatic refugees from Kairouan and Moors from Andalusia. The Islamite
Empire of Morocco was founded, and Idriss II has become the legendary
ancestor of all its subsequent rulers.

The Idrissite rule is a welter of obs