m her
likeness to the eldest boy was probably his mother. The second son was
evidently by a slave: there was no mistaking that likeness--a fat, happy
individual, the greatest contrast to another slave, who, though well
dressed, was pale and miserable-looking. Two or three other corpulent,
smiling blackamoors made up the sum-total of the party in the downstairs
room--most comfortable, lounging on the cushions, they looked, no mean
advertisements of Hadj Mukhtar's "table." The principal and favourite
wife possessed a noisy sewing-machine, which she proudly displayed.

Every Moor's establishment has its slaves--so many, according to his
income: in Tetuan they are sold privately, and frequently exchanged one
for the other, while the wives are as easily divorced. Every year
something like three thousand slaves come into Morocco, chiefly from the
Soudan: a few are stolen from Moorish tribes; the rest are brought in by
Moorish traders, who catch them in various ways, such as scattering
sweetmeats, or in hard times corn, round the villages, up to neighbouring
coverts, just as a poacher at home entices pheasants with raisins, then
pouncing out and carrying them off.

As there are no such things as Moorish women-servants, negresses and
slaves of various types step into the gap, and the evil of this influx of
black blood is seen in the deterioration of a fine race, and the increase
of the type which tends towards thick lips, low foreheads, and sensual
tastes. The slavery of Christians in Morocco, once common, has been by
treaty abolished since the day when the savage Sultan Mulai Ismael had
eleven thousand Christian slaves in Mequinez employed in building his
walls, whose bodies, when they succumbed, were mixed in with the stones
and mud of the buildings. Slaves are not ill treated in the present day,
though now and again one may be flogged to death as the result of fault
or the malice and slander of a jealous fellow-slave: as a rule they live
happily; and if a female slave bears a male child to her master, by a law
in the Kor[=a]n both mother and son are _ipso facto_ freed, though they
continue to live on in the same house.

The last thing Hadj Mukhtar Hilalli showed us was his hummum, cunningly
arranged to flank the kitchen fire at the back. A tiny room; but four of
his wives and slaves could, he explained, take their bath in it at once.
There was a small stone slab inside as a seat, and hot air came in by
means of a pipe in o