d into the Mohammedan heaven. Her function, if
rich, is to bear children, and to be treated like a petted lap-dog: if
poor, to work as a labourer. But interrogate the wife of a rich Moor on
the subject, and she will not have the slightest wish to educate herself,
but will affirm emphatically, "We have children and enough to eat. Why
should we want to learn anything?"

It is manifestly absurd to compare Mohammedanism with Christianity, which
are each the outcome of a distinct race, divided by that greatest
barrier--a racial gulf.

Christianity, it must be confessed, bearing in mind the Christian
renegades with whom the Moor has traded, is looked upon by him for the
most part as a thing beneath contempt. It had five hundred years, before
Mohammed was born, in which to impress itself on the East. It signally
failed. And yet only a few years after Mohammed's death his religion had
taken by storm Egypt, Turkey, Arabia, Persia, Turkestan, parts of India,
the Malay Peninsula, the north coast of Africa, and parts of China,
introducing monotheism, and impressing temperance and cleanliness on
uncivilized millions, but never advancing beyond that point. It is borne
in upon one that, in spite of missionary effort, Morocco will change its
religion for that of Christianity when, as its own proverb says, "The
charcoal takes root and the salt buds." The East, when it adopts other
tenets, will exchange its own for a wider and a more universal cult than
that which modern sects and parties are endeavouring and failing to
introduce to-day.

While we were in our small quarters at the fonda, the weather by no means
came up to the high standard it is said to reach in December. A few sunny
days, when we could bask out of doors, were grudgingly sandwiched between
many wet ones, and again and again the Ramadhan sunrise gun awoke us to
gouts of almost tropical rain, a fiery sunrise followed by an hour's
brilliant sunshine, the herald of a shamelessly distorted April day. The
little gutters down the middle of the streets ran like torrents, carrying
off chickens' heads and cabbage-stalks; hail scoured the pebbles; outside
the city "the dry land was over your boots"; the road to the sea was
impassable, and the rivers between Tangier and Tetuan were unfordable;
snow lay in patches on the mountains; half the vale was inundated; the
river could be heard a mile away; both our windows leaked; and down in
the little patio, where the family sat, the wate