a nominal allegiance
to the Sultan; to-day he could pass through little of their territory
without an army at his back, and into the Riff country he has never been
at all.

Among the Berbers there is plenty of throat-cutting as a legal
punishment, and murder on the score of private vengeance, while
Government oppression is rampant. As for travellers journeying across
their country, only certain "roads" are "open" and safe: a Christian,
with proper precaution, is seldom attacked on the way to Fez or Morocco
City--a Jew occasionally. Off the beaten track and anywhere in the Riff
country his life would not be worth a _flus_ (small copper coin).

The Arabs have given the Berbers a name of their own--_Shillah_, which
means "Outcast," referring back to the days when they drove them out of
the plains up into the mountains; and it has stuck to them ever since.

Travellers descant upon _the noble Shillah race_. The dialect which they
speak is called Shillah: the Riffis at Tetuan spoke Shillah among
themselves, but soon picked up Arabic of a sort, and a little Spanish.

The Arab differs in every respect from the Berber. One of the finest
types among mankind, he has a tall, spare frame, aquiline nose, fine
eyes. He is kind, hospitable, dignified, abstemious, a poet, a gentleman,
and a horseman. He is capable of great things, and of all Orientals has
most impressed himself upon the world. At the same time he is too often
treacherous and blood-thirsty, inclined to be sensual and inquisitive.

Perhaps his faults have led to the extolling of the noble Shillah race at
the Arab's expense. On this subject Mr. Cunninghame Graham writes, that
certain travellers in Morocco must have "been humiliated at finding in
the Arabs a finer type than their own, and have turned to the Shillah
race with the relief that the earthen teapot must find when taken away
from the drawing-room companionship of Dresden china and put back again
on the kitchen dresser." For myself "earthen teapot" and "Dresden china"
have both much fascination. I would trust either just as far as I could
see him.

Thus Morocco is populated by two antipathetic races, who neither singly
nor jointly have or can consolidate it into a thriving empire. The Arab
cared only to convert a conquered people to Mohammedanism and to push his
individual fortune, heedless of assimilating individuals into one
nation, as did the Romans. Great Arab chiefs there have been, but never a
patriot.