h, with learned-looking books, ink,
parchment, and thin slips of wood for pens.

Below the basha or kaid come _sheikhs_ (village elders), who may be
called gentlemen farmers. They collect the taxes directly from the
country people. A province is taxed according to what it produces: no one
pays the sum demanded of him, nor at the time it is demanded, but
eventually every householder in the district is judiciously squeezed to
the uttermost farthing, and half of what he pays goes into the sheikh's
pocket.

Morocco conceals its wealth in times of visitations such as these: money
and corn alike are buried in the ground. Some of the people are
imprisoned, some tortured, and eventually all disgorge, and are left with
barely enough for their every-day wants.

It is a system typical of the East and its slipshod, rough-and-ready
dealings: its great element of simplicity harks back to a life in tents,
where red tape was unknown.

The highest officials are in the habit of transacting business at their
street doors or in their stables: the basha invariably sits in some
gateway near his house, hearing and judging matters which two or three
gesticulating claimants explain to him. Private matters are public
property: the man in the street chats with the Minister of Finance--for
are not all men equal? The minister may have sold groceries at one time,
before he was called upon to fill a position at Court. Who can tell what
a day may not bring forth?

The Sultan--who is known as "The Lofty Portal, the Exalted of God, the
Noble Presence"--has a body of servants and retainers round him: first of
all "The Learned Ones," men who advise him, but make a point of
ascertaining his wishes before they give an opinion, and are of no use at
all except in conducting negotiations; next the officer who carries the
great pearl-and-gold-embroidered parasol over his head; next an officer
who flicks away flies; then a master of ceremonies, a headsman, a
flogger, a shooter, a water-bearer, a tent-layer, a tea-maker, a
standard-bearer, and a "taster" to see that no poison is given.

More closely connected than any of these with the Sultan is of course his
harem, of both black and white women, who have been honoured by admission
into the much-sought-after precincts. Some of them are Circassians,
supplied by Constantinople: all are the best which money can buy, or ease
and position tempt. When their numbers have been greatly swelled, certain
of them are