utenant.

Every Moor capable of bearing arms in Morocco is liable to be _pressed_
for service.

In May, when the country is dry, each basha or kaid is ordered to collect
troops in his own district: then is Tetuan deserted, and every boy and
young man absents himself. How the lady missionaries hid their house-boy!
Tetuan sent off two hundred men, under a colonel, while we were there,
which were to help punish certain rebellious tribes. Often these
expeditions are for the purpose of raising taxes. In any case the tribes
against which the Sultan's troops are sent are said to be "eaten up."
Long before it happened it was known and talked of.

"Ah, yes; the Beni M`Saira would be eaten up in April."

The Tetuan two hundred were sent to help eat up the Beni M`Saira tribe,
some of whom had abducted two Spanish children a year ago. The children
had driven their pigs on to land belonging to the tribe--a thing abhorred
of by Mohammedans, to whom pigs are unclean. Expostulation was not
heeded, and the Beni M`Saira resorted to strong measures, and kidnapped
the children. They were sold from family to family beyond hope of
recovery, and it would be hard to say what was their fate. Of course
they were never seen again. Tales were circulated which said that the
girl had been turned into a dancing-girl, and taught to dance upon hot
ashes, or she may have become slave and concubine to some Moor. She was
sixteen years old, and the lady missionaries at Tetuan knew her well, and
her ten-year-old brother.

The Spanish Government had complained to the Sultan, and now a year after
the offence the Beni M`Saira were to be eaten up; there was to be a
general raid upon their country: men would be killed, women taken as
slaves, villages burnt, and corn destroyed. The worst part of the whole
business is the fate of the prisoners on these occasions. These
unfortunate men, suffering scarcely for their own misdeeds, are sent in
chains to far-distant city prisons, whence they seldom emerge alive.

The colonel of the Tetuan contingent was an example of the rapid rises
and the vicissitudes of life in Morocco. Only the other day he had been
harbour-master down at Martine, but was accused of smuggling and turned
out of that berth; he then took a cafe and sold drinks in Tetuan, when
suddenly the Sultan's pleasure took the shape of making him a full-blown
colonel in his troops. As in the days of Joseph, the chief butler is sent
for out of prison and mad