is not safe. He will probably meet with a dagger or the muzzle of a long
gun one day.

But a people who inculcate such severe and cursory measures have their
redeeming-points. It is a fact that cursing and swearing, so common among
Moors, and polygamy and adultery, are seldom, if ever, met with in the
Riff: for if one Riffi insults another, it is at the peril of his life;
while the stain of immorality is wiped out at once by death.

The gun, pistol, or dagger is the Riffi's summary judge and jury. He
submits to no authority. Questions on land, on inheritance, all legal
questions, are settled in each village by the keeper of the mosque. He
arranges marriages.

The Riffis are therefore a moral people: a man has but one wife; the
women do not veil, and yet familiarity is not tolerated between the
sexes; a young man will go out of his way to avoid passing close by a
young woman whom he sees in the distance, lest he be suspected of
behaving lightly to her.

The Riffis are an indomitable race, one which has never been conquered,
magnificent raw material out of which to shape a battalion of infantry.
Though acknowledged as the Kaliph of the Prophet and their religious
head, the Sultan, as has been said, has never dared to put his head in
this independent hornets' nest.

They are an industrious tribe, growing crops assiduously and rearing
cattle: their valleys are fertile and well farmed for an uncivilized
country. But these details must be taken for what they are worth. S`lam
could say nothing but good of the Riff: how cheap living was, and how
abundant food,--except when rain failed, and then there followed
disastrous famine, and starving Riffis would come down to Tetuan, and lie
in the caves outside the city, and live on roots, doing any work which
offered; and some of them would die, in spite of the missionaries'
kindness and unremitting efforts.

There are many legends about the Riffis: they boast one tribe among
themselves who are said to be descended from the Romans; and there is no
reason against the assumption, since the Romans were in Morocco after
Caesar's day. Another family claims to be descended from the inhabitants
of Sodom. Some of them are quite fair--regular "carrots": Vandal blood
may run in their veins. While, again, some people say there are Celts
among them, with Irish characteristics and Irish words. Possibly. Pirates
and rovers are apt to introduce foreign strains.

At any rate they have nothin