f those fell days. Bought and sold in the market like
cattle, Europeans were more despised than Negroes, who at least
acknowledged Mohammed as their prophet, and accepted their lot without
attempt to escape.

Dark days were those for the honour of Europe, when the Moors inspired
terror from the Balearics to the Scilly Isles, and when their rovers
swept the seas with such effect that all the powers of Christendom
were fain to pay them tribute. Large sums of money, too, collected
at church doors and by the sale of indulgences, were conveyed by the
hands of intrepid friars, noble men who risked all to relieve those
slaves who had maintained their faith, having scorned to accept a
measure of freedom as the reward of apostasy. Thousands of English
and other European slaves were liberated through the assistance of
friendly letters from Royal hands, as when the proud Queen Bess
addressed Ahmad II., surnamed "the Golden," as "Our Brother after the
Law of Crown and Sceptre," or when Queen Anne exchanged compliments
with the bloodthirsty Ismail, who ventured to ask for the hand of a
daughter of Louis XIV.

In the midst of it all, when that wonderful man, with a household
exceeding Solomon's, and several hundred children, had reigned
forty-three of his fifty-five years, the English, in 1684, ceded to
him their possession of Tangier. For twenty-two years the "Castle in
the streights' mouth," as General Monk had described it, had been the
scene of as disastrous an attempt at colonization as we have ever
known: misunderstanding of the circumstances and mismanagement
throughout; oppression, peculation and terror within as well as
without; a constant warfare with incompetent or corrupt officials
within as with besieging Moors without; till at last the place had to
be abandoned in disgust, and the expensive mole and fortifications
were destroyed lest others might seize what we could not hold.

Such events could only lower the prestige of Europeans, if, indeed,
they possessed any, in the eyes of the Moors, and the slaves up
country received worse treatment than before. Even the ambassadors
and consuls of friendly powers were treated with indignities beyond
belief. Some were imprisoned on the flimsiest pretexts, all had to
appear before the monarch in the most abject manner, and many were
constrained to bribe the favourite wives of the ameers to secure their
requests. It is still the custom for the state reception to take place
in an