tter at the low drinking-dens kept by the scum of
foreign settlers in the open ports. Among the country people of
the plains and lower hills there are hardly any who would touch
intoxicating liquor, though among the mountaineers the use of alcohol
has ever been more common.

Tobacco smoking is very general on the coast, owing to contact with
Europeans, but still comparatively rare in the interior, although the
native preparations of hemp (keef), and also to some extent opium,
have a large army of devotees, more or less victims. The latter,
however, being an expensive import, is less known in the interior.
Snuff-taking is fairly general among men and women, chiefly the
elderly. What they take is very strong, being a composition of
tobacco, walnut shells, and charcoal ash. The writer once saw a young
Englishman, who thought he could stand a good pinch of snuff, fairly
"knocked over" by a quarter as much as the owner of the nut from which
it came took with the utmost complacency.

The feeling of the Moorish Government about smoking has long been so
strong that in every treaty with Europe is inserted a clause reserving
the right of prohibiting the importation of all narcotics, or articles
used in their manufacture or consumption. Till a few years ago the
right to deal in these was granted yearly as a monopoly; but in 1887
the late Sultan, Mulai el Hasan, and his aolama, or councillors,
decided to abolish the business altogether, so, purchasing the
existing stocks at a valuation, they had the whole burned. But first
the foreign officials and then private foreigners demanded the right
to import whatever they needed "for their own consumption," and the
abuse of this courtesy has enabled several tobacco factories to spring
up in the country. The position with regard to the liquor traffic is
almost the same. If the Moors were free to legislate as they wished,
they would at once prohibit the importation of intoxicants.

Of late years, however, a great change has come over the Moors of the
ports, more especially so in Tangier, where the number of taverns and
_cafes_ has increased most rapidly. During many years' residence there
the cases of drunkenness met with could be counted on the fingers, and
were then confined to guides or servants of foreigners; on the last
visit paid to the country more were observed in a month than then in
years. In those days to be seen with a cigarette was almost a crime,
and those who indulged in a