ich the mites cannot control or affect.

We will now turn to Africa, the main theatre of war between Moslem and
missionary, who battle with each other for pagan souls and each other's
proselytes.

We will first visit Morocco, the most westerly of Moslem countries.
Here there is not much missionary activity, either Protestant or
Catholic, but the French have been doing some excellent secular work
there, and under their tutelage the country is developing on lines of
moderate progress.

There is little antipathy shown to missionaries here, at any rate on the
coast, and medical missionaries have been welcomed inland. Education
does not flourish, but the country might be described by an unbiassed
observer as enlightened at least as far south as a line joining Mogador
and Morocco City (Marrakesh). In this northern area you will find an
industrious agricultural population of small farmers scattered about the
countryside, which consists of wide, open tracts of arable land under
millet, maize, and other cereals, dotted here and there with groves of
olive and orange and interspersed with large forests of _argan_ and
other small trees. Desert country encroaches more and more toward the
south, and in spite of several large streams draining into the Atlantic
from the snowcapped Atlas range, the country becomes very wild and
sterile the farther south you go from Mogador until it merges in the
Sahara, across which lies the great, bone-whitened highway that leads to
Timbuctoo.

Whatever the indigenous Berber of the Atlas may be, the northern Moor
has never been a mere barbarian, and Spain owes much to his culture and
industry. He certainly used to have a bizarre conception of
international amenities, and got himself very much disliked in the
Mediterranean and even northern waters in consequence. That phase,
however, has long since passed; the last corsair has rotted at its
moorings in Sallee harbour, and I am told that to put a wealthy Jew in a
thing like a giant trouser-press and extort money under pressure is
considered now an anachronism.

When I first knew the country, a quarter of a century ago, it was just
emerging from a revolutionary war, and local relations with foreigners
or even neighbours were capricious. They murdered a German bagman up the
coast in an _argan_ forest, and the "Gefion" landed a flag-flaunting
armed party to impress Mogador, which dropped water-pitchers on them
from upper windows and wondered what on e