sh ideals of justice and fair-play
have forbidden the much-abused practice,--and the most the Englishman can
do is to enter into a trading partnership with a Moor and secure for him a
certificate of limited protection called "mukhalat," from the name of the
person who holds it. Great Britain has never abused the Protection system,
and there are fewer protected Moors in the service or partnership of
Britons throughout all Morocco than France has in any single town of
importance.

If I had held the power and the will to give protection, I might have been
in Morocco to-day, master of a house and a household, drawing half the
produce of many fields and half the price of flocks of sheep and herds of
goats. Few mornings passed without bringing some persecuted farmer to the
camp, generally in the heat of the day, when we rested on his land. He
would be a tall, vigorous man, burnt brown by the sun, and he would point
to his fields and flocks, "I have so many sheep and goats, so many oxen
for the plough, so many mules and horses, so much grain unharvested, so
much in store. Give me protection, that I may live without fear of my
kaid, and half of all I own shall be yours." Then I had to explain through
Salam that I had no power to help him, that my Government would do no more
than protect me. It was hard for the applicants to learn that they must go
unaided. The harvest was newly gathered, it had survived rain and blight
and locusts, and now they had to wait the arrival of their kaid or his
khalifa, who would seize all they could not conceal,--hawk, locust, and
blight in one.

At the village called after its patron saint, Sidi B'noor, a little
deputation of tribesmen brought grievances for an airing. We sat in the
scanty shade of the zowia wall. M'Barak, wise man, remained by the side of
a little pool born of the winter rains; he had tethered his horse and was
sleeping patiently in the shadow cast by this long-suffering animal. The
headman, who had seen my sporting guns, introduced himself by sending a
polite message to beg that none of the birds that fluttered or brooded by
the shrine might be shot, for that they were all sacred. Needless perhaps
to say that the idea of shooting at noonday in Southern Morocco was far
enough from my thoughts, and I sent back an assurance that brought half a
dozen of the village notables round us as soon as lunch was over.
Strangely enough, they wanted protection--but it was sought on account of