With the surrender of Tangier the Byzantine domination in Africa came to an end. Sixty years of warfare, the destruction of fleets, the annihilation of armies, the devastation of provinces, the enslavement of nations, had been required to accomplish this result, never for a moment lost sight of by the Moslems amidst the imbroglios of courts and the revolts of pretenders to the Khalifate of Damascus. The abnormally perfidious and martial character of the Berber placed him outside the category of ordinary enemies. No reverses, however severe, could break his spirit. He ignored the obligation of treaties. No resource remained, therefore, but depopulation. The number of slaves made by the Mussulmans in Africa excited the amazement of their brethren in the East. A successful campaign often yielded two hundred thousand of these unfortunates. Such wholesale captivity was without precedent even in the annals of Rome. The fortresses, with the exception of Ceuta, which was nominally a dependency of the Visigothic kings of Spain--though held by a feeble and uncertain tenure--were now in the possession of the Saracens. The Berbers either paid tribute to the Khalif or, serving under their own commanders, were enrolled in his armies. Already, after the expiration of only two generations, during which the laws and customs of Mohammedan life can be said to have been established, the momentous effects of polygamy were strikingly noticeable. The children of the pagan slaves who filled the harems of the conquerors were educated in the doctrines of the Koran, and idolatry had totally disappeared, save, perhaps, in some sequestered valley of the Atlas Mountains, where the half-savage devotee bowed before a rude and lonely altar, and with mystic incantations invoked the aid of some misshapen image. Islam, which, even by the reluctant testimony of Christian missionaries, exalts the character of the Negro and invests him with a sense of personal dignity and self-respect which no other religion has been able to inspire, soon gained the professed allegiance of the Berbers; and like the Arab, the more suspicious and clannish they had been in their Age of Ignorance, the more patriotic and enterprising they became as Mohammedans--the very isolation and irreconcilable antagonism of their former condition seemed to insensibly impress them with a realization of the imperative necessity and paramount value of national union. The call to prayer of the muezzin everywhere rang out from the towers of pagan temple and Christian church, whose magnificent decorations, bestowed by penitent Goth and Vandal, had once glittered as trophies amidst the splendid pageantry of a Roman triumph. But, despite community of interest, ethnological resemblance, and identity of religious belief, the environment of the inhabitants of Africa seems to be hostile to the permanent improvement of the human species, and before attaining to the highest degree of development of which the race