The census taken by Al-Samh had disclosed the vast preponderance of Christians who still adhered to their ancient faith, and the fears of the Khalif Yezid were aroused by the presence of so many hostile sectaries in the heart of his empire. To obviate this evil, and to assure the future permanence of Moslem supremacy, he devised a scheme which indicates a degree of worldly wisdom and political acuteness rare in the councils of that age. He proposed that the Christian population of Spain and Septimania be deported and settled in the provinces of Africa and Syria, and the territory thus vacated be colonized with faithful Mussulmans. Thus Spain would have become thoroughly Mohammedan, and the establishment of armed garrisons in Gaul would have been supplemented by the aid of a brave and active peasantry, affording an invaluable initial point for the extension of the Moslem arms in the north and east of Europe. But this was by no means the greatest advantage of this bold and original stroke of statesmanship. The penetrating eye of Yezid had already discerned the dangerous character of the mountaineers of the Asturias, who had preserved the traditions and inherited the valor of the founders of the Gothic monarchy. The removal of this threatening element was equivalent to its extirpation, and would probably have preserved for an indefinite period the Moslem empire of Spain in its original integrity. The province of Septimania, supported by the powerful armies of a united and homogeneous nation, could then have defied the desultory assaults of the Franks. The exiles, scattered in distant lands, must by force, or through inducements of material advantage, have gradually become amalgamated with their masters; their children would have professed the prevailing faith; and the progenitors of that dynasty whose policy controlled the destinies of Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries would have disappeared from the knowledge of man. The severity of this project, dictated partly by religious zeal, but principally by political acumen, would have been excessive, yet its beneficial effects upon the fortunes of Islam must have been incalculable. But the mind of Al-Samh, incapable of appreciating the paramount importance of the enterprise, despising the Goths of the sierras as savages, and, like the majority of his countrymen, underestimating their resolution and capacity for warfare, induced him to discourage the plan of the Khalif, by representing that it was unnecessary, on account of the daily increasing numbers of converts to the doctrines of the Koran. The successful inauguration of a similar policy by Cromwell in Ireland nine hundred years afterwards, whose completion, fortunately for the rebellious natives, was defeated by his death, demonstrates the extraordinary sagacity of the sovereign of Damascus in devising a measure of statecraft whose execution portended such important consequences to modern society, and which