We now turn to the coast of Africa, a region which from first to last has exerted an extraordinary and always sinister influence over the destinies of the Mohammedan empire in Europe. The intractable character of the Berbers, and their aversion to the restraints of law and the habits of civilized life, had defied the efforts of the ablest soldiers and negotiators to control them. In consequence, the dominant Arab element was not disposed to conciliate savages who recognized no authority but that of force, and imposed upon them the most oppressive exactions, prompted partly by avarice and partly by tribal hatred. The impetus of Berber insurrection was communicated by contact and sympathy to the settlements of their kindred in Spain, where the spirit of insubordination under a less severe government made its outbreaks more secure, and, at the same time, more formidable. Obeydallah, the present Viceroy, was influenced by these feelings of scorn even more than a majority of his countrymen. A true Arab, educated in the best schools of Syria, of energetic character and bigoted impulses, he regarded the untamable tribesmen of Africa as below the rank of slaves. While collector of the revenue in Egypt he had provoked a rebellion of the Copts on account of an arbitrary increase of taxes, levied solely because the tributaries were infidels. Under his rule the lot of the Berbers became harder than ever. Their flocks, which constituted their principal wealth, were wantonly slaughtered to provide wool for the couches of the luxurious nobility of Damascus. Their women were seized, to be exposed in the slave-markets of Cairo and Antioch. Their tributes were doubled at the caprice of the governor, in whose eyes the life of a misbeliever was of no more consideration than that of a wild beast, for, being enjoyed under protest, it could be forfeited at the will of his superior. Day by day the grievances of the Berbers became more unendurable, and the thirst for liberty and vengeance kept pace with the ever-increasing abuses which had provoked it. At first the tribes, while professedly Mussulman, in reality remained idolaters, fetich-worshippers, the pliant tools of conjurers and charlatans. Over the whole nation a priesthood--by snake-charming, by the interpretation of omens, by spurious miracles, by the arts of sorcery--had acquired unbounded influence; and the names of these impostors, canonized after death, were believed to have more power to avert misfortune than the invocation of the Almighty. In time, however, the zealous labors of exiled Medinese and Persian non-conformists had supplanted the grosser forms of this superstition by a religion whose fervor was hardly equalled by that displayed by the most fanatical Companion of Mohammed. The scoffing and polished Arabs of Syria, of whom the Viceroy was a prominent example, Pagan by birth and infidel in belief and practice, were sedulously represented as the enemies of Heaven and