Finally there is a corps of _controleurs civils_ whose duty it is to report on the condition of the country as a whole, on the crops, the roads, public health, and municipal administration, on the temper of the natives, the character and conduct of native officials. But the duties of the controllers go still further, for they are expected to educate and guide the native functionaries, to take a lively interest in agriculture and sanitation, to protect the peasantry from injustice and oppression, and to propose needed improvements and reforms. These French controllers are the eyes and ears of the Ministry of the Interior; they form what is in effect a bureau of civil intelligence, which keeps the central Maghzen constantly informed as to all that is being thought, said, and done in the districts under civil control, just as the officers of the army intelligence keep the general staff conversant with conditions in the regions under military administration. It should be clearly understood, however, that the control of the southern districts of the empire remains almost exclusively in the hands of the Grand Caïds, those great feudal chieftains who even in the days of Morocco’s independence never gave to the sultans more than a perfunctory allegiance and who continue to exercise over their own half-savage peoples almost as harsh and tyrannical powers as they did in the worst days of the _ancien régime_. Such are El Glaoui, the khalifa of Marrákesh, and his two powerful colleagues, Mtouggui and Goundafi, overlords of the High Atlas and the Sus. In theory they are the khalifas, or viceroys, of the sultan, and are supposed to carry out his orders, but in reality they are virtually independent rulers, who regard the puppet-ruler at Rabat with a contempt which they take little pains to conceal and who treat on terms of perfect equality with the French. Their wealth is believed to be enormous; in their own territories their rule is absolute, and their decrees are ruthlessly carried out, for they exercise over their peoples the high justice, the middle, and the low. They have splendid palaces in the cities, filled with concubines, slaves, and guards; and in the inaccessible fastnesses of the High Atlas they have enormous fortress-castles, called _kasbahs_, where they dwell in a rude feudal grandeur reminiscent of medieval Europe. Undisputed lords of the southern marches, they make and administer their own laws, collect their own taxes, and maintain their own military establishments, it being said that between them they can place in the field an army of fifty thousand well armed fighting-men. Though on terms of amity with the French, who have bought their friendship with enormous subsidies, the Grand Caïds hold the whole Southland in their hands—and are perfectly aware of their power.