It is no secret that the growing power of the Senussiyeh is causing considerable concern to the military and political officials of those European nations that have possessions in North Africa, for, in addition to the three-hundred-odd _zawias_, or monasteries, scattered along the African littoral from Egypt to Morocco, the long arm of the order reaches down to the mysterious oases which dot the Great Sahara, it embraces the strange tribes of the Tibesti highlands, it controls the robber Tuaregs and the warlike natives who occupy the regions adjacent to Lake Tchad, and is, as the French and British have discovered, a power to be reckoned with in the protected states of Kanem, Sokoto, Bagirmi, Bornu, and Wadai. The organisation of the order is both strong and simple. The _khuan_, or brothers, whose names are carefully recorded in the books of the mother lodge at Jof, owe unquestioning obedience to the _mokaddem_, or prefect, in charge of the district to which they belong. Each _mokaddem_ has under his orders a corps of secret agents, known as _wekils_, whose duty is to keep him constantly in touch with all that is going on in his district and to communicate his instructions to the brothers. On Grand Bairam—the Mohammedan Easter—the _mokaddems_ meet in conclave at Jof, on which occasion the spiritual and political condition of the order is discussed and its course of action decided on for the ensuing year. Above the _mokaddems_, and acting as an intermediary between them and the veiled and sacred person of the Senussi himself, is a cabinet of viziers, who, by means of a remarkable system of camel couriers, are enabled to keep constantly in touch with all the districts of the order. At Jof, from which no European investigator has ever returned, are centred all the threads of this vast organism. There is kept the war-chest of the order, constantly increased by large and small contributions from true believers all over the world, for every member of the Senussiyeh who has a total income of more than twenty dollars a year must contribute two and one half per cent of it to the order annually; there the Senussi has established depots of stores and war material and factories for the manufacture, or rather the assembling, of modern fire-arms; thither come to him from the obscure harbours of the Tripolitanian coast cargoes of arms and ammunition; thither flock pilgrims from North and West Africa, from the Niger and from the Nile, to receive his orders and to seek his blessing; there is centred one of the most remarkable secret-service systems in the world, its agents not alone in every corner of the Mohammedan world, but likewise keeping their fingers ever on the political pulse of Europe.