The magnificent remains spread around were the creation of a single reign, and had one date of maturity and desolation. What measure do they not give of the power of Morocco, in the time of our Henry I.? Like the pyramids, they were reared by captive hands; they were bedewed with Gothic blood, and Christian sweat and tears. To forty thousand of the Christian slaves employed in them, the Emperor had promised freedom on their completion, and he gave them liberty to choose a district for their habitation. His ministers represented that such a colony would be dangerous. “My word,” said the Emir el Moslemin (Miramolin) “is passed for freedom, and what is freedom without the means of protecting it?” They were settled in the mountains to the east of Fez. Wives were given to them, and they were called _Shabanets_, from Shaban, the name of the month in which the removal took place. For some generations they preserved their language and religion, and three hundred years afterwards we find them a powerful tribe at war with the Moorish sovereign. The Shabanets were at that time undistinguished from the surrounding population in manners, languages, and _religion_. There is no trace of persecution for religion, and their contests with the princes of Morocco were for their civil rights. That war of borders and of centuries between Moor and Goth, must have been, in part, the image of the kidnapping of Africa as carried on to-day. The common prisoner for us is an encumbrance, for them he was the chief booty. The estimating of the value, and the distribution of the shares amongst the captors, were defined and arranged by a peculiar code. A captive, for instance, made from a fortress within cross-bow range, belonged to the captor on payment of a fifth of the value to the king. Beyond cross-bow range the captor received a third of the value from the governor who got the slave. This treatment of a captive shocks our sense of military honour, and so the lesson which war ought to teach is lost--that each is answerable in his person and fortune for his nation’s acts. The judicial and sacred character of war remains so long only as the captive is treated as a guilty man. Our civilization respects in the prisoner the professional man, because it has converted war from the execution of a sentence into a trade. Riley relates a conversation with some of the tribe on the borders of the Timbuctoo desert. “We cannot,” said they, in answer to his remonstrances, “give quarter, because they ought to die who give us cause to use our weapons. We will not take quarter if vanquished, because we will not be beholden for life to such men.” He describes the tribe as peculiarly harmless.