CHAPTER I. HUNTING EXPEDITION TO SHAVOYA. I have already stated my object in visiting Barbary, and its frustration. I thought it best, therefore, to abstain from any intercourse with the Moorish government on political matters, and to take advantage of the entrance I had obtained to see the country. I soon, however, found myself the object of suspicion. If I spoke of visiting Fez or Morocco, I was mysteriously motioned to be silent. The guards assigned to me watched me as a prisoner. I was not suffered to cross the threshold without a written order from the Caïd. The prospect before me was close confinement until I could get over the bar as I had entered, and for that deliverance I might have to wait six months. In this dilemma, I bethought myself of an expedient. Geology, in these countries, is a delicate subject. There are the jealousy of avarice and the fear of consequences. They associate with their mines the former invasion, and almost conquest by Portugal; and indeed the Portuguese seem to have drawn considerable stores of gold from this country. They opened many mines; in every case, as soon as the Moors got possession, _the mines were filled up_. A promising sulphur manufactory had been recently set up at Fez, by a renegade Frenchman: it was, by order of the government, levelled with the ground, and all the instruments destroyed, lest it should furnish a new attraction to the French; yet it was to geology and mines that I had recourse to unbolt the gates of Rabat. I raised the question _ex abrupto_--spoke of mines to everybody, and exposed the folly of denying to themselves resources, &c. These discussions reached the Sultan; curiosity was excited, and the matter debated; the ludicrous exhibition they had made by ruining the sulphur works, partly admitted mineral investigation, and had its partizans, and at last I received the acceptable intimation that I might go and “hunt wild boars” in the province of Shavoya, whence an inquisitive chief had brought a specimen of “madein,”--a magnificent crystal, or spiculated mass of cromate of iron. On the forenoon of the 23rd of December, the permission reached me, and the Sheik, with geological cravings, the chief of the provincial tribe, was to be my companion, together with three of the Sultan’s own body-guard, and a guard from the Caïd of Rabat. The consul, Mr. Leraza, volunteered his services as interpreter, and in the scarcity of horses, I was obliged to leave behind my English scribe.