This was the first time I had seen a Mussulman community resident for a period of time in the midst of a Christian people; so that, of course, I was soon engaged in a minute investigation of their social, religious, and domestic habits. Under this scrutiny the Imaum soon began to wince, and the women affected--but very awkwardly--to laugh. The glibness with which they had commenced the conversation had vanished before I suspected the cause,--they took me for a Mussulman in disguise, who had come to pry into the nakedness of the land. They do practise the Abdest. They profess to keep the Ramazan (it is at this moment Ramazan). They have no bath and no mosque; but maintained that the mosque at the Moorish head-quarters, to which they sometimes go, is within the prescribed distance. One native practice they had preserved in its pristine vigour, and that was the _kouskouson_, with which they presented me, and to which we all did justice. When I had succeeded in convincing them that I was no Mussulman, their hilarity returned, and they were much amused at the description of my surprise at finding in Europe, Christian women muffled up, and meeting in Africa, Mussulman women with naked shoulders. The Imaum then gave me the detail of a dispute about the neutral ground, which raged at the very moment of the French bombardment of Tangier, and which had been adjusted through the intervention of England--by leaving things exactly where they were! An act of greater insanity there could not be than our interference in any such matter. It is impossible to preserve Gibraltar without the goodwill either of Spain or of Morocco, because our subsistence must be drawn either from the one or the other country. When we are with Spain the Moors are against us; but then we do not need them: when we are against Spain, then we are sure to have the Moors with us. This is the meaning of Lord Nelson’s words,--“Should Great Britain be at war with any European maritime state, Morocco must be friendly to us, or else we must obtain possession of Tangier.” Lord Nelson did not, however, see that the measure he proposed for obtaining that aid, would have had the opposite effect. If you seized Tangier you would place yourselves in the same position in respect to Morocco that Spain is at Ceuta, and be under a total inability of gaining the means of subsistence either from Morocco or Spain, for Tangier or Gibraltar. This judgment of Lord Nelson, thus reduced to its true application, is of the greatest importance.