That event is one of the most remarkable of revolutions.[1] The Spaniards were in possession of all the north country. The Portuguese had extended themselves along the whole of the seaboard of the west, down as far as Suz. The native troops in their pay at one time exceeded 100,000. The four kingdoms of which Morocco is now constituted, were then distinct, and the various courts rivalled each other in pusillanimity and corruption, exhibiting every symptom of dissolution, from the disorders within and the power that threatened from abroad. It was then that a family of mendicants and fanatics issued like lions from the desert, upset the ruling dynasties, re-kindled the flame of patriotism, rallied the sinking people, drove forth the invaders, constructed a common Empire out of these divided States, and placed their Dynasty upon the throne, which it occupies to this day. From that time only have Europe and Africa become strangers to each other; and so Morocco has maintained the independence so strangely won. What renders this non-intercourse surprising is neighbourhood; yet that is its explanation. Here Europeans could not be taken for Children of the Sun, nor supposed to be quiet traders seeking only commerce: the watchfulness of this people was not, as in India, overreached, nor their affections, as in America, surprised. The men who, in times of difficulty, have made themselves immortal names, have done nothing more than endeavour to arouse their countrymen from false security, or to guard them against mistaken confidence. The Moor is deficient in polite literature and is ignorant of Greek; but he already was in himself what the wisest words of Demosthenes might have taught him to be, and was prepared to do what the loftiest strains of Tyrtæus might have inspired. From the beginning the African has been preyed upon by the other quarters of the globe. His wrongs have been stored up in his retentive breast.[2] Thence that hate which is his life; by it he has anticipated the lessons of wisdom, and by it he is a match for science and power.[3] Morocco has consequently been in this distinguished from the other countries that surround the Mediterranean--she has not till now furnished to France and England fuel or field for rivalry and contention. Now she is brought again within the vortex of European politics, and identified in interest with Spain by having the same neighbour, and that neighbour the rival of England. We may again see rehearsed on the same arena, the drama of Rome and Carthage. As I floated down this river, of which the Atlantic is the fountain, and the Mediterranean the sea, remembering the Dardanelles, I felt with Cicero, that he indeed was happy who could visit, on the one hand, the Straits of Pontus, and on the other, those “Europam Lybiamque rapax ubi dividit unda.”