Of the third Mohammedan empire, Morocco, let Hall Caine the novelist, who on occasion can go great lengths as the friend and flatterer of Islam, speak: 'Within sight of an English port and within hail of English ships, as they pass on to our Empire in the East, there is a land where the ways of life are the same to-day as they were a thousand years ago, a land wherein government is oppression, wherein law is tyranny, wherein justice is bought and sold, wherein it is a terror to be rich and a danger to be poor, wherein man may still be the slave of man, and woman is no more than a creature of lust--a reproach to Europe, a disgrace to the century, an outrage on humanity, a blight on religion! That land is Morocco.'[7] {124} Or, again, Joseph Thomson, the African explorer, who confessed that he thought favourably of Mohammedanism before he visited that country: 'It was difficult to grasp the fact which has been gradually boring its way into our minds, that absolutely the most religious nation on the face of the earth was also the most grossly immoral.... Among no people are prayers so commonly heard or religious duties more rigidly attended to. Yet, side by side with it all, rapine and murder, mendacity of the most advanced type, and brutish and nameless vices exist to an extraordinary degree. From the Sultan down to the loathsome beggar, from the most learned to the most illiterate, from the man who enjoys his reputation of utmost sanctity to his openly infamous opposite, all are alike morally rotten.' [Sidenote: Arabia.] Arabia, the home of the Prophet, cradle of Islam, presents a sadder picture still. 'The torch burns lowest nearest to the stump,' says the Arab proverb by way of excuse. Palgrave, who has penetrated to its heart, and returned to tell the tale, sickened by the memory of sights he saw around its sacred places, burst forth in indignation: 'When the Korân and Mecca shall have disappeared from Arabia, then, and then only, can we {125} seriously expect to see the Arab assume that place in the ranks of civilization from which Mohammed and his book have, more than any other individual cause, held him back.'[8] [Sidenote: Reaction of Moslem Degradation on other Lands.]