About a century ago, the revenues of Moocco were estimated at only £200,000 sterling per annum. But if Muley Abd Errahman has fifty millions of dollars, or ten millions sterling in the vaults of Mequinez, he may be considered as the richest monarch in Africa, nay in all Europe. It is positively stated that Muley Ismail left this amount, or one hundred millions of ducats in the imperial treasury, which Sidi Mahommed reduced to two millions. It may have been the great object of the life of the present Sultan to restore this enormous hoard. No country is rich or safe without a vast capital in hand as a reserve for times of trouble, war, or famine. But it is not necessary that such reserve should be in the hands of a government. This, a Maroquine prince cannot comprehend, and he decides as to the riches and poverty of his country by the amount he possesses in his royal vaults. In treating of trade, and comparing its exports with the peculiar products and manufactures of the cities and towns, hereafter to be enumerated, we may approximate to an idea of the resources of the Maroquine Empire, but everything is more or less deteriorated in this naturally rich country. Cattle and sheep, grain and fruits, are of inferior quality, owing to the want of proper culture. No spontaneous growth is equal to culture, for such is the ordinance of Divine Providence. Half of this country is desert. The iron hand of despotic government presses heavily upon all industry. If we add to this defective state of culture, the miserably moral condition of the people, we have the unpleasant picture of an inferiority civilized race of mankind scattered over a badly cultivated region. Not all the magnificence of the glorious Atlas can reconcile such a prospect to the imagination. But, unhappily, Morocco does not constitute a very striking exception to the progress of civilization along the shores and in the isles of the Mediterranean. Many countries in Southern Europe are in a state little superior, and the Moorish civilization is almost on a par with that of the Grecian, Sicilian, or Maltese, and quite equal to Turkish advancement in the arts and sciences of the nineteenth century. The only real advantage of the Turks over the Moors consists in the improvements the former have made in the organization of the army. Whoever travels through Morocco, and will but open his eyes to survey its rich valleys and fertile plains, will be impressed with the conviction that this country, cultivated by an industrious population, and fostered by a paternal government, is capable of producing all the agricultural wealth of the north and the south of Europe, as well as the Tropics, and of maintaining its inhabitants in happiness and plenty. CHAPTER VI.