Large Quantities Of Hides Were Exported
Before They Were A Government Monopoly:
Now the quantity exported is
very inconsiderable.
MAZAGAN.
_Goods Imported_. - Brown Domestics, called American White, muslins, raw
cotton, cotton-bales, silk and cotton pocket-handkerchiefs; tea, coffee,
sugars, iron, copperas, alum; many other articles imported, but in very
small quantities.
A small portion of the importations is consumed at Mazagan and Azimore,
but the major portions in the interior.
The amount of the leading goods exported in 1855 was: - Bales of wool,
6,410; almonds, 200 serons; grain, 642,930 fanegas.
No doubt the commerce of this port would be increased under better
fiscal laws than those now established.
But the primary and immediate thing to be looked after is the wilful
casting into the anchorage-ground of stone-ballast by foreigners.
British masters are under control, but foreigners will persist, chiefly
Sardinian masters.
THE END
[1] The predecessor of Muley Abd Errahman.
[2] On account, of their once possessing the throne, the Shereefs have a
peculiar jealousy of Marabouts, and which latter have not forgotten
their once being sovereigns of Morocco. The _Moravedi_ were "really a
dynasty of priests," as the celebrated Magi, who usurped the throne of
Cyrus. The Shereefs, though descended from the Prophet, are not strictly
priests, or, to make the distinction perfectly clear the Shereefs are to
be considered a dynasty corresponding to the type of Melchizdek, uniting
in themselves the regal and sacerdotal authority, whilst the
_Marabouteen_ were a family of priests like the sons of Aaron.
Abd-el-Kader unites in himself the princely and sacerdotal authority
like the Shereefs, though not of the family of the Prophet. Mankind have
always been jealous of mere theocratic government, and dynasties of
priests have always been failures in the arts of governing, and the
Egyptian priests, though they struggled hard, and were the most
accomplished of this class of men, could not make themselves the
sovereigns of Egypt.
[3] According to others the Sadia reigned before the Shereefs.
[4] I was greatly astonished to read in Mr. Hay's "Western Barbary," (p.
123), these words - "During one of the late rebellions, a beautiful young
girl was offered up as a propitiatory sacrifice, her throat being cut
before the tent of the Sultan, and in his presence!" This is an
unmitigated libel on the Shereefian prince ruling Morocco. First of all,
the sacrifice of human beings is repudiated by every class of
inhabitants in Barbary. Such rites, indeed, are unheard of, nay,
unthought of. If the Mahometan religion has been powerful in any one
thing, it is in that of rooting out from the mind of man every notion of
human sacrifice. It is this which makes the sacrifice of the Saviour
such an obnoxious doctrine to Mussulmen. It is true enough, at times,
oxen are immolated to God, but not to Moorish princes, "to appease an
offended potentate." One spring, when there was a great drought, the
people led up to the hill of Ghamart, near Carthage, a red heifer to be
slaughtered, in order to appease the displeasure of Deity; and when the
Bey's frigate, which, a short time ago, carried a present to her
Britannic Majesty, from Tunis to Malta, put back by stress of weather,
two sheep were sacrificed to some tutelar saints, and two guns were
fired in their honour. The companions of Abd-el-Kader in a storm, during
his passage from Oran to Toulon, threw handsful of salt to the raging
deep to appease its wild fury. But as to sacrificing human victims,
either to an incensed Deity, or to man, impiously putting himself in the
place of God, the Moors of Barbary have not the least conception of such
an enormity.
It would seem, unfortunately, that the practice of the gentleman, who
travelled a few miles into the interior of Morocco on a horse-mission,
had been to exaggerate everything, and, where effect was wanting, not to
have scrupled to have recourse to unadulterated invention. But this
style of writing cannot be defended on any principle, when so serious a
case is brought forward as that of sacrificing a human victim to appease
the wrath of an incensed sovereign, and that prince now living in
amicable relations with ourselves.
[5] Graeberg de Hemso, whilst consul-general for Sweden and Sardinia (at
Morocco!) concludes the genealogy of these Mussulman sovereigns with
this strange, but Catholic-spirited rhapsody: -
"Muley Abd-ur-Bakliman, who is now gloriously and happily reigning, whom
we pray Almighty God, all Goodness and Power, to protect and exalt by
prolonging his life, glory, and reign in this world and in the next; and
giving him, during eternity, the heavenly beatitude, in order that his
soul, in the same manner as flame to flame, river to sea, may be united
with his sweetest, most perfect and ineffable Creator. Amen."
[6] Yezeed was half-Irish, born of the renegade widow of an Irish
sergeant of the corps of Sappers and Miners, who was placed at the
disposition of this government by England, and who died in Morocco. On
his death, the facile, buxom widow was admitted, "nothing loath," into
the harem of Sidi-Mohammed, who boasted of having within its sacred
enclosure of love and bliss, a woman from every clime.
Here the daughter of Erin brought forth this ferocious tyrant, whose
maxim of carnage, and of inflicting suffering on humanity was, "My
empire can never be well governed, unless a stream of blood flows from
the gate of the palace to the gate of the city." To do Yezeed justice,
he followed out the instincts of his birth, and made war on all the
world except the English (or Irish). Tully's Letters on Tripoli give a
graphic account of the exploits of Yezeed, who, to his inherent cruelty,
added a fondness for practical (Hibernian) jokes.
His father sent him several times on a pilgrimage to Mecca to expiate
his crimes, when he amused, or alarmed, all the people whose countries
he passed through, by his terrific vagaries.
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