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INTRODUCTION BY TALCOTT WILLIAMS

HE Sultan of Morocco, be he old or young, lives in a seclusion, as far as Europeans are concerned, common to Oriental sovereigns. The etiquette which surrounds him separates him even from his own court. Secluded from all women but those of his own harem, and without social life, as it is known in the West, no Oriental sovereign comes in contact with ministers and their households. Mulai Abdul-Aziz, the present Sultan of Morocco, has been still further separated by his youth and the anxious desire of those who ruled through him to keep him apart from intrigue. For months together he did not appear outside his citadel walls. He never moved freely in the capital where he was residing. He is still, even for European envoys to his court, a man unknown.

The American artist whose account of his experiences succeeds saw him daily

for some sixteen months, from November, 1900, to March, 1902. Their contact was under the easy, intimate conditions which reveal the man; and it also shows the manner in which the typical youthful Oriental of a ruling caste and supreme power-his father masterful, his mother the charm of the harem-meets the revelation of the West. The accuracy of the portrayal will be recognized by all who know the East.

The Sultan was at this time an unchallenged ruler. He was still in his southern capital, Morocco city, but all resistance had vanished, and he had full control of his entire empire. At the close of 1901 he transferred himself, his court, and his forces from his southern to his northern capital, Fez, a march which still further assured his supremacy.

A host of diplomatic issues were settled, not always with success to Morocco, but

Copyright, 1903, by THE CENTURY CO. All rights reserved.

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Mr. Schneider's record has for readers new gloss and interest now, since all that he records has worked its sure result. The tribes last autumn rose all about the northern capital. They rose between Fez and the Atlantic, on the road to Rabat, between Fez and the Mediterranean, about Tetuan and east. In the great mountains about Tesa, a very considerable place seventy miles from the capital, all the tribes united in insurrection.

The young pupil of the pages that follow has for four months been facing the possibility of losing throne and life. The actual force in resistance was small. The disaffection was general and wide-spread. The leader of the tribes, Omar Zarhuni, better known as Bou Hamara, literally "father of the she ass," more nearly "donkey-man," in November had organized a royal state at Tesa, in December he defeated the column of two thousand men sent against him, and by January his rude camp was a few miles from Fez, watching the main road north. In the early part of February he was defeated by the Minister of War, who figures frequently in this narrative, but there remains the necessity of penetrating the mountains in the spring and subduing the rebels.

With the open chances all in favor of the Sultan, there remain the serious risks to which his reforms, the fanaticism of his

subjects, and his own lack of the masterful qualities of his line have brought him. The issue will probably be decided before or soon after the following pages, which hold the fullest account of him yet penned, are read.

The Sultan has a mingled blood. His great-grandmother was an Irishwoman, wife of a Gibraltar corporal, who went from barracks to harem. There are so many negro women in the succession that his father, Mulai-el-Hasan, had pronounced negroid features. The original stem is Arab, direct in the male line from Fatima, daughter of the prophet, through a chain of thirty-six lineal descendants, and on this has been grafted a long line of Berber marriages.

Mulai Abd-ul-Aziz's mother was a Circassian of Turkish residence and origin. With this line, he became Sultan at fourteen, and when his mother and the vizir who made him Sultan died, he began to walk alone, that vanished thing an Oriental absolute prince playing an old part that will end with him. Before he is through with the pretty game of learning to rule by ruling to learn, Morocco will have gone the way of all other Moslem realms, absorbed, controlled, or protected by some European power. Either France will include it, or Europe agree on a division, or the empire be put into commission.

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AN ARTIST'S REMINISCENCES

N the impenetrable gloom of a moonless African night our staggering animals brought us to the Beb el Hamees-Thursday Gate -of the city of Morocco.

At sunset all gates are closed, as a guard against night attacks by rebel tribesmen; but a sentry had been instructed to admit me, and a soldier, sent by the governor of the Kasbah to see these instructions carried out, had joined us a few hours :before.

Riding up close to the gate, the man banged the heavy portals repeatedly with his rifle, and cried: Booab! Booab!" ("Gateman!")

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A grumbling sentry sleepily answered: shrieked :

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Upon thy head, gateman, thou-" "Guard thou!" interrupted the invisible sentry. "God keep ye until morning!"

In a state of great agitation the men huddled together and excitedly exclaimed that death would be our almost certain fate should we attempt to spend the night in the neighborhood, infested as it was by robbers, whose victims' bodies might be found almost any morning under the very shadow of the gateway.

"Come with me," said the soldier.

So we proceeded along the wall, our tired beasts, exhausted by the four days' journey from Mazagan, stumbling over stones and through ditches, and frequently throwing their riders. After an hour of this rough work, we arrived at the Red Gate. Through this gate alone the Sultan enters or leaves the city walls, but here, as at the Thursday Gate, his name failed to prove an open sesame, the sentry refusing to admit any save the sacred person of the Sultan himself.

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As a detachment of troops were encamped near here, we decided this to be

a safe place to spend the night, pitched our tents, and prepared for rest.

But sleep was out of the question, for all night long the noise from the campthe singing, shouting, and calling aloud to God-and the cries of the sentry could be heard. My mind, too, was busy with the events and circumstances which had brought me to the walls of this ancient Moorish city.

Some years before, after a short visit to Tangier, it had become my ambition to return to Morocco to work in this almost virgin field for the artist. Algeria, Egypt, India, are all more or less hackneyed subjects, but Morocco remains almost untouched by the ruthless army of modern innovations which are fast bringing all the world to a prosaic level.

Yet the difficulties are many. The problem of securing models is not an easy one among a people who fly before the evil eye of the camera as before a Gatling gun, and who shun the artist at his work as they would one unclean. In attempting to sketch the picturesque scene in one of the

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THE ARTIST'S ARRIVAL AT THE THURSDAY GATE OF MOROCCO CITY

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narrow and crooked streets of Tangier, lined on each side by little shops or booths in which the merchants sit cross-legged, chatting with the people, who come to gossip rather than to buy, and who for hours at a time stand in groups and lean against the walls in the laziest, and therefore the most graceful, attitudes, I would no sooner begin my work than the loungers, though apparently unaware of my presence and purpose, would begin to disappear, the shutters would be up in all the little stalls, and the street would be deserted of every living thing, except perhaps a mangy dog or a small boy peeping around a corner to shy a stone at me.

At my approach, the carpenters at their work would drop their tools and flee to cover, the snake-charmer would cease to charm, the story-teller, reciting the tales of the "Thousand and One Nights," would

break off, and his circle of listeners would scatter to the four winds. Even the beggars lining the Kasbah wall, too lazy to move, would cover their faces until I had passed. None so low as to lend himself to the sinful work of picture-making. In the months since I had begun my work there, I had been able to secure a single model, and she a creature of the slums.

One day while at work in my studio at Tangier I was approached by a mysterious stranger, a Moor, with the question: "Can you keep a secret?"

I replied with a common phrase in Arabic: "Try me and see."

He then informed me that a representative of the Sultan wished to see me. I arranged a meeting, and learned that this representative was commissioned to secure an artist- a master-who was to go at once to the court at Morocco city and to take all

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