secret, is steadily increasing, the practice spreading from force
of example among the Moors themselves, as a result of the strenuous
efforts of foreigners to inculcate this vice. European consular
reports not infrequently note with congratulation the growing imports
of wines and liqueurs into Morocco, nominally for the sole use of
foreigners, although manifestly far in excess of their requirements.
As yet, it is chiefly among the higher and lower classes that the
victims are found, the former indulging in the privacy of their own
homes, and the latter at the low drinking-dens kept by the scum of
foreign settlers in the open ports. Among the country people of
the plains and lower hills there are hardly any who would touch
intoxicating liquor, though among the mountaineers the use of alcohol
has ever been more common.

Tobacco smoking is very general on the coast, owing to contact with
Europeans, but still comparatively rare in the interior, although the
native preparations of hemp (keef), and also to some extent opium,
have a large army of devotees, more or less victims. The latter,
however, being an expensive import, is less known in the interior.
Snuff-taking is fairly general among men and women, chiefly the
elderly. What they take is very strong, being a composition of
tobacco, walnut shells, and charcoal ash. The writer once saw a young
Englishman, who thought he could stand a good pinch of snuff, fairly
"knocked over" by a quarter as much as the owner of the nut from which
it came took with the utmost complacency.

The feeling of the Moorish Government about smoking has long been so
strong that in every treaty with Europe is inserted a clause reserving
the right of prohibiting the importation of all narcotics, or articles
used in their manufacture or consumption. Till a few years ago the