lot their name would seem to imply to-day. In fact, the popular
ignorance regarding the nearest point of Africa is even greater than
of the actually less known central portions, where the white man
penetrates with every risk. To declare that the inhabitants of the
four Barbary States--Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Tripoli--are not
"Blackamoors" at all, but white like ourselves, is to astonish most
folk at the outset.

Of course in lands where the enslavement of neighbouring negro races
has been an institution for a thousand years or more, there is a
goodly proportion of mulattoes; and among those whose lives have been
spent for generations in field work there are many whose skins are
bronzed and darkened, but they are white by nature, nevertheless, and
town life soon restores the original hue. The student class of Fez,
drawn from all sections of the population of Morocco, actually makes
a boast of the pale and pasty complexions attained by life amid the
shaded cloisters and covered streets of the intellectual capital. Then
again those who are sunburned and bronzed are more of the Arab stock
than of the Berber.

These Berbers, the original Barbarians, known to the Romans and Greeks
as such before the Arab was heard of outside Arabia, are at once the
greatest and the most interesting nation, or rather race, of the whole
of Africa. Had such a coalition as "the United States of North Africa"
been possible, Europe would long ago have learned to fear and respect
the title "Barbarian" too much to put it to its present use. But the
weak point of the Berber race has been its lack of homogeneity; it
has ever been split up into independent states and tribes, constantly
indulging in internecine warfare. This is a principle which has its
origin in the relations of the units whereof they are composed, of