an oblong dome, boasting all the intri- | clear the manœuvring of their guerilla cacies of the favorite geometric designs richly colored in yellows, gold, reds, blues, and greens, rose to an altitude of some twenty-five feet. For the rest the ceiling consisted of highly decorated beams intersected by gorgeously painted panels, the whole springing from a painted frieze bearing inscriptions in Arabic, the upper portion of which was in wood, the lower in delicate stucco-work. Round the doorway the same beautiful work in plaster was continued, while the lintels were inlaid in mosaic of tiles. For furniture there were carpets, while a long row of clean mattresses formed a divan along the walls. Here half an hour later, having washed and changed, a repast of many cooked dishes was brought us, followed by all the paraphernalia for the drinking of green tea; and with the tray and its many appliances arrived the brothers of our absent host, to whose care and good-fellowship we owe the great pleasure of our stay at Glawa. The present kaid, who is the eldest of a large family of brothers, succeeded his father on the death of the latter. At this time he was only a youth, and to-day still looks remarkably young to hold so important a position as governor of the largest and most turbulent district in Morocco. His brothers, of whom I know personally four, are the sons of various mothers, and while one or two show the light color of pure Berber extraction, others are evidently the children of slave women. Only one of them, I believe, can lay claim to being the actual brother of the kaid, and he is much darker in hue than the governor himself. But whatever their extraction on the mother's side may be, they have fully inherited the Berber characteristics of good manners, no shyness, and skill in athletics and warfare. It was upon this last subject, the all-engrossing one in the Atlas, that our conversation naturally fell; and from the young Berber chieftains a considerable amount of information was gained as to the manner in which war is conducted in these regions. A few general statements must be made in order to render warfare. Firstly, all the villages of these districts, known as ksor (castle), are fortified, every village, as a rule, consisting of a collection of castles, each defended by high loop-holed towers; secondly, every man and boy owns a gun, and, in a country where it is veritably a life for a life, is a ready shot, while their upbringing is one of fearless courage. A certain tribe or portion of a tribe in the jurisdiction of the kaid of Glawa revolts-an event of very common occurrence. After messengers have been sent to demand its surrender, and have returned the richer for a bullet or two as often as not, the kaid collects his own retainers, as many as can be spared from his castle garrison, and together with a number of the local tribespeople, who are kept faithful by light taxation and often-recurring opportunities for loot, he sets out for the scene of action, not seldom leading the force himself. With very few exceptions these rough troops are all on foot, but long and quick marches are accomplished by men who since their birth have been accustomed to mountain work. The revolutionary tribe is reached, and a ksar marked out for attack. The material of which these fortified villages are composed is easily disintegrated by the action of water, so that where possible some stream or irrigation canal is turned on, and the walls destroyed. But, as a rule, the situation does not allow of this practice, and in these cases a siege is commenced, unless the number of the garrison within renders a sudden attack with scalingladders possible. In this case it is a rush to lead the way up the ladders, for the loot belongs to him who first lays his hand upon it. As often as not, especially in important cases, the kaid himself sets the example, one that is seldom followed by the greedy and well-fed governors of the other districts of Morocco. Nor is it the small loot to be found within that tempts the governor, for of that he has no need; on the contrary, it seems to be his inherent love of warfare and enjoyment of ad tofore. The first day after our arrival, escorted by one of the kaid's brothers, we visited the large weekly market held a mile or so away from the castle in the Teluet valley. There was nothing of very great interest to see, for the district is a poor one, and boasts no manufacture of carpets or decorative work of any sort; but the mass of fierce-looking people, who eagerly crowded round us in their excitement to see Europeans, amply repaid us for the absence of any curiosities to purchase. A wild horde they were indeed, but good-natured to a degree, and in spite of the repeated efforts of the kaid's retainers to urge them to attend to their business and leave us breathing-room, they were not to be deterred from the unexpected excitement of gazing upon the "infidels." Amusing, cheery fellows one and all, asking a thousand questions about our saddles, our clothes, and ourselves, but never a word of impertinence or abuse. So great a curiosity were we considered, and so entirely was business neglected, that we heard in the evening that after we had left the market the place quickly emptied, and the local merchants had returned with all their goods unsold. After such an uncommon sight venture. Once the ksar is entered the guides who had been sent with us by slaughter commences, and all men and the kaid from Marakesh was possessed boys are immediately put to death-a of no less than five severe scars-the barbaric practice, but a necessary one latest inflicted of which had rendered in a country where a life is worth a life. him no longer the fleetest man on foot One man spared might eventually mean in the district, a position he was univerthe death of many of their own rela-sally acknowledged to have held theretions, for he would never rest until he had wreaked his vengeance upon one or more of his enemies. The women and young children are allowed to go free, except that now and again a young girl is taken as booty; but in this case so strict are the unwritten laws of honor amongst the Berbers that her captor must marry her, and any children she may bear him have equal rights with those of his other wife or wives. The Jewesses captured in this manner are untouched, and are returned to their fellow-religionists for a ransom, as is the case also of the Jews. This ransom seems always to be forthcoming, as no Jewish community will allow its coreligionists to be in captivity in Moslem hands. There are large villages of these mountain Jews, a warlike people themselves, and often known to aid in the defence of the village of their Berber friends, sometimes themselves firing upon the attacking force, but more often engaged in loading the guns. Such briefly is the manner of warfare in the ksar of the Atlas. In the open ground other tactics are practised, which were illustrated for us by the kaid's brother and their retinue. Great skill was shown in the manner in which they run from stone to stone for cover to fire from, or, when pursued, throw themselves full length upon the ground and aim. In the case of warfare in the open the black cloak (khenif) are abandoned, and a material matching very nearly the color of the soil worn in its place. One particular woollen stuff of fine grey-white and black stripes is said to almost render invisible the wearer on moonlight nights, and such is in reality the case. As can only be expected in a district where fighting is the order of the day, scarcely a man reaches middle-age without half-a-dozen bullet wounds in his body; and as a specimen, one of the unique, I believe as a Christian at the Teluet Sôk, it was found impossible to return to prosaic bargaining over grain and wool and dates, and so all the world dispersed to narrate in their various homes the phenomena which they had seen. On the second day of our stay at Glawa we were taken for a long walk by the kaid's brothers, three of whom, with a large retinue, accompanied us. Our objective was the cave spoken of and visited by the late Joseph Thomson, who reached the kaid of Glawa's residence during his series of explorations in the Atlas Mountains in 1891. With the exception of two missionaries from | olives and eggs, or roasted with lemon Marakesh, the occasion of our visit was the first time since then that Europeans had visited this distant spot. In fact, as far as is known, only five Englishmen had ever been here before, one of them myself. Our walk was varied now and again by the setting up of a target to fire at, by various athletic performances, and by the kaid's brothers dancing the native war-dance in front of us as we proceeded. This performance consists in the divesting of all superfluous clothing, the waving about of a gun, and the pacing of circles by the dancers, who kept well ahead as we proceeded. Music enters largely into the performance, the dancers singing the solos and the chorus being chanted by the remainder. Though possessing no particular charm, the dance was all-sufficient to show off to its full advantage the lithe movements of the young mountaineers. A scramble up a steep incline brought us at last to the entrance of the cave, which is cut in the face of the rock at some height above the now dry course of a mountain torrent. There is little to be seen within. The small hole used as a door gives entrance to a chamber, from one end of which a passage runs for twenty yards or so into the heart of the mountain. Leading off this passage are rooms, to which doors have lately been affixed, for the place is in use to-day as a grainstore, and a very secure one too in troublous times. peel. Very excellent the cooking was too, for the Moorish chefs are by no means to be despised. The gaps between these many meals were filled in with libations of green tea and mint, the favorite beverage of the rich and poor alike in Morocco. But the time at our disposal was drawing to a close, and our presences were required at Marakesh to take our share of the farewell banquets to be given to her Majesty's minister before | leaving the capital. So one morning we bade adieu to our kindest of hosts, not without many regrets, and set out on our homeward journey. I cannot pass over without noting the hospitality of our hosts, which showed itself particularly in the manner in which they fed us. From early morning until late at night successions of heavy meals followed one another with surprising regularity. So many they were that it was impossible to distinguish breakfasts from luncheons and luncheons from dinners. When I mention that the least of these meals consisted of perhaps seven or eight large earthenware dishes of food, some idea of the stupendous amount put at our disposal can be imagined. The least heavy of the dishes would contain perhaps half-a-dozen fowls cooked with There is but little to tell of our return to Marakesh. We followed the same route through Zarkten to the ruined bridge where we had met the kaid of Glawa's men, and thence continued by the Ghadat valley to Sidi Rehal, the little capital of the tribe of Zemran, situated on the plain, at the very foothills of the Atlas. No adventures befell us on the road, and we had the advantage too of experiencing glorious weather, without a cloud to hide the great snow-peaks that we were now leaving behind us. From Sidi Rehal a fast trot of five hours brought us to the gate of Marakesh, and a few hours later we had settled down to the routine of the life we had been leading previous to our excursion to the Atlas Mountains. From The Cornhill Magazine. SIR HENRY PARKES. A PERSONAL SKETCH. Although, as the eulogists of the late Sir Henry Parkes declare, he was honorably distinguished among politicians for his lifelong interest in literary concerns, and his genuine, if at times deplorably misdirected, zeal for works of art, it is not easy to write of this remarkable man apart from his career in the Australian legislature. With Parkes literature was a mere pastime, and art an occasional hobby: politics was the real passion as well as the actual business of his life. At the melancholy close of his career he is said to have remarked that he would rather leave behind "the reputation of a third-rate poet than that of a first-rate politician." But this must be taken as the pathetic paradox of a failing octogenarian, who, in his prime, was nothing if not a man of affairs. To Sir Henry Parkes, as to all men of his type, power was the end and aim of all strenuous human endeavor. Born a Warwickshire peasant, at the village of Stoneleigh, in the year of Waterloo, Parkes began the struggle of life with the scanty education (if education it can be called) of the place and period. Whatever this schooling may have been, it ended in his eleventh year. Breaking away from "Hodgedom," he, as a mere youth, migrated to the midland capital, and became in time a turner in ivory in the city of Birmingham. Here doubtless his real "education" began, at the lathe, among his mates in the workshop, and above all in the crowded popular assemblages of that time of stirring political agitation, when Reform and the "six points" made Chartism loom a mighty and dreaded thing even in the eyes of the conqueror of Napoleon. Parkes, I believe, despite all assertions to the contrary, was never a Chartist. But he was an ardent supporter of Lord Grey's great Reform measure, and his sympathies in all matters were with the "dumb millions" to whom by birth he belonged. He was always reticent as to his early life, and it is not possible to speak too positively on the subject. In his interesting though much too prolix autobiography entitled, "Fifty Years in the Making of Australian History," he, to use his own words, leaves the first thirty years of his birth "almost a blank." He married a young woman of his own class in Birmingham, and finding no scope for his talents, or prospect for his family, in England, in his twenty-fourth year emigrated to Sydney, where he arrived with his wife and child, without a friend to greet him or even a letter of introduction in his pocket. He has himself drawn a restrained but pathetic sketch of his early trials and struggles as an obscure and unknown colonist. He tells us how he wearily tramped Sydney, but could find no work, until in sheer desperation he was forced to engage himself as a farm laborer "up country" at 301. a year, thus reverting to the lowly station he had so painfully emerged from in England. After some six months of this, he returned to Sydney and obtained employment at an ironmonger's, then in a foundry, and afterwards for a while as a petty officer in the Customs. Sir Saul Samuel, the veteran agent-general for New South Wales in London, and in former years a trusted colleague in more than one of Sir Henry Parke's Cabinets, recalls how as a very young man he first met Parkes discharging his duties on the Sydney wharf. But Parkes was not the man to remain long in a dependent post; a letter appeared in one of the newspapers exposing some alleged malpractices in the Customs. and this letter being traced to the cadaverous young tide-waiter, he was promptly suspended. Resigning his small appointment, Parkes opened a toy-shop in Hunter Street, Sydney, and worked at his craft as a turner when the shutters were up. He seems, indeed, to have been a skilful turner in ivory, to judge by an excellent set of chessmen which he presented to his old friend, Sir Saul Samuel, who still treasures them among his valued possessions. Parkes was now once more in a big city, and at the centre of things; also he was again in the very midst of fierce political agitations. The colony, just emerging from its primitive penal condition, and partially released from imperial bureaucratic rule, was the very place to arouse the latent political energy of the young Birmingham demo crat. At this time, too, the late Lord Sherbrook, then Mr. Robert Lowe, was making a great stir throughout New South Wales and Port Phillip by his crusade against the squatters. There could never have been much in common be tween Robert Lowe and Henry Parkes; hour in a strong and bitter denuncia but at this crisis the aspiring toy-seller | tion of Lord Grey's ill-considered policy of Hunter Street knew not how to restrain his admiration for the semi-blind English lawyer who was fighting almost single-handed the governor of the colony, the old imperial officials, and the squatter party led by Wentworth. Robert Lowe, who was regarded as the leader of the Liberal opposition, was standing for a remote "up-country" constituency; but a committee was hastily formed to secure his nomination and return for Sydney, and despite the fact that Lowe formally withheld his consent, they secured his return without personal canvass on his part or the expenditure of a shilling of his money, and in the teeth of an apparently all-powerful combination. of reviving criminal transportation. From this time forth, the petty business of the toy-shop and the turning lathe in Hunter Street was doubtless more and more neglected for the coming labors and more dazzling rewards of the great talking shop in Macquaire Street. Parkes in a few years himself became member for Sydney, sat for various constituencies for something like forty years, and was actually no less than five times prime minister of New South Wales. Into all this part of his career-his real life-work-I do not now propose 'o enter, But apart from his great and manifold achievements in the arena of politics, Sir Henry Parkes was an attractive, if somewhat enigmatical, personality. His career from Warwickshire peasant and mechanic to Australian statesman, and friend of Tennyson, Carlyle and Gladstone, was in itself remarkable-though, if a Dr. Smiles were to set forth all the facts, he would at times find it difficult to draw the necessary moral for the guidance of youth. But this at least will be ad Lord Sherbrooke in later years was fond of recalling this, the first real electoral contest in Australia, and he always spoke of his unexpected and unsolicited return for Sydney as one of the greatest personal triumphs of his political career. But I am inclined to think that he, neither at the time nor afterwards, ever quite realized what an important part the late Sir Henry Parkes had played in this Sydney elec-mitted: Parkes was a man marked out tion. However, Parkes, who was not the man to hide his light under a bushel, was himself fully aware of the fact, and always remembered it. Writing more than forty years after the election, he declares: "I took a very active part in the return of Mr. Lowe; the address to the electors was written by me; and I attended all the meetings as the organizing secretary. At one meeting I attempted to speak; it was my first attempt, and it was, I think, a sorry failure." These two remarkable men met once again, at least, on the public platform (or rather on the top of a disused omnibus) at the Circular Quay, to denounce the landing of the convicts then on board the Hashemy, lying in view in Sydney harbor. By this time, Henry Parkes had learnt the use of that terrific political weapon, the tongue; and, speaking as a working man, he delivered one of the harangues of the from the first as distinct from the common herd, and though the superior moralist may not always esteem or even condone his conduct, average humanity will continue to wonder at, and even admire, such a splendid specimen of human force and vitality. The curious reader at the British Museum, if he turns to the two bound copies of the Atlas, which Lady Sherbrooke has recently presented to that institution, will find in odd corners of this old Sydney newspaper little sets of sentimental verses signed "H. Parkes." These are among the first outpourings of Sir Henry's strange and wayward muse; for the most part there is little to distinguish them from the ordinary contributions to the "Poets' Corner" of any provincial newspaper. But Sir Henry Parkes, whose egotism was colossal, placed a very high value on everything which emanated from him |