212 A POOK SCHOLAR ch.' ix. 



relied upon was Hamed, Ball's personal attendant, one of 

 the poor fellows engaged at Mogador to act in a menial 

 capacity and accompany the expedition on. foot. It is 

 true of the western dialect spoken in Marocco, as well as 

 of the purer Arabic of the east, that a familiar know- 

 ledge of the spoken tongue does not imply a full ac- 

 quaintance with the written language, and Abraham was 

 evidently sometimes at fault. Education, in a literary 

 sense, is not among Moslems a privilege of rank or wealth, 

 and is quite as often found among the poorest as with 

 those above them. Our two Kaids were both ostentatiously 

 illiterate, and the soldiers knew no more than their 

 ofificers ; and poor Hamed, alone of all our suite, seemed to 

 be worth taking into council on these occasions. 



Once more the insatiable rapacity of our escort gave 

 us trouble, and proved to us that the objection to our 

 making a long stay among these poor mountaineers was 

 not an unreasonable one. We ascertained that the 

 demands of these shameless fellows on their own behalf, 

 apart from the rest of the expedition, rose to forty fowls a 

 day, with bread, tea, and sugar in proportion, while they 

 were constantly grumbling at the insufficiency of this 

 allowance for ten persons, and demanding money from the 

 natives in lieu of the other luxuries to which they thought 

 themselves entitled. We sincerely regretted our want of 

 power to put a stop to these abuses; but it was impos- 

 sible to sacrifice the main object of our journey, and we 

 merely resolved to acquaint El Graoui with the facts after 

 our return to Mogador. 



We rose early on the morning of the 15th, and lost 

 no time in preparing for our departure. Just when all 

 seemed ready for a start a new and serious difficulty 

 arose. Hooker and Maw had both provided for the 

 journey several large tin cases painted green, and in- 

 tended for the transport of living plants from Marocco to 

 England ; and, as a matter of course, some of these were 

 amongst the luggage packed up for the expedition to 



