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sometimes refuses; but he always pockets the cash, of course. Once, I was told, he replied that there would not be fine weather for some time yet. It rained continuously for a week; but at the end of that period a message was sent from the saint to the people, commanding that they should all go up at once to the praying-place to pray, as, if they did, the weather would become fair that evening. They all did, and prayed as hard as ever they could. That same evening the winds abated, the clouds dispersed, and the heavens became clear. The remarkable coincidences, such as this, which take place between the saint's warnings and promises and the state of the weather, are attributed by stiffnecked un-Believers, to the possible possession by the holy man of a good barometer. this is, of course, impiety.

But

The following story is no less strange than the preceding, and I am able to offer it "upon the best authority." An old Moor, a gardener, with whom I was well acquainted myself, met a friend of mine an English gentleman, in the street one day, and told him of a strange thing that had just happened to a daughter of his, the Moor's. She was a servant in the Tangier harem of the Sharif of Wazan, and one day having had some little disagreement with her master, she left his service. That same night she got a most dreadful headache, and when she arose in the morning, she found that her head was turned completely on one side, and that she could not move it. In the greatest alarm she called her

mother, who at once divined the cause of the disaster; the curse of the saint was on her, and no doubt her head would not come straight again until she had asked his forgiveness. This, at her mother's entreaty, she accordingly went and did. The holy man benignly gave her his pardon, and at the same time touched her cheek; when her head immediately turned round, and assumed its proper position. The cure was instantaneous.

But the last anecdote I have to relate concerning the Sharif of Wazan, is no less marvellous than the rest. In the year 1854, when he made his pilgrimage to Mecca, it is averred that he was seen by several credible witnesses simultaneously in Mecca, Tangier, and Wazan! Nothing can beat that.

I think I have already mentioned, that one of the privileges enjoyed by this great man, in right of his saintship, is that of unlimited matrimony. This may be regarded by persons who have found even limited matrimony not quite free from "carking cares," as rather a doubtful blessing. Still it has its conveniences. Thus, the saint, who travels much and frequently throughout the empire, never has the trouble of taking wives and their necessary retinues along with him, as he keeps an establishment of them in each of the great towns of Morocco. Fez, Morocco, Tangier, Wazan,*-each has its

The Sharif's first wife, the mother of his heir, and who alone takes the title of "Sharifa," resides at Wazan. This lady, before her marriage, was a cousin of the Sharif's.

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household of fair and fond dames, ready to welcome their lord and master, whenever he shall be pleased to alight at the doors.

On the occasion of the visit of the United States Consul General, Colonel Mathews, to the Sultan at Fez in the spring of 1871,* several men were employed all day long, in making little leather bags, for holding bits of written paper that had been blessed by the saint, as that holy being was then honouring Fez with a visit.

When I was in Tangier the saint was about to get married again; and these espousals were to be perhaps the most remarkable of any that he had yet made, as the new betrothed was a Christian, and a European; a young French lady about fourteen. The saint is not a young man, and must have been marrying steadily for about the last five-and-twenty years; I should therefore really not dare venture to guess at the numerical position about to be occupied by this youthful bride. I heard, however, that a sweeping divorce of former wives was to be included in the new marriage contract, but I vastly doubt if such were the case; at any rate I should think the divorce would be only in name, just to satisfy the possible objections of the priests, and any little religious scruples that the young

• There is an interesting account of this visit in Cassell's Illustrated Travels, Parts xxxiii., xxxiv., and xxxv., 1871. It is written by a gentleman who accompanied Colonel Mathews.

lady and her family might themselves possess; but I don't suppose that these latter were many or very heavy. She was to be married, however, according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church. This was a great scandal to the Moors. Also, the future saintess after her arrival, rode about, in public, with the saint; but accompanied by her mother in accordance with French ideas of propriety (the French are so proper); she was dressed according to European fashion, and rode on an English side saddle. This proceeding was almost more obnoxious in the eyes of the True Believers than the marriage itself. Had the saint been any ordinary man, such conduct would have covered him with indelible disgrace in the opinion of all his co-religionists; but a descendant of the great prophet in Morocco is, like his holy ancestor, exempt from the observance of those rules and customs by which ordinary Musselmen are restrained and bound down.

This latest choice of Muley Abd-Sulem el-Hadji was a fine-looking girl, and seemed quite pleased and satisfied with the position she was about to occupy.*

*This match was, however, afterwards broken off, but the saint easily supplied the place of the fickle fair one. He was married on the 17th of January of the present year to an Englishwoman, a Miss Keene. The marriage ceremony was performed at the English Legation, by Sir John Drummond Hay, the English Ambassador. It sounds odd, and somewhat disagreeable. But "pity 'tis, 'tis true."-February, 1873.

CHAPTER XX.

WIVES IN MOROCCO.

Ir was before the arrival of his French intended, that I, and a party of other English ladies, went to the Tangier town residence of the Sharif of Wazan, to visit his wives.

Unfortunately on the occasion he was just moving to his summer residence in this part of the empire, a house situated in one of the mountains about a couple of miles from the town. For such slight change of quarters as this, he does not consider it necessary to have two sets of wives, his Tangier establishment answering for both his town and country residence in this place. So on this account we were only able to see two of the wives, as the other ladies had preceded the saint to the country house the day before. However, as one of these two was the saint's favourite in Tangier, and the beauty of the establishment, we less regretted the absence of the rest.

The great man, did us the honour to receive as himself, at the top of his staircase. His wives stood behind him ; it would, I suppose, have been too great a degradation of Moorish and saintly marital dignity, for him to have introduced them to us, but his own greetings over, he stood aside a little, and allowed them to come forward;

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