An aged Israelite with a long train of mules came from the Sus that morning. He wore a sort of compromise between Oriental and European clothes, which gave him an incredibly abject look, the elastic-sided boots and ivory-handled cane contrasting most ill-favouredly with his long gaberdine; his ten-carat watch-chain, with a malachite locket hanging from it, rendering the effect of his maroon cloth caftan mean and civilised. He told me that his chief business was to lend money to the Kaids, and that his mules were packed with silver dollars, being the interest on the capital lent to various Governors in Sus. He expressed no fear of any attack upon his caravan; and when I quoted the saying that “if the caravan is attacked the poor man has nothing to fear,” returned, “Nor has the Jew, who is indispensable to the great ones of the earth.” Nevertheless he bore about him several old bullet wounds, and carried underneath his gaberdine a first-rate Smith and Wesson pistol, which he said he would not care to be obliged to use. I put him down as one who, given the opportunity, would shoot an unbeliever like a dog, having generally observed that readiness to shoot goes in an inverse ratio with readiness to talk, and that the man who always has a pistol in his hand might just as often, for all purpose of defence, carry a meerschaum pipe. The way he travelled was curious, for, in the Sus amongst the Berber tribes, he had to take a tribesman, to whom he paid a certain sum, to see him safely through the tribe, who, in his turn, delivered him, on leaving his territory, to another man, and so on right through the country which he had to pass. This system is recognised throughout the Atlas range, and generally wherever the Berber tribes inhabit, and is known as el Mzareg, that is, the protection of the lance, for anciently the protecting tribesman bore a lance, but, nowadays, usually is satisfied with the stout cudgel which all hillmen use. Baruch, the Hebrew with the ivory crutch-handled stick, informed me that, in the Sus, nearly every Jewish family was obliged to have his corresponding Mzareg, who protected and also fleeced them; and that, in consequence, most of those “Pedlars of the ghetto,” in spite of all their industry, were poor. A curious down-trodden race the Atlas Jews, ostensibly the slaves of every one, and in reality their masters; for owing to the incapacity for commerce in the Berbers, every affair where money changes hands has to be brought about by the assistance of some quick-witted Jew. So, just as in Europe, though without being in other respects superior to the races amongst whom they live, the Atlas Jews control the warlike Berbers as easily and as completely as their brethren control all those with whom they come in contact on a business footing throughout the world. Baruch had his home in Mequinez, and was not from Toledo, but an Oriental Jew, his people, as he said, having come into Morocco after the great dispersion, and he himself being of the tribe of Benjamin; though, when I asked him how he knew, he said it was a tradition in his family, and that the ancients never spoke untruth. Into this matter I forbore to enter, and generally gave an assent, quoting the Toledan-Jewish proverb, that “if Moses died, Adonai still survived,” { 243} which he at once knew in its Arabic form, and asked me, as Israelites in the East will often do if you appear to know a little of their lore, if I, too, was of the chosen race. This worthy Baruch, in appearance like a head cut out of walnut wood, set round with fleecy wool, asked me, when passing Mequinez, to remember I had my house there, and said that I should find him, Baruch ben Baruch, as a father and a friend. Unfortunately, since then I have not passed Mequinez; but, if I do so, hope to eat my “adafina” in my father’s house.