Travels in Morocco, Volume 1. eBook

James Richardson (explorer of the Sahara)
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 175 pages of information about Travels in Morocco, Volume 1..

Travels in Morocco, Volume 1. eBook

James Richardson (explorer of the Sahara)
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 175 pages of information about Travels in Morocco, Volume 1..
people against Hebrews.  British merchants ought to be allowed to visit their own vessels whilst in port, to superintend, or what not, the stowing or landing of their goods, as they are entitled to do by treaty.  Spanish dollars are the chief currency in Morocco; but there are also doubloons and smaller gold coins.  This currency, the merchants manage very badly.  A doubloon loses sixteen pence, or four Maroquine ounces in exchange at Mogador, whilst at the capital of Morocco, three days’ journey from this, it passes for the same value it bears in Spain and Gibraltar.

As to the revenues of the Government of Morocco, our means of information are still more uncertain and conjectural, than those we possess regarding commerce.  A French writer asserts, that the tithes upon land assigned by the Koran and the capitation tax on the Jews, produce from twenty to thirty million francs (or say about one million pounds sterling) per annum.  This, perhaps, is too large a sum.

About a century ago, the revenues of Moocco were estimated at only L200,000 sterling per annum.  But if Muley Abd Errahman has fifty millions of dollars, or ten millions sterling in the vaults of Mequinez, he may be considered as the richest monarch in Africa, nay in all Europe.  It is positively stated that Muley Ismail left this amount, or one hundred millions of ducats in the imperial treasury, which Sidi Mahommed reduced to two millions.  It may have been the great object of the life of the present Sultan to restore this enormous hoard.  No country is rich or safe without a vast capital in hand as a reserve for times of trouble, war, or famine.  But it is not necessary that such reserve should be in the hands of a government.

This, a Maroquine prince cannot comprehend, and he decides as to the riches and poverty of his country by the amount he possesses in his royal vaults.

In treating of trade, and comparing its exports with the peculiar products and manufactures of the cities and towns, hereafter to be enumerated, we may approximate to an idea of the resources of the Maroquine Empire, but everything is more or less deteriorated in this naturally rich country.

Cattle and sheep, grain and fruits, are of inferior quality, owing to the want of proper culture.  No spontaneous growth is equal to culture, for such is the ordinance of Divine Providence.  Half of this country is desert.  The iron hand of despotic government presses heavily upon all industry.  If we add to this defective state of culture, the miserably moral condition of the people, we have the unpleasant picture of an inferiority civilized race of mankind scattered over a badly cultivated region.  Not all the magnificence of the glorious Atlas can reconcile such a prospect to the imagination.  But, unhappily, Morocco does not constitute a very striking exception to the progress of civilization along the shores and in the isles of the Mediterranean.  Many countries in Southern Europe are in a state little superior,

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Travels in Morocco, Volume 1. from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.