The number of negroes that have been imported into this country, and are now settled in these states, is astonishing.  The amount is little less than three hundred thousand.  The Emperor’s body-guard, which consists of eighteen thousand horsemen, is chiefly composed of negroes, who enjoy every privilege that despotic power can confer, and are ready upon all occasions to enforce the royal mandate.

The great schools for the Moorish gentry are the chanceries of the Bashaws, where the young men learn the arts of dissimulation and duplicity in the greatest perfection, and become, very, early such great adepts in these valuable acquirements, that in my opinion they are fully able to cope with Monsieur Talleyrand, and the best politicians at the court of St. Cloud.  They are very dexterous also in the art of temporizing with an enemy, and deluding him by a thousand little expedients.  It is therefore fortunate for Europe, that the Moors are so indolent a set of people; for the immense power this empire might have; were it peopled by an industrious and ambitious race of men, would render it the most formidable in the world.

I shall now return to my own affairs, from the period at which they were left off in a former letter.  The Emperor had requested me to report to him, personally, every morning, the state of his favourite Sultana; I therefore waited upon him regularly at five o’clock, and was extremely happy that I was enabled to make the report more welcome each day.  After this visit to His Imperial Majesty, I daily paid my devoirs to the blind prince, the only remaining brother of the Emperor now in Barbary, and who took no part in the disputes of former times; and I then called upon the great officers of state.

Finding the Sultana in such a fair way of recovery, the Emperor dismissed his Governors to their respective provinces, and removed his court to Mequinez, his favourite summer residence, leaving me here, to complete the cure of the Sultana, and to attend several of his subjects, who stand high in his favour, in the lower town of Fez.  As the attendance required by my patients does not occupy the whole of my time, I employ my leisure in observing such things as appear most worthy of remark.

The town (or rather towns of Fez, this city being divided into two distinct parts, the one called Upper, the other Lower Fez) is the capital of the kingdom of that name, and is supposed to contain about three hundred thousand inhabitants, besides foreigners of their own persuasion.  There are upwards of five hundred mosques:  one of them in particular, which was built by Edris the Second, and in which his remains were deposited, is magnificent beyond description, and is about a mile and a half in circumference.  There is another very little inferior to this, which was erected by the Arabs of Caiwan, and called Carubin.  The other mosques have been constructed since.  To most of the mosques are annexed several colleges, religious schools, and hospitals for the pilgrims who visit this place, for, in point of holiness, it is considered as next to Mecca and Medina.