Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/293

Rh from the shores of the Atlantic to the easternmost branches of the Atlas would rise—the Haha, Sous, Draa and Shlu tribes—and with them the peoples camping behind the Anti Atlas, those mixed Arabs and Berbers who also carry strains of the peoples from the Sahara.

When the French came into Morocco they met at first hostility and constant intrigue on the part of the great caids but finally arrived at an understanding with them, leaving undisturbed their feudal organization, dating from as far back as the thirteenth century, their laws and their established traditions. It is, in fact, a state within the state of the sultan, or, more correctly, three states within the Moroccan territory; but, instead of indulging in civil strife, this political combination has become a guarantor of peace in southwestern Morocco. The French, on the one hand, vouched for the sultan's recognition of the feudal laws and relationships and, on the other, assisted the ruler in coming to an arrangement with the mountain tribes for the payment of tribute and the furnishing of warriors. But the great caids know, however, that the first instance of disobedience or revolt would be sufficient for the sultan to declare them enemies and to bring French armies from Marrakesh and the Atlantic ports, which would ultimately drive them from their strongholds and deprive them of their special laws and their governing authority. Consequently the caids vie with one another in their administrative control of their warlike mountaineers as well as in the application of certain features of European science to their civic problems. In no part of French Morocco is it so safe as in the High Atlas, where no French military outposts