At four I went to dine with the British consul. Two other English gentlemen were present, who had arrived at Tangier from Gibraltar about ten days previously for a short excursion, and were now detained longer than they wished by the Levant wind. They had already visited the principal towns in Spain, and proposed spending the winter either at Cadiz or Seville. One of them, Mr. ---, struck me as being one of the most remarkable men I had ever conversed with: he travelled not for diversion nor instigated by curiosity, but merely with the hope of doing spiritual good, chiefly by conversation. The consul soon asked me what I thought of the Moors and their country. I told him that what I had hitherto seen of both highly pleased me. He said that were I to live amongst them ten years, as he had done, he believed I should entertain a very different opinion; that no people in the world were more false and cruel; that their government was one of the vilest description, with which it was next to an impossibility for any foreign power to hold amicable relations, as it invariably acted with bad faith, and set at nought the most solemn treaties. That British property and interests were every day subjected to ruin and spoliation, and British subjects exposed to unheard-of vexations, without the slightest hope of redress being offered, save recourse was had to force, the only argument to which the Moors were accessible. He added, that towards the end of the preceding year an atrocious murder had been perpetrated in Tangier: a Genoese family of three individuals had perished, all of whom were British subjects, and entitled to the protection of the British flag. The murderers were known, and the principal one was even now in prison for the fact; yet all attempts to bring him to condign punishment had hitherto proved abortive, as he was a Moor, and his victims Christians. Finally, he cautioned me not to take walks beyond the wall unaccompanied by a soldier, whom he offered to provide for me should I desire it, as otherwise I incurred great risk of being ill-treated by the Moors of the interior, whom I might meet, or perhaps murdered; and he instanced the case of a British officer who not long since had been murdered on the beach for no other reason than being a Nazarene, and appearing in a Nazarene dress. He at length introduced the subject of the Gospel, and I was pleased to learn that, during his residence in Tangier, he had distributed a considerable quantity of Bibles amongst the natives in the Arabic language, and that many of the learned men, or _talibs_, had read the holy volume with great interest, and that by this distribution, which, it is true, was effected with much caution, no angry or unpleasant feeling had been excited. He finally asked whether I had come with the intention of circulating the Scripture amongst the Moors.