Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎482v] (89/238)

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Morocco : the Sultan and the Bashadours.
rectly known to the native officials as the “ Street-sweeping -
Commission,’’ an elective body of townsfolk and foreign
residents, chiefly dependent upon voluntary subscriptions.
This effort to improve the lamentable condition of the
streets of Tangier has not always met with the official
recognition and support which the voluntary assumption of
such unpleasant duties might have been thought to merit.
Fortunately, of late the representatives of the greater
Powers have, without exception, taken a much warmer
interest in securing the necessary means and authority for
so laudable an enterprise.
Owing to the rapid increase of the population, both
native and foreign, the necessity for some more effective
municipal administration is becoming every day more im
perative.
As the reader may be aware, the duties of the scavenger
in Mohammedan countries are generally left to the pariah
dog or to the bird of prey, both of which have been driven
further afield by the influx of Europeans, who do not share
the natives’ respect and esteem either for the packs of
mongrel curs who used to infest the streets, or for the carrion
birds, since the first brought the pedestrian into eminent
danger of hydrophobia, cases of which have been only too
frequent, whilst the birds offered too tempting a mark for
the gun of the juvenile sportsman.
With the attempt to remove the dust-heaps from the
streets of the town came also the necessity for some form,
however mild,, of police control ; moreover, with the in
crease of foreigners and tourists, all of them ready for a
mad gallop at a moment’s notice, often with less regard for
the safety of people on foot than even the wild nomad of
the desert might be expected to display, attention was
called to the absolute necessity for enforcing some rule of
the road. Here, however, a serious difficulty arose, since
the native guards dare not arrest or interfere with foreigners
unless when fortified by a specific order from the consulates
of the nationality of the offender. It will be readily under-