Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/435

 of the wadies are of any use for navigation, the only craft plying on them being ferryboats of a very primitive type.

On the Mediterranean slope the chief river is the Moluya (Muluya), which has its source amid the snows of the Aïashin mountains, and is further down swollen by the Wed Za and other tributaries from the east. The Moluya (M'luya) is the Molochat, Malua, or Malva of the ancients, who regarded it as the natural frontier between the two Mauritanias (Mauritania Tingitana and Cæsariensis). During the Berber and Arab epochs, down to the year 1830, it ulso formed the boundary between Algeria and Marocco; but the political frontier having been shifted eastwards

by the treaties of Tafna and Tangier, both banks of the river are now included in Marocco territory. Its mouth is sheltered on the north-west by the Zaffarine islets, so called from the Beni-Jafer Berber tribe, which at some distance from the coast form a sort of semicircular breakwater, behind which vessels ride in safety during the prevalence of the fierce north-east gales.

Further west the Rif seaboard presents nothing but small coast streams, such as the Wed-esh-Sherat, which reaches the sea near Tangier. On the Atlantic slope the first important stream south of Cape Spartel is the Wed-el-Khus, which has its rise in the western escarpments of the Beni-Hassan highlands, and reaches the sea some 36 miles south of the Strait. From this point the monotonous