Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/452

 870 NOKTH-WEST Ai'KlCA. than three times too high. The handsomest women in Marocco are said to be the Jewesses of Meknes, and the tenn Meknasia is now applied to all women remarkable for their personal charms. The Negro element is also represented in every part of western Mauritania, where, according to Rohlfs, there are as many as fifty thousand Sudanese blacks of pure stock between Tarudant and Tangier. Many half-castes are also found in the families of the upper classes in the large towns, and the reigning family itself is partly of Negro blood. But in the rural districts interminglings of this sort are less frequent, and never occur amongst the Berbers on the northern slope of the Atlas. The Ilaussas, Bambaras, Fulahs, and other Negro populations in Marocco are constantly recruited by the organised slave trade carried on through the caravan traffic with Sudan. Here they are usually purchased with blocks of salt, whence the term gemt-el-melha, that is, " bought for salt," often applied contemptuously to slaves and freedmen. In the Marocco bazaars the slaves are generally sold by auction, like any other " live stock," the vendor guaranteeing them free of " vicious habits," and the buyer causing them to be examined by the " veterinary surgeon," The price varies from sixteen or eighteen shillings to twenty pounds, according to age, sex, strength, or health. The European element is represented by a few thousand strangers settled in the seaports, and a few hundred French and Spanish renegades in Fez, Meknes, Marrakesh, and other inland towns. Topography. A portion of north-east Marocco is comprised in the hydrographic system of Algeria, the town and district of Ujcla being situated in the basin of the Tafna river. Ujda, which lies at the foot of the Khudriat-el-Khadra hill, in the plain of Angad, is a mere aggregate of small houses surrounded by olive groves, doing some trade across the border. Thanks to its proximity to the Algerian frontier, it ranks as an imperial garrison town, depending directly on the Sultan's Government. About six miles to the west, on the banks of the Islay, a headstream of the Tafna, was fought the famous battle of Islay, August 14, 1844, which placed the Jklarocco Government at the mercy of France, and which was followed by the treaty of Tangier, leaving to the Sultan nearly the whole of the debated territory east of the Moluya. The eastern affluents of the Moluya are partly occupied by the warlike and independent Beni-Mgill Berber tribe, whose chief village is Bidat/nl, which lies over 3,000 feet above the sea on one of the torrents forming the Upper Moluya. Lower down in the same valley is the less powerful Berber confederation of the Aitu-Fella, who in return for their recognition of the Sultan's authority are privileged to levy a sort of black-mail on travellers passing through their territory. Their ksar, or chief village, is Ksabi-esh-Shorfa, inhabited, as its name indicates,