Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/465



Fez, the capital most frequently visited by the Sultan, and the largest city in the empire, occupies an advantageous geographical position about the centre of the depression separating the Rif from the Atlas highlands. It also lies on the natural route which skirts the western foot of the Atlas range, so that its basin is intersected by the two great historic highways of Western Mauritania. The district enjoys the further advantages of a fertile and well-watered soil and pleasant scenery, diversified with rich open plains and densely wooded heights. The city, encircled by an amphitheatre of hills, occupies a terrace of conglomerate about 650 feet high, divided into secondary sections by numerous ravines. The Wed-el-Fez, rising in a rocky cirque a little to the south-west, and fed by innumerable springs, six miles

below the town effects a junction with the Sebu, which is here spanned by one of the few stone bridges found in Marocco. Seen from the bluffs crowned with ruins which encircle it on the south, north, and west, Fez presents a charming prospect, "emerging like a white island ubove the dark green sea of its vast gardens." Above the irregular surface of the terraces rise the gilded summits of its minarets, the lofty walls of the citadel, and the glittering roof of the great mosque.

Fez is divided into two distinct towns, each with its single or double enclosure flanked by towers and buttresses. To the west lies Fez-el-Bali, or "Old Fez," still comprising the greater part of the urban population; to the east Fez-el-Jedid, or "New Fez," standing on the highest terrace, and towards the north connected with the old town by the redoubts of the kasbah. Immediately east of the palace in Fez-el-Jedid the river ramifies into two branches, one flowing through the imperial