Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/482

 them re-named Santa-Cruz, Agadir rose to considerable commercial prosperity. Even under native rule it continued for a time to flourish as the outport of the produce brought by caravans from the Niger regions. But its distance from the centre of the empire tempting its inhabitants to strike for their independence, Agadir was destroyed by Sultan Mohammed and replaced by Mogador, lying farther north. As a military outpost, Agadir marked till recently the real limit of the imperial administration on the Atlantic seaboard. But the foundation of a Spanish settlement in the neighbourhood has induced the Sultan to consolidate his power on this southern frontier by building the new town of Tiznit on a cliff some 12 miles farther inland. The village of Aglu (Agula), 18 miles south from the

mouth of the Wed-el-Ghâs, is destined to become the outport of Tiznit. In the twelfth century the power of the Almohades reached still farther south, and Abdel-Mumen is said to Lave had the distance carefully measured between the two extremities of his empire, from Barka to the Wed Nun.

At present the imperial authority ceases altogether a little south of the Sûs, although indicated on the maps as extending to Sakiet-el-Hamra, south of Cape Jubi. An uninhabited tract even forms a sort of borderland to the south of the territory recognising the Sultan's jurisdiction. This is the upper valley of the Wed-el-Ghâs (Raz, Welghâs), one of the best watered and most fertile in the whole of Mauritania, but condemned to desolation by frontier warfare and diplomacy. The petty states south of the Ghâs are all peopled by Berbers and Negroes, who serve as intermediaries of commercial intercourse between Marocco