Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/488

 402 NORTH-WEST AFRICA. lower down on the same river. Some of the Ferkla palm groves belong to the powerful Ait-Mebrad tribe, who gained a sanguinary victory over the Ait-Attas in 1883. * The Zis Basin. Far more populous than the Todra Valley is that of the Zis, which flows south- wards from the Tizi'ut-er-Riut pass in the Great Atlas, along the historic caravan route between Fez and Timbuktu. The upper valley of the Zis (Guers), inhabited by the Ait-Sdig Berbers, has been described as " another Italy " in the variety of its products and equable climate. The banks of the stream form a continuous garden, dotted over with villages whose houses are built of baked earth mixed with straw and pebbles. Farther down the palm groves form an uninterrupted planta- tion extending from oasis to oasis as far as the desert. Mdnghra, the first of the groves belonging to the region comprised under the generic name of Tafilelt, is one of the richest and most densely peopled on the Sahara slope, comprising about forty villages, some of which are of considerable extent. The largest is Kashah-el-Kedlma, or " the Old Fort," which has a population of fifteen hundred souls. The dates, like the grapes, olives, peaches, and other fruits of Mdaghra, are all of exquisite flavour, and this oasis might be an earthly Eden but for the rivalries of its Arab, Berber, and Jewish inha- bitants. Many are reduced to great want, and over two-thirds are said to suffer from various forms of ophthalmia. Tafilei-t Oasis. South of Mdaghra, most of the natives belong to the powerful Ait-Atta con- federation, which extends westwards to the Wed Draa. According to the local tradition, about one hundred years ago the Ait-Attas expelled the Shorfa Arabs from this part of Tafilelt, which takes the name of Ertih or Reteh. Their women, who go unveiled, are distinguished from most others in Marocco by the practice of tattooing different parts of the body. Ez-Zerigat, capital of Ertib, is probably the largest town in the whole of Tafilelt, mustering, according to Rohlfs, over twelve hundred armed men. At Dnera, a little lower down, the Zis runs out in the sands in summer, reappearing, however, in the Tissimi oasis. Farther on the stream again disappears, leaving the inhabitants of South Tafilelt without surface water till the returning spring. Then the Zis, swollen by the melting snows of the Atlas, overflows its banks, converting the oasis into a lake. The Daya-el-Daura sebkha, which receives all the waters from the eastern Atlas, is also transformed to a temporary lake during the floods. The oasis which is specially known by the name of Tafilelt or Tafilala, is the centre of the largest population in the whole of the Sahara, estimated by Rohlfs at not less than one hundred thousand souls, grouped in more than a hundred and fifty ksars or villages. . The district, covering an area of probably 400 square miles, is almost completely enclosed by an amphitheatre of hills, being op«n only in the north through the Zis Valley, and in the south-east towards the desert.