Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/864

Rh 832 MOROCCO as June, but it is probable that none of them retain it throughout the year. Taken as a whole, the Atlas has a mean elevation higher than that of any other range of equal length in Europe or in the African and Asiatic countries bordering on the Mediterranean. From the lowlands to the north it has a very fine appearance, rising, as it seems, in steep and almost abrupt ascent, though the real distance from foot to summit is a slope of 15 miles (compare the panorama prefixed to Hooker and Ball s Morocco}. What is the culminating point of the range is quite unknown; the M iltsin peak has no claim to that distinction. The English embassy of 1829-1830 advanced up the northern slope only a little beyond Tasseremut (3534 feet), and Davidson in 1836 merely reached the town, and then turned westwards. From Tasseremut eastwards the range is altogether unexplored for 200 miles till we come to the route followed by Ahmed b. Hasan al-Mtuvi (1789), Caillie (1827), and Rohlfs (1863). &quot;The English expedition of 1871 (Hooker and Ball, &c.), besides visiting Tasseremut, went up the Urika valley to a height of 4000 feet, up the Ait Mesan valley to the Tagherot pass (11,484), and up the Ainsziz valley to the summit of Jebel Tezah (11,972 feet). In the Tagherot pass Mr Maw was the only one of the party who reached the watershed ; but from Jebel Tezah a good view was obtained southward across the great valley of the Sus to the Anti- Atlas, which appeared to be from 9000 to 10,000 feet high. In 18SO Dr Lenz crossed the range by the ordinary route from Morocco to Tarudant. &quot; First,&quot; he says, &quot;is a chain of comparatively low and flat hills consisting of Cretaceous and Tertiary rocks ; then follows a plateau with ranges of red, probably Triassic, sandstone ; and finally come the higher and steeper peaks of clay slate with great metalliferous deposits. The pass where the descent towards Siis begins is called Bibauan, and lies 4000 feet above the sea. The roxite down to Emnislah is steep, difficult, and at times dangerous. &quot; As to the relation of the Anti-Atlas to the Atlas proper at its western end nothing certain is known. All the principal rivers of Morocco take their rise in the Atlas mountains, and the headwaters of the Muliiya, the Sebii, the Umm Rabf, the Der a, and the Zfz are all to be placed in that part of the range which lies between 32 20 and 32 30 N. lat., and between 3 30 and 5 W. long. In almost every instance the summer current is comparatively feeble, but the wide beds and often high steep banks are sufficient of themselves to show the change produced by the rains of winter and the thaws of spring. The Muliiya (Mulucha and Malva of Pliny, &amp;lt;fcc.) is mainly interesting as the river which the French have long wished to make the western boundary of Algeria. Its course is almost entirely unexplored. About 34 20 N. lat. Captain Colvile found it some 200 yards wide but quite shallow ; about 25 miles east of its source where it is crossed by the route to Ziz it is already a powerful stream with a deep bed cut in the granite rock, and shortly afterwards it is joined by the W. Sgimmel, a still larger affluent (Rohlfs). Of the lesser streams which flow into the Mediterranean it is enough to mention the W. Martil or Martin (otherwise W. Bii Sfiha, W Ras, W. Mejeksa), which falls into the Bay of Tetuan, and is identified with the Tamuda of Pliny and Thaluda of Ptolemy. On the Atlantic seaboard north of the Sebii there are a number of comparatively small streams, the chief of which is the very winding W. Aulkos or Lokkos, with several tributaries. If Renou s statement that the Sebii (the Subur magnificus et navigabilis of Pliny) had a course not much inferior to that of the Seine be somewhat of an exaggeration, it may at least be compared to the Thames in length and width, though not in steadiness and depth of current. At Meshra at al-Ksiri, about 70 miles from its mouth, it is about 1 feet deep in the month of May and more than 460 feet wide; and, though its banks are 21 feet high, extensive inundations occur from time to time. The tide ascends as far as Al-Kantara, 15 miles above Ma miira, and steam barges with a small draught of water could make their way to the ford just mentioned, and possibly even as far as Fez (Trotter). Affluents of the Sebii are W. Mikkes and W. Al-Redem (90 miles long). The swift and muddy current of W. Beht usually loses itself in a swamp before it reaches the main stream. The impetuous Umm Rabf, with a rocky bed and many rapids, is perhaps as large as the Sebii ; but as there are no important cities in the country through which it flows its course is not so well known. W. al-Abiad, W. al-Akdur, and W. Tessaut seem to be the principal affluents. This last is separated by about 10 miles only from the valley of the Tensift, the river which flows to the north of the city of Morocco ; and, by the W. Nefis, the Asif al-Mil (Asif is Berber for &quot;river&quot;), the W. Usbi, and other smaller tributaries, receives the waters of about 180 miles of the Atlas range. The valley between the Atlas and the Anti- Atlas is traversed by the W. Siis, whose ever-flowing stream is sufficient to turn the whole district into a garden. The Massa or W. al-Ghas (Wholgras of Davidson, Oued Ouel R as of Delaporte), though its headwaters drain only one or two of the lesser valleys at the south-west end of the Anti- Atlas, is &quot;about 50 yards from bank to bank at the mouth, with a depth at high water and in the proper channel of something over a fathom.&quot; Farther south is the Assaka or W. al-Aksd, long known to European geographers by the name of W. Nun ; and finally the famous W. Der a is reached, which in length of course exceeds all the rivers of Morocco, but, except in spring when the snows are melting in the highlands, remains throughout all its lower reaches a dry sandy channel, hardly noticed by the traveller in the surrounding desert. In the upper valleys, on the contrary, innumerable streams from the south side of the main chain of the Atlas, the W. Dades from the east, and the Asif Marghen, W. al-Molah, or Warzazet from the west, flow through populous and fertile valleys, and uniting to form the Der a cut their way southward through a gorge in the Jebel Sogher, which, as the name implies, is a lower range running parallel to the Atlas proper. For the next 130 miles the noble stream holds south-south-east, drained at every step by the irrigation canals which turn this region into a green oasis, till at last its dwindling current bends westward to the sebkha (salt marsh) of Debiaya. For a few weeks once a year the thaw-floods fill this shallow but extensive basin and rush onwards to the Atlantic ; but in summer it dries up, and, like the bed of the river for some distance below, is covered with flourishing crops. From the south of the Atlas still farther east descend a number of other streams, the W. Ziz (with its tributaries the W. Todgha and W. Gheris), the W. Ghir, the W. Kenatsa, &amp;lt;tc., which, after watering the oases of Medghara, Tafilelt (Sijilmasa), Kenatsa, &c., lose themselves in the sands of the Sahara. 1 Besides the lakes and lagoons of the coast district already mentioned, there are several others, such as the Daya Sidi Ali Mohammed, which Rohlfs passed near the summit of the Atlas, but they do not form a feature of the country. The eastern frontier runs across the great Western Shatt, and south from that point lies the extensive Sebkha Tighri. According to Dr Lenz, in his geological map of West Africa (1882), the stretch of country in the vicinity of Ceuta and Tetuan is Ju rassic ; modern Tertiary and Eocene rocks cover all the rest of the great northern promontory for some distance south of Wazan, and extend in an irregular belt from the neighbourhood of Fez south west to the province of Abda ; between these two areas there lies a district of Cretaceous formations which extends to the Atlantic, and skirts the whole African coast from Larash as far south as Cape Blanc (700 miles south of the Der a) ; nearly all the rest of the north western slope of the country is occupied by alluvium. The west ward portion of the Atlas shows a belt of Cretaceous rocks, a broader Jurassic belt, and one still broader of Red Sandstone, porphyrites and porphyritic tuffs forming the backbone of the ridge. From Tarudant eastward runs a strip of clay slates, possibly of Carbon iferous origin, and from Anti-Atlas in the west and Figig in the 1 See Castries on the &quot;Oued Draa&quot; in Bull, de la Soc. de Qeoyr., 1880.