Page:Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Volume 1 (2nd edition).djvu/172

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At daylight, struck our tents, and set forward by a sharp ascent; a brawling torrent in the valley below us; its banks well wooded with olive, carooba, walnut, acacia, cedar—the finest timber we had vet seen in the country, though not very large—and profusion of oleanders, stunted palms and rose-trees; cheered and enlivened on our march by the shouts of the Shellūh huntsmen, re-echoed from rock to rock, in their endeavours to rouse the game; each turn of the road disclosing fresh beauties in the valley, and a more boundless view of the plain and city of Marocco, its various, mosques glittering in the morning sun; basis of road, limestone; soil, stiff clay; stony; boulders of limestone, sandstone, agate, flint, porphyry, gneiss, greenstone, and cornelian; on brow of hill a range of limestone, fissures vertical, resembling a pile of gigantic tombstones, artificially placed; passed several villages, perched in the most romantic situations, and inhabited by the free Shellūhs, the aborigines of these mountains.

After about three hours' ascent, the paths becoming narrow, and intricate, we dismounted, left our Moorish escort, and put ourselves under the guidance of the Shelluh mountaineers—our only directions, pointing to the snowy peaks above our heads; still ascending through a forest of carooba, olive, cedar, walnut, &c., overrun by wild vines, and the hop-plant in great luxuriance; the scenery now becoming truly romantic; abrupt, sterile, sand-stone mountains rising on each side of us; the valley, not a quarter of a mile broad, through which rushed a brawling torrent five hundred feet below us, with the mountain path at times on the very brink of the precipice, while, before us, the snowy peaks appeared to recede as we climbed.

At noon, halted on the summit of a conical schistose hi!l, much decomposed at surface; strata, east and west; dip, 30° north-east, for a meridional observation, which gave our latitude 31° 25½′ N.,—the first ever perhaps taken in the Atlas. Our barometers here showed four thousand six hundred feet above the sea.

While making our observations we were surrounded by the native Shellūhs, who gazed with astonishment at our persons—our dress, particularly the gilt buttons; they silently looked at the compass, the spy-glass, the barometer, as things far beyond their comprehension; but when the quicksilver was poured out for an artificial horizon, they burst out into an exclamation of mingled astonishment and admiration, but no incivility, no rudeness: the contrast between the apathy of the Moors and the intelligence and curiosity of these primitive mountaineers, is striking; they have an air of freedom about them unknown in the plains; well-formed, athletic men, not tall, not marked features, and light complexions.