Journal of a tour in Marocco and the Great Atlas

MAROCCO AND THE GREAT ATLAS
From a Drawing by W. Prinsep, December 1829
PANORAMA OF THE GREAT ATLAS FROM THE CITY OF MAROCCO
BY JOSEPH DALTON HOOKER, K.C.S.I., C.B. PRES. R. S. DIRECTOR OF THE ROYAL GARDENS, KEW; ETC. AND
JOHN BALL, F.R.S., M.R.I.A. ETC.
WITH AN APPENDIX including A SKETCH of the GEOLOGY of MAROCCO, by GEORGE MAW, F.L.S., F.G.S.
CAPE SPARTEL
London MACMILLAN AND CO. 1878
All rights reserved
The expedition of which an account is given in the following pages was undertaken in the year 1871, and it was originally intended that a narrative of the proceedings should be given to the public soon after our return to England. Sir Joseph D. Hooker, who made careful notes throughout the journey, hoped to complete the work without much delay, and actually wrote the greater part of the first two chapters; but the constant demands upon his time arising from his official duties at Kew, and the important botanical works to which he is a chief contributor, further increased by his election, in 1873, to the Presidency of the Royal Society, so far interfered with the completion of the original design as to compel him to request his fellow-traveller, Mr. Ball, to undertake the completion of the work. The latter was at the time engaged in preparing for publication a memoir on the Flora of Marocco, which has since appeared in the Journal of the Linnæan Society, wherein the botanical collections made during the journey are enumerated and described; and his performance of the task allotted to him has been further delayed by several prolonged absences from England.
As regards many countries visited by travellers a delay of several years in publication might seriously affect the accuracy of a narrative intended to represent the existing condition of the country and its inhabitants; but in the case of Marocco, where, from a comparison with the accounts of early travellers, no notable change is apparent during the last two centuries, the effect of a few years’ interval may be considered insensible. Up to the date of our visit the Great Atlas was little better known to geographers than it was in the time of Strabo and Pliny; and it may be hoped that whatever interest belongs to our journey is as great now as it was at the moment of our return.