The Governor and other officials, with the European consuls and merchants, all reside in the Kasbah—the chief of the three quarters into which the town is divided. Here are several narrow but regularly-built streets; the houses are mostly of two stories, enclosing a small courtyard, which is entered by a low and narrow doorway from the street. In the Moorish town, inhabited by natives of the lower class, the houses are of one story, and poor in appearance; but the practice of whitewashing within and without once every week makes them look clean, and, no doubt, has much to do with the remarkable immunity of this place from contagious and endemic diseases. The Jewish town is much overcrowded; but we were assured that even here the modern gospel of soap and water has made much progress.
In the afternoon we sallied forth with our portfolios; but in deference to public opinion, which could not endure that strangers of consequence should be seen trudging on foot, we rode for about a mile out of the town. Its surroundings are not prepossessing. The low tertiary limestone rock, on which it is built, and which doubtless extends inland for some distance, is covered up to the city walls by blown sand, driven along the shore before the SW. winds, forming dunes that cover the whole surface; and in most directions one may ride two or three miles before encountering any other vegetation than a few paltry attempts at cultivating vegetables for the table within little enclosed plots, whose owners are constantly disputing the ground with the intrusive sand. The chief break in the monotony of the sand ridges is due to the small stream of the Oued Kseb (called Oued el-Ghoreb on Beaudouin’s map), which reaches the sea little more than a mile away on the south side of the town. Much of the water being diverted, the current is not strong enough to keep a channel through the sands, but forms at its mouth a marsh, where many of the most interesting plants of the neighbourhood are to be found. The drip from the small aqueduct that supplies water to the town suffices to give nourishment to other less uncommon species.
Mogador has long been tolerably well known to botanists. It was visited by Broussonet at the latter end of the last century, and was for some time the residence of Schousboë. More recently the neighbourhood has been explored by the late Mr. Lowe and by M. Balansa. We could not, therefore, reasonably expect to find here anything new to science; but our short excursion was nevertheless full of interest, though not altogether of an agreeable kind. We here saw for the first time a district recently ravaged by locusts; and while we acquired a lively sense of the amount of mischief effected by these destructive creatures, we also found out how it happens that the damage is confined within tolerable limits; how, in short, they fail to turn the country into a desert. When one reads the reports of credible eye-witnesses, who describe the arrival of swarms of locusts that devour every green thing, one asks oneself how it can be possible for man or animals to survive such destruction. In the first place, it may be remarked that, like most other sweeping statements, these are not strictly true. The locusts do not, in point of fact, devour every green thing. In the spots where they were most destructive we always remarked that certain plants escaped untouched. The result of this immunity would naturally be to substitute the latter for the species destroyed by the locusts, were there not some very efficient agency for repairing the damage and maintaining the life of the species, if not of the individual. An important element in considering this question is the season at which the mischief is effected. The young locust grows very fast, and it is mainly during the period of growth that it consumes vegetation. When once the animal has attained its full size, it becomes comparatively inert, and its capacity for destruction is vastly diminished. If the swarm of young locusts arrives before the middle of April, when the rainy season is not quite over, the first showers revive the plants that have been devoured almost to the root with surprising rapidity. Perennial species throw out new buds, and are soon again covered with leaf and flower; and the same often happens with annuals, unless these have already shed their seed, and then a new crop soon reappears. It may be supposed that the vast amount of decaying animal matter left on the surface, even in the most barren spot, contributes not a little to the vigour of the vegetation, and thus compensates for the destruction effected at an earlier stage. It is when the swarms appear late, and attack the wheat or maize after the flowers are developed, that the consequences to the population are very serious, and famines result that periodically affect large districts.
In the present year it was clear that rain had fallen since the locust invasion, and although much damage had been done, tolerable specimens of many plants here seen for the first time were to be found. A few of these are common to the Canary Islands and this part of Africa; others are not yet known except on this coast. The most curious of them is the Senecio (Kleinia) pteroneura, whose succulent almost leafless branches, as thick as a man’s finger, bear a few heads of flowers that differ little, save in their larger size, from those of the common groundsel. Well pleased with our first glance at the South Marocco flora, we returned to our comfortable quarters, and spent a pleasant evening in discussing our future movements, and in drawing upon our host’s ample stores of information respecting the country and its inhabitants.
We were now for the first time brought into contact with the primitive stock of this part of Africa, one main branch of the Bereber race, which is distinguished by speaking some dialect of the Shelluh (Shleuh) language.[2] The affinity of this people with the Berebers of the Lesser Atlas—including under that name the Kabyles of Algeria, with the Riff tribes of North-west Marocco—has been denied, but does not appear to be open to reasonable doubt. The type is physically the same, excepting among some of the tribes south of the Great Atlas, where the intermixture of Negro blood has introduced new and very diverse elements. The languages now spoken among these tribes doubtless exhibit marked differences, especially to the ear of a foreigner. Jackson long ago denied the relationship between the Shelluh and the Bereber, while Washington, in the paper already quoted, came to a contrary conclusion. It may now be considered as beyond question that the differences between the Shelluh and the Kabyle are merely dialectic.[3] The value of linguistic evidence in ethnological inquiries has of late been questioned by eminent critics, and it must be conceded that such evidence, when it merely rests on lexicographical coincidences, is of less value than when it is derived from grammatical structure; yet, after all deductions, the facts remain to be accounted for, and, in the absence of proof to the contrary, it goes far towards proving community of origin. It must be remembered, that unlettered races are subject to far greater and more rapid changes of dialect than those who preserve in sacred books or popular poetry fixed standards of correct speech; add to this, the chances of error when a traveller, communicating with a native through an interpreter, and contending with sounds unusual to his ear, attempts to form a vocabulary. These causes, acting together, tend to increase the difficulty of recognizing linguistic affinities that really exist.
In the absence of any indication of the intrusion of a conquering race that can be supposed to have imposed its language on the previous population, it seems most probable that the native races of North Africa, between the Libyan Desert and the Atlantic coast, including also the Canary Islands, all belong to a single stock, which may best be called Bereber. The two main branches are both mountain peoples. To the north we have the tribes of the Lesser Atlas, extending from the gates of Tetuan to the hill country of Tunis, who may best bear the common name of Kabyles—to the south-west the population of the Great Atlas, from the neighbourhood of Fez to the coast between Agadir and Oued Noun, broken up into numerous tribes, but all speaking some dialect of the same language, and thence called generically Shelluhs. Of the scattered fragments of the Bereber stock that have spread far through the oases of the Great Desert, till they have come into contact with the Negro tribes from the south of that barrier, our information is still most imperfect. In constant conflict with each other, and with the Arab and Negro tribes who dispute with them the scanty means of subsistence that Nature here provides, they appear on the whole to predominate over their competitors. The Touarecks, scattered over a territory as large as half of Europe, from Algeria to Soudan, form a separate branch of the same stock; while we learn from Gerhard Rohlfs that the predatory tribes of the desert south of Marocco are merely Shelluhs who have changed their habits and manner of life to suit altered conditions of existence.
The character of the Bereber has scarcely received justice at the hands either of ancient or modern writers. They have been inconvenient neighbours for those who have sought to encroach on their territory, and they are justly dreaded by the traveller through the Great Desert as the most active and enterprising of the human enemies he must confront or evade. Comparing them with the Moor and Arab population of South Marocco, our report agrees with that of Jackson, who probably knew them better than any other European has done. They are decidedly superior in intelligence, in industry, and general activity to their neighbours. Two of our retinue, selected by Mr. Carstensen among the mountaineers who resort to Mogador to pick up a living about the port, distinguished themselves over all the rest both in physical and mental qualities; and one of these especially, who became Hooker’s personal attendant, showed an amount of general intelligence and unfailing cheerfulness that made him a favourite with the entire party.
On the morning of the 27th we made an excursion to the island. It is formed of an irregular, low, knobby mass of very friable tertiary rock, which seems to yield rapidly to the erosive action of the heavy waves that almost constantly break on its seaward face, where the overhanging cliffs are hollowed into caverns. At the time of our visit it appeared to be uninhabited. Two or three heavy pieces of cannon, honeycombed with rust, lay near the highest point, but seemed never to have been placed in position. A small building was said to have been sometimes used for the custody of State prisoners, but otherwise there was no indication here of the presence of man. In such a spot we expected to find the coast vegetation fully developed, but we counted without the locusts. Nowhere else did we observe such complete destruction. A good many plants growing on the rocks, within constant reach of the sea-spray, had escaped; but on the rest of the island scarcely a green leaf remained, and it required a patient search to discover a few fruits of some leguminous plants that appear to abound in this locality. Of the seaside rock-plants three were supposed to be peculiar to this single spot. Andryala mogadorensis, of Cosson, a very showy species of an unattractive genus, has been well figured in the ‘Botanical Magazine’ for 1873; Frankenia velutina, the most ornamental species of that variable genus, appeared at first quite distinct, but we were afterwards led to suspect it to be a local form or subspecies of the widely spread perennial Frankenia, so common in the Mediterranean region. Both of these we afterwards found on the coast near Saffi. Of the third plant—Asteriscus imbricatus, of Decandolle—but a single stunted specimen was found by Ball, and as yet it has no other known habitat. We here saw for the first time a plant which turned out to be rather common in South Marocco, and which was taken by us, as it had been by preceding botanists, to be the Apteranthes Gussoniana, of Mikan, first described by Gussone as Stapelia europæa, and in truth closely resembling in habit and appearance some of the South African species of Stapelia. The fruit, which we afterwards found in abundance, did not appear different from that of Gussone’s plant; but when the specimens carried to England by Maw flowered two years later, the structure of the flower showed that it should be recognised as a distinct species of the group which has received the generic name Boucerosia, and it was accordingly published by Hooker, in the ‘Botanical Magazine’ (No. 6137), under the name Boucerosia maroccana.
In the course of the day we called on Monsieur Beaumier, the French Consul, in company with Dr. Thevenin, an intelligent physician, who has spent several years at Mogador, much to the advantage of the inhabitants whether Christian or native. M. Beaumier not only received us with the proverbial courtesy of his country, but showed a warm interest in the success of our journey, and kindly supplied us with many items of information, along with manuscript notes prepared by himself during his residence in South Marocco. His premature death, from an illness contracted during a visit to France in 1875, has been a serious loss to the country which he had made his second home.
Amongst other items of information, we owe to M. Beaumier a series of meteorological observations carried on at Mogador with a single interruption for nearly nine years, and supplying all requisite particulars for eight complete years. The results are so remarkable that they have attracted the attention of many physicians, and may probably lead at some not distant date to the selection of this place as a sanitarium for consumptive patients.