JOURNAL
OF A
TOUR IN MAROCCO.
CHAPTER I.
Voyage to Gibraltar — View of Tangier — Interior of the town — Portuguese and English occupation — Hospitable reception by Sir John Drummond Hay — Ravensrock — Government of Marocco — Climate of North Marocco — Exceptional season — The Djebel Kebir and its vegetation — Cistus and Heath region — Cape Spartel — Night at the Lighthouse — Cave of Hercules — Arab village — Return to Tangier.
On Saturday, April 1, 1871, our party, consisting of Sir Joseph (then Dr.) Hooker, Mr. Maw, and Mr. Ball, with a young gardener, named Crump, from the Royal Gardens at Kew, left Southampton for Gibraltar, in the Peninsular and Oriental Company’s Steamship Massilia.
Even for the ordinary tourist it is a pleasant thing to turn his face towards the South in the early part of the year, and to feel that he is about to exchange six or eight weeks of bitter easterly winds for the bright skies and soft breezes of the Mediterranean region. Still more does the botanist rejoice to quit the poverty of our slowly unfolding spring flora for the wealth of varied vegetation that is spread around the shores of the Inland Sea. But for us, the occasion was one of deeper and more special interest. We were starting, under unusually favourable conditions, to explore a country which, though close to Europe, is among the least known regions of the earth. Although the obstacles we were sure to encounter and the limited time at our disposal, might not allow us to accomplish much, we felt a confident hope that we should learn something of a great mountain chain all but absolutely unknown to geographers, and be able to fill up some missing pages in the records of our favourite science. The thrill of pleasurable anticipation at the prospect of setting foot within the boundaries of terra incognita was heightened by the fact that for each of us this land of Marocco had long been the object of especial interest and curiosity.
From an early period Hooker had conceived the desire to explore the range of the Great Atlas, to become acquainted with its vegetation, and to ascertain whether this supplies connecting links between that of the Mediterranean region and the peculiar flora of the Canary Islands. This desire was increased during a journey in Syria, in 1860, made in company with Admiral Washington, the late Hydrographer of the Navy, one of the very few Europeans who had reached the flanks of the Great Atlas chain, when, as a young naval officer, he accompanied the late Sir John Drummond Hay on his mission to the city of Marocco in 1829.
Maw had already made collections of living plants in the neighbourhood of Tangier, and had also visited Tetuan, where he had pushed his excursions farther than any but one preceding traveller.
Ball had landed at Tetuan in 1851 with the hope of attaining some of the higher summits of the neighbouring Riff Mountains; but the disturbed state of the country in that year made it impossible to advance beyond the immediate outskirts of the city.
From the moment when it seemed likely that the permission to visit the Great Atlas sought for by Hooker, through the intervention of our Foreign Office, would be accorded by the Sultan of Marocco, no time was lost in making the requisite preparations. Although everything was done within about a fortnight, our equipment was tolerably complete; and when, after the first excitement of departure had subsided, we thought it over on board ship, we found but one serious omission to deplore. Two mercurial barometers, provided by Hooker, had been entrusted to Crump, and were by him left behind at the last moment. Thus, in the important matter of determining heights, we were forced to rely upon aneroid barometers and boiling water observations. It was fortunate that Ball carried an excellent aneroid, by Secrétan of Paris, which has before and since been severely tested in the Alps with very satisfactory results, and whose indications during our journey agreed closely with those given by the thermometer in boiling water.