Our road turned once more to the south, and we commenced a steep ascent by a sandy track up the side of a well-wooded mountain, at the summit of which I found that we had reached an altitude of 5600 feet above the sea-level, and nearly 2000 feet above the Sheikh’s house at Zarkten, the elevation of which I made out to be 3710 feet above the sea.
An adventure, which happily ended only in laughter, happened to us at this part of the road. The track, never of any width, was here extremely narrow, and our impatient donkey, desirous of being the first to cross the Atlas, tried to push his way past the mules. There being no room, however, to perform this manoeuvre, he nearly put an end to his existence by falling over the precipice. Happily he alighted some 40 feet down, legs up, in the branch of a pine-tree. The difficulty was how to rescue him from this perilous position, for the poor little fellow carried on his back all my personal belongings—small though their quantity was. We were obliged, accordingly, to unpack the mules, and by tying together the ropes which held the tent, &c., in its place on their backs, I managed to descend, and, cutting the pack-saddle loose, had the happiness of seeing my luggage rescued. Then letting the rope down again, I made it fast to the four legs of the donkey, which I bound together to prevent its struggling, and the others hauled him up, I eventually reaching the track by being pulled up in much the same manner. The donkey was none the worse, and as soon as he had recovered his equilibrium, and found, to his satisfaction, that he was unhurt, issued a prolonged series of cries, and kicked violently at everything his heels could reach.
Every step we took the scenery increased in grandeur, and from one spot we could obtain views of the three valleys. To the west lay that of the upper stream of the Ghadat, through which the river twisted and turned, a thin thread of silver 2000 feet below us. The lower slopes of the valley were mostly wooded, but towering far above them on the west and south rose the central peaks of the Atlas range, Jibel Glawi, or Tidili, a dome of pure white snow dominating the whole, which presented a panorama of exquisite beauty. To the north we could see the gorge of Zarkten, and far down the valley formed by the united streams of the Ghadat and the Tetula; even the plains beyond and the distant hills of Rahamna were visible in the clear atmosphere. Less pleasing, but offering features quite distinct, was the scene directly to the south of us, where the smaller river, the Tetula, dashed between walls of rock that seemed in places almost to meet over its stream. Here were no signs of vegetation, except in the immediate foreground, and all was bare limestone and snow above and shales below, a dreary but impressive scene.
We were leaving all vegetation behind us, and already I missed the azif—palmeto—so common all over Morocco, and in its place there appeared the arar—calitris—and juniper and pines, while scattered about rose the twisted trunks of evergreen oaks.
Proceeding for a time along a level track over a mountain the name of which is Telettin Nugelid, and at an average elevation of about 5000 feet, we descended once more and forded the Tetula, or Asif Adrar n’Iri, near the pretty village of Agurgar, the name of which—walnuts—is due to the existence of a fine clump of these trees. Here the district of Aït Robaa, which extends along the west bank of the Tetula as far as this point, was left behind, and we entered the small and bleak tribe-land of Aït Akherait. Agurgar, from its sheltered position, is pleasant enough, and the village seemed clean and well built. A few of the natives, wild mountaineers, met us and brought us a welcome meal of boiled turnips. The bed of the Tetula is very narrow at this spot, the river rushing between enormous boulders, which bear every appearance of having been heaped up in their present positions by the action of glaciers, which have long since ceased to exist in the Atlas,—for throughout the whole range, as far as it has been at present explored, and that, it must be confessed, is very little of it, no extant glacier has been discovered.
Ascending again, this time on the right (east) side of the river, we quickly left all vegetation behind, except for an occasional wind-bent stump of an evergreen oak, and entered a wild dismal country, the soil of which consisted for the most part of black and grey shales, and above peaks of limestone, and they again capped with snow. Not a sign of life, either animal or vegetable, was to be seen; yet every now and then the cliffs gave back the echo of some strange Berber song which told us that although no human being was to be seen, even these dreary wastes of rock were inhabited.
At a tumble-down hovel of loose stones, where the natives had scratched an acre of soil, poor enough but sufficient to grow a few turnips, we spent the night of November 4, finding protection from the cold in a dirty stable—for, with the exception of the cultivated patch, there was not an inch of soil into which one could drive a tent-peg. However, the dozen or so inhabitants of this dismal abode asked the old Shereef and myself into a grimy room, windowless and without a chimney, and filled with dense smoke, where we were able to sit for an hour or two in warm discomfort over the fire of half-burned charcoal, the fumes of which were stifling. Poverty seemed in possession of the little place, for not a blanket did they appear to possess; but they were cheery good people, and spoke a little Arabic, so that conversation was possible. In winter, when the entire district is under snow, they drive their one or two cows into the house and hibernate,—only the men, and they very seldom, ever leaving the house at all during the two or three months of bitter cold.
They told me the name of the place was Afuden Nugelid, and I found the elevation to be 5800 feet above the sea-level.
A few miles above this spot is a little oasis, the tiny district of Tetula, sheltered from the bleak winds by a semicircle of mountains, amongst which the few acres of gardens and trees nestle. The village is a large one, compared with most that we had passed, and the natives seemed better to do than our friends of the night before. It is from this spot that the last steep ascent to the pass over the Atlas commences, and after an hour and a half’s scramble up slippery paths and amongst enormous boulders, we found ourselves by ten o’clock A.M. on November 5 on the summit of the Tizi n’Glawi, or Glawi Pass, at an elevation of 8150 feet above the sea-level, where, weary with the steep ascent, we threw ourselves down to rest in the warm sunlight, sheltered from biting wind by a huge rock.