8 INTEODUCTION. 
aquatic bird, according to the season ; but in the breeding- 
time the mosquitoes are enough to drive any European 
away, besides which the nests are so plundered by the Arabs 
that it is hardly worth while going there for them. Further 
south than this I have not been, and refer my readers for any 
information to Mr. Drake^s paper in ' The Ibis ' (/. c.) . 
Eastward of Tangier, taking the road to Tetuan, there 
is little or nothing to be done in the way of birds until 
the latter place is reached, after a long and tedious day^s 
journey ; indeed all that part of Morocco which I have visited 
is very wearisome to travel over, except near Tetuan and 
Ceuta, where the mountains break the sameness of the route, 
and where alone any true beauty of scenery is to be found. 
Of these hills only those in the immediate vicinity of 
Tetuan can be visited, owing to the lawless character of the 
hill tribes and their Mahometan prejudices, and, last but not 
least, owing also to the exaggerated stories made up to prevent 
any European from travelling about. In a stream on one of 
these mountains, to the south of Tetuan, a species of trout is 
found ; but I was unable to get a specimen : they are also 
probably met with in the other, higher mountains, which are 
forbidden ground to the European. 
The country about Tetuan is alike interesting to the orni- 
thologist and favourable to the sportsman ; about Martine are 
some fine marshes, while beyond Cape Negro, towards Ceuta, 
is a large, irregularly shaped, shallow laguna, called Esmir, 
with great masses of rush and sedge, interspersed with tama- 
risk bushes, separated from the sea by a wide sandbank 
covered with brushwood ; this laguna and marshes are by far 
the best ground I have seen on either side of the Straits. 
Proceeding from Esmir, towards Ceuta, the road lies either 
on the shore or along the usual scrub- covered country till, 
turning to the left by some Roman ruins, a pass leading up 
to the Sierra Bullones is entered, when the scenery becomes 
very fine, the track ascending by the side of a bright clear 
stream, through bushes sometimes so thick as to completely 
shut out the sky overhead, at other times passing through 
heather, in places twenty feet high. The path becomes 
