HOOKER AND BALL'S TOUR IN MAROCCO, 255 



tion, but of whicli specimens ought to be preserved now when 

 they may, now when it will cost nothing, and injuriously af- 

 fect no man's interest. For the Redwood it is almost too 

 late ; yet a square mile, or half that area, of Kedwood forest 

 might still be reserved in Mendocino or Humboldt County. 

 And from all accounts a square mile or two of true Big-tree 

 forest, on or south of King's River, could well be set apart 

 as a perpetual memorial. The Mariposa Grove is indeed 

 such a reservation. But this is only a grove of a limited 

 number of trees, many of them sadly injured by fires. Far- 

 ther south this great tree is said to be the main constituent of 

 extensive forests. A mile or two of Big-tree forest should be 

 set apart before this district is invaded. 



HOOKER AND BALL'S TOUR IN MAROCCO. 



The isolation of Marocco from the European world is strik- 

 ingly shown in the fact that up to the publication of this 

 goodly volume ^ the principal geographical authority for the 

 interior of the country is Leo Africanus. This man was a 

 Moor of Granada, who with his kinsfolk, at the time of the 

 siege of Granada in 1492, fled to Fez, then the headquarters 

 of Arabic culture, and was taken into favor by Mouley Ahmet, 

 the founder of the dynasty still reigning in Marocco. He 

 traveled throughout the empire, and wrote in Arabic a descrip- 

 tion of that part of Africa, which he must have had with him 

 in manuscript when, in the year 1517, he was captured by 

 Christian corsairs, and carried to Rome. The Pope, Leo X., 

 hearing of this learned Moor, sent for him, treated him kindly, 

 had him baptized, and gave him at the font his own names, 

 Giovanni Leone ; and so, as the writer of the narrative before 

 us naively remarks, the Moor perhaps became as earnest a 

 Christian as the pontiff himself. In Rome he translated his 



1 Journal of a Tour in Marocco and the Great Atlas. By Sir J. D. 

 Hooker and John Ball. London and New York, 1878. (The Nation, 

 No. 718, April 3, 1879.) 



