26 SEASIDE VEGETATION. ch. ii. 



The distance from Tangier to Tetuan is only about 

 forty miles ; but we decided on stopping for the night at 

 the Fondak,' a solitary Moorish caravanserai, about thirty 

 miles distant from Tangier. Hurrying past the accumu- 

 lations of offal and filth that are shot over the seaward 

 face of the city wall, and indulging in a ten minutes' 

 gallop over the sandy beach, we left the seashore ; and, 

 after riding some way through deep sandy lanes, before 

 long reached a stretch of low cultivated land that extends 

 westward from Tangier to the hills that divide this from 

 the neighbouring provinces of Laraish and Tetuan. 



The season was not sufficiently advanced for the flower- 

 ing of many seaside plants ; but there was quite enough 

 to rejoice the eyes of botanists who had escaped from the 

 ghastly spring season of the North when the days grow 

 longer, but only more dreary, and the bitter east wind 

 parches and blasts the young leaves and blossoms that are 

 tempted to their destruction by the mildness of our winter 

 weather. As everywhere on the seaboard of Marocco, the 

 great yellow chrysanthemum (C. coronarium), with florets 

 varying in hue from orange to pale lemon colour, is con- 

 spicuous on sea banks, with several fine species of Heron's- 

 bill {Erodium). In the sands a large purple-flowered 

 Malcolmia {M. littorea) and many LeguminoscB already 

 diversified the aspect of the vegetation ; while robust Um- 

 belliferce, mingled with the familiar eryngo of our own 

 shores, had as yet merely developed their showy leaves'.^ 

 But the characteristic form which chiefly interests the 

 stranger to this region is a grey leafless bush, with long 

 pendulous whipcord-like branches waving in the breeze, 

 that is common among the sandhills, and recurs elsewhere 



' From this Moorish word the Spaniards have taken Fonda- the 

 common designation for an inn of the better class ; while it is more 

 accurately preserved in the Venetian Fondaco — e.g. Fondaco dei 

 Tnrchi, &c. 



^ These sandhills were revisited by one of our party in the month 

 of June, and then supplied many interesting plants not seen during 

 our first stay at Tangier. 



