CH. VII. A JEWISH TOPOGEAPHER. 151 



evitable that the information given by an uneducated man 

 should fall very far short of what we should have desired ; 

 and the abundant catalogue of names of places — very few 

 of them possible to be identified on the map — which he 

 glibly enumerated, rather tended to confuse than to clear 

 up our understanding of the country. With a view to 

 mature deliberation on a point of such importance Salo- 

 mon was requested to write down the chief particulars 

 which he had given us verbally ; and his memorandum, 

 written in Hebrew, was afterwards translated by Abraham. 

 This translation, checked by the memoranda taken down 

 at the time by Ball, is printed in Appendix B, and affords 

 a slight contribution towards the topography of a portion 

 of Marocco hitherto completely unknown to Europeans. 



The morning of Saturday, May 6, found us still in 

 doubt as to our future course ; but, on a careful review of 

 the whole matter, we adopted a decision of which we saw 

 no subsequent reason to repent. It appeared that if we 

 decided on pushing forward into the interior of the coun- 

 try we might be able to reach the head of the valley of 

 the Tessout— the main western branch of the Oum-er-bia — 

 lying probably about 1 20 miles due east of Marocco. The 

 portion of the Atlas chain whence that stream flows is 

 in all probability as high as the range seen from the city, 

 and perhaps somewhat higher, and the district through 

 which we should travel was and still remains a complete 

 ien'tt incognita, as to which Beaudoin's map is almost 

 certainly incorrect.' Against these strong inducements 

 we had, however, to set many weighty reasons in favour of 

 the alternative course, whicli consisted in at once direct- 

 ing our steps towards the main chain south-east of the 

 city, and thence travelling gradually towards the Atlantic 

 coast, penetrating in succession to the head of as many of 

 the chief valleys as circumstances should allow. 



The first course was open to the objection that, under 



' See Appendix C. 



