CH. vu. HILL FORTS OF THE GREAT ATLAS. 167 



their construction to Christians or Romans, the same word 

 conveying either meaning ; but the Jews often explain 

 this to mean Portuguese. The general character of these 

 buildings, as far as our information goes, is tolerably 

 uniform. The walls are of great thickness and built of 

 rough hewn stone : the arches are always rounded and 

 the lower chambers vaulted ; and they are evidently 

 places of defence. There is little reason to believe that 

 the Portuguese, who held at one time or other most of the 

 Atlantic coast of Marocco, ever established a firm footing 

 inland, and still less that they had such a hold on South 

 Marocco as would be implied by the erection of a chain 

 of forts along the foot of the Atlas. On the other hand, 

 the history of Mauritania during the long period of the 

 decline of Eome, and preceding the Saracen conquest, is an 

 almost complete blank, save for a few apocryphal stories. 

 It is certain that the lower country was once completely 

 subject to Roman power and Roman institutions, and it re- 

 mains to be ascertained how far an organised government 

 survived the weakening of the central authority. That 

 the independent tribes of the Atlas may have been incon- 

 venient neighbours to the half-Romanised inhabitants of 

 the plain is more than probable, and that the forts should 

 have been erected to hold the former in check seems the 

 most likely conjecture as to their origin. Excavation, 

 whenever that may be practicable, will scarcely fail to tell 

 something of the original occupants of these buildings, 

 and to diminish our ignorance of a dark period of past 

 history. 



As to the question which interested us most nearly, 

 the Kai'd had at first been reserved ; and when it became 

 necessary to decide, his language was decidedly unfavour- 

 able. It was impossible, he said, to reach the high naoun- 

 tains with snow on them from Tasseremout. Any one 

 attempting to do so would pass beyond his district, where 

 he could not protect us, and he could not allow us to incur 

 such a risk. We remembered Washington's account of 



