170 BOULDEE DEPOSITS. ch. vii. 



in true Oriental fashion. We were assured by our inter- 

 preter, who naturally sympathised with the people of his 

 own race, that they often suffer from ill-usage, for which 

 there is absolutely no redress ; but it does not appear that 

 their condition is practically as bad as that of the same 

 people in Roumania and some other so-called Christian 

 States. In some respects, indeed, they are better off than 

 their Mohammedan neighbours. Not suspected of wealth, 

 their head-men are not liable to be ' squeezed,' and, living 

 apart, they are not engaged in the intestine feuds of 

 adjoining tribes, and not often victims of the cruelties 

 that accompany them. 



During our afternoon ride from Tasseremout to the 

 Ourika river, our course lay to the SW., along the base 

 of the escarpment which had so much attracted our notice 

 from a distance ; and much discussion arose as to the 

 origin of the vast masses of boulders that were spread along 

 the comparatively level shelf along which we rode, and 

 descended, in some places at least, to the margin of the 

 plain. 



During the ascent from our camp of last night to 

 Tasseremout, we first made acquaintance with these 

 deposits, at a height of about 3,000 feet above the sea, 

 that of the olive grove at Tasseremout being 3,534 feet. 

 On the slope to the right of our track a mass of irregular 

 weather-worn blocks of sandstone lay in disorder, the 

 most prominent characteristic being that they were all of 

 large size (measuring from ten to twenty cubic yards, 

 according to Maw), with little or no intermixture of finer 

 materials. Maw was disposed to consider these as glacial 

 deposits ; ' but, among other difficulties, it was urged 

 that the moraines of glaciers descending from a great 

 mountain chain always include a large proportion of finer 

 materials along with large blocks, and that these include 

 fragTnents of the various rocks through which the glacier 



' See Mr. Maw's paper on the ' Geology of Marocco.' Appendix F. 



