CB. XI. THE HILLS ABOVE MILHAlN. 297 



was required ; and he somewhat interested us by singing 

 lustily at the top of his voice songs of a lively character. 

 Hitherto all the mountaineers we had met were marked by 

 a serious and somewhat saddened demeanour, as of people 

 on whom the burden of life pressed heavily, the only 

 exceptions being among the men we had brought from 

 Mogador, of whom Ambak was especially noticeable for 

 his cheerful and lively humom-. 



The outer slopes of the hills about Milhain were 

 scantily clad with a meagre vegetation, in which a woolly 

 variety of Ononis Natrix, Heliantheraum, virgatum, some 

 variety of the ubiquitous Teucrium Folium and Ma- 

 crochloa tenacissima were the prevailing species ; and 

 the attempts at tillage seemed to produce only mis- 

 erable crops of barley. We expected to find more 

 variety on the rocks which were before us, and were not 

 altogether disappointed ; but the season was already far 

 advanced, and the spring vegetation partially dried up. 

 Along the dry bed of the streamlet, that is probably filled 

 only after heavy rain, we gathered Euphorbia pinea, 

 not before seen in Marocco. On the dry rocks we found a 

 curious form of Cwonilla viminalis, reduced to a stunted 

 bush, scarcely two feet high, with its curious jointed pods, 

 four or five inches in length. A range of quite vertical 

 crags was almost covered with two peculiar plants of this 

 region — Euphorbia riinarum, of Cosson, and Andrachne 

 maroccana, of Ball. The latter, though abundantly dif- 

 ferent in structure, has much the habit of A. telephioides, 

 the wide-spread Mediterranean species. In a crevice of 

 these rocks a single small specimen of the rare fern, 

 Aspleniu'tn Petrarchce, was also found. 



The hill opposite that which we ascended was crowned 

 by a fort, similar in character to those which we had seen 

 elsewhere on the skirts of the Atlas, to which our Shelluh 

 guide gave the name Taganagm-t. Our involuntary 

 change of route prevented us from ascertaining whether 

 these extend westward along the northern base of the 



