318 ANCIENT MINING WORKS. ch xii. 



Luilt a small fort near Mogador, it does not seem probable 

 that they ever held control over the adjoining country. 

 As to the long interval between the establishment of 

 Eoman power in North Marocco and the disappearance of 

 Eoman civilisation after the Saracen conquest history is 

 silent, and it would be as unsafe to assert as to deny that 

 the workings of Djebel Hadid are to be referred to that 

 epoch. The only apparent alternative is to attribute them 

 to a still more remote period, when Carthaginian colonies 

 flourished on the coast. 



In connection with this subject it is curious to remark 

 that Leo Africanus, in his account of the hilly range of 

 the Djebel Hadid, makes no allusion to the working of the 

 mines there, although his work contains frequent reference 

 to the extraction of metals, not excepting iron, from mines 

 in the Grreat Atlas. In his day the Djebel Hadid seems 

 to have had a rather numerous population of Bereber 

 stock. He describes them as of gentle and inoffensive 

 manners, who expelled from among them men guilty of 

 robbery and violence. They had been much molested by 

 the Arabs of the neighbouring plains, and had agreed to 

 purchase tranquillity by the payment of black mail in the 

 form of tribute, when the reigning Sultan, whose policy 

 it was to protect and favour the Bereber population, 

 despatched a military force (which Leo Africanus himself 

 accompanied), brought the Arabs to order, and relieved the 

 Berebers from tribute. At the present day the Shelluh 

 stock has apparently disappeared from this part of the 

 country, being either driven away, or absorbed by inter- 

 marriage into the surrounding Arab population. 



A young man, the son of one of the wealthiest Jews in 

 Mogador, had been invited by Mr. Carstensen to accom- 

 pany him in this excursion. He was absolutely ignorant 

 of the country beyond what he may have learned in a daily 

 canter over the sands at Mogador, and was far less fitted for 

 rough life than the majority of English young ladies of the 

 upper class. Everything in tent life seemed to him strange 



