382 APPENDIX C. 



likely to detract from the achievements of his own people, 

 expressly attributes the origin of most of them to the ' antichi 

 Africani,' by which designation he commonly speaks of the 

 primitive Bereber stock; and, as regards the smaller towns 

 lying in the low country north of the Atlas, he frequently 

 speaks of the population being harassed by the Arabs, then, as 

 at this day, leading a semi-nomad existence in the plains. 



If we confront his description with the present state of the 

 country we find comparative ruin and desolation. In all the 

 southern provinces we now find but two inland cities of any 

 importance, Marocco and Tarudant, and these dwindled to a 

 mere tithe of their ancient wealth and population. Where the 

 traveller in the sixteenth century found thriving towns at in- 

 tervals of ten or twelve miles, there are now miserable villages 

 whose wretched inhabitants maintain a bare existence, and are 

 often unable to pay the imposts which leave no surplus behind. 

 It does not appear that in the great province of Haha there is 

 now a single place that can be called a town except the ruined 

 seaport of Agadir, destined by nature to be the chief port of 

 South Marocco, but closed to trade by the caprice of a Sultan. 

 Throughout the interior we saw or heard of but two places that 

 could by courtesy be called towns, Amsmiz and Moulai Ibrahim. 

 Although no statistics are available, it seems a moderate 

 estimate if we reckon that the present population of South 

 Marocco cannot exceed one-third of what it was when Leo 

 wrote. 



Along with the decay of wealth and population, we naturally 

 find that of everything that could raise the people in the scale 

 of existence. In Leo's day iron and copper mines were worked 

 in many places in the Atlas, and various handicrafts exercised, 

 of which there is now no trace. Education, such as it was, was 

 widely spread ; and in some parts of the Atlas where it was ab- 

 sent, the traveller noted the fact as a proof of the low condition 

 of the population. He notes as a curious incident that when 

 he visited the mountain district of Semele, where the people 

 were ignorant of reading and writing, they forced him to 

 remain nine days, hearing and deciding all pending cases of 

 litigation ; in doing which, as he records, he had to act both as 

 judge and notary, there being no one competent to write down 

 the decisions of the court. 



