GEOGRAPHY OF SOUTH JIAHOCCO. 383 



Several incidental statements in the work of Leo Africanus 

 suggest an inquiry of considerable interest. There is nothing 

 in the published annals of the Portuguese wars with the Moors 

 to suggest a belief that the former at any time established their 

 authority in the interior of South Marocco, or even undertook 

 any inland expeditions. From Leo's narrative it appears, how- 

 ever, that, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, they had, 

 at least occasionally, penetrated much farther into the interior 

 than has commonly been supposed, and that the authority of the 

 Portuguese king was in some places paramount. At Tumeglast, a 

 place in the plain of Marocco, probably not far from the present 

 village of Frouga, Leo lodged in the house with a Moor, named 

 Sidi Yehie, who had come in the name of the king of Portugal 

 to levy tribute, the same Moor having been made by the king 

 chief (capitano) of the district of Azasi. Elsewhere he relates 

 that the king of Marocco sent an expeditionary force against an 

 independent chief in the district of Hanimmei, forty miles east 

 of the city of Marocco (apparently in the present province of 

 Demnet), and which force was accompanied by 300 Portuguese 

 cavalry. The expedition was unsuccessful, the Sultan's troops 

 were defeated, and, according to the narrative, not one of the 

 Christian horsemen returned from the disaster. It seems 

 highly improbable that the Portuguese should have taken part 

 in such an affair if their troops had not at the time been sta- 

 tioned somewhere in the interior. 



After Leo African vts but little of a definite kind is to be 

 learned from subsequent writers as to the geography of South 

 Marocco. In 1791 the reigning Sultan applied to General 

 O'Hara, then Governor of Gibraltar, for the assistance of an 

 English physician to treat his favourite son, Mouley Absalom, 

 who was at the time governing the province of Sous. Mr. 

 Lempriere, an army-surgeon, undertook the office, and travelled 

 by the west coast to Agadir, and thence to Tarudant. After 

 successfully treating his patient, he was partly induced, and 

 partly forced, to travel to the city of Marocco, whence, after 

 considerable delay and difficulty, he succeeded in returning to 

 Gibraltar. Mr. Lempriere probably travelled across the Atlas 

 by the road from Tarudant to Imintanout, but his narrative 

 supplies little information to the geographer. He speaks of the 

 distance from Tarudant to the northern foot of the Atlas as an 



