Vol. 55.] GEOLOGY OF SOUTHEEN MOEOCCO AND THE ATLAS. 205 



(3) The Mountains in Glauwa and Misfiwa. 



In passing westward to the next glen to be explored, the traveller's 

 route takes him across the lower and outer ranges of the provinces 

 of Grlauwa and Misfiwa. Leaving the Wad Gadafc above Enzel, 

 he crosses first a series of red shales backed by an outcrop of basalt. 

 The traveller finds himself on an undulating surface, with scarped 

 hills on the west, formed by a capping of limestone over the shales. 

 Irregular folds bring these beds to the surface in different directions. 

 One of these folds has been fractured along the anticline, and forms 

 a small valley, from which the rocks dip on either side. 



An intrusion of a more northerly boss or dyke of basalt seems 

 to have had something to do with these folds. At one place may be 

 seen a circular depression through which runs the Wad Misfiwa, 

 and in which a boss of basalt crops up, while all around the lime- 

 stones dip towards the various points of the compass. 



It is in this province of Misfiwa that the boulder-beds described 

 by Maw,^ and to which he ascribes a glacial origin, are found. It 

 might fairly be assumed, I think, that a glacial deposit several 

 thousand feet thick could hardly be formed in any very restricted 

 area. What evidence then, one may ask, is there of the con- 

 tinuation of these boulder-beds eastward or westward of the locality 

 where Maw examined them ? I can only answer that there is 

 none. A couple of miles east of Maw's boulder-bed, the sole 

 evidence of glacial action that came under my notice was a clearly- 

 defined, railway-embankment-like moraine, of no great breadth or 

 thickness, extending, from behind the Zarktan Mountains, lor a 

 distance of 5 or 6 miles towards the plain. This moraine, with the 

 exception of the glacial drift of Teluet, was by far the most im- 

 portant evidence of ice-action that I ever saw in the Atlas. This 

 fact makes me extremely sceptical of Maw's theory : all the more so, 

 as the situation of these boulder-beds is precisely where one would 

 least expect to find such an accumulation, namely, between two 

 great glens, running into the heart of the mountains, which would 

 be the natural channels of the ice from the heights beyond. As 

 I have not myself seen these deposits, I cannot venture any opinion 

 as to their origin. 



As yet the glen of the Wad Misfiwa has not been penetrated, 

 but the glimpses which the traveller obtains, on his way to Urika, 

 of the mountains beyond suggest a change in the geological forma- 

 tion. The bolder and more irregular outlines are eloquent of other 

 rocks than shales and sandstones, and it needs but a glance at 

 the debris m the river-channel to ascertain that graawacke and 

 diorite form part of the inner framework of the great masses into 

 the core of which the Wad Misfiwa cuts its way. 



1 [App. H to Hooker & Ball's ' Mavocco & the Great Atlas ' (1878) pp. 45F- 

 461.] 



