65 
Its bed forms an excavation whose sides are almost per- 
pendicular, and about twenty-six feet high above the 
level of the water, which runs west. The banks are clay 
and very slippery. All the rivers and brooks which I 
passed on my road have their beds cut in the same man- 
ner; and as they run from east to west, and from the 
chain of mountains to the sea, their shores may be look- 
ed upon as ditches formed by nature, and much adapt- 
ed to military defence, which is aided by the number 
of their angles* 
In the morning we crossed a mountainous country 
till we came into a vast plain, where we could discover 
the chain of the mountains at about twenty English 
miles to the east. A high mountain, separated from the 
others, and at whose foot the town of Fez was said to 
be situated, seemed to be at a distance of about twenty- 
eight English miles to the S. E. The horizon was lost 
in small hills to the E. and extensive plains formed 
the intermediate space. At ten in the morning we pas- 
sed some small lakes which swarmed with innumerable 
tortoises. 
The ground was clayey in the mountains, and in some 
parts of the plains; the rest was common sand with a 
chalky mixture. In the forenoon we passed a rock of 
primitive chalk-stone, in vertical beds. The bed of clay 
which covers the country is very thick, and formed in 
horizontal layers. I think these immense beds are the 
effects of the eruptions of some submarine volcano for 
many centuries. 
All the clay ground was covered with thistle. On the 
sandy soil we saw spartium, and a few other plants 
but none with flowers or fruit. 
I saw that day many douars. In one of them a mar- 
riage feast was celebrating. According to the custom of 
VOL. I, K 
