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Their trade is with the Sahara and Timbuctoo. Fedsi is another considerable city, anciently the capital of Sous, reclining upon a large arm of the river Sous, amidst a fruitful soil, and contains about fourteen thousand inhabitants, who are governed by republican institutions. It is twenty miles E.N.E. of Taroudant. Beneali is a town placed near to the source of the river Draha, in the Atlas.
Some add to this latter, the Province of Draha. Then, a great number of districts are enumerated as comprehended in these large and general divisions; but the true division of all Mussulman States is into tribes. There is besides another, which more approaches to European government, viz, into kaidats, or jurisdictions.
The interior tribes resort thither to purchase and exchange commodities. The market-places form groups of villages. It is not a part of my plan to give any particular description of them. Second, those places distinguished in the kingdom of Morocco, including Sous, Draha, and Tafilett. The latter place is inhabited certainly by Berbers, whose women are famous for their woollen works and weaving.
Formerly, indeed, the authority of the Maroquine Sultans over Touat and the south appears to have been more real and effective. Diego de Torres relates that, in his time, the Shereefs maintained a force of ten thousand cavalry in the provinces of Draha, Tafilett and Jaguriri, and Monsieur Mouette counts Touat as one of the provinces of the Empire.
We had therefore to wait patiently till the sheikh should move his camp further northward. We heard, however, of several large cities in different parts of the Desert: Timbuctoo, a long way to the south; Tintellust and Agadly, to the east; Tafleet and the beautiful oasis of Draha, to the north-west of us, to all of which places travellers were proceeding.
The general surface of Morocco presents a large ridge or lock, with two immense declivities, one sloping N.W. to the ocean, with various rivers and streams descending from this enormous back-bone of the Atlas, and the other fulling towards the Sahara, S.E., feeding the streams and affluents of Wad Draha, and other rivers, which are lost in the sands of the Desert.
Tatta and Akka, are two towns or villages of the province of Draha, situate on the southern confines of Morocco, and points of rendezvous for the caravans in their route over the Great Desert. Tatta is four days direct east from Akka, and placed in 28° 3' lat. and 90° 20' long. west of Paris. Akka consists of two hundred houses, inhabited by Mussulmen, and fifty by Jews.
This shape of the country prevents the formation of those vast Sebhahas, or salt lakes, so frequent in Algeria and the south of Tunis. We are acquainted only with two lakes of fresh or sweet water that of Debaia, traversed by Wad Draha, and that of Gibel-Akhder, which Leo compares to Lake Bolsena.
It is the residence of the chief of the Berbers of Hadrar, on the southern Atlas. Beni-Sabih, Moussabal, or Draha, is the capital of the province of Draha, and a small place, but populated and commercial. On the river of the same name, was the Draha of ancient geography.
The Maroquine Empire, with its present limits, is bounded on the north by the Mediterranean Sea and the Straits of Gibraltar, on the west by the Atlantic Ocean and the Canary and Madeira Islands, on the south by the deserts of Noun Draha and the Sahara, on the east by Algeria, the Atlas, and Tafilett, on the borders of Sahara beyond their eastern slopes. The greatest length from north to south is about five hundred miles, with a breadth from east to west varying considerably at an average of two hundred, containing an available or really dependent territory of some 137,400 square miles, or nearly as large as Spain; and the whole is situate between the 28° and 40° N. Latitude. Monsieur Benou, in his "Description Géographique de l'Empire de Maroc" says Morocco "comprend une superficie d'environ 5,775 myriamètres carrés, un peu plus grande, par conséquant, que celle de la France, qui équivaut
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