of the Spaniards, formerly known as the Gate of the Sudan.[1] It is a little town with white battlements three-quarters of a mile in circumference, on a steep eminence 600 ft. high. In the 16th century it was seized by the Portuguese; but in 1536 it was captured by Mulai Ahmad, one of the founders of the Sa’adi dynasty. Some 60 m. farther south, at the mouth of a river known by the same name, is the roadstead of Māssa, with a mosque popularly reputed the scene of Jonah’s restoration to terra firma. This port[2] was regularly visited by the Genoese traders in the 16th century, who exported skins, gum, wax, gold and indigo.
Another 50 m. farther south lies Ifni, a landing-place easily recognizable by the shrine of Sidi Worzek, a few miles to the south of which is the Cape Non[3] of the Portuguese. The better known Cape Nūn lies 5 or 6 m. north of the W. Nūn, at the mouth of which is Assāka, a port which the sultan of Morocco opened to foreign trade in 1882, but closed after six months. From Assāka to the mouth of the Dra‛ā the country continues broken and fertile, but farther south it is flatter and more sandy, so that with the Dra‛ā the Sahara may be said to begin.
Character of the Interior.—The backbone of the country is the Great Atlas (Dāren of the Berbers), for which see Atlas. The principal rivers take their rise in the Atlas Mountains, and the headwaters of the Mulwiya, the Sebū, the Um er-Rabī‛a, the Dra‛ā and the Ziz all rise between 32° 20′ and 32° 30′ N., and between 3° 30′ and 5° W. The Mulwiya (Mulucha and Malva of Pliny, &c.) is the river which the French have long wished to make the western boundary of Algeria. Its course is largely unexplored save by native French officials. About 34° 20′ N. General Colvile found it some 200 yds. wide but quite shallow; about 25 m. east of its source, where it is crossed by the route to Zīz, it is already a powerful stream with a deep bed cut in the granite rock, and shortly afterwards it is joined by the W. Sgimmel, a still larger affluent (Rohlfs). Of the lesser streams which flow into the Mediterranean it is enough to mention the W. Martīl or Martin (otherwise W. Bū Sfiha, W. Rās, W. Mejeksa), which falls into the Bay of Tetuan, and is identified with the Tamuda of Pliny and Thaluda of Ptolemy.
On the Atlantic seaboard there are a number of comparatively small streams north of the Sebū, the chief of which is the winding W. Lekkus, with several tributaries. The Sebū (the Subur magnificus et navigabilis of Pliny) may be compared to the Thames in length and width, though not in steadiness and depth of current. At Meshra‛at el-Ksiri, about 70 m. from its mouth, it is about 10 ft. deep in the month of May and more than 460 ft. wide; and, though its banks are 21 ft. high, extensive inundations occur. The tide ascends as far as El-Kanṭara, 15 m. above Ma‛mora, and steam barges with a small draught of water could make their way to the ford just mentioned, and
- ↑ This must not be confounded with Santa Cruz de Mar Pequeña, a post established in 1476 somewhere on this coast by Herrera, lord of the Canary Islands. After obtaining permission to reoccupy the post in 1861, the Spanish government was unable to identify it, though in all probability the original site was the lagoon known as Puerto Cansado, much farther south. But this is now too remote a spot to be worth colonizing, hence the desire to substitute some other. Ifni, on old maps Gueder, was chosen (1878), there being some evidence to show that it was possibly the true site of the ancient fort.
- ↑ See Valentin Ferdinand, Beschreibung West Afrikas (Mem. of the Acad. of Munich, 3rd Class, pt. viii.).
- ↑ No, Non, Nor, Naum, Nāo, are among the various readings. It was another Cape Non to the south of Cape Bojador which seems to have given rise to the proverb, Quem pasar o cabo de Não ou tornara ou não. See Bol. de la Soc. Geogr. (Madrid, 1880), p. 316.
