Had been Bashaws, or ministers of this and former reigns.
The isle, however, is finely situate off the Atlantic, fanned and swept
by healthy gales, and the prisoners suffer only seclusion from the
Continent. The exiles never attempt to escape, but quietly submit to
their destiny.
In the port, there are only ten or twelve feet of water at ebb tide, so
that large vessels cannot enter, but must lie at anchor a mile and a
half off the Western battery, which extends along the north-western side
of the port. Such vessels do not lie there except in the summer months,
and then with extreme caution, being, as they are, right off in the
Atlantic, on one of its most dangerous coasts. There are some tolerable
batteries, but they cannot long resist a European bombardment, which was
demonstrated by the French.
Colonel Keating says, "As far as parapets, ramparts, embrasures,
cavaliers, batteries, and casemates constitute a fortress, this town is
one; but the walls are flimsy, the cavaliers do not command, the
batteries do not flash, and the casemates are not bomb-proof. The
embrasures are so close that not one in three upon the ramparts could be
worked, if they were mounted, which they are not. All their guns, which
have been only twelve months here, are already in very bad order, from
exposure to the climate and surf. The casemates are so damp, that their
interior is covered constantly with a thick nitrous incrustation."
Nevertheless, the Moors have such a superstitious veneration for
fortifications built by a parcel of renegades, that they will not permit
Christians to walk on these ramparts. But what is most unfortunate for
the defence of Mogador, the water could be instantly cut off by
destroying its aqueduct.
The population is between thirteen and fifteen thousand souls, including
four thousand Jews, and fifty Christians, who carry on an important
commerce, principally with London and Marseilles. Excepting Tangier, it
is now the only port which carries on uninterrupted commercial relations
with Europe.
Mogador is situate in the midst of shifting sand-hills, that separate it
from the cultivated parts of the country, which are distant from four to
tweleve miles. These sands have an extraordinary appearance on returning
from the interior; they look like huge pyramidal batteries raised round
the suburbs of the city for its defence. The inhabitants are supplied
with water by means of an aqueduct, fed by the little river, or rill of
Wai Elghored, two miles distant south. The climate hereabouts is
extremely salubrious, the rocky sandy site of the city being removed
from all marshes or low lands, which produce pestiferous miasma or
fever-exhaling vegetation. Rarely does it rain, but the whole tract of
the adjoining country, between the Atlas and the sea, is tempered on the
one side by the loftiest ranges of that mountain, and on the other, by
the north-east trade winds, blowing continually. Mogador is in Lat. 31 deg.
32' 40" N., and Long. 9 deg. 35' 30" W.
The environs offer nothing but desolate sands, except some gardens for
growing a few vegetables, and a sprinkling of flowers, which, by dint of
perseverance, have been planted in the sand of the sea-shore. This is a
remarkable instance of human culture turning the most hopelessly sterile
portions of the world to account. These sands of Mogador are only a
portion of a vast and almost interminable link, which girdles the
north-western coast of the African continent, and is only broken in upon
at short intervals, from Morocco to Senegal, like a shifting, heaving,
and ever-varying rampart against the aggressions of the ocean. Both wind
and sea have probably equally contributed to the formation of this vast
belt of shifting sands.
The distance from Tangier to Mogador, by ordinary courier, is twelve
days, but no traveller could be expected to perform the journey in less
than twenty days.
Other courier distances are as follows:
Tangier to Rabat 4 days
Rabat to Fez 2 days
Fez to Mickas 12 hours
Rabat to Morocco 8 days
Mogador to Morocco 21/2 days
Mogador to Santa Cruz 3 days
Mogador to Wadnoun 8 days
Santa Cruz to Teradant 11/2 days
A notice of the interesting, though now abandoned part of Aghadir, may
not be out place here. Aghadir, (called also Agheer and by the
Portuguese, Santa Cruz) means in Berber "walls." It is the Gurt Luessem
of Leo Africanus. The town is small, but strong, and well fortified, and
is situate upon the top of a high and abrupt rock, not far from the
promontory of Gheer, which is the western termination of the Atlas, and
where it dips into or strikes the ocean.
On the south, close by, is the river Sous, and formerly Aghadir was the
capital of this province.
Aghadir has a spacious and most secure port, which is the last port
southwards on the Atlantic. Indeed, this bay is the finest roadstead in
the whole empire. Mr. Jackson says, that during his residence at Aghadir
of three years, not a single ship was lost or injured. The principal
battery of Aghadir, a place equally strong by nature and art, is half
way down the western declivity of the mountain, and was originally
intended to protect a fine spring of water close to the sea. This fort
also commands the approaches to the town, both from the north and the
south, and the shipping in the bay.
Santa Cruz was converted from a fisherman's settlement into a city, and
was fortified by the Portuguese in 1503. Muley Hamed el-Hassan besieged
it in 1536 with an army of fifty thousand men, and owing to the accident
of a powder-magazine blowing up and making a breach, the Sultan forced
an entrance, to the astonishment of the Portuguese, who were all
slaughtered.
