Before The Occupation Of Algeria By The French, All The Cities Were
Vulgarly Calculated At Double, Or Treble Their Amount Of Population.
This Has Also Been The Case Even In India, Where We Could Obtain, With
Care, Tolerably Correct Statistics.
The prejudices of oriental and
Africo-eastern people are wholly set against statistics, or numbering
the population.
No mother knows the age of her own child. It is
ill-omened, if not an affront, to ask a man how many children he has;
and to demand the amount of the population of a city, is either
constructed as an infringement upon the prerogative of the omnipotent
Creator, who knows how many people he creates, and how to take care of
them, or it is the question of a spy, who is seeking to ascertain the
strength or weakness of the country. Europeans can, therefore, rarely
obtain any correct statistical information in Morocco: all is proximate
and conjectural. [18] I am anxious, nevertheless, to give some
particulars respecting the population, in order that we may really have
a proximate idea of the strength and resources of this important
country. In describing the towns and cities of the various provinces, I
shall divide them into,
1. Towns and cities of the coast.
2. Capital or royal cities.
3. Other towns and remarkable places in the interior [19].
The towns and ports, on the Mediterranean, are of considerable interest,
but our information is very scanty, except as far as relates to the
_praesidios_ of Spain, or the well-known and much frequented towns of
Tetuan and Tangier.
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