[30] If Coming Direct From Government, It Would Have Greater Weight.

He thinks, besides, there are a good number of Moors who are favourable to abolition.

Of the connexion between the east and Morocco, he says, all the Barbary States look up to the Sultan of Constantinople as to a great authority, and during the last few years, an active correspondence, on religious matters, has been carried on between Morocco and Constantinople, chiefly through a celebrated doctor of the name of Yousef. If the Turkish Sultan, therefore, would _bona-fide_ abolish the slave-markets, I have no doubt this would produce an impression in Morocco favourable to abolition.

During the time I was in Morocco, I distributed some Arabic tracts, translated from the English by Professor Lee of Cambridge, on the abolition of slavery. A few Arabic Bibles and Hebrew New Testaments were also placed at my disposal for circulation by the Societies. I also wrote an Anti-slavery circular to the British merchants of Mogador, on Lord Brougham's Act.

CHAPTER VIII.

El-Jereed, the Country of Dates. - Its hard soil. - Salt Lake. Its vast extent. - Beautiful Palm-trees. - The Dates, a staple article of Food. - Some Account of the Date-Palm. - Made of Culture. - Delicious Beverage. - Tapping the Palm. - Meal formed from the Dates. - Baskets made of the Branches of the Tree. - Poetry of the Palm. - Its Irrigation. - Palm-Groves. - Collection of Tribute by the "Bey of the Camp."

El-Jereed, or Belad-el-Jereed, the country of dates, or literally, the country of the palm branches, is a part of the Sahara, or the hot dry country lying in the immediate vicinity of the Great Desert. Its principal features of soil and climate offer nothing different from other portions of the Sahara, or the Saharan regions of Algeria and Morocco. The Belad-el-Jereed, therefore, may be properly called the Tunisian Sahara. Shaw observes generally of Jereed: - "This part of the country, and indeed the whole tract of land which lies between the Atlantic and Egypt, is by most of the modern geographers, called Biledulgerid, a name which they seem to have borrowed from Bloid-el-Jeridde, of the Arabians, who merely signify the dry country; though, if we except the Jeridde, a small portion of it which is situate on this side of Lesser Syrtis, and belongs to the Tunisians, all the rest of it is known by no other general name than the Sahara or Sahra, among those Arabs, at least, whom I have conversed with."

Besides the grand natural feature of innumerable lofty and branching palms, whose dark depending slender leaves, are depicted by the Arabian poet as hanging gracefully like the dishevelled ringlets of a beautiful woman in distress, there is the vast salt lake, El-Sibhah, or literally the "salt plain," and called by some modern geographers the Sibhah-el-Soudeeat, or Lake of Marks, from having certain marks made of the trunks of the palm, to assist the caravans in their marches across its monotonous samelike surface.

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