Previously to particularizing the population of Morocco, I shall take
the liberty of introducing some general observations on the whole of the
inhabitants of North Africa, and the manner in which this country was
successively peopled and conquered. Greek and Roman classics contain
only meagre and confused notions of the aborigines of North Africa,
although they have left us a mass of details on the Punic wars, and the
struggles which ensued between the Romans and the ancient Libyans,
before the domination of the Latin Republic could be firmly established.
Herodotus cites the names of a number of people who inhabited North
Africa, mostly confining himself to repeat the fables or the more
interesting facts, of which they were the object.

The nomenclature of Strabo is neither so extensive, nor does it contain
more precise or correct information. He mentions the celebrated oasis of
Ammonium and the nation of the Nasamones. Farther west, behind Carthage
and the Numidians, he also notices the Getulians, and after them the
Garamantes, a people who appear to have colonized both the oasis of
Ghadames and the oases of Fezzan. Ptolemy makes the whole of the
Mauritania, including Algeria and Morocco, to be bounded on the south by
tribes, called Gaetuliae and Melanogaeluti, on the south the latter
evidently having contracted alliance of blood with the negroes.

According to Sallust, who supports himself upon the authority of
Heimpsal, the Carthaginian historian, "North Africa was first occupied
by Libyans and Getulians, who were a barbarous people, a heterogeneous
mass, or agglomeration of people of different races, without any form of
religion or government, nourishing themselves on herbs, or devouring the
raw flesh of animals killed in the chase; for first amongst these were
found Blacks, probably some from the interior of Africa, and belonging