difficult access, that vessels of two hundred tons can scarcely enter
it. In winter, the roadstead is very bad; [21] the houses are
substantially built; and the fortifications are good, because made by
the Spaniards, who captured this place in 1610, but it was re-taken by
Muley Ishmael in 1689. The climate is soft and delicious. In the
environs, cotton is cultivated, and charcoal is made from the Araish
forest of cork-trees. El-Araish exports cork, wool, skins, bark, beans,
and grain, and receives in exchange iron, cloth, cottons, muslins, sugar
and tea. The lions and panthers of the mountains of Beni Arasis
sometimes descend to the plains to drink, or carry off a supper of a
sheep or bullock. Azgar, the name of this district, connects it with one
of the powerful tribes of the Touaricks; and, probably, a section of
this tribe of Berbers were resident here at a very early period (at the
same time the Berber term _ayghar_ corresponds to the Arabic _bahira_,
and signifies "plain.")

The ancient Lixus deserves farther mention on account of the interest
attached to its coins, a few of which remain, although but very recently
deciphered by archeologists. There are five classes of them, and all
Phoenician, although the city now under Roman rule, represents the
vineyard riches of this part of ancient Mauritania by two bunches of
grapes, so that, after nearly three thousand years, the place has
retained its peculiarity of producing abundant vines, El-Araish, being
"the vine trellices;" others have stamped on them "two ears of corn" and
"two fishes," representing the fields of corn waving on the plains of
Morocco, and the fish (shebbel especially) which fills its northern
rivers.

Strabo says:--"Mauritania generally, excepting a small part desert, is
rich and fertile, well watered with rivers and washed with lakes;