Travels in Morocco, Volume 2. by James Richardson
page 68 of 181 (37%)
page 68 of 181 (37%)
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Africa, as Keatinge says, their "King Arthur." Tradition has it that
Elmansor went in disguise to Mecca, and returned no more. Mankind love this indefinite and obscure end of their heroes. Moses went up to the mountain to die there in eternal mystery. At a short distance from Rabat is Shella, or its ruins, a small suburb situated on the summit of a hill, which contains the tombs of the royal family of the Beni-Merini, and the founder of Rabat, and is a place of inviolate sanctity, no infidel being permitted to enter therein. Monsieur Chenier supposes Shella to have been the site of the metropolis of the Carthaginian colonies. Of these two cities, on the banks of the Wad-Bouragrag, Salee was, according to D'Anville, always a place of note as at the present time, and the farthest Roman city on the coast of the Atlantic, being the frontier town of the ancient Mauritania Tingitana. Some pretend that all the civilization which has extended itself beyond this point is either Moorish, or derived from European colonists. The river Wad-Bouragrag is somewhat a natural line of demarcation, and the products and animals of the one side differ materially from those of the other, owing to the number and less rapid descent of the streams on the side of the north, and so producing more humidity, whilst the south side, on the contrary, is of a higher and drier soil. Fidallah, or Seid Allah, _i. e_., "grace," or "gift of God," is a maritime village of the province of Temsa, founded by the Sultan Mohammed in 1773. It is a strong place, and surrounded with walls. Fidallah is situated on a vast plain, near the river Wad Millah, where there is a small port, or roadstead, to which the corsairs were wont to resort when they could not reach Salee, long before the village was built, called Mersa Fidallah. The place contains a thousand souls, |
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