feet thick, strengthened with bastions.  There is a small port, or dock, on the north side of the town, capable of admitting small vessels, and the roadstead is good, where large vessels can anchor about two miles off the shore.  Its traffic is principally with Rabat, but there is also some export trade to foreign parts.  Its population is two or three hundred. [23] After proceeding two days south-west, you arrive at Saffee, or properly Asafee, called by the natives Asfee, and anciently Soffia or Saffia, is a city of great antiquity, belonging to the province of Abda, and was built by the Carthaginians near Cape Pantin.  Its site lies between two hills, in a valley which is exposed to frequent inundations.  The roadstead of Saffee is good and safe during summer, and its shipping once enabled it to be the centre of European commerce on the Atlantic coast.  The population amounts to about one thousand, including a number of miserable Jews.  The walls of Saffee are massy and high.  The Portuguese captured this city in 1508, voluntarily abandoning it in 1641.  The country around is not much cultivated, and presents melancholy deserts; but there is still a quantity of corn grown.  About forty miles distant, S.E., is a large salt lake.  Saffee is one and a half day’s journey from Mogador.

Equidistant between Mazagran and Saffee is the small town of El-Waladia, situate on an extensive plain.  Persons report that near this spot is a spacious harbour, or lagune, sufficiently capacious to contain four or five hundred sail of the line; but, unfortunately, the entrance is obstructed by some rocks, which, however, it is added, might easily be blown up.  The lagune is also exposed to winds direct for the ocean.  The town, enclosed within a square wall, and containing very few inhabitants, is supposed to have been built in the middle of the seventeenth century by the Sultan Waleed. after whom it was named.

This brings us to Mogador, which, with Aghadir, have already been described.

CHAPTER V.

Description of the Imperial Cities or Capitals of the Empire.—­ El-Kesar.—­Mequinez.—­Fez.—­Morocco.—­The province of Tafilett, the birth-place of the present dynasty of the Shereefs.

The royal or capitals of the interior now demand our attention, which are El-Kesar, Mequinez, Fez, and Morocco.

El-Kesar, or Al-Kesar, [24] styled also El-Kesue-Kesar, is so named and distinguished because it owes its enlargement to the famous Sultan of Fez, Almansor, who improved and beautified it about the year 1180, and designed this city as a magazine and rendezvous of troops for the great preparations he was making at the time for the conquest of Granada.  El-Kesar is in the province of the Gharb, and situate on the southern bank of the Luccos; here is a deep and rapid stream, flowing W. 1/4 N.W.  The town is nearly as large as Tetuan, but the streets are dirty and narrow, and many of the houses in a ruinous condition, This fortified place was once adorned by some fifteen mosques, but only two or three are now fit for service.  The population does not exceed four or five thousand souls, and some think this number over-estimated.