Journal of a Tour in Marocco and the Great Atlas - Livres de poche

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ch. u. RIFF MOUNTAINS. 35 helped us to recover everything of importance. The watch and note-book were safe; but the contents of a broken bottle of claret had somehow run under the cover of Hooker's mattress, and, placed as we were, the attempt to rearrange it was something like the classical difficulty of ' swopping horses in the middle of a stream.' Cautiously creeping about to see what had befallen our companions, we found the faithful Bulbo (with more practical meteorological instinct than we had displayed) safely ensconced on the lee side of the low parapet. The shapeless heap, rolled up in the multitudinous folds of a white haik, could not have been recognised, but for the inevitable long gun in the red case that lay beside it. Little sleep was to be expected for the remainder of the night, and with the first light we began to move. Though the wind was falling, we could not attempt to avail ourselves of Maw's cooking apparatus, and we agreed to postpone breakfast till we should reach some more sheltered spot. The vegetation here was little advanced, and we saw but few plants in flower, save a little yellow Lithospermum (L. apulum), on our way to the top of the pass, which was covered with low brushwood and shrubs of the same species that we had seen near Tangier. We halted in a hollow place near the highest point, where we strangely omitted to take observations for altitude; and after a slight repast hurried down the slope in a SSE. direction, towards the valley of the Tetuan river. We here enjoyed a fine view of the snow-streaked mass of the Riff Mountains, which we may call, from their best known peak, the Beni Hassan Group. The mountain ranges of the Riff?extending for about 180 miles from Tetuan to the mouth of the Oued Mou- louya, which lies very near the Fr...