r run through our veins. We took a walk in the gardens, and
were surprised at the quantities of doves fluttering among the
date-trees; they were the common blue or Barbary doves. In the environs
of Mogador, these doves are the principal birds shot.

Toser, or Touzer, the _Tisurus_ of ancient geography, is a considerable
town of about six thousand souls, with several villages in its
neighbourhood.

The impression of Toser made upon our tourists agrees with that of the
traveller, Desfontaines, who writes of it in 1784:--"The Bey pitched his
tent on the right side of the city, if such can be called a mass of
_mud-houses_." The description corresponds also with that of Dr. Shaw,
who says that "the villages of the Jereed are built of mud-walls and
rafters of palm-trees." Evidently, however, some improvement has been
made of late years. The Arabs of Toser, on the contrary, and which very
natural, protested to the French scientific commission that Toser was
the finest city in El-Jereed. They pretend that it has an area as large
as Algiers, surrounded with a mud wall, twelve or fifteen feet high, and
crenated. In the centre is a vast open space, which serves for a
market-place. Toser has mosques, schools, Moorish baths--a luxury rare
on the confines of the Desert, fondouks or inns, &c. The houses have
flat terraces, and are generally well-constructed, the greater part
built from the ruins of a Roman town; but many are now dilapidated from
the common superstitious cause of not repairing or rebuilding old
houses. The choice material for building is brick, mostly unbaked or
sun-dried.

Most of these houses stand detached.

Toser, situate in a plain, is commanded from the north-west by a little
rocky mountain, whence an abundant spring takes its source, called
_Meshra_, running along the walls of the city southward, divides itself
afterwards in three branches, waters the gardens, and, after having
irrigated the plantations of several other villages, loses itself in the
sand at a short distance. The wells within the city of Toser are
insufficient for the consumption of the inhabitants, who fetch water
from Wad Meshra. The neighbouring villages are Belad-el-Ader, Zin,
Abbus; and the sacred villages are Zaouweeat, of Tounseea, Sidi Ali Bou
Lifu, and Taliraouee. The Arabs of the open country, and who deposit
their grain in and trade with these villages, are Oulad Sidi Sheikh,
Oulad Sidi Abeed, and Hammania. The dates of Toser are e