Colonel Keating says, “As far as parapets, ramparts, embrasures, cavaliers, batteries, and casemates constitute a fortress, this town is one; but the walls are flimsy, the cavaliers do not command, the batteries do not flash, and the casemates are not bomb-proof.  The embrasures are so close that not one in three upon the ramparts could be worked, if they were mounted, which they are not.  All their guns, which have been only twelve months here, are already in very bad order, from exposure to the climate and surf.  The casemates are so damp, that their interior is covered constantly with a thick nitrous incrustation.”  Nevertheless, the Moors have such a superstitious veneration for fortifications built by a parcel of renegades, that they will not permit Christians to walk on these ramparts.  But what is most unfortunate for the defence of Mogador, the water could be instantly cut off by destroying its aqueduct.

The population is between thirteen and fifteen thousand souls, including four thousand Jews, and fifty Christians, who carry on an important commerce, principally with London and Marseilles.  Excepting Tangier, it is now the only port which carries on uninterrupted commercial relations with Europe.

Mogador is situate in the midst of shifting sand-hills, that separate it from the cultivated parts of the country, which are distant from four to tweleve miles.  These sands have an extraordinary appearance on returning from the interior; they look like huge pyramidal batteries raised round the suburbs of the city for its defence.  The inhabitants are supplied with water by means of an aqueduct, fed by the little river, or rill of Wai Elghored, two miles distant south.  The climate hereabouts is extremely salubrious, the rocky sandy site of the city being removed from all marshes or low lands, which produce pestiferous miasma or fever-exhaling vegetation.  Rarely does it rain, but the whole tract of the adjoining country, between the Atlas and the sea, is tempered on the one side by the loftiest ranges of that mountain, and on the other, by the north-east trade winds, blowing continually.  Mogador is in Lat. 31 deg. 32’ 40” N., and Long. 9 deg. 35’ 30” W.

The environs offer nothing but desolate sands, except some gardens for growing a few vegetables, and a sprinkling of flowers, which, by dint of perseverance, have been planted in the sand of the sea-shore.  This is a remarkable instance of human culture turning the most hopelessly sterile portions of the world to account.  These sands of Mogador are only a portion of a vast and almost interminable link, which girdles the north-western coast of the African continent, and is only broken in upon at short intervals, from Morocco to Senegal, like a shifting, heaving, and ever-varying rampart against the aggressions of the ocean.  Both wind and sea have probably equally contributed to the formation of this vast belt of shifting sands.

The distance from Tangier to Mogador, by ordinary courier, is twelve days, but no traveller could be expected to perform the journey in less than twenty days.