Salee or Sala, a name which this place bore antecedently to the Roman occupation, is a very ancient city, situate upon the right bank of the river Bouragrag, and near its mouth.  This place was captured in 1263, by Alphonso the Wise, King of Castille, who was a short time after dispossessed of his conquest by the King of Fez; and the Moorish Sultans have kept it to the present time, though the city itself has often attempted to throw off the imperial yoke.  The modern Salee is a large commercial and well-fortified city of the province of Beni-Hassan.  Its port is sufficiently large, but, on account of the little depth of water, vessels of large burden cannot enter it.  The houses and public places are tolerably well-built.  The town is fortified by a battery of twenty-four pieces of cannon fronting the sea, and a redoubt at the entrance of the river.  What navy the Maroquines have, is still laid up here, but the dock-yard is now nearly deserted, and the few remaining ships are unserviceable.  The population, all of whom are Mahometans, are now, as in Corsair times, the bitterest and most determined enemies of Christians, and will not permit a Christian or Jew to reside among them.  The amount of this population, and that of Rabat, is thus given,

Salee Rabat Graeberg 23,000 27,000 Washington 9,000 21,000 Arlett 14,000 24,000

but it is probably greatly exaggerated.

A resident of this country reduces the population of Salee as low as two or three thousand.  For many years, the port of Salee was the rendezvous of the notorious pirates of Morocco, who, together with the city of Rabat, formed a species of military republic almost independent of the Sultan; these Salee rovers were at once the most ferocious and courageous in the world.  Time was, when these audacious freebooters lay under Lundy Island in the British Channel, waiting to intercept British traders!  “Salee,” says Lempriere, “was a place of good commerce, till, addicting itself entirely to piracy, and revolting from the allegiance to its Sovereign, Muley Zidan, that prince in the year 1648, dispatched an embassy to King Charles 1, of England, requesting him to send a squadron of men-of-war to lie before the town, while he attacked by land.”  This request being acceded to, the city was soon reduced, the fortifications demolished, and the leaders of the rebellion put to death.  The year following, the Emperor sent another ambassador to England, with a present of Barbary horses and three hundred Christian slaves.

Rabat, or Er-Rabat, and on some of the foreign maps Nuova Sale, is a modern city of considerable extent, densely populated, strong and well-built, belonging to the province of Temsna.  It is situated on the declivity of a hill, opposite to Salee, on the other side of the river, or left side of the Bouragrag, which is as broad as the Thames at London Bridge, and might be considered as a great suburb, or another quarter of the same city.  It was built by the famous Yakob-el-Mansour, nephew of Abd-el-Moumen, and named by him Rabat-el-Fatah, i.e., “camp of victory,” by which name it is now often mentioned.