Fez, indeed, could make no bona-fide resistance to an European army.  The manufactures are principally woollen haiks, silk handkerchiefs, slippers and shoes of excellent leather, and red caps of felt, commonly called the fez; the first fabrication of these red caps appears to have been in this city.  The Spanish Moorish immigrants introduced the mode of dressing goat and sheep-skins, at first known by the name of Cordovan from Cordova; but, since the Moorish forced immigration, they have acquired the celebrated name of Morocco.  The chief food of the people is the national Moorish dish of cuscasou, a fine grained paste, cooked by steam, with melted fat, oil, or other liquids poured upon the dish, and sometimes garnished with pieces of fowl and other meat.  A good deal of animal food is consumed, but few vegetables.  The climate is mild in the winter, but suffocating with heat in the summer.  This city is placed in latittude 34 deg. 6’ 3” N. longitude 4 deg. 38” 15’W.

Morocco, or strictly in Arabic, Maraksh, which signifies “adorned,” is the capital of the South, and frequently denominated the capital of the Empire, but it is only a triste shadow of its former greatness.  It is sometimes honoured with the title of “the great city,” or “country.”  Morocco occupies an immense area of ground, being seven miles in circumference, the interior of which is covered with heaps of ruins or more pleasantly converted into gardens.  Morocco was built in 1072 or 1073 by the famous Yousel-Ben-Tashfin, King of Samtuna, and of the dynasty of the Almoravedi, or Marabouts.  Its site is that of an ancient city, Martok, founded in the remotest periods of the primitive Africans, or aboriginal Berbers, in whose language it signifies a place where everything good and pleasant was to be found in abundance.

Bocanum Hermerum of the Ancients was also near the site of this capital, Morocco attained its greatest prosperity shortly after its foundation, and since then it has only declined.  In the twelfth century, under the reign of Jakoub Almanzor, there were 10,000 houses and 700,000 souls, (if indeed we can trust their statistics); but, at the present time, there are only some forty to fifty thousand inhabitants, including 4,000 Shelouhs and 5,000 Jews.  Ali Bey, in 1804, estimates its population at only 30,000, and Captain Washington in 1830 at 80, or 100,000.  This vast city lies at the foot of the Atlas, or about fourteen miles distant, spread over a wide and most lovely plain of the province of Rhamma, watered by the river Tensift, six miles from the gates of the capital.

The mosques are numerous and rich, the principal of which are El-Kirtubeeah, of elegant architecture with an extremely lofty minaret; El-Maazin, which is three hundred years old, and a magnificent building; and Benious, built nearly seven hundred years ago of singular construction, uniting modern and ancient architecture.  The mosque of the patron saint is Sidi Belabbess.  Nine gates open in the city-walls; these are strong and high, and flanked with towers, except on the south east where the Sultan’s palace stands.  The streets are crooked, of uneven width, unpaved, and dirty in winter, and full of dust in summer.