Shtouka, or Stuka, is, according to some, a large town or village; or, as stated by Davidson, a district.  The fact is, many African districts are called by the name of a principal town or village in them, and vice versa.  This place stands on the banks of the Wad-el-Mesah, and is inhabited by some fifteen hundred Shelouhs, who are governed by a Sheikh, nearly independent of Morocco.

On Talent and Shtouka, Mr. Davidson remarks.  “There is no town called Stuka; it is a district; none that I can find called Talent; there is Tilin.  The Mesah flows through Stuka, in which district are twenty settlements, or rather towns, some of which are large.  They are known in general by the names of the Sheikhs who inhabit them.  I stopped at Sheikh Hamed’s.  Tilin was distant from this spot a day’s journey in the mountains towards the source of the river.  If by Talent, Tissert is meant, Oferen (a town) is distant six miles.”

On the province of Sous generally, Don J.A.  Conde has this note:—­

“In this region (Sous) near the sea, is the temple erected in honour of the prophet Jonas; it was there he was cast out of the belly of the whale.”  This temple, says Assed Ifriki, is made of the bones of whales which perish on this coast.  A little further on, he alludes to the breaking of horses, and being skilful in bodily exercises, for the Moors and Numidians have always been renowned in that respect.

In the lesser and more remote towns, I have followed generally the enumeration of Count Graeberg, but there are many other places on the maps, with varieties of names or differences of position.  Our geography of the interior of Morocco, especially in the South, is still very obscure, and I have only selected those towns and places of whose present existence there is no question.  My object, in the above enumeration, has been simply to give the reader a proximate estimate of the population and resources of this country.  Of the strength and number of the tribes of the interior, we know scarcely anything.  The names of the towns and villages of the South, so frequently beginning and ending with T., sufficiently indicate the preponderance of the Berber population, under the names of Shelouh or Amazirgh, whilst the great error of writers has been to represent the Arabs as more numerous than this aboriginal population.

Monsieur E. Renou, in his geographical description of the Empire of Morocco (Vol.  VIII. of the “Exploration Scientifique,” &c.) foolishly observes that there is no way of arriving at correct statistics of this empire, except by comparing it with Algeria; and then remarks, which is true enough, “Malheureusement, la population de l’Algerie n’est pas encore bien connue.”  When, however, he asserts that the numbers of population given by Jackson and Graeberg are gross, and almost unpardonable exaggerations, given at hazard, I am obliged to agree with him from the personal experience I had in Morocco, and these Barbary countries generally.