Having left Tangiers on 21 June 1883, I first went to Tetuan. Sixty kilometers south of that city lies the village of Chefchaouen; located in the Rif region, in the heart of high mountains, it is famous for its admirable fields and for the abundant waters that travel across the ground and render its soil fertile; I visited the village. From Chefchaouen I returned to Tetuan; then, crossing the fertile province of the Rarb, a vast undulated plateau, I reached Fez. I made use of my stay in this capital to make two excursions, one to Tâza and the other to Sfrou. On 23 August 1883, I left Fez for Meknès, where a caravan leaving for the Tadla awaited me. We got underway. From Meknès to the Tadla, it was nothing but forests and mountains; savage tribes—the Zemmour Chellaha, the Zaïr, and the Zaïan—inhabit this region. The Tadla is made up of a huge plain, white and flat, rocky and barren, immense and monotonous like an ocean; it stretches across both banks of the Oued Oumm er Rebia and all the way out to the foothills of the Middle Atlas. I stayed there for a month, then entered and crossed this range to reach the High Atlas. After seeing the charming town of Demnat, I crossed the Atlas in turn at Tizi n Telouet. This pass, at 2,634 meters in altitude, belongs to the depressed relief called Tizi n Glaoui. To both east and west of this pass white masses rise in high snowy peaks. The forests took up again when I came back out of the Tadla; they had covered the slopes until Tizi n Telouet: there, all greenery ceases; the burning breath of southern winds denudes the mountain's rocky skeleton. I went down the southern face of the High Atlas, crossed the upper Drâa valley, where the river is still a mere mountain stream, reached the Anti-Atlas, and crossed it. From Tizi n Glaoui on, there was not a single tree or patch of grass: hills and valleys, slopes and plains were, all of them, nothing but stones; everything was black and seemed charred; one could think that a fire had devoured these bleak regions.