Draha and Tafilelt produce a superior breed of goats, and a great abundance of dates: the countries situated near the banks of the rivers of Draha and Tafilelt have several plantations of Indian corn, rice, and indigo. There are upwards of thirty sorts of dates in this part of Bled-el-jerrêde;[32] the best and most esteemed is that called Butube, which is seldom brought to Europe, as it will not keep so long as the Admoh date, the kind imported into England, but considered by the natives of Tafilelt so inferior, that it is given only to the cattle; it is of a very indigestive quality: when a Filelly[33] Arab has eaten too many dates, and finds them oppressive, he has recourse to dried fish, which, it is said, counteracts their ill effects. This fruit forms the principal food of the inhabitants of Bled-el-jerrêde, of which Tafilelt is a part; the produce of one plantation near the imperial palace[34] at Tafilelt sold some few years past for five thousand dollars, although they are so abundant there that a camel load, or three quintals, is sold for two dollars. The face of the country from the Ruins of Pharoah to the palace of Tafilelt is as follows: Tafilelt is eight (erhellat[35] de lowd) days journey on horseback from the Ruins of Pharoah; proceeding eastward from these ruins, the traveller immediately ascends the lofty Atlas, and on the third day, about sun-set, reaches the plains on the other side; the remaining five days journey is through a wide extended plain totally destitute of vegetation, and on which rain never falls; the soil is a whitish clay, impregnated with salt, which when moistened resembles soap. A river, which rises in the Atlas, passes through this vast plain from the south-west to the north-east; at Tafilelt it is described to be as wide as the Morbeya at Azamor in West Barbary, that is, about the width of the Thames at Putney; the water of this river receives a brackish taste, by passing through the saline plains: after running a course of fifteen erhellat,[36] or four hundred and fifty miles, it is absorbed in the desert of Angad. It has several (l’uksebbat) castles of terrace wall on its banks, inhabited by the (Sherreefs) princes of the reigning family of Marocco. Latterly wheat and barley have been cultivated near the river and the castles. The food of the inhabitants, who are Arabs, consists, for the most part (as already observed), in dates; their principal meal is after sun-set, the heat being so intolerable as not to suffer them to eat any thing substantial while the sun is above the horizon.