About twenty-five miles south of Rabat is a square building called (El Monsoria) the Building of El Monsor, it having been erected by that Sultan in the 12th century, as a refuge for travellers during the night; as the adjacent country is favourable to the depredations of robbers; and the people of this neighbourhood have been noted, from time immemorial, as mischievous plunderers. Following the coast southward for 25 miles more, we reach Fedala; where a peninsula, which forms an indifferent shelter to small vessels, has been called in some maps an island. The Emperor Seedy Mohammed, before he founded Mogodor, was desirous of building a city here. The situation, as to country and produce, is delightful; and to encourage commerce, he caused the corn to be brought from the Matamores[45] of the adjacent provinces, and allowed it to be shipped here; it being cheap, he induced the merchants to build houses, as a condition of their being allowed to export it; but the place, although an excellent situation, was abandoned soon after the corn was shipped, owing to some new whim of the Emperor; for such is the fickle instability of the Moors, that it is no uncommon thing in this extraordinary country, to see a town deserted before the buildings are all completed, and such indeed was the case with this delightful place. The road here is, I believe, with the exception of that of Agadeer, the only one where ships may ride at anchor in security in winter, which is owing to the land south of the peninsula before mentioned, projecting into the ocean towards the west. About twelve miles to the south of Fedala, is Dar el Beida,[46] a town formerly belonging to Portugal, but now in ruins, and consisting only of some huts. The plains in the vicinage of Dar el Beida are so abundant in grain, that when the old Emperor (Seedy Mohammed) reigned, he received annually for duties on corn shipped at this place, five or six hundred thousand Mexico dollars; but since the accession of his son, the present Emperor, and the consequent prohibition of the exportation of grain, the soil here and elsewhere has lain fallow, as it would be useless for a people, whose mode of life renders their wants so few, to sow corn, without having a market to sell it at; and I myself know, that in consequence of this prohibition, corn had become so cheap, that many husbandmen, after the famine and plague in 1800 had subsided, let their crops stand, the value of them being insufficient to pay the expense of reaping them. Forty-four miles south of Dar el Beida, stands the town of Azamore, in the Arab province of Duquella, at some distance from the mouth of the river Morbeya; the entrance to this river being dangerous, the town of Azamore is not adapted to commerce. The walls built here by the Portuguese are still standing. It was besieged in 1513 by the Duke of Braganza, but abandoned by the Portuguese about a century afterwards.