We did not visit the remains of ancient miners’ work that are visible at several places about the base of the hill; but we found scoriæ in abundance, and some fragments of the ironstone from which the mountain takes its name. It is not easy to conjecture the date at which these iron mines can have been worked. There is no reason to believe that any Moorish ruler ever attempted to turn them to account; and although the Portuguese once built a small fort near Mogador, it does not seem probable that they ever held control over the adjoining country. As to the long interval between the establishment of Roman power in North Marocco and the disappearance of Roman civilisation after the Saracen conquest history is silent, and it would be as unsafe to assert as to deny that the workings of Djebel Hadid are to be referred to that epoch. The only apparent alternative is to attribute them to a still more remote period, when Carthaginian colonies flourished on the coast. In connection with this subject it is curious to remark that Leo Africanus, in his account of the hilly range of the Djebel Hadid, makes no allusion to the working of the mines there, although his work contains frequent reference to the extraction of metals, not excepting iron, from mines in the Great Atlas. In his day the Djebel Hadid seems to have had a rather numerous population of Bereber stock. He describes them as of gentle and inoffensive manners, who expelled from among them men guilty of robbery and violence. They had been much molested by the Arabs of the neighbouring plains, and had agreed to purchase tranquillity by the payment of black mail in the form of tribute, when the reigning Sultan, whose policy it was to protect and favour the Bereber population, despatched a military force (which Leo Africanus himself accompanied), brought the Arabs to order, and relieved the Berebers from tribute. At the present day the Shelluh stock has apparently disappeared from this part of the country, being either driven away, or absorbed by inter-marriage into the surrounding Arab population.