Tissint to Tazenakht

After new—but vain—efforts to reach the Drâa through Zgid, I decided to go via another route, the Tazenakht route. The road to Zgid, a challenge at all times, was impassable because of the famine ravaging the region; I could find no one to be my escort. Obliged to pass through Tazenakht, where I had already made a long stop, I resolved to take, for my return, a different route than the one I had traveled five months before. Of the three roads between Tissint and Tazenakht, I had taken the easternmost, Tizi Agni, one on my journey out; this time I chose the westernmost one, the road to Tizi n Haroun.

6 April 1884. Departure from Agadir at midnight. The Hajji, one of his brothers, and one of his cousins escort me. Mardochée is with me; we will not separate again from here to Lalla Maghnia. I cross the Feïja, passing near the ruins of Imazzen, an abandoned qçar. There is nothing more to say about this plain: still the same sands, the same gum trees. I leave the plain to follow the Oued Aginan from the point where it opens here. It is 100 meters wide, with a shingle bed, and dry. The valley floor is of a stony soil, scattered with gum trees; at first 400 meters wide, it narrows by degrees; at the same time the sides, from low black rock embankments at the beginning, become high and steep. From the Oued Aginan, I go on to one of its tributaries, the Oued Ikis, also called Ignan n Ikis, which I follow in turn. The valley is identical, but narrower. After some time, the bottom fills with crops and date-trees: a trickle of water appears; this is Tamessoult: soon I reach the houses. I stop there at seven o’clock in the morning.

Tamessoult is a large village, built of stone, halfway up the left side of the Oued Ikis, at a fair height above the riverbed. In the middle rises up the zaouïa of S. Abd er Rahman, a vast structure towered over by a dungeon: this is where I stop.