This eBook was transcribed by Les Bowler. _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ FAITH. HOPE. CHARITY. SUCCESS. PROGRESS. HIS PEOPLE. A HATCHMENT. THIRTEEN STORIES. * * * * * MOGREB EL ACKSA: A Journey in Morocco. (_New Edition in Preparation_.) * * * * * BROUGHT FORWARD * * * * * BY R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM * * * * * LONDON DUCKWORTH & CO. 3 HENRIETTA ST., COVENT GARDEN, W.C. * * * * * _First Published_ 1916. _Second Impression_ 1917. * * * * * _All rights reserved_. * * * * * TO COMMANDER CHARLES E. F. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM R.N. * * * * * PREFACE LUCKILY the war has made eggs too expensive for me to fear the public will pelt me off the stage with them. Still after years of writing one naturally dreads the cold potato and the orange-peel. I once in talking said to a celebrated dancer who was about to bid farewell to her admirers and retire to private life, “Perhaps you will take a benefit when you come back from finishing your last tour.” She answered, “Yes . . .”; and then added, “or perhaps two.” That is not my way, for all my life I have loved bread, bread, and wine, wine, not caring for half-measures, like your true Scot, of whom it has been said, “If he believes in Christianity he has no doubts, and if he is a disbeliever he has none either.” Once in the Sierra Madre, either near the Santa Rosa Mountains or in the Bolson de Mápimi, I disremember which, out after horses that had strayed, we came upon a little shelter made of withies, and covered with one of those striped blankets woven by the Navajos. A Texan who was with the party pointed to it, and said, “That is a wickey-up, I guess.” The little wigwam, shaped like a gipsy tent, stood close to a thicket of huisaché trees in flower. Their round and ball-like blossoms filled the air with a sweet scent. A stream ran gently tinkling over its pebbly bed, and the tall prairie grasses flowed up to the lost little hut as if they would engulf it like a sea. On every side of the deep valley—for I forgot to say the hut stood in a valley—towered hills with great, flat, rocky sides. On some of them the Indian tribes had scratched rude pictures, records of their race.