Nine miles more brought us into Oujda, an important garrison town because it guards Morocco’s eastern gate. Like most frontier cities it is clean, drab, and quite uninteresting, architecturally at least, for those who dwell in close proximity to international boundary lines seldom indulge in buildings of much magnificence, on the theory, I suppose, that boundaries can be moved by bayonets and that to-morrow they may find themselves in another country and under another rule. As history shows, this certainly holds true of Oujda, which, during the long series of wars between the sultans of Fez and Tlemcen, changed hands many times. Still, it is a well kept place, with broad, tree-planted thoroughfares and substantial public buildings, which makes on the visitor a favorable if not a very lasting impression. The Riffian campaign was in progress when we were there, and the town was so packed with troops that my memory harked back to the days of the Great War, the rumble of cannon-wheels and the measured tramp of troops sounding beneath our windows all night long. From Oujda onward to Taourirt, Taza, and Fez the road was chock-a-block with soldiery—cloaked and turbaned spahis perched above their wiry little ponies in high-peaked saddles of red leather; _tirailleurs_ in dust-brown khaki (did you happen to know that _khaki_ is the Hindustani word for dust?); _infanterie coloniale_, bearing on their collars the anchor which is the distinguishing badge of the corps; tall, slim riflemen from Senegal, with the thinnest legs in the world, their black faces smiling cheerily under their high tarbooshes at the prospect of fighting; a battalion of the _IIme Etranger_, swinging along beneath their heavy packs at a steady three miles an hour, the sun-bronzed men lustily roaring the chorus of “La Casquette du Père Bugeaud”; _chasseurs d’Afrique_, their small, active horses laden with pretty much everything save the kitchen stove; battery after battery of field-artillery, the muzzles of the lean _soixante-quinze_ hooded with canvas against the day when they should speak to the Riffi with the voice of France; machine-gun companies, guns and ammunition neatly packed on sturdy little mules; _génie_ with picks and shovels strapped to their knapsacks, ready to build roads, to construct bridges, or to dig trenches; creaking pontoon-wagons hauled each by a dozen horses; field-kitchens, steam rising from the caldrons of soup and coffee; gray staff-cars filled with officers in pale-blue uniforms and gold-laced képis; ambulances with staring red crosses painted on their canvas sides—all these told us that the torrential winter rains were over and that the big spring push against the _harkas_ of Abd-el-Krim was about to begin. Though of this war I was but a spectator, and an unofficial one at that, it was good to see once more the slanting lines of steel, to sniff again the smell of sweat-soaked leather, to hear the bugles go. For he who has once marched