We collected a good many specimens during the afternoon, but were able to add little to the list of species already noted in the valley. The most important business in hand was to bring to book our enemy Kaïd el Hasbi—for so we began to consider him—and ascertain clearly whether he did or did not mean to carry out the orders of the Sultan, and convey us to some point within reach of the upper regions of the mountains. When pressed on this point, he distinctly declared that from Reraya—the next adjoining district to the west—we should be able to ‘reach the snow;’ and with that assurance we had to satisfy ourselves, and give such orders that the next evening should find us in the desired district. The name of the village was differently noted by the members of the party; Assghin, as it is entered in Hooker’s notes, by an observation taken this afternoon, with the thermometer in the shade at 72° Fahr., stands at 3,427 feet (1,044·4 m.) above the sea. Up to this our observations had been reduced on the assumption that the pressure at sea level was exactly 760 millimetres; but henceforward we had the advantage of direct comparison with observations recorded twice a day at Mogador. The evening was fine, but flashes of lightning were seen to the SE. after dark, and during the night fresh snow fell on the higher ridges, which looked brilliant on the early morning of April 11, but rapidly melted under the mid-day sun. We started rather late, about 8 A.M., and by 10.30 had returned to the site of our former camp in the broad bed of the stream below Achliz. Here our ill-humour was increased by a long and quite unnecessary delay. As a rule, a light luncheon was all that was consumed at our mid-day halt, the men being content with some fragments of the _mona_ of the previous night. But our greedy soldiers had requisitioned a further _mona_, nominally on our behalf, from the adjoining village, and were determined not to move forward until it was supplied. When Hooker happened to surprise our Mogador Kaïd in the act of secreting a quantity of tea and sugar, the old fellow in self-defence began to narrate the misdeeds of his colleague, and so gave us a clearer notion than we before had of the sort of abuses that pervade the whole fabric of Moorish administration. It is true that one is told that the value of goods requisitioned in this way by Government officers is allowed to the villages as payment on account of taxes; but the poor country people tell a different tale, and it is probable that any allowance made on this head is quite inadequate.