However, all our fears were needless, and with but the shortest of delay we found ourselves within the great double gateway that protects the _ksar_—for so constant is warfare in the district, that the natives have thought it necessary, or at least expedient, to have two gates, one within the other, and separated from one another by an open piece of ground, surrounded with high walls, so that should their enemies force the outer gate, there would be every chance of annihilating them from the ramparts as they assailed the inner one. Proceeding by a wide street with high houses on either hand, we at length found a large _fondak_, or caravanserai, where we took up our quarters under an arcade that ran along two of its sides; and to commemorate our safe arrival in Tafilet, we bought some tea and sugar and a candle, hired a kettle, and enjoyed ourselves as far as was possible in the cold. Travel had left its mark on all of us. I felt ill and weak, and my throat gave me much pain. Poor Mohammed had a most unbecoming cold in his head, and no pocket-handkerchiefs. The negro—upon whom many curses—worried us by his constant demands for more food, and enraged us by insisting on riding our little donkey the whole way, while Mohammed and I walked. The old Dadsi Shereef’s nephew, too, was thin and tired, and one and all were begrimed with desert sand and with our clothes torn by desert thorns, while our bare legs and feet were fretted over with scratches. Yet we thought of none of these things that night; we merely huddled together in the cold and laughed and chatted, and congratulated each other that now, at long last, after some seventeen days’ weary march, and often from thirty to forty miles a-day, our goal was reached and success attained. I little thought then that the greatest hardships of my journey were yet to be borne, for I imagined that the Sultan and his Viziers, though doubtless not pleased at my coming, would extend to me some small form of hospitality, and at least not refuse to me the only request I had to make to them,—a few yards of canvas, the smallest of the soldiers’ tents, as a place where I and my few faithful men could rest in. But I was wrong. Near us, spending the night in the _fondak_, were a few Haratin of Wad Draa, short in stature, of deep copper colour, and with faces showing much of their negro origin. Cheery fellows they were, and we invited the three or four of them to our dinner-party; and though they spoke but little Arabic, their laughter added to our amusement. They, like myself, were travellers, wandering apparently for no particular object, though the principal cause of travel amongst these Draa natives is, that the cultivated banks of the river produce only sufficient to support a certain number of lives, and thus the excess population, for it is a largely increasing one, seeks its livelihood elsewhere. This no doubt accounts for the large number of Haratin, &c., found throughout the entire country of Morocco.