from cold and hunger were extreme. Only the riding and baggage animals of the Sultan and his immediate officials receive fodder from the Government, the various Kaids and the auxiliary troops—a kind of yeomanry—that they bring with them being dependent upon their own means; and as on a part of the Sultan’s route from Fez to Tafilet barley cost no less than 5s. a feed for a horse per night, the poor brutes fared ill. The camp at Tafilet, after three weeks’ stay in one spot, though grain here was tolerably cheap, was literally surrounded with dead mules and horses. The quantity of baggage-animals was enormous. I was told by one who ought to be well informed that no less than 9600 horses and mules were fed by the Government each night, and there must have been 3000 or 4000 more belonging to the Kaids of districts and their retinues. A rough calculation gave the result that the Sultan must be paying some 3000 dollars—£500—per night for fodder, or rather the cost of bringing it to Tafilet would have been as much as that; for the merchants, who looked after their affairs far more keenly than his Majesty could afford time to do, were able to sell it, and make a small profit, at a price that gives this result, and no doubt the Sultan was charged far more. Even if the transactions necessary for purchasing it and bringing it this great distance were absolutely honest, it could not have cost him less than the sum mentioned. When one calculates the total amount spent on barley, averaging rather less over the whole time, on an expedition of nine months’ duration, and when one adds to this the pay of the soldiery—for though often they do not get it the Government invariably pays it out—and the food for the regular troops and the Sultan’s immense retinue, not forgetting the presents that have to be given on the road, and then to the total the vast amount of swindling that takes place on every side, one will gather some idea of the cost of such an expedition. As a rule in the more adjacent portions of Morocco, so large are the levies of provisions, and so much of the _mona_ is supplied by the governors of the districts, that the summer march of the Sultan affords a profit to the treasury, besides offering many opportunities for private pilfering. So poor are these districts of the Sahara, however, that few of the spots at which the army rested, with the exception of Tafilet and Askura, could have afforded to keep them supplied for more than one or two nights—and at Tafilet alone the Sultan remained three weeks.