Some nine hours’ travelling the following day brought me to Marakesh, and that night I spent feasting and listening to music in the house of my old friend Sid Abu Bekr el Ghanjaui; for he made my safe return the excuse for a dinner-party, on such dimensions that I was almost as likely to come to grief from excess of food as I had been of dying of starvation. Seated in the pleasant warmth, on great piles of cushions, with steaming dishes of every luxury that the city can furnish or skilled cooks prepare, it was little wonder that I enjoyed myself, or that we laughed heartily as I narrated to my kind host and his genial guests my adventures on the road. I remained some three weeks in Marakesh, for I was still weak from my illness, and much needed the rest. A pleasant time it was, spent in idleness, strolling in the bazaars, or picnicking in gardens. Meanwhile the Sultan was approaching, leading his great army by the same route as we had followed, and in cold still more intense. No pen could describe what must have been the suffering of man and beast, nor can any reliable account of the loss of life be obtained, except that it was very large. Snow fell as they reached the Glawi Pass, and men and mules and camels died in numbers, frozen to death, while the Berbers stripped the bodies of clothes and rifles. [Illustration: _Shops at Bab Khemis, Marakesh._] I saw the Sultan’s entry into Marakesh—his last entry into any Moorish city—and for days after half-starved men and beasts crawled into the town, lame and sick, the remnants of the great camp I had seen at Tafilet. I questioned many of those who came in, and their tale of suffering and hunger brought tears to one’s own eyes as well as theirs. Yet in justice be it said, the Sultan and the Moorish Government did all in their power to alleviate their sufferings by doling out supplies of food; but with a disorganised commissariat, of which probably a third of the baggage-animals had been frozen to death, fallen over precipices, or broken their legs on the bad mountain roads, it was but little. From Marakesh I returned to Saffi, where again I was most hospitably entertained by Mr George Hunot, H.B.M. Vice-Consul, and a few days later found a small steamer going direct to Gibraltar.