SKETCH MAP OF MOROCCO SHOWING AUTHOR’S ROUTE _To face page 1_ DETAIL MAP OF AUTHOR’S ROUTES BETWEEN MARAKESH AND TAFILET _At end_ [Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF MOROCCO, Showing Mr W. B. Harris’s Routes to and from Tafilet. _Author’s route_ -----] TAFILET. * * * * * CHAPTER I. PREPARATIONS AND START. It had long been my intention to make a journey of exploration into, and if possible beyond, the Atlas Mountains; and though on several occasions my plans had been already formulated, I had been obliged, almost at the last moment, to abandon the idea. However, the close of the year 1893 offered an opportunity which could not be neglected; but before entering upon the description of my journey, a few words must be said as to what not a little helped it toward success. Mulai el Hassen, the Sultan of Morocco, had been meditating for some years an expedition into the southern regions of his dominions, toward that indefinite frontier which divided his country from the wastes of the Sahara desert. Until, however, the spring of the year 1893 he had been so occupied with summer expeditions, organised to crush petty rebellions and intertribal strife, that he had found no favourable opportunity of making any protracted absence from the seat of his Government; for so miserable are the means of communication in Morocco, that, once across the Atlas Mountains, he was practically as distant from his capital—and still more from the residence of the European Ministers accredited to his Court, who reside at Tangier—as Kamskatka is from London. However, during the summer of 1892 the tribes had been so punished for their many rebellious offences, and so heavily taxed in consequence, that his Majesty felt but little anxiety in carrying out his projected visit to his trans-Atlas dominions. But there were other questions almost as serious to be considered—first, his relations with foreign Powers; and, secondly, the reception that might await him in those far-off corners of his realm.