The news of the coming of the old Shereef and members of his family had travelled before us, and one forgot all the weariness of the landscape in the pleasant reception that awaited us. An hour or two before we arrived at Dads we caught sight of little bands of people, black specks in the bright sunlight, and as they recognised their relations they ran toward us. The old man dismounted from his mule and proceeded on foot, the better to embrace the ever-increasing flow of welcomers. It formed one of those charming pictures which one now and again comes across in travelling in Morocco,—the old man, the centre of a little crowd of men, women, and children, all laughing and singing, being escorted after years of absence back to the home of his ancestors. I came in for my share of the welcome—for was not I one of his party?—and I shook hands with, and was kissed by, a score of men and women and children, before, just as suddenly as we had lost sight of Aït Yahia, the wide valley of Dads burst into view. Here at the summit of the cliffs more friends awaited us, and as we descended, all happy that a stage at least of our journey was over, our band formed quite a caravan, the children laughing and tumbling over one another in their glee, the men alternately singing and crying out words of welcome, and the women, with their hands to their mouths, uttering the shrill cry of the _zakerit_. So our little procession turned and twisted down the steep path, every moment being met by more people, one and all eager to welcome us, until, surrounded by a rejoicing crowd, we entered the narrow streets of the village of Zauia Aït bu Haddu, and reached the dwelling of the old Shereef. CHAPTER VII. DADS. It seems so long since I have found an opportunity of writing of my personal experiences, and those of the good men who accompanied me upon my journey, that it is quite a pleasure to abandon for a time things geographical, and to enter for a chapter into the less important but interesting details of my stay at Dads, where a sojourn of five days in the Shereef’s house, with innumerable kind but indigestible feasts elsewhere, allowed me to see much more of the Berber home-life than would otherwise have been the case. The first new experience was to look upon the interior of one of these strange castles that the natives build themselves, the outsides of which had so impressed me by their size and the manner in which they are built. No sooner had we arrived at the Zauia Aït bu Haddu than the opportunity I had all along been wishing to find occurred, and on alighting from my donkey at the door of the Shereef’s house, he bade me welcome with all the grace and rhetoric that the Arabs know so well how to use.