A stable-yard, a large enclosed space, divided the house from the street of the village, and, passing through this, a walnut-wood door, of roughly-sawn planks, gave entrance to the house. Within all was darkness, and it was only by striking a match that I could perceive we had entered a wide and dusty passage which seemed to lead nowhere. Groping along a gradual ascent, which took the place of stairs, we reached the first floor, on which most of the living apartments were situated, the remainder of the ground-floor serving as stabling, and opening by another entrance into the yard we had already passed through. Still ascending, we entered at length a large unfurnished room some 30 feet square, the whole black with smoke. Here we found a number of women, mostly accompanied by babies in arms, attending to the household affairs. Some were cooking the meal that was being prepared for our reception over fires of inferior and smoke-giving charcoal, while others were weaving on hand-looms a heavy woollen material, to serve eventually for the _haidus_ or cloaks of the Berbers. The walls of the room were of rough _tabia_ and the floor of plastered mud, while the ceiling consisted of trunks of walnut-trees supported on pillars of _tabia_, and covered with brushwood and clay above, the latter forming the floor of the next storey. A few huge copper cooking-pots and a rough unstained box or two formed all the furniture visible, together with a heap of dishes of considerable size, each a segment of the trunk of large walnut-trees skilfully hollowed out. Some of these were already filled with the steaming _kuskusu_ and boiled turnips that were to form the staple _pièce de résistance_ of the coming feast. Again an ascent of clay, supported on walnut beams fastened into the wall, led us to a second chamber of much the same dimensions as the first, only in place of the narrow loopholes which allowed a dim light to enter in the lower storey there were here round holes in the roof, serving at once for windows and chimneys, and decidedly unsuccessful at either, for the heavy smoke of fig-wood charcoal hung like a cloud in the air, obstructing what little light might otherwise have entered. In other respects the rooms were in every way identically the same, the walls black with smoke, and covered with cobwebs near the ceiling, but with these exceptions tolerably clean. Again we ascended, this time emerging on to the flat roof, in the centre of which stood a highly decorated room built of mud bricks, with a door of the usual walnut-wood and two or three small windows with shutters. We were a great height up, probably some 50 to 55 feet from the ground; but towers rose still higher, though their only purpose seemed to be the defence of the _ksar_, for they contained no rooms, but only galleries with narrow loopholes in the walls. The door of the room was thrown open, and we entered the clean and comfortable _minzah_ and threw ourselves down on the