In spite of the great size of the _ksor_ of Dads, with their castellated towers and fortified walls, the place is an extremely poor one, and little or no money circulates, except amongst the men employed in caravan-work. Even in this case it is very few indeed who possess more than a couple of mules, such being considered a large capital, and the long and wearisome journey to Morocco City and back usually brings only some five dollars or so of profit per mule; that is to say, an absence of a fortnight, with some 250 miles of desert and mountain, the latter often snow-clad, may, if robbers be escaped and favourable luck be met with, bring in some sixteen shillings of English money. But, as a rule, the population of Dads subsist upon the dried figs and other scanty produce of their gardens, which are poor enough little fields, well irrigated certainly, but with inferior soil and scanty products. The figs are plucked ripe and laid out on to the flat house-tops to dry in the sun, and eventually stored for the winter. So hard do they become that we were obliged to crush them between stones before we were able to make any impression upon them with our teeth. Very few cattle are to be found, such as there are being entirely stall-fed, _fsa_—a kind of lucerne—being grown for the purpose. There being absolutely no grazing land, the cows seldom leave the yards of the house. They are invariably fed out of mangers, built of _tabia_, and raised about 12 to 18 inches from the ground. The women attend to the cattle as to everything else, it being their duty to fetch and carry water and firewood, in fact to do almost all the work with the exception of tilling the soil, and in a few cases I saw them even so occupied. As a rule, the cultivation is done by paid workmen, who take piecework, the digging of an acre of soil preparatory to its being sown with turnips bringing the labourer about two shillings English money. These labourers are not of the Dads tribe, for they think it below their station to dig, but usually come from the banks of the Wad Draa, and are known, both amongst themselves and all over Morocco, as “Haratin”—that is to say, “freemen,” and not slaves. In type they form much in common with the negro, and seem too not unlike him in good humour and docility. Their language is a variety of Shelha, called “Drauia,” but is only partially comprehensible to the tribes [Illustration: _A Woman of Dads._]