Our party from Dads to Tafilet consisted of five—the Shereef’s nephew, to whom no words of praise could do justice; my Riffi servant, Mohammed; the miserable cur of a negro whose conduct caused us so much anxiety, but who paid for it on our return to Marakesh; a Dads tribesman, who went as our _zitat_, or guarantee against robbery and murder; and myself, still in my torn _chamira_ and _jelab_, barefooted, browned by the cold and sun, and as hard as nails: and a merry little band we were, as—our two donkeys packed with our scanty baggage, only a few pounds in weight—we shook hands with all the friends who had been so kind to us at Dads, and, receiving their blessing, set out. The last to leave us was Hammu, my friendly caravan-man, and he accompanied us some way up the valley, until, reaching a district with which his _ksar_ had a blood-feud, he bade us “adieu” and turned back. For a quarter of an hour or so we could hear his voice rising and falling in the strange cadence of the Berber songs until it died away in silence. CHAPTER VIII. DADS TO UL TURUG. Although we left the Zauia Aït bu Haddu on November 12, we spent that night in the province of Dads, our road having merely taken us some twelve miles up the river’s course, as far as a _ksar_ in the district of Aït Iunir, which I had promised to visit _en route_, as it was from near this point that the main road to Tafilet leaves the valley to cross the plain of Anbed. The path, for it is no more, winds about amongst the gardens and _ksor_, every few minutes crossing one of the small canals that irrigate the fields, &c. These, where not too deep, are forded, but in many places are crossed with little bridges—merely the trunks of trees laid across from bank to bank, and covered with stones and soil. Only two places of any note are passed on the way, the tomb and sacred groves of Sid bu Yahia, and close to it the _sôk_, or market, of the Khamis, or Thursday. The tomb of the saint is built of _tabia_, and consists of two rooms, in one of which the remains of Sid bu Yahia lie, while the other serves as a mosque. A pointed dome of green tiles covers the former. Near by is the grove of trees, so common an adjunct to sanctuaries in Morocco. They are silver poplars, and of great size. The market-place is only an open space, and the day not being Thursday, it was deserted. There is a second large _sôk_ at Dads—the Arbaa, or Wednesday—a little to the south of Zauia Aït bu Haddu: we had passed through it when nearing Dads on the day of our arrival. Close to the Sôk el Khamis are the remains of seven villages of Aït Atta, which were destroyed when that tribe made an unsuccessful attempt to wrest the valuable strategical position along the river from its present holders. Up to that date the Attauis had possessed these seven villages; here they were allowed to live in peace, but on the breaking out of open hostilities their _ksor_ were razed.