somebody, for he carried it at right angles to his horse across the saddle, and often on the road I would start to consciousness that the kaid was covering me with his be-frocked weapon.  After a time one grew accustomed and indifferent to the danger, but when I went shooting in the Argan forest I left the blessed one in camp.  He was convinced that he carried his gun in proper fashion, and that his duty was well done.  And really he may have been right, for upon a day, when a hint of possible danger threatened, I learned to my amusement and relief that the valiant man carried no ammunition of any sort, and that the barrel of his gun was stuffed full of red calico.

Our inland tramp over, he took one day’s rest at Mogador, then gathered the well-earned store of dollars into his belt and started off to follow the coast road back to Djedida.  Perhaps by now the Basha has had his dollars, or the Sultan has summoned him to help fight Bu Hamara.  In any case I like to think that his few weeks with us will rank among the pleasant times of his life, for he proved a patient, enduring man, and though silent, a not unedifying companion.

Among the strange stories I heard in Djedida while preparing for the journey was one relating to the then War Minister, Kaid Mahedi el Menebhi, some-time envoy to the Court of St. James’s.  In his early days Menebhi, though a member of the great Atlas Kabyle of that name, had been a poor lad running about Djedida’s streets, ready and willing to earn a handful of floos[8] by hard work of any description.  Then he set up in business as a mender of old shoes and became notorious, not because of his skill as a cobbler, but on account of his quick wit and clever ideas.  In all Mohammedan countries a Believer may rise without any handicap on account of lowly origin, and so it fell out that the late Grand Wazeer, Ba Ahmad, during a visit to Djedida heard of the young cobbler’s gifts, and straightway gave him a place in his household.  Thereafter promotion was rapid and easy for Menebhi, and the lad who had loafed about the streets with the outcasts of the city became, under the Sultan, the first man in Morocco.  “To-day,” concluded my informant, “he has palaces and slaves and a great hareem, he is a Chief Wazeer and head of the Sultan’s forces, but he still owes a merchant in Djedida some few dollars on account of leather he had bought and forgot to pay for when Ba Ahmad took him to Marrakesh."[9]

[Illustration:  A BLACKSMITH’S SHOP]

In the R’hamna country, on the way to the southern capital, we pitched our tents one night in a Government n’zala, or guarded camping-ground, one of many that are spread about the country for the safety of travellers.  The price of corn, eggs, and chickens was amazingly high, and the Maalem explained that the n’zala was kept by some of the immediate family of Mahedi el Menebhi, who had put them there, presumably to make what profit they could.  I looked very carefully at our greedy hosts.  They