lood, but fordable since the fine
night. The waters roared past between the crumbling banks: we saw in one
place waggon-loads of red soil suddenly subside with a vast noise into
the cataract which had undermined it. Upon the brink the men stripped
themselves; then, wading into the torrent, hauled across mules, camel,
and donkey one by one: we took our feet out of the stirrups, and managed
to keep dry; the camel behaved admirably.

[Illustration: TRANSPORTING OUR BAGGAGE.

[_To face p. 314._]

It was an uneventful day, across a bleak and stony country. Towards
evening we passed a ruined kasbah, rose-red in the sunset. Riding due
east, our long sharp shadows pointed ahead: there was a peace over all
things. The shadowed heights on the right, scooped into blue gullies and
mighty crests, carried a veil of cloud on their tops: the good little red
path we were on, was without a stone. As the sun dropped we swung along
into a dim grey beyond, to the muffled tramp, tramp of the mules' hoofs,
_shuffle-shuffle through the night_, while a cool breeze got up, and a
flight of birds high above us called aloud as they passed over. Ah! but
how good it was!--no telegrams, no conventionalities, no possessions
worth worry or consideration. Strange, the influence which such a simple
life has upon the mind: letters, and newspapers, and the topics of the
day, and the world in general, have little interest for the time being,
and get buried in the wastepaper-basket of trivialities, while the
weather, and the state of the track, and little things in Nature,
assume gigantic proportions and fill the mind.

We camped that night near another red ruined kasbah, whose long line of
crumbling tapia walls against the Atlas Mountains stretched itself out
like a watch-dog beside the forbidden hills. In the morning Arabs were
more importunate than ever, one woman thrusting her head between the
flaps of the canvas while we were dressing. A deal, meantime, went on in
the kitchen-tent over a lamb, Omar feeling its neck and tail, and
subsequently buying it for five shillings, after which it was silently
dispatched on the far side, skinned, cut up; and the donkey bore a
pannierful of meat that day.

Our blue jay of the ruined kasbah at Sok-el-Tleta turned up again on the
march, beautiful as ever, and no less tame; but all the birds shared that
distinction, and were of a confiding nature delightful to see.

Before Frouga, one of our next camping-grounds,