The following year, 1864, saw Sir John again in attendance at the Court, which was then at Rabát. From that city he writes to his mother on October 16:—
I arrived here on the 28th ult., having passed a week on the road, and had good sport with small game.
The Sultan did not enter Rabát till the 13th inst., having been detained en route in ‘eating up’ some rebel tribes, some of the latter causing him several days of uneasy digestion.
The night before His Majesty’s entry into Rabát, the Uzir tells me, the Sultan woke up about 11 o’clock and summoned him. It was to ask whether the Uzir thought I would like to see His Majesty enter, and if so to bid him write off and invite me to witness the scene from a good position, where a guard of honour would be stationed to protect us from the wild hordes, or, if I so pleased, to meet and have an audience of His Majesty in the midst of his troops before he entered.
As a true courtier, I chose the latter course, and, having put on our armour, we sallied out at 9 a.m. to meet the Sultan.
As usual on such festive occasions, it poured buckets. I was well covered, but not so were the members of my mission, who looked in their uniforms and feathers like drowned cocks.
Adjoining the outer walls of Rabát, which are about a mile from the town, there is a beautiful plain of red sand, with small undulating hills here and there, and covered with palmettos, shrubs, and wild flowers. The vanguard of the army, which latter consisted of about 30,000 men, was already in sight, and picturesque groups of the irregular cavalry had stationed themselves on these heights, as, I suppose, pickets acting as a sort of police to the wild hordes that followed.
The rain ceased, and the sun broke out as the Royal cortège appeared. The disciplined troops, a body of about 6,000 infantry, dressed in scarlet jackets and blue trousers, marched in parallel columns, leaving a space of about a quarter of a mile between each column. The disciplined cavalry, some 500 strong, riding in front and rear and on the flanks to keep order. Within the lines came the tribes, each forming a separate body and marching with some sort of regularity, banners flying and pipes squealing, as if they had been Highlanders.
Then followed some mules and camels with field guns and ammunition, and, after these, bodies of the Sultan’s Bokhári, or Royal guard. Troops of forty or fifty of these every now and then wheeling back and charging towards the group that surrounded the Sultan, fired their guns in the air.
His Majesty was preceded by a body of running footmen; then came the Chief Usher, followed by two men on foot bearing long lances—the last and sole signs of ancient Moorish chivalry; then the Sultan himself, mounted on a beautiful grey horse, a monster for a Barb, being not less than seventeen hands high. Behind His Majesty were the umbrella-bearer and the sword-bearer, followed at a little distance by the Ministers of State, mounted on mules, and by a palanquin covered with scarlet cloth borne between two mules. It was all closed, so there may have been some houri within.