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692 officer, her English maid, and Dwarkanauth Tagore. The Baboo’s medicated and constant pipe dispensed an odour anything but agreeable to the general, who drew forth a manilla, and puffed away vigorously. The bishop and the “Friend” followed suit with their cigarettes, and the fumes of the Indian pastile soon gave way before a cloud of genuine fragrance, which the ladies were glad enough to tolerate.

But it is time to return to the vans, which during my short digression have cleared the crazy old gates of Cairo, and having skirted the cemetery where poor Burckhardt reposes, are fast gaining that desert which he was not permitted to explore. On this particular journey, Raven has provided me with a fleet dromedary, in place of a seat in one of the vans, for I am in the company of two personal friends who are bound on a long and perilous journey towards the interior of Africa; and who, alas! were fated to swell the list of victims already sacrificed to the White Nile and its sources,—a problem now so happily solved by the glorious discoveries of Speke and Grant. They are both well-mounted; one on a powerful saddle-horse of Raven’s, the other on his own especial favourite—a black Arab of the purest blood. The moon is up, and the desert stretches beyond and around us, bathed in its cool silvery light. Despite the saddened feelings which precede a long separation, we trot gaily and swiftly along; leaving, far away in the rear, our fellow-travellers in the vans. At the centre, or No. 4 Station, we make a long halt, for a spurt of forty-two miles, whether on horse or dromedary, renders repose needful both for beast and rider. Then we press on again, for the reis or captain of the Red Sea boat has warned us, by a messenger, that the wind, now favourable, may speedily chop round to another quarter. Reaching Suez, we pass together our last short night, and I take a hurried farewell of friends I am never to meet again on earth. As he wrings my hand, B presses upon my acceptance his favourite Arab, whispers some last earnest commissions, and the shore-boat bears me away.

day was far advanced when I reached the shore after some hours’ laborious tacking. Being in no humour to encounter the idlers who were awaiting at Manson’s hotel the departure of the Bombay steamer, I determined to trot back leisurely over the twenty miles of sand, between Suez and the No. 6 Station; and therefore looked about for a lad who would ride my return-dromedary, and take charge of my only article of luggage, a small but well-stuffed carpet-bag. The right sort of man was soon found, a copper-legged fellàh, who stowing away in his shirt-front the residue of his half-eaten supper, was speedily perched aloft on the hump of the willing beast, and in a few minutes we had turned our backs upon the low wall which environs the dirt and dreariness of Suez. Evening had set in ere we passed the well, so familiar to desert travellers, and the angry voices of the camel-drivers wrangling over a few pints of muddy water, became gradually inaudible, as we gained the clear hard sand beyond, now sparkling in the light of the rising moon. Jogging on leisurely, the profound stillness being only broken by the footfall of our beasts, and an occasional futile attempt on the part of my companion to break into song, we reached No. 6 at ten o’clock, where refreshment and a shake-down were kindly provided by the English lady who then farmed the station.

Accustomed to the noonday heat, I was in no hurry to start the next morning, so looked after the well-being of our four-footed friends, and lingered over Mrs. Seedeick’s grateful Mocha. The dromedary also seemed unwilling to stir, and greeted me when I attempted to rouse him with such unmistakeable signs of displeasure, that I decided to leave him behind, and start alone upon my journey. Charging the lad who had the care of my carpet-bag to follow me to the centre station, No. 4, I was once more on the sand, with a bright sun overhead, and our shadows beneath us. Mrs. Seedeick had uttered some commonplaces as to the “extreme fineness of the day, &c.” In Egypt the characteristics of a “fine day,” would be a canopy of dull cloud above, and a continuous pelting shower of rain, and such was certainly not the sort of weather I was now to experience. Not a cloud was visible above the horizon, not a sign of anything greeted me save the mane and sharp ears of my Arab, and the eternal sand. If my friends in the Red Sea boat were, as I hoped they might be, scudding away towards Jeddah under the influence of a northerly breeze, not a breath of it found its way to me! All—around, above, and below—was silent and scorching. So overpowering was the heat that I almost resolved to return to the station, and make the trial later in the day, when the decline of the sun would be followed by light airs and a cooler track than that now before me. But my presence was required at No. 4, and go on I must. So I put my kerchief to the pristine and legitimate use of that appendage, by winding it round my tarboosh, and then taking a last look at the station behind me, to assure myself by its bearings that I am going in the right direction, I half close my eyes to shut out the glare, and am borne gently onwards.

The easy jog of the horse must have lulled me to sleep, or the heat and the glare combined had produced a lethargic feeling which had deadened my senses to outward objects. Certain it is, that after an indefinite interval of time I was aroused to consciousness by the sudden stopping of the Arab. Opening my eyes, I make the startling discovery that the sand over which I should be travelling has been changed, as by the enchanter’s wand, to a boundless tract of verdure: that I am, in fact, surrounded by some sort of vegetation, of whose vitality in the desert I had never even dreamed. Dismounting, to convince myself that I am really awake, I find interminable patches of a prickly sort of grass, brown and sunburnt, with intervals of sand between. I must, then, have been carried very wide of the faintly-defined track, and as the sun and my watch agree in telling me that it is past one, I may by this time be miles away from it. I get into the saddle again and stand up in the stirrups to obtain a more extended view. Nothing but the grassy tufts! Nothing,