lowship, there never lived a man more worthy of esteem than poor Stroyan.

Lieutenant Burton had sent a boat's crew off to near the site of our camp, a distance of three miles, to fetch away anything that might remain there, and bring it to us. They found the place deserted, with only such things left as the Somali could make no use of, and were too cumbersome to carry away; such, for instance, as grain, boxes, books, and various scientific instruments, which, after being wantonly deserted, were left scattered on the ground. It appeared, by accounts brought back, that many of the men who ran off at the first false alarm never ventured again to help themselves from the spoils. They had now destroyed about £1500 worth of property, but had enriched themselves but very little, for, whilst fighting, they had destroyed in the scramble nearly everything of any worth to themselves. When the boat's crew returned with Lieutenant Stroyan's body, it was found to be too late to sail that evening. During the time of waiting, a poor man, with no covering on his body, crawled up to the vessel, and implored the captain, in the name of Allah-the fakir's mode of begging-to give him a passage to Aden. His prayer was answered, and he came on board. He was a Mussulman, born in Cashmere, and had been wandering about the world in the capacity of a fakir; but was now, through hunger and starvation, reduced to a mere skeleton of skin and bones. His stomach was so completely doubled inwards, it was surprising the vital spark remained within him. On being asked to recite his history, he said, "I was born in the 'happy valley' of Cashmere; but reduced circumstances led me to leave my native land. When wandering alone in some woods one day, I had a visitation, which induced me to turn devotee, and wander about the world to visit all places of pilgrimage, carrying only a bottle and a bag, and ask charity in the name of God, who supplies the world with everything, and takes compassion on the destitute. At first I travelled in India, visiting its

VOL. LXXXVIII.—NO. DXXXVII.

shrines and temples, and then determined on crossing the sea to see what other countries were like. Taking passage at Bombay, I first went to Muskat in Southern Arabia, and thence travelled overland to Aden, begging all the way, and receiving kind hospitality wherever I spent the night. In Aden I remained a while, and by constant begging accumulated sufficient property to purchase food for a considerable time, when I again set out, in the name of Allah, to see what the Somalis' land was like. At first I went across to Kurrum, and lived there as long as my little stock held out, but I could get no assistance from the people of the place. The stock exhausted, I was spurned from every door. At last, despairing of obtaining anything on the coast, I ventured to see what the interior would produce, but I found the Somalis everywhere the same; they were mere hywans (animals), with whom no human beings could live. A man might travel in Arabia or any other place in the world, but in the Somali Land no one could exist. Finding myself reduced to the last stages of life, for no one would give me food, I went to a pool of water in a ravine amongst the hills, and for the last fortnight have been living there on water and the gums of trees. Seeing I was about to die, as a forlorn hope I ventured in this direction, without knowing whither I was going, or where I should come to, but God, you see, has brought me safely out."

20th. This morning we weighed anchor, and in two days more arrived in Aden.

Thus then ended my first expedition,-a signal failure from inexperience, and with a loss of £510 worth of private property. I had nothing to show but eleven artificial holes in my body. Had we gone with the Ugahden caravan, I feel convinced we should have succeeded; for that is the only way, without great force, or giving yourself up to the protection of a powerful chief, that any one could travel in Somali Land. Firearms are useful in the day, but the Somali despise them at night, and consequently always take advantage of darkness to attack. Small-shot and

C

smooth-bore guns, on this account, would be of far greater advantage as a means of defence, than rifles with balls; and nothing but shot well poured in would have saved us from this last attack. We have been often condemned for not putting on more sentries to watch; but had the whole camp been in a state of ordinary preparation, with such cowardly hearts as our men all had, we should have been as signally defeated. Experientia docet; and I now think small shot is the only force to employ against Somalis; whilst, to have marched with the Ugahden caravan, would have proved as easy and safe as travelling usually is with a cafila of merchants.

On arriving in Aden, I was a miserable looking cripple, dreadfully emaciated from loss of blood, and with my arms and legs contracted into indescribable positions, to say nothing of various angry-looking wounds all over my body. The doctors took compassion on me, formed into committee, and prescribed, as the only remedy likely to set me right again, a three years' leave to England, where, with the congenial effects of my native home, they hoped I should recover. Lieutenant Burton now sent in an estimate of all loss to the Government, and advised, as the best plan of taking an effectual revenge upon the Somalis, in whose territories we were attacked (the Habr Owel), that a ship should be sent to blockade their coast, with a demand that they should produce for trial in Aden the living bodies of the two men who so cruelly killed our lamented friend, and so wantonly endeavoured to despatch me.. Further, that a sum of money equivalent to all our aggregate losses should be paid in full ere the blockade would be raised. This was considered the wisest method by which, in future times, any recurrence of such disasters would most probably be avoided. It is needless to observe, considering the importance of Berbera to the welfare of the Habr Owel, their subsistence and their existence as a nation depending on it, that anything

might have been exacted from them that we wished to extort, or they could afford to give. The Government, unfortunately for our pockets, were of a different opinion; they would have nothing to do with money exactions when human blood had to be avenged. Moreover, they had been wishing to suppress the slave-trade, and found in this occurrence a favourable opportunity to indulge their hobby. They therefore established a blockade of all the coast-line between Seyareh and Jibal Elmas, demanding, as the only alternative by which it would be raised, the surrender of the principal instigators of the outrage on us for trial in Aden, of whom the first in consequence was Ou Ali, the murderer of Lieutenant Stroyan. When the season for the fair arrived, the only vessel present in the Berbera harbour was a British man-of-war, and the Habr Owel then believed we were in earnest. Until then, it appeared, they would not believe it, thinking our trade in Aden would suffer by this proceeding as much as their own. They were, however, mistaken; trade found an outlet at other places; and they, by its suppression on their grounds, were fast sinking into insignificance. Seeing this, they showed by urgent prayers a disposition to treat on any conditions we might like to impose on them, and even sent in for trial to Aden a man who showed the scar of a gun-shot wound on his back, and at the same time declared their intention of forwarding all others to us as soon as they could catch them, and that they were ready (so I hear on good authority) to reimburse us for the property we had lost.

To make the matter short, I will give you intact the articles of a treaty which was signed at Berbera on the 7th November 1856, between the Hon. East India Company on the one hand, and the Habr Owel tribe of Somalis on the other, as it appears in an appendix (D), in a History of Arabia Felix or Yemen, by Captain H. L. Playfair, Assistant Political Resident, Aden.*

for effecting cures, had I not, in addition to a strong constitution which I fortunately possess, been living for many months previously in a very abstemious manner, principally, as appears in the body of the journal, on dates, rice, and sour curds.

I now left Aden on sick certificate," and arrived in England in the early part of June 1855. The Crimean war was then at its height, and the military authorities were beating up for recruits in every corner of the land. This summons for war was irresistible. I was suffering a little from blindness, brought on probably by my late losses and impoverishment of blood. Still I lost no time in volunteering my services to take part in this great national object, thinking it was a duty, as a soldier, I owed my country, and delighting in the prospect of immediate and active employment, where, at any rate, I should be in Europe, and enjoying the temperature I had come home to seek. The Turkish Contingent was then being incorporated, and I was, being an Indian officer, competent to serve in it. With an introduction from friends, I wrote a letter to Major Graham, an officer appointed by the Horse Guards to engage officers for General Vivian's contingent, giving him an account of my past services, and asking for an appointment with the army. He at once closed with me, declaring "I was just the sort of man he wanted," and, granting two weeks' leave to prepare an outfit, told me to be off. In a fortnight more, I arrived in Constantinople, and was posted to a regiment of Turks, with the commission of captain. The Turkish Contingent was now at Buyukdere, but soon was ordered to embark in ves

sels and proceed to Kertch in the Crimea. I went with them, and remained serving until the close of the Crimean war. My commandant being otherwise employed, I, as second in command and Kaimakan of the 16th regiment of infantry, took its headquarters back, and disbanded them at Constantinople. Whilst I was engaged in these parts, and thinking there would be no further chances of my being able to return to Africa, I had made up my mind, at the expiration of the war to try my hand in collecting the Fauna of the very interesting regions of the Caucasian Mountains, and had even gone so far as to purchase guns and equip myself for it. Captain Smyth, of the Bengal Army, an old and notorious Himalayan sportsman, had agreed to accompany me, and we wrote home to the Royal Geographical Society to exert their influence in obtaining passports, by which we could cross over the range into the Russian frontier; but this scheme was put a stop to by Dr Shaw, the Secretary of that Society, writing out to say there would be very little hope of our being able to obtain the passports we required, and that he thought the time ill-advised for working in those regions, adding, at the same time, that an expedition to explore Africa was again being organised under the command of Captain Burton, and advising me to join it. By the same mail I received a communication from Captain Burton himself, inviting me to join him once more in exploring Africa. This settled the matter. Without a second thought I took my passage to England by the first mail, and travelled night and day until I again reached home.

Ir used to be said, half a generation ago, that this was an unpoetical age; and to be sure it continues to be said now, because nobody has forcibly originated a different opinion. Because we were an age of steam-engines and electric telegraphs, &c., &c., &c.-because Curiosity had taken the place of Enthusiasm-because the world had become practical, and was so busy ameliorating its neighbours' ills and lightening its neighbours' burdens, that it had no leisure to attend to the vain pipings of individual joy and sorrow. So said many a desponding critic in lamentation, and so said many a stout man of business, happily ignorant of the nature of the thing over the failure of which he rejoiced. Since then, certain national poems of the highest tragical sublime of poetry have rung deep into the heart of the universe-such poems as those of Crimea, of India, of Italy; epics terse, urgent, and splendid, showing what, and what manner of thing a man is, or can be, when all his philosophies, sciences, informations are stripped off him, and he stands in primitive straits, with only a hasty weapon to defend himself, and his life in his hand. Such a tide has brought with it, as might be expected, a full flux and flow of the ocean of song. The birds sing always, doubtless, but it is only when a storm is over that the universal twitter of gratitude catches one's ear with a sudden pleasure, as if the exuberance were unusual. The nation has not been unmoved to hear what her sons have done. The race has quickened through heart and limb to discover with a thrill of delicious surprise that it has not degenerated-that it is as its fathers were-that the skill in its fingers has not diminished the courage of its heart-and that in no age has a soul more dauntless abode in the land than that which clothes itself in the outside proprieties of the nineteenth century. In the perpetual course of change which is always astir, some shrewd alterations have taken place within these dozen years in our general opinions. Then we

had prematurely concluded war to be over, poverty and pain to be on their way to the same happy end, and commerce, science, free trade, and anæsthetics to be working out, if not an entire exemption from death and trouble, at least the largest amount of ease and comfort imaginable. What is it that has shaken the undoubting faith in these great modern influences with which so many people, now of different sentiments, begun their own independent career? For example, there is commerce-trade. Perhaps there scarcely exists an Englishman, belonging by the faintest link to that class of Englishmen who make speeches, who has not gone out of his way some time in his life to deliver a panegyric upon the commercial spirit, the wealth, the enterprise, and the honour of English merchants and the trading community; nor an audience, from the House of Lords downward, which has not cheered such an eulogium: yet it is with a faltering tongue, and a certain sickening sensation at one's heart, that one echoes these popular sentiments to-day. Could all that miserable bankrupt array, who have flung other people's money away by hand fuls, yet kept their own reputation unspotted up to the very moment of discovery-could such men exist, so many of them, in a soil that is quite untainted? One makes all haste to turn from the subject, and leave the decent outside cover over the concealed heart, for which, however, no man will vouch nowadays as everybody would have vouched ten years ago. Then there goes big Science, with his infallible calculations and his mustbe's-his demonstrations that no accident need ever happen anywhere, and his successes on paper. people begin to whisper to each other privately even such thrilling incendiary whispers as, What is the good of the telegraph? Was it good or harm to those poor souls who heard that a battle had happened ever so long before they could know whether the light of their eyes had gone out in the fury of that deadly mysterious

But