for an opportunity of seeing active service, and the idea of serving under Sir Garnet Wolseley appealed to me irresistibly, but I feared that I should be looked upon as only a theorist, a writer, and a teacher. But if there was ever to be a chance for me, this seemed to be the occasion. So that night I wrote to Sir Garnet, and said how proud I should be to serve under him in the humblest capacity. The most I dared to hope for was some small billet in the transport, or perhaps as a "special service officer" with native levies. Judge of my astonishment and delight when the morning brought me a telegram, "Will you accept post of my Assistant Military Secretary?-Wolseley."

Thus ended my long connection with the Royal Military Academy. It is interesting to look back, and to call to memory as they then were some of the cadets who passed through my hands: Field-Marshal his Royal Highness the Duke of Connaught, late InspectorGeneral of the Forces; General Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, Commander-in-Chief in India; General Sir William Nicholson, Chief of the General Staff, and First Military Member of the Army Council; Sir Herbert Chermside, late Governor of Queensland; Colonel Sir George Clarke, Governor of Bombay; Major - General Sir Charles Hadden, Master-General of the Ordnance; Sir Fleetwood Edwards, Keeper of the Privy Purse to Queen Victoria; Sir

Arthur Bigge, Private Secretary to Queen Victoria, and now Private Secretary to the Prince of Wales, were all Gentlemen Cadets in that time, showing promise of the distinguished future that awaited them; and I cannot remember any of them, as Sir William Nicholson told me soon after my arrival in India as a member of the Viceroy's Council that he could remember me, as a very frivolous subaltern."

Lest it should be thought that my other occupations caused me to neglect my official duties, I append an extract from the order of the Governor (Sir Lintorn Simmons), published on September 11, 1873 :

"Captain H. Brackenbury, R.A., having been appointed Military Secretary to Major-General Sir Garnet Wolseley, C.B., K.C.M.G., for service

on the Gold Coast, has ceased his duties as Professor of Military History at the Royal Military Academy.

"The Governor, in notifying Captain Brackenbury's departure, desires to record his high sense of the great ability he has displayed in his lectures, much study and deep research comwhich, having been the result of bined with a spirit of sound military criticism, have been of great benefit to the large number of gentlemen others now officers in the Royal Arcadets now in the Academy, and tillery and Royal Engineers who have passed under his tuition.

"The Governor also desires to thank he has rendered to the Royal Military Captain Brackenbury for the service Academy in acting as honorary librarian to the Cadets' Library, and in wishing him every success in his future career, is sure that he only one connected with the Royal Miliexpresses the heartfelt desire of every tary Academy.”

THE city of Sham, or Damascus, is, as all good travellers in the East know, shaped like a gigantic spoon. The handle of the spoon is formed by the long street that leads, almost with as little deviation as the "Street which is called Straight" itself, through the Meidan suburb to Kadem-esSherif; and at Kadem-esSherif is the beginning of the Hedjaz Railway. It lies well outside the city, in the midst of a sandy plain, surrounded by distant trees. The station buildings are modest enough; but close by a series of large workshops are rapidly rising; and these, when completed, will make it easier to realise than at present that this is the starting-point of a great arterial line of railway. There is no platform at this terminus - which in truth is no terminus, for the rails are continued across the plain, skirting the world-old city, and end close to the station of the Damascus-Mezarib line. Later, if present intentions are carried out, they will be farther prolonged to the Mushariet quarter, in the heart of the city itself. They do not actually join those of the line just mentioned; but, some hundred kilometres farther south, the Dera'a-Caiffa branch runs through Mezarib; the two lines are united there; and, as the Mezarib-Damascus Railway joins with the Damascus-Beirut line (now the property of the same French company), the

Hedjaz Railway is thus brought into unbroken connection with Aleppo and with the sea-coast.

At the station there is the usual motley confusion of an Eastern crowd as the train— which leaves for Ma'an three times in the week-prepares to start. Two entire carriages and a luggage- van, the last converted into store-room and kitchen, are allotted to our Commission (the object of whose journey is to study the measures required to control the spread of disease by pilgrims travelling by the new railway). They are now attached to the rear of the ordinary train; beyond Ma'an we shall have our own engine, and be free to choose our own halting - places. Precisely at two o'clock, Eastern time (9.35 A.M. by Western reckoning), the train moves off. For the first few hours the line passes over flat or undulating plains, through wide stretches of oultivated land, where golden barley, the green, clover-like alfalfa, and other crops are varied by round clumps of fruit-trees or groups of tall poplars. To the distant right are the AntiLebanon and the snows of Hermon; they almost seem to travel with us, and the silver and blue tracery of the latter is not lost sight of for many hours. Every thirty or forty minutes the train draws up at a "station," where is nothing but a four-square, rough stone building, with corrugated iron roof. Occasionally there is a

Druse or other settlement olose by. At intervals the plain is broken by the ruins of some deserted village; by the black, poverty-stricken tent of some Bedouin family; by vast flocks and herds, or by smaller groups of camels, tended by motionless, Biblical-looking figures, in broadstriped, flowing garments.

Ere very long the cultivated land begins to alternate with stretches of bare reddish earth, littered with black lumps of lava, and we are soon skirting that strange region of volcanic freaks, the Lejah, or Trachonitis. We only touch the fringe of it, and catch but glimpses of this sable sea of lava. Villages of the blue-black lava-stone, each with its tall watch-tower, dot the country at intervals, making a strange and startling contrast of colour with the gold of the crops,- -a gold of almost dazzling intensity in the noonday sun. The crops are prodigious in extent and richness. Perhaps the hidden fires that once melted the surging sea of lava and formed the Lejah still give some warmth and added fertility to a soil in itself rich in the extreme. Locally, indeed, there seems to be a belief that those fires are not quite extinct, or at all events that this volcanie area is still in vital connection with other active areas in the earth's crust. In proof whereof it is averred that there exists in the Lejah a lake, whose waters are ordinarily some two metres in depth; yet, on the day of the great eruption in Martinique, when the town of St Pierre was overwhelmed, the waters of this lake completely dried

up, and only returned to their former depth on the morrow! Far be it from me to vouch for or to question-the truth of this most interesting statement. The line crosses from north to south the Nukrah, or plain of the Haurân; away to the east is the Jebel-ed-Druse, the Mountain of the Druses, the Bashan of the Bible, clearly seen from the train; and-unseen - the ruins of the once great city of Bozrah. Westward there is for a short distance the line of railway, already mentioned, from Damascus to Mezarib, parallel with the Hedjaz line; and a main route of traffic continues southwards, still parallel with our line, through Kerak and El Tafileh, to Petra; but these are far to the west, and we see nothing of them. Five hours from Damascus the train makes a long pause at Dera'a, an important junction, where the line from Caiffa joins the main trunk. The village is distant some half mile away, to the right (west) of the station; it is reached by means of a bridge crossing a shallow ravine, wherein are some Roman ruins and an ancient reservoir. In the black, age-old houses the Arab women are busy with their household duties; outside strings of camels are returning from the threshing-floors, where the adis, or small green-grey lentil, is being threshed out from its golden straw. Such a threshing - floor must have been that of Araunah the Jebusite; and most assuredly Esau's mess of pottage was made of lentils just such as these. There is little time to

explore the ruins of Dera'a; we hasten back to the station, drink a cup of airan, or sour goats' milk, mixed with water, ice, and a little salt,-a somewhat trying beverage to those unused to it,—and shortly after the train starts once more.

At sunset we cross the River Amman (a tributary of the Zerka or Jabbok river, itself a tributary of the Jordan): its bed is now brilliant with great masses of oleander bushes, in full bloom. There is nothing more refreshing in the world than to light upon the luxuriant pink blossoms and glossy green leaves of the oleander, when the eye has been tired and dazzled by the glare of desert sand and barren rock. They are the glory of many a wady and stream in Syria and Arabia, and are most resplendent in the Sîk,-that mighty desert gorge that leads to Petra.

For dinner, or supper, our table is laid in the station office of Amman, the RabbothAmmon of the Old Testament, the Philadelphia of later times. It is tantalising that we have neither time nor opportunity to visit the ruins of this city. It is equally tantalising that the next hundred miles of the railway have to be passed, both going and returning, in darkness. We are now in the desert east of the Dead Sea, and separated from it by the mountains of Moab. When the next morning dawns we have left that sea far behind and are in the land of Edom. The only place of any importtance passed in the night is Katrani. At Aneizeh in the

early morning we stop by the side of an old Arab fortress and

reservoir, from whose soummed and stagnant water the third-class passengers rush to fill their water-bottles and skins. At 10.30 we are at Ma'an.

There are two large villages here, Ma'an-es-Sham and Ma'anel-Hedjazieh (or Ma'an-el-Misr), together containing some four or five thousand inhabitants. In the latter a large kala'at, or fortress, dominates the village, and close by it is the inevitable birket, or reservoir.

We e are now on the Dharbul-Haj, or Pilgrims' Way, which henceforth the railway (that has hitherto only gone more or less parallel with it) follows faithfully, almost without deviation, until it reaches Medina itself. On Turkish and Arabian maps of this region have always appeared quite an imposing number of names of places situated at longer or shorter intervals along the

Way," and most of these have now become the names of railway stations. But more often than not there is no village or sign of human habitation near. In this land of wandering Bedouin, settled villages are rare in the extreme, and names have been given, it would seem, only to places where the all-precious water can be found. Where water exists the hajjis have from time immemorial made their haltingplaces on their long tramp of eight hundred miles; and to meet their wants a large reservoir, or birket, has been constructed at each menzil, or resting-place. But the price

less fluid must be guarded; so by the side of the birket is always found a fortress, or kala'at. And so, all down this desert way, kala'at and birket, fortress and reservoir, are always seen together, in inseparable pairs, and often they alone represent in reality the name that makes such an imposing appearance on the map. The forts are picturesque, medievallooking buildings of stone; their outer walls broken by no windows, but loopholed here and there for rifle-fire. The rooms inside open on to a courtyard, in which there is usually a well, and a gallery runs round the four sides; it is reached by rough flights of stone steps, and gives access to upper rooms. Farther down the line we shall see that the solitary station buildings are built on the same plan.

Ma'an is in direct communication with Akabah, at the tip of the eastern horn of the Red Sea, of which so much was heard a few years ago. A camp of Turkish soldiers, said to have come from that port on their return from the Yemen, lies a few hundred yards to the west of the station at Ma'an. Some miles farther down the line is a station that bears the name of Akabah, or, to be more exact, Akabat-el-Hedjazieh. It lies some 3500 feet above sealevel, and, with the exception of Dar-ul-Hamra, which is about 150 feet higher, is the highest point that the railway traverses. Almost immediately beyond the desert plateau suddenly ceases, at the edge of a steep descent of a few hundred feet, which caused no little

trouble to the engineers who laid the line. The rails climb down by means of great curves. The passage is called by the Arabs Batn - ul - Ghoul," the Belly of the Fiend"; and a very fearful monster the Fiend must be if he is at all like the description given by the Bedouin to Mr Doughty, and faithfully reproduced in his wonderful book. The gorge is worthy of the name: wind down it just after sunset, the extraordinarily variegated rocks, in patches of reds and yellow, browns and green, sandy-white and purple-black

as we

their colours blended in the russets and gold of a cloudless after-glow-produce an effect that is weird and unreal in the extreme.

We have now our own engine, and are free to stop or pursue our journey when and where we will. We halt in the evening at a place called Telel-Shakhm; a table is spread in the desert by the side of the line, and our cook and marmiton distinguish themselves by producing from the depths of the luggage-van a quite excellent meal, which they have cooked as we travelled. A moon threequarters full, and the stars overhead, shine as moon and stars only can over vast open spaces, as the desert or the sea. Nothing breaks the sandy waste around us save the distant fire of a Bedouin camp and the two straight lines of metal that cut the desert ruthlessly in two, and gleam, rather harshly, in the moonlight. The great heat of the day is over, and the remaining warmth,