distance of each other at the upper end of the gorge. Throughout the rest of the gorge there were the usual cuttings, embankments, &c., of a railway, and at the time in question there were about 10,000 workmen scattered in little camps along the line, and working away daily like ants. The whole of the provisions for these workmen, and all the necessary tools, &c., for the work there and beyond, had of necessity to come up the gorge, for the mountains on either side were so rugged and rocky as to be practically impassable. It will, therefore, be understood that a flood blocking up the gorge would be a most serious matter. Rain, however, fell so seldom in that part of the country at any time of year, and least of all in the early months, that the risk seemed quite justifiable.

The winter's work had been rather disastrous. First, an outbreak of cholera had scattered workmen and created a scare. Then sickness had decimated the staff, and the consequent changes in personnel had retarded progress. Then a very serious landslip had blocked the temporary line in the gorge at a place where it was impossible to make a diversion. But as the season advanced these difficulties had been overcome, and by the beginning of April it really looked as if everything was getting on smoothly.

Then, to everybody's astonishment, rain of unprecedented violence and duration came on day after day.

The headquarters camp at this time was at the end of the gorge, situated so as to be near the five bridges under construction. It was in telegraphic communication with the depôt or base at the other, or plains, end of the gorge whence, daily, material trains came up over temporary lines and temporary bridges, bringing supplies of all sorts. At the depôt there were the offices and dwellings of the subordinate staff, and a vast quantity of stores, worth thousands of pounds, on the safety of which all the work for many months depended. Close by this depôt the river emerged from the mountains, and, at its exit, there were several artificial channels, where the natives had made for themselves canals for irrigating their fields. These channels passed so close to the store yards that any rise of the water in them meant risk of overflow into the yards, and consequent damage to the stores which were daily being brought in, for many of these stores were of a nature to be ruined by water.

Two officers lived in the headquarters camp, one of whom, the Chief Engineer, was at this time engaged in an inspection of the upper parts of the line, and prevented by floods from returning. The other officer was his Personal Assistant. The duties of this individual were administrative, not executive. He initiated nothing, he designed nothing, but his main business was to see that nothing was wanting

at the time and place where it was needed. There were 20,000 men all busily working on the line. He had to see that they were supplied with everything they required. Bridges were being built, tunnels were being pierced, rails were being laid, he had to see that all the plant and machinery was at the various places when and where it was wanted. Officers and subordinate staff were needed to supervise, he had to see that they were forthcoming.

Every day five hundred camels came up the gorge laden with food, every day a train-load of materials came groaning up the temporary line and disgorged its load of materials and tools at railhead. The Personal Assistant was the responsible brain of all this organism, his was the hand on the regulating valves of the complicated machinery, his business was to know every other man's wants and see that they were supplied.

So when the waters rose higher and higher and rendered the gorge more and more difficult to traverse, the brow of the Personal Assistant grew darker and darker. At last one morning a telegram reached him to say that early that day the material train coming up to the depôt in its daily journey had capsized, owing to a portion of the line being undermined by the flood-waters, that one engine driver and two firemen were killed, another driver badly injured, two locomotives smashed, and generally a fearful wreck.

He felt it was his duty to get down to the base by hook or by crook, albeit the fourteen miles, along which usually it was easy to travel, were now blocked with raging waters such as were unknown in the memory of the oldest inhabitant. But the adjoining mountains were not wholly impassable, so he started off on foot, and with infinite difficulty managed to cover the distance in something like eight hours.

When he arrived at his des

tination, hungry and wet, he found a sad little funeral procession wending its way to a little forlorn enclosure which had been set apart as a cemetery. In a rude coffin the poor mangled body of the slain engine-driver was being borne to its last resting-place by the other Europeans-platelayers, overseers, and clerks, with one poor woman in black, a relative of the dead man. The burial service was being read by one of the number in his rough working clothes and muddy boots. A working man's funeral is often a touching sight, but surely no more pathetic group ever gathered round a grave than that little band of men who laid their comrade to rest in the wind-blown sand of the desert-the rain meantime steadily pouring.

The two firemen were Indians,-only one of their bodies had been recovered, the other lay buried under the débris of the wrecked train.

All that evening the rain kept pouring and the river kept rising. Gangs of work

men were hard at work on the wreckage of the train, endeavouring to restore the line and to remove to some place of safety the stores which lay strewn around.

In the store yard at the depôt quantities of perishable goods were piled. Late into the night and at an early hour next morning men toiled without intermission removing to higher ground those articles that could be most easily moved, and especially those that would be most damaged by water. But the task was enormous. There were hundreds of sacks of grain waiting to be moved up to the various working camps for the food of the workers; there were thousands of casks of cement, imported at great expense from England, on which the building of bridges, &c., depended, but which would at the touch of water become masses of useless stone. move all these and the countless other stores would entail an army of labourers far greater in number than those actually available, and meantime the river, flowing close by, was steadily rising, and water, now pouring in great volume down the irrigation channels, threatened to attack the store yard in rear as well as in front. Therefore it seemed that the only feasible policy to follow was to dam those channels and every weak spot in the river banks. Every available man therefore was put on the task of fighting the rising waters. Sacks, empty

To

barrels, and packing-cases were filled with sand and stones and piled at the points of weakness. But it is one thing to devise means of stopping a rush of water and quite another matter to accomplish it. Hour after hour the task went on, with men working up to their waists in the rushing stream, and again and again the flood bore away the fruit of toil in its overwhelming power. Night fell, but still the work proceeded with increasing success and fascinating interest, until about midnight the channels were at last stopped, and, with the consciousness of a battle hardly won, the wearied workers were bidden to seek rest and food, while the directing officer, leaving a watchman to warn him if in the night there was any fresh rise of the stream, wrapped himself in a borrowed blanket and stretched himself on a native bedstead for the sleep he so sorely needed.

As day was breaking the watchman roused him hastily. In the early light the river was seen coming down in greater force than ever, huge chocolate-coloured waves leaping over one another with fearful velocity, and whirling the débris of bridges and huts, uprooted trees (from some distant forest land), and the bodies of animals and, here and there, of human beings. The water had overtopped the dams of the previous evening and threatened rapidly to undo all the evening's toil. Already

streams, not as yet in any great rush but creeping forward like huge venomous snakes, were finding their way into the stores yard. Not a moment was to be lost, for the water soon would reach the scattered houses of the community with their sleeping inmates; and as the walls were only of sundried bricks, which would melt like sugar, the question was now not merely the salvage of property, but the saving of life. At once everybody in the place was aroused, and ordered to pack up their household goods and make their way to higher ground. Across one of the irrigation channels was a girder bridge, in ordinary times far above water-level. Now the stream had risen to the girders, and was steadily rising up the sides. If it reached the top, then all chance of keeping it out of the store yards and houses would be gone. tunately the rain had ceased, and the sun rose on a bright and glittering world.

For

But the river had spent its force. By noon the water on the sides of the girder rose no longer, and half an hour later there was a line of foam an inch or two above the waterlevel, showing that at last the worst was over. A few hours later the water-level had fallen below the girders, and the weary workers were bidden again to rest.

It happened to be Easter Sunday. The European members of the little community were invited to come into the

largest room in the main railway office, and there to join in words of thanksgiving and prayer. It was a small band of working men in dirty clothes and unshaven faces, but their devotions were at least as heartfelt and earnest as if they had been worshipping with their kinsfolk in any of the peaceful and beautiful churches of the far-off homeland.

Meantime agents had been sent off to every village in the neighbourhood to collect pack animals - oxen or mules or donkeys. There were thousands of men up the valley depending on the supplies which were lying there ready for transport, but which could not be sent as usual upon camels, for "the ship of the desert" is useless in a muddy road. Hundreds of pack animals were brought in that evening, and next morning were loaded and sent up the gorge. Paths had to be made for them in many places, and rough bridges built, while arrangements for rafts across the main stream had to be organised in certain reaches of the river. Two days' more hard work had to be carried out in this way before food reached the beleaguered, and it was not until the evening of the fifth day from the accident to the two locomotives that communication was in any way restored, The Personal Assistant had, during that time, no opportunity of wearing any other clothes than those he wore

when he started on his scramble over the mountains, and he had obtained food and sleep by snatches where and how he could.

But the food for the 20,000 workmen and the stores for the work were practically unharmed, and no serious delay in the progress of the operations occurred.

To-day the gorge is silent and uninhabited, its solitudes broken twice a day by the whistle of the engine drawing the daily train, and by the grinding of the wheels on the rails round its curves. The modern passenger knows nothing

of the day when the whole place was swarming with busy men, nor of the time when those men were in dire peril of starvation. But in the little cemetery at the foot of the hills there are some sleeping their last sleep who fought those floods, and who were carried away, shortly afterwards, by a still more overwhelming scourge -cholera. Their day's work was done, their gallant fight for country ended, and while there they bore the "white man's burden" manfully and well, now they guard for ever the frontier of the land they helped to win.