captain, followed as an escort up to the top of the first hill, where they saluted, wheeled, and returned to Nicosia. Our journey down was as the journey up. We took a cup of 4 o'clock tea at sixpence apiece all round at the Dewdrop Inn, and found the landlord cheery in his little bell-tent. An English friend of his, who had just come over from Syria to pay him a visit, told us the people there all thought themselves badly served that we had not taken the mainland instead of Cyprus. Heat and dust, and yet it is November 2d. . .

Sunday, Nov. 3.-Under weigh early. Church as usual at 10.30, and this time the band played the usual chants for the psalms as well as the hymns. I think we most of us enjoyed the service thoroughly.

At 12 we were off Famagusta, where Admiral Hornby was already anchored in the Helicon. We went inside the reef which runs from the old harbour parallel with the land, so as to constitute a breakwater almost as good as that at Plymouth, within which large ships can lie in perfect safety.

The town is surrounded by a very thick wall, and it is only approached from the sea by a water-gate. The ship's boat drew near the shore, and we saw a crowd of people on the shore waiting our arrival. On landing, we had to pass under the domed gateway some hundred feet thick. Inside there were ponies and mules awaiting to take us to see the ruins of the town. It was impossible to walk, for the sun was hotter than we had before felt it. Our first work was up to the top of the bastion commanding a view of the port. Such desolation I had never before witnessed. Everything is a ruin, and much of the ruin is as if it had been accomplished only a few months, or at most years, ago. There are, they say, remains of forty churches in the town, and not one perfect one remaining. The cathedral is turned into the one mosque in the town, disfigured and dirty, with tower and pinnacles gone, the pillars outside coated with whitewash and green paint where the stone capitals should be, but still in its mournful decay retaining externally in its doorways, windows, and flying buttresses the most delicate and beautiful tracery, no one window or pinnacle being like another.

We visited another splendid ruin, and on the walls of the roofless apse we could trace perfectly mural paintings of the Agony, Crucifixion, and other scenes in our Lord's Passion, the peculiarity being that the drawing was perfect and the colours strong and good. The place was the most mournful I have ever seen. It was literally a heap of ruins, and from the good preservation in which some parts are found, man and not decay must have created the havoc. We rode between the remains of palaces and churches, and there are now only a few hovels left, which are built out of the débris of past greatness. The Commissioner, Captain Inglis, took us to the Konah, and it seemed to give pleasure to the soldier-servants to see our faces.

There are the remains of forty churches, and only 250 living men in the town. Mr Millard, our surveying officer, navigated the ship out of the harbour, and after a lovely sunset, we steamed slowly round the land towards Kyrenia, where we arrived by daylight on

A.D. 1878.]

BAFFO.

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Monday, Nov. 4.-Fancy a range of hills, extending quite to the height of Scottish hills, at the distance of from five to ten miles from the shore, sloping from the last half of the distance gradually towards the sea, with a somewhat thick wood as it appears from the sea; but when we got ashore we found they were fine carob-trees, olives, and pines, thickly planted in fields which, although mostly bare now, are all under cultivation. We landed at Kyrenia, an old Venetian port with castle and walls still standing, and looking very picturesque from the sea as the Union-jack floated from the ramparts. Passing through the small town, we soon came to the camp of the 42d Highlanders, the Black Watch. The poor fellows were in a very depressed state, as they had had a good deal of fever and ague, which made them look washed out, and they had no games or amusements; but if all is well they will soon be moved. There is one lady, a wife of an officer, but there is only one other officer to call on her, so her life cannot be very cheerful.

Some of our party went up to a monastery in the mountains, and brought down beautiful flowers and fruit-oranges, lemons. The country appears to produce everything. In the evening we said good-bye to Admiral Hornby, who returned to Constantinople, and we sailed to Paphos or Baffo.

Tuesday, Nov. 5.-Arrived at Baffo, and landed in a little harbour full of rocks. There was a tower or castle there, in which death was certain, it was so unhealthy. More zaptiehs and more receptions. Negroes and Nubians seem especially to prevail here.

On our way round from Kyrenia, and while we were lying there, we could see clearly the mountains of Asia Minor, and I shall therefore have seen all the quarters of the world by the time I get home.

Landing at Baffo was a serious business. Our boat bumped on rocks, and our poor coxswain trembled for the Enchantress pinnace. At one time it appeared likely we should want the aid of an Arab boat, but we got on shore safely.

Every description of steed met us-English ponies, Arab horses, mules, donkeys-with a corresponding variety of saddles.

...

Our road lay through ruins, marble and granite columns many hundred years old lying by the wayside-remnants of two separate periods of civilisation, pagan and Christian. There were rock tombs —and one realises that Abraham was buried in a trough hewn out of the rock-and bits of arches and carvings of Christian churches.

So we proceeded, passing near where tradition says Venus arose out of the sea, and a temple to Aphrodite was raised on to the ground on which the camp of the 42d detachment stands.

The men were better and more in fettle than those at Kyrenia, but some were unwell. We returned in a blazing sun and embarked for Limasol, coasting along a rich country.

At Limasol we landed at a little pier covered with myrtle, and carpeted in honour of our arrival. There was a crowd and a deputation. The municipality wished to present an address, which was read to us with great emphasis by a gentleman in black and a top-hat. When he finished there was "Zeto!" or "Long live the Queen!" "Long live the Commissioner and the Ministers!" in good round

cheers, and these were followed by "God save the Queen" in Greek, sung by the schoolboys of the town. We hurried through the town, for time was precious, to the castle, the kahn, and the jail; and coming out of that, we were met by another crowd and another address in Greek, to which we listened gravely, not understanding a word, and all agreeing that Mr Gladstone ought to be there to translate it.

We went on board, transferred Sir Garnet Wolseley and Lord Gifford to the Humber, which was waiting, and started for Port Said. Poor Sir Garnet felt our parting, but he said our visit had been a real comfort to him. Fine weather again favoured us, and on Wednesday, November 6, we arrived at Port Said, the mouth of the Suez Canal. There were ceremonies to be gone through—a French admiral with his flag-ship, the Governor of Port Said, the Admiralty agent, were all come on board. We got through all this, and started for a short run up the canal. It is much to the credit of France that M. de Lesseps, persevering, accomplished the greatest work of the century in making a navigable canal through the sands of the desert. We returned to Port Said, and took a stroll in the town. There is an Arab lake (dwelling) village just outside on piles over the Lake Menzaleh, which might have been one of the Swiss lake villages of some hundred years ago, now being discovered or uncovered. The town of Port Said is most uninteresting, but it seems to embrace every kind of people and language under the sun. The Arab boys were troublesome in their attention to us, but a school we saw amused us much. All the children made as much noise as they could. They, master and all, sat as Arabs sit together, squatting on a mat, and as they said or learned their lessons their bodies swayed to and fro like seesaws, the master, in turban, using a bamboo stick for the heads of the most distant, if they failed to jabber and to sway. We went on board, and sailed at 5 P.M. for Alexandria.

CHAPTER XIII.

1878-1880.

When Smith's only son, Frederick, who had lately gone to school, was home for the Christmas holidays in 1878, he told a funny little story about his experience. The boys had asked him if his father was the man who had the bookstalls, to which he answered, "Yes." Then they asked him if he did anything else. "Oh yes," replied Frederick, "he's

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First Lord of the Admiralty!". a statement which was received with shouts of incredulous derision.

By the time that Smith returned to England from the East, war had been declared with Afghanistan, and Parliament was summoned to meet on 5th December. For the fourth time during 1878 the Government were to be arraigned on a motion of censure—this time moved by Mr Whitbread-and the House was to be called on to declare that it disapproved of the policy which had led to hostilities; for the fourth time the attack was to be repulsed: the Government obtained a majority of 101 in a House of 555 members.

Although the shadow of war no longer lay upon the land (for the affair in Afghanistan, though serious and deplorable enough, was very light compared with the mighty conflict into which Britain had so nearly been drawn in the year that was past), the gloom of commercial depression, which had set in with the crash of the City of Glasgow Bank in September, weighed heavily on all classes. Agriculture especially was in a languishing state: the pressure of competition in corn and meat had begun to be formidable about two years previously, and for the first time the effect of onesided free trade was making itself felt upon our principal industry-in addition to which the harvest of 1878 had been a disastrous one. On the back of all this came news of another frontier war in which Great Britain had become involved, this time in South Africa, with Cetchwayo, King of the Zulus. Not much interest was taken in it by people in this country, absorbed as they were in their private anxieties, until, on February 11, arrived messages describing the terrible calamity at Isandhlwana, where the English column under Colonel Glyn had been cut to pieces.

It was under such circumstances as these that Ministers met Parliament on February 13. The glow of exultation

N

which had followed the return of our Plenipotentiaries from Berlin had given place to cold disapproval and anger at the humiliation of our arms by a tribe of savages. Notwithstanding all this, the House of Commons still, though with a diminished majority, ratified the conduct of the Government, and rejected a vote of censure (the fifth within twelve months), moved by Sir Charles Dilke, by a majority of 60.

The Home Rulers were not slow to turn the circumstances of the day to practical account. Agricultural distress, low prices, and the ruin of the crops were availed of to foment political discontent, and Parnell lent the full weight of his new authority to the anti-rent agitation.

For Parnell was now leader of the Home Rule party. In the previous session, a debate had taken place on the occasion of the murder of Lord Leitrim, during which the line taken by Messrs Parnell, Biggar, O'Donnell, and Callan, the accusations made and the language used by them, were made the subject of remonstrance and disclaimer by their nominal chief, Mr Butt, who, when he found that he had lost control over his followers, resigned the leadership. Henceforward the policy of Irish Nationalist representatives was to be that of sparing no charge, however odious and unfounded, of respecting no custom or tradition of Parliament, however venerable and honourable, with the intention of making their presence at Westminster intolerable to the House of Commons, and incompatible with its use as a legislative assembly.

During the Whitsuntide recess, it fell to the First Lord of the Admiralty to make an important speech at Bury St Edmunds-important, not because it marked an era in oratory or gave birth to any of those phrases with which it is the happy knack of some public men to tickle the fancy of the public, but important because of the reassuring effect it had upon the general anxiety which prevailed. The war