came on, and no appearance of the return of the banditti. I had, however, the satisfaction of seeing the flask fairly emptied by my companions, who were too niggardly disposed to offer me a drop of its contents.

No one can tell what I endured between the hope of escape, and the fear of the return of the

banditti. But I will spin out my tale no longer. The dose of laudanum was enough to make the rascals sleep for a fortnight; without waiting to change my blue jacket with the fur cape, and my ragged red pantaloons, I left my companions in a sound slumber, and there, for aught I know, they may be sleeping still. If they wait for me to call them, their mustachoes will be at least a foot long when they next make their appearance as Italian bandits.

I CAN bear heat and cold, hunger and thirst, hardship and toil; but, for all that, I shall not soon forget what I went through in the Great Desert of Kirman. When I was a boy I was a sort of leader among my companions: we had

our mimic battles, and the motto worn on my hat-crown was taken from Beattie's Minstrel :

Patient in toil, serene amidst alarms;

Inflexible in faith, invincible in arms.

That motto, as I tell you, I wore on my hatcrown when a boy, and I have worn it on my heart since I became a man.

There is a desert which stretches itself from the vicinity of Korn almost to the Zurra, running from east to west about four hundred miles English measure, and it may be two hundred and fifty from north to south. In this latter direction it connects itself with the Desert of Kirman. I should think the two deserts together may be seven hundred miles long; but if you had to traverse them, you would almost suppose them to be as many thousands.

I know not how many

there were of us; but

when the camels were stretched out into a line, patiently plodding one after another, they seemed almost endless.

The fiery wind, and the cry of distress,

Were heard in the desert drear,

And the Sirdar Shiek, and the Muhmood Shah,
And Rohoollah Beg Ider were there;

And prone in the sand on our faces we lay,

Till the blast of the desert had wing'd far away.

We must have been perfect salamanders to have breathed that fiery atmosphere. I kept my head in the sand till I was all but choked; and if the burning blast had not passed away speedily, no British coffin would ever have been needed for me. Had there been a cool shadowy lane leading towards Old England, I should soon have turned down it, and left all the turbanned Moslems, the sons of the Prophet, to enjoy their deserts as they pleased. We had dates to eat,