her, who was sleepy, and slipped pres- and with the hot southern sun beating ently into a comfortable sprawl. "But, implacably upon us, and filling the Monsieur la Militaire," she broke out train with a stifling heat and dust, inat last, startling us all into wakefulness, stead of dashing through rain and "assuredly you have the legs of a storm and the night. In the oppogiraffe, you! Observe only that I am site corner was an apple-cheeked old entouré de soldats, and retire yourself woman, in a wonderful cap, with a then, that I may expand!" And she bundle on her knee, and a trickle of did so, apparently; but I don't quite tears lying in the wrinkles that seamed know what became of the rest of us. her face. "I go," she explained to us at intervals, "to meet my boy; he is a soldier, you understand; and he is coming home from overseas oh! he has been incredibly far away. And he is ill- very ill; it is those terrible hot countries. He wanted so much to be a soldier, my André; he said he would come back to me in a beautiful uniform and with a medal on his breast; but now he is ill-very ill." And after a little silence, she added, "But perhaps the good air of France We drew near to Marseilles, and she looked round at us anxiously, with an open need of reassurance. "Voyons! I do not care about the medal; but he is ill, very ill, and he has been so far away 99 Then she went off to meet her André, who had no wounds to wear in front, and who, perhaps, would not even be there to meet her. And I recall another travelling companion, an English soldier, a sergeant, who wore the colors of the queen with a smartness that became them. He had been all through the Egyptian and the Soudanese wars, and told much of what he had seen, telling it well. We were in the night-express; the others in the carriage slept, in various stages of déshabillé and discomfort; the rain beat on the windows and the train roared and rocked and jangled as it rushed southwards. But I only heard the strong voice of my neighbor, as he poured out story after story of the two campaigns; and now we laughed, and now we fell to silence for a space, as he turned from the wild jollity of a camp to its queer sudden pathos, and spoke of the bravery that went unrewarded and the great deeds that could never be recompensed. "For it ain't the best of us that's decorated," he said; "and, after all, if a fellow drops behind in a rush, and has all his wounds in front, what better medal could he have than that?" But I glanced at his breast, and, smiling, shook my head; he was willing to tell story after story of what his chums had done, and what he had heard of others; but he did not say how he had gained that plain little cross, and he only reddened and grew taci-disobedience; and truly, when one turn when I asked about it. "Twas comes to think of it, it is not so much nothing," he said awkwardly, and that royalty is lessened as that we think there was no further word of it to be less fit to obey it. It was worth while got from him; "'twas of no conse- being royal when power was a tangible quence. Now, if they had given it thing and a crown lay actually upon to "and he plunged into another one's temples. One can envy that story which ended in such a manner princess who graved in stone her that we had both to stare hard out of motto, "Grumble who will, thus shall window. it be, for it is my good pleasure;" one would even like to say as much one's self, but for a lurking conviction that no one would pay any particular atten Not long after that I was travelling in France, hurrying southward, too, but at a very different rate of speed, Somebody once, I think, spoke of mankind as "Kings of opportunity;" and indeed it would be a very admirable thing even but once to command fate. But we have lost the trick and the mantle of conscious royalty; we wear the emperor of China's invisible robe, and there is always some one ready to perceive our nakedness. It is all very well to order the tide to stand still, but it has a grievous manner of tion to it. No; we have lost the habit | been hard to live up to it even in the of obedience, except perhaps to an world of old romance. Oriental potentate in jewelled robes, or a barbaric autocrat in none, must be difficult to look thinks, though there are succeed. - when it royal, one those that I seem to have read a story once in some old book, a foolish, fantastic thing, which yet lingers oddly in my mind, of a king and his judgment. For he had a wife that was beautiful There is a monarch of my acquaint- and frail; and after a long drama of ance who is amiable in his manners temptation and sin and shame, learnand a fatherly despot in his govern- ing her secret he went to her, and ment; his lately learned civilization showed her what was in his mind. still sits strangely on him, and he doffs And she, appalled at his pitifulness, it sometimes, to take a luxurious yearned for punishment and thereby plunge-bath into his former barbarism, expiation; and fetching her child, laid though solely, as he assures his con- it before him with tears. "Lord, I am science and the nearest missionary, out not worthy," she sobbed. "It is but of necessity. He was discovered re- right you should take it from me." cently superintending the happy de- But the king looked down upon her spatch, by several refined modes of and upon the child, and mused a while torture, of a considerable number of in silence, and then returned it to her persons connected with his court, and arms. was remonstrated with accordingly. "But consider," he returned, with conviction, "if I do not kill my people sometimes, how will they know that I am the king?" And there was really a great deal to be said for it from his point of view. For he was a shrewd as well as an enlightened person, in spite of an immense desire to be a white man and a brother; and when he was told that he should not cut off the ears and noses of his wives when they plagued him, he said that civilization gave him a stomach-ache. "Keep it," he said; "it will comfort you for the burden of a crown." And, the chronicler adds, the queen wept, and sinned no more. Yet she would, perhaps, have better understood the bearing of a penance and the absolution thereby gained. But that was in the foolish old times, and all the world is wiser now, and cultivates its little sins kindly; it is even the fashion to seem worse than we really are and to look on virtue as plebeian and underbred; and we prefer to play the king of operetta, rather than to strut the tragic scene and round our mouths to great emotions. So we yawn over the passions of Phèdre (some of us), and crowd to watch the evident feet of Nini Patte en l'Air. But it is a mere necessity nowadays to be either Oriental or barbaric, if one would know what a fine manner of thing it is to be set up over other men; unless, indeed, sleeping, one could There was lately a foreign prince in dream one's self into an old-time tale, Paris, travelling for his education; he when constitutions were not and was simple in his tastes and of a disprinces were a law unto themselves; cerning intelligence, and they took him when the king's daughter was all to see a great tragedian play her beautiful within, and his sons declared greatest rôle of sin and suffering. The their birthright in purple and fine next night he went to the Folies-Berlinen; when the king's face gave gères. "Now this," he said, "is reagrace indeed, and he was free to par- sonable; this is serious. The other don as to punish; when the king's was pour rire; people do not speak sword was unconquerable as the king's like that at all, and if they did such word was unbroken. In those far things, they would be put in prison. days, if you were born to the burden So I have been taught, and that it is of it, it was worth while to be royal wrong to do things for which you will and something other than the rest of be put in prison. But this is reamen, though it must sometimes have sonable. J'aime à voir des femmes, et même d'en voir beaucoup." And we are the veldt, from Dundu in Natal, I at all reasonable nowadays, even those of us who are kings. last found myself in Zululand the country of all others, I had set my heart on seeing, with its brave people and historic battlefields, especially the famous and fatal field of Isandhlwana (pronounced Sandlewana). My first experience of Zululand was anything but pleasant. To begin with, it was raining hard, and the inhabitants of the so-called hotel were for the most part drunk, very drunk, so much so that I found one of them, a Boer, ou my bed, with a Winchester near him, But, nevertheless, I think we have the best of it, we happy folk who are not born in the trammels of the purple, and who can drowse or drudge through life as we please, without convulsing a nation by our small caprices; who can wear old clothes and enjoy the comfort of our loose and easy-fitting peccadilloes; who can sit down hungry to meat and rise up satisfied; and who can feel as intimate a satisfaction in the beauty of sky and sea, of the many-roaring out something about "Vercolored hills, and the admirable sunshine. It is a sufficing thing for one of a humble spirit to be warm and indolent and full of wandering fancies; to be soothed and tickled by the sound of lapping waters and the various pealing of bells; to hear the high voices of women and the laughter of children, and to catch the holiday note in the clatter of the hurrying feet. And, like the deeper undertone that creeps into the plashing waters of the bay from the deep seas outside, one remembers, now and then, that if to-day is All Saints, to-morrow is All Souls, and the priest will go down to the shore and pray for all those that sleep in all the waters of the world, at the Banks and at the Iceland fishings; and there will be some around him who listen and remember, and some who listen and fear. There will be eyes dim with the long habit of tears, and others weary with watching for the boats that have not yet returned; not yet, and it is November. There will be singing and chanting, and the incense will mingle with the salt smell of the seaweed; but the deepest and the longest prayer will be an unspoken one "Etoile de la Mer, send us our men home from the sea!" From The United Service Magazine. ISANDHLWANA, ZULULAND, 1894. BY E. A. HIRST. ARRIVING at Rorke's Drift very tired, after my thirty miles ride over domdt, Englanders." So taking discretion to be the better part of valor, I retired to the wagon of a trader, and there spent a fairly quiet night. On waking up in the morning I found a huge Zulu standing over me, who, on seeing I was awake, lifted a cup of coffee over me, spilling some in the process, and calling out "Koos (Chief). Whereupon I took the coffee, said "Thank you," and nodded, at which the Zulu stared for a few moments, and then departed. Mr. L—, the trader, now returned, and said he would have to wait at the Drift for a day or so for another of his wagons. So it was agreed that we should ride over to the battlefield of Rorke's Drift. Calling Jim, his Zulu servant, my friend of the coffee, he told him to saddle up our horses, and we would start after breakfast. At breakfast I sat opposite my friend, the Boer of the previous night, who, with profuse apologies, hoped he had not disturbed me, as, he said, he had only had a "tot" or two with some friends; he did not often get down to the Drift, and when he did, he acknowledged, he generally made a night of it, but he meant no offence, so all was made right. Mr. Land I rode out into the veldt to examine the historic mission station of Rorke's Drift, or "N'qutu," as the Zulus call it. The view from the Drift across the Buffalo River is perfect. The mission station, perched on the side of the sloping ground, nestled among trees, draws from one memories of that heroic defence when Lieutenants Chard and Bromhead, | ketry, I awoke to find my Zulu friend, with only one hundred and thirty men, Jim, calling me to get up, as the Koos gallantly held their own during the wanted to start early. To watch the long afternoon and night of January inspanning of the oxen over our morn22nd and 23rd, 1879, after the fearful ing cup of coffee is a very interesting disaster at Isandhlwana, against about sight. Each ox has its own name, to four thousand Zulus of the Undi Corps which it answers by trotting up to its under the famous Zulu general, Debu- yoke. One is Salisbury, another Koos, lamanzi. As we approach the mission and another Tagati (Wizard). Presstation we were saluted by a Zulu ently all are yoked up, and with a servant of the missionary, who con- "Yak, yak, trek," from the Hottentot ducted us up to the house, where we driver, the oxen strain and pull, and were kindly received by one of the the great, tent-covered wagons ramble staff, who showed us a collection of on their way over the veldt to Isandhlassegais, shields, cartridges, and guns, wana. It is impossible to describe the that had been collected in and around journey without the aid of the poet's the defences. In front of the first line pen. Now we are travelling over the of defence only a low, stone wall veldt, like great seas of grass-land; behind which, on the day of the fight, now we enter some deep cleft in the were piled biscuit-boxes, are the Zulu mountains, to emerge again upon some graves; some three hundred meu are seldom-trodden path round the base of buried here. Here it was that the a spur of the N'qutu Hills. Here famous Undi Corps of Ketchwayo's there breaks upon our view the first. army made their most determined charge, driving the defenders into the second line of biscuit-boxes and mealie bags, which formed a sort of last citadel for the defenders. Near here is the graveyard of those who fell or died of their wounds, in the centre of which stands a neat, stone obelisk, on which are carved the names of the soldiers, surmounted by a stone laurel-wreath with the number of the regiment on it. Very quiet and peaceful it all looks. It is difficult to imagine the tempestuous scenes enacted round this secluded spot, to adequately picture a defence which has sent its echoes round the civilized world, and a heroism which has added another page of fame to the records of the British army. My companion had almost to drag me away from this entrancing spot. However, as it was getting late, and he had to see to his wagons and goods, I was forced to go; but not before I had promised my kind friend at the mission station that I would visit him on my return from my long trek through Zululand. The wagon having arrived, we determined to start for Isandhlwana in the morning. So retiring again to Mr. L's hospitable wagon to dream of Zulu charges and volleys of mus clear sight of the famous mountain of Isandhlwana. Like a great closed hand, it towers to the sky, a fitting. monument for all time for those who sleep beneath its shade. The wagon road here dips down into a deep valley watered by a long and winding stream, on whose banks nestle the numerous Zulu kraals, like magnified beehives in a summer field. The cattle of the Zulus, dotted here and there, complete the picture, tended by bright young Zulu lads, who rise at our approach, and give us the dignified and picturesque Zulu salute. Standing with one arm raised, they drone out their "Sagu bone inkoos" (I see you, chief), and with a" Ho, umfan" (O, boy), we pass across the stream and mount the slope, down which flew the few survivors from the terrible fight. Noticing dotted here and there small piles of stones, I asked my companion what they were for. He said, "Each of those mounds marks the grave of a British soldier, and this "-pointing to our right" is the way to Fugitives' Drift, down which fled the panic-stricken survivors of the Natal native contingent on January 22nd, 1879." On the top of the pass, to our left, is a great mound, marking the spot where Colonel Durnford is supposed to have had seen the sun rise in all its splen- were fighting in groups back to back, |