mostly, bearing the unmistakable stamp
of responsibility. Men who "build the Empire" are little apt to "slop
over" or demand sympathy. The boyish vigour remains with them later than
with most men, but it is tempered by a certain hardness outside. The
train is particularly comfortable and well managed, with sleeping-cars
that bear comparison with the best in Europe, and a good dining-car; and
it is necessary, for these men have a journey of a day and a night
before reaching Khartoum, the capital of the Soudan, and the way lies
right across barren desert, where the sand insidiously creeps in at
every chink in spite of the closely shut windows. To some of them indeed
Khartoum is only a jumping-off place. There is one army man who received
orders to leave Cairo at ten days' notice and plunge into Central
Africa, there to hold an outpost as the only white man for hundreds of
miles around. He knows little of what is expected of him beyond the fact
that he is to purchase a year's stores in Khartoum, and that when he has
gone as far as boat and waterway can take him, he will have to march at
least a hundred miles through country where his equipment must be
carried by natives, as it is the haunt of the dreaded tsetse fly whose
bite is fatal to animals. He has a map made up mostly of rivers
"unexplored" and country "unknown." It looks quite full of information
and names when you merely glance at it, but when you begin to handle it
you find a great deal of the print tells you only what is not there. The
owner of it hardly knows what language he will have to speak, but he is
as pleased about it all as a girl going to her first ball. In his own
words, he "has got his chance." When we ask him what he is going to
take with him, he answers with a merry twinkle, "I started with two
dozen tooth-brushes; I should think in their line they would be enough."
So long as England produces men of this metal she need not fear the
decadence of the race.

When we have parted from them all we stroll down the bazaar at Wady
Haifa and are immediately followed by a horde of children of all ages,
sizes, and descriptions, who, whenever we stop and look around at them,
say with growing confidence, "Bakshish, bakshish!" even the tiny fat
babe who can scarcely toddle murmurs "'Shish!"

Still pursued by the horde we make our way to a tea-house, where
numerous natives of Haifa sit out in a little compound surrounded by a
wooden fence and refresh themselves.