of these ever
reached the front. In Buenos Ayres cholera broke out and thirty thousand
people died, among the number about half the Legion. MacIver was among
those who suffered, and before he recovered was six weeks in hospital.
During that period, under a junior officer, the Foreign Legion was sent
to the front, where it was disbanded.

On his return to Glasgow, MacIver foregathered with an old friend,
Bennett Burleigh, whom he had known when Burleigh was a lieutenant
in the navy of the Confederate States. Although today known as a
distinguished war correspondent, in those days Burleigh was something of
a soldier of fortune himself, and was organizing an expedition to assist
the Cretan insurgents against the Turks. Between the two men it was
arranged that MacIver should precede the expedition to Crete and
prepare for its arrival. The Cretans received him gladly, and from the
provisional government he received a commission in which he was given
"full power to make war on land and sea against the enemies of Crete,
and particularly against the Sultan of Turkey and the Turkish forces,
and to burn, destroy, or capture any vessel bearing the Turkish flag."

This permission to destroy the Turkish navy single-handed strikes one
as more than generous, for the Cretans had no navy, and before one could
begin the destruction of a Turkish gun-boat it was first necessary to
catch it and tie it to a wharf.

At the close of the Cretan insurrection MacIver crossed to Athens and
served against the brigands in Kisissia on the borders of Albania
and Thessaly as volunteer aide to Colonel Corroneus, who had been
commander-in-chief of the Cretans against the Turks. MacIver spent three
months potting at brigands, and for his services in the mountains was
recommended for the highest Greek decoration.

From Greece it was only a step to New York, and almost immediately
MacIver appears as one of the Goicouria-Christo expedition to Cuba,
of which Goicouria was commander-in-chief, and two famous American
officers, Brigadier-General Samuel C. Williams was a general and Colonel
Wright Schumburg was chief of staff.

In the scrap-book I find "General Order No. 11 of the Liberal Army of
the Republic of Cuba, issued at Cedar Keys, October 3, 1869." In it
Colonel MacIver is spoken of as in charge of officers not attached to
any organized corps of the division. And again:

"General Order No. V, Expeditionary Division, Republic of Cuba, on board
_Lil