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iron-ore; and along the Tugela came across quartz specimens showing gold so plainly that it must have been present in the proportion of many ounces to the ton. Just before the regiment left Natal some enterprising men suggested that I should take a hand in starting a company to develop the Dundee mines, and lay a tramway from the intended railway to Elandslaagte, where the men of the regiment (Welsh miners) had found a splendid outcrop. I was rather taken with the idea, and the matter was under consideration, when a sudden order came for the regiment to go to Egypt. This at once put an end to my commercial aspirations; but I was, nevertheless, very nearly becoming a permanent colonist of Natal, by reason of an accident when embarking my regiment. The huge troop-lighter which took the regiment over the Durban harbour bar to the transport, H.M.S. Jumna, out in the roads, had nearly got rid of its cargo: the sea being calm, the men were rapidly passed in to the ship by the baggageport, but a heavy swell began to make itself felt as the last were going in. I ought to have gone in with them, but being, as I considered myself, an old sailor, I did not care to go in at the lower-deck port, and called to the blue-jackets by the quarter-deck gangway to give me a hand when the great lighter rose on the swell, and I would come aboard in that way. I must have proved heavier than they thought, for I slipped through their hands and fell between the lighter and the ship. Those looking on feared that I was cut in two, but as I rose to the surface I took in the situation in a fraction of a second, and with a few rapid strokes was under the quarter of the lighter before she closed on the ship again. A grass

line was thrown to me, and by the assistance of three blue-jackets, who oddly enough had been with me on the Invincible, I was lifted on to the lighter. I did not then know how badly I was damaged, and insisted on boarding the Jumna in the way I had intended, but with the precaution of a bowline over my shoulders in case I should slip again. For about a quarter of an hour I managed to go on with my work, but then I had to throw up the sponge and send for a surgeon. Not only was it found that several of my ribs were broken, but I had also got a nasty internal squeeze. The result was that when the regiment arrived at Cairo I had to be invalided home, and did not rejoin until the autumn of 1886.

CHAPTER XXIV.

CAIRO.

IN the middle of October 1886, on a Thursday, I embarked in the Tyne for Alexandria. Hitherto my family had been at home whilst I was abroad with my regiment, but this time I took my wife and two of the children with me for the winter in Cairo. We ought to have been at Plymouth the same night, or very early next morning; but a perfect hurricane suddenly came on, the force of the wind being as great as in the typhoon I once experienced in Chinese waters. So powerful was it that the engine-room hatches could not be got down, and before the gale was over there was a dangerous amount of water in the stoke-hole. Under the influence of a very nasty wall-sided sea the rudder-head began to move in a decidedly unpleasant manner, and we did not get into Plymouth Sound until the afternoon of Saturday. On Sunday the ship was put in dock, when it was found that we had just made the port in time, the pintles of the rudder-post being all but worn through. There had been great alarm about us, and we had been reported lost in the Friday evening newspapers, two men-of-war being under orders to look for the ship. My naval friends in

the Tyne during the gale took consolation from the thought that as I was on board we should get into port all right: they evidently thought I was destined for a more elevated fate than drowning!

There were plenty of dances and dinner-parties going on at Cairo, and many excursions to be made, so my family had a good time of it until the end of the winter, when smallpox and diphtheria broke out in the house we were staying at. We escaped the former, but my youngest boy nearly died from the latter. When he was convalescent the family went home, and I then returned to barracks.

I was able when at Cairo to improve my system of battle-training for the officers by giving out a scheme for the attack or defence of a bridge or position. A week before it took place each officer sent me in a sketch and written description of how he would do the work these I went over, writing my remarks on them. The attack or defence was then carried out by the regiment (without blank cartridge), any mistakes rectified, and a short lecture given. A day or two afterwards the work was all done over again, this time with blank cartridge. The interest officers and men took in this systematic method of training was really wonderful. I may mention that for lectures on outposts I found the billiard-table and chalk marks very handy; for larger schemes the raised war game model, the invention of Colonel Shaw, was excellent. All this, however, I gave in detail in a lecture at the United Service Institute in June 1889, entitled "Battle Training of Regimental Officers." One subject I did not mention in that lecture-viz., field-cooking. The young officers got instructions in that branch from the sergeant cook.

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Cairo was a more expensive place than Maritzburg, where our mess catering-three meals a-day-was only 3s. 6d. At Cairo we had a mess - man, an excellent cook, who did us very well for 4s. Το prevent extravagance I adopted the system in use in the navy: I would not allow any subaltern to have a larger mess-bill than £12 a-month, this to include regimental subscriptions of every description. To show what can be done if things are looked after, I may mention that every Sunday all the smart people in Cairo used to come to our barracks to hear the band (50 strong)—which I believe was the best in the service-play sacred music. Tea, coffee, biscuits, cigarettes, and similar refreshments were liberally provided; a subaltern's share was 1s. 7d. Entertainments of every description I had charged pro rata for rank, so as to make their contributions as light as possible to the young officers, all of whom I took care to introduce to the best of the society who visited us on Sundays. Many of these were high political officials, foreign as well as English ; so my Welsh boys made many friends and had a real good time of it. With the French and Austrians we got on particularly well. I was much interested on discovering from one of the former, la Comtesse d'Aubigny, that the Bretons and Welsh are really from the same stock. Some of the bandsmen standing near her were speaking Welsh, when, to my astonishment, she said, "I am a Bretonne, and can understand what your men are saying." The French newspapers very kindly advertised our Sunday programmes, and one day they made a slight mistake, printing, instead of "The Heavens are Telling," "The Heavens are Yelling"!