advised the erection of blockhouses at certain points along the line of march where springs were to be found, to secure water for the troops. The Bascha thought this rather a roundabout mode of proceeding, held his men's lives very cheap, and boasted of his seven hundred dromedaries, every one of which, in case of need, could carry three soldiers. His counsellors were dismissed, with injunctions to secresy, and on their return home they found at their door, as a present from the Bascha, two beautiful dromedaries, tall, powerful, ready saddled for a march, and particularly adapted for a campaign, inasmuch as they started not when muskets were fired between their ears. A few days later, Mr Werne was sent for by Achmet, who, when the customary coffee had been taken, dismissed his attendants by a sign, and informed him, with a gloomy countenance, that the people of Taka refused to pay their _tulba_, or tribute. His predecessor, Churdschid Bascha, having marched into that country, had been totally defeated in a _chaaba_, or tract of forest. Since that time, Achmet mournfully declared, the tribes had not paid a single piastre, and he found himself grievously in want of money. So, instead of marching south-westward to Darfour, as he had intended, he would move north-eastward to Taka, chastise the stubborn insolvents, and replenish the coffers of the state. "Come with me," said he, to Mr Werne; "upon the march we shall all recover our health," (he also suffered from frequent and violent attacks of fever;) "yonder are water and forests, as in Germany and Circassia, and very high mountains." It mattered little to so restless and rambling a spirit as Mr Ferdinand Werne whether his route lay inland towards the Mountains of the Moon, or coastwards to the Red Sea. His brother was again sick, and spoke of leaving the country; but Mr Werne cheered him up, pointed out to him upon the map an imaginary duchy which he was to conquer in the approaching war, and revived an old plan of going to settle at Bagdad, there to practise as physician and apothecary. "We resolved, therefore, to take our passports with us, so that, if we chose, we might embark on the Red Sea. By this time I had seen through the Bascha, and I resolved to communicate to him an idea which I often, in the interest of these oppressed tribes, had revolved in my mind, namely, that he should place himself at their head, and renounce obedience to the Egyptian vampire. I did subsequently speak to him of the plan, and it might have been well and permanently carried out, had he not, instead of striving to win the confidence of the chiefs, tyrannised over them in every possible manner. Gold and regiments! was his motto."