that has ever descended from these grim northern hills has degenerated in India. The Arab fares no better than does his horse when once he passes those arid portals. Such was the land and such the people with whom Napier was now to come to blows in the new year about to dawn. War had not been declared, but it was certain that some of the Ameers at least were gathering their Beloochee feudatories, that it was often stated in their durbars that the hot season, now near at hand, would paralyse the action of the English general, and that, as a bold and resolute front had ended in Afghanistan in the total withdrawal of the English armies, so might that most necessary adjunct to the string of diplomacy ensure the final retirement of the Feringhee from the territories of Scinde. Ever present in Napier's mind was this approaching hot season. Viewing the conduct of the principal Ameers through the glasses of his new friend and ally, Meer Ali Moorad, and seeing with his own eyes the evidence of their tyrannical rule over their subjects, he had resolved to anticipate all plans, to forestall all projects, to determine all events by marching at once upon the chief strongholds of the Ameers. If his innate love of justice whispered to him any suggestion that the cause of quarrel was not clear, that the chief Ameers were divided among themselves, and that moderate counsels would prevail over their fears and their weakness, the spectacle of their tyranny and worthlessness, of Beloochee bloodthirstiness and Scindian slavery, was ever before his vision to shut out such misgivings. The government of the Ameers seemed in his eyes as monstrous and unjust as had the Irish government of his boyish days or the English administration of Castlereagh and Sidmouth, and all the pent torrent of his nature longed to go out and crush it. Love of glory, hatred of oppression, these two most potent factors in the story of his life, called him to the field; he forgot that it is possible to be unjust even to injustice, and that if there were no criminals there need be no mercy. On January 5th, 1843, he struck out with a small force for the desert fortress of Emanghur. CHAPTER IX THE BATTLE OF MEANEE The desert--the world before it was born or after its death, the earth without water, no cloud above, no tree below--space, silence, solitude, all realised in one word--there is nothing like it in creation.