On the occasion of one of these halts I was astonished to see a diminutive boy in very ragged clothes walking along with two half-plucked pigeons in his hand and a large bag over his shoulder. After mounting I rode beside him and found that he was a Greek. His father and mother kept a small café in Cairo, and the boy, who was only fourteen and very small for his age, had actually traversed some twelve hundred miles by land and water in order to sell cigarettes to the army. This adventurous urchin, Anastasios by name, became a great pet with the Tommies, who bought his cigarettes and supplied him with enough fragments of bully beef and biscuit to keep him going throughout the campaign. As I spoke some Greek, I saw a good deal of the boy subsequently, and succeeded in getting him allowed a passage from Omdurman on board the _Metemmeh_; but at Atbara Camp some of the officials rather needlessly refused to give him a place amongst the baggage in the open trucks, and when I last saw the imp he was being led away by a zaptieh, or native policeman, after a desperate attempt to override authority and hide himself and the remainder of his cigarette boxes under a heap of luggage. During our advance by land from Hagir, Mr. Frederick Villiers' bicycle was much in evidence. It is astonishing to what a number of uses this versatile machine may be put in peace and war alike. An Oxford professor, whose metaphysical researches are combined with military enthusiasm and the study of minor tactics, has given to the world a treatise in which is demonstrated with logical acumen the value of the bicycle as a weapon or rather implement of defence against a charge of cavalry. The academical tactician suggests, I believe, that when the enemy's horse are galloping down upon you their charge may be broken and rendered futile by the terrifying aspect of a line of cyclists holding their machines in the air and rapidly spinning the wheels round! No war-horse, it is maintained, could face this fearsome spectacle, and utter discomfort would overtake the charging squadrons! What a pity our 'Varsity cyclist corps were not posted in front of the zeriba at Omdurman to obviate the necessity of bullets when the Baggara horse came thundering down upon us!