After the reading of the general order, Sir Robert Napier handed over the rescued prisoners to the representatives of the Governments to which they belonged; and the general feeling of every one was, that we wished these officers joy of them, for a more unpromising-looking set could hardly be found anywhere else outside the walls of a prison. Sir Robert Napier, in handing these prisoners over, thanked the foreign officers for having accompanied the expedition, and for having shared in its toils and hardships. The ceremony over, the last act of the Magdala drama may be considered to have terminated, and the army on the next day marched for the coast, the second brigade leading, and the first following a day in their rear. The interest of the campaign being now over, I determined to come on at full speed, instead of travelling at the necessary slow pace of the army with all its encumbrances of material and baggage. It is, too, vastly more pleasant to travel alone, the journeys are performed in two-thirds of the time, and without the dust, noise, and endless delays which take place in the baggage-train. At the end of the journey the change is still more advantageous: one selects the site for one’s tent near the little commissariat stations, but far enough off to be quiet; and here, free from the neighing and fighting of horses and mules, the challenge of the sentries, the chattering of the native troops, who frequently talk until past midnight, and the incessant noise of coughing and groaning, and other unpleasant noises in which a Hindoo delights when he is not quite well, we pass the night in tranquillity. The hyenas and jackals are, it is true, a little troublesome, and howl and cry incessantly about the canvas of our tent; but the noise of a hyena is as music compared to the coughing and groaning of a sick Hindoo; and so we do not grumble. We have a party of four, making, with our ten servants, syces, and mule-drivers, a pretty strong party; no undesirable thing, as the country is extremely disturbed all the way down. Convoys are constantly attacked, and the muleteers murdered; indeed, scarce a day passes without an outrage of this kind. It is, perhaps, worst between Lât and Atzala; but beyond Antalo, and down even in the Sooro Pass, murders are almost daily events. The killing is not all on one side, for numbers of the natives have been shot by the guards of the convoys which they have attacked. The evil increases every day, and the Commander-in-chief has just issued a proclamation to the natives, which is to be translated into Amharic and circulated through the country, warning the people that the scouts have orders to fire upon any armed party they may meet, who do not, upon being called upon to do so, at once retire and leave the path clear. The fact is, that, except at this point, we have not enough troops in the country to furnish guards of sufficient strength to protect the convoys. A