The Bashi Buzuks, some 3000 sabres, almost all well mounted and better armed, were pertinaciously kept pitched on a bare hill-side, far from the scene of action and close to the Dardanelles country town, that gay and lively Turkish Coventry, at the Hellespont-mouth. In an evil hour I proposed, if my General, who wanted nothing better, would allow me, to proceed in person to Constantinople and to volunteer officially for the relief of the doomed city, Kars. Ah, Corydon, Corydon, quæ te dementia cepit? And I _did_ proceed to Stamb’ul; and I _did_ volunteer; and a neat hit, indeed, was that same public-spirited proceeding! It would be a lively imagination that could conceive the scene of storm which resulted from my brazen-faced procedure. The picture has its comic side when looked back upon through the mellowing medium of three long lustres. The hopeful eagerness of the volunteer; the ‘proper pride’ in one’s corps, that had come forward for an honourable action; the fluent proof that we could convoy rations enough for the gallant and deserted Ottoman garrison, diplomatically left for months to slow death by starvation; and—the blank and stunned surprise at the hurricane of wrath which burst from the high authority to whose ambassadorial ear the project was entrusted. Reported home as a ‘brouillon’ and turbulent, I again turned lovingly towards Africa—Central and Intertropical—and on April 19, 1856, I resolved to renew my original design of reaching the unknown regions, and of striking the Nile-sources viâ the Eastern coast. For long ages, I knew, explorers had been working, literally, as well as figuratively, against the stream; and, as the ancients had succeeded by a flank march, so the same might be done by us moderns. My Ptolemy told me the tale in very plain and emphatic terms, and although his shore-line shows great inaccuracies, his traditions of the interior, derived from mariners of Tyre and from older writers, appeared far more reliable:— ‘He (_scil._ the Tyrian) says that a certain Diogenes, one of those sailing to India, ... having the Troglyditic region on the right, after 25 days reached the Lakes whence the Nilus flows, and of which the Promontory of the Rhapta is a little more to the south.’[2] Amongst my scanty literary belongings on our march to the Tanganyika Lake was a paper (De Azaniâ Africæ littore Orientali, Commentatio Physiologica, Bonviæ, Formis Caroli Gengii, MDCCCLII.) kindly sent to me by the author, Mr George F. de Bunsen. It quoted that same passage which was a frequent solace to me during our 18 months’ wanderings, and I still preserve the pamphlet as a memory. Nor had I forgotten Camoens:—