consequently ammunition is kept by the C. O., and is never served out except before a fight. All use the matchlock: while good shots are rare, many are tolerably skilful with sword and shield. Their nominal pay is from $2 to $3 per mensem, a pittance of some 20 pice (120 pice=$1) per diem: this must find them in clothes and rations as well as in arms; often there is not a sandal amongst them, and they are as ragged a crew as ever left the barren wolds of Central Asia in quest of African fortune. They live in tattered hovels, which they build for themselves, upon one meal a day, which is shared by their slave concubines. To the natural greed of mountain-races, the poor devils who come in horse and salt-boats, and act barbers and sailors, porters, labourers, and date-gleaners, add the insatiable desires of beggars. The Banyans have a proverb that a Baloch, a Brahman, and a buck-goat eat the trees to which they are tied. Sudden and sharp in quarrel, they draw their daggers upon the minutest provocation; they have no mitigation nor remorse of voice, and they pray in the proportion of one to a dozen. Africa is to them what the Caucasus is to the Russians, Kabylie to the French, and Sind to the English soldier. All look forward to ‘Hindostan—bagh o bostan,’ India the flower-garden; but the Arabs have a canny proverb inporting that the fool who falleth into the fire rarely falleth out of it. Fraudare stipendio, saith ancient Justin, was the proverb of the Great King’s satraps: the custom has been religiously preserved by the modern East. Each station is commanded by a Jemadar, who receives $4 to $5 per month, and ample license to pay himself by peculation. This class is at once under-salaried, and over-trusted. The Jemadar advances money upon usury to his men; he keeps them six months in arrears, and not a few of them never see the colour of Government coin from the year’s beginning to the end. He exacts perquisites from all who fear his hate and who need his aid; and he falsifies the muster-rolls impudently and with impunity, giving 25 names to perhaps four men. Thus, like the Turkish Colonel of Nizam, the Jemadar lives in great state. He has a wife or two, and perhaps a dozen slaves; he sports a fine coat of scarlet broadcloth, a silver-hilted sword and dagger, and a turban of rich silk. He keeps flocks of sheep and goats, and he trades with the interior for ivory and captives. Such has been, such is, and such ever will be till Europe steps in, that false economy which throughout the ‘East,’ from Stambul to Japan, grasps the penny and flings away the pound. It is a state inseparable from the conditions of society and of government, where public servants are not paid, they must, of course, pay themselves; and they often prefer the latter mode, as they pay themselves far better than they would otherwise be paid. About a century ago we did the same thing in India, where men amassed fortunes, and