troops across three miles of broken country on a pitchdark night, there is always a possibility that some one will get mislaid. On this particular occasion a whole battalion lost itself without any delay or difficulty whatsoever. The other three were compelled to wait for two hours and a half, stamping their feet and blowing on their fingers, while overheated staff officers scoured the country for the truants. They were discovered at last waiting virtuously at the wrong rendezvous, three-quarters of a mile away. The brazen hatted strategist who drew up the operation orders had given the point of assembly for the brigade as: ... the field S.W. of WELLINGTON WOOD and due E. of HANGMAN's COPSE, immediately below the first O in GHOSTLY BOTTOM,— but omitted to underline the O indicated. The result was that three battalion commanders assembled at the O in "ghostly," while the fourth, ignoring the adjective in favour of the noun, took up his station at the first O in "bottom." The operations had been somewhat optimistically timed to end at 11 P.M., but by the time that the four battalions had effected a most unloverly tryst, it was close on ten, and beginning to rain. The consequence was that the men got home to bed, soaked to the skin, and asking the Powers Above rhetorical questions, at three o'clock in the morning. Next day Brigade Orders announced that the movement would be continued at nightfall, by the occupation of the hastily-dug trenches, followed by a night attack upon the hill in front. The captured position would then be retrenched. When the tidings went round, fourteen of the more quick-witted spirits of "A" Company hurriedly paraded before the Medical Officer and announced that they were "sick in the stomach." Seven more discovered abrasions upon their feet, and proffered their sores for inspection, after the manner of Oriental mendicants. One skrimshanker, despairing of producing any bodily ailment, rather ingeniously assaulted a comrade-in-arms, and was led away, deeply grateful, to the guardroom. Wee Peter, who in the course of last night's operations had stumbled into an old trench half-filled with ice-cold water, and whose temperature to-day, had he known it, was a hundred and two, paraded with his company at the appointed time. The company, he reflected, would get a bad name if too many men reported sick at once. Next day he was absent from parade. He was "for Cambridge" at last. His father was "weel kent" the sea, he was over-engined in the town of Dumbarton, for his beam. being a chief engineer, employed by a great firm of shipbuilders to extend new machinery on trial trips. Needless to say, he made a great fight. But though his heart was big enough, his body was too frail. As they say on And so, three days later, the simple soul of Twenty-seven fifty-four Carmichael, "A" Company, was transferred, on promotion, to another company the great Company of Happy Warriors who walk the Elysian Fields. "Firing parrty, one round blank-load!" There is a rattle of bolts, and a dozen barrels are pointed heavenwards. The company stands rigid, except the buglers, who are beginning to finger their instruments. "Fire!" There is a crackling volley, and the pipes break into a brief, sobbing wail. Wayfarers upon the road below look up curiously. One or two young females with perambulators come hurrying across the grass, exhorting apathetic babies to sit up and admire the pretty funeral. Twice more the rifles ring out. The pipes cease their wailing, and there is an expectant silence. The drum-major crooks his little finger, and eight bugles come to the "ready." Then "Last Post," the requiem of every soldier of the King, swells out, sweet and true. III. The chaplain closes his book, takes off his spectacles, and departs. Old Carmichael permits himself one brief look into his son's grave, resumes his crape-bound tall hat, and turns heavily away. He finds Captain Blaikie's hand waiting for him. He grips it, and says "Weel, the laddie has had a grand sojer's funeral. His mother will be pleased to hear that." He passes on, and shakes hands with the platoon sergeant and one or two of Peter's cronies. He declines an invitation to the Sergeants' Mess. "I hae a trial trup the morn," he explains. "I must be steppin'. God keep ye all, brave lads!" The old gentleman sets off down the station road. The company falls in, and we march back to barracks, leaving Wee Pe'er-the first name on our Roll of Honour-alone The echoes lose themselves in his glory beneath the Hampamong the dripping pines. shire pines. (To be continued.) ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT.-III. BY W. J. C. on no morning had expectation been so strong as when I left Urgub by a sandy track that wound up a gully to the higher land behind the town. The day spent in Urgub had made it seem, after all, a decadent metropolis of troglodytes, a place fallen greatly from primitive simplicity. Now, however, I was on the way to find unchanged haunts of the race; for I had heard of villages called almost eerie in aspect, and more like the fantasies of a disordered dream than the dwelling-places of human beings. So I went in the lightest spirits, with expectation on edge, and somewhat like one who believes that before nightfall he shall behold enchantments. The weather, too, was all in favour of high spirits. Here was the first week in December, yet in feeling and appearance the morning might have been in spring. VOL. CXCVII.-NO. MCXCIV. Certainly the air was keen, though no keener than proper to nearly 5000 feet of altitude. There had been frost, in fact; but in this region of dry sand and porous rock the only visible sign of it was ice at a wayside fountain. For the rest there was intoxicating air, a dome of deep blue sky without a cloud, and the sun just risen over Topuz Dagh. The birds, as well, seemed to have scented spring in these parts the early flowers were now little more than a month away-and were twittering and singing joyously. And underfoot, to complete my satisfaction, lay paths that were a delight. They were of firm clean sand, bordered sometimes by a margin of green grass; and sometimes they went in deep hollow ways, like sunken lanes, between banks of soft disintegrating rock that varied through yellow and green and brown to a brick-red. All tramping men can recall hours of special delight upon the road, but I knew that none could have had better than fell to me this early morning on the romantic uplands of Cappadocia. Even Ighsan felt the charm and exhilaration of the morning; for as he walked before his horse, leading it by a halter, he began to dance. "Altmish! altmish! altmish!" (sixty) he cried, with 2 K stooped head, watching his feet as he bounded and kept time to the words. It was the morning air, no doubt; but there was also a definite and considered purpose behind this avowal of age and unexpected show of activity. He had been a very weary man, too tired to eat, the night he reached Injesu, and again after our arrival at Urgub. Now he was seeking to remove, or at least reduce, any unfavourable impression that he might have given then. We soon dropped into narrow ravine, in which flowed a bright little stream. The flat ground was carefully cultivated and planted with fruit trees pear, apricot, apple, almond and on the sunny side was a patch of vines. Nowhere in Turkey had I seen such careful cultivation before. The ground had been deeply dug by spade, and the digger had taken professional pride in his work. The surface was even, the clods broken small, and the edge of the dug ground finished to a careful line. But we had not gone far before the sides of the ravine attracted attention. They were pitted and scored by ancient chambers and galleries laid open by the rock weathering away. You might see the half of a gallery, fifty yards long and four or five feet high, stretching along the face of the cliff and connecting rooms that now looked like caves. There were tiers of these excavations, and there were also tunnels that ran back from them into the still solid rock. When the ravine widened, an isolated mass of rock stood in the midst of the open space. It was fifty or sixty feet across and thirty or more in height. It also was honeycombed with passages and rooms, of which some had been exposed by the same process as in the cliffs. While I looked at this prehistoric place of dwelling, something moved in one of the holes near the ground, and a chubby, brown-faced child appeared. It came out as much at home with its surroundings as a slum child in an alley; and then it saw me, and drew back out of sight with the startled manner and instant movement of a wild animal. Within a mile or so the ravine brought us to a valley, three or four hundred yards wide at this point, and something over a hundred feet in depth. The bottom was level, and the sides were of coloured rock weathered into strangely curved surfaces like the prevailing curves of German Art Nouveau. I had come upon a sight more singular in its actuality than anything I had expected to find. Bald descriptions that had been given me had stated fact without conveying a mental picture, even similes had been inadequate; and I now saw the remarkable valley of Geuremé with almost as much surprise as if I had never heard of it. The valley was filled with cones of rock in shape like sugar-loaves. Some were ten feet in height; others went from eighty to more than a hundred feet; but most were forty or fifty feet. And these cones were not in mere dozens or scores; they were literally in thousands. They choked the valley, and in places were so closely set that when passing between them it was possible to touch two at once with arms outstretched. And though its geological features might be called remarkable, this valley of Geuremé was even more remarkable in another way; for all the larger cones were hollowed out, either as dwellings or for other purposes of man, and were occupied by hundreds of people. Some cones contained ancient chapels with rude Byzantine paintings on the walls. One cone at least was a shop. Another was a kahveh, outside of which men sitting over their cups in the morning sunlight found me a deal more surprising than any thing else in the valley. I asked what they called this village, and they were very certain that it was Mat-yan, and carefully repeated the name several times. I heard it with something of a shock, for there had been a bishopric of Matiane in these parts in old days, and the notion of a prelate as a troglodyte was not to be absorbed quickly, or without difficulty. But here was the place that had given its name to the see, and evidently it never had been greatly different to what it was now. So it was necessary to suppose that the bishops had managed, in time, to accommodate themselves to their surroundings. One cone that I examined with a little care was nearly forty feet across at the base, and rose to something like eighty feet. The thickness of wall left beside the door was about eight feet. Steps in the wall led up from the domed lower cell to mysteries above that I did not care to explore alone. Likewise, instead of entering, I willingly imagined the passage that was said to lead downwards from this cell into the solid rock, and thence elsewhere. It seems that the earlier inhabitants of these cones never regarded them as places of absolute safety. They always liked to have a burrow easily accessible into which they could retreat in time of real danger. a Every cone in the valley owed its formation to a cap of hard stone, which had protected the top while disintegration went on in the softer rock outside the protected area. A number of cones still retained the cap. On more than one it displayed a tendency to slide off, but had been buttressed and supported with masonry. Cones without cap showed the sharp-pointed tip that spoke of decay going on. Several cones were reeded from base to summit with convex sunk flutings, and over some of the doorways a rough pediment had been worked by way of decoration. There were few windows, and they were small square openings like embrasures. There seemed to be an inherent tendency in the stone to form cones, for on the sides of the valley were small pinnacles, each with its |