This reminds me how, shortly after my arrival, the Russian authorities were particularly irate at a picture they had seen in the Illustrated London News representing Turkish prisoners breaking up the gravestones of their ancestors to make roads for the conveyance of Muscovite field-pieces to the front, while Cossacks with knotted whips were placed at intervals over them to enforce, if necessary, obedience to this edict. The authorities did not pretend to deny the soft impeachment, but they objected to its publicity, and asked my assistance to discover that other "chiel amang 'em takin' notes" who had sent home the picture to which I refer. They searched vainly for days, offering rewards in all directions for his discovery, and I, of course, assured them I would lend every assistance in my power, which, though it savoured of an amiable desire to

serve them, when summed up meant very little after all. I had done that picture myself! had crossed the Danube in a small boat and sent it from the Roumanian post office at Zimwiztza.

I remember when at Porodim, the headquarters of the then Grand Duke, how, on one occasion in midwinter, having already sent my only available messenger on with sketches, an incident of special interest happened which I felt should also at once be transmitted. Now it so happened that a Russian officer whom I knew was about starting for the rear on some important military business, so we joined issue, and succeeding in getting a ramshackle two-horse drosky, started late that same night, in a blinding snowstorm, in the direction of the Danube. Will either of us ever forget that night? I think not, and hope it may never be my lot to experience such

another. The storm increased so that before we had been much more than an hour on our way we were completely snowed up, and had it continued to fall with the same severity all night we must, I verily believe, have been buried alive. As it was, the driver and ourselves were so benumbed-indeed, partially frost-bitten, and suffering, too, from that fatal tendency to drowsiness-that at length we found it necessary that two in turn should keep awake through the night, while the third for an arranged time slept, all being afraid of that sleep induced by intense cold from which there is no awakening.

To make a long story short, however, those sketches did arrive after all at the offices of the Illustrated London News.

On a previous occasion, in Servia, I attached myself to the Ambulance, who were generally in touch with Belgrade or Semendria, sending backwards and forwards in this way my sketches to the rear; in fact, I once brought a number of wounded Servians to Belgrade myself, in a sort of cross between a broken-down barge and a steam-tug, actuated almost as much by my desire to get a safe transit for my sketches as in the interests of poor humanity; to be always in communication with the rear being, in its way, as important as getting to the front.

While writing thus in my sanctum, a picture of the Illustrated London News which is before me recalls several occasions on which a telling subject has sprung from a trivial incident; for instance, while at Plevna, I on one occasion found myself sketching in a most exposed position, and quite unexpectedly discovered myself conspicuous against the sky line, where I soon drew a rattling fire from the Turkish rifle pits. It is unnecessary to say I was the next moment beating a hasty and ignominious retreat for the first available cover, which happened to be a neighbouring redoubt. Nor had I been long there when yet another "Special" rushed in for shelter from a similar cause, but from an opposite direction; it was the Times correspondent, Conigsby. Happily, we were both known to the officers on duty, who, of course, realised our unceremonious appearance in their midst.

"Do you know where you are?" said the "Special" of our great daily, who was better versed in the geography of the camp than I. "No; why?"

66

Why? Because we are in the Gravitza redoubt; yet I suppose we shall get no credit for these hairbreadth escapes in Fleet Street or the Strand; yet stay! I have a sudden inspiration."

"Stay! I have an idea-a sudden inspiration." Conigsby was

always having "sudden inspirations," and he drew himself up to his full height, which-being a man more commanding in nature than stature was necessary, and then, posing like Ajax defying the lightning, he said, smiling blandly:

"There, do a picture representing the Illustrated London News and the Times Specials' in the most advanced trenches before Plevna. Don't forget to convey an adequate idea of my manly bearing, and I, on the other hand, will make my discovery of the Illustrated London News at the forefront the subject of a special paragraph in my next article for the Times. Thus will our zeal in the service of our respective papers be recorded to all time."

Harking back to my first campaign, I recall another occasion on which my pencil might have led to an unpleasant predicament.

It was just after the battle of Saarbrück. I was hastening from Lausanne, where I had been staying before the outbreak of the war, to join the Germans, and was about crossing at Basle, when the mustering of the Swiss Guards for the protection of their frontier at that place struck me as a telling incident not to be missed, so, sketch-book in hand, I was proceeding to make a number of artistic notes, when I was promptly arrested by a surly sergeant and, under an armed escort, taken before one of the commanding officers, who at once, with the utmost gravity, ordered my detention, whispering at the same time something to my captor which I had failed to catch, the result being that I was taken to the regimental mess-room at the chief hotel at Basle, at the end of which that surly sergeant and his guards kept me in durance vile, while officers crowding in hung their swords on pegs and took their respective seats for the evening meal, amongst them the president of the mess-none other than the officer who had, with so much gravity, ordered my detention. I was naturally the observed of all observers, and was not a little astonished when, in a trite speech, he informed those around him that as I was the first prisoner of war the Swiss Republic had taken, at least in their time, and had, moreover, been caught redhanded making mysterious notes in their midst, that they could not do better than signalise the occasion by (and here came an uncomfortable pause and much wonderment on my part) entertaining me as their guest! since my offence had been discovered to be nothing greater than that of making sketches for an English newspaper. Nor do I remember ever having spent a more enjoyable evening than on this first

occasion on which I was made a prisoner of war, specially as, since then, I have at times been very roughly handled.

The tendency on the war-path to look upon every man possessed of a note or sketch-book as a spy, has led to my making a special study of the art of confining my memoranda to as small a space as possible. Probably of the five campaigns in which I have been, the Asiatic and Spanish were the most picturesque, and, at the same time, the most trying with regard to the transit of sketches. Anatolean freelances terrible troopers, who claimed no nationality and asked no quarter-combined with professed brigands, as I have already endeavoured to show, to make it dangerously hot for returning messengers; while in Spain the brigand was, of course, again in evidence, and guerilla warfare precluded the possibility of knowing who might be lying in wait for the despatch-bearer you sent to the rear, the few pesetas in whose pockets would amply repay his murderer.

It was under these circumstances-remembering the favourite motto of the present editor of Punch, "If you want a thing done, do it yourself" that I often returned to San Sebastian during the fighting in that neighbourhood, rather than trust to the disorganised postal arrangements of war time or the chance honesty of my courier.

Indeed I was eye-witness to one incident, which was quite enough to have shaken my confidence, if nothing else would. O'Donovan and myself were at one of the advanced posts on the Hernani road, half hidden by pine woods, which, from the position we were in, seemed to enshroud the surrounding country, save where a long stretch or sharp turn of dusty-white highway revealed itself, along which, now and again, a small detachment of infantry or cavalry might be seen moving.

Now, on this particular occasion, having entrusted a batch of sketches for England to the postal authorities at Hernani, I was a little interested to see the royal mail-a huge diligence-like vehicle with four horses coming full tilt down the broad road, which, from our elevated position amongst the pines, we commanded. I knew that in those mail bags were my latest contributions to the London Press from the seat of war. Now, this diligence was occupied, inside and out, in the coupé, everywhere, in fact, by soldiers, the driver alone being a civilian, who, for a meagre pittance, made the double journey daily to Hernani and back to San Sebastian, being under a raking Carlist fire for the greater part of the distance.

I must say my excitement knew no bounds when, swarming like ants along the neighbouring ridges, Carlists now blazed away, from every crack and cranny in the rocks, on the guardians of the royal mail, who were assisted to some extent by the Fort of Oriamendez (in which we were), and which sent a shell now and again into their midst. On, on came the diligence in pell-mell haste, the dust from the chalky road mingling with the blue smoke as it coiled upwards from the muzzles of our men's rifles, who returned with a will the enemy's cross-fire from the hills on either side of them.

There were several wounded and two killed on this occasion, but fortunately the horses were unscathed, and the mails-amongst which were those sketches of mine-arrived safely in San Sebastian, due as much to the indomitable pluck of those who defended them as to the extraordinary elasticity of those four sinuous horses.

How odd is the association of ideas! The word elasticity naturally suggesting indiarubber, brings me to a circumstance I hinted at in the earlier pages of this article. It was a hot midsummer day, we were encamped near Kars, my arabagee, who was enjoying his midday siesta under the shadow which his waggon afforded, when I made a sketch of him, which, owing to his remarkably aquiline nose, was quite unmistakable; now as he happened to wake before I had finished it, it was only natural I should show it to him. I shall never forget the poor man's face when he saw it; the look of hopeless, abject despair which he gave when he glanced at that sketch-book, was no compliment to art, specially when presently he averted it in horror and sobbed aloud. My interpreter, as in most other cases, now came to the rescue. He explained that in that part of Asia Minor from which the arabagee came there was a deep-rooted superstition that he whose features were in any way reproduced must die within three days.

For several hours he was quite inconsolable, and although a little more resigned towards night, on the following day his impending fate perfectly overcame him, when, most fortunately, a brilliant idea on my interpreter's part completely turned the tide of events. The victim of witchcraft and superstition was quite ignorant of the properties of indiarubber, and when told that the Pasha had a magic elastic stone which, when drawn rapidly to and fro over the surface of the paper, would act as a charm, dispersing those accursed lines and leaving the paper in all its original purity, then was he satisfied that if this wonderful antidote could be brought to bear he should live; and when