to watch them enjoying their hour of bliss, sometimes on the horses, sometimes in the automobile, on the boat or on the throne with the golden canopy, borne along to entrancing music, watching their rapt countenances in the gilded mirrors as they revolved. Then all of a sudden the contraption stopped, when it had just started again. We were reckoning that Félicie and Dolores must have had at least three kilometres of delight.

From

I had noticed in the dim interior of the structure a horse without a rider that looked just as wooden as the others, more so in fact, as every other horse had an arched neck and flowing mane, and feet which, if they did not actually caper, at least spurned the ground. This poor old dappled-grey pedestrian, whose melancholy long face one saw reflected in the mirrors, I discovered, was the inspiration of the whole machine. three in the afternoon until eight or nine, and then, after an hour's rest for supper, from nine to midnight, it revolved in its dizzy crepitating prison amidst the dazzle of electric light and mirrors, shouts and cries, and outlandish music. "Cruelty," I expostulated to the showman who gave me the time-table of the entertainment. "But no," he explained, "it is habituated." There was a limit, however, it appeared, to its habituation. For the old dappled grey, the cheval

VOL. COXII.-NO. MCCLXXXIV.

after Félice's third kilometre, and the machine, deprived of its sole inspiration, refused to "function." No other habituated animal was to be found, nor would any self-respecting horse of Hendaye be induced to enter the contraption.

There seemed little left when the chevaux de bois were eliminated. Félicie and Dolores mistrusted the swing-boats; shooting-booths were for the young men; and the ring game, in which you carried off your bottle of wine if you dropped one of the rings thrown quoitwise on to the neck, appeared to them too much of a gamble. But half an hour afterwards, when we passed through the place again, Hendaye was dancing the Fandango with all the rhythm of spring.

Spring had come in a day after three weeks of almost continuous rain. The limes and plane-trees spread a canopy over the dancers; the lilac was in full bloom; the leaves of the horse-chestnut were unfolding. In the morning the pearly mists had lifted from the Bidasoa. In the clear rainwashed air one could see immense distances. From the hills above Hendaye we could follow the coast-line to the curving white sweep of the Landes beyond Bayonne. The great caravanserais on the cliff at Biarritz, fourteen miles away, were distinguishable with the naked eye. To the south the long promontory ridge of Jaizquibel, where the Pyrenees glide

S

smoothly into the sea at Cap Figuier, interposed a screen, an intriguing natural barrier concealing a wide expanse of Spain. Our impulse was to climb it from Fontarabia at the foot for the view over Guipcuzoa, to discover how much of the Atlantic and the Cantabrian Mountains could be seen from the other side. But we listened to the pipes of Pan, and were drawn inland far away from the sea.

Forty miles up the Bidassoa from the bridge at Irun is the town of Elizondo in Spanish Navarre, once the capital of a small republic where every peasant was a noble-a gentle, favoured, pastoral land. Here we found the garden of the Hesperides, the daughters of Atlas and Hesperis, "who keep the golden fruit beyond the mighty sea." Iris describes Elizondo to Ceres in The Tempest':

"Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep,

And flat meads thatched with stover, them to keep;

Thy banks with pioned and twilled brims,

Which spongy April at thy hest
betrims,

To make cold nymphs chaste crowns;
and thy broom-groves,
Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor
loves."

66

and cannot therefore be planted in groves. A copyist's error." And for "he broom substituted elm." As if to the prostrate bachelor, supine or prone, the broom were not a covering forest. I lay in a broom grove at Elizondo, not in the spirit of the dismissed bachelor, and watched my companion fish the Bidassoa. There was no fly on the water; we did not see a natural rise all day. But we were both bathed in content. There is generally one day in the year, quite apart from all the others, when it seems that everything with the breath of life in it wishes to communicate its consciousness of spring. We watched "the young lambs bound as to the tabor's sound," and heard with equal joy the ass's bray, the blackbird's song, the hum of insects, the bleating of kids, the tinkle of sheep-bells, the peaceful tolling of the church bells of Elizondo. For it was Sunday, and we watched the black-coated peasants emerge from the farms, berets and mantillas. They carried prayerbooks in their hands. I saw one with a tall altar candle, which reminded me of the asphodels in the wood we had passed. Spain might become agnostic or anarchical, but there was nothing in Elizondo to disturb faith or content. Monarchists-they were all Carlists in the 'seventies, loyalists, church-goers, bearers of arms

the family escutcheon is carved in stone on the humblest homestead: who among them

ABADEH is a small town in Central Persia, situated on the main route between Shiraz and Isfahan, and approximately half-way between the two cities. This unimportant agricultural centre, which was formerly known to the traveller for its beautifully carved sherbet spoons, was the scene of a gallant defence by a small detachment of Indian troops during the fateful summer of 1918. Persia declared her neutrality at the outbreak of the Great War, but was powerless to keep her frontiers inviolable against the Central Powers, who, following the policy of Napoleon at the beginning of the nineteenth century, decided to strike at our Indian Empire across Persia, using the powerful Turkish Army as their instrument. Their policy was sound, and had a single Turkish brigade reached the Herat province, it is almost certain that the Afghans and the turbulent tribesmen of the North-West Frontier of India would have joined them, irresistibly lured by hopes of the plunder of India. We could not have met this menace without withdrawing thousands of troops from other fronts, where their numbers were all too small, and, consequently, the success of this plan might have involved

us in disaster. Indeed, it was to prevent its realisation that the British advanced on Baghdad in 1915, although the public at home has not yet realised this important fact, and still, generally speaking, believes that this advance was ordered to secure a success that should serve as a set-off to failures in other fields. For the same reason, the operations of various German bands in Central and Southern Persia at this period, who murdered British and Russian consuls and drove the subjects of both Powers out of the country, and simultaneously despatched Missions to the Amir of Afghanistan, were viewed with deep concern by the British.

As a counter-stroke, I was instructed to raise the South Persia Rifles, a Persian force under

British and Persian officers, with the object of restoring the lost authority of the Shah and of protecting British subjects. Its early history was one of constant difficulties, that were overcome through the courage and tact of the young British officer. Recruiting for a regiment was started at Bandar Abbas and for a brigade at Kerman, the capital of South-East Persia; and in November 1916, Shiraz, selected to be the headquarters

of the force, was reached by the little Indian column that had marched across Central Persia. The local situation was complicated by the fact that, in the city and the surrounding province of Fars, there were some three thousand gendarmes, who had been raised by Swedish officers. Unfortunately German gold had corrupted the Swedes, who induced their men to help the Germans in every possible way. They had even seized the British Consul, the bankers and the telegraph officials, and had imprisoned them in a fort behind Bushire, where the intense heat and lack of proper food and accommodation had involved much sickness and even loss of life. At the time of our arrival on the scene, there were no Swedish officers with the force, which was derelict, without discipline or pay, and it was a subject for anxious consideration as to what was the best course to pursue. The Persian Government would not give permission for me to take over the force, but it would not object to this being done, as it was not in a position to regain its authority over it or to pay it.

On

From our point of view the risk of taking over thousands of men, who might remain hostile, was a serious one. the other hand, if the force were not taken over it would break up, and most of the men would desert with their arms and join the numerous bands of robbers that were rapidly destroying trade and agriculture in unfor

tunate Fars, and causing scarcity, almost amounting to famine, at Shiraz. Weighing the advantages against the disadvantages, I decided to take over the gendarmes, and assembling their officers, I informed them that they now constituted part of the Fars Brigade of the South Persia Rifles, and I appealed to them to help to restore the authority of the Shah in Fars. The majority of the officers and men were pleased with the change, which secured them good pay and good treatment; but a minority, including many of the best fighters, were hostile to the new order, as they had been making much money by robbery and blackmail.

At first all went well. An efficient staff of officers and also some reinforcements reached me in the spring of 1917; 1917; the capture of Baghdad encouraged our friends; and, influenced by this striking success, the Persian Government officially recognised the South Persia Rifles, and expressed its gratification at the progress that was being made towards the restoration of order in Southern Persia.

The chief duty of the force was to guard the main caravan route, and for this purpose Abadeh was the most important centre north of Shiraz. Gradually as units of the Fars brigade were disciplined and equipped, they were despatched to this centre, until the garrison was six hundred strong.