and the joke on the boats of the Indus flotilla is that Moultan is too hot to bear, and Sukkur much hotter; but that Jacobabad, on the Beloochee frontier, near Sukkur, is so hot that the people come down thence to Sukkur for the hot season, and find its coolness as refreshing as ordinary mortals do that of Simla. Hot as is Sukkur, it is fairly beaten by a spot at the foot of the Ibex Hills, near Sehwan. I was sleeping on the bridge with an officer from Peshawur, when the crew were preparing to put off from the bank for the day's journey. We were awakened by the noise, but, as we sat up and rubbed our eyes, a blast of hot wind came down from the burnt-up hills, laden with fine sand, and of such a character that I got a lantern-for it was not fully light-and made my way to the deck thermometer. I found it standing at 104°, although the hour was 4.15 A.M. At breakfast time it had fallen to 100°, from which it slowly rose, until at I P.M. it registered 116° in the shade. The next night it never fell below 100°. This was the highest temperature I experienced in India during the hot weather, and it was, singularly enough, the same as the highest which I recorded in Australia. No part of the course of the Indus is within the tropics, but it is not in the tropics that the days are hottest, although the nights are generally unbearable on sea-level near the equator.

At Kotree, near Hydrabad, the capital of Scinde, we left the Indus for the railway, and, after a night's journey, found our selves upon the sea-shore at Kurrachee.

CHAPTER XVI.

OVERLAND ROUTES.

Or all the towns in India, Kurrachee is the least Indian. With its strong south-westerly breeze, its open sea and dancing waves, it is to one coming from the Indus valley a pleasant place enough; and the climate is as good as that of Alexandria, though there is at Kurrachee all the dust of Cairo. For a stranger detained against his will to find Kurrachee bearable there must be something refreshing in its breezes: the town stands on a treeless plain, and of sights there are none, unless it be the sacred alligators at Muggur Peer, where the tame "man-eaters" spring at a goat for the visitor's amusement as freely as the Wolfsbrunnen trout jump at the gudgeon.

There is no reason given why the alligators' pool should be reputed holy, but in India places easily acquire sacred fame. About Peshawur there dwell many hill-fanatics, whose sole religion appears to consist in stalking British sentries. So many of them have been locked up in the Peshawur gaol that it has become a holy place, and men are said to steal and riot in the streets of the bazaar in order that they may be consigned to this sacred temple.

The nights were noisy in Kurrachee, for the great Mohamedan feast of the Mohurrum had commenced, and my bungalow was close to the lines of the police, who are mostly Belooch Mohamedans. Every evening at dusk, fires were lighted in the police-lines and the bazaar, and then the tomtom-ing gradually increased from the gentle drone of the daytime until a perfect storm of "tom-a-tom, tomtom, tom-a-tom, tomtom," burst from all quarters of the town, and continued the whole night long, relieved only by blasts from conch-shells and shouts of "Shah

Hassan Shah Hoosein! Wah Allah! Wah Allah !" as the performers danced round the flames. I heartily wished myself in the State of Bhawulpore, where there is a licence-tax on the beating of drums at feasts. The first night of the festival I called up a native servant who "spoke English," to make him take me to the fires and explain the matter. His only explanation was a continual repetition of "Dat Mohurrum, Mohamedan Christmas-day." When each night, about dawn, the tomtom-ing died away once more, the chokedars-or night watchmen-woke up from their sound sleep, and began to shout “Ha ha!” into every room to show that they were awake.

The chokedars are well-known characters in every Indian station always either sleepy and useless, or else in league with the thieves, they are nevertheless a recognised class, and are everywhere employed. At Rawul-Pindee and Peshawur, the chokedars are armed with guns, and it is said that a newlyarrived English officer at the former place was lately returning from a dinner-party, when he was challenged by the chokedar of the first house he had to pass. Not knowing what reply to make, he took to his heels, when the chokedar fired at him as he ran. The shot woke all the chokedars of the parade, and the unfortunate officer received the fire of every man as he passed along to his house at the farther end of the lines, which he reached, however, in perfect safety. It has been suggested that, for the purpose of excluding all natives from the lines at night, there should be a shibboleth or standing parole of some word which no native can pronounce. The word suggested is "Shoeburyness."

Although chokedars were silent and tomtom-ing subdued during the daytime, there were plenty of other sounds. Lizards chirped from the walls of my room, and sparrows twittered from every beam and rafter of the roof. When I told a Kurrachee friend that my slippers, brushes, and soldier's writing-case had all been thrown by me on to the chief beam during an unsuccessful attempt to dislodge the enemy, he replied that for his part he paraded his drawing-room every morning with a doublebarrelled gun, and frequently fired into the rafters, to the horror of his wife.

In a small lateen-rigged yacht lent us by a fellow-traveller

from Moultan, some of us visited the works which have long been in progress for the improvement of the harbour of Kurrachee, and which form the sole topic of conversation among the residents in the town. The works have for object the removal of the bar which obstructs the entrance to the harbour, with a view to permit the entry of larger ships than can at present find an anchorage at Kurrachee.

The most serious question under discussion is that of whether the bar is formed by the Indus silt or merely by local causes, as, if the former supposition is correct, the ultimate disposition of the ten thousand millions of cubic feet of mud which the Indus annually brings down is not likely to be affected by such works as those in progress at Kurrachee. When a thousand

sealed bottles were lately thrown into the Indus for it to be seen whether they would reach the bar, the result of the "great bottle trick," as Kurrachee people called it, was that only one bottle reached, and not one weathered, a point six miles to the southward of the harbour. The bar is improving every year, and has now some twenty feet of water, so that ships of 1000 tons can enter except in the monsoon, and the general belief of engineers is that the completion of the present works will materially increase the depth of water.

The question of this bar is not cne of merely local interest: a single glance at the map is sufficient to show the importance of Kurrachee. Already rising at an unprecedented pace, having trebled her shipping and quadrupled her trade in ten years, she is destined to make still greater strides as soon as the Indus Railway is completed; and finally-when the Persian Gulf route becomes a fact-to be the greatest of the ports of India.

That a railway must one day be completed from Constantinople or from some port on the Mediterranean to Bussorah on the Persian Gulf is a point which scarcely admits of doubt. From Kurrachee or Bombay to London by the Euphrates valley and Constantinople is all but a straight line, while from Bombay to London by Aden and Alexandria is a wasteful curve. The so-called "Overland Route" is half as long again as would be the direct line. The Red Sea and Isthmus route has neither the advantage of unbroken sea nor of unbroken land transit; the direct route with a bridge near Constantinople might be

extended into a land road from India to Calais or Rotterdam. The Red Sea line passes along the shores of Arabia, where there is comparatively little local trade; the Persian Gulf route would develop the remarkable wealth of Persia, and would carry to Europe a local commerce already great. At the entrance of the Persian Gulf, near Cape Mussendoom or Ormuz, we should establish a free port on the plan of Singapore. In 1000 A.D., the spot now known as Ormuz was a barren rock, but a few years of permanent occupation of the spot as a free port changed the barren islet into one of the wealthiest cities in the world. The Red Sea route crosses Egypt, the direct route crosses Turkey; and it cannot be too strongly urged that in war time "Egypt" means Russia or France, while "Turkey" means Great Britain.

In any scheme of a Constantinople and Gulf railroad, Kurrachee would play a leading part. Not only the wheat and the cotton of the Punjaub and of the then irrigated Scinde, but the trade of Central Asia would flow down the Indus, and it is hardly too much to believe that the silks of China, the teas of Northern India, and the shawls of Cashmere will all of them one day find in Kurrachee their chief port. The earliest known overland route was that by the Persian Gulf. Chinese ships traded to Ormuz in the fifth and seventh centuries, bringing silk and iron; and it may be doubted whether any of the Russian routes will be able to compete with the more ancient Euphrates valley line of trade. Shorter, passing through countries well known and comparatively civilized, admitting at once of the use of land and water transport side by side, it is far superior in commercial and political advantages to any of the Russian desert roads. A route through Upper Persia has been proposed, but merchants of experience will tell you that greater facilities for trade are extended to Europeans in even the "closed" ports of China than upon the coasts of Persia, and the prospects of the freedom of trade upon a Persian railroad would be but a bad one, it may be feared.

The return of trade to the Gulf route will revive the glory of many fallen cities of the Middle Ages. Ormuz and Antioch, Cyprus and Rhodes, have a second history before them ; Crete, Brindisi, and Venice will each obtain a renewal of their ancient