Nearly all of us (whites) found that the very much abused habit of smoking was a great help in time of thirst. Not that one after the smoke did not require a drink of water just as much, but during the act of smoking one's senses were soothed, and the craving for water made less, and so relief obtained.

The Wanyamwezi porters are perhaps the best carriers that come from any of the inland countries of Africa; they can carry with ease weights up to seventy pounds, but are great cowards, and drop their loads and run if fired at. For this reason it is customary for their caravans to be periodically robbed and wrecked with great ease by the robbers of the desert, the Wa Rugga Rugga.

On the 19th of November, about 10.30 A.M., we caught sight of the German flag waving over Fort Mpwapwa, and soon after halted under the two guns of the fort and made camp. Here we were welcomed by some German officers, who informed us that this was their farthest point west. Fort Mpwapwa was well able to withstand the attacks of any number of Arabs, provided its water-supply would only hold out. It is very striking to see our Zanzibaris beside the Zulu and Soudanis soldiers of the Germans. Our men never salute us, and know no drill that could be of use to them; while, on the other hand, the Germans have their men drilled to almost perfection. While it is of the greatest importance to have men well trained in the use of their arms-i.e., to be good shots-I doubt if all this fancy drilling does much good; it is apt to break down in such a country as this.

Six days after leaving Mpwapwa we received as a gift from Major von Wissmann some hams, champagne, and cigars. Needless to say, we soon made these disappear. Later on we received still further presents, this time from Mr. J. G. Bennett, of the New York Herald. These certainly showed we were approaching civilisation, for among them were tooth-brushes, Florida water, and soap.

On the evening of the 4th of December we found ourselves encamped near the Wami River, and only eight miles from Bagamoyo and the Indian Ocean. The men were in great spirits, singing the whole day long, as the thought arose that home and friends were

near.

As we were all chattering and sitting round the camp-fires about eight in the evening, talking of to-morrow and what it was to bring forth, and of our past adventures, all of a sudden came the low' boom' of the Sultan's gun far across the water from the island of Zanzibar. It was the signal that calls all true believers to evening prayer. Like some long-lost and long-since forgotten chord, it awoke the memories of the Zanzibaris, and went straight to their hearts. With a tremendous outburst of cheering, the men sprang up from their fires and rushed over to where our chief's tent stood. Again and again the cheers rang out through the still night air, as the men gathered round Mr. Stanley's tent and sang his praises.

Next day the Expedition marched into Bagamoyo; and as we looked seaward again we saw, for the first time for three years, the Union Jack flying at the peaks of the men-of-war lying in the Bay.

Good-bye, boys; you have stuck to us like the men you are. Over six thousand English miles some of us have footed it backwards and forwards through the forests and across the plains of Africa together. And though now we go to the white man's home far over the sea, still, deep down in the heart of each of us will ever live the remembrance of the pluck and fortitude shown by you through so many dark and trying days.

W. G. STAIRS,

Lieutenant, R.E.

TSAR v. JEW.

'Now there arose a new king over Egypt which knew not Joseph; and he said to his people, Behold the people of the children of Israel are too many and too mighty for us: come let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass that, when there falleth out any war they also join themselves unto our enemies. . . And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve them with rigour.' So said Pharaoh in the first chapter of Exodus, and so quotes an anti-Semitic writer as one of the reasons for the improvement of the Jews off the face of Russia; a second reason being that though a large number of Slavs try their utmost to avoid fulfilling their soldiering duties, twenty-three out of twenty-eight per cent. of those who shirk the conscription are Jews.

It is useless to try and discuss any proposition with such a logician; but the two points above mentioned are half-a-dozen pages apart, and the casual reader may easily miss their curious connection, and be carried away by the plausible arguments in between to imagine that the essayist has proved his case against the race he sweepingly condemns. But the question of the Russian Jew, not as connected with Lord Mayor's meetings, past or present, but as concerning the pauper immigration into the East End of London, has become one of such burning interest to millions of human beings that it is well worth careful sifting and elucidation, and is no longer one between the Tsar and his Semitic subjects only.

The Jewish question is emphatically not a religious question. Except in Spain and, to a slighter extent, in Italy, it never has been a religious question. The Inquisition persecuted the Jew, as it persecuted the Mussulman and the Protestant-as the 'Ingoldsby Legend' has it :

Turks, heretics, infidels, jumpers and Jews.

No one else ever did in the narrow sense of the word. The Romans tolerated him; Charlemagne and his successors placed him under a spiritual ban and left him severely alone, and we find no traces of persecution in the early centuries of the Christian era.

And why? The reason is not very recondite or far to seek.

If Front de Bœuf had been placed in the Palace of Truth instead of the Castle of Torquilstone, would he have suggested heretical doctrines as the reason for making Isaac of York acquainted with the gridiron in his dungeon?

Did King John draw the teeth of his Semitic subjects becausethey had not submitted to the rites of baptism?

It took some time after the lawless period that followed the disintegration of the Roman Empire for wealth once more to accumulate in the hands of individuals; and the knights and soldiers of fortune acquired it quicker than the slow working and much harassed trader. But unpleasant consequences might have followed had John's and Front de Bouf's victims been christened Norman or Saxon..“ He whom the Church had placed outside the pale of justice and charity had alone no defenders.

It was power trading on the superstition of its neighbours. Have motives so very much altered since those days? Human nature is unfortunately the same all the world over, whether Saxon or Gael, Teuton or Celt, Slav or Semite. When a crowd of ill-fed, ill-housed, uneducated and moneyless folk see a minority in their midst possessed of luxuries they yearn for yet cannot obtain, it takes little eloquence to persuade them that, as that minority is outside the pale of spiritual welfare, it ought also to be placed outside that of temporal welfare and its goods given over to those whom Providence and the executiveGovernment consider more deserving. 'Heaven helps those that help themselves' is a proverb liable to more than one interpretation.

The Gordon riots were not accepted in England as a reason for turning all the Roman Catholics out of Great Britain; yet it is now seriously argued that the anti-Semitic risings justify the removal of the Jews from Russia.

As far as I can make out, the Russians object to the Jews:

1. Because they increase rapidly and their infant mortality is a tenth smaller than that of the Christian Russians.

2. Because they do not amalgamate with and become lost in the Slav races.

3. Because they are not agriculturists and show no desire to till the soil.

4. Because they are principally middlemen, and belong to noguild.

5. Because they shirk soldiering.

6. Because they evade the laws made against them.

Reason Number 1 may surely be left to take care of itself; or perchance many curates of the Anglican Church with small salaries and large families may explain.

Number 2 is essentially a religious, or rather sectarian, complaint up to a certain point; and beyond that point only proves the

condition artificially produced by one of those laws which the Russians declare are simply maintained for self-defence. That is to say, a Jewish parent naturally prefers to see his children marry into Jewish families, just as the Roman Catholic prefers to mate with the Roman Catholic and the Protestant with the Protestant. Therefore, the Jewish community remains dogmatically the Jewish community all the world over, though its numbers increase. But in Russia only is it also linguistically a Jewish community. The Russian Jew is a legacy from the partition of Poland, and, like the rest of the country, knew not Russian when he was forcibly annexed. The wealthy Jew can of course easily learn the language; but how is the poor one to do so when the native holds aloof from him save for the necessities of business; and the law steps in to forbid the attendance of more than a certain percentage of Jewish children in the national schools, a percentage calculated, not on the number of Jewish, but of Christian children.

When equal facilities of education are given to both in Russia, the Jew and the moujik will talk the same tongue, and Yiddish ' (the Polish dialect of Hebrew) will disappear from that country as it is disappearing from Whitechapel or the Ghettos of Frankfort and Rome.

3. Why are the Jews not agriculturists? The Russians say because they are physically and intellectually incapable of the pursuit. If so, whose fault is that? They were not created so. In the Old Testament there is much description of certain kingdoms of Judah and Israel whose exports consisted almost exclusively of corn and wine, and whose towns were few and far between. But the conqueror overwhelmed and dispersed them to the four corners of the earth: and the Jews perforce turned to other means of livelihood.

It would indeed have been marvellous had the agricultural instinct remained in the Jew during the seventeen and a half centuries in which, whatever privileges were given to or withheld from him, all nations alike were agreed as to this-that the Jew, as a Jew, could not and should not hold land. It is curious that most of the Judophobes in this country should belong to the party that asserts that an Irish tenant, notwithstanding fixity of tenure and compensation for disturbance, cannot possibly succeed in the struggle for life unless he is given the fee simple of the acres he farms; and at the same time agrees with the Russian that the Jew is unfit to be a landowner because, when he was not even allowed to become the leaseholder of the house he dwelt in, he did not devote his energies to tilling the soil in which he was by law forbidden to hold the slightest interest. Till the beginning of this century such a law existed all over Europe. It remained the law of Austria till after 1848; it is to this day the law in Russia.

'' Yiddish' is merely the phonetic spelling of the German word 'Jüdisch,' as pronounced by the German Polish Jew.