284 The Jameson Raid Described [ J 897 



before he started, including, I remember, thirty-six cases of champagne 

 which he distributed to his men, with leave to get drunk for three 

 days. There were among the men a number of loafers brought up 

 from Cape Town, some of them waiters from the restaurants, who had 

 never been on horseback before, and the whole force was more or 

 less drunk when it started. Jameson had told off three men to cut the 

 telegraph wires, but they were in such a condition that they mistook 

 a barbed wire fence for the telegraph and cut off a hundred yards of 

 it and carefully buried it instead of the other. When they got near 

 Johannesburg, Jameson could not find the way and picked up Boers 

 to show it them, who of course led them wrong. Scrope's brother and 

 others knew the road but were not listened to. As to drunkenness, I 

 can well believe the story, for I remember how, on a journey in South 

 America in 1868, some English men of the party riding with me took 

 for all provision on the road, a gigantic demi-john of spirits, which 

 they strapped to the back of a horse and drove in front of them." 



I left England in October once more for Egypt, still in bad health, 

 indeed in worse, for I had foolishly allowed myself to be persuaded 

 into becoming a vegetarian as well as the teetotaler I had been for 

 fifteen years, and the life at Sheykh Obeyd, delightful to those in 

 health, was too primitive to be suited to an invalid. On board the 

 ship that took us to Alexandria I found Walter Harris, the " Times " 

 correspondent in Morocco, who told me a good deal about his life 

 at Tangiers where he has a garden four miles from the town. He 

 talked also about the war in Thessaly where his brother was killed 

 last summer while helping the Greeks. The Greeks had abandoned 

 the brother when wounded, after robbing him of everything. They 

 had behaved abominably during the war. The Crown Prince of Greece 

 himself told Harris that he had seen the Evzoni throw paraffin on the 

 Turkish wounded and set them on fire. 



I found all well at Sheykh Obeyd, except that the desert round us 

 was beginning to be cultivated and enclosed. The day will come when 

 we shall be caught in a network of gardens and country houses, though 

 so far no great harm has been done. People argue with me and say, 

 " But your property must be increasing in value," as if that was any 

 consolation for losing the solitude. Foxes are still plentiful in the 

 garden and I have twice seen a very large wolf, old and grey, who, 

 they tell me, has been here all the summer, frightening the boys who 

 cut the grass for the horses. Salem says the wolf pursued him one 

 evening and tore his shirt and Suliman that he had taken two of his 

 lambs from his tent outside our wall. He comes and howls under our 

 window after nightfall. There are certainly two sorts of wolves here 

 besides jackals, unless, indeed, the intermediate size is a cross between 

 wolf and jackal. Our present guest is of the big desert kind. 



