6 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



this out fully should reach the officer in command, 

 English troops were to remain at Bushire, and the 

 sloop was to remain before Mahamra. As the sharp 

 bows of the Comet flashed by the opening of the 

 canal into the Shut-el-Arab, we took a last look at 

 Maharnra, its demolished batteries, and its belts of 

 date-groves, among which scores of stout trees might 

 be seen smashed and doubled like broken straws, 

 where a 68-pounder from the English frigates had 

 gone crashing through the belt into the camp beyond. 

 Soon we reached the junction of the Tigris and Eu- 

 phrates : the little vessel, steaming gaily along these, 

 the waters of the old old world, shot into the 

 channel of the Tigris. Three days' constant steam- 

 ing, lodging now and then on a sandbank, brought 

 us to Baghdad. Here it was determined upon by 

 General Outram and the Honourable Charles Murray, 

 that a mission, consisting of three officers and a 

 doctor, should proceed to Herat. We were ordered 

 to accompany the Minister, and form part of his 

 suite, as far as the capital, for which place he was 

 soon to set forth, the war being finished. From the 

 capital we were to make the best of our way through 

 Khorassan, and across the eastern frontier of Persia, 

 into Afghanistan. If we reached that place and 

 the odds, as it turned out afterwards, were consider- 

 ably against such an event we were to remain there 

 till orders from the Indian Government should reach 

 us. The English Minister's return to the capital, 



