BALLOONING. 39 the Turkish army, to appoint him as their representative in the field, to second the work of their commissioner at Constantinople. The organization was an admirable one, and the surgeons, assistant surgeons, and dressers sent out did good work in succouring about 100,000 of the sick and wounded of the Turkish army. Burnaby did his work too. He visited the hospital at Adrianople, found it in excellent working order, and reported on it, and then went to another hospital at Sofia. But he had obtained from the commissioner at Constantinople a letter to Osman Pasha, the Turkish general at Plevna, and thither, as to the probable centre of the conflict, he meant to go, that he might be in the thick of the fight; and he actually proposed to Colonel Valentine Baker, who had entered the Turkish service, to make his way across the Balkans and get through the Russian lines into Plevna. He fought by Baker's side at the battle of Tarkeshan, and soon undertook the regulation of the fifth Turkish brigade. Through the terrific cold of that winter and in the face of repeated dangers he had plenty of fighting, and appeared to be as reckless of the fact that he was not warranted in giving militarj' aid to the Turks as he was of the obstacles and hardships that would have killed weaker men, and had already struck poor Radford with death. In the spring of 1878 the condition of Radford was an additional reason for Burnaby's return to England, where the faithful servant and brave soldier died in his master's arms almost immediately on arriving at Dover.

Burnaby then turned his attention to politics, and also proposed for the hand of Miss Hawkins-Whitshead, the daughter of Sir St. Vincent Bentinck Hawkins-Whitshead, Bart., of county Wicklow, In 1880 he contested Birmingham in the Conservative interest (for he was a pronounced Conservative), but was unsuccessful, though he and his friend Lord Randolph Churchill were the recognized Conservative candidates.

Amonof his cherished intentions was that of crossing the Mediterranean in a balloon, or rather an aerial ship, steered from the French coast. He had made several balloon ascents, the first as early as 1864 from Cremorne Gardens in a Montgolfier,