THE ROAD TO RUIN. 97 become current in all the quarters where men, who live by their wits, are apt to foregather. In my travels over the veldt in South Africa, it has been my fortune on various occasions to see a horse, or ox, or mule, in the team by which our party was conveyed, fall down on the ground, worn out by overwork, lack of food, or sudden sickness.

The traces were cut, and the poor brute was left to die where he had fallen. There was not a sign on the earth below or in the sky above of any living thing, but if within a few minutes of the beast of burden sinking to the ground, and refusing to move from the spot where he lay, you happened to gaze upwards, you would see a black speck on the far-away horizon. As you looked, the specks increased rapidly in size and numbers ; and before your team had moved on far enough to lose sight of their dying comrade, you would catch sight of a flock of vultures swooping down to gorge themselves with the flesh of the still half-living corpse.

I never witnessed the descent of the Ass Vogels from the clear sky in the Transvaal without the spectacle bringing back to my mind the remembrance of the days when (all the adventurers of Europe' swooped down on Egypt on becoming aware that Ismail Pasha was in pecuniary straits, and that there was money to be made out of his embarrassments.

All the knights of industry — the inventors, who only required temporary advances to procure fabulous wealth for their patrons ; the promoters of impracticable H