X INTRODUCTION that that should happen in England. As a set-off they see big game and shoot it if their eye is straight. They see countries and peoples. They administer large districts. Very often they wander in those most fascinating tracts of the world—the blank places of cartographers—the unexplored. In a word, they make Empire.

Which of the three would one choose ?

I have often heard those in Cairo and Khartum jeered at when they were heard to long for life at an out-station. I never jeer. To my mind there is no comparison.

To those who wish to join the E.A. it is well to say that previous experience, however short, in say West or East Africa, is invaluable. But more so is seniority as captain.

One's seniority in the British Army (after the first contract of two years is over) is practically the touchstone for promotion to the rank of kaimakam (lieutenant-colonel). Hence it continually happens that those who arrive at the eleventh hour, by reason of their seniority, step into the vacancies to the higher appointments, passing those junior to them in British rank who have borne the burden of the day and the heat thereof. I must, however, hasten to say that this is not at all a hard-and-fast rule ; it has its exceptions occasionally. The conditions of service in the Egyptian Army are contained in a contract, the main point of which is that the pay for a bimbashi (major) is 540 a year, with 60 in addition while quartered in