liberty, if not of life; but he lacked the boldness that could have pressed on her then the question of mere bodily danger, the mere physical perils from the cell and the rods of her persecutors.

There was that in her attitude, as she sat bowed, motionless, with the loosened weight of her hair sweeping down into the salt pools of the beach, and an icy chillness of calm on the colourless immutability of her features, that subdued, and shamed, and had a nameless terror for him. Some sense of reluctant reverential fear was woman whom, nevertheless, he had goaded and and tortured through the length of many years. her ever lingered in him.

always on him for the trepanned, and injured, Some touch of love for

He paused a long while, at some distance from her, while the in-coming tide rolled nearer and nearer up over the shingle and the sand, till the surf washed over her feet. She never noted it; her eyes, without sight in them, gazed at the dusky changing mass of water that here and there beneath the spell of waking light broke into melting lustrous hues, like the gleam of colours on a southern bird's bright throat.

He drew closer, with a doubtful hesitation.

"You will come with me, then ?"

She gave no sign even that she heard the words.

"I am not alone," he pursued. “Lousada, Veni, and the boy Berto sought you. I fell in with them as I neared here; they are fugitives, and proscribed themselves; they lie hid by day in an old sea-den of Veni's; they look to get away by the coast in a night or so; they would give their bodies to shot and sabre to save your hand from a rough touch. Will you come to them ?"

He could not tell whether she heeded him; he saw her face in profile; it was still, cold, passionless, stern with a mute intolerable suffering, like some Greek head in stone of Destiny.

He felt a restless fear of his own victory.

He spoke afresh, rather to break that death-like silence, filled only with the ebbing and the flowing of the sea, than for the sake of what he uttered.

“Veni's sea-nest is safe-safe, at least, for a little while; it lies yonder, through there, where a passage-way pierces the rocks. All that acanthus hides the entrance. It has sheltered many before; Fiesole lay there once, in the first days of his proscription. Lousada doubts little that he can get a brig from Salerno, and steal away off westward three nights hence. It is the best chance. You will come?"

At last she lifted her head, and looked at him.

"But for Giulio Villaflor I would go-far sooner-back to the dungeon of Taverna."

His face paled; he knew her meaning-knew the unspeakable loathing and scorn of himself that made the severities of captivity and wretchedness look fairer in her sight than every recovered freedom shared with his companionship.

"There is no other alternative," he said, sullenly. "You will come ?" "I will come."

He was once more victorious; and once more with victory stole over him a strange chill dread, as he who has brought down and netted the lioness of the plains will feel something of awe, something of fear, when in his

toils lies the daughter, the mate, the mother of free-born kings of untrodden soil-when beneath the rain of his blows, and from out the meshes of his trap, the great fearless luminous leonine eyes look at him, suffering but unquailing.

Why do you wait, then ?" he asked.

"I wait

for him."

"So! You will, after all, be false to one of us. Which ?" "Neither."

"What gage have I of that ?"

"That I have said it."

He was silent a moment; he scarcely dared dispute that single bond, her word. Traitor himself to her, he knew that his treachery would never be repaid him by its own.coin.

"You wait for him ?" he said.

"Are you weary of the shame of

"Then so also do I."

your life that you seek to lose it ?" "No. But he shall take it rather than I will leave you here." Through the calm upon her face, the calm of martyrdom, of despair, he saw the conflict of many passions, of infinite misery.

"Will you choose for us to meet ?"

Where her forehead rested on her hands that were thrust among the masses of her hair, the great dews started as they had never done when the scourge was lifted at Taverna.

"We shall not part alive," he pursued. "Perhaps you count on that? Your lover is the younger and the stronger; there are few men he would not worst. You rode all day through the heat and press of a battle under Verona once, I remember; maybe you wish to see a life-and-death combat."

She answered nothing; a shiver as of intense cold ran through her. "You can enjoy your new passion, true, if he kill me ;-a dead body flung with a kick into that surf, the waves to wash it seaward, none on earth to care enough for me to ask where I have drifted,—it would be easy work. Is that the reason why you wait' ?"

"God! how can you link such guilt with me, even in thought?"

66

Why not? That will be the end if we meet in your sight to-day, unless, indeed, fate turns the other way, and your lover falls through me. Sit there, Miladi, and watch the struggle; you will never have seen two harder foes. Turn your thumb downward, like those dainty, haughty Roman dames you copy in philosophies and seductions; turn it down for the slaughter-signal, if you see me at his mercy. How free you will be then! But-listen just a little-if he press me too close, we have not the northern scorn of a timely thrust, and it will be but in self-defence!" As he spoke, he drew gently half out of its sheath the blade of a delicate knife that was thrust in his waistband, and let the beams of the sunrise play brightly on the narrow shining steel.

The glitter flashed close beside her. It sent fire and life like an electric shock through all the icy stillness of her limbs; she rose with a convulsive force; her eyes had the gleam of an opium-drinker's in them, her voice had scarce a likeness of itself.

"I come, I come; do what you will with me, so that his life escapes you!"

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

THE RAILWAY IN THE PUNJAB.

THE railroad from Lahore, the capital of the Punjab, to Attock on the Indus, the permission to construct which has been recently granted by Sir John Lawrence, is but the completion of the main Indian arterial lines from Calcutta by Agra and Delhi to Lahore, and from Kurachi by the Indus to Multan, and thence by rail to Lahore; but it opens of itself an entirely new region-that of the five rivers-to commerce and civilisation, and it carries all those facilities of travel and transport which belong so peculiarly to the iron-road to the extreme north-west frontier of India, and to spots surrounded by warlike barbarism, and yet on the nearest and most direct road to Europe. The contemplated enterprise will, it has been remarked, "be the outpost, the very vedette of all steam travelling, and go near to reach that historical mystery 'the heart of Asia.'"

Little good ever came permanently from war, nor are the results of the struggles of humanity always to be foretold. In 1838 and 1839 Sir John Keane's force marched through the Dūrānī (or Douraunee) empire, meeting with little opposition but at Ghuznī; Dhost Muhammad surrendered to Sir William Macnaghten, Shah Sujah was restored to his throne, and all appeared tranquil. "Shah's" troops were raised; Dūrānī orders were distributed; Sir John Keane was raised to the peerage; addresses and congratulations were presented on all sides. Alas! how little the political envoys, how little the world at large, dreamed of the mine over which they were standing! In the beginning of November, 1841, it exploded, and the assassination of the British envoy; the total destruction of a large British force, including her Majesty's 44th Regiment, and several corps of native troops; the seizure of our guns; the capture of officers and ladies ;-a catastrophe, in short, almost unequalled in our annals, fearfully dispelled the vision of Affghanistan tranquillity and British influence as then established throughout Central Asia. The very next year Shah Sujah was himself murdered by a party of Baurikzais while proceeding to his camp at Būtkhak—a miserable end of a troublous

course.

The "avenging armies of Affghanistan" were sent from the northwest and the south in 1841 and 1842 to re-establish the reputation of Great Britain, and to some extent avenge the disasters which our arms had experienced through the treachery of the Orientals. The grand objects of the campaign were achieved; the armies of Pollock and Nott met from different directions in triumph at Kabul, the prisoners were recovered, all past disasters were retrieved and avenged in every scene on Nov.-VOL. CXXXVIII. NO. DLI.

S

which they were sustained, and repeated victories in the field, and the capture of the cities and citadels of Ghuznī and Kabul, advanced the glory and re-established the accustomed superiority of the British arms. But what came of this glorious success, so hardly earned? The British troops were withdrawn with undignified celerity, and enormities unheard or unthought of were unblushingly attributed to our armies. "The whole British army," wrote Captain J. M. B. Neill, of the gallant 40th,* "had now withdrawn from Affghanistan; our eventful connexion with that country had totally ceased. That connexion will assuredly constitute a curious and important page in history-less certain is it that that page will be a creditable one to the British name." "What Christian can contemplate," remarked the Rev. J. N. Allen, who also published a "Diary of a March through Seindh and Affghanistan," in reference to the conduct of the Affghans, "such a tissue of conspiracy, treachery, cruelty, and blood, without ardently desiring, and fervently praying for, the diffusion throughout these lands of that blessed Gospel which is not only the brightest manifestation of the glory of God, but the harbinger of peace and good will towards man. May God of His mercy hasten the time when these hardy and indomitable tribes shall be added to the kingdoms of our God and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever."

An iron railroad once laid down in a country, is a very different thing to the advance of an army sent to supersede the Russo-Persian policy of a Dhost Muhammad, or to avenge the losses incurred, by a glorious campaign and a disgraceful return. It is a thing of peace and of permanence, of commerce and civilisation; the possession of such a line must be upheld, and hence, as it is now utterly impossible to ignore the bearings of such an undertaking, so is it also necessary to grapple with them, not, as is so absurdly argued, as a "mystery," but as a fact admitting of a clear, concise, and definite exposition.

And first with regard to the Punjab. It derives its appellation from two Persian words, punj, five, and ab, water, from the five rivers which flow through the territory. These rivers are, going from west to east, first, the Indus, or Attock, with its two tributaries the Kabul and Gilgit rivers; secondly, the Jailum, or Jhelum, or Hydaspes; thirdly, the Chenab, or Ascescines; fourthly, the Ravee, or Hydrastis, the river of Lahore, the second, third, and fourth uniting to form the river of Multan; and, fifthly, the Gharra, or river of Bhawulpur, which has for tributaries the Beyah, or Hyphasis, and the Sutluj, or Sutlej. The extensive natural sections which lie above the confluence of two rivers are described by the native term Du-Ab, corresponding to the Mesopotamia of the ancients. The rivers are all in a great measure navigable, not less, it has been computed, than 1960 miles of the principal streams being available for purposes of inland traffic. A railway crossing the country, and having stations on the rivers, the produce of the regions above and below would be thus brought to these stations under great advantages of

transit.

Irrigation to an almost unparalleled extent is carried on without much assistance from artificial means, the great plains being extremely level, or

* Recollections of Four Years' Service in the East, &c., p. 296.

sloping so gradually from north-east to south-west, that the highest elevation does not exceed 1600 feet above the level of the sea, and descends to about 220 feet. This in Lower Punjab; but the bed of the Sutluj at Rampur is 3260 feet above the level of the sea; the Jailum, in latitude 33 deg. 2 min., 1620 feet; the Indus at Attock, about 1000 feet; Peshawur being 1068 feet, Lahore about 900 feet, and the confluence of the Indus and Punjnud 220 feet. The exceeding smoothness of the country, so advantageous for railway purposes, has, however, the untoward effect of causing the rivers to frequently change their courses; not one of them runs now within several miles of the great towns whose walls they washed when they were first founded. Probably the greatest engineering difficulties that would have to be overcome in carrying a railway across such a country would be in carrying viaducts over its rivers, and then confining these to their beds. It would, however, be a work of great advantage to the country.

Scattered over this vast territory, but chiefly in the vicinity of the rivers, are numerous towns, fortresses, and villages. The principal are Lahore, the capital, Umritsir, Multan, Wuzīr-abad, Mūsuffīr-abad, Kashmir, or Siranuggur, and Peshawur. The fortresses are Umritsīr, a place of no particular strength; Rotas, a fort on the high road from Lahore to Peshawur, strikingly situated on an eminence, but now suffered to fall into decay; and the castle on the banks of the Attock, which commands the passage of the river. Most of the towns are, or were, surrounded by a mud or brick wall of a frail construction, and Lahore was itself so defended, with the addition of a dry moat, which, on an emergency, could be filled with water from the neighbouring Ravee.

Lahore is a town of considerable dimensions; the circuit of the walls exceeds seven miles. Originally occupied by the Mussulman invaders, it contains many remnants of spacious and handsome mosques, serais or palaces, and monuments, and near it is a magnificent tomb where the remains of the Mogul emperor Jihanghīr are said to repose. The streets of Lahore, like those of other native towns of India, are narrow and dirty. The houses are lofty, but are, for the most part, surrounded by dead walls, which give á sombre aspect to the town, scarcely relieved by the bustle of the bazaars, where valuable merchandise of every description is crowded into mean and incommodious edifices. There are not many gardens within the town, but the vicinity abounds with luxuriant orchards scattered amidst masses of ruins.

Umritsir, properly Umrīta-Sarai, or the "fount of immortality," the title given to a superb tank upon an island in the centre of which is a temple to Vishnu, is situated between the rivers Beas and Ravee, and is even of greater extent than Lahore, being a place of great commercial importance. The architecture of the houses is also in rather better taste. The bazaars are spacious, and the town boasts of a few manufactories, a canal from the Ravee, and the usual places of public worship. The most striking edifice is, however, the lofty Govind-ghur, or fort of Govind, upreared by Runjit Singh as a royal treasury-the Gaza or Ecbatana of the Punjab. The Akali fanatics, who were raised by the famous Govind, whose name this fortress commemorates, were among the bravest opponents of the British. One of these men rushed singly upon the bayonets of a European regiment; the privates, however, were unwilling to take