ris against the army of Versailles. To reach England any other way
than via Paris involved a delay of many days, and Burnaby determined to
dare all that was to be done by the Communists. So, carrying a Queen's
Messenger's bag full of cigars in packets that looked more or less like
Government despatches, he passed through Paris and safely reached
Calais.

A year later he set forth intending to journey to Khiva, but on reaching
Naples was striken with fever, spent four months of his leave in bed,
and was obliged to postpone the trip. In 1874 he once more went to
Spain, this time acting as the special correspondent of the Times with
the Carlists, and his letters form not the least interesting chapter in
the long story of the miserable war. In the early spring of 1875 he made
a dash at Central Africa, hoping to find "Chinese Gordon" and his
expedition. He met that gallant officer on the Sobat river, a stream
which not ten Englishmen have seen, and having stayed in the camp for a
few days, set out homeward, riding on a camel through the Berber desert
to Korosko, a distance of five hundred miles. After an absence of
exactly four months he turned up for duty at the Cavalry Barracks,
Windsor, with as much nonchalance as if he had been for a trip to the
United States in a Cunard steamer.

It was whilst on this flight through Central Africa that the notion of
the journey to Khiva came back with irresistible force. It had been done
by MacGahan, but that plucky journalist had judiciously started in the
spring. Burnaby resolved to accomplish the enterprise in winter; and
accordingly, on November 30th, 1875, he started by way of St.
Petersburg, treating himself, as a foretaste of the joys that awaited
him on the steppes, to the long lonely ride through Russia in midwinter.
At Sizeran he left civilisation and railways behind him, and rode on a
sleigh to Orenburg, a distance of four hundred and eighty miles. At
Orenburg he engaged a Tartar servant, and another stretch of eight
hundred miles on a sleigh brought him to Fort No. 1, the outpost of the
Russian army facing the desert of Central Asia. After this even the
luxury of sleigh-riding was perforce foregone, and Burnaby set out on
horseback, with one servant, one guide, and a thermometer that
registered between 70 degrees and 80 degrees below freezing point, to
find Khiva across five hundred miles of pathless, trackless, silent
snow.

Two Cossacks riding along this route with desp