eeds, and
vow to take a summary vengeance on the cruel Mahdists when they catch
them.

It seems, however, as if they were going to have a good deal of
difficulty in catching them. As yet they have not been able to come up
with the enemy.

Osman Digna, the Mahdist general, steadily retreats before the British
and Egyptian troops. It is supposed that it is his intention to draw the
army as far as possible from its base of supplies, and then to give
battle, hoping to have it completely at his mercy.

If this is his hope, he will find himself very much mistaken.

We told you in a recent number about the railway that the troops were
laying across the desert. With the aid of the iron horse--as the
locomotive is often called--the dreaded desert can be crossed with ease,
and the invading army can have all the supplies it needs following it
wherever Osman Digna leads.

* * * * *

There is sad news from the Philippine Islands. A cyclone and tidal wave
have visited the island of Leyte, which is one of the Philippine group,
and have done a great deal of damage, sweeping over a vast tract of
country and killing thousands of people.

A tidal wave, or, more properly speaking, an earthquake wave, is an
extraordinarily high wave, supposed to be formed by the disturbance
caused by an earthquake in the bed of the sea.

The action of the earthquake causes the waters to retreat from the
shores, and gather themselves into a mighty mass, which suddenly turns
and advances upon the shore in one huge wave of enormous height. This
wave sweeps on over the land until it has spent its force, when the
waters rush back to the sea once more.

The force of such a wave is so great that it destroys everything in its
path, tearing up rocks and boulders, and carrying them along inland with
it.

In 1746, when the coast of Peru was the scene of one of these
catastrophes, a war-ship was lying at anchor in one of the bays. The
wave came sweeping down upon it, lifted it up on its crest and bore it
several miles inland, depositing it on the side of a hill.

The island of Leyte, which has just been visited by one of these
terrible waves, is one of the smallest of the Philippine group. Its
trade was carried on with Manila, on the island of Luzon, where the
rebellion is raging. It was a thriving little island, and boasted of
several busy towns, all of which have been completely ruined and in part
swept away by the earthq