under a hot sun. A miss is unthinkable, and yet a moving gazelle is neither a big nor an easy target.

They come steadily on, and will pass to our right1-a lucky omen! the buck second in the string. Now they have changed their line a shade. Will they pass out of range after all? No, it is all right, but it will be a long shot. Now the buck's eye is almost visible. How does the verse go?

"I never nursed a dear gazelle, To glad me with its soft black eye, But when it came to know me well,

And love me, it was sure to die." Well, not sure, perhaps; but we'll do our best. Now the gazelle are at the nearest

point; every yard farther will make the shot longer. The sight covers the buck,-covers him almost completely up! As I am about to shoot he moves behind a bush; now he is out. Bang! he is down. That's all right. Ibrahim has seen him drop, and is galloping up to hallal him. So over the gazelle we meet, and tell Ibrahim we have never seen such a clever gardan, and shabash him and pat him on the back. Ibrahim, I find, is of my opinion, that the gazelle suspected our bush. They were, he tells us, coming up "by first intention," but had been scared by something, from which it is clear that, careful as we had been, we had not been careful enough.

THERE never was a time in the history of the world in which there was so violent a passion of movement as today. We are none of us

content to live our lives in one place. We must all be going somewhere in search of new sights. The railroad no longer keeps pace with our desires. Though we can cross Europe in a couple of days, and travel overland to China in less than a fortnight, we are still avid of new methods. The neatly laid rails which traverse continents seem too formal in the rapidity of our thought. It irks us to present ourselves at a railway station in time for the express. We must settle our own hour and take our journey as we list. So motor-cars come to the aid of railway trains, and for those who cannot bear the sloth and solidity of the earth on which they were born there is the flying machine. In vain we multiply the artifices of progress. The universality of travel has made us forget its meaning. To share your pleasures with all the world is to lose them. Above all, steam and petroleum have killed the spirit of adventure.

There are very few wanderers left who are willing to take their chance of a night's lodging under the stars.

Yet once upon a time all the romance of life was on the road. Men rode and fought and gained their living in the free air of heaven. Eagerly did they measure the distance from tavern to tavern. At the landlord's open hearth they found their ease and entertainment. They felt not the ties of house and lands. They were not enslaved by their own possessions. The only police that they knew was the sword at their hip. Their nimble minds did not pierce the sordid mysteries of the ballot - box. It was not for them to vote, but to do. In all the varied actions of life they were their own representatives.

And nowhere did the spirit of adventure breathe more freely three hundred hundred years since than in Spain, the home of the picaresque in life and letters. There was then a career open to all the talents. Not merely might the wanderer gallop over the yellow mountains, and clatter with his sword at the gates of

still seem as though they are hung from the sky. He might seek glory in the lowlands, or gold in the mysterious Indies of the South. He was a man of infinite humour and many jests. Even though, as became a Spaniard, he refused to laugh, a smile always wrinkled his mouth, and his tongue was as ready to slip its scabbard as his sword. His prowess was celebrated in many a prose epic. Lazarillo del Tormes and Guzman d'Alfarache remain the liveliest of their kind. And at the very moment that these creatures of the mind were amusing thousands, one hero there was, who was acting in his own life the very drama of romance. This was Alonso de Contreras, a man who by turns scullion and corsair, soldier and hermit, who fought his way across Europe, pillaged Barbary, measured swords with Sir Walter Raleigh in America, and who engrossed in his own person the virtues and vices of the picaroon. And he did something more than this. He sat him down to write his Memoirs, and has left us such a picture of his life and times as elsewhere we might look for in vain. Recovered by a Spanish scholar, Señor Serrano y Sanz, some ten years ago, the Memoirs of Contreras fascinated the distinguished poet, J. M. De Heredia, who would have added them to the litera

was

been interrupted by death. The work which he was not permitted to undertake has been accomplished by Messrs Lami and Rouanet, with so deft a hand that those who have no Spanish may win the intimacy of Alonso de Contreras through the French, with very little sense of the intervention of a foreign tongue. For this version reproduces, with astonishing accuracy, not merely the meaning, but the very style and accent, of the illustrious bandit.

The Memoirs of Contreras are a book of truth and good faith. Though the author is keenly sensible of his own courage and pre-eminence, he has no desire to hide the savagery of his temper. He describes the crimes which he committed in his youth with a singular sincerity. He is too proud or too careless to palliate his sins. In this respect he is plainly superior to Casanova, who is desperately anxious lest his readers should discover the extent of his knavery. At times he almost reaches the height of self- revelation scaled by Samuel Pepys. After the plain sincerity of the book, what strikes the reader most forcibly is its sense of action. Obviously the writer's hand was more familiarly accustomed to the sword than the pen. The narrative is blunt in its brevity, and as direct as a

well-aimed shot.

And though he disdains extenuation, he is convinced, like most of his kind, that his life left nothing to regret. Throughout the storm and stress of battle and pillage he remains & devout and practising Christian. When in one of the great moments of his life he was Governor of Pentellaria, an island off the coast of Barbary, he perceived with sorrow that the church was thatched like a wayside inn. Instantly he set about the work of restoration. He strengthened its roof with beams and battens. He built six arches of stone, and added a pulpit and a sacristy. He adorned the walls with what he thought a magnificent series of paintings. His taste, perchance, was unrestrained, but he did what he could without stint and the the best of motives. Nor was he content with the mere act of restoration. He munificently endowed the church, that masses should be said for the repose of his soul, and that every two years the paintings of the church should be cleaned and its walls whitewashed. We wonder whether his pious wishes are still observed, or whether the Church of Our

This devotion to the Church came, no doubt, from the desire which obsessed Contreras to stand well with the great ones of the earth. Though he would sacrifice his independence to none, and had no scruple in insulting the President of the Council of the Indies himself, who had thwarted his ambition, he loved to bask in the sun of grandeur. When he is composing a panegyric on the Count of Monterey, he boasts that he has known an infinite number of princes. He delights to describe how easily his eloquence on a certain occasion won the Pope over to his side. Once upon a time there came to Madrid a report that he had been killed, and the capital of Castille was as much moved by the news as if he had been a grand seigneur. How should he recall the welcome episode without pride! Nor was that all. His death was first spoken by the Marquis of Barcarrota, in the pelotacourt, so that there was no touch of commonness anywhere. The President of Castille sent forth messengers to discover if the rumour were true, and in case it were to see that the murderer was punished. Contreras was able to declare that he was in the best health, and thus to rejoice the Court of Spain. "There," says he, "that's what comes of being well seen." And what is very rare, even in amiable bandits, he had a lofty appreciation of the poets. An