Loss by Accident. — Here and there in history occurs the total loss of an army; and nothing in history makes a stronger impression on young and old. The best-remembered passage in Herodotus is apparently that little paragraph which relates to the fate of Cambyses' army, sent against the people of Ammon. It is only a few lines: — The army of the Persians was said to have reached a certain spot, but no one could verify the fact. All that was certain was, that it did not reach Ammon, and that it never returned to Egypt. Some reported that, while the troops were taking a meal in the desert, a strong south wind overwhelmed them with mountains of sand, — “and thus perished this army.” The image of this vast, instantaneous death and burial in the heart of the desert has haunted men's imagination for two thousand years. The hot sands are not more striking than the snows. Snowdrifts have overwhelmed armies from the days when Central Asia was advanced in civilisation till now, when the people have to trust to the elements for a defence against the Russians. For generations to come there will be a vivid image in men's minds of the Russian expedition to Khiva in 1839, the greater part of the troops never having returned.