El Paso daily herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1881-1901, 1899-11-13

I completed my own chef ID 'oeuvre in
the shape of q stone culvert under
| meath the now rebuilt wall at the place
where the river had washed through.
1t was q large culvert. and l put bars
of iron across il firmly fixed in the
stone work at the ends to prevent the
enemy getting through 1t into the
town. So pleased was I with it that
after had bored everybody else into
coming to look at it until they we're
tired, 1 used to ride of by myself and
admire 1t by toe half hour to-
come down from the hills that 1 might
have the pleasure of seeing the water
] wash through my culvert instead of
through the walls, as it had done be-
| fore, bringing on that occasion two
dead cattle with it into the sea. Speak
ing of that flood, strange circum-
| stance must be mentioned. For three
or four days after it occurred the whole
of the ssndy surface Of the desert, and
q most instantly notably the dry bed of
the KhOrs, or water courses, was COW
cred with tosde. They we're chiefly
pairing and in couples everywhere, but
some were scattered about alone in
places Four days after the rain, which
It may be mentioned had fallen on one
day, there was not q single toad to De
seen anywhere. They had disappeared
as completely as though they had never
been! Nor did we subsequently ever
discover one in the sand when we
were excavating in various places out
side the walls to make q chain of outly-
ing round redoubis as an additional de-
fence.
AN INTERESTING ''FIND."
What could have become of them?
Gould they have disappeared into the
rock itself like my hermit crab? have
heard of toAds living in coal but not in
rock. At least one could, 1 can answer
for him,-I won It talk about the others.
l found him out like this. I was
watching the men o: my battalion
blasting the coral rock which lay I'M
derneath the soil in the desert, at
about 1000 yards from the town
of Suakin and about as
far from the narrow channel forming
the harbor. We were building the
, redoubt known subsequently as A. Re-
doubt, and with the coral rock, which
we fret blasted with gunpowder and
then broke up in the ditch with pick
, axes, we used to build the parapets.
NY great friend, that gallant and very
distinguished young officer, the late
David Gregorie, of the Royal Irish re-
giment, who was acting as my staff
officer. was assisting me in the
operations at A. Redoubt, when sud
!denly before our eyes q strange thing
happened. A large detached block OF
icoral proved too hard for any OF the
men to break. In fact 1t turned the
point of their pick axes. It was to9
big to remove WITHOUT smashing up,
and, as We did not want to fire another
lshot just to break one stone,- 1 ordered
a company bash shswesh, sergeant
major, named Mitwslli Hussein, to try
to break it, for he was the strongest
man in my regiment. the LIST battalion
mighty blows did the Mitwalli deal
upon that block without effect. At
last, after rest, exclalming. "Bismil.
lah," in the name of God, he smote
another blow mightier than all. The
rock split like magic amid the ap-
plause OF the surrounding soldiers,
As 1t fell apart q perfect fossil of q
whelk she'll. or SO I thought it, fell out
quite uninjured from the very centre
of the stone. l picked il up and
Gregorie and examined it, noticing,
with great interest that il was the
fossil not only of q whelk she'll but also
of q hermit crab within that shell, for
there was the big claw folded across
and closing the entrance to the lime
covered shell.
81 will keep this" I remarked, sit
is . wonderful FOSSIL"
Five minutes after 1 had had it in
my hand Gregorie remarked to me, on
looking at it again, that the point of
an antenna was protrudtng and that he
had not noticed it before. Neither had
I noticed it myself. Ten minutes later
1t put out its pig claw and pinched mel
was then convinced that held in my
hand one of the greatest msrvels of
creation, creature which had been
1 "a in q "a nj lad anil lot lin
for perhaps hundreds of thousands of
iyears. Nearly all the English officers
and English residents then in Suakin
saw and examined the crab
that evening and allowed them
: selves to be pipched by it in order
that, as the con- jurors say, there might
r be absolutely no deception. One gen
b tleman, who is very we'll known in re-
: ference to Soudan matters, gave to
. that crab regret to say whiskey! 1t
then became livelier than ever and
. most aggressive, and l saw that it's
mission in life was not by any means
what my friends suggested, namely, to
terminate a life SO lately restored to
consciousness in musty museum in a
bottle of alcohol. I thought that for
an animal that had been 60 miracu-
, lousy preserved for perhaps a mil
: lion years ago, there must be a better
mission than that. Therefore, although
it's preserved body might have now
r been worth thousands of pounds
3 las q unique specimen, 1
T let it give me q parting pinch of the