Chapter XII: The First Battalion (1)

1884-1885.

THE NILE EXPEDITION.

At the time of England’s armed intervention in Egypt in 1882, the Khedive’s authority extended nominally far beyond the limits of the province which Mahomet Ali had wrested from the Sublime Porte. The founder of the Egyptian dynasty, not satisfied with fighting his Suzerain the Sultan in Syria, had pushed armies up the Nile into the heart of the Soudan, or country of the Blacks, a no-man’s land which stretched from Wadi Halfa, the southern boundary of Egypt, to the Great Lakes far beyond the equator. This region had no form of government; its inhabitants were oppressed by Arab slave-hunters; its condition was pitiable in the extreme. Mahomet Ali gradually conquered every tribe in the Nile valley up to the junction of the White and Blue Niles, where he built Khartoum, and thrust forward outposts in every direction from the capital of his new dominions, which was about a thousand miles south of Cairo. The country thus annexed became known as the Egyptian Soudan, and extended from the shore of the Red Sea to the western frontier of Kordofan; it was about the size of France and Germany put together, and its population in 1883 was estimated at fourteen millions of mixed breed, the descendants of the aboriginal negroes and the Arabs who overran the country early in the Mohammedan era. This blend had produced a race possessing the outward characteristics and mental attributes of the Arab, combined with the endurance and brute courage of the Negro.[252] After anarchy such as had prevailed in the Soudan, almost any form of government might have been expected to improve the condition of the country; but in this respect Egyptian rule completely failed. Taxation was heavy; extortion was the rule, rather than the exception, and slave-hunting, with all its attendant horrors, was not suppressed; indeed, thanks to the connivance of the officials, who were virtually in partnership with the slave-dealers, it so greatly increased that the country was rapidly becoming depopulated, when in 1869, the pressure of British public opinion compelled the Khedive to institute reforms in the administration, and to appoint an Englishman, Sir Samuel Baker, as Governor-General of the Equatorial provinces, which stretched from Khartoum to the Great Lakes. Five years later Baker was succeeded by General (then Colonel) Charles George Gordon, who held the post till 1879. Though both accomplished much towards the establishment of better government and the suppression of slave-hunting, their efforts were cramped and thwarted by the officials at Cairo and at Khartoum, who were naturally disinclined to lose the enormous profits they derived from the trade in slaves. A country so mercilessly treated only needed a leader to turn upon its oppressors, and in 1881, such a leader arose in the Soudan. A prophecy had long been current among Mohammedans that about this time a “Mahdi” would appear and convert the whole world to the true faith, and of this prophecy a religious adventurer, named Mohammed Ahmed, availed himself to the uttermost. He proclaimed himself the Mahdi whose advent had been predicted, and announced that as soon as the Soudan had joined his cause he would march on Egypt, destroying all who opposed him, and convert the whole world to Islam. Such was the spiritual part of his programme, carefully prepared to rouse the fanaticism latent in every Mohammedan; the temporal advantages he offered to his followers were universal equality and community of goods. Although denounced as an impostor by the educated Mussulmans, who probably regarded his socialistic propaganda with misgivings, he rapidly gained a great following, and obtained several successes over the Egyptian garrisons, which were at this time in a wretched condition. The troops had not been paid for many months, in some cases even for years: the soldiers were undrilled, their officers incompetent to drill them: the loyalty of all ranks was as doubtful as their courage. To stiffen this unpromising material, several Englishmen in the service of Egypt were sent to Khartoum; among them was Hicks Pasha, at one time an officer in the Indian army, now the newly appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Khedive’s troops in the Soudan.

In September, 1883, Hicks, acting under the orders of the Egyptian government, led an expedition into the depths of Kordofan, where the Mahdi had retired to organise the tribesmen, from thirty to sixty thousand strong, whom his recent victories had attracted to his standard. Hicks commanded about 11,000 weakly and ill-fed men, of whom many were so unwilling to be soldiers that to prevent desertion they had to be sent up the Nile in chains. His artillery consisted of thirty-six Krupp, Nordenfelt, and mountain guns, and his transport was supplied by six thousand horses and camels. The whole of the Egyptian troops were thoroughly out of heart; they were aware that they were about to march into a country of which little was known except that it was almost waterless, and that they would encounter hordes of desperate and ruthless fanatics. As the men filed out of Khartoum they were in floods of tears. The fate of such an army may easily be imagined: on the 5th of November it was surprised by the Mahdi with 40,000 of his followers, and cut to pieces, near El Obeid in Kordofan.[253] Hicks and the other Europeans died fighting dauntlessly to the last; the Egyptians allowed themselves to be butchered almost without resistance: three hundred were given quarter, only to become the slaves of the victors, into whose hands passed the guns, much ammunition, thousands of rifles, and all the transport animals. One man alone escaped to bring the news to Khartoum. Yet so little was the importance of the Mahdist movement appreciated by the English government that at the very time Hicks’s column was being destroyed in Kordofan, Mr Gladstone was urging the reduction of the British army of occupation in Egypt. When Hicks’s fate became known in Cairo the situation grew very complicated. The Cabinet in London, afraid of being drawn into armed intervention in the Soudan, had persistently assumed an attitude of aloofness on the subject of Hicks’s operations, and, affecting to ignore the fact that Britain was virtually, though not officially, mistress in Egypt, and that a word from her representative at Cairo, Lord Cromer (then Sir Evelyn Baring), would have stopped the expedition, declined all responsibility on the ground that it had been undertaken solely on the authority of the Egyptian government. The annihilation of Hicks’s army had placed Khartoum in a position of great danger: only two thousand troops were left to man the four miles of earthworks by which the town was ringed, and its communications with Cairo and Suakim were seriously threatened. The generals in command of the British army at Cairo admitted that, if the Mahdi advanced on Khartoum, it would be impossible to hold it in its existing condition, and that in all probability the whole valley of the Nile, as far south as Wadi Halfa, would be lost to Egypt. Alarmed at the crushing blow which had befallen him, and at the consequences likely to follow it, the Khedive begged that British troops might be sent to the Soudan, or, if these should not be forthcoming, that a contingent of Turks might be imported to hold Khartoum. Our government refused to move a single soldier to the Soudan, but had no objection to the employment of a Turkish force to garrison Khartoum, provided that no expense was thereby thrown upon the Egyptian Treasury. They, however, advised Tewfik to abandon all territory south of Assouan, softening the blow by the promise that England would defend not only Egypt proper, but also the ports of the Red Sea against the Mahdists. To this wholesale dismemberment of his dominions the Khedive demurred, and again suggested a Turkish occupation of the Soudan, whereupon England sternly replied that if the Egyptian ministers would not carry out the evacuation of the Soudan they would have to make room for Englishmen, ready to enforce her policy. The Khedive thereupon withdrew his opposition, and agreed that the whole of the Soudan, except the port of Suakim, should be abandoned to its fate. During these negotiations the situation at Khartoum had become so serious that the senior European officer there, in reporting that it would be impossible to hold the town against the whole population of the Soudan, which had now thrown in its lot with the Mahdi, urged that immediate orders should be given for a withdrawal down the river. The question next arose--who was to effect the withdrawal, not only of the troops, but also of the officials, traders, and other members of the civil army of occupation in the Soudan?

The English ministers then bethought themselves of General Gordon, one of the most remarkable characters of the nineteenth century. His career had been a strange and eventful one. After serving with distinction as a Royal Engineer in the Crimea, the chances of war carried him to the Far East where he played his part in the Anglo-French expedition to China. When the object of the campaign was accomplished, peace was signed with the Emperor of China, but the end of the war found some of the most fertile provinces of the Celestial Empire in the hands of great hordes of insurgents, with whom the Chinese authorities were wholly unable to cope. Gordon was lent to the Emperor to command a force of Chinamen, raised by himself and officered by adventurers of mixed nationality. With a rare combination of military talent and personal courage, readiness to assume responsibility, power of influencing his subordinates, and complete absence of self-seeking, he welded his unpromising material into good soldiers, with whom he stormed many walled towns and won battles innumerable against vastly superior numbers. After a long struggle, in which his men earned the title of “the ever-victorious army,” he completely crushed the rebels; and then, disbanding the troops who had learned to look upon him as invincible, he returned to Europe with the justly earned reputation of a born leader of men. During his five years’ sojourn in the Soudan Gordon had acquired great influence over its inhabitants. The fighting men had learned to follow, the slave-hunters to fear him: the traders respected his stern and evenhanded justice: all classes knew that his word, once pledged, was never broken, and that his orders must be obeyed to the letter. At a few hours’ notice, Gordon was sent to Egypt to secure the retreat of the garrison of Khartoum and of the thousands of civilians who would probably wish to accompany it, and also to effect the evacuation of the remainder of the Soudan. For this enormous task he was allowed one Staff officer, Colonel D. Stewart,[254] 11th Hussars, with whom he reached Khartoum on February 18, 1884.

While Gordon was on his way up the Nile, the tide of war was setting strongly against the Egyptians in the eastern Soudan, where a wing of the Mahdi’s army was commanded by Osman Digna, an ex-slave dealer who had been ruined by the capture of his _dhows_ by British cruisers. Osman Digna had stormed several fortified towns and villages, held by the Khedive as outposts round Suakim, and had cut to pieces columns of Egyptian troops sent at various times to the relief of the garrisons scattered throughout the district. Suakim itself was threatened, and the ships of war then lying off the port landed bluejackets and Marines for its protection, while Major-General Sir Gerald Graham was sent from Cairo to reinforce them with 4000 British troops. There were two sharp engagements at El-Teb (February 29) and Tamai (March 13), in which Osman Digna fought with magnificent courage, but sustained such heavy losses that his power for evil appeared sufficiently diminished to warrant the withdrawal of the British soldiers from the eastern Soudan.

While these events were taking place round Suakim, things were going badly with Gordon at Khartoum, and though direct telegraphic communication with him was cut off about a month after his arrival, the news which reached Cairo showed that his position was becoming one of considerable danger. In April, the Secretary of State for War began to realise that it might become necessary to send an expedition to rescue Gordon, and called upon Lord Wolseley for a plan of campaign. In his reply Wolseley showed that Khartoum could only be approached by the caravan roads converging on Berber from the Red Sea or by the valley of the Nile, and strongly advocated the latter route. He proposed to move the dismounted troops up the river in boats, and after pointing out that Gordon’s supplies would not permit him to hold Khartoum later than the 15th of November, urged that immediate preparations should be made to meet possible contingencies. For several months government took little action beyond making inquiries about the track across the desert from Suakim to Berber, and sending naval officers up the Nile to report whether Lord Wolseley’s scheme was practicable. These officers reported against it, and Sir F. C. A. Stephenson, the General commanding the British troops in Egypt, agreed with their views. On the other hand, a committee composed of three officers who had taken part in the Red River expedition in Canada emphatically expressed their opinion that Wolseley’s plan was perfectly feasible, and pointed out that the naval objections to it were based on the assumption that steamers of considerable size, and boats up to 40 tons burden would be required, whereas the army only asked for whale-boats, which could be used at any state of the Nile.

While these discussions were going on, the tide of Mahdism steadily flowed northwards. To meet a possible attack upon Egypt proper, the bulk of the Khedive’s army, then in process of reorganisation by British officers, was hurried to Assouan, where it was strengthened by English battalions; the Nile was patrolled by steamers manned by the navy; and irregular levies of Bedouins, also commanded by British officers, were pushed up the river into Dongola, the most southern portion of the Egyptian dominions in which the authority of the Khedive was still recognised. Dongola was ruled by a Mudir who, though originally in sympathy with the Mahdi, had been won back by golden arguments to the cause of his Suzerain. In the course of the summer his territory was attacked; it was considered necessary to help him with British bayonets, and the 1st battalion of the Royal Sussex regiment was moved southwards from Assouan. On the 8th of August, only eight days before the Royal Sussex reached the town of Dongola, a vote of credit was obtained from the House of Commons to cover the expense of sending troops to the assistance of the Mudir; but though by this vote government definitely committed itself to the Nile route, and therefore to the use of small boats, it was not until the 12th that official sanction was given for the construction of these craft. Four hundred were then ordered, and in a few days the number was doubled. The boats were to carry twelve men with their equipment, ammunition, and rations; to be suitable alike for rowing, sailing before a wind, and tracking (_i.e._, being hauled up stream from the bank), for ascending and descending rapids, and for passing over shallow and rocky places in the river: to be as light as possible, yet strong enough to be dragged over short stretches of ground to avoid cataracts; and to be 32 feet in length, 6 feet 9 inches in breadth, and only 2 feet 6 inches in depth. The first consignment reached Alexandria on September 22, the last on October 18, 1884.

It had not been proposed to employ Lord Wolseley in the expedition, but on August 26, he was appointed to command the troops upon the Nile. He reached Cairo on September 9, when there were actually in Egypt, or on their way thither, a regiment of cavalry, one battery of Royal Horse artillery, one of Royal Field artillery, one camel battery of mountain guns, and two garrison batteries; four companies of Royal Engineers, one of which was at Suakim; a battalion of mounted infantry, 423 strong; and thirteen and a half battalions of infantry--in all, nearly 11,000 officers and men, among whom were the first battalion of the Royal Irish regiment. Not all these troops, however, were available for the actual operations at Khartoum when that far-distant goal should be approached. The garrisons of Cairo and Alexandria absorbed four and a half battalions of infantry, a squadron of cavalry, and all the artillery except the mountain guns. Though the Egyptian army held the line of communication from Cairo to Hannek, it was considered necessary to strengthen this section with a British battalion, while to secure the Nile between Hannek and Berber, at least five battalions would be required. Lord Wolseley aimed at placing about 5400 men in line at Shendi, a place on the river about 100 miles south of Berber, and the same distance to the northward of Khartoum, and after making allowance for the inevitable wastage of troops in an expedition such as he was to conduct, and for the possibility that he might have to send part of his column on a sudden dash across the desert, he asked the War Office to supply him with eleven hundred more men, volunteers from regular regiments at home, to be turned into “camelry”--_i.e._, infantry mounted upon camels. The request was granted, and these reinforcements arrived in time to reap a large share of the honours of the campaign.

Before any troops could be moved to Shendi, through a country from which little or no food could be obtained, it was necessary to form an advanced base as high up the river as possible, where stores of all kinds were to be collected before the main body began to arrive from Cairo. It was also necessary to establish along the line of communication on the river a chain of intermediate depôts, from which the troops would draw rations and thus preserve intact the cargo of stores with which each whale-boat was to be freighted. Korti was selected for the advanced base, and there, when the first thousand miles of its journey from the sea was accomplished, the expeditionary force was to effect its preliminary concentration.[255] As far as Wadi Halfa, about 750 miles above Cairo, the navigation of the Nile presents no great difficulties, and every available river steamer and river boat was pressed into the service. But above Wadi Halfa a formidable series of cataracts, or rapids as they should more accurately be termed, proved fatal to so many of the native craft that the transport of stores to the higher reaches had almost entirely to be carried out by the whale-boats. It was not until the 1st of November that a sufficient quantity of supplies had been sent up the river to warrant Lord Wolseley in moving the main body of his infantry. Then as speedily as possible each corps was despatched in turn on its journey southward. Towards the end of December the first battalion of infantry reached Korti, where the camelry, who had marched along the banks of the Nile, were beginning to assemble; in about four weeks more the last regiments arrived, and by the end of January the preliminary concentration had been successfully accomplished.

* * * * *

While the second battalion was winning fresh honours for the regiment at Tel-el-Kebir, the first battalion was in India. It was stationed at Meerut in August, 1884, when the welcome order was received to start for Egypt forthwith on active service. In high spirits at the prospect of a campaign, all ranks worked with a will; by the 20th the preparations were finished, and the Royal Irish, after a very hot railway journey, embarked at Bombay on the 29th, and three weeks later arrived at Cairo in magnificent order. They are described by an officer who was then serving with the regiment--

“When the 1st battalion Royal Irish landed in Egypt in 1884, it
was, bar none, the finest battalion I have ever seen, both in
physique and in general appearance. Under Colonel M. MacGregor
they were considered to be the best dressed regiment in India,
and since his departure they had lived up to their reputation.
In this respect they presented a very marked contrast to many
of the battalions in Egypt, who were dressed in a very hideous
grey serge very similar to that worn by convicts, which was
worn apparently exactly as it had been issued from store. Their
physique was equally distinguishable from the Corps who had
lately arrived from home. The average service was (if I remember
right) about seven years, and the average height, taken from the
annual return prepared at Wady Halfa, was 5.7¾, and the chest
measurement was 38″. While we were at Cairo a gymkhana was held
at Gezireh, where one of the events was a tug-of-war open to
all troops in garrison. The Royal Garrison artillery for some
time past had invariably won this contest: so invincible were
they considered that no infantry regiments would compete against
them, and they used to take the prize on every occasion with a
‘walk-over.’ On the arrival of the Royal Irish, we determined to
enter our team, which had been practically unbeaten in India. On
the day of the gymkhana the R.G.A. expected to have another ‘walk
over,’ when to their surprise and to that of the spectators (we
had kept the fact dark that we intended to enter a team), ten
strapping Royal Irishmen, in jerseys of the regimental colours,
stepped out on to the ground. The gunners were so unprepared
for this that they hadn’t even taken the trouble to be suitably
dressed for a tug-of-war. So confident were they of beating all
comers that instead of the usual line they had arranged an open
ditch filled with water, across which the opposing teams had to
pull. It was not many minutes before the two leading gunners were
in the water, and the rest, to save themselves a ducking, had to
let go the rope!”

The Royal Irish were almost the last troops to leave lower Egypt; but at length the long-expected order reached them, and on the evening of November 12, 1884, they entrained for Assiut, the farthest point to which the railway ran up the Nile. The marching-out state showed a strength of seven hundred and forty-six officers and men.[256]

Next morning, after a journey of 229 miles, the Royal Irish arrived at Assiut, and at once exchanged the train for the barges in which they were to be towed 318 miles to Assouan, at the foot of the First Cataract. The men were packed into four barges, in each of which a subaltern was on duty for twenty-four hours at a time; the remainder of the officers were divided among the steamers and a _dahabiah_. “That night the halt was not sounded till 10 o’clock, when,” wrote a young officer of the Royal Irish, “a nice job we had of it. Our steamers did not keep together, so that we had to go along the bank for about a mile in the dark, and draw rations for the next day, and very ticklish work it was, as the path was quite close to the river and bits of the bank were continually falling in.” Progress was slow, for both barges and tugs occasionally ran on to sandbanks, and it was not until November 24, that the flotilla, which had been joined by the 2nd battalion, Royal West Kent regiment, reached its destination. As the barges could not pass the rapids the Royal Irish landed, and spent an unhappy day in the belief that they were to remain at Assouan. They had been ordered to encamp, and some of the officers were on their way to select the ground, when a tremendous roar of cheers and Irish yells told them the battalion had received good news; shortly afterwards a staff-officer informed them that they were to proceed up the river forthwith, and after a short journey in the railway turning the rapids, the Royal Irish re-embarked at Shellal, this time in the sailing-boats or _dahabiahs_ in which the traffic of the Nile from time immemorial has been carried on. The next stage (210 miles) in the voyage was to Wadi Halfa, the frontier town of Egypt, and the most southern point which Roman legions had occupied in the valley of the Nile. Here a long stretch of rapids called the Second Cataract barred the passage of all local craft at that time of year, and the troops landed and went into camp, where owing to a block on the line of communication the battalion was detained for more than a fortnight. This halt was by no means a restful one, for the fatigues were incessant, but some of the officers found time to reconnoitre the nearest of the rapids through which they were about to pass, and reported that a task awaited the XVIIIth as arduous in its way as any that had fallen to the lot of the regiment during the two centuries of its existence. The Second Cataract, like that at Assouan, is turned by a line of railway thirty-three miles in length, which ended at Gemai, where, in an improvised dockyard, the whale-boats lay waiting for the Royal Irish. By December 16, the line of communication was again clear, and the first detachment--B and E companies under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Wray--were sent by rail to Gemai, where they took possession of their “whalers,” and many stores. When these were packed the flotilla started in single file, and sometimes sailing, sometimes rowing (with many different strokes and styles), worked up a smooth stretch of river till nightfall, when the boats were tied up to the bank, and the crews disembarked and pitched their camps. Next morning the detachment reached Sarras, where the remainder of the stores were issued. Each whaler carried the arms, ammunition, tents, and camp equipage of her crew, materials for repairing any damage she might sustain on the voyage, and cases containing a hundred days’ rations for twelve men. These cases were not to be opened, but were to be delivered intact at the point of concentration, the supplies for current use being drawn at the various posts on the line of communication. By the time the whole of the freight (about four tons) was on board the boats, the load of boxes at stem and stern rose so high above the gunwales that the men at the oars were half-hidden behind the high-piled cargoes.

Lord Wolseley had always attributed much of the success of the little Red River expedition to the skill of the boatmen, or _voyageurs_ who navigated his canoes over the waterways of Canada. With some difficulty he induced the British government to sanction the enrolment of a corps of Canadian boatmen for the much larger expedition of 1884; nearly four hundred officers and men were raised, many of whom proved themselves as valuable on the Nile as their predecessors had been on the rivers of Ontario and Manitoba. These _voyageurs_ joined the whalers at Sarras: they were placed in charge of the actual handling of the boats, but, except as watermen, they had no authority. The flotilla as a whole was in charge of the regimental officers, who were distributed among the whalers, but in every company many boats were necessarily commanded by sergeants and even by corporals. In most cases the non-commissioned officers were as ignorant of boat work as their men, and with their crews had to learn by experience the use of oars and sails, the employment of poles to prevent the whalers from being dashed against the rocks, and the art of tracking. Even the best of the _voyageurs_, though experts in other branches of boatmanship, knew nothing of sails, which were not used in the navigation of the rivers with which they were familiar. In the forenoon of December 18, B and E companies pushed off from Sarras, followed by the remainder of the battalion, less G company, which next day brought up the rear. Thus the whole battalion was now afloat, engaged in a ceaseless struggle with the rapids of the Nile, and greatly handicapped by want of _voyageurs_, of whom the supply had run so short that instead of a couple of Canadians being posted to each boat, as had been the case with the corps first up the river, only two could now be allotted to each company of the Royal Irish. The difficulties encountered, as will be seen, were enormous, but the first battalion of the Royal Irish overcame them with brilliant success, and made the passage up the river faster than any other corps in the expeditionary force. In order to “get the last ounce” of work out of his troops, Lord Wolseley appealed to both the sporting and the patriotic instincts of his soldiers by offering a prize of £100 to the non-commissioned officers and men of the battalion which made the fastest run with the fewest accidents from Sarras to Debbeh, and by promising that the winning corps should be selected for the post of honour in the farther advance towards Khartoum. The money prize was awarded to the Royal Irish, who thus won the right to share in the hardships of the march across the desert to Metemmeh. Before that march is described, some account must be given of the portion of the Nile up which the Royal Irish had to force their way before they could hope to strike a blow for the relief of Gordon. For eighty miles above Sarras the river runs through a wild and barren region known as Batn-el-Hájar or the Womb of Rocks, of which the official historian gives the following description:--

“After leaving Sarras the first serious obstacle to navigation
is the cataract of Semneh, the foot of which is reached after
an eleven miles’ pull against a smooth, swift current running
between high rocky banks. Then come ten miles of swifter-flowing
water, against which, however, with the help of a moderate
breeze, it is possible to proceed with the help of the track
lines. At the head of this rapid is the great ‘Gate of Semneh,’
a narrow gorge, between two rocky cliffs, partly blocked by two
islands about equi-distant from the shores and from each other.
Through the three passages thus formed the whole pent-up volume
of the Nile rushes as through a sluice-gate. Here the boats have
to be unloaded, and their cargoes, package by package, carried
for half a mile over the rocks and deposited near smooth water
above the cataract. Then the track lines are passed round the
rocks, and two or three boats’ crews manning one line, each boat
is in turn hauled by main force up the water slide and run in
opposite its cargo on the beach.

“For the next sixteen miles the course of the river is unimpeded
by any serious obstacle, still for every yard the current runs as
strong as the Thames in flood, on every side the basalt mountains
radiate their heat, and everywhere the sunken rocks lie in
wait for the unwary steersman. At the end of this distance the
cataract of Ambako is reached, a very different piece of water to
that of Semneh. At the latter spot an obstacle to navigation was
formed by the volume of the Nile being pent into a narrow gorge;
at Ambako the same effect is produced by a broad expanse of river
being choked by an innumerable mass of reefs and islets. At full
high Nile, when the lower rocks are buried deep beneath the
surface, the cataract is not a formidable one; but as the river
falls and reef after reef makes its appearance, the difficulties
of navigation increase, until at low Nile the cataract has become
impassable for the larger native craft, and is a grave source of
difficulty even to the buoyant English whalers.

“Here every means of propulsion has to be employed. At one moment
the whalers, under the lee of some islet, may be paddled gently
up a narrow lane of almost stagnant water. Then, as the shelter
of the rock is lost, though its crew pull for dear life, it is
carried back some hundreds of yards until a point of vantage is
reached near the shore. Next the track line is got out, and step
by step the boat is hauled round a projecting point by a treble
boat’s crew. Now a fresh breeze and a clear reach of moderate
water make it just possible to gain a few hundred yards by making
the very most of sails and oars; then a bit of shelving shore
is met with, along which good progress may be made by half the
crew tracking, while the remainder stay on board and use their
punt-poles. At length, by dint of perseverance, the five miles of
rapid are surmounted in twice as many hours of incessant labour,
and another eight miles of open water are entered on.”[257]

Though no two cataracts are exactly alike, their general features are much the same, and therefore it is enough merely to mention the others passed by the XVIIIth. Above the rapids of Ambako came the cataract of Tanjur, which, though only two miles and a half long, usually took the boats a whole day to ascend, and fifteen miles higher up was another rapid, nearly as troublesome as that of Semneh. This was succeeded by ten miles of smooth water running between hills crowned with ruins, relics of a nation so ancient that its very name has been forgotten. Then followed the cataract of Dal, round which stores had to be carried for three or four miles by hand; these rapids once passed, the boats entered a long reach of calm but swift-running water 100 miles in length, at the head of which two more cataracts, those of Kaiber[258] and Hannek, had to be surmounted. From Hannek to Korti the navigation of the Nile was fairly easy.

The record of the forty days spent by the battalion between Sarras and Korti is one of unceasing toil. The Royal Irish worked like galley slaves. From dawn to dark, in burning and daily increasing heat, they rowed, and poled, and hauled the boats by ropes through the easier portions of the rapids. In the more difficult places it became necessary to lighten the whalers, and the crews had to unload them partially or entirely and to transport the cargo across the rocks, work the boats through the broken water, and then carefully repack them, with the knowledge, acquired by bitter experience, that an hour or two later the performance would have to be repeated. Occasionally, to avoid some especially bad piece of river, the boats had to be emptied, lifted out of the water, and hauled across country on the rollers provided for the purpose. Sometimes a boat missed the narrow passage among the rocks which barred her way, and was whirled backwards down the current until the men on the banks, hanging on to the drag ropes with their arms almost wrenched from the sockets, succeeded in hauling her into slack water. Occasionally a whaler was wrecked; nearly every day and sometimes several times in the day one or more were injured by striking against submerged rocks, and in default of professional boat-builders the officers had to repair the damage themselves. Major-General (then Captain) Burton Forster’s diary contains many references to his labours as a shipwright, and a few are quoted almost at random, to show what “handy men” the officers of the XVIIIth became in the expedition of 1884-85. “Found Sergeant Evans’s boat again broken at a small rapid. Stopped, and put in a plank about nine feet long, as the original one was cracked all that distance.” ... “Got all the ten boats of my Company up rapids by dark and beached them for repairs.” ... “Four-fifths of the keel torn off Corporal ----’s boat, mended her.” The work went on for seven days a-week; there was no rest on Sundays, or even on Christmas day, the entry for which runs--“Divine service for Roman Catholics, then drew boats up main rapids, kept moving, and unloaded in the evening.” In less arduous circumstances the voyage up the Nile would have proved a pleasant experience, for the scenery possesses a weird beauty of its own, wholly unlike that of any other part of the world; the climate is glorious, and the endless series of ruins which line the banks interesting in the extreme. But the officers of the Royal Irish had no time to admire scenery, or to study the archæology of the ancient Egyptians. They had suddenly been turned into fresh-water sailors; they had become jacks-of-all-trades--shipwrights, doctors, dock labourers; they had to maintain discipline, to keep up _morale_, and to cheer the men when under the strain of unceasing toil even their buoyant spirits for a moment flagged.

An officer of the regiment thus records his reminiscences of the boat work on the Nile--

“Greatcoats and nothing else was the favourite kit with the men
of my boat, who prided themselves on their dress and were anxious
to save one good suit of khaki in which, they said, they would
march into Khartoum. It was a handy costume when you stuck on a
sandbank or struck upon a rock, as you could be overboard in a
second to shove the boat off. Very often my men used to row in
their ‘birth-day suits’! Just before we started up the Nile I
had been transferred to a new company, and my skipper[259] left
the detailing of the crews of the boats to the Colour-Sergeant,
who took advantage of my youth and innocence (?) to put into my
boat ten of the biggest blackguards in the company, and a really
good corporal of the old stamp (Corporal George M‘Kee). Though I
was new to the company, my future boat’s crew were well known to
me by name and sight as being constant attenders at the Orderly
Room, so I thought a ‘few kind words’ would do them no harm, and
consequently informed them that I knew them well, but that we
were going to have no d----d nonsense in my boat, or out of it
they would go to sink or swim! A grin of amusement was all the
answer I got to my short speech.

“When we started off the Corporal and I were the only two men who
had ever handled an oar in their lives. Luckily the Corporal was
a good tough nut, and had been stroke in the regimental boat some
years previously when we were in Malta. That first day’s row is
still a nightmare to me. We left Sarras at 12 noon, the Corporal
and I doing the rowing, while the remainder did their best to
imitate us, but only succeeded for the most part in ‘catching
crabs.’ The current for the Nile was slight--but except quite
close in-shore it ran at about 3 miles an hour. Unfortunately
our Cox, never having handled a tiller before, kept alternately
running us out into the stream or into the banks. The distance
from Sarras to Gemai was only 12 or 14 miles, but we did not get
there till 8 P.M., and I thought we should never get there. I was
more dead-beat than I have ever been before or since, and once
I had thrown myself on to the sand when we eventually reached
Gemai, I could not have gone another yard. However, youth and a
sound sleep worked wonders, and next morning I was as fit as a
fiddle, and started loading up the food stuff--a job requiring a
lot of time and care, as each box had to be fitted into its place
like blocks in a Chinese puzzle. With the stores, we also took in
one or two Canadian _voyageurs_ per company. My company had two.
Regiments who had preceded us had had a _voyageur_ for each boat,
but a good many of them had become ‘fed up’ and had gone home or
to Hospital, and by the time the Royal Irish went up the river,
the supply only ran to about one or two for every 10 or 12 boats.

“I was given a French Canadian, and the company tool chest, and
told to bring up the rear--a pleasant task which meant I had to
go to the assistance of any boat in difficulties on a rock or
sandbank, come last into the night’s halting-place, and when
there sit up most of the night mending the ‘lame ducks’ of the
fleet. The actual mending did not take so long, as we soon learnt
to patch up holes and tears, but the repairs usually involved the
unloading of the boat, and fitting together the ‘Chinese puzzle’
of boxes in the dark was an operation that took two or three
hours.

“My Canadian was a very fine specimen of his class, and had
a flow of bad language--both French and English--that I have
seldom heard surpassed or even equalled. Owing to my being able
to talk a certain amount of French, we became very good friends,
and under his instruction I became an expert _voyageur_ both at
the helm and with the pole in the bows, and could have taken a
boat up any of the rapids. Though we were such good friends,
it did not prevent him ‘doing me in the eye.’ Each boat had a
box labelled ‘Medical comforts,’ which was on no account to be
opened. Very foolishly the authorities had a printed label on
the box showing its contents, which in addition to beef-tea,
arrowroot, &c., also consisted of 2 bottles of brandy and two of
port wine. It had been reported that no box of medical comforts
had reached its destination intact. I determined that my boat
should be the exception, so the box was put in the stern of the
boat, so that I could keep my eye on it during the day while I
pulled stroke, and at night I slept on it in the boat. Never did
it go out of my sight except at the portages, when my friend
George, the Canadian, volunteered to carry it for safety’s (?)
sake. I drew the line at carrying boxes at portages, and trusted
George. When, however, my box was examined on arrival at Korti,
though it appeared quite untouched, the liquor was all gone, the
arrowroot, &c., were, however, quite complete; George had no use
for _them_!

“It was marvellous how quickly the men took to rowing. In a few
days they were pulling powerful if not stylish oars, and they
certainly put their hearts and their backs into it. My crew of
blackguards were simply splendid, and we never had any difference
of opinion. On one occasion we came to a very stiff bit of
water, and I turned round and said, ‘Now, boys, we’ll have to
pull here,’ and the man behind--one of the biggest and sturdiest
scamps in the battalion, said, ‘Begorra, sir, we’ll pull to hell
wid you,’ and a voice from the bows added, ‘and out the other
side, sir.’

“The Nile sores were the things that troubled us most; any
scratches or in many cases ordinary rowing blisters, turned into
festering sores which nothing could cure so long as we remained
on the river. I took the skin off my ankle shoving the boat off a
rock, and tho’ I kept it perfectly clean, and put vaseline on it,
it would not heal. The strange thing was that once we got into
the desert, tho’ we could not wash, these sores all began to heal
at once.

“Other regiments suffered terribly from lice, but so far as I
know we had none in the Royal Irish. I certainly had none in my
company. I attribute this to the fact that our men were always
in the water to shove the boat off if she stuck on a sandbank or
rock, while I noticed other regiments seemed to dislike getting
into the water, and used to try to shove off a boat that stuck
with poles and oars, and much bad language. The day’s work did
not vary much: we awoke at the first streak of dawn--had some tea
or coffee and biscuit--bully beef if you cared for it, and then
used to sail if the wind was really strong--which to us seemed
very seldom,--to sail and row, if the wind was only moderate. If
there was no wind, or an adverse one, it was a case of rowing,
or towing if the bank was favourable, the latter being a quicker
mode of progression than rowing against the strong current. If
we had a really good sailing breeze, we didn’t like to waste
it, and had cold bully beef and biscuit at about midday as we
sailed along, but if we had had a tough morning’s row or two,
we used to halt for about an hour to have a hot meal. At about
sunset the leading boat of the company would halt for the night
at some suitable spot, and the others if possible closed up.
This often was not possible, owing to the numerous mishaps that
were always taking place from bumps on rocks and sandbanks. The
boats, when the Royal Irish took them over, had done several
trips already, and were for the most part in a pretty rotten
condition, and the materials for repairing them had run out, so
that we had to use any expedients such as biscuit tins, &c.,
to patch them up. I thought myself lucky if on arrival at the
night halting-place there was no damaged boat to mend, and that
in consequence I could get a full night’s sleep--such a splendid
sleep it was, too, under the clear sky of the Soudan winter!
The ordinary monotony of the journey was broken at places like
Dal, where one had to pull for four solid hours up a gigantic
mill-stream, sometimes only gaining a few feet after half an
hour’s pull, when one’s muscles felt as if they would crack. At
Dal we took out the rifles and ammunition and a few of the boxes
out of each boat, took a picked crew of eight men, and had two
half-breed Indians in the boat, one at the helm, the other in
the bows with a pole. It was most exciting work, and at first
the task looked an impossible one, but the skill with which the
_voyageurs_ took advantage of every back water, and shot past
the most dangerous-looking places was perfectly marvellous. Most
of us officers learnt the trick before we reached Korti, and
could have qualified as _voyageurs_. Amongst the _voyageurs_ I
should tell you, there were some who had not much claim to the
title, and hardly knew the stern of a boat from the bow. They
had come out for a picnic, but when they saw the Cataracts they
‘went sick’! One of the so-called _voyageurs_ was a man who had
been in the Royal Irish a short time before we went to Egypt.
He was a smart, plucky fellow, who soon learnt the tricks of
the trade, and by the time the regiment came up he was quite an
expert, and went by the name of ‘Dare-Devil Dick.’ Some of the
_voyageurs_ were an insubordinate lot, and gave a good deal of
trouble--especially in wanting to halt, and as they were not
subject to military law it was difficult to know what to do with
them on these occasions. One gentleman, however, met his match,
after he had been particularly abusive to an officer who was
well known in the service for his handiness with his fists. The
_voyageur_, amongst other things, said that he was not going
to obey any one’s orders, and that he was as good a man as any
officer, so the officer told his men to row ashore, which they
did; he then took off his coat and said, ‘You said you were as
good a man as I am, take off your coat and I’ll show you whether
you are or not.’ The Canadian looked at him for a moment, and
then said, quite quietly, ‘No, boss, I guess not.’ ‘All right,’
said the officer, ‘you will obey my orders in future, or out of
the boat you go, neck and crop.’ After that there was no further
trouble.

“Pipes, or rather a lack of pipes, were soon a matter of great
difficulty. The old soldier had not acquired the modern habit
of cigarette smoking, and clay pipes were practically the only
kind the men ever smoked. In the rough work of the Nile boat
the supply of these soon gave out, and in my boat after about
a week there was only one stump of a ‘dhudheen’ left amongst
the twelve of us. This was passed round, each man getting ‘two
or three draws and a spit’ out of it. I had started with three
or four briar pipes, but they all disappeared--appropriated,
I regret to say, by officers. As I did not care to share the
dirty little stump that did duty for a pipe in my boat, I had
to devise something as a substitute for my beloved briars. A
broken oar-handle for the bowl, a boat’s auger, and a hollow reed
for the stem soon provided me with the means of making quite a
serviceable article. As the ash of the oar got very charred, the
bowl had to be lined with a bit of biscuit tin. My patent was
soon copied, and in a few days, as far as my crew was concerned,
it was a case of ‘one man one pipe.’ My pipe did me yeoman’s
service till after the return of the battalion from Metemmeh,
when, amongst other luxuries in the shape of jam and sardines, an
enterprising Greek brought up a store of wooden pipes which he
sold at fabulous prices.”

The only amusement on the voyage was to watch the wild geese and pelicans which abounded in some parts of the river, to look for traces of the hippopotami, much disturbed by the long procession of whale-boats through the upper part of the river, and to take “pot-shots” at the crocodiles. The old ones were wary, and offered but indifferent targets for the officers’ revolvers; the young ones, less used to the ways of mankind, were slower in taking to the water. One, indeed, remained so long on an overhanging bank that when a party of the Royal Irish approached him his only means of escape was by taking a header into the water, right over a man who was standing on the edge of the river.

On the 23rd of January the leading boats reached Korti, where by the 27th the whole regiment was assembled, but not in the same strength as it left Cairo. The hardships and fatigues of the unaccustomed life had taken toll, and many men had been dropped at various hospitals on the line of communication.[260] One soldier had been drowned in the Nile, a fate which Lieutenant-Colonel Hugh Shaw, V.C., nearly shared. His boat was working close in-shore when a sudden fall of earth and stones from the bank struck her gunwale, and threw him into the swiftly running river. As soon as the dust had cleared away he was seen struggling in the stream; instantly Orderly-Room Sergeant Hanrahan and Colour-Sergeant Moylan plunged into the water, swam to him, and held him up until all three were rescued. For this gallant action the bronze medals of the Royal Humane Society were awarded to these non-commissioned officers. The Royal Irish won great praise not only for the short time in which they made the passage from Sarras, but also for the excellent care they had taken of the stores with which their boats were freighted, and Lord Wolseley’s thanks were officially conveyed to them in a special general order dated the 4th of February, 1885.

“The following battalions in the order given have completed the
journey from Sarras to Debbeh in the quickest time:--

1. The 1st Battalion Royal Irish.
2. The 1st Battalion Gordon Highlanders.
3. The 1st Battalion Royal West Kent.

The 2nd Division Naval Brigade, the Royal Irish, and the Royal
West Kent have distinguished themselves by the care they have
taken of their boats. The division of the Naval Brigade and
Captain Forster’s Company of the Royal Irish handed in their
supplies at Korti complete, no case or package being either
damaged or missing. General Lord Wolseley congratulates the
men of the Royal Irish most heartily upon having won the small
prize which he offered to mark his personal appreciation of
the battalion which should accomplish the difficult journey of
about 370 miles in the shortest time. As they have been first on
the river, so he hopes they may be amongst the first to enter
Khartoum, and he feels assured that he can wish this old and
distinguished regiment nothing more thoroughly in accordance with
its own desires.