WITH LORD WOLSELEY ON THE NILE.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1946, 25 December 1884, Page 2

WITH LORD WOLSELEY ON THE NILE.

The "Argus'" special correspondent writes from Wiuly -Haifa on October 19th ,13 follows :— lt is in this neighbourhood couuted a virtuous act on the pait of Moses that "he slew an Egyptian and hid him in the sand." There would be no great griff manifested if another Moses were to slay all the Egyptians, and hide them where they would trouble and present complex problems to the English people and the Nubians no more for ever. Only three niurht ago Sir Evelyn Wood, the " Soldan " of the Egyptian army— a better and braver man never stepped — got Lord Wolseley to come down on the levee, as they would say in New Orleans, and look at some practice with a Krupp field-piece at a target about 2ooyds. away among the orange sandhills across the Nile. Lord Wolseley, ever amiable, consented, and attended by his military secretary, his aide-de-camp, his one dnibional general, and his personal acquaintances, he arrived at a little stone pier built out into the muddy watera of the muddy river. He chatted like the good fellow th.it he is, if the expression may be permitted, with those around him, but he did not take any extraoidi naiy interest in the shooting, nor did he see enough to make him astonished. The men did their drill in a fair way— as a battery of volunteer artillery-men in England practising six times a year might have done it. The sergeant who laid the gnn was even a smart fellow, with a good eye, but in eight shots, nevertheless, the target was not hit, either with a percussion shell or case shell, though every time the laying of the piece was checked by Col. Duncan, the camp commandant, the late Tory candidate for Finsbnry, and himself one of the most distinguished officers of the Royal Artillery. Now here we have, a=* in a nutshell, the whole case of Egypt and the Egyptian army. What is done directly under Enelish eyes is done just fairly well. With English officeis behind them the men may light — for the revolver bullets will be certainly fatal, and the spears of the enemy may not be so. As in military affairs to it is in civil. The Egyptian race is run. They cannot cope with the Nubians— they can cope still less with the Aiabs and the Soudanese. What alone they can do is to cope with the climate, and many if not most Europeans can do that finite as well if they conform to the conditions of life. For neatly three months before Lord Wolseley came up here Sir Evelyn Wood had his head quarters in this place with Colonel Fraser, an energetic and impnlaivp officer, as bis chief of the staff, and Colonel Duncan as his camp commandant. But what had been clone by way of repairing the broken down engines of the Soudan railway, on which Ismail P.isha spent £450,000, and then dropped it in a condition which enabled it with good luck to run fourteen trains a year? The true answer is, next to nothing. I am far from saying this was " Soldan's " fault, but even in the month or five Wcieks which elapsed between Lord Wo'seley's appointment and his arrival, when the £30,000 voted by Pailiament was an old story, and it was known that t venty times the amount would be foit l iconiing rather than that the expedition should fail, all th \t was done was to get up a pair of "shears," which were fationjr enough for any practical purposes. What Loid Wolseley calls the strangest i ail way he ever saw in his life was left w ith engines w Inch broke dow n in the essential pat ts whcncvci they were fired, and the shaip curves and steep gradients were not more queer than the locomotives. This without a cylinder tap, that with a fractured eccentric, the other without a steam pipe, winch hail been expected to do duty somehow, until the Railway Company of the Royal Engineers came up and saw how hopeless everything was until they had taken it in hand for ten days. Then and only then did things begin to mend, and they have mended ever since But one piece of ci edit may be freely awarded to Sii E. Wood .iud his staff. They turned a railway biigalow, by the help of the English army medical officeis, into a capital hospital, which has been supplemented by Indian tents, and here, under the intelligent diiection of a perfect and hard-worked medical staff, aided by two " army sisters,"' trained at Netley Hospital, and both wearing medals for previous campaigns, the considerable amount of sickness iv the camp, reaching 10 per cent already, is being dealt with ia a most efficient way. Further credit I am unable to accord, but the moment the English staff came up thcie was a change for the better. The Egyptian troops wete put on their mettle, and Ciptain Lord Clias. Beresford, R N., who himself works literally like " a nigger," with his coat off, in a broiling sun, along with the bluejackets lent by Admiral Lord John Hay from the Mediterranean fleet, said that next to his A.B.s he preferred to work with the Egyptians. The railway is now occupied by always one train each way of the thiity-fourmilijsfroni heretoSarras, on the south side of the great citaract, and generally two. Thcie is some chance of getting messages by telegraph since the R.K. cleiks do not take siestas from 12 to G p.m., as the Aiab cleiks did, and we are getting by degrees into a state which the young English naval officer in charge of the transport here calls " ship-shape and sailor fashion." Four days ago I accompanied the Commander in-Chief to the Bab, or gate, or gut of the great cataract, to see certain nuggais, or rough couutiy-built undecked boats, with lateen sails, hauled over the stream, which runs with the force of a canal when both gates of a lock are open, and which is dangerous rather on account of the whiiling eddies at its foot than because of the water-worn blocks of granite rocks which line the passage. About three times as many men as were necessaiy were used in hauling on the hawsers, but then the natives do not always understand the signals or words of command, and ate apt to let go at inconvenient moments, an evidence of this being the wreck ot one of the boats the day before he went up. For the rest, apait from the weird beauty of the river, with its black rocky islets cultivated with palm trees and dhoura wherever a morsel of alluvial soil had been deposited, the golden sand which drifts over the granite, and the picturesque grouping of the natives in blue and whHo garments, or none, there was really little to repay one for a two and thirty miles ride in a Soudan sun on camel back, save this pregnant fact that the blue jackets have now got the grip of the way to do the work. They can do it without the help of the sheikh of the cataract, of the Egyptians if need be, but the special Nile boats are being carried round the gut. There are not too many of them for the work to be done. The loss of a few would be a disaster, and as the boats are light, twenty men with a relief of twenty more can with ease uarry them, keel upwards, the mile of level Band round the gut. There is no reason whatever for running any risk ; besides, it will have to be done at some of the other rapids for even greater distances ; Lord Wolseley's plan having been from the first based upon "a low Nile," on account of the smaller difficulty of the ourrent when sailing or rowing, and the sooner the blue-jackets come to know how to direct the natives in doing- this, the quicker will be the movements onwarda to Ambigel. Lord Wolseley is still cheery and confideut, He entertains no doubts as to the success of the expedition, or if he does, he keeps them to himself, and away from the men and the members of his staff, who have been his chosen companions for years. He has not shown any chagrin at the want of progress made before his arrival. He has good reason to be satisfied with it. The naval men, on whom he is relying as upon his good right han<J, were to a man against his plan until he came. Now, I think, they,

can be done it shall be done, and we're just the boys to do it," is the phrase to- - day. Very different from the phrase three weeks or a fortnight ago. Then the news that Colonel Stewart had been murdered at Merawi, though now believed to be uutrue, had its share ia giving a fillip to everybody, whether his ordinary wear be red or blue, and now 11 Motley's the only wear." Anything more ludicrous than the appearance of this force, from the general commanding-in-chief to the correspondent, from the commissariat sergeant, who tries to keep his dignity in a blue and gold jacket, to " Tommy Atkins" fishins; for baybee with a palm branch, and with American " bully beef" for a bait, when he gets an hour off in the heat of the day or the evening, could not be imagined, even by the getter -up of a Drury - lane pantomime. It would be a. fine idea for the proprietor of a Christmas entertainment of this sort to introduce on the stage a representation of the British army in the Soudan with goggles, mushroom or pith helmets and very dirty ot variously - faded puggarees ; greasestained light-grey serge ; boots of every size and make, fro n Tanjank boots and Carves' slippers ; veils, which by their variety of hue, and mors particularly their invariable contrast with the costume worn, would disgrace the road to the Epsom Derby ; and, must it be added, the display of woollen shirts without collars, the uniform jacket being kept open for convenience, which would shock the susceptibilities of the 7th Hussars, the proud privilege of which regiment it is to wear collars and cuffs on parade ; a privilege in clays gone by— in the days of stocks in fact— reluctantly accorded even by the Duke of Wellington. Well, the dress regulations of the army are never very much attended to on campaign, but here, so strange is the change in the tone of the Horse Guards, the officer most distinctly responsible for the tone of the army is the man who, with his staff, sets every precedent at defiance. This may be taken, it is to be hoped, to signify that there is a last a thorough resolve to adapt means to ends ; and inasmuch as what his detractors call "our only general," is responsible at one and the same time for advising our Government at home on militery matters and for the conduct of this expedition, ifc may be hoped that he will continue to violate those laws of tailoring which are inconsistent with the efficiency of the service, for nobody denies that in times of peace tailors largely help to make an army. And now I will venture upon a little morsel of prediction. This expedition cannot start fiom here by the Ist, or even the 7th November, the latest date by which it is possible to reach Knrfcouin, according to Lord Wolaelv's intention, in force before Christmas, but I do really think that we may bid Charles Gordon a Happy New Year. The only way even this can be done is by expediting the movement of the Camel Corps, which is known now to have reached Assouan, where the heavy trooper and the light hussar and the gay guardsman will be put into more or less intelligent relations with the camels, on which they are expected to achieve works of " Derring Do." Above all, after some prolonged experience of the extent of the man, do I place my trust in the performances of " Biby M'Calmont" and the men whose weight does not distress the camels. That the heavies can do their day's work may be fieely admitted ; that the lights, wbtn the noimal day's work is done, will be lit for .actiou, is at least antecedently more probable. But what is the pin pose of the expedition ? I regret to say I have not been able to find out. We remember that Hotspur was willing to concede Glendower power to " call spirits from the vasty deep." Lord Wolsoly may ask Chailes Gordon to come, but unless he has a commission from the Khedive hitherto unrcvealed to supersede Gordon as Gordon General of the Soudan, it does not seem within his province to interfere with Gordon in his civil capacity. And what then ? I can assure you it is this question which to a very Luge degree is paralysing the whole movement. Pailiameut meets next week. Franchise or no frauc'iise, there must be an explanation of our position here. When that is given, this expedition will be fuller of heart than it i*. The days heie for the present succeed one another. Ste.imers arrive towing boats and bearing stores, though out of the 2400 tons of boats' stores required for the use of tlie e^pedision not more than forty tons had ai lived last night ,it sundown, and sometimes they tow up dahabiyebs and nnggars laden with everything that is immediately wanted. Then the railway round the first cataract at Assouan has its engnus continually breaking down as the railway here had, and the ttiengMi of the chain of supply in its weakest link. Moreover theie have been a good many desertions, of Dongolese men from up the river, and Esueh men from down the river who have been sent here and to the Second Cataract to help. There has, further, been a small mutiny, owing to a report spread in the bazaar that two generals had bean seen running away fiom the Mahdi's army. This report was based upon the fact that the day Lord Wolseley was up at the Bab he cantered past the camp on his way to his quarters on his lulubeeyah, and Colonel Swain, the military secretary, naturally cantered also, but several boats' crews took this "running away of two Generals " as a i»ood enough argument for breaking their engagements, and they arc now reflecting m chains that the Egyptian authorities are not yet quite superseded, at least by the Mahdi If they do not speedily return to duty in a fitting frame of mind, they may find themselves some morning with very sore backs, for if flogging is abolished by Act of Parliament in the English army, it it has been wisely enough restored to its place among convenient punishments in that of His Highness the Khedive, and what is good for soldiers can hardly be bad for camp followers. Still, we have in this incident evidence enough of the soit of material with which the work to be done has to be compassed, and if it were not for the blue jackets and English soldiers, who are not a bit affected by the news that over 9 per cent, of their number are in hospital, I should have less faith in the future than I am bound to have. As it is, we shall be very glad when we see the Canadian voyagenrs, who are now daily expected.

Ictheie is one time more than another when a woman should be entirely alone, it is when a full line of clothes cornea down in the mud. " Whit is the name of your cat ?" one lad asked of another. "We used to call him William until he had fits, but now we call himFitzwilliam." '•How do you preserve your peache 3 so nicely ?" asked a lady visitor. "By putting them on the top Bhelf where Tommy can't reach them," sdid Mrs Bushman. "Father, did the boy really stand on the deck ?" asked Green's hopeful progeny, the other day. "No Georgie, he stood on three kings, and he put the deck up his sleeve, to use as occasion demanded." A paragraph in an article on " The care of Clothes" says : " An umbrella should always be carried away from you," It generally is, innocent author ; It generally is carried about two miles away. Probably the destruction of American forests would be more severely felt and deplored in Nevada than any other section of the Union. Nevada vigilantes have hanged thirty-three horsc'theives thia season. Women t have a great respect for old age. Watch a young lady seated iv a street car between a young gentleman and an elderly one, and see how determined she is not to incommode the latter by crowding against him. Wo draw the attention of our readers to the corrected achertisement of the sale oi race privileges of the Cambridge New Year Meeting, The privileges will b« sold at Hunter's Mart, and not «it the Public Hall, as advertised in, ■$H«s4*y'M*W« ' ' ' r