The cavalry combat at Kassassin, the storming of the lines of Tel-el-Kebir, were very successful feats of arms. Fighting of a much more serious character was in store for us before we were long in Egypt. The Great Nile Expedition, for the relief of the ill-fated hero Gordon, was akin to those to Magdala and Coomassie, but it differed rather in scope and greatly in results. To ascend a mighty river, running down with a steady stream five miles an hour and barred at intervals by cataracts and rapids, was a greater task than scaling mountains or penetrating the bush. The enterprise was further hampered by the opposition of a most determined and courageous foe. “Fuzzy Wuzzy,” as our soldiers christened the shock-headed Soudanese warrior, was an opponent worthy of our steel. His contempt for British squares and British breechloaders has been sung in strong language by Kipling, the soldier’s poet, and was shown by the recklessness with which he threw himself on the one and faced the other. Of all the brilliant battles fought by British soldiers, they may be most proud of Abu-Klea, Tamai, and El-Teb. It has been often said in disparagement of our small wars, that they have been mostly waged against savage foes. But this is surely to our soldiers’ credit, for they have, in this way, encountered some of the most warlike races in the world, many of impetuous, of reckless fanatical bravery, who accepted none of the recognised canons and conventions of civilised warfare. To kill or be killed was the only watchword of the Afghan Ghazi, the stalwart Zulu, or the irrepressible Soudanese. There was no quarter, no making prisoners, except for subsequent butchery. In these desperate campaigns, our men fought with their lives in their hands. It was truly war to the knife, and called for the highest courage. Nothing shows this better than the many deeds of heroism recorded in these wars, deeds that earned the most coveted of English military distinctions--the Victoria Cross. A chaplain, Mr. Adams, in the first fight outside Sherpur, bravely extricated a trooper who was under his dead horse in a _mêlée_, and who would certainly have been slain. In the Mutiny, Sir Charles Fraser, now a gallant general, won both the cross and the Humane Society’s medal at one and the same time for saving, under a heavy fire, a man who was drowning. In the closing affair of the Zulu war, before Ulundi, Lord William Beresford gallantly picked up a trooper, whose horse had been shot under him, and carried him off behind him on his own horse. The Zulus were near at hand in great numbers, and the fate of the fallen man would have been sealed. Commandant D’Arcy, of the frontier Light Horse, exhibited the same self-sacrificing courage on this occasion, but his own horse was wounded and fell under the double weight, whereupon D’Arcy mounted his man upon another trooper’s horse, and saw them safely off before he rode away. * * * * *