“The generally acknowledged difficulty of travelling by wheeled carriages in Egypt induced the trial of a number of contrivances to lessen that evil also, the first of which were a kind of litters,... termed ‘horse-barrows.’ No wood growing in this country proper for such purposes, rendered it necessary to dig saw-pits, in order to cut the pine timber into long scantling (16 feet in length, and about 4 inches square), something near the shape of a common hand-barrow, preserving the grain as entire as possible. Two movable cross-bars, which are secured by two small bolts, keep these shafts at a proper interval, to admit a horse at each end between them. Each horse or mule had a small cart saddle with girth, back-band, breastplate, and crupper, and a halter for leading it by. These barrows were particularly useful for narrow paths and the trenches of an attack, or for conveying any individual weight too heavy for a single horse, such as a small piece of ordnance, standing carriage, large casks of provisions, &c. (The powder and ammunition expended at the attack of Aboukir Castle were mostly conveyed from the landing-place to the batteries in this manner.) Besides these single barrows, a design was formed for double ones, consisting of three shafts, to be carried by four horses in pairs; and also others upon a still larger scale for camels, but neither time nor materials admitted of their being put into immediate execution. A very considerable number of carrying-poles, about 9 feet long each, were formed out of the small-sized trees, to which rope-slings were added, for the soldiers to convey kegs of musket-ball cartridges, ammunition-boxes, or royal mortars with. “A number of horses were purchased at Constantinople on the part of the English Government, and sent to Marmorice, for remounting the Light Dragoons, and those rejected by them were turned over to the Artillery service. Such poor undersized animals as they were rendered it absolutely necessary not only to take the harness entirely to pieces, in order to bring it anything near fitting them, but also to lay aside all the heavy parts, such as neck-collars, chain-traces, curb-bits, &c., and replace them with light leather breast-collars, rope-traces, and pads formed out of the waggon harness, a great part of which, fortunately, was not likely to be otherwise called for.