The guns of the foot artillery were drawn by bullocks brought from Bombay; and the horse artillery joined the army which was collected at Ghennah about the middle of July, and the whole embarked in jermes, or country boats, on the 31st, and sailed down the Nile. The stream was rapid, and they floated successively past towns and ruins, pyramids and other monuments of mystic Egypt; and on the 7th August reached Gizah, and on the 8th and following days disembarked and encamped on the Isle of Roda, where they remained till the 28th, awaiting orders from General Hutchinson; on their reception they once more embarked, and arrived at Rosetta[52] on the 31st August,—too late to participate in any of the service. The detachment remained in Egypt till May, 1802, when it marched from Gizeh (near Cairo) to Suez, detachments following each other successively, and completed it in five marches, losing only three Europeans by the way. On the 5th June the head-quarters embarked on H.M.S. _Victor_, and reached Calcutta towards the end of July. The foot artillery, under command of Lieutenant Starke (Lieutenant Drummond[53] having returned to Calcutta on sick leave in September, 1801, and Captain-Lieutenant Flemyng most probably having sailed direct for England from the same cause, for he does not appear to have returned to India, nor to have been in Egypt in October, 1801, and he subsequently retired in England in December, 1802), returned in the _Commerce_, and the men composing the detachment rejoined their companies in Fort William on the 1st August, 1802. The horse artillery disembarked on the 4th August, and rejoined the remainder of the experimental horse artillery. [Illustration] The services of these detachments were acknowledged by the Governor-General on their landing, in Orders, from which the following is an extract:—“Under a grateful impression of the important aid derived to the common cause of our country by the able and successful conduct of the expedition from India to Egypt, his Excellency is pleased to order, that honorary medals be conferred on all the native officers, non-commissioned officers, troopers, sipahis, golundaz, and gun-lascars who have been employed on the service in Egypt.” The insufficiency of the artillery in India had early attracted Lord Mornington’s attention; in June, 1799, we find him writing to Mr. Dundas—“Our artillery throughout India is very deficient. * * * I cannot too strongly press the necessity of attention to the artillery in India: if you do not send out ample supplies of proper men and officers for this useful corps, it will soon fall to ruin; it is already on the decay,—a larger annual supply of cadets, and a reduction of the export of writers would tend to recruit it.”