The preparations for such a voyage are no trifles. I required forty-five armed men as escort, forty men as sailors, which, with servants, &c., raised my party to ninety-six. The voyage to Gondokoro, the navigable limit of the Nile, was reported to be from forty-five to fifty days from Khartoum, but provisions were necessary for four months, as the boatmen would return to Khartoum with the vessels, after landing me and my party. In the hope of meeting Speke and Grant's party, I loaded the boats with an extra quantity of corn, making a total of a hundred urdeps (rather exceeding 400 bushels). I had arranged the boats to carry twenty-one donkeys, four camels, and four horses; which I hoped would render me independent of porters, the want of transport being the great difficulty. The saddles, packs, and pads were all made under my own superintendence; nor was the slightest trifle neglected in the necessary arrangements for success. In all the detail, I was much assisted by a most excellent man whom I had engaged to accompany me as my head man, a German carpenter, Johann Schmidt. I had formerly met him hunting on the banks of the Settite river, in the Base country, where he was purchasing living animals from the Arabs, for a contractor to a menagerie in Europe; he was an excellent sportsman, and an energetic and courageous fellow; perfectly sober and honest. Alas! "the spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak," and a hollow cough, and emaciation, attended with hurried respiration, suggested disease of the lungs. Day after day he faded gradually, and I endeavoured to persuade him not to venture upon such a perilous journey as that before me: nothing would persuade him that he was in danger, and he had an idea that the climate of Khartoum was more injurious than the White Nile, and that the voyage would improve his health. Full of good feeling, and a wish to please, he persisted in working and perfecting the various arrangements, when he should have been saving his strength for a severer trial. Meanwhile, my preparations progressed. I had clothed my men all in uniform, and had armed them with double-barrelled guns and rifles. I had explained to them thoroughly the object of my journey, and that implicit obedience would be enforced, so long as they were in my service; that no plunder would be permitted, and that their names were to be registered at the public Divan before they started. They promised fidelity and devotion, but a greater set of scoundrels in physiognomy I never encountered. Each man received five months' wages in advance, and I gave them an entertainment, with abundance to eat and drink, to enable them to start in good humor.