Next morning, after a journey of 229 miles, the Royal Irish arrived at Assiut, and at once exchanged the train for the barges in which they were to be towed 318 miles to Assouan, at the foot of the First Cataract. The men were packed into four barges, in each of which a subaltern was on duty for twenty-four hours at a time; the remainder of the officers were divided among the steamers and a _dahabiah_. “That night the halt was not sounded till 10 o’clock, when,” wrote a young officer of the Royal Irish, “a nice job we had of it. Our steamers did not keep together, so that we had to go along the bank for about a mile in the dark, and draw rations for the next day, and very ticklish work it was, as the path was quite close to the river and bits of the bank were continually falling in.” Progress was slow, for both barges and tugs occasionally ran on to sandbanks, and it was not until November 24, that the flotilla, which had been joined by the 2nd battalion, Royal West Kent regiment, reached its destination. As the barges could not pass the rapids the Royal Irish landed, and spent an unhappy day in the belief that they were to remain at Assouan. They had been ordered to encamp, and some of the officers were on their way to select the ground, when a tremendous roar of cheers and Irish yells told them the battalion had received good news; shortly afterwards a staff-officer informed them that they were to proceed up the river forthwith, and after a short journey in the railway turning the rapids, the Royal Irish re-embarked at Shellal, this time in the sailing-boats or _dahabiahs_ in which the traffic of the Nile from time immemorial has been carried on. The next stage (210 miles) in the voyage was to Wadi Halfa, the frontier town of Egypt, and the most southern point which Roman legions had occupied in the valley of the Nile. Here a long stretch of rapids called the Second Cataract barred the passage of all local craft at that time of year, and the troops landed and went into camp, where owing to a block on the line of communication the battalion was detained for more than a fortnight. This halt was by no means a restful one, for the fatigues were incessant, but some of the officers found time to reconnoitre the nearest of the rapids through which they were about to pass, and reported that a task awaited the XVIIIth as arduous in its way as any that had fallen to the lot of the regiment during the two centuries of its existence. The Second Cataract, like that at Assouan, is turned by a line of railway thirty-three miles in length, which ended at Gemai, where, in an improvised dockyard, the whale-boats lay waiting for the Royal Irish. By December 16, the line of communication was again clear, and the first detachment--B and E companies under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Wray--were sent by rail to Gemai, where they took possession of their “whalers,” and many stores. When these were packed the flotilla started in single file,