and sometimes sailing, sometimes rowing (with many different strokes and styles), worked up a smooth stretch of river till nightfall, when the boats were tied up to the bank, and the crews disembarked and pitched their camps. Next morning the detachment reached Sarras, where the remainder of the stores were issued. Each whaler carried the arms, ammunition, tents, and camp equipage of her crew, materials for repairing any damage she might sustain on the voyage, and cases containing a hundred days’ rations for twelve men. These cases were not to be opened, but were to be delivered intact at the point of concentration, the supplies for current use being drawn at the various posts on the line of communication. By the time the whole of the freight (about four tons) was on board the boats, the load of boxes at stem and stern rose so high above the gunwales that the men at the oars were half-hidden behind the high-piled cargoes. Lord Wolseley had always attributed much of the success of the little Red River expedition to the skill of the boatmen, or _voyageurs_ who navigated his canoes over the waterways of Canada. With some difficulty he induced the British government to sanction the enrolment of a corps of Canadian boatmen for the much larger expedition of 1884; nearly four hundred officers and men were raised, many of whom proved themselves as valuable on the Nile as their predecessors had been on the rivers of Ontario and Manitoba. These _voyageurs_ joined the whalers at Sarras: they were placed in charge of the actual handling of the boats, but, except as watermen, they had no authority. The flotilla as a whole was in charge of the regimental officers, who were distributed among the whalers, but in every company many boats were necessarily commanded by sergeants and even by corporals. In most cases the non-commissioned officers were as ignorant of boat work as their men, and with their crews had to learn by experience the use of oars and sails, the employment of poles to prevent the whalers from being dashed against the rocks, and the art of tracking. Even the best of the _voyageurs_, though experts in other branches of boatmanship, knew nothing of sails, which were not used in the navigation of the rivers with which they were familiar. In the forenoon of December 18, B and E companies pushed off from Sarras, followed by the remainder of the battalion, less G company, which next day brought up the rear. Thus the whole battalion was now afloat, engaged in a ceaseless struggle with the rapids of the Nile, and greatly handicapped by want of _voyageurs_, of whom the supply had run so short that instead of a couple of Canadians being posted to each boat, as had been the case with the corps first up the river, only two could now be allotted to each company of the Royal Irish. The difficulties encountered, as will be seen, were enormous, but the first battalion of the Royal Irish overcame them