A large base hospital, with two hundred beds, had been established at Assouan, and throughout the line of advance strenuous efforts were being made to cope with any demands upon the medical service. It is generally admitted that at the Atbara fight the medical arrangements were not as complete as they might have been, and considerable confusion is said to have been produced by the inadequacy of the accommodation for the wounded. This time, however, Surgeon-General Taylor had arrived on the scene, and throughout the campaign there was no cause for complaint. In addition to base hospitals at Assouan, Atbara, Rojan Island, and elsewhere, each brigade had no less than five field hospitals attached to it. The National Aid Society proffered its assistance, undertaking to send its own transport; but the Sirdar refused the offer, with the idea probably that an army in the field ought to supply its own medical requirements. Some of the officials of the Society were, I heard, incensed at this refusal; for they alleged, with some reason, that during a campaign nobody "goes sick" unless he is practically too ill to move about, and that the voluntary assistance rendered by the Society may be of the greatest service to a large number of devoted men who, despite their sufferings, are too keen and patriotic to enrol themselves on the sick-list--the only means of securing treatment from the Army Medical Corps. Just before we embarked, a batch of invalided men passed northwards on their way to Cyprus, where the climate is comparatively cool in August. Sunstroke was beginning to claim its victims; a sergeant and a private of the Northumberland Fusiliers had already succumbed to the heat, which, amid the rocks of Philæ, was driving the quicksilver up to 110° in the shade. The Nile was still rising perceptibly day by day, and in one spot I saw hundreds of tons of Government stores--reserve supplies for ten thousand men--which would have to be moved, as the waters gave promise of reaching an abnormal height this year. Scores of natives found employment about the landing-stage as porters, and were perpetually fighting over the division of the luggage and the _bakshish_. I noticed four of these men, during a frantic struggle on the river bank, collapse into the water, where they still continued their combat of words and blows, even when occasionally submerged-- Quamquam sunt sub aqua sub aqua maledicere tentant.