Early in September I was ordered by Lord Wolseley to go up the Nile, overhauling the arrangements for the water transport, right up to Wady Halfa, which would be the temporary military base, I went by train from Cairo to Assiout, the hottest journey I had ever endured. India was nothing to it. The desert gathered itself up to destroy me. Any little spot upon my person which was not deep in desert was a fly-bazaar. But at Assiout a cold shower-bath paid for all. Here I investigated the transport arrangements made by Captain Boardman, and found them excellent. I may say at once that the whole of Captain Boardman's work was admirable, and that his management {224} throughout the campaign was marked by the greatest good feeling, tact, and patience. I left Assiout in one of Messrs. Cook's steamers, the _Fersaat_, which had the appearance of a boat and the manners of a kangaroo. She was loosely concocted of iron and leaked at every rivet; she squealed and grunted; her boiler roared like a camel; she bounded as she went. Her Reis (captain and pilot) was a sorrowful old Mohammedan, whose only method of finding out if the shoals and sands were still in the same place was by running upon them; and his manner of getting off them was to cry "Allah Kerim!" ("God is great!") and to beat his poor old forehead on the deck. In the meantime one of his Arabs, tastefully attired in a long blue night-gown, an enormous pair of drawers, and decorated elastic-sided boots, stripped and jumped overboard and pushed the boat, and while he pushed he chanted a dirge. As the boat began to move, he made sounds which suggested that he was about to be violently sick but could not quite manage it satisfactorily, although encouraged thereto by the loud objurgations of the two stokers. When he clambered back on deck, he put on the decorated boots and walked about in them till he was dry enough to dress; while the Reis gave thanks to his Maker, and the two stokers, men who knew nothing and feared nothing, piled wood on the furnaces and drove the boat along again. If anyone walked from port to starboard or touched the helm, the boat rolled over, and until the next roll maintained a list of ten degrees, so that I was frequently shot off the locker upon which I was trying to sleep, landing upon the top of José, my Maltese interpreter, and followed by field-glasses, filter, sword and boots. The mosquito-curtains carried away, and the mosquitoes instantly attacked in force, driving me nearly mad with loss of blood, irritation, and rage. My only comfort was a pneumatic life-belt, which had been sent to me by Lady Charles, and which I used as a pillow. {225}