Sir Edward Watkin kept right on promoting his tunnel project for quite a while. By 1884—a year, incidentally, when Lord Wolseley was called away from the country to command the British expeditionary force that arrived too late at Khartoum to relieve General Gordon—Sir Edward was still doing his best to bring the British Army around to his viewpoint on the tunnel. A series of contemporary illustrations in the London illustrated weekly publication _The Graphic_ records some views of a tunnel party held during that year for a group of British Army officers. One of the engravings shows a number of officers preparing to descend into the tunnel; the caption reads, "I say, Dear Chappie, if we invade France through the Tunnel, I hope I shan't be told off to lead the Advanced Guard." The visit was further reported on in an accompanying article by one of a few journalists accompanying the party. From this, it appears that the condition of the tunnel hadn't improved since the time that Colonel Yolland nearly split his head open in it. "Under foot for a great portion of the way," the author said, in describing how the visitors were drawn along the long gallery on canvas-hooded trolleys, "was ankle deep in slush," and he went on to quote from the report of one of his colleagues: Onward to no sound, save the splashing made by the tall workmen [who drew the trolleys] tramping through the mud and the drip, drip, drip of the water upon the hood above our heads, we are dragged and pushed ... under the bed of the Channel.... Sometimes, in the fitful flashes of light, the eye rests on falling red rivulets, like streams of blood, flowing down the damp walls. So we go on until the electric lamps cease altogether, and the long, awful cave is enveloped in a darkness that would be impenetrable but for the glimmer of a few tallow candles stuck into the bare walls of the cutting.