THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN half per hour. On the frame was the brass label which stated that they were the work of Messrs. Penn & Co., and that the steamer was built by Messrs. Samuda Brothers ; that the Burden was capable of doing the work upon which she was then engaged after some twenty years' service in the Sudan said much for the soundness and strength of the materials, and for the excellent workmanship which' her builders put into her. Looking at the boiler, one felt astonished at seeing how thin its plates had become, and how many tubes leaked, but the most amazing thing of all was that it had no safety valve ! The engineer kept heaping in logs of wood, but so far as I could see he had no guide at all to tell him what the pressure in the boiler was. A little watching, however, showed that when he thought the engines were working too fast, he left the furnace door, and went and turned a tap projecting from the top of the boiler, and let out as much steam as he thought necessary. This done, he returned to his furnace and heaped on more wood. In any other country that boiler would have exploded, and killed many men, and wrecked the steamer, but in such respects Egypt and the Sudan are under the care of a special Providence. The natives have ways of their own in such matters which do not commend themselves to Europeans, but the results are singularly successful.

The Burden closely resembled one of the " penny steamers " which used to ply on the Thames between London Bridge and Greenwich about the year 1865, and was one of a group of paddlewheel steamers which were bought by the Egyptian Government, on the advice of Sir Samuel Baker and General Gordon, for service on the White Nile. Sir Samuel Baker was the first to recognize that it was impossible to deal effectively with the slave trade without the means of moving quickly up and down the river ; and it was he who persuaded the Khedive Isma'il to order three steamers of 251, 108 and 38 tons respectively, and two steel lifeboats of 10 tons each. The Burden obtained her name ' from a place in Upper Egypt, where Sherif Pasha, who was at one time Prime Minister of Egypt, had a large estate, and her sister steamers were called Ismailia, Einbaba, Mansura, and Sasia. She had a very honourable 'record, and had done ' I.e., the "cool of the morning and evening."

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