BY THE WAY—FROM CAIRO TO DAKHALA. g!

No barney, boys, give over mousing, True Britons are ye from hill and fen, Now rally lads, and drop all grousing, And pull together like soldier-men.

Chorus.

Then roll on, boys, roll on to Khartoum, March ye and fight by night or by day, Hasten the hour of the Dervishes’ doom, Gordon avenge in old England’s way.

“ Grousing ” is Tommy Atkins for grumbling, which is an Englishman's birthright. As for no rum, subsequently the men were allowed two tots a week ; Wednesdays and Saturdays were, I think, the days of issue. Less than half a gill was each man’s share. 1 am inclined to believe had there been a daily issue of the same quantity of rum it had been better, and the young soldiers might have escaped with less fever.

Dakhala had undergone many changes since March. It was bigger in every respect, but no better as a camping-ground. Truth to tell, it was so bad as to be well-nigh intolerable. The correspondents’ quarters were exceptionally vile, the location being the worst possible within the lines. We had no option, and so had to pitch our tents behind the noozle in a ten-acre waste of dirtiest, lightest loam, which swished around in clouds by day and night, making us grimy as coalheavers, powdering everything, even our food and drink, with gritty dust and covering us in our blankets inches deep. The river breeze was barred from us, and the green and fresher banks of the Atbara and the Nile, beyond the fort, were for other