234 EGYPT AND THE SOUDAN.

weighed, when skinned and paunched, only 9 lbs., and it cost at the rate of 8c/. a pound. A sheep would have cost four dollars, and the value of the meat would have been even less in proportion to the money, for they seemed to run almost entirely to wool, and the best of them were too fat in the tail. Turkeys were about the only things worth buying, and they could only be got at the largest places, from all of which it was gathered that the promise of regular rations of fresh meat on certain days in the week when the men took to the boats, was one that it would be almost impossible to keep. This, however, mattered the less, as the American tinned meats had hitherto proved of invariably excellent quality, and to the corned beef in particular the men had taken quite a fancy, though it was doubtful whether it would not pall upon their tastes even when with potatoes and onions it was made into savoury sea-pie.

The labour of hauling the big steamers at the cataract at Wady Haifa may be imagined when it is remembered that when the Nassif-Khcir had grounded amidships through the fall in the river, nearly 3000 men on the east bank and the adjacent islands were employed at the hawsers. The vessel was got afloat and passed the first rapid, but at the second rapid the bow hawser parted, and the blue-jackets who brought a fresh cable down the cataract in a boat, narrowly escaped being wrecked because of the strength of the current and the difficulty of navigation. The new hawser and the men were taken on board, but the boat was subsequently wrecked lower down the cataract. At the second attempt to get the steamer along the bow cable parted again, and she was finally eased into a safe berth about 500 yards down the stream, but above the original starting-place. She had sustained so much injury by coming against the rocks and otherwise that she had to be repaired. This steamer had been taken over by the admiralty some months before, and, armed with a Gardner gun and manned with about fifteen blue-jackets and a couple of officers, had the duty of patrolling the Nile between Philcc and Wady Haifa as one of the vessels already referred to. In the middle of September, at the time of the passage of this steamer, which was berthed at