THE CANADIAN VOYAGEURS ON THE NILE. 249 was not otherwise damaged. The prisoners and papers found were sent to Berber.

Suleiman paid 400 of his men i dollars each out of the money taken on the steamer for their work."

There was, perhaps, no more striking indication of the farreaching resources of the British empire than the engagement of the Canadian voyageurs, the grave skilful boatmen and half-breed Indians of the Great Lakes, to enlist for duty in navigating the Nile and guiding the great flotilla that was to carry British soldiers to the remote border-lands and arid deserts of the Soudan. That troops leaving India and the West Indies should be intercepted and conveyed to Egypt was a less striking circumstance than that many of the children of " Red Indians," the Cree and Iroquois half-breeds, should be seen quietly and confidently steering through the land of Nubia to the Land of the Blacks. The greater number of the Canadians undoubtedly did their work well, and the manner in which the pioneer expedition surmounted the difficulties of the river entitled them to confidence. They did not quite approve of the build of the boats which they had to take through the rapids, and thought they would have been better without keels; but they did not, at first at any rate, regard the navigation of the Nile as dangerous, though it was more laborious and difficult than they liked or expected. In the pioneer expedition, too, the boats were manned by the engineers under Major Dorward, and damages were readily repaired. When the river began to fall the volume and force of the water diminished, but the stream had previouslv run pretty smoothly and with sufficient depth in places that at lower level showed a series of rapids. The soldiers, however, thoroughly appreciated the skill and alacrity of the Canadians, without whose coolness and experience at the helm the voyage could not have been made, even with the help of soldiers and labourers to haul up the boats and to take out the cargoes at the foot of the cataract, to be portaged to the upper end by the Egyptian soldiers. The voyageurs at first rather under-estimated the difficulties, and at Wady Haifa were asking, Where are the cataracts? Colonel Alleyne, too, considered that the second cataract was but a trilling