254 EGYPT AND THE SOUDAN.

two tons of stores, besides twelve men each, they seemed to have sufficient freeboard, and appeared under perfect control. The leading boat I could see with my glasses carried the native reis told off to act as euide. He stood in the bows beside the Canadian, endeavouring to direct the soldier who steered, but for a long time they remained motionless in the current, making little or no headway. At several points they essayed to ascend, but always apparently found the current too strong, and drifted back again to their former position. All the time the voyageur, seated in the bows filling his pipe, evidently abstained from interfering with the reis. There cannot be two captains to a boat any more than to a ship. But boat No. 2 was all the time rapidly approaching.

Her voyageur I could see go aft and take the tiller himself. Coming close inshore he made for a rock, behind which a long eddy tailed for a hundred yards. Up this he sailed with great velocity, and just as, apparently, he was about to collide with the rock he sheered out into the stream, steadied and paused for a moment as his boat met the rush of water — her timbers, as one of the men told me afterwards, quivering with the shock — and slowly but perceptibly, with the aid of a friendly puff, passed over the critical point. Making for the shore again near the opposite bank he entered slack water, and tore on after the dahabeeah. Still the boat under native command fails to ascend, and the other three also lie huddled together in mid stream, their sails flapping between the gusts against the masts. But all, apparently, are put on their mettle by the success of the boat that has gone before them. The men put out their oars. The voyageur who has a native reis to assist him has lit his pipe, and tells, I suppose, that reis to hold his tongue, for the latter sits down quiescent on a thwart, and interferes no more. And then they breast the stream with sails and oars together, taking advantage, as did the first boat, of all the eddies, as far as possible, before attempting to enter the main current. In twenty minutes after the leading boat, the other four had passed; and the first obstacle on the voyage to Dal was overcome."

" But by and by the wind dropped and the channel narrowed,