HOW TO GET THERE. 73 vehemently at the time, and since equally vehemently renewed. It will be well, therefore, to give in full the Government’s own reasons for their decision —especially as many of the arguments adduced will be interesting to Canadian readers and those acquainted with the Red River expedition :— “ In the selection of the route by which a force operating for the relief of General Gordon should advance into the Soudan the question of water supply held by far the most important place. Putting aside for a moment the con¬ sideration of the physical suffering produced by thirst and the rapidity with which men in tropical and semi-tropical regions are brought face to face with it, and applying to the question only the tests of weight and carriage, it was calculated that the carriage of water for one man for one day would require five times the amount of transport necessary for the conveyance of food per head for the same time, while the difficulties in the way of conveying and storing water are at least doubled by the nature of the burden carried.

“Alone among the routes proposed, the Nile was free from this paramount water difficulty. Whatever might be the length of its water-way or the obstacles that lay in its cataracts and rapids, the first and most important consideration—that of an inexhaustible supply of pure and wholesome water, in a land the climatic and physical conditions of which induced almost con¬ stant thirst—was met ; and this advantage alone was considered so great, that if the cataracts had been much more difficult than they were known to be the certainty of an inexhaustible supply of water through the Egyptian desert would have inclined the authorities to operate by the Nile route rather than to commit an army of English soldiers to the intense sufferings of a march across the practically waterless waste that for more than 200 miles lies between Suakim and Berber. But the difficulties which the Nile presented in its cataracts were not unknown in the history of the British Army ; they were almost identical, indeed, with physical obstacles which on another con¬ tinent had been successfully surmounted by British troops.

“ Fourteen years ago a small expedition had followed a water-way in the depth of the North American wilderness, where there were rocks, rapids, cataracts, and waterfalls as formidable as those of the Nile. The boats used in that expedition had been specially constructed for the work—quickly put together in different parts of Canada. They had been conveyed by steamer and railway many hundreds of miles before they could be placed upon the waters which they were finally to navigate. They carried 10 men, with from two to three months’ supplies. They were adapted for sailing, rowing, poling, and “ tracking,” and they were light enough to be lifted, in case of necessity, out of the water, and dragged or “portaged1’ along the shore.

“In the 500 or 600 miles that lay between the height of land north of Lake Superior and the basin of Lake Winnipeg, which was the destination of E