the vicissitudes of my colleagues and myself during the recent advance of the Egyptian troops up the Nile to warrant me addressing you this afternoon. Especially as toward the end of the campaign the Sirdar, or Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian army, Sir Herbert Kitchener, became more sympathetic with our endeavors to get good copy for our journals, and allowed us to return home by the old trade route of the Eastern Soudan, over which no European had passed since the revolt of the Eastern tribes in 1883. Unfortunately, the period for campaigning in the Soudan is in the hottest months in the year, on the rising of the Nile at the end of July, when the cataracts begin to be practicable for navigation. At the same time, in spite of the heat, it is the healthiest period, for the water, in its brown, muddy, pea soup state, is wholesomer to drink, and the banks of the river, which, when exposed at low Nile, give off unhealthy exhalations, are protected from spreading fever germs by the flood. To show you how much the people of Egypt depend for their very existence on this extraordinary river, the average difference between high and low Nile, giving favorable results, is 26 feet. Twenty-eight feet would cause serious damage by inundation, and the Nile as low as 20 feet would create a famine. The flood of the river depends entirely on the equatorial rains which cause the Upper White Nile to rise in April and the Blue Nile early in June. The muddy Atbara, joining her two sisters about the same time, sends the flood down to Lower Egypt toward the end of August at the rate of 100 miles a day. The Blue Nile in the middle of September falls rapidly away, while the Atbara leaves the trio in October. The White Nile is then left by herself to recede slowly and steadily from a current of four knots an hour to a sluggish and, in many parts, an unwholesome stream. Flies and mosquitoes increase, and fever is rife.

I arrived in Cairo on a sweltering day in July, and found four colleagues, who had been waiting for a week the Sirdar's permission to proceed to the front, still waiting. Luckily, the day after my arrival a telegram came from headquarters, saying that "we might proceed as far as Assouan and their await further orders." This, anyhow, was a move in the right direction; so we at once started. It was rather a bustle for me to get things ready, for Sunday blocked the way and little could be done, even on that day, in Cairo. I procured a servant, a horse and two cases of stores, for the cry was "nothing to be had up country in the shape of food; hardly sufficient sustenance to keep the flies alive." My colleagues, who had the start of me, were able to procure many luxuries—a case of cloudy ammonia for their toilet, and one of chartreuse, komel and benedictine to make their after dinner coffee palatable, and some plum pudding, if Christmas should still find them on the warpath, were a few of the many items that made up the trousseau of these up-to-date war correspondents, though at least one of them had been wedded to the life for many years. Unfortunately I had no time to procure these luxuries, and I had to proceed ammonialess and puddingless to the seat of war. My comrades were quite right. Why not do yourself well if you can? One of them even went in for the luxury of having three shooting irons, two revolvers and a double-barrel slug pistol, so that when either of the weapons got hot while he was holding Baggara horsemen at bay, there was always one cooling, ready to hand. He also, which I believe is a phenomenal record with any campaigner, took with him thirteen pairs of riding breeches, a half dozen razors and an ice machine. Even our commander-in-chief, when campaigning, denies himself more than two shirts and never travels with ice machines. But the thirteen pairs impressed me considerably. Why thirteen, more than fifteen, or any other number? I came to the conclusion that my colleague must certainly be a member of that mystic body the "Thirteen Club," and as he had to bring in the odd number somewhere to keep the club fresh in his memory, he occasionally sat upon it.

I found, after all, there was some wisdom in his eccentricity, for, when riding the camel, mounted on the rough saddle of the country, I often wished that I had my friend's forethought, and I should have been glad to have supplemented mine with his odd number. No doubt my colleague's idea in having such a variety of nether garments was to use them respectively, on a similar principle to the revolvers, when he rode in hot haste with his vivid account of the latest battle to the telegraph office.

But, unfortunately, this recent campaign did not, after all, necessitate these elaborate preparations, for there were no dervishes for us to shoot at or descriptions of bloody battles to be telegraphed. At all events, the cloudy ammonia and the thirteen breeches, with the assistance of a silken sash—a different color for each day of the week—made the brightest and smartest looking little man in camp. However, when I reflect on this new style of war correspondent, who, I forgot to mention, also carried with him two tents, a couple of beds, sundry chairs and tables, a silver-mounted dressing case, two baths, and a gross of toothpicks, and I think of the severe simplicity of the old style of campaigning when a famous correspondent who is still on the warpath, and who always sees the fighting if there be any, on one arduous campaign took with him the modest outfit of a tooth brush and a cake of carbolic soap, I joyfully feel that with the younger generation our profession is keeping pace with the luxury of the times.

FROM BERBER TO SUAKIM.

Toward the end of the campaign four colleaguesMessrs. Knight, Gwynne, Scudamore, Maud—and myself, took this opportunity of traversing a country very little known to the outside world, and a route which no European had followed for fourteen years, from Berber to Suakim. Moreover, there was a spice of adventure about it; there was an uncertainty regarding an altogether peaceful time on the way—a contingency which always appeals strongly to Englishmen of a roving and adventurous disposition. Only quite recently raids organized by the apparently irrepressible Osman Digna had been successfully carried out a few miles north and south of Berber. At the moment General Hunter, with two battalions of troops, was marching along the banks of the River Atbara to hunt for Osman and his followers, but there was much speculation as to whether five-and-twenty dervish raiders were still this side of the river, and drawing their water from the wells on the Suakim road.

I was hardly prepared for this journey—one, probably, of twelve days—for my campaigning outfit, which I was compelled to leave on board my nugger on the Nile, had not yet arrived in Berber. Unfortunately, I could not wait for the gear, as the Sirdar insisted on our departure at once, for the road would be certainly insecure directly General Hunter returned from covering our right flank on the Atbara. I had no clothes but what I stood up in, and I had been more or less standing up in them without change for the last two weeks.

Our caravan of nineteen camels, with two young ones, quite babies, following their mothers, and a couple of donkeys, about seven in the evening of the 30th of October quitted the mud-baked town of Berber, sleeping in the light of a new moon, and silently moved across the desert toward the Eastern Star. Next morning at the Morabeh Well, six miles from Berber, our camels having filled themselves up with water, and our numerous girbas, or water skins, being charged with the precious liquid—till they looked as if they were about to burst—our loads were packed and we started on a journey of fifty-two miles before the next water could be reached.

We made quite a formidable show trailing over the desert. Probably it would have been more impressive if our two donkeys had restrained their ambition, and kept in the rear instead of leading the van. But animals mostly have their own way in these parts, and