200 SPORT AND TRAVEL PAPERS 



amount of trouble our baggage was passed through the Custom 

 House and taken to the depot to be weighed. To escape the 

 trouble of procuring change, our station friend was quite content 

 to take five dollars instead of the six originally charged for over- 

 weight. Although the train to Panama was crowded, my 

 companion and I were the only passengers who paid the recog- 

 nised fare 25 dollars ; the fact that we had done so created 

 some amusement among our fellow travellers. Most of them 

 had paid the conductor five dollars to let them off without a 

 ticket, while the others had joined the train a mile outside 

 Colon, and only paid half the legal fare at least, so we were 

 told. Poor strangers in a foreign land poor shareholders ! 



IV. AFRICA. 



Christmas Day in 1884 was spent on the banks of the Nile, 

 on that wonderful river which is as wide at Khartoum as at 

 Cairo, 1,800 miles away or more, running its course sluggishly 

 between sandy banks through stony deserts, except here and 

 there, where interfered with by rocks which try to bar the way, 

 it rushes swiftly and foams in anger. Sometimes the few huts 

 of a village are reflected in its muddy waters, now and then a 

 magnificent ruin, but little affected by that pure desert air, well- 

 preserved monuments through all the ages of the greatness of 

 former empires. Nothing else but these and fringes of date- 

 palms does Nature offer to our eye already so wearied by desert 

 plains apparently endless and sandy hills, as we slowly ascended 

 the mighty river in our way, via Khorti to Khartoum, the 

 longed-for goal of everybody taking part in the Nile Expedition 

 of 1884-85. 



On this Christmas morning I had reached with my camels, 

 carrying a part of the advanced field hospital, a point where it 

 became necessary to cross the Nile to a place called Shabadood 

 on the left bank, about 1,000 miles south of Cairo. There to 

 my great delight I found temporarily encamped the Camel 

 Kemount Depot commanded by a brother officer, a discovery 

 which promised a cheery Christmas evening. But my camels, 

 men and baggage, had first to be got over to the other side, 

 for which purpose two country boats composed of palm planks 



