SOME EXPERIENCES IN EGYPT 
MAJOR F. B. ELMSLH3, 
Precis of a Lecture delivered at the Boyal Artillery Institution, Woolwich , 
LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR HENRY BRACKEN BURY, k.c.b., k.c.s.i IN THE CHAIR. 
fit is regretted that Major Elmslie’s lecture cannot be published verbatim. It was illustrated 
by as many as forty-one lantern slides adapted from photographs taken up the Nile by Major 
Elmslie, and a few taken by Captain Buckle and Surgeon-Lieutenant Gaine. Without these 
illustrations the lecture would lose much of its point and sense. Although it is not practicable to 
re-produce the whole of the photographs, nine of them have been selected for enlargement and 
printing, and are issued herewith. They will serve as specimens of the style of views with which 
the lecture was explained and enlivened, and perhaps serve as acceptable souvenirs of an interest¬ 
ing military and historical event.— Secretary B.A.I.'] 
T HE lecturer, after stating that the artillery force, which went up 
the Nile, under command of Colonel Long, R.A. was quite a 
representative one, comprising two British Field Batteries, the 32nd 
(Major Williams) armed with 15-prs., and the 37th, armed with 5" 
howitzers ; one Egyptian Horse Artillery Battery, (Brevet-Major 
Young) and four Egyptian Field Batteries (Brevet-Major Lawrie, 
Captain Peake, Captain de Rougement, and Captain Stewart), to say 
nothing of a Maxim Battery manned by the R.A. (Captain Smeaton) 
and two 40-prs. R.B.L. (Lieut. Waymouth), went on to describe the 
journey of the 37th Field Battery from Cairo to Omdurman, a distance 
of about 1,200 miles. It can hardly be called a march, as the means of 
progression were so varied and unusual, comprising the ordinary rail¬ 
way, the desert railway, a route march across the desert. Cook’s 
steamers, gun-boats, stern-wheelers, gyassas and naggars. Some¬ 
times the troops were towed in barges, and at other times they had to 
tow the barges ! 
Many inconveniences and hardships were met with on the way, such 
as overcrowding, exposure to the sun, dangers of explosion, due to 
sparks from the furnaces of the steamers, alongside which the barges 
were lashed, risk of being swamped, landing in the dark, bivouackfng 
in the desert, dust storms, rain storms, short rations, light kits and 
perpetual and heavy fatigue work, but all these were borne by the 
2. VOL . XXVI. '* 
