Note 223 — THE NILE, 1884–85.

The advance of the troops up the Nile was difficult and onerous in the extreme. Some of the cataracts extended for two and three miles, and all the stores had to be taken out of the boats and carried miles round, over broken and rocky ground, and then shipped again beyond the obstruction. It often took seventy men to haul one boat through the rapids, and some days the whole progress made was under a mile. Many of the boats were capsized and wrecked, and fifty men of the expedition, including ten Canadians, were drowned before reaching Dongola.