Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/680

674 for the student of chances to calculate how many out of the forces in the Soudan at the beginning of April will find themselves still there in October. A case, truly, of the survival of the fittest!

Passing from the first on the list, we come to a posse of elderly and respectable general officers and colonels – most of them married men with families – far more fitted to adorn their respective stations, whether military or social, at home, than to pass in comparative idleness the trying ordeal of the next few months. Then come the band of warriors who, prompted by love of novelty or of active service, hurried out to the scenes they would now perhaps not unwillingly exchange for the more varied excitements of the London season and the flesh-pots of Pall Mall. That they have deserved well of their country, and done work equal to, and possibly greater than, any performance even of our armies of bygone days, is gratifying to them and to all; let us hope that the reminiscences of their good deeds will serve to temper the wind of May and June to these shorn lambs. Then, again, there are the few who, having already borne the burden and heat of 1884, are doomed to another summer a few hundred miles farther south, and who in some ways are more to be pitied than their comrades, as they remember only too well the full force of that scorching heat which is already advancing upon them with rapid strides.

In connection with this, it may be stated that the average maximum and minimum temperatures along the Nile from Korti northwards to Sarras for the first three weeks of March, were in the shade 91.14° and 60.4° respectively – the maximum and minimum readings being 99° and 48°. A steady daily increase is observable, only interrupted by an occasional two days' hurricane, during the first day of which the thermometer rises considerably; but on the second, the sun being obscured as in a London fog by the dust-laden air, the actual reading is lower, an advantage entirely counterbalanced by the choking and suffocating sensation induced by the inhaling for forty-eight hours of this visible and tangible substance. Nothing but a well-built house, with closely fitting windows, and kuskus grass tatties, kept continually wet, as in India, supplying the place of doors, would afford any protection against this evil; and as even in Lower Egypt such contrivances are unknown, they cannot be looked for in the Soudan, where, indeed, for mats of that description, &c., no suitable grass or fibre can be found. Moreover, our troops are not in houses, and, owing to the scarcity of material for building, are not likely to be so accommodated.

The discomforts of the gale while it lasts cannot certainly be exaggerated. Business becomes almost impossible, though for the first few hours a little writing may be accomplished by the substitution of the pencil for the pen. Eating in the open is out of the question; and, with tent-doors closed, the rapid rise of temperature makes it equally distasteful there. In fact, men and animals alike make up their minds to passive resistance and inaction, as, huddled together under rocks or trees, with veils over their heads, they await with patience (?), like Norwegian ponies, with their tails turned towards a storm, the subsidence of the wind.

The true value, however, of the gale – which, from the tone of this article, it may rightly be inferred is raging at this moment of writing