The boats which are to form the flotilla for the
ascent of the Nile, under Lord Wolseley's daring plan, are being rapidly com- pleted, and on Thursday one of them was tried at Woolwich. The boat was launched in the outer basin of the Dockyard, and loaded with the full amount of the stores to be carried. The cases were packed in a single layer on -the floor, and along the sides, the boxes of meat and biscuit rising above the gunwale, so as to make a partial protection against musketry. Thirteen men were seated in the boat, and were quite comfortable,. while six of them, three of whom were novices in the use of oars, rowed the boat round the basin. The boat, it was ascer- tained, with everything on board, could sail well in fifteen inches of water, less than is always to be found on the Rapids, even with a low Nile. The hospital-boats are to be separate,—a wise precaution, as, among men expected to toil at unusual labour for so many days, there will be much sickness. Pulling round a dock basin is a different thing from pulling at intervals for fifty or sixty days in a cramped boat, and with unaccustomed food. Still, it has been done, and the soldiers in Egypt enter the boats with a sense of being engaged in a wonderful picnic, which is of itself exhilarating.
