Jackson made clear to me what important duty was given the Canadian voyageurs in this Nile campaign. By their success or failure in taking heavy-laden boats up the cataracts Lord Wolseley proposed to decide whether the troops for Gordon's relief should go straight up the Nile or around by the Red Sea and the desert. It was the river if they succeeded; it was the desert if they failed: and twenty thousand soldiers waited at Alexandria in a fever of impatience while Jackson and his band, with some hundreds of voyageurs from other provinces, let it be seen if their training on the St. Lawrence would serve against river perils in ancient Egypt. Lord Wolseley was confident it would, for during the Riel rebellion he had found out what stuff was in these men. Still he dared not start his army until it was certain those formidable cataracts could be surmounted. And that meant a month, let the men strain as they might at paddles and hauling-lines—a month to wait, a month for Gordon to wait.
THE PILOT, "BIG JOHN."
"Oh," said Jackson, gloomily, "if Lord Wolseley had only trusted us without any trial! Why, there was nothing, sir, in that Nile River we hadn't tackled a hundred times as boys right here in the St. Lawrence. When you talk of cataracts it sounds big, but we've got rapids all around here, just plain every-day rapids, that will make their cataracts look sick. Of course we did it—did it easy; but when we got up to the top of the whole business, where was our army? Back in Alexandria, sir! And it makes a man sad to know that those boys in Khartum were dying just then; it makes a man mighty sad to know that!"
One sees what ground there may be for such lament on turning up the dates of this unhappy Nile expedition, and the heart aches at the sight of those dumb figures. Think of it! the relief-party reached Khartum about February 1, 1885—too late by less than a week. Khartum had fallen; Khartum, sore-stricken, lay in fresh-smoking ruins. And when at last British gunboats, firing as they came, steamed into view of the tortured city that had hoped for them so long, there was no General Gordon within walls to thrill with joy. General Gordon was dead, cut down ruthlessly by the Arabs a few days before—killed on January 27, with his countrymen so near, so short a distance down the river, that their camp might almost have been made out with field-glasses. What a difference here a little more hurrying would have made, a very little more hurrying!
It would be interesting indeed if we might hear the whole story of these months spent in fighting a river, in battling with cataract after cataract, in rowing and steering and sailing and hauling a fleet of boats and supplies for an army up, up, up into unknown rapids, through a burning desert, such a long, long way. It would be an inspiration could we know in detail what these pilots did and suffered, what perils they defied, and how some of them perished—in short, what problems of the river they went at and how they fared in solving them. That would make a book by itself.
A few things we may know, however. This, for instance: that, while the maps put down six cataracts in the Nile between Cairo and Khartum, say fifteen hundred miles, there are, in truth, many more than six. Between the second and third alone there are more than six, and some of them bad. Also that the river beyond the third cataract curves away in a great rambling S, so that Lord Wolseley planned to send an expedition, as he actually did, straight on from that point by a short cut across the desert. The important thing then, and the difficult thing, was to reach the third cataract, and upon this all the skill of the voyageurs was concentrated.
The first cataract, about five hundred miles above Cairo, is fairly easy of ascent; the second cataract, some two hundred and fifty miles farther on, is perhaps the most dangerous of all, and resembles its rival at Lachine in this, that the Nile here strains through myriad foam-lashed islands strewn in the channel for a length of seven miles, like teeth of a crooked comb. A balloonist hovering here would see the river streaming through these islands in countless channels that wind and twist in a maze of silver threads. But to lads in the boats these silver threads were so many plunging foes, torrents behind torrents, sweeping down roaring streets of rock, boiling through jagged lanes of rock; and up that seven-mile way the pilots had to go and keep their craft afloat.
