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A Presocratics
Reader

Selected Fragments
and Testimonia

Second Edition

Edited, with Introduction, by

Patricia Curd

Translations by
Richard D. McKirahan
and
Patricia Curd
A PRESOCRATICS READER

Second Edition
 A PRESOCRATICS READER
Selected Fragments and Testimonia
Second Edition

Edited, with Introduction, by

PATRICIA CURD
Translations by
RICHARD D. MCKIRAHAN
and
PATRICIA CURD

Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

Indianapolis/Cambridge
Copyright © 2011 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

14 13 12 11 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

For further information, please address

Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
P.O. Box 44937
Indianapolis, Indiana 46244-0937

www.hackettpublishing.com

Cover design by Listenberger Design & Associates

Interior design by Dan Kirklin
Composition by William Hartman
Printed at Victor Graphics, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A Presocratics reader : selected fragments and testimonia / edited,
with introduction, by Patricia Curd ; translations by Richard D.
McKirahan. — 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-60384-305-8 (pbk.) — ISBN 978-1-60384-306-5 (cloth)
1. Philosophy, Ancient—Sources. 2. Pre-Socratic philosophers.
I. Curd, Patricia, 1949– II. McKirahan, Richard D.
B187.5.P75 2010
182—dc22 2010019297

Adobe PDF ebook ISBN: 978-1-60384-598-4

 CONTENTS

Preface vi
On Abbreviations and Notes viii
Maps x
Time Line xiii
Acknowledgments xiv

1. Introduction 1
2. The Milesians 13
2.1. Thales 13
2.2. Anaximander 16
2.3. Anaximenes 19
3. Pythagoras and Early Pythagoreanism 23
4. Xenophanes of Colophon 31
5. Heraclitus of Ephesus 39
6. Parmenides of Elea 55
7. Zeno of Elea 66
8. Empedocles of Acragas 73
9. Anaxagoras of Clazomenae 101
10. Leucippus and Democritus: Fifth-Century Atomism 109
11. Melissus of Samos 127
12. Philolaus of Croton 132
13. Diogenes of Apollonia 138
14. The Sophists 144
14.1. Protagoras 145
14.2. Gorgias 148
14.3. Prodicus 153
14.4. Hippias 154
14.5. Antiphon 155
15. The Derveni Papyrus, Columns IV–XXVI 162

Concordance 173

v
 PREFACE

A Presocratics Reader began as a revised and expanded version of the

first section of Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy (Hackett, 1st edition
1995). For a number of reasons, this is an excellent time to prepare a new
edition of the Reader, and most of the changes will be incorporated into
the next edition of Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy.
Since 1995 and 1996 when this volume was put together, Presocratic
studies have grown rapidly. Exciting new material has been discov-
ered: the Strasbourg Papyrus with its previously unknown lines of
Empedocles, and the Derveni Papyrus, which shows how Presocratic
philosophy was adopted into the wider intellectual world of ancient
Greece. There have been new studies published, and numerous inter-
national conferences: scholars have asked novel questions, and offered
fresh interpretations. In this new edition, I have revised all of the intro-
ductory material (in many cases to take advantage of recent interpre-
tations), and have included much of the new material (especially on
Empedocles) that has come to light. The fragments in the Heraclitus
and Empedocles chapters have been reordered, and the chapter on the
Sophists has been changed in order to provide longer selections and
a view of the Sophists more in keeping with contemporary scholar-
ship. Finally, this edition includes the text of the intriguing Derveni
Papyrus.
For A Presocratics Reader, the most important development has been
Richard D. McKirahan’s complete revision of his excellent volume,
Philosophy Before Socrates, for its second edition. The translations from
this new edition of Philosophy Before Socrates form the backbone of
A Presocratics Reader, and in revising this little book, I have had the
advantage of working through the new material and corresponding
with Professor McKirahan. Suggestions from those who have used A
Presocratics Reader (including students and colleagues here at Purdue
University) have been very helpful, and I have tried to incorporate as
many of them as possible.

vi
PREFACE vii

This collection is meant as a sourcebook of moderate length; it is not

a complete collection of the fragments and testimonia for the figures
included here. My aim has been to provide a good selection from the
early Greek philosophers, along with some of the ancient reports about
them, with minimal editorial intrusion. I have strong views about many
issues in Presocratic philosophy, but I have refrained from imposing
them on the reader. Those who want more scholarly intervention should
consult the suggested readings at the end of each section. These read-
ings (some introductory and some more advanced) will offer interpreta-
tions, arguments, and further references so that anyone beginning here
can quickly enter the world of Presocratic scholarship.
In the last two years I have worked with Richard McKirahan as
he was preparing the second edition of Philosophy Before Socrates. He
allowed me to use a version of the new text in a seminar with upper-level
undergraduates and graduate students at Purdue University, and we
discussed many questions of translation and interpretation. As always,
I have learned much from Richard, even—and perhaps mostly—when
we disagree. (I am happy to note that over these years we have come to
have more agreements.) I am grateful for his comments and suggestions
on my work over the years, including this project. I have also benefited
from the Pythagorean expertise of Professor Carl Huffman, to whom I
extend thanks.
The editors at Hackett Publishing have supported Readings in Ancient
Greek Philosophy and A Presocratics Reader from the beginning, and I am
grateful to them, and especially to Brian Rak and Liz Wilson.
 ON ABBREVIATIONS
AND NOTES
The standard text collection for the Presocratics is H. Diels and
W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (6th edition, Berlin, 1951, and
later printings), commonly referred to as DK. This collection has defined
the scholarly conventions for referring to Presocratic texts, whether in
Greek, Latin, or a modern translation. For each Presocratic philosopher
DK assigns an identifying number: for example, Heraclitus is 22 and
Anaxagoras is 59. DK uses the letter A to indicate testimony from ancient
sources about that person, and the letter B to refer to what are taken to
be direct quotations from that figure’s work. These quotations are also
referred to as the fragments, since all we have are small sections from
longer works. Furthermore, DK identifies the testimonia and fragments
by unique numbers. Thus text identified as 22A2 refers to Heraclitus
(22) testimony (A) number two (2); and text identified as 59B12 refers to
Anaxagoras (59) fragment (B) number twelve (12).
In this volume, DK numbers (where available) accompany every
quotation; when all the passages in a chapter come from the same sec-
tion of DK, the particular Presocratic’s identifying number (22 or 59
in the examples just given) is listed only for the first passage. Hence
fragment 1 from Anaxagoras will be identified as “(59B1)” and frag-
ment 12 as “(B12).” Where texts come from more than one section, com-
plete identifying DK numbers will be used as appropriate. In all cases,
the source of the testimony or fragment from which DK drew the text
appears at the end of the passage. For those texts that are not included
in DK, the standard textual identification for the source is given along
with the indication “not in DK.” Where proper names follow textual
references, the reference is to the editor of the standard edition of the
relevant text. For example, in the Heraclitus chapter, the entry “Proclus,
Commentary on Plato’s Alcibiades I 117, Westerink” following selection 8
(B104) indicates that the fragment comes from Proclus’ Commentary on
Plato’s Alcibiades I, and can be found on p. 117 of L. G. Westerink’s 1954

viii
ON ABBREVIATIONS AND NOTES ix

edition of the text. References to two major papyrus collections use the
standard abbreviations “P.Herc.” and “P.Oxy.”1
Unless otherwise indicated, translations are by Richard D. McKirahan.
In the few places where I have modified his translations, “tmpc” appears
in the source identification line; where I have translated the entire pas-
sage, “tpc” appears. All of the translations in Chapter 9 (Anaxagoras)
are mine.

Notes on the texts are scattered throughout this collection. Notes from
the translator (McKirahan) are marked as such; all other notes are
mine.
Finally, in the translations of quoted passages from ancient authors,
I use a system of brackets:
(. . .) Parenthetical comment in the ancient text
<. . .> Supplements to the text (either proposed by scholars, or
added by the translator for the sake of clarity)
[. . .] Alternative possible translations, explanatory remarks, or
context for the quoted passage

1. P.Herc. is the Herculaneum Papyri, followed by the classification number of

the papyrus. (More information can be found at http://163.1.169.40/cgi-bin/
library?site=localhost&a=p&p=about&c=PHerc&ct+0&1=en&w=utf-8.)
P.Oxy. is the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, followed by the classification number of the
papyrus. (More information can be found at http://www.papyrology.ox.ac.uk/
POxy/.)
x
MAPS A PRESOCRATICS READER

MAPS
MAPS xi
 xii
THRACE
Abdera

Aegospotami
Mount Lampsacus
Olympus
Troy

Mitylene
LESBOS

Mt. Aegean LYDIA

Parnassus Sea
Delphi Smyrna
BOEOTIA
Mt. Thebes CHIOS IONIA
Helicon Marathon Clazomenae
Elis Megara Rhamnous Colophon
Corinth Athens Ephesus ander R.
Me
PE Samos
L Mycenae
Olympia OPO Argos Priene
NN CEOS Miletus
ES
E DELOS Branchidae
Sparta PAROS

Cos
MELOS

CRETE
0 100 Miles

0 100 Kilometers
Greece and
A Presocratics Reader

Western Asia Minor

 TIMELINE
TIME LINE xiii

TIME LINE
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Excerpts from Richard D. McKirahan, Philosophy Before Socrates: An

Introduction with Texts and Commentary, 2nd edition, Hackett Publishing
Company, 2010. Copyright © 2010, Hackett Publishing Co. Reprinted by
permission of the Publisher.
Excerpts from Patricia Curd, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae: Fragments
and Testimonia. Texts and Translation with Notes and Essays (The Phoenix
Presocratics Series), University of Toronto Press, 2007. Copyright © 2007,
University of Toronto Press. Reprinted by permission of the Publisher.

xiv
 1. INTRODUCTION

Ancient tradition says that Thales of Miletus predicted an eclipse of the

sun. Although we know none of the details of this supposed prediction,
the event (an eclipse in 585 BCE) has traditionally marked the beginning
of philosophy and science in Western thought. Aristotle, who was one of
the earliest to think critically about the history of philosophy, speculated
about why this kind of inquiry should have begun in Miletus, a Greek
city on the Ionian coast of Asia minor (in what is now Turkey); like later
scholars who have asked this question, Aristotle was unable to find an
answer. So the circumstances surrounding the beginning of philosophy
remain unclear; perhaps the question is unanswerable. Nevertheless,
Thales, the titular first philosopher, stands at the beginning of a great
tradition of rational inquiry and critical thought about the world and the
place of human beings in it that continues to the present day.
Thales was the first of a succession of thinkers known as the
Presocratics who lived in Greece in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE.1
These thinkers do not belong to any unified school of thought, and they
differed dramatically in their views. Yet they share intellectual attitudes
and assumptions and they all display an enthusiasm for inquiry that
justifies studying them as a group. It cannot be merely Thales’ reported
prediction of an eclipse that can justify our thinking of him as the first
Western philosopher and scientist—after all, both the Babylonians and
the Egyptians had complex astronomies. Nevertheless, for Aristotle
and those who came after him, Thales, and his fellow-Milesians

1. The name “Presocratics” comes from 19th-century classical scholars, who

saw a fundamental break between the interests and methods of our group of
thinkers and Socrates (470–399 BCE), and who regarded Socrates’ interests in
ethics as a radical advance in Western thought. Few would now agree with that
evaluation, and it is worth pointing out that several of our Presocratics were
actually contemporaries of or younger than Socrates. So, as a descriptive label,
the name “Presocratics” is misleading, but as a designator for a recognized
group of thinkers, it is quite useful, and I shall use it here in that sense. For more
on this issue, see articles in Long and in Laks and Louguet.

1
2 A PRESOCRATICS READER

Anaximander and Anaximenes, shared an outlook that truly marks the

beginning of philosophical inquiry. Part of this was a willingness to
speculate and give reasons based on evidence and argument. Another
aspect was a commitment to the view that the natural world (the entire
universe) can be explained without needing to refer to anything beyond
nature itself. For instance, Thales seems to have thought that everything
is from water (although it is not clear whether he thought that water is
the origin of all things, or that everything really is water in some form
or another). This may strike us as a naïve and overly simplistic claim.
Yet Aristotle saw in Thales’ views something that suggested that Thales
had reasons and arguments for them:

[T]hey do not all agree about how many or what kinds of such prin-
ciples there are, but Thales, the founder of this kind of philosophy,
stated it to be water. (This is why he declared that the earth rests on
water.) Perhaps he got this idea from seeing that the nourishment
of all things is moist, and that even the hot itself comes to be from
the moist and lives on it (the principle of all things is that from
which they come to be)—getting this idea from this consideration
and also because the seeds of all things have a moist nature; and
water is the principle of the nature of moist things.
(Aristotle, Metaphysics 1.3 983b18–27 = DK 11A12)

From Aristotle’s comments, it is clear that he thought that Thales’ claim

was based on reasoning from observational evidence.
We may contrast Thales’ account of the character of the natural world
with the story Hesiod tells (probably in the century before Thales) about
the origin of the cosmos:

Tell me these things, Muses, who dwell on Olympus,

From the beginning, and tell me, which of them was born first.
First of all Chaos came into being. Next came
broad-breasted Gaia [Earth], the secure dwelling place forever of all
the immortals who hold the peak of snowy Olympus.
And murky Tartaros [Underworld] in a recess of the broad-roaded
Earth,
and Eros [Love], who is the most beautiful among the immortal
gods, who
loosens the limbs and overpowers the intentions and sensible plans
of all the gods and all humans too.
1. INTRODUCTION 3

From Chaos there came into being Erebos [Darkness] and black
Night.
From Night, Aithēr [bright upper air] and Hemera [Day] came into
being,
which she conceived and bore after uniting in love with Erebos.
Gaia first brought forth starry Ouranos [Heaven]
equal to herself, to cover her all about
in order to be a secure dwelling place forever for the blessed gods.
She brought forth long mountains, beautiful shelters of divine
Nymphs who live in wooded mountains,
and also, without delightful love, gave birth to the barren sea,
Pontos, raging with its swelling waves. Then,
bedded by Ouranos, she gave birth to deep-swirling Ocean
and Koios and Kreios and Hyperion and Iapetos
and Theia and Rhea and Themis and Mnemosyne
and Phoebe with a golden wreath and lovely Tethys.
After them, last of all, was born crafty-minded Kronos,
the most terrible of the children, and he hated his mighty father.
(Hesiod, Theogony 114–38)

Hesiod requests the help of the Muses for the claims he will make. He
then reports on the births of the gods with the Muses’ authority as his
source. In relying on the Muses, Hesiod does not infer his account of
the cosmos from natural evidence. Nor does he think that appeals to
evidence are necessary: the divine warrant offered by the Muses is suf-
ficient for his purposes. Hesiod’s account of the origins of the universe
(his cosmogony) is in fact a story of the origins of the gods (a theogony).
Each aspect of the cosmos is identified with the distinct characteristics
and personality of a god, who controls that part of the universe. The
change from the state of chaos to the presence of Gaia (Earth), Tartaros
(the deepest underworld), Eros (desire), Erebos (the darkness under the
earth), and Night is not explained in this passage.2 Earth, Tartaros, and
Eros simply came to be; there is no attempt to explain how this hap-
pened or justify why they came to be at exactly this moment rather
than another. Once Eros is present, the model of generation is primar-
ily sexual, although we are told that Gaia (Earth) gave birth to Pontos
(sea) “without delightful love.” These gods who, in some sense, are the

2. Hesiod says that Chaos “came into being”; there is no explanation for this
coming-to-be.
4 A PRESOCRATICS READER

different parts of the universe, behave like humans in their desires,

emotions, and purposes. As in the Egyptian, Sumerian, and Hebrew
creation myths, the Hesiodic story makes no clear distinction between
a personality and a part of the cosmos: The natural and the super-
natural coincide. Since Hesiod feels no compunction about asserting
his claims without reasons to support them, he seems to think that
the proper response to the story is acceptance. The hearer or reader
should not subject it to critical scrutiny followed by rational agreement
or disagreement.
While the Presocratics rejected both the kind of account that Hesiod
gave and his attitude toward uncritical belief, we must take care not to
overstate the case: In the fragments of the Presocratics we shall find gaps
in explanation, appeals to the Muses, apparent invocation of divine war-
rant, breaks in the connection between evidence and assertion. Despite
all these apparent shortcomings, these early Greek thinkers took a bold
leap in adopting a critical attitude. In the case of the Milesians, for
instance, we find each proposing something different as the ultimate
foundational reality of the cosmos. Anaximander, who followed Thales,
apparently rejected the idea that water is the basic stuff; in its place he
posited a single reality that he called the boundless (or the indefinite),
something with no specific characteristics, out of which arise the other
ingredients of the cosmos. Anaximander’s follower Anaximenes, in turn
rejects the boundless, apparently arguing that it was just too indefinite
to do the job Anaximander required of it. Anaximenes claimed that air
was the foundational stuff. Moreover, he seems to have seen that there
was a gap in the earlier Milesian theories: Thales and Anaximander
provided no mechanism to account for the transformations of their basic
stuff. Anaximenes remedies this by proposing the processes of conden-
sation and rarefaction: as air becomes more rarified or compacted, other
stuffs are produced. Despite the disagreements among them, even this
brief view shows that the Milesians worked within a shared framework
of argument and justification.
Having adopted this critical attitude, the early Greek thinkers faced
the question of what a human could justifiably claim to know. The
Milesians might make claims about the basic stuff of the cosmos, and
might give arguments for these claims, but how could they claim to have
knowledge about an original or basic state of the universe, which they
had never experienced? Hesiod would have an answer to this question:
He could say that his information came from the Muses, and he could
call on them to authenticate the truth of his claims about the coming-
1. INTRODUCTION 5

to-be of the gods. In the same way, we find Homer calling on the Muses
when he wants to offer a catalogue of the leaders of the expedition to
Troy. Because the Muses are divine they are immortal; since they were
present for the gathering of the ships, they are appropriate as witnesses
and can provide assurance that the story Homer tells is true:

Tell me now Muses, who have dwellings in Olympus

for you are goddesses and present and know everything,
while we hear only rumor and we know nothing;
Who were the Greek commanders and leaders?
The throngs I could never tell nor name,
Not even if ten tongues, ten mouths belonged to me,
a voice unbroken, and a bronze heart within me,
Unless the Olympian Muses, daughters of aegis-holding
Zeus, put into my mind those who came below Ilion.
(Homer, Iliad 2.484–92; tpc)

Although the contexts differ, Homer and Hesiod use the same invo-
cation of the Muses to guarantee their claims: historical for Homer,
religious and cosmogonical for Hesiod. Xenophanes of Colophon spe-
cifically rejects this justification. “By no means,” he says (21B18), “did the
gods intimate all things to mortals from the beginning, but in time, by
inquiring, they discover better” (tpc). In rejecting divine authority for
their claims, the Presocratics invite inquiry into the sources of human
knowledge. A tantalizing mention of this problem appears in a fragment
from Alcmaeon, who echoes Homer’s claims that the gods know all
things, but apparently offers a more pessimistic outlook for humans:
“Concerning the unseen, the gods have clarity, but it is for men to con-
jecture from signs . . .” (DK24B1; tpc). We do not have the end of the frag-
ment, but it is clear that Alcmaeon is contrasting the limited epistemic
status of humans with the exalted certainty that the gods enjoy.
We find the Presocratics considering what separates sure and certain
knowledge from opinion or belief, and the roles of sense perception and
thought in acquiring knowledge, and, indeed, worrying about the very
possibility of such knowledge. Moreover, as competing theories about
the cosmos appear, the problem of theory justification comes to the fore.
Sometimes, as with the three Milesians, justification might be a question
of which theory appears to fit the evidence best; but there is another
aspect to theory justification, and that is the metatheoretical question
about what constitutes a genuine theory, regardless of the particular
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in their officers, the men immediately dropped on the sand and fell
fast asleep during the few minutes’ repose which they were allowed.
About the same time the Highland brigade was halted to refresh the
men. As all orders were passed in a low tone from company to
company and from battalion to battalion, this order was not at once
received by the troops on the outer flanks; they continued to
advance, but as they remained in touch with the centre they lost
direction and by the time the command reached them they had
wheeled inwards, though quite unconsciously. Thus the brigade
halted not in line, but in a crescent-shaped formation. When the
order was given to resume the march the flank battalions, quite
unaware that they had lost direction, moved straight to their front,
and soon almost crashed into each other. Each thought the other
was the enemy, but by a triumph of discipline, every man waited for
orders to fire, and thus gave time for the officers to discover the
mistake. The brigade was halted, the companies of direction placed
on the true line of advance, and the remainder of the Highlanders,
gradually and successively drawing back, re-formed upon the proper
alignment. This mistake, which took about twenty-five minutes to
correct, is a good example of the difficulty of night operations and
the necessity of implicit obedience to orders.
After a short rest Graham’s brigade again advanced, this time in
line, but the formation was found unsuitable, and was changed to an
advance by fours from the right of companies. To keep in the proper
direction was no easy matter, especially as the mass of artillery on
the left was steering a few degrees too far to the northward, and
thus continually elbowed the 2nd brigade off the right path: to
correct this pressure frequent turns half-left and half-right had to be
made. Suddenly, at about 4.45 A.M., “far away to the left was heard a
tremendous rattle of musketry, mingled with the firing of big guns,
succeeded by ringing and sustained cheers, and”—to quote the
special correspondent who, as already mentioned, had attached
himself to the Royal Irish—“we felt sure that the Highland brigade
had found its quest and run into it.” At this moment it became
necessary again to correct a mistake in direction, and “a halt and
change of front a quarter circle to the left were at once ordered.... A
rattling fire of small arms now opened on us from the works, distant
about 600 yards.[248] It was still dusk, but the blackness of night
had given place to a pale darkness, through which the flashes of fire
sparkled with ceaseless rapidity.”
By this time, owing to the difficulty of marching at night over the
featureless desert with nothing to steer by but the stars, Lord
Wolseley’s force was no longer in line but in echelon from the left,
and when the Highlanders struck the enemy’s works the head of
Graham’s brigade was probably more than 800 yards from the
Egyptians’ entrenchments. As soon as the brigade had formed line
the Royal Irish pushed forward, and were rapidly nearing the
position when the brigade-major, suddenly appearing on the scene,
told Colonel Gregorie it was General Graham’s wish that he should
form the Royal Irish for attack. Though it was obvious that the
battalion was too close to the trenches for the evolution to be
carried out accurately, the necessary orders were given, and C and D
companies extended, with B and E in support, and the remainder in
reserve. Then the leading companies swept onwards under a heavy
but fortunately ill-directed fusilade; the supports and reserves closed
upon the firing-line, and with wild yells and almost without firing a
shot, the Royal Irish swarmed over the shelter trenches at the
extreme end of Arabi’s line, driving before them at the point of the
bayonet the Egyptians, who slowly and in good order fell back to a
second line of works in rear. The Royal Irish were now enfiladed by a
redoubt on their left flank, but taking no notice of its fire they
pressed onwards until, after driving the Egyptians from the second
line of entrenchments, they were peremptorily halted and ordered to
re-form their ranks. While this second charge was being delivered,
Lieutenant Chichester made a gallant effort to storm the redoubt
with a few men; but he and two or three of his followers fell
wounded, and it remained in the hands of the enemy until the York
and Lancaster carried it with a rush. The Marines and the Royal Irish
Fusiliers gradually made themselves masters of the works in front of
them, and the Egyptians, falling into confusion, and to a large extent
abandoned by their officers who were among the first to fly, retired
in disorder. When they discovered that the British cavalry had swung
round the left of their position and were directly threatening them
from the rear, their retreat became a rout. Yet there were many
among the rank and file, especially in the regiments composed of
Nubians, who had shown bravery in the battle, and at the time it
was thought that had these men been well led they would have
been formidable enemies. The justice of this, opinion has been
proved by the services of the modern Egyptian troops in the Soudan,
where regiments of Egyptian peasants and Soudanese blacks,
trained and officered by men of the regular British army, have on
many occasions acquitted themselves excellently.
Some interesting episodes have been recorded of the part played
by the Royal Irish in this phase of the engagement. The special
correspondent relates that as the battalion was advancing towards
the first line of trenches two men, mad with excitement, dashed out
of the ranks and rushed towards the enemy. For a moment they
disappeared, but

“presently they were seen by themselves, beyond the first works, and in
front of the big redoubt, in the very midst of the foe. These gallant two!
One was on his knee facing south-west; apparently he is conscious of
having gone beyond support. The Egyptians in their trenches and ditches
are in front, to right and to left of him. He glances back towards where
kneels, a few yards behind him, his brave companion. But who can save
you now, rash, gallant young Irishmen! You have turned from the front of
your regiment and are cut off from all aid. My position on horseback
enabled me to see the men, who, kneeling, were hid by the trenches from
their own regiment. I saw an Egyptian officer move up behind the left of
the leading man, and seizing his arm, strike him over the head or shoulder
with his sword. A struggle ensued, but the smoke of battle hid them from
further view. After the fight Colonel Gregorie found two dead bodies of his
men among the others of his regiment in the place described: their names
were Corporal Devine and Private Milligan.”

The good conduct of other soldiers is thus described by Colonel

(then Lieutenant) Chichester—

“They stood back to back, tackled six Nubians, and accounted for them
all. I now forget their names, but I was going to recommend them for
reward, but afterwards heard that they had been killed later in the battle. A
very brave reservist in my company was badly wounded and lay on the
ground close to where I had fallen. He had eight bullet holes in his body,
yet he only died the day that our transport full of wounded arrived at
Plymouth. When the men came to attend him on the battlefield, he said,
‘Don’t mind me; look after others, worse hurt.’”

In sharp contrast to the gallant behaviour of this Irishman was the

treachery of an Egyptian officer who lay injured on ground occupied
by the XVIIIth. One of the men offered him water; he drank it, and
then suddenly rolled over, snatched up a rifle and shot down one of
the soldiers who were tending him. Prompt steps were taken to
prevent this ruffian from doing more mischief!
After pursuing for some distance, Graham halted to re-form his
brigade in readiness for further action. He had every reason to be
proud of his command, for, as he reported to Lord Wolseley, “the
steadiness of the advance of the 2nd brigade under what appeared
to be an overwhelming fire of musketry and artillery will remain a
proud remembrance.” As he rode from battalion to battalion he was
greeted with many cheers, a tribute to the leader who, though a
stern disciplinarian, had ever proved himself mindful of the comfort
of his men, watchful of their safety, and who had now led them to
decisive victory. By the time the second brigade had re-formed its
ranks the troops on the left had also finished their work. The task
set to Alison’s command had proved much harder than that allotted
to Graham’s battalions. Not only were the fortifications which faced
the Highland brigade far stronger than those attacked by the second
division, but when the Highlanders had surmounted them they came
under a very heavy fire from the inner works. But thanks to the
timely aid of the guns, which pushed right into the entrenchments,
the enemy was driven back in wild confusion, and in less than an
hour Arabi’s army was shattered as completely as it had been
surprised.
Lord Wolseley lost no time in reaping the fruits of his victory. As
soon as the enemy’s works were in his hands the cavalry were
ordered to continue their pursuit, and to strain every nerve to reach
Cairo before Arabi had been able to burn it, as he had threatened to
do if he was defeated; while the Indian brigade, which had
completely driven the enemy from the cultivated country on the
southern bank of the canal, was to push on to Zag-a-zig, and by
occupying it, prevent the various detachments of Arabi’s troops in
the Delta from coming to his assistance. Both enterprises were
successful. At four o’clock on September 14, the cavalry after a
magnificent forced march began to appear before the gates of Cairo,
where Arabi, who was one of the first to quit the entrenchments of
Tel-el-Kebir, had taken refuge. Without attempting to fight, or to
carry out his plan for the destruction of the city, he surrendered at
once, and with him the garrison of ten thousand men. The Indian
brigade made itself master of Zag-a-zig, capturing much rolling
stock, in which a great portion of the infantry was moved up to
Cairo. With their arrival the war was over, and in ten days’ time
every garrison in Egypt had been disarmed, and the men set free to
resume the avocations of peace.
Not all the British infantry, however, went on at once to Cairo.
Among the regiments left at Tel-el-Kebir was the second battalion of
the Royal Irish, who thus had plenty of opportunity to admire the
fifty-eight guns which had been taken on the 13th. In the
engagement the Egyptians are believed to have lost about two
thousand killed;[249] of the number of their wounded there is no
record, but several hundred were tended by our army doctors, while
many uninjured prisoners were taken, disarmed, and turned adrift.
The British casualties were nine officers killed and twenty-seven
wounded; of the other ranks forty-eight were killed, three hundred
and fifty-five wounded, and thirty missing—in all, four hundred and
sixty-nine.
In the Royal Irish the losses were:
Killed Captain C. M. Jones (attached from the
Connaught Rangers) and three
other ranks.
Mortally Wounded Four private soldiers.
Wounded Lieutenant A. G. Chichester and
Lieutenant H. H. Drummond-Wolff
(attached from the Royal Fusiliers)
and fourteen other ranks.[250]

After a week at Tel-el-Kebir the Royal Irish were moved by train to

Cairo, where they were quartered in a barrack, the filth of which was
so great that to this day the remembrance stinks in the nostrils of
those who occupied it. The duty was heavy; there was much
sickness among all ranks, and beyond ceremonial parades in honour
of the return of the Khedive to the capital in which he had been
reinstated by British bayonets, nothing of interest occurred during
the three weeks the battalion spent in Cairo except a great fire, in
the suppression of which it was employed. Lieutenant W. R. B. Doran
(now Colonel Doran, C.B., D.S.O.), in a letter written at the time,
thus described the part played on this occasion by the Royal Irish,
who were fortunate to escape without any of the casualties which
occurred among other corps—

“On the 29th of September we were startled by a tremendous bang,

followed by what sounded like a succession of cannon-shots. After an
interval there was another great explosion, more cannon-shots, and then a
rattle of musketry. We thought at first it was some kind of plot. It turned
out that a lot of trucks full of powder, unexploded shells, and small-arm
ammunition had been set on fire by another train containing hay. How the
hay was set on fire no one has yet found out. About 6.30 P.M. we were
turned out in a great hurry, and went to the railway station, to stop all
traffic in the streets in the neighbourhood, and to prevent the scum from
beginning to loot; they had just begun, but they got such ‘toco’ from the
‘Tommies’ that they soon stopped their little games. We remained guarding
the streets till nearly 1 A.M., when we were relieved and began, as we
thought, to march home, but were grievously disappointed, as before we
had gone half a mile we were halted in a square and told to lie down and
go to sleep in the road. I was rather hungry, as I had not quite finished my
dinner when the order to fall in came, so I managed to get a sort of penny
bun from one of our captains, half of which I ate; the other half I put under
my head and went to sleep on the hardest bed and strangest pillow I have
ever had!”

The battalion was sent to Alexandria[251] on October 11, and a

month later Lieutenant-Colonel Gregorie, after serving his full time in
command, was succeeded by Lieutenant-Colonel R. W. E. Dawson.
On February 1, 1883, the medals with clasps for Tel-el-Kebir were
presented to the Royal Irish on the racecourse of Alexandria by a
veteran soldier, Field-Marshal Lord Napier of Magdala, G.C.B., and a
few days later the battalion, which to the great satisfaction of all
ranks was not included in the 10,000 troops left to hold Egypt for
the Khedive, sailed for Malta, and after remaining there for three
months, landed at Plymouth at the end of May, 1883.
The regiment received permission to add to its battle honours the
words “Egypt 1882” and “Tel-el-Kebir.”
 Lieutenant-Colonel C. F. Gregorie was appointed a Companion of
the Order of the Bath; Major G. W. N. Rogers and Captain J. H.
Daubeney each received a step in brevet rank; Quartermaster and
Honorary Captain T. Hamilton was made an Honorary Major;
Lieutenant A. G. Chichester and Sergeant E. O’Donnell were
mentioned in despatches. The following officers were permitted to
accept and wear decorations awarded by the Sultan, viz.:
Lieutenant-Colonel Gregorie, the Medjidie (3rd class); Major Rogers,
the Osmanieh (4th class); Captain Daubeney, Medjidie (4th class);
and Lieutenant Chichester, Medjidie (5th class), and all ranks were
presented by the Egyptian government with a decoration known as
the Khedive’s Star.
Two officers attached to the second battalion—Captain H. H.
Edwards, Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and Lieutenant H. H. Drummond-
Wolff, Royal Fusiliers, were also mentioned in despatches.
 CHAPTER XII.

T H E F I R S T B ATTA L I O N .

1884-1885.

THE NILE EXPEDITION.

At the time of England’s armed intervention in Egypt in 1882, the

Khedive’s authority extended nominally far beyond the limits of the
province which Mahomet Ali had wrested from the Sublime Porte.
The founder of the Egyptian dynasty, not satisfied with fighting his
Suzerain the Sultan in Syria, had pushed armies up the Nile into the
heart of the Soudan, or country of the Blacks, a no-man’s land which
stretched from Wadi Halfa, the southern boundary of Egypt, to the
Great Lakes far beyond the equator. This region had no form of
government; its inhabitants were oppressed by Arab slave-hunters;
its condition was pitiable in the extreme. Mahomet Ali gradually
conquered every tribe in the Nile valley up to the junction of the
White and Blue Niles, where he built Khartoum, and thrust forward
outposts in every direction from the capital of his new dominions,
which was about a thousand miles south of Cairo. The country thus
annexed became known as the Egyptian Soudan, and extended from
the shore of the Red Sea to the western frontier of Kordofan; it was
about the size of France and Germany put together, and its
population in 1883 was estimated at fourteen millions of mixed
breed, the descendants of the aboriginal negroes and the Arabs who
overran the country early in the Mohammedan era. This blend had
produced a race possessing the outward characteristics and mental
attributes of the Arab, combined with the endurance and brute
courage of the Negro.[252] After anarchy such as had prevailed in
the Soudan, almost any form of government might have been
expected to improve the condition of the country; but in this respect
Egyptian rule completely failed. Taxation was heavy; extortion was
the rule, rather than the exception, and slave-hunting, with all its
attendant horrors, was not suppressed; indeed, thanks to the
connivance of the officials, who were virtually in partnership with the
slave-dealers, it so greatly increased that the country was rapidly
becoming depopulated, when in 1869, the pressure of British public
opinion compelled the Khedive to institute reforms in the
administration, and to appoint an Englishman, Sir Samuel Baker, as
Governor-General of the Equatorial provinces, which stretched from
Khartoum to the Great Lakes. Five years later Baker was succeeded
by General (then Colonel) Charles George Gordon, who held the post
till 1879. Though both accomplished much towards the
establishment of better government and the suppression of slave-
hunting, their efforts were cramped and thwarted by the officials at
Cairo and at Khartoum, who were naturally disinclined to lose the
enormous profits they derived from the trade in slaves. A country so
mercilessly treated only needed a leader to turn upon its oppressors,
and in 1881, such a leader arose in the Soudan. A prophecy had
long been current among Mohammedans that about this time a
“Mahdi” would appear and convert the whole world to the true faith,
and of this prophecy a religious adventurer, named Mohammed
Ahmed, availed himself to the uttermost. He proclaimed himself the
Mahdi whose advent had been predicted, and announced that as
soon as the Soudan had joined his cause he would march on Egypt,
destroying all who opposed him, and convert the whole world to
Islam. Such was the spiritual part of his programme, carefully
prepared to rouse the fanaticism latent in every Mohammedan; the
temporal advantages he offered to his followers were universal
equality and community of goods. Although denounced as an
impostor by the educated Mussulmans, who probably regarded his
socialistic propaganda with misgivings, he rapidly gained a great
following, and obtained several successes over the Egyptian
garrisons, which were at this time in a wretched condition. The
troops had not been paid for many months, in some cases even for
years: the soldiers were undrilled, their officers incompetent to drill
them: the loyalty of all ranks was as doubtful as their courage. To
stiffen this unpromising material, several Englishmen in the service
of Egypt were sent to Khartoum; among them was Hicks Pasha, at
one time an officer in the Indian army, now the newly appointed
Commander-in-Chief of the Khedive’s troops in the Soudan.
In September, 1883, Hicks, acting under the orders of the
Egyptian government, led an expedition into the depths of Kordofan,
where the Mahdi had retired to organise the tribesmen, from thirty
to sixty thousand strong, whom his recent victories had attracted to
his standard. Hicks commanded about 11,000 weakly and ill-fed
men, of whom many were so unwilling to be soldiers that to prevent
desertion they had to be sent up the Nile in chains. His artillery
consisted of thirty-six Krupp, Nordenfelt, and mountain guns, and his
transport was supplied by six thousand horses and camels. The
whole of the Egyptian troops were thoroughly out of heart; they
were aware that they were about to march into a country of which
little was known except that it was almost waterless, and that they
would encounter hordes of desperate and ruthless fanatics. As the
men filed out of Khartoum they were in floods of tears. The fate of
such an army may easily be imagined: on the 5th of November it
was surprised by the Mahdi with 40,000 of his followers, and cut to
pieces, near El Obeid in Kordofan.[253] Hicks and the other
Europeans died fighting dauntlessly to the last; the Egyptians
allowed themselves to be butchered almost without resistance: three
hundred were given quarter, only to become the slaves of the
victors, into whose hands passed the guns, much ammunition,
thousands of rifles, and all the transport animals. One man alone
escaped to bring the news to Khartoum. Yet so little was the
importance of the Mahdist movement appreciated by the English
government that at the very time Hicks’s column was being
destroyed in Kordofan, Mr Gladstone was urging the reduction of the
British army of occupation in Egypt. When Hicks’s fate became
known in Cairo the situation grew very complicated. The Cabinet in
London, afraid of being drawn into armed intervention in the
Soudan, had persistently assumed an attitude of aloofness on the
subject of Hicks’s operations, and, affecting to ignore the fact that
Britain was virtually, though not officially, mistress in Egypt, and that
a word from her representative at Cairo, Lord Cromer (then Sir
Evelyn Baring), would have stopped the expedition, declined all
responsibility on the ground that it had been undertaken solely on
the authority of the Egyptian government. The annihilation of Hicks’s
army had placed Khartoum in a position of great danger: only two
thousand troops were left to man the four miles of earthworks by
which the town was ringed, and its communications with Cairo and
Suakim were seriously threatened. The generals in command of the
British army at Cairo admitted that, if the Mahdi advanced on
Khartoum, it would be impossible to hold it in its existing condition,
and that in all probability the whole valley of the Nile, as far south as
Wadi Halfa, would be lost to Egypt. Alarmed at the crushing blow
which had befallen him, and at the consequences likely to follow it,
the Khedive begged that British troops might be sent to the Soudan,
or, if these should not be forthcoming, that a contingent of Turks
might be imported to hold Khartoum. Our government refused to
move a single soldier to the Soudan, but had no objection to the
employment of a Turkish force to garrison Khartoum, provided that
no expense was thereby thrown upon the Egyptian Treasury. They,
however, advised Tewfik to abandon all territory south of Assouan,
softening the blow by the promise that England would defend not
only Egypt proper, but also the ports of the Red Sea against the
Mahdists. To this wholesale dismemberment of his dominions the
Khedive demurred, and again suggested a Turkish occupation of the
Soudan, whereupon England sternly replied that if the Egyptian
ministers would not carry out the evacuation of the Soudan they
would have to make room for Englishmen, ready to enforce her
policy. The Khedive thereupon withdrew his opposition, and agreed
that the whole of the Soudan, except the port of Suakim, should be
abandoned to its fate. During these negotiations the situation at
Khartoum had become so serious that the senior European officer
there, in reporting that it would be impossible to hold the town
against the whole population of the Soudan, which had now thrown
in its lot with the Mahdi, urged that immediate orders should be
given for a withdrawal down the river. The question next arose—who
was to effect the withdrawal, not only of the troops, but also of the
officials, traders, and other members of the civil army of occupation
in the Soudan?
The English ministers then bethought themselves of General
Gordon, one of the most remarkable characters of the nineteenth
century. His career had been a strange and eventful one. After
serving with distinction as a Royal Engineer in the Crimea, the
chances of war carried him to the Far East where he played his part
in the Anglo-French expedition to China. When the object of the
campaign was accomplished, peace was signed with the Emperor of
China, but the end of the war found some of the most fertile
provinces of the Celestial Empire in the hands of great hordes of
insurgents, with whom the Chinese authorities were wholly unable to
cope. Gordon was lent to the Emperor to command a force of
Chinamen, raised by himself and officered by adventurers of mixed
nationality. With a rare combination of military talent and personal
courage, readiness to assume responsibility, power of influencing his
subordinates, and complete absence of self-seeking, he welded his
unpromising material into good soldiers, with whom he stormed
many walled towns and won battles innumerable against vastly
superior numbers. After a long struggle, in which his men earned the
title of “the ever-victorious army,” he completely crushed the rebels;
and then, disbanding the troops who had learned to look upon him
as invincible, he returned to Europe with the justly earned reputation
of a born leader of men. During his five years’ sojourn in the Soudan
Gordon had acquired great influence over its inhabitants. The
fighting men had learned to follow, the slave-hunters to fear him:
the traders respected his stern and evenhanded justice: all classes
knew that his word, once pledged, was never broken, and that his
orders must be obeyed to the letter. At a few hours’ notice, Gordon
was sent to Egypt to secure the retreat of the garrison of Khartoum
and of the thousands of civilians who would probably wish to
accompany it, and also to effect the evacuation of the remainder of
the Soudan. For this enormous task he was allowed one Staff officer,
Colonel D. Stewart,[254] 11th Hussars, with whom he reached
Khartoum on February 18, 1884.
While Gordon was on his way up the Nile, the tide of war was
setting strongly against the Egyptians in the eastern Soudan, where
a wing of the Mahdi’s army was commanded by Osman Digna, an
ex-slave dealer who had been ruined by the capture of his dhows by
British cruisers. Osman Digna had stormed several fortified towns
and villages, held by the Khedive as outposts round Suakim, and had
cut to pieces columns of Egyptian troops sent at various times to the
relief of the garrisons scattered throughout the district. Suakim itself
was threatened, and the ships of war then lying off the port landed
bluejackets and Marines for its protection, while Major-General Sir
Gerald Graham was sent from Cairo to reinforce them with 4000
British troops. There were two sharp engagements at El-Teb
(February 29) and Tamai (March 13), in which Osman Digna fought
with magnificent courage, but sustained such heavy losses that his
power for evil appeared sufficiently diminished to warrant the
withdrawal of the British soldiers from the eastern Soudan.
While these events were taking place round Suakim, things were
going badly with Gordon at Khartoum, and though direct telegraphic
communication with him was cut off about a month after his arrival,
the news which reached Cairo showed that his position was
becoming one of considerable danger. In April, the Secretary of State
for War began to realise that it might become necessary to send an
expedition to rescue Gordon, and called upon Lord Wolseley for a
plan of campaign. In his reply Wolseley showed that Khartoum could
only be approached by the caravan roads converging on Berber from
the Red Sea or by the valley of the Nile, and strongly advocated the
latter route. He proposed to move the dismounted troops up the
river in boats, and after pointing out that Gordon’s supplies would
not permit him to hold Khartoum later than the 15th of November,
urged that immediate preparations should be made to meet possible
contingencies. For several months government took little action
beyond making inquiries about the track across the desert from
Suakim to Berber, and sending naval officers up the Nile to report
whether Lord Wolseley’s scheme was practicable. These officers
reported against it, and Sir F. C. A. Stephenson, the General
commanding the British troops in Egypt, agreed with their views. On
the other hand, a committee composed of three officers who had
taken part in the Red River expedition in Canada emphatically
expressed their opinion that Wolseley’s plan was perfectly feasible,
and pointed out that the naval objections to it were based on the
assumption that steamers of considerable size, and boats up to 40
tons burden would be required, whereas the army only asked for
whale-boats, which could be used at any state of the Nile.
While these discussions were going on, the tide of Mahdism
steadily flowed northwards. To meet a possible attack upon Egypt
proper, the bulk of the Khedive’s army, then in process of
reorganisation by British officers, was hurried to Assouan, where it
was strengthened by English battalions; the Nile was patrolled by
steamers manned by the navy; and irregular levies of Bedouins, also
commanded by British officers, were pushed up the river into
Dongola, the most southern portion of the Egyptian dominions in
which the authority of the Khedive was still recognised. Dongola was
ruled by a Mudir who, though originally in sympathy with the Mahdi,
had been won back by golden arguments to the cause of his
Suzerain. In the course of the summer his territory was attacked; it
was considered necessary to help him with British bayonets, and the
1st battalion of the Royal Sussex regiment was moved southwards
from Assouan. On the 8th of August, only eight days before the
Royal Sussex reached the town of Dongola, a vote of credit was
obtained from the House of Commons to cover the expense of
sending troops to the assistance of the Mudir; but though by this
vote government definitely committed itself to the Nile route, and
therefore to the use of small boats, it was not until the 12th that
official sanction was given for the construction of these craft. Four
hundred were then ordered, and in a few days the number was
doubled. The boats were to carry twelve men with their equipment,
ammunition, and rations; to be suitable alike for rowing, sailing
before a wind, and tracking (i.e., being hauled up stream from the
bank), for ascending and descending rapids, and for passing over
shallow and rocky places in the river: to be as light as possible, yet
strong enough to be dragged over short stretches of ground to avoid
cataracts; and to be 32 feet in length, 6 feet 9 inches in breadth,
and only 2 feet 6 inches in depth. The first consignment reached
Alexandria on September 22, the last on October 18, 1884.
It had not been proposed to employ Lord Wolseley in the
expedition, but on August 26, he was appointed to command the
troops upon the Nile. He reached Cairo on September 9, when there
were actually in Egypt, or on their way thither, a regiment of cavalry,
one battery of Royal Horse artillery, one of Royal Field artillery, one
camel battery of mountain guns, and two garrison batteries; four
companies of Royal Engineers, one of which was at Suakim; a
battalion of mounted infantry, 423 strong; and thirteen and a half
battalions of infantry—in all, nearly 11,000 officers and men, among
whom were the first battalion of the Royal Irish regiment. Not all
these troops, however, were available for the actual operations at
Khartoum when that far-distant goal should be approached. The
garrisons of Cairo and Alexandria absorbed four and a half battalions
of infantry, a squadron of cavalry, and all the artillery except the
mountain guns. Though the Egyptian army held the line of
communication from Cairo to Hannek, it was considered necessary
to strengthen this section with a British battalion, while to secure the
Nile between Hannek and Berber, at least five battalions would be
required. Lord Wolseley aimed at placing about 5400 men in line at
Shendi, a place on the river about 100 miles south of Berber, and the
same distance to the northward of Khartoum, and after making
allowance for the inevitable wastage of troops in an expedition such
as he was to conduct, and for the possibility that he might have to
send part of his column on a sudden dash across the desert, he
asked the War Office to supply him with eleven hundred more men,
volunteers from regular regiments at home, to be turned into
“camelry”—i.e., infantry mounted upon camels. The request was
granted, and these reinforcements arrived in time to reap a large
share of the honours of the campaign.
Before any troops could be moved to Shendi, through a country
from which little or no food could be obtained, it was necessary to
form an advanced base as high up the river as possible, where
stores of all kinds were to be collected before the main body began
to arrive from Cairo. It was also necessary to establish along the line
of communication on the river a chain of intermediate depôts, from
which the troops would draw rations and thus preserve intact the
cargo of stores with which each whale-boat was to be freighted.
Korti was selected for the advanced base, and there, when the first
thousand miles of its journey from the sea was accomplished, the
expeditionary force was to effect its preliminary concentration.[255]
As far as Wadi Halfa, about 750 miles above Cairo, the navigation of
the Nile presents no great difficulties, and every available river
steamer and river boat was pressed into the service. But above Wadi
Halfa a formidable series of cataracts, or rapids as they should more
accurately be termed, proved fatal to so many of the native craft
that the transport of stores to the higher reaches had almost entirely
to be carried out by the whale-boats. It was not until the 1st of
November that a sufficient quantity of supplies had been sent up the
river to warrant Lord Wolseley in moving the main body of his
infantry. Then as speedily as possible each corps was despatched in
turn on its journey southward. Towards the end of December the
first battalion of infantry reached Korti, where the camelry, who had
marched along the banks of the Nile, were beginning to assemble; in
about four weeks more the last regiments arrived, and by the end of
January the preliminary concentration had been successfully
accomplished.
 While the second battalion was winning fresh honours for the
regiment at Tel-el-Kebir, the first battalion was in India. It was
stationed at Meerut in August, 1884, when the welcome order was
received to start for Egypt forthwith on active service. In high spirits
at the prospect of a campaign, all ranks worked with a will; by the
20th the preparations were finished, and the Royal Irish, after a very
hot railway journey, embarked at Bombay on the 29th, and three
weeks later arrived at Cairo in magnificent order. They are described
by an officer who was then serving with the regiment—

“When the 1st battalion Royal Irish landed in Egypt in 1884, it was, bar
none, the finest battalion I have ever seen, both in physique and in general
appearance. Under Colonel M. MacGregor they were considered to be the
best dressed regiment in India, and since his departure they had lived up to
their reputation. In this respect they presented a very marked contrast to
many of the battalions in Egypt, who were dressed in a very hideous grey
serge very similar to that worn by convicts, which was worn apparently
exactly as it had been issued from store. Their physique was equally
distinguishable from the Corps who had lately arrived from home. The
average service was (if I remember right) about seven years, and the
average height, taken from the annual return prepared at Wady Halfa, was
5.7¾, and the chest measurement was 38″. While we were at Cairo a
gymkhana was held at Gezireh, where one of the events was a tug-of-war
open to all troops in garrison. The Royal Garrison artillery for some time
past had invariably won this contest: so invincible were they considered that
no infantry regiments would compete against them, and they used to take
the prize on every occasion with a ‘walk-over.’ On the arrival of the Royal
Irish, we determined to enter our team, which had been practically
unbeaten in India. On the day of the gymkhana the R.G.A. expected to
have another ‘walk over,’ when to their surprise and to that of the
spectators (we had kept the fact dark that we intended to enter a team),
ten strapping Royal Irishmen, in jerseys of the regimental colours, stepped
out on to the ground. The gunners were so unprepared for this that they
hadn’t even taken the trouble to be suitably dressed for a tug-of-war. So
confident were they of beating all comers that instead of the usual line they
had arranged an open ditch filled with water, across which the opposing
teams had to pull. It was not many minutes before the two leading gunners
were in the water, and the rest, to save themselves a ducking, had to let go
the rope!”
 The Royal Irish were almost the last troops to leave lower Egypt;
but at length the long-expected order reached them, and on the
evening of November 12, 1884, they entrained for Assiut, the
farthest point to which the railway ran up the Nile. The marching-out
state showed a strength of seven hundred and forty-six officers and
men.[256]
Next morning, after a journey of 229 miles, the Royal Irish arrived
at Assiut, and at once exchanged the train for the barges in which
they were to be towed 318 miles to Assouan, at the foot of the First
Cataract. The men were packed into four barges, in each of which a
subaltern was on duty for twenty-four hours at a time; the
remainder of the officers were divided among the steamers and a
dahabiah. “That night the halt was not sounded till 10 o’clock,
when,” wrote a young officer of the Royal Irish, “a nice job we had
of it. Our steamers did not keep together, so that we had to go along
the bank for about a mile in the dark, and draw rations for the next
day, and very ticklish work it was, as the path was quite close to the
river and bits of the bank were continually falling in.” Progress was
slow, for both barges and tugs occasionally ran on to sandbanks,
and it was not until November 24, that the flotilla, which had been
joined by the 2nd battalion, Royal West Kent regiment, reached its
destination. As the barges could not pass the rapids the Royal Irish
landed, and spent an unhappy day in the belief that they were to
remain at Assouan. They had been ordered to encamp, and some of
the officers were on their way to select the ground, when a
tremendous roar of cheers and Irish yells told them the battalion had
received good news; shortly afterwards a staff-officer informed them
that they were to proceed up the river forthwith, and after a short
journey in the railway turning the rapids, the Royal Irish re-
embarked at Shellal, this time in the sailing-boats or dahabiahs in
which the traffic of the Nile from time immemorial has been carried
on. The next stage (210 miles) in the voyage was to Wadi Halfa, the
frontier town of Egypt, and the most southern point which Roman
legions had occupied in the valley of the Nile. Here a long stretch of
rapids called the Second Cataract barred the passage of all local
craft at that time of year, and the troops landed and went into camp,
where owing to a block on the line of communication the battalion
was detained for more than a fortnight. This halt was by no means a
restful one, for the fatigues were incessant, but some of the officers
found time to reconnoitre the nearest of the rapids through which
they were about to pass, and reported that a task awaited the
XVIIIth as arduous in its way as any that had fallen to the lot of the
regiment during the two centuries of its existence. The Second
Cataract, like that at Assouan, is turned by a line of railway thirty-
three miles in length, which ended at Gemai, where, in an
improvised dockyard, the whale-boats lay waiting for the Royal Irish.
By December 16, the line of communication was again clear, and the
first detachment—B and E companies under command of Lieutenant-
Colonel Wray—were sent by rail to Gemai, where they took
possession of their “whalers,” and many stores. When these were
packed the flotilla started in single file, and sometimes sailing,
sometimes rowing (with many different strokes and styles), worked
up a smooth stretch of river till nightfall, when the boats were tied
up to the bank, and the crews disembarked and pitched their camps.
Next morning the detachment reached Sarras, where the remainder
of the stores were issued. Each whaler carried the arms,
ammunition, tents, and camp equipage of her crew, materials for
repairing any damage she might sustain on the voyage, and cases
containing a hundred days’ rations for twelve men. These cases
were not to be opened, but were to be delivered intact at the point
of concentration, the supplies for current use being drawn at the
various posts on the line of communication. By the time the whole of
the freight (about four tons) was on board the boats, the load of
boxes at stem and stern rose so high above the gunwales that the
men at the oars were half-hidden behind the high-piled cargoes.
Lord Wolseley had always attributed much of the success of the
little Red River expedition to the skill of the boatmen, or voyageurs
who navigated his canoes over the waterways of Canada. With some
difficulty he induced the British government to sanction the
enrolment of a corps of Canadian boatmen for the much larger
expedition of 1884; nearly four hundred officers and men were
raised, many of whom proved themselves as valuable on the Nile as
their predecessors had been on the rivers of Ontario and Manitoba.
These voyageurs joined the whalers at Sarras: they were placed in
charge of the actual handling of the boats, but, except as watermen,
they had no authority. The flotilla as a whole was in charge of the
regimental officers, who were distributed among the whalers, but in
every company many boats were necessarily commanded by
sergeants and even by corporals. In most cases the non-
commissioned officers were as ignorant of boat work as their men,
and with their crews had to learn by experience the use of oars and
sails, the employment of poles to prevent the whalers from being
dashed against the rocks, and the art of tracking. Even the best of
the voyageurs, though experts in other branches of boatmanship,
knew nothing of sails, which were not used in the navigation of the
rivers with which they were familiar. In the forenoon of December
18, B and E companies pushed off from Sarras, followed by the
remainder of the battalion, less G company, which next day brought
up the rear. Thus the whole battalion was now afloat, engaged in a
ceaseless struggle with the rapids of the Nile, and greatly
handicapped by want of voyageurs, of whom the supply had run so
short that instead of a couple of Canadians being posted to each
boat, as had been the case with the corps first up the river, only two
could now be allotted to each company of the Royal Irish. The
difficulties encountered, as will be seen, were enormous, but the
first battalion of the Royal Irish overcame them with brilliant success,
and made the passage up the river faster than any other corps in
the expeditionary force. In order to “get the last ounce” of work out
of his troops, Lord Wolseley appealed to both the sporting and the
patriotic instincts of his soldiers by offering a prize of £100 to the
non-commissioned officers and men of the battalion which made the
fastest run with the fewest accidents from Sarras to Debbeh, and by
promising that the winning corps should be selected for the post of
honour in the farther advance towards Khartoum. The money prize
was awarded to the Royal Irish, who thus won the right to share in
the hardships of the march across the desert to Metemmeh. Before
that march is described, some account must be given of the portion
of the Nile up which the Royal Irish had to force their way before
they could hope to strike a blow for the relief of Gordon. For eighty
miles above Sarras the river runs through a wild and barren region
known as Batn-el-Hájar or the Womb of Rocks, of which the official
historian gives the following description:—

“After leaving Sarras the first serious obstacle to navigation is the cataract
of Semneh, the foot of which is reached after an eleven miles’ pull against a
smooth, swift current running between high rocky banks. Then come ten
miles of swifter-flowing water, against which, however, with the help of a
moderate breeze, it is possible to proceed with the help of the track lines.
At the head of this rapid is the great ‘Gate of Semneh,’ a narrow gorge,
between two rocky cliffs, partly blocked by two islands about equi-distant
from the shores and from each other. Through the three passages thus
formed the whole pent-up volume of the Nile rushes as through a sluice-
gate. Here the boats have to be unloaded, and their cargoes, package by
package, carried for half a mile over the rocks and deposited near smooth
water above the cataract. Then the track lines are passed round the rocks,
and two or three boats’ crews manning one line, each boat is in turn hauled
by main force up the water slide and run in opposite its cargo on the beach.
“For the next sixteen miles the course of the river is unimpeded by any
serious obstacle, still for every yard the current runs as strong as the
Thames in flood, on every side the basalt mountains radiate their heat, and
everywhere the sunken rocks lie in wait for the unwary steersman. At the
end of this distance the cataract of Ambako is reached, a very different
piece of water to that of Semneh. At the latter spot an obstacle to
navigation was formed by the volume of the Nile being pent into a narrow
gorge; at Ambako the same effect is produced by a broad expanse of river
being choked by an innumerable mass of reefs and islets. At full high Nile,
when the lower rocks are buried deep beneath the surface, the cataract is
not a formidable one; but as the river falls and reef after reef makes its
appearance, the difficulties of navigation increase, until at low Nile the
cataract has become impassable for the larger native craft, and is a grave
source of difficulty even to the buoyant English whalers.
“Here every means of propulsion has to be employed. At one moment the
whalers, under the lee of some islet, may be paddled gently up a narrow
lane of almost stagnant water. Then, as the shelter of the rock is lost,
though its crew pull for dear life, it is carried back some hundreds of yards
until a point of vantage is reached near the shore. Next the track line is got
 out, and step by step the boat is hauled round a projecting point by a treble
boat’s crew. Now a fresh breeze and a clear reach of moderate water make
it just possible to gain a few hundred yards by making the very most of sails
and oars; then a bit of shelving shore is met with, along which good
progress may be made by half the crew tracking, while the remainder stay
on board and use their punt-poles. At length, by dint of perseverance, the
five miles of rapid are surmounted in twice as many hours of incessant
labour, and another eight miles of open water are entered on.”[257]

Though no two cataracts are exactly alike, their general features

are much the same, and therefore it is enough merely to mention
the others passed by the XVIIIth. Above the rapids of Ambako came
the cataract of Tanjur, which, though only two miles and a half long,
usually took the boats a whole day to ascend, and fifteen miles
higher up was another rapid, nearly as troublesome as that of
Semneh. This was succeeded by ten miles of smooth water running
between hills crowned with ruins, relics of a nation so ancient that
its very name has been forgotten. Then followed the cataract of Dal,
round which stores had to be carried for three or four miles by hand;
these rapids once passed, the boats entered a long reach of calm
but swift-running water 100 miles in length, at the head of which
two more cataracts, those of Kaiber[258] and Hannek, had to be
surmounted. From Hannek to Korti the navigation of the Nile was
fairly easy.
The record of the forty days spent by the battalion between Sarras
and Korti is one of unceasing toil. The Royal Irish worked like galley
slaves. From dawn to dark, in burning and daily increasing heat,
they rowed, and poled, and hauled the boats by ropes through the
easier portions of the rapids. In the more difficult places it became
necessary to lighten the whalers, and the crews had to unload them
partially or entirely and to transport the cargo across the rocks, work
the boats through the broken water, and then carefully repack them,
with the knowledge, acquired by bitter experience, that an hour or
two later the performance would have to be repeated. Occasionally,
to avoid some especially bad piece of river, the boats had to be
emptied, lifted out of the water, and hauled across country on the
rollers provided for the purpose. Sometimes a boat missed the
narrow passage among the rocks which barred her way, and was
whirled backwards down the current until the men on the banks,
hanging on to the drag ropes with their arms almost wrenched from
the sockets, succeeded in hauling her into slack water. Occasionally
a whaler was wrecked; nearly every day and sometimes several
times in the day one or more were injured by striking against
submerged rocks, and in default of professional boat-builders the
officers had to repair the damage themselves. Major-General (then
Captain) Burton Forster’s diary contains many references to his
labours as a shipwright, and a few are quoted almost at random, to
show what “handy men” the officers of the XVIIIth became in the
expedition of 1884-85. “Found Sergeant Evans’s boat again broken
at a small rapid. Stopped, and put in a plank about nine feet long, as
the original one was cracked all that distance.” ... “Got all the ten
boats of my Company up rapids by dark and beached them for
repairs.” ... “Four-fifths of the keel torn off Corporal ——’s boat,
mended her.” The work went on for seven days a-week; there was
no rest on Sundays, or even on Christmas day, the entry for which
runs—“Divine service for Roman Catholics, then drew boats up main
rapids, kept moving, and unloaded in the evening.” In less arduous
circumstances the voyage up the Nile would have proved a pleasant
experience, for the scenery possesses a weird beauty of its own,
wholly unlike that of any other part of the world; the climate is
glorious, and the endless series of ruins which line the banks
interesting in the extreme. But the officers of the Royal Irish had no
time to admire scenery, or to study the archæology of the ancient
Egyptians. They had suddenly been turned into fresh-water sailors;
they had become jacks-of-all-trades—shipwrights, doctors, dock
labourers; they had to maintain discipline, to keep up morale, and to
cheer the men when under the strain of unceasing toil even their
buoyant spirits for a moment flagged.
An officer of the regiment thus records his reminiscences of the
boat work on the Nile—
 “Greatcoats and nothing else was the favourite kit with the men of my
boat, who prided themselves on their dress and were anxious to save one
good suit of khaki in which, they said, they would march into Khartoum. It
was a handy costume when you stuck on a sandbank or struck upon a rock,
as you could be overboard in a second to shove the boat off. Very often my
men used to row in their ‘birth-day suits’! Just before we started up the Nile
I had been transferred to a new company, and my skipper[259] left the
detailing of the crews of the boats to the Colour-Sergeant, who took
advantage of my youth and innocence (?) to put into my boat ten of the
biggest blackguards in the company, and a really good corporal of the old
stamp (Corporal George M‘Kee). Though I was new to the company, my
future boat’s crew were well known to me by name and sight as being
constant attenders at the Orderly Room, so I thought a ‘few kind words’
would do them no harm, and consequently informed them that I knew them
well, but that we were going to have no d——d nonsense in my boat, or out
of it they would go to sink or swim! A grin of amusement was all the
answer I got to my short speech.
“When we started off the Corporal and I were the only two men who had
ever handled an oar in their lives. Luckily the Corporal was a good tough
nut, and had been stroke in the regimental boat some years previously
when we were in Malta. That first day’s row is still a nightmare to me. We
left Sarras at 12 noon, the Corporal and I doing the rowing, while the
remainder did their best to imitate us, but only succeeded for the most part
in ‘catching crabs.’ The current for the Nile was slight—but except quite
close in-shore it ran at about 3 miles an hour. Unfortunately our Cox, never
having handled a tiller before, kept alternately running us out into the
stream or into the banks. The distance from Sarras to Gemai was only 12 or
14 miles, but we did not get there till 8 P.M., and I thought we should never
get there. I was more dead-beat than I have ever been before or since, and
once I had thrown myself on to the sand when we eventually reached
Gemai, I could not have gone another yard. However, youth and a sound
sleep worked wonders, and next morning I was as fit as a fiddle, and
started loading up the food stuff—a job requiring a lot of time and care, as
each box had to be fitted into its place like blocks in a Chinese puzzle. With
the stores, we also took in one or two Canadian voyageurs per company.
My company had two. Regiments who had preceded us had had a voyageur
for each boat, but a good many of them had become ‘fed up’ and had gone
home or to Hospital, and by the time the Royal Irish went up the river, the
supply only ran to about one or two for every 10 or 12 boats.
“I was given a French Canadian, and the company tool chest, and told to
bring up the rear—a pleasant task which meant I had to go to the
assistance of any boat in difficulties on a rock or sandbank, come last into
the night’s halting-place, and when there sit up most of the night mending
the ‘lame ducks’ of the fleet. The actual mending did not take so long, as
we soon learnt to patch up holes and tears, but the repairs usually involved
the unloading of the boat, and fitting together the ‘Chinese puzzle’ of boxes
in the dark was an operation that took two or three hours.
“My Canadian was a very fine specimen of his class, and had a flow of
bad language—both French and English—that I have seldom heard
surpassed or even equalled. Owing to my being able to talk a certain
amount of French, we became very good friends, and under his instruction I
became an expert voyageur both at the helm and with the pole in the bows,
and could have taken a boat up any of the rapids. Though we were such
good friends, it did not prevent him ‘doing me in the eye.’ Each boat had a
box labelled ‘Medical comforts,’ which was on no account to be opened.
Very foolishly the authorities had a printed label on the box showing its
contents, which in addition to beef-tea, arrowroot, &c., also consisted of 2
bottles of brandy and two of port wine. It had been reported that no box of
medical comforts had reached its destination intact. I determined that my
boat should be the exception, so the box was put in the stern of the boat,
so that I could keep my eye on it during the day while I pulled stroke, and
at night I slept on it in the boat. Never did it go out of my sight except at
the portages, when my friend George, the Canadian, volunteered to carry it
for safety’s (?) sake. I drew the line at carrying boxes at portages, and
trusted George. When, however, my box was examined on arrival at Korti,
though it appeared quite untouched, the liquor was all gone, the arrowroot,
&c., were, however, quite complete; George had no use for them!
“It was marvellous how quickly the men took to rowing. In a few days
they were pulling powerful if not stylish oars, and they certainly put their
hearts and their backs into it. My crew of blackguards were simply splendid,
and we never had any difference of opinion. On one occasion we came to a
very stiff bit of water, and I turned round and said, ‘Now, boys, we’ll have to
pull here,’ and the man behind—one of the biggest and sturdiest scamps in
the battalion, said, ‘Begorra, sir, we’ll pull to hell wid you,’ and a voice from
the bows added, ‘and out the other side, sir.’
“The Nile sores were the things that troubled us most; any scratches or in
many cases ordinary rowing blisters, turned into festering sores which
nothing could cure so long as we remained on the river. I took the skin off
my ankle shoving the boat off a rock, and tho’ I kept it perfectly clean, and
put vaseline on it, it would not heal. The strange thing was that once we
got into the desert, tho’ we could not wash, these sores all began to heal at
once.
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