Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 | Page 4

my colleague's idea in having such a variety of nether garments was to use them respectively, on a similar principle to the revolvers, when he rode in hot haste with his vivid account of the latest battle to the telegraph office.
But, unfortunately, this recent campaign did not, after all, necessitate these elaborate preparations, for there were no dervishes for us to shoot at or descriptions of bloody battles to be telegraphed. At all events, the cloudy ammonia and the thirteen breeches, with the assistance of a silken sash--a different color for each day of the week--made the brightest and smartest looking little man in camp. However, when I reflect on this new style of war correspondent, who, I forgot to mention, also carried with him two tents, a couple of beds, sundry chairs and tables, a silver-mounted dressing case, two baths, and a gross of toothpicks, and I think of the severe simplicity of the old style of campaigning when a famous correspondent who is still on the warpath, and who always sees the fighting if there be any, on one arduous campaign took with him the modest outfit of a tooth brush and a cake of carbolic soap, I joyfully feel that with the younger generation our profession is keeping pace with the luxury of the times.
FROM BERBER TO SUAKIM.
Toward the end of the campaign four colleagues--Messrs. Knight, Gwynne, Scudamore, Maud--and myself, took this opportunity of traversing a country very little known to the outside world, and a route which no European had followed for fourteen years, from Berber to Suakim. Moreover, there was a spice of adventure about it; there was an uncertainty regarding an altogether peaceful time on the way--a contingency which always appeals strongly to Englishmen of a roving and adventurous disposition. Only quite recently raids organized by the apparently irrepressible Osman Digna had been successfully carried out a few miles north and south of Berber. At the moment General Hunter, with two battalions of troops, was marching along the banks of the River Atbara to hunt for Osman and his followers, but there was much speculation as to whether five-and-twenty dervish raiders were still this side of the river, and drawing their water from the wells on the Suakim road.
I was hardly prepared for this journey--one, probably, of twelve days--for my campaigning outfit, which I was compelled to leave on board my nugger on the Nile, had not yet arrived in Berber. Unfortunately, I could not wait for the gear, as the Sirdar insisted on our departure at once, for the road would be certainly insecure directly General Hunter returned from covering our right flank on the Atbara. I had no clothes but what I stood up in, and I had been more or less standing up in them without change for the last two weeks.
Our caravan of nineteen camels, with two young ones, quite babies, following their mothers, and a couple of donkeys, about seven in the evening of the 30th of October quitted the mud-baked town of Berber, sleeping in the light of a new moon, and silently moved across the desert toward the Eastern Star. Next morning at the Morabeh Well, six miles from Berber, our camels having filled themselves up with water, and our numerous girbas, or water skins, being charged with the precious liquid--till they looked as if they were about to burst--our loads were packed and we started on a journey of fifty-two miles before the next water could be reached.
We made quite a formidable show trailing over the desert. Probably it would have been more impressive if our two donkeys had restrained their ambition, and kept in the rear instead of leading the van. But animals mostly have their own way in these parts, and asses are no exception to this rule. The two baby camels commenced "grousing" with their elders directly we halted or made a fresh advance; they probably had an inkling of what was in store for them. After all, the world must seem a hard and unsympathetic place when, having only known it for two or three weeks, you are compelled to make a journey of 240 miles to keep up with your commissariat. One of these babies was only in its eighteenth day. In spite of its tender youth the little beast trotted by the side of its mother, refreshing itself whenever we came to a halt with a pull from her teats, and, to the astonishment of all, arrived in Suakim safe and sound after twelve days' marching.
To the uninitiated regarding the "grousing" of camels, I should explain that it is a peculiar noise which comes from their long funnel necks early or late, and for what reason it is difficult to tell. Sometimes the sound is not unlike the bray of