The Sun.
London, England, 1868-01-06 00:00:00

THE INDIAN RELIEF SERVICE.

(From a Correspondent of the Times)
ALEXANDRIA, Dec. 26.
The transport by the overland route from Eng-
land of troops to supply the necessary annual reliefs
of the garrison of India commenced at the end' of
the autumn. The system has been carefully

watched in this country. Time sufficient to ob-

serve its practical working has elapsed, and it must
be confessed that the anticipations of success openly

avowed by some of its originators have hardly been
realized. As an instance, I may state briefly how

the 27th Regiment, which it is hoped may to-day
embark here for England, has been brought from
India. On the 14th of November this regimect

left Bombay in the troopship Euphrates, high of
hope to be at home by Christmas-day. On the
6th of December the Euphrates arrived at Suez

with the 27th, four batteries of artillery, and a large
number of men sent home to be discharged. Accord-

ing to the theory of the British transport through
Egypt these troops should without delay have been
forwarded by rail to Alexandria, where another
troopship should have been waiting to take them on
board, and convey them immediately to England.
Practically, however, the case has been considerably
different. The Crocodile, which should have been
at Alexandria on or about the 6th of December to
receive the 27th on their arrival in Egypt, sailed
from Cork on the Bth of that month, when she ought
to have been at Alexandria on the 7th at the latest.
She had fortunately a fine passage, and arrived at
Alexandria with the 6th 'Regiment on the 21st of
December. On the afternoon of the 22d the latter
regiment was despatched by rail from Alexandria,
and was embarked on board the Jurnna, which hap-

pened to be at Suez. The 27th have not yet
arrived at Alexandria, though I believe they

are expected this afternoon. While the Eu-
phrates has been lying in the Roads of Suez it
has been found impossible to allow the soldiers to
go ashore. They have been literallf " cabined,
cribbed, confined," have been tantalised by the near
prospect of the forbidden shore, and have been pro-
bably doomed to spend their Christmas-day on the
weary railway, instead of, as they fully hoped, at

home.
Nor is it in the actual passage of the troops alone
that the directors of the transport service (whoever
they may be) are unhappy. As troops returning
from India have sometimes been known to have
among them some cases of illness, it was decreed
thht an hospital should be erected at Suez. In order
that this hospital might be of use, ignorant persons
might have supposed that it would be completed
before the transport of troops commenced. Not so,
however. Till within one or two days the high-
sounding Victoria Hospital, Suez, has been but a
ghastly skeleton of poles and scaffolding, and it is
but little more than a week ago that boards arrived
at Port Said, which, after being conveyed through
the Suez Canal, are to be used to construct the hos-
pital. It is believed that it will not be capable of
receiving patients until the transport of troops has
ceased for the season. To compensate for the ab-
sence of the hospital, where atone their services
would be of much avail, female nurses have been
sent out by the Crocodile, who,
it is supposed, can
in the meantime only be intended to find a field for
their exertions among the mules collected for the
Abyssinian expedition. A very nice steamtug has
been sent to Suez, via the canal, by the English Go-
vernment, to assist in the embarcation of troops.
Prudence might have dictated that the tug should
draw such a depth of water as might allow her easily
to ply in the notoriously shallow channel. Pru-
dence was, however, boldly cast aside, and the nicely
painted Prompt appeared at Suez drawing about a
foot more water than the tugs already employed
there. In the existing state of the channel the
Prompt could not move, and appeared likely to be-
come a mere fixed monument of government
management. Proverbially, however, Fortuna
favct fortibus ; the channel was dredged, and the
Prompt, without coals on board, and it is whis-
pered at high tide, will be able to get in and out to
the roads.

No preparations have been made at either Suez
or here to receive troops in case they may not be
able after their passage by the railway to be put •
immediately on board ship. At both places, never- •
theless, though much more frequently at Suez than
in this harbour, all communication between the
shore and the shipping is often interrupted by a
sudden gale. The Gth Regiment left here the other
day when it was almost quite fine. The following
morning, when they arived at Suez, it was blowing
so bard that it was extremely doubtful whether
they could be got off to the Jumna. They were
put on board, but had the wind been a very little
stronger they must have remained on shore without
either houses or tents, and, not improbably, would
have been condemned to house themselves in the
railway carriages in which they had been trans-
ported from Alexandria.
These little incidents of the transport service,
which do not appear to augur well for its succssful
prosecution, are naturally much discussed in Euro-
pean society here. They do not tend to elevate
our official management of public affairs in the eyes
of either the educated Egyptians or the French,
who are our keen rivals in this country. It is sup-
ppsed here that the attempt made by our Govern-
ment to form and maintain a special transport ser-
vice
for the troops is a weuliarly faulty and ex-
pensive arrangement. It would have been
inure desirable to have made a contract with
the Peninsular and Oriental Company to convey
the troops out and home. This company his
already an effective transit service, always ready
for use. The Government troopships on the
southern side of the Isthmus of Suez will be
for six months of the year —since the Indian reliefs
can only be conducted during the winter—use-
less, and will be idle, with their entire crews, at
Bombay. Thus, the capital invested in their con-
struction bears interest for six months alone in each
year. In the hands of the Peninsular and Oriental
Company they would do good service the whole
year round. Were the Government determined to
take upon themselves the transport of the troops to
)l India, it canot be denied that it would have been