Morning journal and courier., 1883-03-15
The New English Army.


 Out in front spread 8 fan-shaped dotted line of mounted men, whoselast exercise in the saddle had been taken between Knights bridge and the Victoria docks, when the three squadrons of household cavalry marched to | their authorization just three weeks earlier-a big change truly in 21 days How now, my l worthy club critic You had snorted at the idea of these big troopers and their colossal ] horses being employed on this expeditionf; you had foretold with your usual accuracy l that horses would perish and men would | smother under the heat and sand of the Egyp-
 tian desert but see, far out over the yellow wilderness how the big men and the big
 horses-one day off ship board remember hold their way over drift and ridge and level, as though Magfar had changed places with Mayfair, and Mahuta's mosque was the mar ble arch in Hyde Park. 'tAh, but, you will say, wait bit, it is too short test they will all collapse before they get half way to Cairo" Well, my worthy prophet, let us go on another three weeks as we have gone back that period This very day three weeks, Thursday, the 14th September, these same big troopers and troop horses will be enter
 ing the Egyptian capital, having ridden over 40 miles in that one days march, and from the day you saw them pass through Cornhill, when you uttered your famous prophecy. un- til the day they got to Cairo, will have been exactly six weeks this day at Fl Magfar is the halfway house on the journey. So much for the men and horses now how about the young infantry soldiers About two miles behind the cavalry they plod along through the deep sand. They too are only two days off board they are carrying 70 rounds of ammunition man, intrenching tools, rations, and the rest of it; but they hold on over the endless plain, though already the great sun ball of fire is growing hot on their backs, and the desert before them is beginning to dance and waver with mirage. Farther back come two horse artillery guns. They have the hard est time of all, for it was late yesterday when they got on shore, and all night long they have been hard at work getting the battery together, ready with its countless details for the service before them, and now this soft yielding sand has made the 13-pounders seem like 4O-pounders on the collar. In the seven and-t twenty years that had elapsed since the Crimean campaign England had weged many wars in various parts of the world-the great conflict in India, wars in China. New Zealand,
 Abyssinia, Ashantee, South Africa, and Af-
 ghanistan she had spent about e10O, 900, 900
 in these conflicts and they had brought their various results of colonial dominion extended, empire restored, or aggression punished. But in one respect there was 8 striking similarity pervading them. In none of them had our soldiers met modern artillery handled by trained artillerists. We had fought again st
 Ashantee fint-guns, Afghan matchlocks, Kafir
 assegais, New Zealand hatchets; and if in hi-
 na and in the Indian mutiny our adversaries had attempted to bring artillery against us, the guns were either so old or the gunners
 so ignorant that the danger was greater to the friend that stood behind the breach than to
 the enemy who was in front of the muzzles. The big black horses had reached @ point in the sand about 10 miles from Ishmailia, when the desert horizon to the west began to show
 sign of movement other than mirage or dust
 spout a mile or two in front, extending
 right and left about the same distance, dot ted line of horsemen and camelmen could be seen, some on the sky line, others half con- cealed behind it. Right in front, mile dis tant, rose the great heaps of sand and clay which marked the site of some city of times when the pyramids were growing youngsters,
 but now ruins and rubbish, called Tel Fl Ma huta. The earth mounds were black with men who had suspended their work of dam ming the adjacent canal and blocking the rail way from the high piled debris of Pharaoh's bricks, and now swarmed up upon the loftier levels of the sand heaps for better view of the approaching soldiers, whose drink they were engaged in stopping; and now from the ground on the right of the sand heaps came 8 puff of white smoke, and rush and roar of iron, the preliminary operations of aim. gun laying, and distance judging having been so accurately performed at the further end, that the missile, Krupp shell at this end, passed a yard or two over the heads of gr cup of staff officers, among whom stood the Com mander-in-Chief and, bursting 20 yards in rear killed the near leader in an artillery team just arrived on the ground
 Widow Achsa Lamson died of pneumonia, at the residence of her son-in-law, Augustine Wilcox, in West Granby, March 2, aged S1