The San Francisco call., 1898-01-30

ter, all fiocked to the recruiting office, and, providing they could pass the medical examination, were enrolled. Some of these men had never had rife in their hands before, did not even know the rudiments of the goose step, but the old stagers pulled them through and in ten days they were sent forth, clad in the traditional red jacket of the British army, to fight the mother country's battles in Egypt.
 But despite it's heterogeneous char acter the regiment soon proved its ca pacity. Three weeks on board the troopship, with constant drilling and strictest of discipline, brought it into a compact and SerViceable form, and when we landed at Suakim the British officers, knowing nothing of the hap hazard origin of the contingent, were surprised at the character of the troops Australia was able to turn out
 So was Tommy Atkins, who was soon on the friendliest possible terms with his brother from across the sea. For one thing the Australian youth had a proficiency in swearing which was the envy of the Britishers, and when the English regiments returned home they took many new and forcible cuss words with them, which, even at the present day, impart a strangely Australian flavor to many an imperial barrack yard.
 Suakim, when the Australians land ed, was one of the busiest ports. The shores of the little lagoon were fairly encircled with great ocean steamers. Men-of-war were dotted here and there, their guns commanding the far away ranges behind the camp where the rebels clustered; magnificent P. and O. liner, with wide, open ports and clean, well ventilated decks, proved the care and attention which awaited the sick and wounded. The town, which is on an island and can be reached only by a guarded causeway, fairly hummed with military life. Every where there was the orderly hustle of a well-regulated camp, and strangest of all there was the British navy, with his vast bulk of beef-fed flesh.
 The navvy, who. except when drunk. | is generally a man of peace, seemed strangely out of place amid such war like surroundings. But he was there strictly on business. He was to build a railway after the soldiers had paci- fled the hostile tribes with rifles and machine guns. And at the time we all | fondly believed that our mission was | to take that railway right across 200 miles of desert until it struck the great river at Berber. Thus. though 1t was | too late to save Gordon, we were to ! solve the Central African problem and
 insure the pacification of the Upper ! Nile region.
 The railway would have been made 1 right enough, though at what cost of men and moneyI know not, had not the | British Government. with characteris- i tic Vacillation, withdrawn from the en-
 terprise before it was well begun All i the material for the railway, even to ! the depots and name boards. was on
 the spot; dozens of steamers freighted
 With rails and construction plant were Tn the harbor, waiting to discharge. and
 had the line gone through the map of
 Africa might have been colored in a very different way. At any rate, Cen tral Africa would have been opened to 1 European trade and the fanatical fol-
 lowers of the Mahdi would have found
 sudden reason to mend their ways.
 The fiat, sandy shore of Sualirn Ray was one vast camp. The soldiers were
 not quartered in the town; the place was much too small, but were canned
 on the plain, protected only by a slight trench and a thin line of sen
 tries from the attacks of the hostile Soudanese. And Fuzzy Wuzzy. as
 Kipling has christened him, is a terri
 bly treacherous enemy, especially on 2
 dark night. His tricks are endless
 he can sneak through a line of the
 most vigilant sentries, and at one time
 his nightly visits used to cause great
 alarm in the British camp
 The soldiers slept in large tents q,
 the Indian pattern, each holding forty or fifty men. And at night time. wher all were quietly sleeping, Fuzzy Wuzzy