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[Page 8]
shade trees on all footpaths, asphalt roadways, electric lighting, water supply and sewage systems, but I will not waste time on this as you can read it all in "Baedeker" and most probably know all about it already.
Where we are, everything has to be conveyed out from the Canal partly on a light line of railway 2'6" guage, thence by camels, so you can imagine we cannot indulge in many plunge baths, particularly as our one and only (at present) loco has a nasty habit of jibbing, and developing faults rendering it necessary to harness our draught horse to the trucks to get supplies to rail head, where the patient and supercilious dromedary awaits, chewing the cud.
Our men marched the whole distance carrying full loads, and found it pretty trying, as they are a bit out of condition, having been so long in the trenches, but they are good fellows, and always prove equal to any emergency, and will, I am quite sure, until the end.
Our few days stay at Tel-el-Kebir on the desert was most interesting to me, as it afforded an opportunity of studying the battlefield, trenches and earthworks constructed by Arabi Pasha 33 years ago, when he failed to stop the onslaught of the British under Wolseley. The earthworks practically surrounded our camping ground. I was amazed at the wonderful state of preservation of everything after being exposed to the winds of the desert for so long a period. In some places many whitened bones of Egyptian soldiers buried where they were bayonetted at dawn on that fateful day have worked to the surface. The British dead were collected and their remains laid in a well kept cemetery surrounded by a dwarf wall and iron palisading near the Tel-el-Kebir Railway Station.
After this show is over here, I hope we will get a look in at France, or Servia in the Spring, for I feel pretty sanguine next spring will just about see the drame through to a satisfactory end, and I should personally like to be somewhere near the "Big Smoke" when "peace with honor" is proclaimed, yes "with honor" and "damnation to the Kaiser and his crew" for this is the only peace that is thinkable or acceptable to Britons, otherwise far better the war should continue for five year or fifty years if necessary, and if we cannot win,