mixed with far Canadian fields
And murmur of Canadian streams.
--C. D. G. ROBERTS.

The awe-inspiring designation which Dan had bestowed upon his friend
was not readily dropped. The Canadians seized and used it joyfully.
Others who heard the name and were not aware of the joke in which it
originated supposed that the bearer of it was really an Indian chief,
about whose bloody prowess they were ready to believe any tales which
the ingenious Mr. Murphy might invent. And so, for the remainder of
the voyage, Scotty was known throughout the column as Big Scalper, the
fiercest Indian from the Canadian wilds.

But in the days that followed Dan found few opportunities for indulging
his reckless humour, for soon the army was moving forward rapidly and
the boatmen were in the midst of stupendous toil. The River Column had
been bidden to make haste. Gordon was shut up in Khartoum waiting his
rescuers, and no one must rest. On they went, day after day, past
dreary stretches of sand, broken only by an occasional and equally
dreary dom palm; past barren ledges of rock, deserted mud villages and
ruined temples; battling madly with a rapid, only to find when it was
overcome that another lay ahead; toiling strenuously to catch up with
the enemy, only to see at nightfall their spearheads disappearing over
the last brown ridge of sand hills. Scotty felt himself becoming a
machine, something that did the day's work mechanically. To toil all
day in the bow or stern of a boat in the scorching heat of the pitiless
sun, or walk over blistering rock and dazzling sand; to sleep at night
inside a square of good British bayonets, chilled by the numbing wind
from the north; to rise at the bugle-call and go at it again--that was
the unvarying programme. Cataract and sand plain succeeded cataract
and sand plain with such deadly monotony, that all sense of time,
place, and progress was blotted out. They seemed stationary in an
endless desert, toiling against an endless river, always moving but
never advancing.

He often wondered, as he watched the brown, turbid water racing down to
meet him, what secret the mysterious Nile held for him. What would be
its bearing upon his life? But he always ended his questionings with
the assurance that whatever the outcome might be, even though he should
never see it, it was controlled by a higher Power, and he was content.

And through all the hardships and stress of the work, the strug