site Assouan,
we passed the camp of the Black Watch. At Shellal, a steamer with forty
whalers in tow received us and started at once towards Wady Halfa. We
camped two or three miles above Shellal and were therefore deprived of
any sight of the first cataract. Our fifty-six Caughnawaga Indians were
given eight boats, which were towed four abreast and ten long, this was
the first time we got into the boats. We soon made use of the awning
provided for each. The country along the river here is all rock and as I
was told, back of the rock all sand. Doctor Neilson informed me that we
were now about crossing into the tropics. The natives here are
considerably darker than the Egyptians and better built men. They were
dressed similarly to the Egyptians. A navy pinnace overhauled us here
bringing Abbe Bouchard who had stayed behind in Cairo. We went a good
distance before we again met cultivated land and then only in strips,
some of which were not twenty feet wide and they were utilized every
inch. The natives follow the falling river with cultivation, as I
discovered when coming back a little over three months afterwards, when
I found crops of beans from one inch to a foot long, growing where there
had been water. We passed miles of barren rock and then again narrow
strips and altogether the country was poorer than Upper Egypt.
Occasionally we would see a few date trees along the river and now and
then a small mud-built village. Irrigation was going on the same as
below, both by hand and by ox-power. We reached Korosko on the 24th of
October the steamer was run with the bow on the shore, but the boats
towed too far from shore for us to get out.

Korosko is a small fort occupied by both English and Egyptian soldiers.
The river banks around are fifteen to twenty feet high. From my whaler I
could see a small building near the beach with a sign over the door
marked "poste Keden" Post office. We left Korosko after an hour's
stoppage and beached in good season, to give us a chance to cook supper.
At every night's camp we unavoidably did more or less damage to the
crops, which must have caused serious loss to these poor people by whom,
as I said before, every inch of the spare soil is utilized. We got under
way at sunrise. The river up this far from Assouan is a series of very
straight stretches from five to fifteen miles in length with no
difficult bends and good for navigation everywhere. The current varys
from three to five miles an