[Illustration: WHALER GIG FOR THE NILE.]

As soon as the authorities had finally made up their minds to send a
flotilla of boats to Cairo for the relief of Khartoum, not a moment was
lost in issuing orders to the different shipbuilding contractors for the
completion, with the utmost dispatch, of the 400 "whaler-gigs" for service
on the Nile. They are light-looking boats, built of white pine, and weigh
each about 920 lb., that is without the gear, and are supposed to carry
four tons of provisions, ammunition, and camp appliances, the food being
sufficient for 100 days. The crew will number twelve men, soldiers and
sailors, the former rowing, while the latter (two) will attend the helm.
Each boat will be fitted with two lug sails, which can be worked reefed, so
as to permit an awning to be fitted underneath for protection to the men
from the sun. As is well known, the wind blows for two or three months
alternately up and down the Nile, and the authorities expect the flotilla
will have the advantage of a fair wind astern for four or five days at the
least. On approaching the Cataracts, the boats will be transported on
wooden rollers over the sand to the next level for relaunching.

* * * * *

THE PROPER TIME FOR CUTTING TIMBER.

_To the Editor of the Oregonian:_

Believing that any ideas relating to this matter will be of some interest
to your readers in this heavily-timbered region, I therefore propose giving
you my opinion and conclusions arrived at after having experimented upon
the cutting and use of timber for various purposes for a number of years
here upon the Pacific coast.

This, we are all well aware, is a very important question, and one very
difficult to answer, since it requires observation and experiment through a
course of many years to arrive at any definite conclusion; and it is a
question too upon which even at the present day there exists a great
difference of opinion among men who, being engaged in the lumber business,
are thereby the better qualified to form an opinion.

Many articles have been published in the various papers of the country upon
this question for the past thirty years, but in all cases an opinion only
has been given, which, at the present day, such is the advance and higher
development of the intellectual faculties of man, that a mere opinion upon
any question without sufficient and substantial reasons to back it is of
little value.

My o