armed men as escort, forty men as sailors, which, with servants, &c.,
raised my party to ninety-six. The voyage to Gondokoro, the navigable
limit of the Nile, was reported to be from forty-five to fifty days from
Khartoum, but provisions were necessary for four months, as the boatmen
would return to Khartoum with the vessels, after landing me and my
party. In the hope of meeting Speke and Grant's party, I loaded the
boats with an extra quantity of corn, making a total of a hundred urdeps
(rather exceeding 400 bushels). I had arranged the boats to carry
twenty-one donkeys, four camels, and four horses; which I hoped would
render me independent of porters, the want of transport being the great
difficulty. The saddles, packs, and pads were all made under my own
superintendence; nor was the slightest trifle neglected in the necessary
arrangements for success. In all the detail, I was much assisted by a
most excellent man whom I had engaged to accompany me as my head man, a
German carpenter, Johann Schmidt. I had formerly met him hunting on the
banks of the Settite river, in the Base country, where he was
purchasing living animals from the Arabs, for a contractor to a
menagerie in Europe; he was an excellent sportsman, and an energetic and
courageous fellow; perfectly sober and honest. Alas! "the spirit was
willing, but the flesh was weak," and a hollow cough, and emaciation,
attended with hurried respiration, suggested disease of the lungs. Day
after day he faded gradually, and I endeavoured to persuade him not to
venture upon such a perilous journey as that before me: nothing would
persuade him that he was in danger, and he had an idea that the climate
of Khartoum was more injurious than the White Nile, and that the voyage
would improve his health. Full of good feeling, and a wish to please, he
persisted in working and perfecting the various arrangements, when he
should have been saving his strength for a severer trial.

Meanwhile, my preparations progressed. I had clothed my men all in