252 DISTINGUISHED CHURCHMEN
country between the second cataract and Khartoum, with a view to the construction of the Soudan Railway, the British Government pleaded with the Egyptian Government for his services. Thereupon the engineer proceeded to his office, and, having looked up his original tracings, conveyed them to the War Office. They proved of the greatest use at a critical time, and it is on record that Lord Wolseley s own candid confession was that he could not have succeeded in the expedition without them, because they showed the possible routes, and, moreover, the only places the oases where the troops could get water.
As an engineer, Sir John Fowler s crowning work was, of course, the Forth Bridge, and for this Queen Victoria conferred a baronetcy upon him. His third son (Montague) received his early education at Harrow under Dr Butler, the present Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and among his contemporaries there were three men who were destined to shine in the political world, viz., Mr G. W. E. Russell (Mr Gladstone s Under Secre tary of State for Foreign Affairs), the Earl of Crewe, and the Honourable Robert Spencer. Then, as now, Harrow was noted for its cricket, and young Fowler was frequently to be seen either at the wickets or in the field. But per haps the event of his school days to which he looks back with most joy was his trip to Egypt with his father on the occasion, at Wadi Haifa,
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