with apparently overwhelming difficulties, but the energy of the commander and men triumphed over the physical obstacles that blocked their way. They transported the steamers which were to navigate the Great River in sections from Seleucia in the bay of Antioch to Birejik on the upper Euphrates, in spite of the opposition of the pasha of Egypt, who was then supreme in those parts, and in defiance of the impediments offered by the hilly country to heavy metal goods. After immense labour and much suffering from malaria —Chesney himself was struck down by brain fever for a while—the two steamers, named respectively the Euphrates and the Tigris, were put together on the upper river at Birejik, and the voyage down was begun under favourable auspices. They had almost got as far down as Anah, the spot where Chesney began his former exploration, when a sudden storm wrecked the Tigris, with the loss of twenty lives, and she had to be left at the bottom of the river, while the Euphrates proceeded on her way down, and, having safely reached the mouth, steamed across to Bushire in the summer of 1836. The main work of the expedition was now accomplished. Chesney had proved that the Euphrates was navigable for steam vessels through the entire course, from a point about 120 miles from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf; he had shown how short and rapid a route this would prove to India; and had confirmed his previous views about the tractability of the Arab tribes that ranged the banks. The foundering of the Tigris was an accident that might have occurred anywhere, and formed no argument against the practicability of the route. He remained some time longer to explore the Tigris and Karūn, and to make a journey to India to consult with the authorities at Bombay on the development of the new route, and did not return to England till the middle of 1837. In London he busied himself in working for the reward and promotion of his officers and in preparing his great work on the expedition, but was interrupted in this task by being ordered to China to command the artillery at the Hongkong station in 1843, where he remained till 1847. He was one of the party attacked on the Canton river by the Chinese mob, and was present at the consequent bombardment of the Bogue forts by Sir John Davis. On his return to England he published (1850) the first two volumes, geographical and historical, of his ‘Expedition for the Survey of the Rivers Euphrates and Tigris;’ a ‘History of the Past and Present State of Firearms,’ a work of high value from a military point of view; and a volume on the ‘Russo-Turkish Campaigns of 1828–9,’ based upon his personal observations at the close of the war. Having completed his service as colonel commandant of the Cork division, he had now retired to his home in the ‘kingdom’ of Mourne, county Down, where the greater part of what remained of his long life was spent. In 1855 he was invited by the Duke of Newcastle, secretary at war, to raise and command a foreign legion for service in the Crimea, but a change of ministers brought the project to naught. In 1856 a scheme for connecting India with England by a railway route running through the Euphrates valley was set on foot by Mr. (now Sir William) Andrew, and Chesney was naturally invited to take a prominent part in advocating this adaptation of his own scheme. Government sanctioned another expedition to examine into the feasibility of such a railway, and at the age of sixty- seven Chesney set out, accompanied by Sir John Macneill, the engineer, and thoroughly surveyed the ground with a view to ascertaining the best point for the new line to intersect the range of hills which sever the Euphrates valley from the bay of Antioch. The result was highly satisfactory, and, after having by persistent efforts obtained the necessary concessions from the Turkish government, Chesney returned home, only to find that the home government did not dare to carry out or even encourage a scheme that was regarded with dislike by Palmerston's ally, the Emperor Louis Napoleon. Yet one more attempt was made. At the age of seventy- three Chesney again went out to Constantinople in 1862 to win fresh concessions from the Porte for a renewed railway scheme, and, after a successful mission, found himself again baulked by the timidity of the British government. He visited Paris in 1869, and received the compliments of De Lesseps, who s tyled him generously the ‘father of the Suez Canal.’ He had now published (1868) by government desire the concluding ‘Narrative of the Euphrates Expedition,’ and in 1871 began to hope again that his life's idea was at last to be realised; for a committee of the House of Commons was appointed to examine into the merits of the Euphrates railway scheme, and only a few months before his death the aged general, as full of vigour as ever, though eighty-two years old, attended the meetings of the committee and gave his valuable evidence. He did not live to see the favourable but ineffectual report of the committee, for on 30 Jan. 1872 he died at his home in Mourne in his eighty-third year. He had received the Geographical Society's gold medal so long before as 1837, and, besides being a member of various learned
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