He
married a full-blood and has several splendid-looking children. At the
time of Riel's first half-breed rising, Kennedy's services attracted the
notice of Sir Garnet Wolseley. When, in 1844, Wolseley was detailed to
lead an expedition for the relief of Chinese Gordon, then at Khartoum,
he had to think of the details of river-transportation, and the
flat-boats of the Nile recalled the Canadian batteaux and Alec Kennedy.
It is a far call from the Lesser Slave to the Nile, but men who can
navigate boats and manage crews are rare, and the outcome was that this
Scots-Sioux,--strong, silent, faithful, was ordered to collect a party
of Canadian voyageurs and report to the Commander-in-Chief. Reaching
Egypt, Kennedy was at once attached to a young officer, Kitchener, who,
too, was later to win his spurs. Round the camp-fire we induce Alec
Kennedy, between puffs from a black pipe, to tell in short ruminating
sentences of the hansoms slurring over London mud, of the yellow Nile,
of Africa's big game, of the camel that takes the place of the moose, of
the swart Arabs and Egyptians. But of his own deeds of derring-do Alec
has little to say.
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