Quote Originally Posted by altfritz View Post
I'm reading an "Official History of the Gordon Relief Expedition" (probably not the exact wording of the title) and it describes the journey up the Nile in great detail - day by day, in fact. It is all a series of official military reports and what is annoying is sometimes they use East and West but others they say the right bank or left bank! So, should I assume that as they are heading South the right bank is the West bank?!
Left and right banks of a river are always when you are looking downstream.

(Of course, that doesn't mean Gordon knew that, he might be referring to the direction he was traveling on the river)