168 UGANDA AND THE EGYPTIAN SOUDAN.

regular soldiers, and from a thousand to fifteen hundred irregular negro troops. A desperate struggle took place. Suleiman Bey was driven beyond Dem Idris ; but he afterwards surrounded Gessi at that place, and for three months fierce and almost daily fights took place. During the whole of this time Gressi's troops had only dhurra to eat, and many of his Nyam Nyam soldiers lived on the dead. The horrors of this siege, he told me, were indescribable. At last he managed to make a successful sally, and built a small redoubt near enough to Suleiman's camp to shell it with considerable effect, and he managed to blow up several of the rebels' powder magazines. Upon this Suleiman fled, being hotly pursued by Gessi, and finally he was driven from his last stronghold at Dem Suleiman. He lost many of his men, escaping for a time with some eight hundred soldiers, but was afterwards captured and shot. Of his fifty captains, forty-seven were killed in battle ; one died subsequently, and only two now remain. After the war some two thousand of his men were shot or hanged, and three thousand expelled from their territory ; strong measures being the only way of dealing with them. Thus a most bloody war was ended, and Gessi was raised for his services to the rank of Pasha.

As soon as the war was ended, he undertook the onerous work of establishing a good and just