WARS OF THE NINETIES. 58 successfully resisted our attack in 1885, and had been the scene of the defeat of our Jaalin friends in July, 1897. There were no war correspondents with the reconnaissance, and the best description of it available is contained in a letter from Wortley himself.

this kind the Sirdar took steps to clear the Atbara country of the enemy. General Hunter was accordingly sent up the river with a flying column, which left Berber on October 23rd. It reached Adarama only to find that Osman had broken up his camp and fled, so after reconnoitring the country southwards without finding any trace of the enemy, the columnreturned to Berber, and on November 9th a permanent post of two companies, under Lieutenant Wolseley, was left in a mud fort at Dakhila, opposite Ed Darner, to guard the point where the Atbara reaches the Nile.

" We leftBerber," he says, " with three gunboats, and steaming southwards we passed the pyramids of Meroe, and found ourselves, at five a.m.on themorningofOctober 16th.withina few milesof the townand forts of Metemneh.

"The camp (of the Dervishes) lies some three miles back from the river, but nine forts in succession along the bank lookedvery menacing and businesslike as we approached. Between each fort was a shelter-trench, and through our glasses we could see men running into them and preparing for the attack. On a ridge to the west of the town there appeared a force of about 15,000 men, all apparently well armed.

The places to which the Berber garrison had retired were Shendy and Metemneh, some seventy miles above Berber. Metemneh was reported to be strongly entrenched and held by a large force. The Dervish leaders had shown good judgment in choosing it for their rallying point after Berber was lost, for it is the point where the most practicable route across the Bayuda desert strikes the river. They were thus able to watch Berber on the one hand and the desert route from Merowe on the other; and, more than this, their presence there, while an obstacle to our advance along the river, forced us also tokeep a considerablegarrison in the Dongola province, which otherwise might have been raided by the desert route. Having cleared the country up to the Atbara, the Sirdar directed Captain Keppel,r.n., to reconnoitre Metemneh with his gunboats. Keppel took with him the three new steamers [El Zaffir and her two sister-snips). He had with him a hundred riflemen of the 9th Soudanese Regiment, and his quick-firing guns andMaxims were manned by gunners of the Royal Marine Artillery. He wasaccompanied by MajorStuart-Wortley, of the staff. The major was the only officer in theexpeditionwhohad everbeen as far as Khartoum, and he only saw it from the deck of one of Sir Charles Wilson's gunboats on the terrible day when they arrived in sight of the town only to find it in possession of theMahdi. It was he who brought down the news of the disaster to the British camp at Gabut after the wreck of the steamers. To do this he had to slip past a Dervish battery in the dark in an open boat, with the message from Wilson that brought Lord Charles Beresford to the rescue of his shipwrecked crews.

" We steamed to within 2,000 yards, and then opened fire at the first fort. The enemy replied vigorously, but their shells for the most part fell short. Steaming slowly on. we shelled each fort in succession, and threw some shells at extreme range into the town. When abreast of the town the nearest fort was a thousand yards from us. We were then hotly engaged, and our boat being the leading one, we got all the hottestof the sire. "' Our fire was good, all our shells bursting oneafter another intheir embrasures. Suddenly from the left bank a rifle-fire wasopened onus, the enemybeingconcealed in thick scrub about four hundred yards away. We turned aMaxim gun in their direction,whichsoon silenced them. " A Krupp shell then burst on board on the lower deck, cutting the feed-pipe in two and dangerously wounding one man. We went right past Metemneh to opposite where the British camp wasin 1885. Then,turning round and engagingthe enemy'sforts again,we steamed past them to an island about five miles below, picking up six of their boatson the way.

"On Sunday, the 17th, we steamed up and renewed our attack, but owing to the large expenditure of ammunition the day before we could not continue it long. The enemy's fire improved a good deal, and they had inc 1 the number of their guns during thenight. Our other two steamers were hit with shells,and we were prettywell pepperedby rifle-bullet-. We steamed once more past the forts, and the'.l concentrated our fire on their grain -boats, which we sunk.

Major Stuart-Wortley had now the satisfaction of helping to reopen the way to Khartoum. He was going to assist Keppel in the reconnaissance of Metemneh, the town that had