oo ON THE WHITE NILE.

CHAPTER XII.

THE " RACE FOR THE NILE."

~T T THEN the Sirdar returned to Cairo at \/ Y the end of November it was expected that active operations would be susattended the Sirdar's movements, and some of them werehopeless failures.

One of the expeditions that ended thus in a collapse was a British enterprise. Major Macdonald, who was in command of the British forces on the Great Lakes, had been ordered to proceed northward with an expedition the precise object of which has never been explained. According to one account he was to -cure a footing on the Upper Nile in the Fashoda district, in order to be in possession there before the arrival of French expeditions which were known to be on the way from the Bahr-el-Ghazal. According to another version of his plans he was to march from Uganda into the region of Lake Rudolf, east of the Upper Nile, to save that district from being overrun by the Abyssinians, who were believed to be contemplating annexation in that direction, Menelek having recently appointed Colonel Leontieff, a Russian officer, "Governor of the EquatorialProvinces of Ethiopia." In any a sa Macdonald's expedition was intended to secure for British East Africa a large portion of the debateable land towards the headwaters of the Nile.

pendedtill the rise of the river openedthe way for the final advance on Khartoum in the late summer of 1898. Meanwhile the railway was to be continued to the Atbara ; stores and supplies of all kinds were to be accumulated at Berber and beyond; and at the end of the year the Italians were to evacuate Kassala, and an Egyptian garrison was to take possession of the place, thus giving the Sirdar a new point from which to menace the centre of the Khalifa's power. On the enemy's side the Emir Mahmoud was keeping quiet at Metemneh, and rumour said that the Dervishes were fortifying the heights above the Shabluka pass. It was generally expected that nothing would happen on the Nile till the Sirdar marched to the capture of Metemneh as the first stage in the attack on Khartoum. But, as we shall see, the .saying that in war it is the unexpected that happens wasin this case, foronce, to bejustified by events.

Before relating the stirring story of the Atbara campaign in the spring of 1898, it will be well to note what was happening in other parts of the Upper Nile region. Besides the Egyptian advance on the north, other expeditions werepushing into this vast territ.ry from the west, the east, and the south, though none of themobtained anythinglike thesuccess which From the very outset, however, misfortune dogged his enterprise. First, there was a long dela\ ingettingtogether his supplies andporters at Kikuyu, which had been chosen for his starting-point;then he was taken seriously ill,and it was not till October that he beganhis march