THE RECONOUEST OF THE .SOUDAN. 63 Dervishes had destroyed its former prosperity. Dem Zebehr was in ruins, only a icw people living in straw huts near the neighbouring marshes. Out of the bricks from the walls of the ruined Government House, once Zebehr's palace, and afterwards the home of Lupton Bev, Gordon's English lieutenant, M.Liotard built a small fort. He then marchedon to Meshra-er-Rek, whichhe occupied on July 23rd. Meshraer-Rek was theplace to which,in the daysbefore had theNileand the Soudan Railway for hisline of communications. The French had to drag everything by hundreds of milesof narrowpaths through forest and jungle on the heads of their black carriers. No wonder they advanced so slowly.

Marchand's expedition in 1897 pushed a number of small columns into the country east of Dem Zebehr. Two gunboats,each sixtv fee*: long,built in sections, and anumber of shallow SKETCH MAP ILLUSTRATING THE RACE FOR THE NILE.

the Mahdist revolt, stern-wheel steamers used to ascend every year from Khartoum, bringing draft barges of the same construction, were sent to the Congo to form a French flotilla on the Upper Nile. To get them up the Congo into its northern tributary, theUbanghi, was a comparatively easy matter, but then they had to be conveyed as far as possible up a branch of the Ubanghi, dragged through rapids, and often carried round an impassable cataract, until at last the problem had to be faced of conveying them through forest and jungle over the watershed between the basin of the Nile and that of the Congo. The Such or Juhr river, a stream which runs into the Bahr-el-Ghazal, and so reaches the WhiteNile, was chosen as the waterway on which the boats were to be put together.

supplies and soldiers for the garrison of the Bahr-el-Ghazal province. The French were thus at the head of a water-way, leading down to the main stream of the Nile,but it was only with the utmost difficulty that they could maintain themselves in this advanced position. There wasno sign of the Dervishes or ofany other enemy,but supplies had for the most part to be brought up by porters from the starting-point of the expedition on the northern borders of the French "■ Captain Marchand, with twobattalions otnative troops and 3,000 porters, wasbusy with this work all through the summer. The Sirdar