290 WITH THE CAMEL CORPS UP THE NILE.

worse. Out of the 24 officers and 430 men who had come up, only 8 officers and 210 men were returning.

Burnaby, Gough, Atherton, Law, Darley, Carmichael, and Wolfe had been killed ; St. Vincent had died of his wounds, Browne and Costello from enteric fever, and Somerset, Beach, Binning, Gore, and Murdoch had been sent home wounded or invalided. Of ourselves, thank goodness, no one had died ; Crutchley, Poe, and Magill had been sent home wounded, and Townshend, Drummond, and Baden Powell invalided but that was all. Dongola was to be abandoned, and all our troops withdrawn below Wady Haifa no chance of an autumn campaign. It was very hard lines to leave the country thus in the hands of the Mahdi and his followers, and we felt that the native confidence in England was rudely shaken. However, if the British tax-payer wouldn't stand another expedition, he wouldn't, and there was an end of it.

The morning after leaving Dongola the boats flew down the river before the wind, and we must have done the distance to Abu Fatmeh in record time. It was rather ticklish work steering through