DONGOLA. 45 in resting at places called respectively Akasheh and Abu Fatmeh ; our rate therefore averaged just twenty miles a day. Dongola is a big mud town on the left bank of the river, with, as every one knows, a Mudir, a barracks, and a post-office, and, at that time (lastly, but by no means leastly), Lord Wolseley. Many people seem not to have known which Dongola this was, as on all the maps were marked two Dongolas Old and New ; for their information, therefore, I beg to state that it was the latter. Old Dongola is no more a town than, say, Old Sarakhs in Afghanistan ; it is a collection of ruins on the opposite (right) bank of the river, some sixty or seventy miles up stream, and has nothing whatever to do with the other Dongola : in fact, the sheikh of Old Dongola didn't know his ruins by that name at all.

Our orders from Wady Haifa were to cross the river at Dongola, and probably stay there to wait for the rest of the Camel Corps ; but, on rowing over to the town, our commanding officer received orders not to cross for some twenty miles further.

The reason of this was that small-pox had broken out in the town, and had laid low several of the