IV PREFACE.

containing a good deal of information on subjects that required to be relieved by a considerable variety of striking colour.

To write a complete story of the war in Egypt and the Soudan with such descriptive accounts, sketches of persons and scenes, explanations of financial and administrative changes, and narratives of successive events as would make a comprehensive and trustworthy as well as a popular history, was not rendered difficult because of the lack of sources of information. The real difficulty was in the profusion of material, which had to be examined, assorted, compared, selected, and wrought into suitable form.

It is not for the writer to say that he has succeeded in the endeavour to make the following pages contain accurate and complete information, and to be at the same time easy and interesting to the reader. He has not spared effort, and he has already the happiness of knowing that, when three out of the four volumes were issued, they were well received and spoken of by competent critics and reviewers in terms which should suffice to make him grateful, and to sustain the hope (already largely realized) for an equally favourable and friendly greeting from thousands of readers, not only in this country, but in those great Colonies which are so closely and inseparably a portion of the British Empire, that the instant the call to arms was heard within their townships or on their remoter borders efficient contingents of trained and trusty men were ready and eager to share the hardships and the perils of the camjaaign.

London, February, i88y.