I3S EGYPT AND THE SOUDAN.

a son of the Sheikh of the Robatab, who wanted to advance towards Handab against the wish of Suleiman Wad Gami, the Sheikh of the Monassir, who had, it was said, just left Birti for the purpose of laying his complaint before the Mahdi's emir at Berber.

Birti was only thirty miles from the place where our troops were bivouacked, and at about the same distance on the right a band of robbers were raiding on the route from Duguiyet to Berber. The friendly natives were now to be left behind, and the pleasant aspect of the country was to be changed for rock-strewn cataracts, a rugged and comparatively barren shore, and a series of deserted huts and hovels. The Gerendid Cataract, known by the natives as Hajen Oolad Gurbar, turned out to be not a cataract at all, but a rapid between rocks, and there did not appear to be much danger in the passage; but there was a report that a band of the Mahdi's patchwork-covered dervishes occupied the right bank opposite Ooli Island, and that the band of the robber chief had been reinforced by forty men from Berber. General Brackenbury chose a place for the camp at Hamdab, a mile further up the river than that first selected, as it afforded a better defensive position, and a view obtained from a mountain, Jebel Kulgeli, about five miles further, showed that there was nothing to stop the river passage for the boats between Hamdab and Ooli Island, the whole country being left desolate and uninhabited. Where any natives could be brought together, however. Lord Wolseley's proclamations of friendly intentions to the people were read and distributed.

On the afternoon of the 4th of January General Earle arrived at the camp with two of his staff. The force under his command was to consist of a squadron of the 19th Hussars (91 sabres), the Staffordshire Regiment, the Royal Highlanders, the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, the Gordon Highlanders, a battery of Egyptian artillery, the Egyptian Camel Corps head-quarters, and 300 camels of the nth Transport Company. The general was to concentrate the forces at Abu-Hamed, and as soon as he had collected there rations sufficient to last a hundred days per man, ' The River Column, by Major-general Brackenbury, C.B.