THE ENEMY S CAMP AT BIRTI. 151 On searching the houses in the village a large number of papers were found, and also some remains of articles that had evidently belonged to Colonel Stewart and his party. Among these were portions of French and English books, part of a field boot, the damaged face and battered case of an aneroid barometer v/hich General Brackenbury afterwards ascertained had been purchased only an hour or two before Stewart left Charing Cross with General Gordon. These were all found in Suleiman Wad Gamr's house.

It was uncertain whether Suleiman had fled to Berber, but the report was that Lekalik and Moussa were holding the Shukook Pass while Suleiman collected his cattle, after which the chief would retire. Colonel Butler pushed forward, and mounted troops patrolled the country for six miles to the spot where Butler had fixed on a site for a camp, where there was forage, good ground for cavalry, and clear water to Birti. The country all around was uncultivated, stony, and broken, but Birti itself was a green spot in that wilderness of ugly rocks through which the troops had been making their weary way since leaving Belal. On the high fertile island opposite, as well as on the mainland, the growing crops were plentiful, the sakyehs in workable order, and some grain was found, either in the houses or buried in pits in the neighbourhood. Major-general Brackenbury says in his account: "The enemy's camp had been situated on uncultivated ground some distance below (down stream of) the village of Birti itself. A semicircle of low rocky hills surrounded it, the ends of the semicircle resting on the river. In the midst of it there was a low rocky eminence; and on this, on the slopes of the hills, and on the flat ground below, the dervishes had constructed their shelters of boughs of trees and straw mats. One of the most curious features of the camp was the number of places of prayer, of large size, prepared on spaces of flat ground by clearing away all stones, carefully marked by lines of stones, with the same point towards the east, with which we are all familiar on oriental prayer-carpets. Judging by my experience of native camps built in a similar way in Ashanti, I should say there had been from 1500