KIRBEKAN. POSITION OF THE ENEMY. 1 59 Salamat, and as breastworks of stone had been built up among the rocks, the Arab rifles could have swept both the road and the river. From this position they would have to be entirely dislodged before the column could advance towards Abu-Hamed. Even with the series of knolls, and about 600 yards behind them to the left rear of the enemy, was the ridge before-mentioned, about 300 feet high and ending suddenly about 600 yards from the river.

Its slope was as steep as the side of a glacier, and at the summit was a ridge of white marble rocks, described by General Brackenbury as projecting like the teeth from the jawbone of a skeleton. Along this summit men with flags and spears were moving among the rocks. These two positions of the enemy were apparently only outposts, perhaps capable of holding not more than 300 or 400 men, and the main body was probably behind the hills waiting to come out on the advance of our troops to attack them.

If it would be possible to move the right of our force under cover of the broken ground and march quite round the ridge (the same ridge which had been climbed by Colonel Butler on the 5th) our troops might then move round its rear and attack both it and the rocky hillocks. A wide detour made by Colonel Butler's reconnoitring party showed that the position could be turned by a march through a broad sandj' wady, and that this wady could be approached by a road from our camp. It was, therefore, decided that preparations should be made for an immediate attack.

The attack was to be made next morning (the loth). By sunset on the 9th the Staffords with two sections of the field hospital, the head-quarters, and seven companies of the Black Watch had reached their bivouac scarcely a mile from the enemy's position. Some of the troops—the wing of the Cornwalls and one company of the Black Watch—who had been struggling with the difficulties of the Nile channels, were still at Castle Camp; but there was no time to be lost. The infantry baggage was to be packed in the boats, the rest of the baggage with the baggage animals to be packed on the shore in front of the boats. The boat of the royal navy with its gatling-gun, commanded by Lieutenantcolonel Eden, was to be ready to sweep the shore and the river up