ESTIMATES FOR THE WAR. 169 A supplementary estimate of the amount that would be required during the year ending March 31, 1885, to meet additional expenditure for ordinary services and for military operations in the Soudan was issued, the sum required being 942,000. The amount was made up as follows:—general staff and regimental charges (including gratuity for operations in the Soudan, 1883-84), 50,000; medical establishments and services, ;!22,ooo; militia pay and allowances, 10,000; commissariat, transport, and ordnance-store establishments, wages, &c., 20,000; provisions, forage, field allowances, transport, and other services, 270,000; clothing establishments, services and supplies, ;40,ooo; supply, manufacture, and repair of warlike and other stores (including 30,000 for armaments for coaling stations abroad), 315,000; works and buildings (chiefly for railway, piers, water supply, and hut accommodation at Suakim; also ;5000 for defences of coaling stations abroad), 235,000; and miscellaneous effective services.

Orders were received at Aldershot to form a second additional semi-permanent telegraph section immediately for service in the Soudan, partly composed of postal volunteers and reserve engineers; and the government contractors received additional orders for the construction of hospital huts for the Soudan campaign.

Reports from Suakim showed that up to the 6th of February the enemy had been making repeated night attacks on Suakim.

Colonel Chermside was there or at Massewa (where the Italians were soon afterwards established), and all the coast was said to be in the hands of Osman Digma. The friendly tribes were active in their opposition to him and his followers, and on the i8th of January actually looted fifty-seven camels at Tamai and took them into Suakim on the following day; but the rebels followed in force, and were only kept off by the guns at the works and on the ships. At that time there was nightly firing, and it was evident that the power of Osman was increasing, though after the 6th of February, when it was reported that his followers were excited and alarmed by the report of the advance of the English by the Nile and the desert, the attacks on the town ceased.