FRUSTRATED PLANS. 197 repeated to the corps by the colonel. The same evening Lieutenant-general Sir Gerald Graham had an audience with her Majesty, of whom he took leave before his departure for the Soudan.

Preparations for sending a considerable force (about 7000 men) with all the materials for constructing the railway and for maintaining a campaign continued, although the reserves were not called out until nearly a month afterwards; but by that time it had become evident that the plan of procedure would have to be changed.

Operations against the hostile tribes of Osman Digma were to be carried on vigorously, but there was little or no probability that any movement could be made against the Mahdi's forces at Berber either by the desert route and Metammeh, or by the Nile and Abu Hamed: for after the removal of the sick and wounded from the camp at Abu-Kru to Abu-Klea, General Duller had found his position untenable against the swarming forces of the Mahdi coming from Khartum and Berber, and had retired with the whole force—his own troops and the remains of the desert column. At about the same time General Brackenbury, with his Nile column had gone through the Shukook Pass, had reached Salamat, where they destroyed the whole of the property of the treacherous Suleiman Wad Gamr, the murderer of Colonel Stewart and his party; had gone on to Hebbeh, the scene of the murder itself, and thence to the end of the Monassir country, and almost within touch of Abu Hamed, when a message of recall reached him from Korti, in which General Wolseley informed him of the evacuation of Gubat, the retirement of General Duller to Abu-Klea, and the abandonment of all hope of going to Berber before the beginning of the autumn campaign.

On the 1 2th of February Sir R. Buller ordered the departure of the wounded from the camp at Abu-Kru to Abu-Klea with an escort of 300 men from the three camel regiments, and the start was made on the following morning, the most severely wounded men being carried in litters by Egyptian bearers. Sir Herbert Stewart was the first to be conveyed on this mournful procession.