I WADI HALFA Tawfikiya has grown rapidly in recent years, and it now contains numbers of well-to-do merchants, who continue to thrive on the trade which the Anglo Egyptian Expedition to the Sudan has attracted to the place. It is now the terminus of the railway, and passengers to Khartum start from it instead of from the old landing-place as formerly.

At Tawfikiya the steamer stopped to unload certain stores, and when the four barges had been "cast off" we moved up the river.

It was ten years since I had visited Wadi Haifa, and the change which had come over the place was very great. In 1884 it was a small and miserable Sudiini village, with a very limited number of inhabitants, who lived chiefly by work on the river in connexion with the exports from the south and imports from the north.

Its chief importance was due to the fact that it was connected with Sarras, thirty-three miles to the south, by a line of railway ; the gauge of the line was, and still is, 3 ft 6 in., and its road-bed had been made, exclusive, of course, of bridges, for fifty-five miles. New life was brought into the place by the arrival of half a battalion of British troops in September, 1884, and when, in the following month, the "whalers" appeared which were to convey Lord Wolseley's Expedition into the Siidn to relieve General Gordon, with their crews, Wdi Haifa, or simply Haifa as it is now called, presented a scene the like of which was unknown to the " oldest inhabitant."

After the return of the Expedition early in 1885 the authorities decided to consider Haifa as the frontier of Egypt on the south, and by April 15th all the troops and stores were withdrawn from the stations further up the Nile, and a garrison of Egyptian soldiers was established there. In November Major-General the Hon. RH.de Montmorency (the late Lord Frankfort) took command of the troops at Haifa, for a body of Dervishes, from 7,000 to 10,000 strong, 1,500 of whom were armed with rifles, were on their way north wdth the view of capturing Argin, and thus to cut the line of Egyptian communications. In this they were unsuccessful, but in December they made good their hold on Sarras, and again threatened Haifa. Colonel (now Sir) Herbert Chermside, and Major (now Sir) Leslie Rundle attacked them, and after a severe hand-tohand fight defeated them; Nur al-Kanzi, their leader, and nearly 83