AL-HAFIR barges was interesting and characteristic. Little groups of soldiers perched on the sides of the barges, or squatted round handfuls of fire watching the ibriks (metal pots) boil, and as they smoked with great deliberation their small cigarettes they discussed the future of the war, and told stories, as amazing as amusing. At the ends of the barges down-stream others washed themselves, and then climbing up on to any tolerably clean place slipped off their shoes and said their prayers. An Egyptian bugler began to practise, and the crew employed themselves in stacking the boxes in a more ship-shape fashion, to the words, " Ya Muhammad an-Nebi," i.e., " O Muhammad the Prophet ! " Above all the noises rose the steady beat of the great paddlewheel aft on the water, and the noisy clang of the door of the boiler fire when, at short intervals, fresh logs were pushed into the furnace. Everybody seemed to make as much noise as he could, and everybody seemed as happy as if there were no such thing as war in the world. Our progress was very slow, for the steamer herself was heavily laden, and she had besides to tow four barges, two on each side ; in addition to this the Nile current ran swiftly and strongly, and in some places we cannot have covered more than two and a half miles of ground in the hour.

Two or three hours' steaming brought us opposite Al-Hafir, a village on the west bank, famous in the annals of the Dongola campaign as the scene of the artillery duel between the Egyptians and the Dervishes on September 19th, 1896. A few days before this date the Sirdar learned that the forces of the Khalifa were strongly entrenched at Kerma, but on the evening of the i8th, Captain Mahon reported that he had been close up to the fort at Kerma and had found it empty. Next morning the Anglo-Egyptian troops marched through Kerma and on to a spot opposite Hafir, where Wad al-Bishara had taken up a very strong position. "The Dervishes were occupying some excellently " placed low trenches connecting six earth gun emplacements. " Several Dervishes could also be seen firing from the tops of the " palm trees, from which they were soon dislodged by the '* maxims, and if they were not killed by the bullets, they certainly ' Now Col. Mahon, C. 15., D.S.O. He led the Mafeking Relief Column in 1900.

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