MERAWI mile or two, we knew that we had arrived at the Headquarters of the Frontier Field Force. We were met by Colonel (now Sir) F. R. Wingate, H. E. Slatin Pasha, my old friend Major Drage, now Colonel W. H. Drage Pasha, and other officers, who gave us a hearty welcome.

At length the correspondents learned what had been happening since they left Haifa and its neighbourhood. That Abu Hamed had been taken on August 7th they knew before they started, but they did not know that Berber had been evacuated by the Dervishes as a result of this, nor that it had been reoccupied promptly by " friendlies " on behalf of the Sirdar, and that General Hunter was at that moment on his way to support them. They learned too that the stop which we had been forced to make at Debba was due to the fact that the Sirdar was about to despatch a company of the Camel Corps to Berber by the desert route, and that he wished it to start before we arrived. The correspondents were eager for permission to ride across the desert, either to Berber or to Matamma, which the Sirdar was about to attack from the river, but it was refused, and they departed sadly enough to the place assigned them at the down-stream end of the camp. Owing to the great kindness of Colonel "Wingate, I was allowed to mess with the officers of the Intelligence Department, and on the following day General (now Sir) Leslie Rundle had a tent pitched for me near the officers' tukuls, i.e., rectangular structures with the framework formed of branches of trees, and the roofs and sides of palm-leaf mats. Having arrived at a spot quite near to the site of the ancient town of Napata, where the Trustees of the British Museum ordered archaeological investigations to be carried out, it only remained to get to work as soon as possible.

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