MEllAWI IN 1897 actions of the Dervishes, of envoys from the Gakdiil Wells, and from Matamma, and of fugitives from the wrath of the Khalifa.

Besides these, scores of men came asking for help for their starving relatives and friends, and for assistance to enable them to remain loyal to Egypt. From the stream of words which these men poured out as they squatted on a mat laid on the ground, Colonel Wingate would pick out the essential facts, whilst a shrewd question quietly asked by Slatin Pasha would indicate that he had discerned where the truth in the story ended and the fiction THE INTELLIGENCE DEPARTMENT AT MERAWI IN 1897.

began. Natives from every tribe in the Sudan came to these huts, and no matter what dialect of Arabic they spoke, either Wingate or Slatin would understand it. These officers would sit there hour after hour, patiently listening and noting, and advising or directing, through the men before them, the course of events which were taking place hundreds of miles away, in Abyssinia, Sennaar, and even in the remote places of Kordofan. It is a pity that there were no means available for taking down the stories of the cruelties which the Dervishes were perpetrating at that time, to say nothing of the valuable information about 179