THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN number of boxes, and bags, and logs of wood which were to be found with each section of the Army at every place in the Sudan 1 He spent most of the day in writing orders, and giving directions to a legion of subordinate officials, and in seeing that his commands were carried out promptly, and a good deal of the night he devoted to official " paper work." His practical, shrewd common sense and great experience enabled him to attend to half a dozen things at a time, and to grasp the details of each in a surprising manner ; nothing escaped his notice, nothing disturbed him, and he was just as sagacious in discussing with the General the number of times which a soldier's boots ought to be soled, as the preparations necessary for the despatch of a company of Camel Corps to Berber or elsewhere. At Merawi in 1897, and at Aswan in 1886, 1887 and 1888, I was indebted to Major Drage for much timely assistance.

A little further up the river was Major Drage's nuziil, or " place where things were set down," i.e., the place where all the stores and ammunition were set down by the men who unloaded the stern-wheelers which anchored alongside. Here were stacked in rows hundreds and thousands of bags of grain, rice, lentils, &c., and the stores which were required for feeding and arming the Frontier Field Force. At the end of the nuziil was a wall of logs of wood, three or four feet long, and at each end of it stood a sentry. These logs were intended for fuel for the stern-wheelers, and were supplied by natives who went about in gangs, and either cut down or dug up by the roots such trees as they found in the desert kJiors and valleys on each side of the Nile. It is worthy of note that the natives were paid for every load of wood which they brought in at remunerative rates, and many native officials have expressed surprise that the British officials who were leading a victorious army into the Sudan, for the benefit of the natives, should insist on paying the inhabitants for that which cost them nothing but their labour and the price of a few cheap tools ; for they might reasonably have demanded and obtained the wood without payment. Beyond the nuztll were placed at intervals on the river bank the huts, tents, and mudhouses of many of the British officers, H.S.H. Prince Francis of Teck, Captain Bunbury, Captain Borton, Colonel Townshend, 182