THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN he betook himself to a great cleft in the river bank which had formerly held a water-wheel ; a cluster of palm trees stood above it giving pleasant shade, and its sides were lined with grass, altogether an attractive place so far as appearance went. To this spot Mr. Villiers moved his bed and stores, and for a few days he rejoiced in his new abode ; to keep off the wind at night he hung palm-leaf matting all about him, but this in the end only caused trouble. We know now, thanks to experiments and researches made by Dr. Andrew Balfour, of Khartum, that waterwheel cuttings in the river banks serve as nursing homes for the anophek'i mosquito, and Mr. Villiers fell an easy prey to the legions of this insect which throve in his new home. In a very short time malaria seized upon him, and each day its effects became more serious. One night, from some unexplained though suspected cause, the matting about him caught fire, and he was only rescued from the flames with difficulty; for many weeks the trunks of the palms above the cutting were blackened and scorched to the height of several feet. Soon after he was well enough to travel, the Sirdar sent permission for him to return to Haifa by steamer and rail, and thence by rail to Abu Hamed, and a day or so later the war correspondents were allowed to move higher up the river. One morning the whole party of them, with their stores and baggage, was sent by boat to Kassingar, where the following day they made up a caravan, and set out to march up the east bank of the Fourth Cataract to Berber, a distance of about 260 miles. They left Merawi about the middle of October, and as the Battle of the Atbara was not fought until April 8th of the following year, their patience must have been tried considerably.

A subject of never-failing interest of that time was the progress of the railway across the desert between Haifa and AbA Hamed, and each evening the General received by telegraph a statement as to the advance which it had made during the day. It will be remembered that the first rail was laid on May 15th, 1897, only eleven days after the line between Haifa and Kerma was completed. For a few weeks progress was very slow, and but little more than twelve miles were laid ; but so soon as the railway battalion at Kerma had been transferred to the scene of its new labours, and I go