THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN impromptu dinners given from time to time by Colonel Lewis and Colonel Townshend were greatly appreciated. Colonel Lewis had taught the band of his Battalion to play numbers of European airs and marches, and his grave "blacks" rendered many a familiar tune with considerable accuracy and skill, seeming to enjoy the result of their efforts as much as we did. Colonel Townshend was himself no mean musician, and as he possessed a fine voice and an extensive repertory of songs, most of which he accompanied on the banjo, his concerts were a great pleasure. Such entertainments were few and far between, but while they lasted the Khalifa and all his evil works passed out of the mind, and the audience forgot that they were sitting on a mudbank fourteen hundred miles up the Nile, stewing in the sun by day and shivering in the desert wind by night.

To a civilian like myself the camp was a source of perpetual interest, for one saw and realized for the first time numbers of facts which most of us only knew from books. It was quite easy to take for granted the acts of heroism which officers and men perform in battle, but not so easy to conceive the ceaseless strain which had to be borne for weeks and months by the officers who were responsible for the efficiency and well-being of the Egyptian Army, until the details were worked out under one's eyes. Every likely move of the enemy was calculated beforehand, nothing was forgotten, nothing left to chance, nothing wasted ; men and animals were worked so as to get the utmost out of them, and marvellous economy was practised unflinchingly. Only picked men, with a practical knowledge of the country and its people and their languages, could have achieved such results at such small cost in money. The Egyptian Army at Merawi in 1897 puzzled greatly the natives who remembered the Gordon Relief Expedition of 1884-5. According to legends current in the villages the British bought any supplies which were forthcoming at fabulous prices, and money was spent freely. One old woman at Shibba declared that she had sold her eggs in 1884 for five large piastres (one shilling) apiece, and lamented loudly because she could do no business on those terms in 1897 ; she was quite convinced that the British officers she met in 1897 were not of the same race as those whom she had seen in 1885. Every native told the same 196 I