A¥AD1 HALFA could now enjoy the fruits of their labours without further fear of the Khalifa.

On arriving at Haifa I heard that my friend Colonel Maxwell had become Governor of Omdurman, but the Commandant of Haifa had received instructions to send me to the south by the first train, and without delay I made preparations for the journey. None of the officers whom I met at Haifa that year had visited the site on the Island of Meroe which I wished to examine, and no one could give me any information about the state of the country there. Colonel Wingate and Slatin Pasha, who knew every mile of the country well, were both at Khartum or Omdurman, so no information could be obtained from them. Good fortune, however, put me in the way of Lieutenant A. G. Stevenson, R.E., one of the gallant little band of Royal Engineers who had built the Halfa-Abii Hamed Railway, and Lieutenant M. G. E. Manifold, R.E., whose work in connection with the telegraphs in the Sudan is too well known to need mention here, and from them I learned many important facts.

These gentlemen told me that there were very few inhabitants on the east bank of the Nile, that no supplies of any sort or kind could be bought anywhere on the way, and that for all practical purposes the Island of Meroe was as bare of the necessaries of life as the Abu Hamed desert. As a result of the information I set to work to obtain stores of tinned meats, rice, &c., and in a few hours those invaluable Greeks, Messrs. Angelo Capato, collected for me a comprehensive selection of stores which a long experience in the service of British officers had taught them were likely to be needed. Through the friendly help of Lieutenant Stevenson I obtained the loan of a couple of tents, and the opportunity of purchasing second-hand a Berkefeld filter, with a supply of new strainers. In the course of the afternoon the Commandant told me that a goods train would be leaving for the Atbara in the evening, and that he had arranged for me to travel by it in one of the covered-in waggons, with sliding doors at the sides, which were then used for transport of everything from a Pasha to a goat. In due course myself and my baggage were deposited in this waggon, and about six o'clock the train started.

The train was made up of two huge water-tanks, each containing many thousand gallons of water, bolted on trucks, several long VOL. I. 241 R