482 LETTERS TO DR. SCHWEINFURTH.

the south and to Gondokoro, where they could find food, and I was myself engaged in an inspection of the fortifications, when, on April 18, I was again honoured by despatches from Keremallah. The letters contained the usual invitations to us all to join the champions of the faith, but the most important communication was the news that Khartum had fallen. I should find the details, he said, in an enclosed copy of a letter from the Mahdi. ‘This letter, dated Rebi-wl-Akhir 12, 1302 (January 28, 1885), contained the news that Khartum was taken by storm on the morning of Monday, Rebi-ul-Akhir 9 (January 25), and that every one in it was slain except the women and children. Gordon, the enemy of God, had refused to surrender, and he and his men had fallen; the Mahdi had lost ten men only. The letter, written in old-fashioned Arabic, and imitating in its expressions the older chapters of the Koran, concluded with an injunction to Keremallah to act in a similar manner here and in the Bahr-el-Ghazal. No mention is made about a steamer being sent to the Meshraer-Reéek, although it was such an important matter. I have returned no answer at all to these last letters. | On April 19, the soldiers from Makraka came safely to Bedén and Rejaf, without being attacked again. On the 21st the boat which had been sent to Bor with corn came back; the garrison still refused to come here—they must therefore take the consequences. On the 23d a reinforcement of 130 men marched into Lado, and on the 24th I called together a council of all the officers to discuss the measures to be adopted to save us from famine, and to guard against unnecessary exposure to danger. After mature de-— liberation, and when I had retired for half an hour, resigning the chair to Major Rihan Aga, in order that the decision might be quite impartial, the following resolution was carried, in the presence of Captain Casati:—‘ Considering that there is not corn enough in Ladd, Rejadf, Bedén, &c., to support the men that have come from Makraka as well as our own people, that the next harvest is still far off, that by sending out foraging parties we should exhaust our meagre supply of ammunition and be left at the mercy of the Negroes, while, on the other hand, it is impossible to procure corn by