FROM THE ATBARA TO WAD HAMED 103 tins and fragments of offal and _ similar dainties. | The glow of a tropical sunset was falling on the Nile; yet, beautiful as it was, the scene lost something from the dead level of the surrounding prospect. For an ideally beautiful effect -of the kind one needs mountains as well as water. Who, for example, that has ever seen it, can forget the play of moonbeam and starlight on the lake— When the blue waves roll nightly on deep Galilee?

It was strange to think that within a week the campaign would be ended, Gordon avenged, and the Crescent flag flying over the ramparts of Omdurman—the final goal of all this vast congeries of men and stores, guns and ammunition. As the postal connection with the outside world was now to cease until the capture of Omdurman, many letters had been sent off on the previous day, and for several of the writers the message which sped home was a final one. Later on, when the battle had been fought, a man whom I knew showed me a letter which he was sending off to his widowed mother to tell her that he had come safe through the fight and was on the point of