THE WEEK BEFORE THE BATTLE 135 advance. Here it was that the Khalifa had doubtless intended to await our onslaught, but either his heart failed him at the last moment or the rapidity of our advance upset his plans. Yet, in refusing to take his stand on the hills of Kerreri, the Khalifa was acting in opposition to the sentiment of his followers, who trusted in a prophecy of the Mahdi, to the effect that one day Kerreri should be the scene of a great victory over the infidel invaders. ‘It was’ called,” writes Mr. Bennett Burleigh, ‘‘the death-place of all infidels’; and thither at least once a year repaired the Khalifa and his following, to look over the coming battleground, and render thanks in anticipation for the wholesale slaughter of the unbelievers, and the triumph of the true Moslems.”

A propos of Kerreri, it may be worth noticing how misleading were the accounts of this prospective battlefield which had appeared in some newspapers, and how incorrect the maps were. One account stated that along the wady to the north of Kerreri white quartz stones lay so thickly on the ground that at night-time the place appears: to be covered with snow. This description was simply absurd. There