100 KHARTOUM CAMPAIGN.

during the summer were to be expected. The troops bore the discomfort of cold and wet clothes uncomplainingly, waiting for daybreak, and the tardy sun, to get dry and warm. Bugle calls were a work of supererogation on the morning of Wednesday, 24th August, everybody having been astir long before reveille. It had been given out in general orders—one of those gracious niceties of military courtesy never exhibited to the correspondents in these later Soudan campaigns—that the Khedivial troops were to proceed that day to the south of Shabluka Cataract. The journey thither was to be made by the army in two stages, and the British division was to follow on Thursday. Wad Bishari, about half-way, was the first portion, and there the men were to bivouac one night. Next day they were to complete the distance, making a détour to avoid the rough hills of Shabluka, and going into a new camp laid out at El Hejir. At 5 a.m. Macdonald’s and Lewis's brigades paraded, and under the command of Major-General Hunter, stepped off. So the end at last began to loom in sight. Major-General Gatacre wished to go part of the way the same day, in order to reduce the distance to be marched, but the Sirdar put his veto thereon, observing that if the ‘‘Tommies” could not do a little march of 13 miles, they could not walk any distance. In the afternoon, at 4 o'clock, the remainder of the Khedivial division—Maxwell’s and Collinson's brigades—set out for Wad Bishari to join their comrades. The men were in fine spirits as they left, cheering and singing to the strains of their bands as