116 KHARTOUM CAMPAIGN.

equipment, was for the first time got together within the confines of the same encampment. From there also it set out next day in battle array, ready to encounter the Khalifa’s full strength. In the clear atmosphere of the early morning and in the late afternoon when the bewildering mirage and dancing haze had vanished, from any knoll could be seen the large village of Kerreri. There the Mahdists had built a strong mud-walled fort by the bank of the Nile. They had besides blocked the road with a military camp big enough to shelter in huts and tukals several thousand men. Information brought us by natives, spies and deserters, was to the effect, that only a small body of dervishes had been left at Kerreri under Emir Yunis for the purpose of observing the movements of our army. Kerreri, which the Arabs pronounce with a prolonged Doric or Northumbrian roll of the r’s, as though there were at least a dozen of them in the word, is upon the margin of a belt of rough gravel, stone, and low detached hills that extend to the southward, to Omdurman and beyond. The alluvial strip by the Nile, along which we had marched so many days, gave place to ridges and hummocks of sand, gravel, and rock.

So we waited impatiently at Um Terif for the flotilla with the fifteen days’ supplies on board. Meanwhile the axes of an army of soldier wood-choppers were clanging upon the hard timber, which was being felled for firewood. The ruin of agriculture had meant the growth of bush, and there was an abundance of useful mimosa and sunt growing on the alluvial lands by the river.