ADVANCE TO KERRERI. 123 gone. That day the Baggara horsemen were met with in far greater numbers than previously. By instructions, the Lancers rushed one of the many small villages, or groups of native mud-dwellings and beehive straw huts that dotted the sparse bush-land a mile or more inland from the river beyond Sheikh el Taib. Several of the enemy hastened away, and in one of the huts a man in dervish dress was found awaiting the troops.

He turned out to be a secret agent of Colonel Wingate’s Intelligence Department. The spy in question was a Shaggieh, named Eshanni, and but thirty hours out from Omdurman. I was led to understand that he gave much valuable information as to the position and strength of the Khalifa’s force and the state of affairs in Omdurman. We were told that the Khalifa meant to attack us at or near Kerreri. There was an oldtime prophecy of the Persian Sheikh Morghani, whose tomb is near Kassala, that the English soldiers would one day fight at Kerrerii Mahomed Achmed and Abdullah had further added to the prediction that there they were to be attacked and defeated by the dervishes under the Khalifa. Kerreri plain, therefore, had become a sort of holy place of pilgrimage to the Mahdists.

It was called the ‘death place of all the infidels,” and thither at least once a year repaired the Khalifa and his following to look over the coming battle-ground and render thanks in anticipation for the wholesale slaughter of the unbelievers and the triumph of the true Moslems.

All except those on duty were abed by last post on 30th August at Sheikh el Taib camp. Lights