Sudan Archive

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KHARTOUM MEMORIAL COLLEGE. 275 porters of the proposed institution. In the Metropolis as well as in all the chief towns of the Kingdom the matter was taken up enthusiastically. An influential committee was formed. The subscriptions were showered in from home and abroad, wherever the English tongue was spoken and Gordon had _ been known. In less than a month the £100,000, and considerably more, were subscribed, and the establishment of the Memorial College assured.

Lieut.-Colonel C. S. B. Parsons, R.A., Governor of Kassala and the Red Sea littoral, to whom I have previously referred when we were advancing against Omdurman, was menacing the dervish outpost of Gedarif. Later on, when Ahmed Fadl was marching to reinforce his master the Khalifa, Colonel Parsons was leading his Egyptians, Abyssinian irregulars, and friendlies from Kassala up the head waters or khor of the Atbara, far to the southward, and thence to a tributary of the Blue Nile where the enemy had long had a garrison. The fifteen years’ campaign against Mahdism was nigh over, but not quite concluded, with the victory of Omdurman. On receiving the check from the gunboats, Fad] and his dervishes retreated up the Blue Nile to where they had come from, their own country upon the borders of Abyssinia. News seems to have reached them of Colonel Parsons’ advance, and it became a race for Gedarif. The Egyptians had a good start, and managed to reach and capture the place and occupy the two forts, one on either side of the river, or, what it is more frequently, the khor, before the dervishes got back. Fadl was a man of

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