300 KHARTOUM CAMPAIGN.

kieh” proved accurate in almost every detail. I confess that, at the time, knowing the Arab indifference to exactness in dates, I did not credit his assertion that _ Marchand had reached Fashoda six weeks before the dervishes attacked him. Floating down stream in a small steam launch, aluminum row-boats, and other craft, the Frenchmen arrived off Fashoda on the roth of July. In 1892-93 the French Government had begun sending military or quasi-scientific missions from the west and east African coasts to obtain treaties and pre-emption claims to territory in the interior. That the French flag should wave from sea to sea was their confessed desire. Their incentive was to forestall and annoy Great Britain and render worthless the blood and treasure our country might spend in smashing the dervishes. Major Marchand set out from the west coast or French Congo in 1896, with a small body of Europeans and about 500 Senegalese troops. With indomitable zeal and courage he pushed east, reaching the vast basin lands of the Bahr el Ghazal after sore hardships and the loss of many of his men, chiefly from sickness. The spirit that animated the leader and his followers may be gathered from the following lines which were written some time ago by a non-commissioned officer of Senegalese Rifles to his relatives.

‘“We have no rest, not even for a single day, as a moment’s delay might render all our exertions useless. All that we shall have done will be wasted if the English or others occupy our route when we want to pass. When you read this letter we shall either be on the Nile or our bones will be slowly whitening in the Egyptian brushwood under a torrid sun. I verily believe that if we are destroyed I shall retain regret for our failure in another world.”