$0 KHARTOUM CAMPAIGN.

Lively and original skits and verses were given at these symposiums. Here are a few verses of a topical song on the refractory blacks and fellaheen fallen under the condemnation of either the civil or military law and forced to hard labour. It was written and frequently sung by a clever young engineer officer :— We're convicts at work in the Noozle, We carry great loads on our backs, And often our warders bamboozle, And sleep ’neath mountains of sacks.

Chorus: Ri-tooral il looral, &c.

(The Noozle is the commissariat depét.)

We convicts start work at day dawning, Boilers we mount about noon, Sleepers we load in the morning, And rails by the light of the moon.

Our warders are blacks, who cry Masha! (march), And strike us if we don’t obey, Or else he’s a Hamla Ombashi, Who allows us to fuddle all day.

Hamla Ombashi is a corporal of the transport service, and “fuddle” is to sit down. It was the chorus with spoken words interlarded that caught on astonishingly, and showed that the men’s lungs were in magnificent condition. Another howler, but by another author, was ‘Roll on to Khartoum.” Here is a specimen verse and the chorus :— Come, forward march, and do your duty, Though poor your grub, no rum, bad ’bacca, Step out, for fighting and no booty, To trace a free red line thro’ Africa.