160 WITH KITCHENER IN THE SOTTDAN Fusiliers at Gibraltar were also despatched without delay.

Major-General Gatacre was appointed to the command of the brigade.

At the end of the third week in January the three regiments from Lower Egypt had arrived at Wady Haifa, and the Seaforths at Assouan. At the beginning of February the British brigade was carried by railway to Abu Dis. Here they remained until the 26th, when they marched to Berber, and then to a camp ten miles north of the Atbara, where they arrived on the 4th of March, having covered a hundred and forty-four miles in six days and a half, a great feat in such a climate. Mahmud had made no movement until the 10th of February, when he began to cross the Mile to Shendy.

This movement had not been expected by the Sirdar, and was hailed by him with satisfaction. Had Mahmud remained at Metemmeh he could, aided by the forts, his artillery, and the walled town, have offered a very formidable resistance. Had he marched along the banks of the Nile he would have been exposed to the fire of the gun-boats, but these could not have arrested his course. The country round Berber was favourable to the action of his cavalry, and if defeated he could have fallen back unmolested through Metemmeh on Omdurman ; but by crossing the river he practically cut himself off from the Dervish base, and now had only a desert behind him, for we had taken over Kassala from the Italians, and the Egyptian battalion there and a large force of friendly Arabs would prevent him from retiring up the banks of the Atbara.

Mahmud’s plan was to march along the Nile to Aliab, then to cross the desert to Hudi at an angle of the river whence a direct march of twenty-five miles would take him to Berber, and in this way he would avoid our strong position at the junction of the Atbara and the Nile. It would have been easy for the gun-boats to prevent Mahmud from crossing the Nile, but the Sirdar was glad to allow him to do so. The movement afforded him time to concentrate his force and to