350 WITH KITCHENEE IN’ THE SOUDAN men. Two squadrons of Egyptian cavalry and a Soudanese brigade, two Maxims, two mule-guns, and a company of ’ camel corps were placed under the command of Colonel Kitchener. The great difficulty was the lack of water along the route to be traversed. Camels were brought from the Atbara and the Blue Nile, and the whole were collected at Kawa on the White Nile. They started from that point, but the wells were found to be dry, and the force had to retrace its steps and to start afresh from Koli, some forty miles farther up the river.

They endured great hardships, for everything was left behind save the clothes the men and officers stood in, and one hundred rounds of ammunition each, only one pint of water being allowed per head. The country was a desert, covered | with interlacing thorn bushes. An eight days march brought !

the force to a village which was considered sacred, as it contained the grave of the Khalifa’s father and the house where the Khalifa himself had been born. Three days later they reached the abandoned camp of the Khalifa, a wide tract that had been cleared of bush. A great multitude of dwellings constructed of spear-grass stretched away for miles, and at the very lowest compilation it had contained twenty thousand people, of which it was calculated that from eight thousand to ten thousand must have been fighting men, ten times as many as had before been reported to be with the Khalifa.

( A reconnaissance showed that a large army was waiting to give battle on a hill which was of great strength, surrounded by deep ravines and pools of water. The position was an anxious one. The total force was about fourteen hundred strong, and a defeat would mean annihilation, while even a victory would scarcely secure the capture of the Khalifa, who with his principal emirs, Osman Digna, El Khatim the Sheik of El Obeid, the Sheik Ed Din, and Fadil, would be able to gallop off if they saw the battle going against them. Colonel Kitchener had the wisdom to decide against risking the destruction of his followers by an assault against so great a