76 WITH KITCHENEK IH THE SOHDAH them furiously, but were repulsed with heavy loss. There was hand-to-hand fighting among their huts, and the second brigade carried with the bayonet that rough hill that you see over there. It was all over by seven o’clock. Our loss was only twenty killed and eighty wounded. About one thousand of the Dervishes were killed, including their chief Emir and some forty of the others, while five hundred were taken prisoners. It was a great victory and a very important one, but it can hardly be said that it was glorious, as we outnumbered them by three to one. Still, it was a heavy blow to the Dervishes, and the fact that the Khalifa was obliged to send troops down to the Nile to check an advance that had proved so formidable must have greatly relieved the pressure on the Italians at Kassala. There was a pause here. It was certain that we should have to meet a much stronger force before we got to Dongola. Well as the Egyptian troops had fought, it was thought advisable to give them a stronger backing. The heat was now tremendous, and cholera had broken out. We moved to Koshyeh, and there encamped. The only change we had was a terrific storm which almost washed us away.

In the middle of August we managed to get the gun-boats up through the cataract, and were in hopes of advancing, when another storm carried away twenty miles of the railway, which by this time had come up as far as the cataract.”

At Ginnis, twenty miles from Ferket, they passed the ground where, on the 31st of December, 1885, on the retirement of General Wolseley’s expedition. Generals Grenfel and Stevenson, with a force of Egyptian troops and three British regiments, encountered the Dervish army which the Khalifa had despatched under the Emir Nejumi, and defeated it.

It was notable as being the first battle in which the newly raised Egyptian army met the Mahdists, and showed that, trained and disciplined by British officers, the Egyptian fellah was capable of standing against the Dervish of the desert. From this point the railway left the Nile, and for thirty miles crossed the desert. Another twenty miles, and they reached Fareeg.