FERVENT HEAT. WATER. NEWS AT ABU HAMED. 83 appearance of a mirage exactly resembling a beautiful lake, insisted on being led to its banks by the Arab guide, who told them in vain that it was an illusion. They quarrelled with him, words led to blows, and he was killed. The whole regiment turned from the track where they left him weltering in his blood, and hurried over the burning sands further and further towards the supposed lake, but only to be lost and to perish in the desert, where their parched and withered corpses were afterwards discovered by a party of Arabs sent in search of them. So intense is the heat that woodwork warps, ivory knife-handles split, paper breaks when crunched in the hand, and the extreme dryness of the air induces an extraordinary amount of electricity in all woollen materials.

Poor and destitute as the village of Abu Hamed is, it is a place of rest and refuge after the desert journey, for there is the sight of the Nile after the long arid desolation, the luxury of a bath and of comparatively unlimited water.

Here General Gordon arrived on the 8th of February, and here he found messengers from different parts of the country to welcome him. It is pretty evident that unless he had received from the khedive the firmans appointing him Governor-general of the Soudan, he could not have exercised much control over the Egyptian authorities employed in the province, and on his arrival at Abu Hamed he considered not only that the state of the country was less disorganized than he had at first supposed, but that a kind of suzerainty should still be kept up by the Egyptian government. His message to Sir E. Baring on the 8th of February was: "From the various telegrams soliciting appointments and from other signs of confidence in the government, it is evident that the country is far less disturbed than has been reported, and that very probably the mass of civil employes will refuse to leave the Soudan. even if dismissed and their expenses paid to Cairo. Both with a view to eventual evacuation and also to economy, it will be absolutely necessary to reduce all establishments to a minimum; and should the dismissed employes refuse to leave the country, I propose making them sign a paper releasing the Egyptian government from all future responsibility on their behalf.