104 THE WAR IN THE SOUDAN.

first halt of any length was made at Gakdul. How the little army performed this march, and the almost indescribable sufferings they endured, has been told by almost the last despatch penned by the well-known Mr. Cameron, correspondent of the London Standard. We give his words in full: Gakdul, January 13.

“ At three o’clock in the afternoon of the 8th inst., we were all paraded in the Desert outside Korti, ready at last to open the campaign. General Stewart’s previous march to Gakdul and back was more of the nature of a suc¬ cessful reconnaissance made in search of water. We were now in grim earnest bound on a dash straight across, to plunge unsupported into the heart of the enemy’s country, and amidst a population all of them avowed disciples of the Crescentade against infidels everywhere, inaugurated by Mahomed Achmet, the Mahdi of the Soudan. No wonder that the natives who watched looked upon us as men doomed to destruction, for had not three large armies more numer¬ ous than ours, and as well equipped, already passed over the same road, bound on a similar errand to ours, and had they not all perished to a man ? But what the natives did not realize, although some among them were beginning to have a glimmering of the fact, was that these great white soldiers, although they did not bully and kick and tyrannise over them, were still a very different kind of fighting material to the white-livered, despicable Egyptian and mur¬ dering Bashi-Bazouk, to whom they had hitherto been accustomed. Only Greeks, Copts, and blacks—chiefly runaway slaves—would accompany us as servants. In the desert, water is the great thing. Food we can do without for a period, and not suffer much, but never water. And so the first thing to do on halting was to examine the skins that contained our precious supply ; and then by the friendly bivouac of the Mounted Infantry detachment on rear guard, we lay on the sand to try and snatch some sleep eie the bugles sounded. For the waning moon would rise at half-past one, and at that hour General Stewart had ordered the start to be made. Apparently the last fire to remain alight had only flickered out and silence had but reigned for a few minutes, when the beautiful but weirdlike reveille of the British army startled us unwillingly into life again. Once or twice only during my campaigning expe¬ riences have I heard the reveille' sound with feelings of satisfaction. The last occasion was the morning of the battle of Tamai. All night we had lain silent while the enemy cracked volleys of musketry into us from the bush outside our zeribah. But with the first note of the re veille we sprang to our feet as one man, glad all of us to think that now our turn had come. And before the bugles ceased the Arabs, too, had stopped their firing and retired to the ambush from where they subsequently sprang upon us. With very different disposition do we listen here in the desert to the morning call;