348 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

Colonel Valentine Baker. This motley army was composed of police constables, of fellaheen recruits, arrested in their villages and sent in gangs to Cairo, and of the refuse of the State prisons. I was one of the spectators who went to the station at Cairo to say good-bye to the General and his staff. The departure was a dismal spectacle. Many of the soldiers were handcuffed ; they were followed by crowds of women, weeping and wailing ; the troops had to be driven like cattle into the trucks provided for them. Drill or discipline, there was none. Even the cheeriness of Baker, and his delight at going once more into action, failed to relieve the general gloom and depression, and the solitary cheer raised by a handful of Englishmen as the train crawled out of the station met with no response. The forebodings created by this spectacle were amply fulfilled. After endless delays and difficulties, Baker succeeded in getting his forces into something resembling order, and landed his troops at Trinkitat, on the Red Sea, whence they were to march on Tokar and relieve its garrison.

On the morning of the 4th of February, the Egyptian troops commenced their advance. They had only accomplished some half-dozen of the forty odd miles of desert which lie between Trinkitat and Tokar, when they were attacked by the Dervishes. Almost before the attack began, the Egyptian troops, officers as well as men, broke up in a panic, and took to flight. The stampede was followed by a massaae. The Dervishes literally hunted the Egyptians, killing J