GORDON'S RETURN. 359 the Utter contempt of death, and the resolve either to kill or be killed, which characterized the Dervishes.

The second, and more important, was the discovery that courage, however fanatical, is powerless against disciplined troops possessing arms of precision. The establishment of these facts had undoubtedly a bearing on the ultimate outcome of the campaign, but it had little or no effect on its immediate fortunes. Neither the authority of the Mahdi, nor that of his chief lieutenant, Osman Digma, were seriously impaired by the defeats inflicted on the insurgents by Graham's army. Whatever effect these defeats might have produced was neutralized by the precipitate withdrawal of our troops from the Eastern Soudan. General Gordon, not being aware that the .Graham expedition was intended solely as a military demonstration, had telegraphed home urging that their services should be employed to open up the Suakin-Berber route. The advantages of this course were manifest, supposing the expedition was to be something more than a sham fight. If the Suakin-Berber route had been rendered available for British troops, there would have been no necessity for the subsequent Nile expedition, and in all likelihood Gordon would have been able to retire from Khartoum, having accomplished his mission.

But our Government refused to hear of any step being taken which militated against their resolve to compel Egypt to evacuate the Soudan. The march of an Indian army across the desert from the Red Sea to the Nile, which had been accomplished without