vi Preface.

It was in this city that Gessi and Gordon met for the second time. Gordon had come to reside at

Tulcia as a member of the International Commission

for determining the boundaries between Russia and Turkey. This chance meeting of the two friends from the Crimea was to have a decisive influence on

the fate of Romolo Gessi. In 1873, Gordon being appointed to the Government of the Egyptian Soudan, proposed to liis friend to follow him. Gessi

accepted the offer and started for Egj-pt.

At this point begin the memorials of this remark-

able man, which we have now collected in great part from letters sent from the seat of war to our journal the Esploratore, and in part also from inedited documents confided to us a few days before

Gessi's death.

Early in 1874 Gessi repaired to Cairo and from thence to Suez, Avhere he embarked, and after having

touched at Gedda, set sail for Suakim, where he organized a caravan of two hundred and fifty camels, crossed the desert and reached Berber. From this

station he ascended the Nile in a boat as far as Khartoum, and was sent by Gordon, after the few

days' halt necessary for the pi*eparations for a journey into the interior to the Gazelle, charged

with establishing commercial and administrative stations with small garrisons. Returning by the White Nile, he ascended it as far as Rejaf, and planted stations at Sobat, Gaba-Shambe, Bohr, Lado,

and Rejaf.

Having accomplished this work, Gessi made the best of his way back to Khartoum, and was soon

afterwards charged by Gordon with an extremely difficult geographical mission, in which two eminent English staff officers, Watson and Chippendale, had already failed.

This mission, or rather exploration, consisted in ascending the Nile as far as the last Cataract, and proceeding from Dufile to Wadelai, and from Wadelai