Great Mortality through Famine. 397 be always time enough to furnish ourselves with fuel from the shore.

XovcDiber loth. — All this time the work of removing the bars continued, but with little success. Our fuel is diminishing, and because of a curve in the river, we are still further away from the forest. I gave away four of my flour tins, and have now only one and a half left. The rest of my provisions consist ot" eight bottles of barberies, four tins of sausage, six pounds of barley, and thirty cigars. I observed long since that the soldiers began to eat their shoes ; they devoured every kind of herb they found to the very roots, and they made lines with iron wire and took some little fish. It is a critical moment. No hope of salvation ; everyone begins to abandon himself to despair, and, sitting on deck with bent head, quietly awaits death. There have lately died twenty-two children, nine soldiers, and eighteen women. The people came to beg me to take eight strong men and go with a boat to Fashoda to seek help. But first I thought it dishonourable to forsake my post at the moment of danger, and it might be said that I only cared for my own safety ; and then, in order to reach Fashoda, passing through we did not know how man}' bars, it would need in the most favourable case ten or twelve days to go, and as many again to find provisions, reinforcements, etc. The third consideration was that it needed a steamer to go up the river, and as all steamers are dismantled there was every probability that I should find no means of returning. Besides that, I had not sufiicient provisions to last during the descent of the Bahr-el-Grhazal as far as where it flows into the White Xile, either for me or my men, who, as they would have to work all day, could not conquer the difficulties they would meet with unless well fed. Finally, I should have had to cross a country thickly populated with natives, who asked nothing better than a chance of revenging themselves on their oppressors.