SERVICE AND SPORT IN THE SUDAN

CHAPTER I

From Cairo to Khartum—The Nile—Khartum, then and now—On to El Obeid—"Chasing shade" at Jebel Tius—My first head—El Obeid —General Mahon—The mess, treasury, and officers' quarters— Re- building of El Obeid—Origin of the name—My three native officers The men.

A HOST of writers have described both higher and

lower Egypt. Even the depths of the Sudan had been sounded in pre-Mahdist days. How then dare

I venture to add to what has been told so well, so

badly, and so often ? It is of the arms and the man

of the Egyptian army that I will sing—subjects which,

I think, have been but lightly touched on till now.

In a Bimbashi's (Major's) uniform, built for me in

a night by Messrs. Collacot of Cairo, I reported myself

at the War Office, was introduced to Sir R. Wingate,

the Sirdar, and received from him my orders to join

the Hagana (Camel Corps) in Kordofan.

There was nothing to delay me in Cairo, so in the company of Captain Leveson (i8th Hussars) 1 started

a very dusty and rather hot journey to Khartum by