The British Campaign in the Soudan. 155 hundred and thirty of the soldiers, and the rest fled in terror to their steamers. The gunner was ordered to fire the cannon at the Mahdi, who was sitting on horseback a short distance from the shore, but in his excitement and terror he fired wide of the mark, and the Mahdi coolly turning his horse rode quietly away, while the discomfited expedition returned in dismay to Khartoum. This first success over the government troops gained for the Mahdi much prestige and a large increase of followers.

In December following, the governor of Fashoda, a Kurd named Rashid-Bey, advanced against the Mahdi with four hundred regulars and two thousand Shillooks. A short and fierce battle was fought at Jebel Gedir, in which the governor and all his troops and nearly all the Shillooks with their king were slaughtered by the Baggdras. All the Remington rifles and ammunition of the regulars and a large quantity of supplies fell into the hands of the Mahdi, who captured Fashoda, an important military post on the White Nile. This second victory was followed by the accession of several considerable tribes. To the powerful and fierce Baggdras, who had already joined the Mahdi’s standard, were now added the Kababeesh and Hassaneeyehs in Kordofan and the Abou-Rof in Sennaar, while the Ababdehs and Bishareens, between the Nile and the Red Sea, were ready to rise at the approach of the Mahdi who sent emissaries everywhere with the ominous message: “Be ready, I am coming !” : In the meantime Raouf-Pasha was superseded, and Griegler-Pasha, a talented Bavarian engineer, with whom I had become well acquainted in Kordofan, was Jeft in