166 The British Campaign in the Soudan.

ficers, and Allah-ed-Deen, the governor-general, fell fighting to the last. Such entire extermination is only what must happen on the desert, for if an army can be cut off from water for three or four days, there is no need to fire another shot. Should any fugitives escape the sword or the lance, they fall exhausted within a few hundred yards, never to rise again. Von Seckendorff’s ominous prediction was fulfilled to the letter. Not one man ever returned from that doomed army.

The battle of Kashgill was fought Nov. 1st-3d. -Three days later another Egyptian force was destroyed at Tokar on the shores of the Red Sea, eight hundred miles from Kashgill, by the Mahdi’s chief leutenant, Osman-Digma who had stirred up the warlike Bishareens inhabiting the deserts between Berber and Suakim. Col. Moncrieff, the British Consul at Suakim who had volunteered to lead this force, was killed with eleven officers and one hundred and fifty men. One cannon and three hundred rifles fell into Osman-Digma’s hands.

I have stated above that the news of these two disasters reaching London a few days after Mr. Gladstone’s Guildhall speech announcing a gradual evacuation, put an immediate stop to all idea of reducing the British forces in Egypt.

The consternation in Cairo was immense, and with good reason, for all the troops in the Soudan except the enfeebled garrisons, had perished with Hicks-Pasha. Now, Khartoum, Sennaar, Kassala, Berber and even Suakim were in imminent peril. With them the entire Soudan would be lost, and the rebellion would endanger Egypt herself.

Once more the Khedive and his ministers turned