Early on the morning of the 17th our old friend the El Tahra came in sight, and we hailed her and crossed again to the Atbara. Next day, with the rest of the correspondents still remaining in the camp, we embarked on board a native ghyassa which was towed up the river by the gunboat Tamai. We were thoroughly crowded and uncomfortable on this miserable barge, and even when we stepped on to the lower deck of the gunboat the dirt and confusion was indescribable. The first night I attempted in the dark to get a little exercise in this way, but I fell over a live goat into the middle of a dead sheep newly slaughtered, and resolved to do without any further exercise until I landed.

The Arab servants were quite happy amid these horrid surroundings, and according to their wont would sit about in groups telling stories till the small hours of the morning. One of their tales, I learnt, concerned a mummy which arose and talked to the Bedawin who unearthed it. In view of certain evidence which has lately been forthcoming, it is just possible that some substratum of truth may have underlaid this weird story. The evidence to which I allude is contained in the following account, which is alleged to be authentic.

A short time ago an Englishman who was travelling in Mexico happened to discover a mummied body of which the extremities were missing. He carried off his find to the home of a Mexican friend whose guest he was, and after dinner showed the mummy to the master and mistress of the house. The case with its contents was placed on the billiard table, and the trio sat on a couch some distance off, when suddenly a voice seemed to issue from the box. The Englishman turned to his host to compliment him on his supposed ventriloquism, when he saw that both the Mexican and his wife were deadly pale, and the lady in a fainting condition. He rushed to the case on the table and declares that as he stooped over it he heard articulate speech issue from the mummied form inside! The voice, however, was only momentary, and after a time his host informed him that already before he entered the room the sound had been heard by his wife and himself proceeding from the box.

This mummy is now, I hear, in England, and one authority who has been consulted suggests that the employment of the RÖntgen rays might perhaps reveal in the mummy's interior some mechanical device employed by the ancients to produce the semblance of the human voice. That some contrivance of this kind was known in antiquity seems almost certain. Priestcraft sometimes caused the statues of gods to talk, as, for example, the famous statue of Memnon amongst the ruins of Thebes. In the case before us some vibration may have started this venerable clockwork into renewed activity, just as nowadays the pressure of infantile fingers causes the mechanical doll to squeak and gibber, or cry "Papa," "Mamma."

At length Colonel Wingate took pity on our abject position in the ghyassa, and we were permitted to leave the society of "Gyppy" officers and native servants, and have our meals on the upper deck.

The gunboat conveyed the Staff of the Intelligence Department, including Slatin Pasha. The long years of hardship endured at Omdurman have left few traces on Slatin; he is always in excellent spirits, and a most kind and unselfish travelling companion. He told me that he was utterly weary of the Sudan, and would, like many others, be heartily glad to see the last of campaigning in these torrid regions. He told me, too, many interesting things about Omdurman and the prisoners still in the Dervishes' power; and how the Austrian mission-sister had been compelled to marry a Greek by the Khalifa on the quaint ground that it was indecorous for an unmarried lady to reside at Omdurman without adequate protection.

The Nile becomes much more interesting above the Atbara, and the banks in places are clothed with dense vegetation. We stopped several times to take in wood for the engine, and at one of our halting-places, Zeibad, during a ramble on shore, I found the bushes full of little doves (turtur Senegalensis), and a flock of wild geese got up, offering a fine shot had one carried a gun. A few hundred yards away I noticed a line of huge Marabout storks. The plumage of these birds is very striking, and I have heard it suggested that when on one occasion during the Atbara campaign a correspondent rode back to camp in hot haste with the report that he had been chased by Dervishes, he had really fallen in with a line of Marabout storks, and mistaken their mottled plumage for Arab "gibbehs." Farther along the bank we skirted a huge marsh—a perfect paradise for a sportsman: teal, duck, and snipe rose in vast coveys; on a tall bush a large fishing eagle was perched, which paid scant attention to the steamer; while at the foot two small crocodiles or very large water-lizards lay basking in the sunshine. On every side a multitude of cranes, secretary birds, and the sacred ibis stalked solemnly about in dignified silence. The whole formed a charming picture of animal life undisturbed by the presence of man—every creature working out its own perfection in "delight and liberty."

The voyage was full of interest. By day we wrote up our diaries, took photographs of interesting bits of river scenery, or occasionally got a shot at a wild duck or goose, which formed a welcome addition to our larder. About half-way to Shabluka we sighted the curious pyramids of Meroe, thirteen or fourteen in number. These seem to be often irregular in shape, and are not nearly so large as the pyramids of Ghizeh or Sakhara. They stand all solitary in a waste of sand and rock, strange enigmatic relics of a vanished race. The region of Meroe once formed a kingdom in itself, which succeeded the Ethiopian kingdom of Napata, lower down the river. The dynasties of the Meroitic kings attained considerable power, and were able to retain their independence when the rest of Egypt became subject to foreign control. Meroe was formerly a flourishing centre for caravan and river-borne trade, but this seems to have disappeared by the Christian era, for in Nero's time it is described as a desolate wilderness, and this fact seems to render untenable the belief that the Queen Candace mentioned in the Acts was the sovereign of Meroe. From the time of Justinian to the 14th century Meroe was absorbed in the kingdom of Dongola, whose inhabitants professed the Jacobite form of Christianity. Quite recently I heard that an altar had been found somewhere in the Meroe region with an inscription to Isa (Jesus), who still lives in the tradition of the country as a great Sheikh. Now that the Sudan has been opened up, and travellers need not fear a compulsory experience of the Khalifa's hospitality at Omdurman, one of the first steps which English archÆologists ought to undertake is the investigation of the countless ruins, tombs, inscriptions, and so forth, which exist south of Wady Halfa. No one, for instance, has yet deciphered the script which is met with amongst the ruins in the Wady Ben Naga. Lepsius explored these ruins in 1844, and published some of the curious inscriptions in his DenkmÄler; but until a bilingual inscription is discovered which will, like the Rosetta Stone, furnish a clue to this mysterious writing, Egyptologists will continue to sigh over its inscrutable characters. Professor Sayce had asked me to bring back some "squeezes" and photographs from the Meroitic inscriptions; but, alas, on the return journey the squeeze paper and photographic apparatus were lost by the capsizing of some ghyassas, and so I could do nothing in the cause of palÆography.

A short distance past the pyramids we caught up a curious procession wending its way along the bank. A famous Gaalin sheikh, Hamara Wad Abu Sin, was journeying southwards to join the Anglo-Egyptian forces. This important ally led the way on foot, followed by a retainer armed with a Remington. Then came a baggage camel carrying the personal luggage of the chieftain, and the rear was brought up by two men and two boys. When the gunboat got opposite the old sheikh, he at once jumped into the river and swam to us, followed by one of the small boys, who kept his master's bundle of clothes out of the water. Wad Abu Sin is head of the Shukryeh tribe, and is noted throughout the Sudan for his personal bravery. His father was mudir of Khartum under Gordon, and he himself was a prisoner in that town until he managed to escape through Abyssinia. It was touching to see the old man's joy at meeting Slatin, his fellow-sufferer under the cruel tyranny of the Khalifa.

At Magyrich, on the western bank, we found the Lancers encamped in a beautiful palm grove, and Cross and I were especially glad to see our camel with the two servants, who had evidently managed to pick up the column. Some distance lower down than Magyrich we had already passed two little groups of Lancers. One batch of twelve stood on the bank, and asked us to take them on board, as their horses had broken down; the other party consisted of only two men, whose comrade had just died of sunstroke, and been buried by the survivors under a mimosa bush.

At 5 a.m. a man swam to the boat from the shore, who turned out to be a deserter from Omdurman. He stated that when he left two of the Dervish boats were on the point of starting to the South, in order, perhaps, to fetch grain, and that the Khalifa was at present with his army, at the outermost of the Omdurman lines of defence, about three miles to the north of the town. This seemed to confirm the general belief, which was afterwards verified, that the decisive battle would not be fought in front of the Kerreri ridge, some ten miles north of the capital, but in front of Omdurman itself.

The sight of Metemmeh was full of interest. On the opposite bank lay the ingeniously constructed forts of Shendy, with solid mud walls, thirty-five feet thick. Miles back beyond Metemmeh, in the desert, lay Abu Klea, and between the two the hamlets of Abu Kru and Gubat. The fighting which we were destined to experience before Omdurman was as nothing compared with the desperate struggles in 1885, when the gallant column of British troops fought its way through overwhelming numbers from Abu Klea to the Nile. Englishmen may well be proud of this splendid feat of arms, unexampled as it is in the history of the Sudan campaigns. Major Stuart-Wortley, who was present at the series of fights from Abu Klea to the Nile, pointed out to me the mud-hut to which Sir Herbert Stewart had been carried. How pitiful to think that the lives of this gallant leader and many another brave man were sacrificed in vain! Instead of helping to save the beleaguered city and rescue Gordon, the dearly-won victory of Abu Klea only seemed to hasten the destruction of Khartum. The Mahdist forces were so incensed by the sight of their wounded comrades brought back after the battle, that they demanded to be led at once to the assault, and captured the town almost without resistance.

We heard, by the way, at Nasri that all the graves of the gallant men who fell in the fighting from Abu Klea to Metemmeh had been desecrated by the Dervishes, and that the white bones lay scattered over the desert. One exception, however, had been made. The resting-place of Sir Herbert Stewart had not been molested.

The above news was, I believe, embodied in several telegrams, but was struck out by the Press Censor, as it was thought likely to cause pain to many in England whose relatives had fallen in the Abu Klea campaign. Afterwards, too, some doubts were thrown upon the truth of the report; but even if the story was well founded, it matters little. Of our valiant dead we may surely say, in the immortal words of the Athenian statesman, "They received each one for himself the noblest of all sepulchres. I speak not of that in which their remains are laid, but of that in which their glory survives.... For the whole earth is a sepulchre of famous men: not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions, but there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone, but in the hearts of men."

The evening before we reached Nasri Island we were suddenly overtaken by a terrific sandstorm. Two vast columns of sand rose straight up from the desert and swept rapidly towards us. The sky was black with clouds, birds ceased to sing, and the grasshoppers chirruped no more, as all living creatures, from ourselves downward, prepared for the coming terror. The Tamai at once tied up to the bank, and we waited for the hurricane. Suddenly it came rushing upon us. Everyone clutched books, camp-chairs, cameras, plates, bottles—whatever lay within reach—and sat tight, while the gunboat heeled over beneath the shock. The storm was shortlived; streams of sunshine broke afresh through the clouds, and birds and insects came forth from their hiding-places, and rejoiced that the tyranny was overpast. We speedily collected our scattered properties and went on our way. Yet all night long the lightning flashed incessantly, showing up every bush and rock on the river bank as clearly as at noonday.

Nasri Island had been converted into a vast depÔt for stores. All the people who were obliged to remain at this station throughout the campaign seemed very depressed. There was nothing whatever to do out of work hours except to prowl along the river bank, on the chance of slaying a goose or catching a fish. One of the officers came on board, and, in answer to our query as to his welfare, said he felt "a bit cheap," as in addition to being soaked to the skin as he lay in bed, he had been stung by two scorpions during the night. As the Tamai's condensers had gone wrong, and the engineer seemed to have lost his head altogether, we tied up to the bank until 2 a.m., and four more hours brought us to Wad Hamed, where the Sirdar's forces were to be finally concentrated before the march upon Omdurman.

We thoroughly enjoyed the week's sojourn at Wad Hamed, as the camp seemed healthy, and along the Nile there were many charming bits of scenery. In fact, in some places where the enormous breadth of the river was broken up into narrower channels, one might almost imagine oneself on the Thames. The banks were clothed with the bright green foliage of the nebek and mimosa bushes, which afforded shelter to innumerable birds. The thorns of the nebek are worse even than those of the mimosa; they curl inwards, and are very strong. Nevertheless, the camel rejoices exceedingly when it can seize a mouthful of this prickly tree, and the yellow berries are not to be despised by human beings when they are really hungry. There is, however, one feature which is sadly lacking even in the nicest bits of Nile scenery; there are no flowers.

After we had pitched our tents amongst some mimosa scrub, during which process our barefooted servants leapt about like cats on hot bricks, we were informed that the Sirdar would receive the correspondents in his tent. Bennett-Burleigh had arrived in the meantime, having stolen away from the Lancers' camp and the other correspondents, and ridden forty miles that day—a fine performance, if not strictly in accord with military discipline. We thereupon collected our little cohort of fifteen, and went off to meet the General. I did not enjoy the interview, which was as barren of results as it was humiliating. The only parallel to it which I can think of is that of a row of curates before a brusque and autocratic bishop. During the brief commonplaces which passed between us, the general impression conveyed to me was the immeasurable condescension of our chief in even deigning to address the representatives of a Press which has never failed to extol even to the verge of exaggeration the achievements of the Anglo-Egyptian Army and its leader! How deep the gulf which appeared to separate the Egyptian commander-in-chief from the civilian correspondent! In short, I should advise anybody who cannot put his pride in his pocket to avoid the rÔle of amateur war correspondent in Egypt. The professionals are, I suppose, to some extent inoculated by this time, and cling to the delusion that correspondents during a campaign are treated like officers.

At the same time, I am bound to confess that if I were a commanding officer I should not be favourably impressed with the genus "correspondent" as a whole. There is sometimes a blatant self-conceit and vulgar swagger about a war correspondent which is very irritating, while in other cases intolerance of discipline and incessant attempts to override military regulations for mere private ends have gone far to justify Lord Wolseley's dictum that correspondents are "the curse of modern warfare." Of course there are delightful exceptions to this sort of thing to be met with in a war correspondent's camp. Some of the men who engage in this most delightful occupation are good fellows in every sense of the phrase,—brave, generous, and clever,—and it is a privilege to enjoy the companionship of men like Steevens, Scudamore, Villiers, and others whom I could name.

Altogether, the little kosmos of our camp was full of interest, as the types of war correspondent one meets with vary considerably. There is the rough man who glories in his roughness, scorns luxury, and doesn't wash. An excellent fellow in his way, he yet renders himself more unhappy than he need be by his unstinted devotion to discomfort. To imitate an ancient Eremite by never changing one's shirt when you can purchase one for 2s. 11¾d., and to sleep on the ground when you have got plenty of money to buy a valise bed, may have certain charms when the weather is fair and you haven't got fever; but when rain is falling upon you, as it knows how to fall in the tropics, or you would give half your income for a little shade from the midday sun, which has got you by the back of the neck and made you limp and listless—it is then that the swashbuckler and old campaigner theory breaks down.

In signal contrast with the above type, one finds the war correspondent who makes himself as comfortable as possible. His editor does not grudge the supply, nor he the expenditure, of large sums of money. He puts on a clean shirt every day, and has his boots polished in the heart of the desert. He wears beautiful cummerbunds, and is all glorious within; his underclothing is of wrought silk. When less fortunate mortals drink muddy water this Sybarite calls for a whisky and Rosbach, and finishes off a dinner of five courses with a glass of excellent liqueur. But, after all, why shouldn't a man make his camp life as pleasant as possible as long as his comforts don't interfere with other people's? Indeed, so far from this being the case, the "comfortable" correspondent—as far as my experience goes—is often a really kind and generous fellow, who never grudges a friend a share in his good things; and as to his picturesque costume and careful toilette, a man preserves his self-respect all the better when he is clean and nicely dressed. The hospitality, too, which, when camels and servants abound, can be generously dispensed to agreeable and communicative officers, is a most valuable factor in the success of a war correspondent's career; its quality is like that of mercy—it blesses him that gives as well as him that takes.

Another type meets us in the veterans, the self-constituted doyens of the pressmen, who claim to regulate the camp and lay down the law generally. Some old persons of this sort, on the strength of their own antiquity and their experience of half a dozen campaigns, are loud in their denunciation of all "interlopers," as they are pleased to call all gentlemen who pay their own expenses and do literary work in connection with the campaign.

Again, all campaigners must know the type of correspondent, who, ignorant of any language except his own, and speaking that imperfectly, ill-treats his servants when they fail to understand his orders. Such persons as this are either too stupid or too lazy to master even a few common words of the vernacular, yet they imagine that for £2, 10s. a month they can secure an accomplished linguist as a servant! "Untwist that knot; not that knot, that other knot! Great Scot! You," etc. etc. The poor Arab boy stands perplexed and fearful—he cannot understand this bewildering utterance, and becomes helpless or makes a bad shot and begins to open a tin of marmalade or lay the table. Then "thud, thud," as a heavy stick falls on the servant's bare flesh, or the wretched boy emerges from the tent, his face streaming with blood from a cowardly blow by his master's fist. I have known an Arab servant to be followed for yards and beaten most cruelly with a heavy stick, because, owing to a breakdown of the telegraph, he was unable to forward a message sent by his master. The boy was absolutely blameless in the matter, but his master would not listen to a word of explanation, and the sound of the brutal strokes he showered upon the servant were audible far away. The foul abuse bellowed at servants frequently made our camp a disgrace to the zeriba. Everybody in the East swears at his servants, but still—whether the proposition be ethically sound or not—there is a gentlemanly way of swearing—brief and incisive, and not intended to reach the ears of others than the delinquent.

Moreover, if one treats one's Arab servants with kindness and firmness withal, they generally do their best, and often become quite devoted to their master. When after the battle Mr. Villiers was lost for some time, and fears were entertained about him, his servant was full of genuine distress and anxiety. If, on the other hand, no tie exists between master and servant except fear of the kurbash and the loss of the paltry wages, what can one expect in the way of zeal and devotion?

The yells and screams of fury which commenced at daybreak, and often made night hideous in the correspondents' camp, were never heard amongst the officers, who surely had infinitely more to put up with in the way of discomfort than we had. In short, disgust was often the prevailing sentiment with which one could contemplate our own camp, and it was a delightful relief to get away for a quiet, pleasant chat with one's officer friends.

There are other types also. The "new hand," some peaceful-looking journalist who has never fired a shot in his life, even at a bunny, stands before the door of his tent clad in all the trappings with which Messrs. Silver adorn the noumenal war correspondent of their imagination. Every strap in the brand new kit is in its place, and the poor man is so festooned with cameras and field-glasses and revolvers and haversacks that respiration must be difficult, as he bumps along on his gee-gee in an enormous helmet. He cannot ride, to walk he is ashamed. Yet, if the "new hand's" enthusiasm for a war correspondent's career is not disillusioned by the stern realities of a Sudan campaign, he will appear in our next "little war" as an old hand, and will be all the happier for having left behind him the outfit dear to the war correspondent of comic opera, and donned a less intricate but more effective costume.

Once more, there is the non-journalistic amateur, who, in order to go through the campaign, has secured a permit to act as a correspondent for some newspaper. As I was myself a humble member of this class, I will refrain from criticising its merits and defects, though later on a brief tribute may well be paid to the memory of two of its members, who, alas, did not return—Cross and Howard.

Now, concerning war correspondents enough has been said. Let no one be offended by fair criticism and good-natured banter—

At the same time it seems likely that the day of the highly paid war correspondent, with carte blanche to spend as much as he likes, is almost over. Scores of capable men with a 'Varsity education would be delighted to do war correspondent's work for a tithe of what is paid to some of these gentlemen; and as agencies like Reuter supply excellent telegrams, there is no crying need for additional "wires." At least one of our leading newspapers was quite uncertain for a long time as to whether it would send a special correspondent to the Sudan or not, and an editor remarked to me that the copy sent was often scarcely worth the outlay. "We don't want to read," said he, "how our correspondent was bitten by mosquitoes, or left his pyjamas behind him."

As my friend Professor Poulton of Oxford had kindly bestowed upon me a small net and a "killing bottle," I resolved to collect some butterflies and insects for the University Museum, and made frequent excursions outside Wad Hamed camp for the purpose. But ill-luck pursued my untrained efforts at practical entomology. The only thing the bottle came within measurable distance of killing was myself, for it got broken almost at the start, and my cook, thinking the strong-smelling concoction at the bottom was some form of curry powder or seasoning, had carefully annexed the dÉbris of the bottle, and was proceeding to use it for culinary purposes, when I seized the stuff and hurled it into the river.

The butterfly net also fell upon evil days, for the donkey which carried it began to roll one evening before its load was removed, and the apparatus was utterly smashed. The stick and brasswork I reluctantly left on the field, but the green gauze served to protect one's eyes and complexion when sandstorms swept through the air.

In consequence of these disasters my entomology had to be carried out with ruder implements—to wit, a bath towel and a thick stick. If a butterfly settled on the ground I stalked it carefully, and then fell upon it with the towel; but I often rose from the earth with no butterfly, and nothing in my hands except half a dozen mimosa thorns. Incensed at failure, one struck at the gaudy insects as they fluttered past, and sometimes succeeded in braining a few; but as I gathered up the scattered remains I trembled to think of the Professor's sarcasms upon the condition of my Sudanese specimens. The natives used to gaze upon my pursuit of butterflies with looks of amusement and surprise. What could the Englishman want with these worthless insects? Were they his totems or fetiches? did he collect them for gastronomic purposes, or as material for magical rites? I sometimes offered some trifling bakshish for butterflies, but the Arabs could never be brought to realise that I wanted variety and quality as well as quantity. On one occasion a struggling mass of fifteen or twenty common white butterflies in a matchbox—all exactly the same—was triumphantly brought me by a small boy. I liberated the unhappy prisoners, and rewarded the boy with one penny and a severe lecture.[1]

As to the other insects in my collection, many of these were so appallingly ugly and malignant in appearance that one had to pull oneself together to attempt their capture. A soda-water bottle had been filled with whisky amid the protests of Cross, who thought this a waste of good liquor, and when some grisly insect with a striped body, projecting eyes, and aggressive antennÆ appeared inside the tent, something like this conversation used to take place:—

E. N. B.—"Do you mind catching that harmless lepidopt, Cross, while I hold the bottle?"

H. C.—"I think, somehow, that you're better at catching those beasts than I am; give me the bottle."

As I had decreed death as the penalty for any creeping thing which invaded our tent, the noisome creature was, as a rule, gingerly secured and forced into the spirit, where it speedily died of delirium tremens. Nothing is more unpleasant in tropical countries than to have a winged insect of great size and energy enter one's tent in the dark. Omne ignotum pro terribili: suddenly the Unknown makes its presence felt by rising up from the ground with a loud buzz; it necessarily strikes against the tent pole or the canvas, and immediately collapses with a thud on the bedclothes or one's face; and then, after a brief interval for recovery, it recommences its clumsy gambols and aËrial flights.

Our stock of literature in the Wad Hamed camp was of amazing variety. We established by usage a sort of Desert Circulating Library, and novels, old magazines, and even newspapers of venerable antiquity were eagerly sought for and exchanged. My own parcel of books on board the Tamai consisted of Whyte Melville's Holmby House, The Juggler and the Soul, by Helen Mathers, and a penny edition of Quentin Durward. I was surprised on one occasion to find a Scotchman engaged in reading Horace's Satires in a new translation by Mr. Coutts. He knew nothing of the original Latin, but had purchased the volume, and was wading through the archaic material with apparent relish. Possibly the jokes of antiquity may have succeeded in striking that chord in a Scottish temperament which is so often unresponsive to contemporary humour! Whenever one got a periodical of any sort, such as The Wide World, one did not toy with it in a dilettante fashion. Every line of it was read from cover to cover, and even the advertisements of life assurance offices were perused with some degree of interest amid this comparative dearth of intellectual pabulum.

One evening, in an interval of leisure before dinner, I strolled along the Nile to see if I could add a little fresh fish to our mÉnu. I had with me one of the excellent rods made for a few shillings by Slater of Newark-on-Trent, which pack up into very small compass, and can easily be carried in a hold-all or Gladstone bag. The river was much too muddy for fly fishing, and one of my officer friends remarked that the fish would have to jump a foot out of the water before they saw the fly. Nevertheless I tried a few casts with a Zulu and a nondescript chub-fly, and after a couple of rises managed to land a curious fish of the carp (?) tribe with long barbules, which is called by the Arabs "Abu Shenab" (Father of Moustaches). There is another very common fish in the Nile of the bream species. It is shaped like a pair of bellows, and has about the same flavour when cooked.

It is always worth while to try a cast or two on unknown waters in the course of one's travels. This spring I was fortunate enough to get some excellent sport from a few hours' fly fishing in the Waters of Merom and the Jordan. The latter river simply teems with fish of seventeen different species, some of which, including the "Father of Moustaches," are found elsewhere only in the Nile—a fact which seems to indicate a connection between the two streams at some remote period.

Sir Francis Grenfell told me that a friend of his had landed some huge fish at the junction of the Nile and Atbara, and during our stay there a native caught a fish weighing nearly a hundred pounds, which was served up, I believe, at the Guards' mess. When the Nile gets lower, some splendid sport might be enjoyed with these monstrous fish. In fact, when one fishes in a stream like the Atbara, there is a delightful uncertainty about the nature of the prospective catch. One never knows what is coming up. That keen sportsman, the late Sir Samuel Baker, fished in this stream with a live bait 2 lbs. in weight, and landed fish up to 180 lbs.! On one occasion he tells how something seized the bait, and would not budge an inch. The dead weight on the line was tremendous, and Sir Samuel says it felt "as if the devil himself had got hold of the hook." At last, after placing his feet against a rock and pulling, something moved upwards in the water which looked for all the world like a cart wheel. Finally, up came a huge water-tortoise, which gave one plunge, and broke away with the hook and several yards of line.

By day the vast area occupied by the two British brigades, and various battalions of Sudanese and Egyptians, was full of ceaseless work, accompanied by a perfect babel of sounds, as fatigue parties hurried in various directions, and long strings of native labourers carried loads or hauled at ropes, with their monotonous sing-song recitation of Koran fragments. The Gregorian chant, which secures the exclusive devotion of some Churchmen, is doubtless an approximation to the music of the primitive Church, but solely because that Church happened to find its earliest home in the East, where no other type of music has ever been known or appreciated. But there is no more reason why an Englishman should feel bound to sing ugly Gregorians than that he should chant the psalms in loose cotton garments without his boots. In either case the "local colour" is quite un-Western.

In this, as in all other Sudan campaigns, some difficulty was experienced by the officers in keeping the soldiers from becoming almost amphibious creatures. If he had his own way, Tommy Atkins would have spent the greater part of his time in floundering about the muddy river. The spirit of sport, so deeply ingrained in the Englishman, found few outlets during the campaign; but now and then, in order to witness a good swimming race, Mr. Atkins would gladly cast a large lump of his rations—bread or biscuit upon the waters. Arab urchins swim admirably, with that quick hand-over-hand stroke which primitive tribes always employ; and they judge their distances so accurately that they rarely miss a crust, even where the stream is running at the rate of many miles an hour.

But the troops were, as a matter of fact, always far too busy to get much time for relaxation, in or out of the water. It is astonishing that the authorities should have found it necessary to assign such an enormous amount of work to the officers and men during the concentration at Wad Hamed. On some days the British troops had no less than twelve hours' fatigue work! Take, for example, the casual record of one day's round of work, got through by a certain battalion in the heat of a Sudan August. The troops were on parade from 4.30 to 8. They then returned to the camp, and, without being allowed any breakfast, were set to cut grass. Ten minutes were then allotted for the morning meal. The next item was wood-cutting, and the digging of trenches for camp purposes. This fatigue continued till the midday dinner, and from two o'clock to dark the men were practised in loading camels. Next morning reveille sounded at four, and then, although the battalion was on the point of leaving the camp, they were actually ordered, before their departure, to cut a number of tree-stumps out of the ground! I do not mention these facts with any intent to dispute their utility or expediency. The British soldier does, under normal conditions during peace, infinitely less work than falls to the lot of his continental brethren. When the Russian soldier has finished his parades he is set to build walls and make roads, while Atkins is disporting himself in the cricket or football field. So it is perhaps not undesirable that our men should learn the meaning of really hard work occasionally. But it was pleasant to see how cheerfully the Tommies bore it, at anyrate outwardly; for I never heard a word of grumbling or "grousing," as they phrase it. Moreover, from a hygienic point of view, their round of heavy fatigues most certainly agreed with them. Wonderfully little sickness prevailed in the ranks, in spite of the fierce heat and the indifferent water, though the wear and tear removed every ounce of superfluous flesh, and reduced our men to the condition of those "lean and wiry dogs" which Plato regarded as a model in the selection of his Republican warriors.

The Sudanese, on the other hand, grumbled a good deal. Their conception of military discipline and obedience are somewhat rudimentary, and manual labour is distasteful to them. The discontent which was caused in their ranks by what they deemed excessive fatigue work culminated finally in a number of desertions. In Wad Hamed alone there were, I believe, no less than twenty cases of desertion, and three at least of the scoundrels were recaptured and shot. The deserters were doubtless making off southwards to join the Khalifa, for the life of a Baggara Dervish in prosperous times—a mere round of eating, sleeping, and fighting—would form an ideal existence in the eyes of an animal like the average Sudanese soldier.

On the other hand, a constant stream of fugitives began to reach the camp from the south; in Wad Hamed there were some thirteen hundred deserters from the Khalifa's dominions. Many of them came down the river, a motley herd of women and children, with a sprinkling of men all packed together in native barges. What these poor creatures lived on I do not know, but I strolled amongst some hundreds of them one evening, and they all seemed in excellent spirits and quite convinced that this time, at anyrate, they had put their money on the right horse. The presence of these uninvited guests caused considerable embarrassment to the Army Service Corps, but the authorities did the best they could for them, and in a big camp there are always a good many pickings which the refugees and vultures might share between them, though our feathered visitors had rather a pull over the other bipeds, as they rose betimes, and, according to the ancient adage, the early bird got the "bully" beef. This beef, by the way, was always to be picked up. It was issued to the men, for greater convenience of transport, in 3-lb. tins, which were trisected with a hammer and chisel for three rations. But, as the men soon got tired of the meat, and it speedily, after being opened, became uneatable from the heat, vast quantities of it were thrown away; and I noticed that the line of railway was often marked for hundreds of yards with tins of "bully" beef more or less full, which were speedily pounced upon by Arabs; if any village chanced to be close at hand.

Occasionally the soldiers got rations of fresh meat, and, what was almost more welcome, fresh bread, with now and then the additional luxury—oh, blissful moment!—of a little marmalade. Once a week, too, a tot of rum was served out, and happy was the orderly whose task it was to convey the rum rations to his superiors; for the officers rarely drank the fiery spirit, and when it was given back it was not wasted. This small weekly allowance was the only strong drink which Tommy Atkins imbibed throughout the campaign. The deadly effects of alcoholic excess in a climate like that of the Sudan are, of course, well known, and in a previous campaign the danger of allowing the men the use of intoxicants had been so unpleasantly demonstrated in the case of a certain British battalion, that the Sirdar very wisely established a system of "total prohibition" amongst the rank and file. Some rascally Greeks brought casks of whisky and beer to the Atbara, but the authorities soon discovered their little game. Most of the alcohol was sent back to Cairo, and of the remainder, some was put under the military seal and the rest simply emptied into the sand!

At Wad Hamed officers and correspondents alike enjoyed a life of comparative comfort and refinement, which was necessarily impossible in our subsequent camps during the final week of the campaign. On ordinary days we woke about five o'clock, when Ali brought us a mug of cocoa and a biscuit. The biscuit supplied to the Egyptian troops was of a dark brown colour, and hard as a brick. On leaving Wad Hamed, Ali went by mistake to the wrong canteen, and brought us a bag of "Gyppy" biscuit, on which Cross and I subsisted for several days, and were thankful at the end that we had only lost one tooth each in that period. The British biscuit was much nicer, comparatively white, and quite free from "weevils"; for I used to shake my biscuits to see if I could extract one of these insects, which I much wished to see. No weevil ever emerged, and I am under the impression that this insect, which figures so prominently in tales about pirates and "sea dogs," must be a semi-fabulous creature, to be placed under the same category as the basilisk and the Barometz lamb.

After dressing we generally strolled about the camp on the banks of the river for an hour or so, and then we were quite ready for breakfast, which ordinarily meant porridge, sardines, bread or biscuit, marmalade, and tea. As at this time of the day one could generally secure a little hot water or the remaining contents of the teapot, I used to devote some time to shaving. This operation was quite an ordeal in the Sudan. Lather manufactured from muddy Nile water spread a layer of fine sand over one's face, which speedily blunted the best steel, and towards the end of the campaign I might as well have used a piece of hoop iron as try to make my razors work with cold water. With warm water the torture was somewhat less acute.

Perhaps it is worth while mentioning in connection with our biscuit supply that any traveller or explorer who cannot secure flour as he proceeds, can easily make certain of having a continual supply of decent bread by the following means. Let him order a quantity of thick, flat cakes to be made of ordinary bread dough. When these are thoroughly baked they must be gradually dried either by artificial heat or by the sun, if its rays are strong enough, until every particle of moisture is dried up. Bread thus desiccated will last for months, and when it is wanted a lump is sprinkled with a little water, and one finds nice spongy bread for breakfast instead of the hard and monotonous biscuit. Mrs. Theodore Bent first taught me this bread-lore, and when I explored Sokotra in company with herself and her husband, we took several sacks of these flat cakes, and were in consequence never without nice fresh bread.

In the interval between breakfast and midday we got through a good deal of work in the way of letter-writing or telegraphing. If one had nothing to do oneself there was always a certain psychological interest attaching to the study of one's fellow-correspondents and their mysterious movements. One of them, after a successful prowl for news, would appear walking towards his tent with an air of nonchalance intended to conceal his eagerness to find telegraph forms. He would dive within the canvas, and then dispatch a servant with a telegram, which five hours afterwards would be received in London, and next morning would be read by thousands of eager eyes; for surely no Sudan campaign has ever possessed a quarter of the interest which, for some reason or other, the present one has aroused in the British public. Of course all telegrams had to be brought to Colonel Wingate and receive his official visÉ and approval before being put upon the wires. The utmost precautions were taken throughout the campaign against any bad faith on the part of the operatives. All the clerks employed in this service were bound over in sureties of £240 not to divulge the contents of any telegram. This was found necessary, inasmuch as during the last campaign several important telegrams—so I was informed—between the Sirdar and Sir Francis Grenfell were revealed to others than the lawful recipients.

After a light lunch about 12.30, everybody, soldier and civilian alike, lolled about in shirt-sleeves or went to sleep well under cover of his canvas. Outside the sun blazed down in fury on the desert, till the rocks became too hot to be touched, and the rarefied air quivered over the yellow sand. To walk twenty yards in the open without a helmet might mean death, and even inside one's tent the heat which penetrated a double roof of thick green canvas was so intense that a wet towel was very welcome as a protection for the head. Whenever the surrounding temperature exceeds that of the surface of one's body there is always a risk of sunstroke, and it is amazing that during the heat which has prevailed in England during August and September few people took the trouble to protect their heads by any additional covering beyond a straw hat. In fact, Surgeon-Major Parkes states that he had come across many more cases of sunstroke in England than in Africa, where he had spent many years amid the vicissitudes of travel and exploration. Furthermore, a "spinal pad" is almost of as much importance as a good helmet against sunstroke, yet in the Sudan the use of the spinal pad supplied by the Government was rather the exception than the rule, and men walked about in the tropical sun with a helmet on their heads while their back was protected only by a flannel shirt. Sunstroke acts in different ways. I have seen the quartermaster of a P. and O. in the Red Sea suddenly drop as if he had been shot; but, in most cases, the initial stages—loss of appetite, nausea, and headache—give one full warning, and if the patient can at once get under some shade and secure medical assistance, the "touch of the sun," which has upset him for the time being, passes away without leaving any effects behind it except a general lassitude for some time.

About four o'clock the hottest part was over, but the danger of sunstroke was, if anything, greater, because the oblique rays of the sun fell upon one's neck, unless, indeed, as was the case with the rank and file, a "curtain" was attached to the helmet. Nearly everybody drank tea about this time. There is a kind of notion abroad that this beverage serves to cool one, but the general effect produced in the Sudan seemed quite the reverse. Any perspiration left in one's sebaceous follicles after the genial warmth of the Sudan had kept us in a sort of natural Turkish bath for six hours, was elicited by the warm tea, and one realised how easy under such conditions it would be to lose every particle of one's existing body in even less than the seven years indicated by medical statistics, and thus, on good Bishop Butler's showing, secure, together with revaccination, a frequently recurring proof of one's immortality.

After tea we were amply compensated for the discomforts of the day by the delights of a tropical evening. The air was deliciously cool, and the soft tints of sunset coloured all the landscape. Everyone recovered his temper, and such pleasures and duties of social life as survived in the desert occupied our attention from this hour till bedtime. Men dropped in to see each other all over the camp, and there was a general atmosphere of "Have a drink, old chap." The amount of fluid one can consume in these tropical regions is amazing. Nobody, of course, who has any common sense thinks of drinking much alcohol in the heat of the day. Lime juice and soda is often taken at lunch, while some claret or sauterne, or a whisky and Rosbach, are common beverages in the evening. It is often very difficult indeed—especially when one is on the march—to keep such luxuries cool, but the ingenious "sparklets," which were brought out to the Sudan in thousands, will always, if fairly good water can be got, provide one with a decent drink, as the sudden liberation of the compressed gas cools the water as well as aËrates it.

It is worth while being really thirsty and hungry to understand the pleasures of drink and food. Our English meals follow each other with such regularity and diversity that one seldom realises what it means to crave for food and drink as a primary instinct. But oh! the joy of a deep draught of cool water after long hours of abstention in the desert, or, what is almost as bad, a long course of brackish water—saline water, which quenches one's thirst for the moment only to increase it by the after-taste. Once when I was travelling with Mr. Bent, I remember how I was walking in a stony ravine after six days of nothing but brackish water; suddenly, to my delighted vision, a little brook of limpid water appeared running down to the sea. One threw oneself flat upon the bank and drank, and drank, and drank! Hunger is much more easily endured than thirst, and Æschylus did well to class amongst the most joyful of human experiences the sight of running water to a thirsty traveller—

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