this statement produced a certain slackness of watch among the soldiers of Arabi, who turned into their tents. An alarm was certainly given when an Arab pony in the British lines neighed a response to another half a mile distant, but still the men of Arabi thought nothing of it. Soon after this an artillery colonel reported that he heard the clank of accouterments at a distance. A picket that was ordered out to reconnoiter refused to do so, and a vedette who had lost his horse, thinking he could see it, crept out from the earthworks and saw the British army lying down!

He had barely time to report this circumstance when the roar of battle burst over all the trenches. Believing themselves to be invulnerable and impregnable, the enemy stood firm for a considerable time, blazing hard, till their rifle-barrels became heated with the fierce rapidity of their firing.

CHAPTER XLIV

BATTLE OF KASHGATE AND FALL OF KHARTOUM

THE WAR IN THE SOUDAN-THE MAHDI-DEFEAT OF HICKSNILE EXPEDITION AND DEATH OF GORDON

A.D. 1883-1884

ELED-ES-SOUDAN, or "the Land of the Blacks," is the name given by Arabian geographers to that part of the African continent which stretches to the south of the Sahara, from the Nile on the east to the Atlantic on the west. Khartoum (which signifies "the point") is the capital of this country, the sovereignty of which was first seized by Egypt in 1819, when Mehemet Ali, on becoming aware of the anarchy existing there, conceived the idea of introducing civilization, and of providing occupation for his troops at the same time. He according sent his son Ismail with a large force to invade the country. Ismail reached Khartoum, which is situated at the delta where the

Blue and White Nile unite their waters to form the great river of Egypt; but he and all his followers were burned alive by a native chief, who first made them drunk at his own table and then set fire to the house which held them. For this, terrible vengeance was promptly taken, and Egyptian sovereignty was established over Kordofan and Sennaar.

Khartoum is about equi-distant-between eleven hundred or twelve hundred miles-from the northern frontier of Egypt, the Mediterranean, and the southern boundary of the khedive's equatorial dominions, the Lake Nyanza, and the principality of Uganda. The actual extent of the Soudan is sixteen hundred miles in one direction and thirteen hundred in another, and from first to last this almost inaccessible country has never paid the cost of its government.

After various revolts had been quelled, Sir Samuel Baker, in September, 1869, undertook the command of an expedition to Central Africa, under the auspices of the khedive, who placed under his orders fifteen hundred chosen Egyptian troops, with four years' absolute and uncontrolled power of life and death; and he conquered the Equatorial Provinces, of which Colonel Gordon, now so well known to fame, was appointed governor-general in 1874. In the following year Darfour was annexed in the west, and in the extreme east, southward of Abyssinia, Harrar was conquered.

When Colonel Gordon became absolute governor of the Soudan, he warned the khedive "that he would render it forever impossible for Turks or Circassians to govern there again." Gordon was as good as his word. By treating the people with a justice hitherto unknown to them, by giving attention to their grievances, by repressing without mercy all who defied the law, he accustomed the Soudanese to appreciate a purer and gentler-yet firmer-form of rule than had ever prevailed in that part of the world before; and during his term of office he kept the Soudan free from interference by the venal ministry at Cairo.

After his departure, a horde of Turks, Circassians, and BashiBazouks were let loose in the territory, where they worried the unfortunate people, reversed his entire policy, and made marked men of all his old officials, and armed revolt was the result.

It was in July, 1881, that the Mahdi first took the field, but was defeated at Sennaar in the spring of the following year, the May oi which saw Egypt in that state of revolution which led to the British conflicts with Arabi Pasha. Retreating up the Blue Nile, he gathered fresh followers as he went, and, crossing the White Nile, invaded the country watered by the Bahr-el-Gazelle, a river the shores of which are generally bordered by reeds, and in July, 1882, six thousand Egyptian troops, led by Yussuf Pasha, were surrounded by his army and massacred nearly to a man.

In August, 1882, he advanced against El Obeid, the capital of Kordofan, but was defeated at Bara, and was twice defeated again in assaulting the former place, without apparently injuring the supposed sanctity of his mission. After various turns of fortune, the February of 1883 saw nearly the whole of the Egyptian forces in the Soudan almost isolated in Kordofan, while the neighborhood of Suakim was swarming with exultant followers of the Mahdi, five thousand of whom were defeated on the 29th of April by the Egyptian forces, under Colonel Hicks, formerly of the Bombay Army, with the loss of five hundred men, including the Fals Prophet's lieutenant-general. At the battle of Kashgate, however, which was fought on the 5th of November, the army of Hicks was annihilated by the forces of the Mahdi, after three days' hard fighting.

General Hicks charged at the head of his staff. They galloped toward a sheikh, supposed by the Egyptians to be the Mahdi. General Hicks rushed on him with his sword, and cut his face and arm; this man had on a Darfour steel mail shirt. Just then a clu thrown struck General Hicks on the head and unhorsed him. Th horses of the staff were speared, but the officers fought on foot til. all were killed. General Hicks was the last to die. The Mahdi was not in the battle, but came to see his body, through which, according to an Arab custom, every sheikh thrust his spear.

Baker's forces behaved with less resolution than those of Hicks, when attacked on the march to Tokar. They refused to defend themselves, but lay on the ground groveling and screaming fo. mercy. No efforts of Baker and his British officers could induce them to face the enemy. They abandoned him, and he, wil

Colonel Burnaby, Colonel Hay, Major Harvey, Mr. Bewlay, and others, had to hew their way out through a forest of Arab lances. Captain Giles, writing to the "Graphic" from the scene of action, described a charge of some Turkish cavalry on a body of mounted men, whom Baker thought it advisable to disperse, and continued thus:

"After rallying and getting them together, and while returning to get in rear of the square, which Baker had attempted to form on the enemy's attack, we found that a furious fire had been going on. For a moment we thought all was well, but in closing, saw that the force had broken up, a stream of soldiers, camels, and horsemen making off. . . All around us the fugitive Egyptians had thrown away their arms, and had not even the pluck to attempt any selfdefense, but allowed themselves to be slaughtered like sheep. The shooting, too, of the Egyptians, both cavalry and infantry (while they had their arms) was most dangerous, as they blazed off their rifles without putting them to their shoulders, and without the smallest care which way the shot went. Numbers of our men were killed by them. The conduct of the Egyptians was simply disgraceful! Armed with rifle and bayonet, they allowed themselves to be slaughtered, without an effort at self-defense, by savages inferior to them in numbers, and armed only with spears

and swords."

In concert with the Mahdi's revolt against the Egyptian government in the Western Soudan, the tribes of the east broke into open rebellion, surrounding the garrisons at Sinkat and Tokar, and cutting off the communications between Berber and Suakim, where they were kept at bay only by the appearance of our gunboats in the harbor. In the beginning of November a force was sent to relieve Tokar, but was surrounded by the rebels and destroyed.

A month later an attempt to relieve the starving garrison at Sinkat met with an equally disastrous fate, and for a time it began to seem as if the Mahdi, whose forces were at times stated to be three hundred thousand strong, were carrying all before him, and would ere long menace Cairo, though garrisoned by our slender army of occupation. Thus, more than ever did many of the ignorant Soudanese believe in the holiness of his mission.

Immediately after the destruction of Hicks and his army the Mahdi's forces advanced to Khartoum, where General Gordon was blockaded, and laid siege to it.

We have not the space here to detail the circumstances that led Gladstone's government to undertake what is known as the Nile Expedition, one of the most remarkable and interesting of military history. Suffice it to say that, on January 18, 1884, General Gordon was dispatched to Khartoum, to withdraw all the Egyptian garrisons from the Soudan, and make the best arrangements possible for its future government.

General Gordon entered Khartoum on February 18, and at first all went well, and he declared Khartoum was "as safe as Kensington Park"; but the Mahdi continued to gain successes, Khartoum was invested, and, on May 26, Berber fell. Lord Wolseley conjured the British government to dispatch an expedition to the relief of General Gordon in May; but doubts were entertained by the Ministry as to his inability to extricate himself, and no determination was come to until August 5. The loss of these three months was fatal to success, and the desert column, under Sir Herbert Stewart, arrived at Khartoum too late by two days.

Lord Wolseley, Adjutant-general of the Horse Guards, left for Egypt on August 31, to assume supreme command. On his arrival at Cairo he called for volunteers from the regiments of Guards and cavalry stationed in the United Kingdom, to form a Camel Corps, consisting of sixty-five officers and one thousand one hundred and eighty-seven rank and file, each regiment and battalion contributing two officers and forty-three men, the whole being organized into three distinct corps, called respectively the Guards, and Heavy, and Light Camel Regiments. This chosen body of troops embarked from England on September 26, and the sagacity that dictated the formation of the Camel Corps was amply justified by its success in the famous desert march to the Nile, the probability of which Lord Wolseley had in view.

For four months the Nile presented the most singular spectacle that even "the father of rivers" has shown throughout the centuries during which some of the most striking episodes of history have been enacted on its banks. For many hundreds of miles of