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and think that that man, in the midst of all that wretchedness and semi-starvation, was contemplating the conquest of Egypt, and then of the world, is a fact which makes such large demands on one's imagination that one has to put it aside. The recollection that other great movents in this world have begun from germs as insig nificant, does not in the least reconcile one to the idea.

On the 17th July the Sirdar returned towards Assuân, while on the following day the troops from Cairo began to arrive at Toski and occupied the village. Toski is 25 miles from Bellâna; between the two lies the famous temple of Abu Simbel. On the

25th Makîn-el-Nur and Ali-WadSaâd arrived at Bellâna, and pitched their camp a little to the south of Wad-el-Najûmi's. They had marched 45 miles in thirty hours, and had therefore come without many provisions, though they were well supplied with transport. They brought some 500 armed men with them. On the 28th July Wad-el-Najûmi marched northwards, and pitched his camp opposite Abu Simbel (10 miles).

Between the 2d July, the day of Argin, and the 28th July, when Wad-el-Najûmi left Bellâna, Wodehouse's flying column had been engaged in patrolling the river by night and day, in preventing the enemy from making any lodgment on the Nile, and in holding Bellâna village, prepared at any moment to meet an attack such as had been delivered at Argin. Bellâna village is in every way a counterpart of Argin, except that the sand-hills are considerably higher. At Faras fort they had engaged the enemy, and compelled him to retire after a three day's occupation. During

the whole of this time they had had to contend against the great heat of a Nubian summer; but the frontier officers were seasoned men, and stood the heat as well as the native soldiers. Serra had been the scene of an act of great personal bravery on the part of an English officer, which it is a pleasure to record. It will well explain the kind of warfare they were engaged in. Bimbashi Judge, of the 13th battalion, had been ordered to land at Serra village with fifty men, as a strong party of dervishes threatened an attack there. He landed his men, and taking twelve of them with him, he proceeded on foot to the western side of the village, to see if there was any sign of the enemy. Suddenly a number of the enemy's cavalry appeared from behind the sand-hills. The men with him precipitately fell back and left him alone. Calling on them to stand, he fell back slowly. There were seven dervish horsemen altogether. Instead of charging down on him in a body and despatching him, they tried to deliberately surround him. This enabled him to use his revolver and disable three of them as they closed around him. By this time the fourth man, an emir, was on him. finding that his sword had no effect on the thick, padded coat and turban of the emir, and being a very tall and powerful man himself, as a last desperate resort seized the man by the collar, tore him from his horse, and ran his sword through him. Just then all his men came up and despatched the remainder of the enemy. The twelve men, who had suddenly lost their presence of mind and deserted him, on their return to their regiment went up to their commanding officer and reported the matter. This was

Judge,

the most distinguished encounter of the campaign; but during the whole of the time the dervishes were kept off the Nile, officers and men had again and again personal encounters such as one is accustomed to read of in ancient warfare, but seldom gets an opportunity of witnessing in modern times. To prove how dangerous it was to show any clemency to the Arabs from among the enemy, the following incident which occurred at Bellâna will afford a good example. An English officer of the mounted corps, returning from a reconnaissance, saw under a rock an Arab and two women: approaching them alone, without any weapon in his hand, the officer called on the Arab to surrender. The Arab acquiescing, the officer approached within three yards of the party and told the man to drive his spears into the ground. The Arab at once sprang to his feet and made a thrust at the officer with his spear; the latter with difficulty evaded the blow by wheeling his horse round, while the spear grazed his saddle. Thereupon another English officer rode up and shot the Arab. The next incident shows how ill founded was the reproach cast on the Egyptian army of undue severity towards the enemy. This same officer, who had jeopardised his life in going out of his way to save one of the enemy, two or three days afterwards met another Arab moving away from Najumi's camp with his wife: he again rode up and called on the man to surrender. It is satisfactory to be able to state that

on

this occasion the Arab, in response to the officer's demand to surrender, handed his spears, five in number, to his wife, and told her to give them to the officer, which she did.

As far as Bellâna there had not been many deaths among the campfollowers of Najûmi, as there was plenty of food in the camp, and they had always been able to water freely. During the long halt at Bellâna, however, food became very scarce, though water was plentiful. At the Bellâna camp there were a few instances of cannibalism, but from Bellâna onwards there was a considerable increase. The fighting men had food distributed to them-for them there was enough; but the campfollowers had to exist as best they could. Most of those who died at Bellâna inside the camp were buried, but Najûmi had now no transport for the wounded, so that when he marched northwards he left the wounded in rude tents made of palm branches. The road followed by Najûmi leaves the camp at Bellâna by a long steep incline in heavy sand till the crest of the hills is reached. From here, straight on to Toski, the road is easily followed by the numbers of the corpses which are strewn over the desert: here a child of five or six years of age-one wonders how he managed to come so far from his home away in the south; there two or three emaciated women; beyond them a powerful soldier badly wounded in some previous encounter. In many cases the corpses had been partially devoured to provide food for the camp-followers. It is easy to distinguish the ravages committed by the few savage animals which inhabit the deserts from those of human beings. At Abu Simbel camp Najûmi buried all the armour he had brought with him from Khartoum, and which had been carried so far to enable the dervishes to enter Cairo in triumph in a befitting manner. By a strange irony of fate, he

buried these trophies almost in the shadow of the temple which was constructed by an ancient Egyptian king to commemorate a victoryover such another foe as himself. On the 31st July, Wad-el- Najûmi marched from Abu Simbel to his camp at Toski (a distance of 10 miles). The camp was well chosen; it was the last one occupied by him. On the 1st of August, Wodehouse's flying column left Bellâna and took up its position in Toski village, where the troops from Cairo had already arrived. From this day Wodehouse lost his individuality, and commanded one of the brigades in the Sirdar's force. He

Infantry Brigade under Wodehouse Pasha,

Cavalry Brigade under Kitchener Pasha,

had a very brilliant record to show for the time that the frontier had been in his guardianship. He had met at Argin the very ablest of the dervish generals, in command of 3500 men; he had left him at Toski with only 2000. He himself had lost but 20 killed and 70 wounded out of the 2000 men under his own command. His plan of campaign had been fully justified. At Toski were collected together all the staff-officers of the Egyptian army except those at Suakim. The following troops took part in the engagement of the 3d August, under the command of General Grenfell:

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Camel corps under Bimbashi Dunning, Horse battery, and first and second 1 field batteries,

250

Total,

3650

Artillery under Rundle Bey,

Wingate Bey was Intelligence officer to the force.

The only change which had taken place in the flying column since the day of Argin was that Lloyd Bey had taken command of his regiment, the 9th Sudanese battalion; while Lewis Bey, who had commanded at Argin, had been made commandant of Halfa. The 2d infantry division consisted of new troops, which had just arrived. The 1st battalion under Coles Bey and Bimbashi Frith, and the 2d battalion under Shakspeare Bey and Bimbashi Martyr, had come from Cairo; while the 11th Sudanese battalion, under Macdonald

Bey and Bimbashis Cotton and Jackson, had marched across the desert from Kosseir to Kena.

It is not so easy to decide what was exactly the strength of the enemy. The number who crossed the frontier had occupied at the 1st camp at Argin roughly 110,000 square yards of ground, at the 2d camp at Argin 90,000 square yards, and at Serra 90,000 square yards. At Bellâna Wad-el-Najûmi's original camp covered 75,000 square yards, and Makîn-el-Nur's contingent 5000 square yards. The camp at Abu Simbel covered 50,000 'square yards, and the Toski camp 50,000 square yards. Allowing

10 square yards for each person, the numbers of the enemy at the different camps were as follows:

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11,000
9,000

8,000
5,000
5,000

high mass of granite hills which separated him from the Sirdar's camp on the Nile. The distance between the two camps was about five miles on the straight. The 9,000 granite hills died away gradually as one advanced towards the northeast of the dervish position, or to the northwest of that of the Egyptian troops, so that following a curve there was a road across a level plain about seven miles in length between the two positions. This plain stretched away illimitably to the east and west, dotted here and there with conical hills and sandy mounds. It was bounded on the north, at a distance of about five miles from either camp, by another great mass of granite hills traversed by a rocky gorge running in a westerly direc tion. Between these two masses of granite hills was fought the battle of Toski; while the line of retreat of the dervish forces was due west through the gorge, towards the Nile, which makes a long sweep round Abu Simbel. It was a place of bad omen for the dervish leader. The temple of Abu Simbel, as already noted, commemorates a brilliant victory of the Great Thothmes over a joint army of Arabs and blacks such as Wad-el - Najûmi himself was commanding. every wall of the temple the giant figure of the king is represented again and again as seizing by the hair of their heads a number of pigmy enemies, half of whom have distinctly Arab features and half of them Negro faces. These he is on the eve of executing. Owing probably to the death of the king occurring before the temple was completed, some of the chambers are unfinished. The present Government might complete these in memory of the successful issue of the Nile campaign of 1889.

The differences between these numbers agree fairly well with the numbers of deserters and those of the killed and wounded. About 3000 deserters surrendered themselves before Toski, and about 3000 afterwards. The balances represent the losses from deaths and desertions towards the south. The numbers in the previous list contain the fighting men as well as the camp-followers. About 3500 fighting men crossed the frontier under Wad-el- Najûmi, and 500 under Makîn-el-Nur and Ali-Wad-Saâd, making a total of 4000 men. Of these, 1000 were killed at Argin or died of wounds in the camp, and about 500 were killed in the thirty days' fighting between Argin and Toski. The deserters who fled southwards and who surrendered themselves were very numerous, to which the steady diminution in the sizes of the camps testifies; and as every large body of deserters was always accompanied by a certain proportion of fighting men, the number of the fighting men who deserted cannot have been less than 500. If these numbers are added together, it will be found that Najûmi had with him 2000 men on the morning of the engagement at Toski. Independent witnesses who had every opportunity of knowing the number of the enemy put them down at 2000.

Wad-el-Najûmi's camp at Toski lay in the desert to the west of a

On

At dawn on the morning of the

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