ly shown.

But quite apart from any original error as to the inception of the
campaign, which may fairly be deemed a matter of opinion, there can be
no difference between any two persons who have studied the facts that
the execution of it was completely mismanaged. In the first place the
start of the expedition was delayed, so that the Mahdi got ample
warning of the coming attack. The troops were all in the camp at
Omdurman in June, but they did not reach Duem till September, and a
further delay of two months occurred there before they began their
march towards El Obeid. That interval was chiefly taken up with
disputes between Hicks and his Egyptian colleagues, and it is even
believed that there was much friction between Hicks and his European
lieutenants.

The first radical error committed was the decision to advance on El
Obeid from Duem, because there were no wells on that route, whereas
had the northern route _via_ Gebra and Bara been taken, a certain
supply of water could have been counted on, and still more important,
the co-operation of the powerful Kabbabish tribe, the only one still
hostile to the Mahdi, might have been secured. The second important
error was not less fatal. When the force marched it was accompanied by
6000 camels and a large number of women. Encumbered in its movements
by these useless impedimenta, the force never had any prospect of
success with its active enemy. As it slowly advanced from the Nile it
became with each day's march more hopelessly involved in its own
difficulties, and the astute Mahdi expressly forbade any premature
attack to be made upon an army which he clearly saw was marching to
its doom.

On the 1st November 1883, when the Egyptians were already disheartened
by the want of water, the non-arrival of reinforcements from the
garrisons near the Equator, which the Governor-General had rashly
promised to bring up, and the exhausting nature of their march through
a difficult country, the Mahdi's forces began their attack. Concealed
in the high grass, they were able to pour in a heavy fire on the
conspicuous body of the Egyptians at short range without exposing
themselves. But notwithstanding his heavy losses, Hicks pressed on,
because he knew that his only chance of safety lay in getting out of
the dense cover in which he was at such a hopeless disadvantage. But
this the Mahdi would never permit, and on 4th November, when Hicks had
reached a place called Shekan, he gave the o