ourably with the massive frame and iron constitution of the peasant
of the Delta. Always excitable and often insubordinate, he required the
strictest discipline. At once slovenly and uxorious, he detested his
drills and loved his wives with equal earnestness; and altogether
'Sambo'--for such is the Soudanese equivalent of 'Tommy'--was a lazy,
fierce, disreputable child. But he possessed two tremendous military
virtues. To the faithful loyalty of a dog he added the heart of a
lion. He loved his officer, and feared nothing in the world. With the
introduction of this element the Egyptian army became a formidable
military machine. Chance or design has placed the blacks ever in the
forefront of the battle, and in Lord Kitchener's campaigns on the Nile
the losses in the six Soudanese battalions have exceeded the aggregate
of the whole of the rest of the army.

It was well that the Egyptian troops were strengthened by these valiant
auxiliaries, for years of weary war lay before them. Sir Reginald
Wingate, in his exhaustive account of the struggle of Egypt with the
Mahdist power, [MAHDISM AND THE EGYPTIAN SOUDAN, Sir Reginald Wingate]
has described the successive actions which accompanied the defence of
the Wady Halfa frontier and of Suakin.

The ten years that elapsed between Ginniss and the first movements of
the expedition of re-conquest were the dreary years of the Egyptian
army. The service was hard and continual. Though the operations were
petty, an untiring vigilance was imperative. The public eye was averted.
A pitiless economy was everywhere enforced. The British officer was
deprived of his leave and the Egyptian private of his rations, that a
few pounds might be saved to the Egyptian Treasury. The clothing of the
battalions wore thin and threadbare, and sometimes their boots were so
bad that the soldiers' feet bled from the cutting edges of the rocks,
and the convoy escorts left their trails behind them. But preparation
was ever going forward. The army improved in efficiency, and the
constant warfare began to produce, even among the fellahin infantry,
experienced soldiers. The officers, sweltering at weary Wady Halfa and
Suakin, looked at the gathering resources of Egypt and out into the
deserts of the declining Dervish Empire and knew that some day their
turn would come. The sword of re-conquest which Evelyn Wood had forged,
and Grenfell had tested, was gradually sharpened; and when the process
was almost complete,