deprive the Arabs of a base in the fertile delta of the Tokar
river. The fort is strong, defended by artillery, and requires for its
garrison an entire battalion of infantry.

No description of Suakin would be complete without some allusion to the
man to whom it owes its fame. Osman Digna had been for many years a most
successful and enterprising Arab slave dealer. The attempted suppression
of his trade by the Egyptian Government drove him naturally into
opposition. He joined in the revolt of the Mahdi, and by his influence
roused the whole of the Hadendoa and other powerful tribes of the
Red Sea shore. The rest is upon record. Year after year, at a horrid
sacrifice of men and money, the Imperial Government and the old slaver
fought like wolves over the dry bone of Suakin. Baker's Teb, El Teb,
Tamai, Tofrek, Hashin, Handub, Gemaiza, Afafit--such were the fights of
Osman Digna, and through all he passed unscathed. Often defeated, but
never crushed, the wily Arab might justly boast to have run further and
fought more than any Emir in the Dervish armies.

It had scarcely seemed possible that the advance on Dongola could
influence the situation around Kassala, yet the course of events
encouraged the belief that the British diversion in favour of Italy had
been effective; for at the end of March--as soon, that is to say, as
the news of the occupation of Akasha reached him--Osman Digna separated
himself from the army threatening Kassala, and marched with 300 cavalry,
70 camelry, and 2,500 foot towards his old base in the Tokar Delta. On
the first rumour of his advance the orders of the Xth Soudanese to move
via Kossier and Kena to the Nile were cancelled, and they remained in
garrison at Tokar. At home the War Office, touched in a tender spot,
quivered apprehensively, and began forthwith to make plans to strengthen
the Suakin garrison with powerful forces.

The state of affairs in the Eastern Soudan has always been turbulent.
The authority of the Governor of the Red Sea Littoral was not at this
time respected beyond the extreme range of the guns of Suakin. The
Hadendoa and other tribes who lived under the walls of the town
professed loyalty to the Egyptian Government, not from any conviction
that their rule was preferable to that of Osman Digna, but simply for
the sake of a quiet life. As their distance from Suakin increased, the
loyalty of the tribesmen became even less pronounced, and at a radius of
twenty miles all the