gallons for horses, and five for mules. To lessen the thirst caused by
the heat Colonel Kitchener decided to march by night. An advanced depot
was formed at Gedid and food for two days accumulated there. Besides
this, each unit carried ten, and the column transport seven, days'
rations. Thus the force were supplied with food up till the 9th of
February, and their radius of action, except as restricted by water, was
nineteen days. This was further extended five days by the arrangement
of a convoy which was to set out on the 30th of January to meet them as
they returned.

The column--numbering 1,604 officers and men and 1,624 camels and other
beasts of burden--started from Kohi at 3 P.M. on the 23rd of January,
having sent on a small advanced party to the wells of Gedid twelve hours
before. The country through which their route lay was of barren and
miserable aspect. They had embarked on a sandy ocean with waves of
thorny scrub and withered grass. From the occasional rocky ridges,
which allowed a more extended view, this sterile jungle could be seen
stretching indefinitely on all sides. Ten miles from the river all
vestiges of animal life disappeared. The land was a desert; not the open
desert of the Northern Soudan, but one vast unprofitable thicket, whose
interlacing thorn bushes, unable to yield the slightest nourishment to
living creatures, could yet obstruct their path.

Through this the straggling column, headed in the daylight by the red
Egyptian flag and at night by a lantern on a pole, wound its weary way,
the advanced guard cutting a path with axes and marking the track
with strips of calico, the rearguard driving on the laggard camels
and picking up the numerous loads which were cast. Three long marches
brought them on the 25th to Gedid. The first detachment had already
arrived and had opened up the wells. None gave much water; all emitted
a foul stench, and one was occupied by a poisonous serpent eight feet
long--the sole inhabitant. The camels were sent to drink at the pool
seven miles away, and it was hoped that some of the water-skins could
be refilled; but, after all, the green slime was thought unfit for human
consumption, and they had to come back empty.

The march was resumed on the 26th. The trees were now larger; the
scrub became a forest; the sandy soil changed to a dark red colour; but
otherwise the character of the country was unaltered. The column rested
at Abu Rokba. A few starving inhabitant