and summer of 1899
supreme in Kordofan, reorganising his adherents and plundering the
country--a chronic danger to the new Government, a curse to the local
inhabitants, and a most serious element of unrest. The barren and almost
waterless regions into which he had withdrawn presented very difficult
obstacles to any military expedition, and although powerful forces
were still concentrated at Khartoum, the dry season and the uncertain
whereabouts of the enemy prevented action. But towards the end of August
trustworthy information was received by the Intelligence Department,
through the agency of friendly tribesmen, that the Khalifa, with all
his army, was encamped at Jebel Gedir--that same mountain in Southern
Kordofan to which nearly twenty years before he and the Mahdi had
retreated after the flight from Abba Island. Here among old memories
which his presence revived he became at once a centre of fanaticism.
Night after night he slept upon the Mahdi's stone; and day after
day tales of his dreams were carried by secret emissaries not only
throughout the Western Soudan, but into the Ghezira and even to
Khartoum. And now, his position being definite and his action highly
dangerous, it was decided to move against him.

On the 13th of October the first Soudanese battalion was despatched in
steamers from Khartoum, and by the 19th a force of some 7,000 men, well
equipped with camel transport, was concentrated at Kaka, a village on
the White Nile not far north of Fashoda. The distance from here to
Jebel Gedir was about eighty miles, and as for the first fifty no water
existed; the whole supply had to be carried in tanks. Sir Reginald
Wingate, who was in command of the infantry, reached Fungor, thirty
miles from the enemy's position, with the two leading battalions (IXth
and Xth Soudanese) on the 23rd of October, only to find news that the
Khalifa had left his camp at Jebel Gedir on the 18th and had receded
indefinitely into the desert. The cast having failed, and further
progress involving a multiplication of difficulties, Lord Kitchener,
who was at Kaka, stopped the operations, and the whole of the
troops returned to Khartoum, which they reached in much vexation and
disappointment on the 1st of November.

It was at first universally believed that the Khalifa's intention was
to retire to an almost inaccessible distance--to El Obeid or Southern
Darfur--and the officers of the Egyptian army passed an unhappy
fortnight reading