ortune. And so it
came to pass that in this last scene in the struggle with Mahdism the
stage was cleared of all its striking characters, and Osman Digna alone
purchased by flight a brief ignoble liberty, soon to be followed by a
long ignoble servitude.

Twenty-nine Emirs, 3,000 fighting men, 6,000 women and children
surrendered themselves prisoners. The Egyptian losses were three killed
and twenty-three wounded.

. . . . . . . . . .

The long story now approaches its conclusion. The River War is over. In
its varied course, which extended over fourteen years and involved
the untimely destruction of perhaps 300,000 lives, many extremes and
contrasts have been displayed. There have been battles which were
massacres, and others that were mere parades. There have been occasions
of shocking cowardice and surprising heroism, of plans conceived in
haste and emergency, of schemes laid with slow deliberation, of wild
extravagance and cruel waste, of economies scarcely less barbarous, of
wisdom and incompetence. But the result is at length achieved, and the
flags of England and Egypt wave unchallenged over the valley of the
Nile.

At what cost were such advantages obtained? The reader must judge for
himself of the loss in men; yet while he deplores the deaths of brave
officers and soldiers, and no less the appalling destruction of the
valiant Arabs, he should remember that such slaughter is inseparable
from war, and that, if the war be justified, the loss of life cannot
be accused. But I write of the cost in money, and the economy of the
campaigns cannot be better displayed than by the table below:

Railway: LE 1,181,372
Telegraph: LE 21,825
Gunboats: LE 154,934
Military Expenditure: LE 996,223
TOTAL EXPENDITURES: LE 2,354,354 (LE1 = L1 0s.6d.)

For something less than two and a half millions sterling active military
operations were carried on for nearly three years, involving the
employment--far from its base--of an army of 25,000 disciplined troops,
including an expensive British contingent of 8,000 men, and ending
in the utter defeat of an enemy whose armed forces numbered at the
beginning of the war upwards of 80,000 soldiers, and the reconquest and
re-occupation of a territory measuring sixteen hundred miles from north
to south and twelve hundred from east to west [Lieut.-Colonel Stewart's
Report: Egypt, No.11, 1883], which at one time supported at least twenty
millions of inhabitants. But this is