small rifled brass guns and 4000
cavalry. It was his intention to cross the Atbara about 30 miles up
from the Nile, and fall upon the flank and rear of the Sirdar's
detached and outlying troops, killing them in detail. He reckoned too
confidently and without full knowledge. Using the steamers and the
railways the Sirdar quickly concentrated his whole force, bringing men
rapidly up from Wady Halfa and the province of Dongola. The entrenched
Egyptian camp at the junction of the Atbara with the Nile was
strengthened, and General Gatacre's brigade of British troops was
moved on to Kunur, where Macdonald's and Maxwell's brigades also
repaired. Mahmoud had ultimately to be attacked in his own chosen
fortified camp. His army was destroyed and he himself was taken
prisoner. So closed the unexpected Atbara campaign in March last.
Thereafter, as the Khalifa showed no intention of inviting fresh
disaster by sending down another army to attack, the Sirdar despatched
his troops into summer rest-camps. Dry and shady spots were selected
by the banks of the Nile between Berber and Dakhala. One or another of
the numberless deserted mud villages was usually chosen for
headquarters and offices. With these for a nucleus, the battalion or
brigade encampment was pitched in front and the quarters were fenced
about with cut mimosa thorn-bush, forming a zereba. All along the
Upper Nile, wherever there is a strip of cultivable land, or where
water can be easily lifted from the river or wells for irrigation,
there the natives had villages of mud and straw huts. In many places,
for miles following miles, these hamlets fringe the river's banks,
sheltered amidst groves of mimosa and palms. The fiendish cruelty and
wanton destructiveness of the dervishes, who, not satiated with
slaughtering the villagers--men, women and children--further glutted
their fury by firing the homesteads and cutting down the date palms,
resulted in depopulating the country. Ignorant and fanatical in their
religious frenzy to convert mankind to their new-found creed, the
Mahdists held that the surest way to rid the world forthwith of all
unbelievers lay in making earth too intolerable to be lived in.

These native dwellings, when cleaned, were not uncomfortable abodes.
As the flat roofs were thickly covered with mats and grass whilst,
except the doorway, the openings in the mud-walls were small, they
were even in the glare of noontide heat, pleasantly cool and shady.
The t