chener of Khartum, was free to turn his
attention to the reduction of the country to some sort of order.

Captain Marchand at Fashoda.

He had first, however, to deal with a somewhat serious matter--the
arrival of a French expedition at Fashoda, on the White Nile, some 600
m. above Khartum. He started for the south on the 10th of September,
with 5 gunboats and a small force, dispersed a body of 700 dervishes at
Reng on the 15th, and four days later arrived at Fashoda, to find the
French Captain Marchand, with 120 Senegalese soldiers, entrenched there
and the French flag flying. He arranged with Marchand to leave the
political question to be settled by diplomacy, and contented himself
with hoisting the British and Egyptian flags to the south of the French
flag, and leaving a gunboat and a Sudanese battalion to guard them. He
then steamed up the river and established a post at Sobat; and after
sending a gunboat up the Bahr-el-Ghazal to establish another post at
Meshra-er-Rek, he returned to Omdurman. The French expedition had
experienced great difficulties in the swampy region of the
Bahr-el-Ghazal, and had reached Fashoda on the 10th of July. It had been
attacked by a dervish force on the 25th of August, and was expecting
another attack when Kitchener arrived and probably saved it from
destruction. The Fashoda incident was the subject of important
diplomatic negotiations, which at one time approached an acute phase;
but ultimately the French position was found to be untenable, and on the
11th of December Marchand and his men returned to France by the Sobat,
Abyssinia and Jibuti. In the following March the spheres of interest of
Great Britain and France in the Nile basin were defined by a declaration
making an addition to Article IV. of the Niger convention of the
previous year.

During the sirdar's absence from Omdurman Colonel Hunter commanded an
expedition up the Blue Nile, and by the end of September had occupied
and garrisoned Wad Medani, Sennar, Karkoj and Roseires. In the meantime
Colonel Parsons marched with 1400 men from Kassala on the 7th of
September, to capture Gedaref. He encountered 4000 dervishes under the
amir Saadalla outside the town, and after a desperate fight, in which he
lost 50 killed and 80 wounded, defeated them and occupied the town on
the 22nd. The dervishes left 500 dead on the field, among whom were four
amirs. Having strongly entrenched himself, Parsons beat off, with heavy
loss to the