ners, and 147 dervish standards were captured.

The ever-increasing progress of Egypt during the next ten years,
together with the accounts received from escaped prisoners of the
reign of terror and inhumanity which obtained in the Sudan, brought
the question of the reconquest of the lost provinces once more into
prominence. The Italians had met with a fearful disaster in fighting
against the Abyssinians at the battle of Adowa on March 1,1896. They
were holding Kassala within the ex-Egyptian territory by invitation
from England, and a reason was presented for attacking the dervishes
elsewhere in order to draw off their army from Kassala. With the
appointment of Sir Henry Kitchener, on March 11,1896, as sirdar of the
Egyptian army, the final period of hostilities was entered upon between
Egypt and the independent Arabs of the Central African Provinces.

General Kitchener was ordered to build a railroad up the Nile, and to
push forward with a well-organised Egyptian army, whose chief officers
were Englishmen. The whole scheme of the invasion was planned with
consummate forethought and deliberation, the officials and advisers
in charge of the enterprise being chosen from the most tried and able
experts in their several provinces. Lieut.-Col. E. P. C. Girouard, a
brilliant young Canadian, undertook the work of railroad reconstruction.
Col. L. Bundle was chief of the staff, and Major R. Wingate head of the
Intelligence Department, ably assisted by the ex-prisoner of the califa,
Slatin Bey. The army consisted in the beginning almost entirely of
Egyptian and Sudanese troops, together with one battalion of the North
Staffordshire Regiment. There were eight battalions of artillery, eight
camel corps, and sixty-three gunboats which steamed up the Nile.

After some sharp skirmishing, the advance was made to Dongola, when the
English battalion was sent home disabled, and in time was replaced by a
strong English brigade under General Gatacre. Early in 1897, a railroad
had been thrown across the desert from Wady Haifa towards Abu Hamed,
obviating the need of making an immense detour around the bend of the
Nile near Dongola. The califa had, by this time, organised his defence.
The Jaalin tribe had revolted against him at Metammeh, and had sought
for help from the Egyptians, but before the supply of rifles arrived,
the dervishes under the Emir Mahmud stormed Metammeh and annihilated the
whole tribe of the Jaalin Arabs.

The van of t