brilliant
achievement even for the Sirdar, for it meant that 23,000 men, with all
impedimenta, stores, and ammunition, had been moved within ten days 150
miles across the desert into the enemy's country by means of marching
and the use of the flotilla on the Nile.

"The task before them is one of the most arduous that an army has ever
been called upon to perform, being at a distance of something like 1200
miles from the real base of operations, on the sea, in a climate the
conditions of which are trying, and amidst deserts devoid of all
resources--even of those few which existed in 1884 when the British
forces under Lord Wolseley advanced to Metammeh, and which have since
been utterly destroyed by the complete devastation of the villages on
the banks of the Nile and the murder or despoliation of their
inhabitants."--Field-Marshal Sir J.L.A. Simmons, in a letter to the
_Times_.

On the 2nd September the army lay encamped at Agaiga on the Nile, a few
miles only from Khartoum, having already come into touch with he
Khalifa's outposts, the main body of whose army, some 40,000 or 50,000,
had come out of Omdurman, and was intrenched between them and the city.
The Sirdar's camp was in the form of a semicircle, with about one mile
of the Nile for its diameter. On the extreme left was the 32nd
Field-Battery R.A.; and next them, with their left on the Nile, and on
the right of the guns, lay the second British brigade (Rifles,
Lancashire, Northumberland, and Grenadier Guards); then the first
British brigade (Wauchope's), Warwicks, Seaforths, Camerons, and
Lincolns; then Maxwell's 2nd Egyptian; Macdonald's, and then Lewis with
his right on the Nile. On the left, and extending close down to the
lines, was a small hill, Gabel Surgham; and on the right, some way off,
the rising ground of Kerrin. The camp was protected by a zareba and
trench, with spaces at intervals, and all along the river were the
flotilla of gunboats.

At an early hour the whole army was armed and everything in readiness
for the advance, when the scouts and the pickets of the 21st Lancers
came galloping in with the astounding but most welcome news that the
Khalifa, instead of waiting to be attacked behind his intrenchments, as
did Mahmoud at Atbara, was rapidly advancing with his whole army upon
the zareba. Nothing could have been more fortunate for the Sirdar or
more foolish on the part of the Khalifa; had he even remained in his
position he would have ca