Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 17, 2025
According to them, the dervishes were killing all the Jaalin who were suspected of trying to escape north, and the Shaggieh and other northern tribesmen stood in little better plight. All natives, other than blacks and Baggara, who could get away from Omdurman were running off, as they believed the fall of the dervish rule was assured.
Half of them were negroes fine, muscular men, with the limbs of a jet Hercules; and the other half were Baggara Arabs small, brown, and wiry, with little, vicious eyes, and thin, cruel lips.
They say Metemmeh is full of dead, and that even the Dervishes do not care to live there." "The Baggara are mostly mounted, are they not?" "Most of them are so, though there are some on foot. The leaders of the tribesmen who fight for the Khalifa are all on horseback, but most of the army are on foot." "You do not speak the Baggara language, I suppose?" Zaki shook his head.
But so dense and tangled was the country that after three miles of peril and perplexity they abandoned he attempt, and the routed Arabs fled unmolested. The Baggara horse had ridden off during the action, headed by the prudent Osman Digna whose position in the zeriba was conveniently suited to such a manoeuvre and under that careful leadership suffered little loss.
His first and most important announcement was that the Baggara chiefs force had been nearly doubled during the night, it seeming probable that the water-holes had been made the place of meeting for a divided force.
"Oh, no, Excellency," replied the Sheikh; "only two that will be smaller; but everything necessary for their Excellencies' comfort will be done. It will be right, and impress the Baggara and others of the Mahdi's followers. For the Hakim is not a poor dervish who tries to cure; he is a great Frankish doctor who travels to do good.
When the other gunboats got up, what with cannon, quick-firing guns, and Maxims brought to bear upon the dervish camp, it was speedily wrecked and torn. The enemy bolted into the bush, leaving over 200 dead and wounded behind, including several Baggara and the chief Emir. A few shells from the "Sultan" had hulled and shattered the "Safieh," so the victory was complete.
Somehow the regiment struggled through, and up the bank on the south side. Nigh a score of lances had been left in dervish bodies, some broken, others intact. Lieutenant Wormwald made a point at a fleeing Baggara, but his sabre bent and had to be laid aside. Captain Fair's sword snapped over dervish steel, and he flung the hilt in his opponent's face.
The friendlies also had the luck to capture a dervish sailing boat laden with grain. That evening at sunset, a few Baggara horsemen and footmen were seen upon the nearest hills watching the Sirdar's camp. It was at Um Terif that the army, with all its equipment, was for the first time got together within the confines of the same encampment.
But they were thinning or being thinned as they drew nearer. When about 1100 yards away a body of horsemen, two hundred or so, the Khalifa's own tribesmen, Taaisha Baggara, chiefs and Emirs, setting spurs to their horses charged direct for the zereba. Cannon and Maxims smashed them, infantry bullets beat against and pierced through them.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking