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Updated: May 25, 2025
When his preparations were at last complete, it was found that the Nile had sunk so low that the flotillas, over which so much care had been lavished, and upon which depended the whole success of the campaign, would be unable to surmount the cataracts. At the same time it was by then the middle of November a message arrived from Gordon indicating that Khartoum was in serious straits.
The designer was one El Osta Abdullah, a former employee of General Gordon's in Khartoum Arsenal. There were several steam engines; the principal one driving the main shafting was of 28 horse-power. The fly-wheel was 4 feet in diameter. There were five lathes, one cat-head lathe 36 inch, three drills, and other tools including a slotting machine, all in perfect going order.
A slave trade would quickly spring up between the Khedive's officers and the slave-hunters of Abou Saood, unless I enforced the strictest discipline. The expedition would represent a government slave market for the reception of slaves captured by the Khartoum companies.
The line was put down step by step as the troops advanced. Thus an alternative system of telegraphic communication with Khartoum was early provided for. It stirred the blood of everybody in our dull camp to see detachment after detachment of the second British brigade detrain. Most of us turned out and like schoolboys followed the drums and fifes as they played the troops to their camping-ground.
Answer: "An immense quantity. They have a large house, which is quite full." Question: "How will they transport it?" Answer: "They are building a vessel of iron on the M'wootan N'zige, upon the borders of which they are now staying." Question: "Do they know that I am commanding this expedition?" Answer: "Yes; they have frequently asked `whether you had arrived; and they wish to go to Khartoum."
Attended by cavasses and soldiers, he rides through every street of Khartoum, abusing the underlings for past neglect, ordering the streets to be swept, and the town to be thoroughly cleansed; he visits the marketplace, examines the quality of the bread at the bakers' stalls, and the meat at the butchers'. He tests the accuracy of the weights and scales; fines and imprisons the impostors, and institutes a complete reform, concluding his sanitary and philanthropic arrangements by the imposition of some local taxes.
He was a sallow, sickly-looking man, who with a large bony frame had been reduced from constant hard work and frequent sickness to little but skin and sinew; he was a mason, who had left Germany with the Austrian Mission to Khartoum, but finding the work too laborious in such a climate, he and a friend, who was a carpenter, had declared for independence, and they had left the Mission.
On the fourth day he embarked on two of Gordon's steamers, which awaited the relieving column, and taking with him twenty British soldiers and a few blue-jackets set forth towards the Shabluka Gorge and the town that lay beyond. On the 27th of January the rescuers came in sight of Khartoum and under the fire of the enemy.
There were also some outlying garrisons, such as that at Kassala, but the principal Egyptian force remaining was the body of 4000 so-called troops, the less efficient part, we may be sure, of those available, left behind at Khartoum, under Colonel de Coetlogon, by Hicks Pasha, when he set out on his unfortunate expedition.
"Aw don't see what tha friend was doin' at Khartoum wi' Goordon." 'E was makin' Perry Davis' Pain Killer for them at 'ome who wouldn't send Gordon 'elp when the 'eathen was at 'is doors a 'underd to one. 'E was makin' it for them to soothe their bloomin' pains an' sorrers when Gordon an' Macnamara 'ad cried 'elp! for the lawst toime!"
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