United States or Timor-Leste ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The noonday sun was shining brightly when the English soldiers and their officers saw Khartum straight in front of them on the point between the White and Blue Niles. All glasses were turned on the tall palace; every one was in the greatest excitement and dared hardly breathe, much less speak. There stood Gordon's palace, but no flag waved from the roof.
He saw the sun rise daily beyond the bend of the river behind the tall palm trees of Khartum and burn across the sky, and the months dragged one after the other. On an evening towards the end of August, in that year when Durrance came home blind from the Soudan, he sat in a corner of the enclosure watching the sun drop westwards towards the plain with an agony of anticipation.
The dash at Omdurman and Khartum promised to tax to the uttermost the strength of the army; but another brigade of British troops, commanded by Colonel Lyttelton, soon joined the expedition, bringing its effective strength up to 23,000 men. General Gatacre received the command of the British division.
The British Government, which was now responsible for Egypt, was in a difficulty. The Sudan must either be conquered or evacuated, for the Egyptian garrisons were still at Khartum and at several places even down to the equator. The Government decided on evacuation, and Gordon was sent to perform the task of withdrawing all the garrisons. He accepted the mission and set out immediately for Cairo.
The magic of the British name in the Sudan seemed to us to rest not only on the art of government but on the great memories of Gordon and Kitchener and the abiding influence of General Wingate's personality. The Gordon statue at Khartum is almost a shrine. The Sudan itself is Lord Kitchener's monument. During our life there we were daily witnesses of General Wingate's tact, power and example.
On the 27th January 1915 the Prophet's birthday was celebrated with rapturous pageantry, and the Sirdar and Lady Wingate paid most impressive visits to the pavilions set up by the principal sheikhs and notables in front of the mosques at Khartum and Omdurman, while huge crowds of religious enthusiasts beat tom-toms and sang outside.
Eventually Miss Tinné found herself compelled to abandon her scheme of penetrating into the land of the Nyam-Nyam, and carrying with her the bodies of Madame Tinné and her maid, who had also fallen a victim to the pestilence, she returned to Khartûm, after an absence of a year and a half.
We'll go up to Khartum and take a caravan beyond. You shall go big-game shooting with me in Africa. I'll take you where very few women have been before. I'll take you where you can gamble with life and death instead of this sordid business of freedom or prison. We'll start for Abyssinia in three weeks if you like. I'll find you excitement the right sort.
I will do my best to carry out my instructions, but I feel conviction I shall be caught in Khartum . It is not surprising that Ministers were perplexed by Gordon's despatches, or that Baring telegraphed to Khartum that he found it very difficult to understand what the General wanted.
We saw the Sirdar reviewing his Egyptian and Sudanese troops at Khartum, formally inspecting the schools, hospitals, barracks and prisons around Port Sudan, decorating veterans with medals, and addressing in every native dialect the political and religious leaders of the people.
Word Of The Day