CHAPTER XXVI

THE SOUDAN WAR (_Continued_)

IV. THE FIRST MARCH OF THE DESERT COLUMN

NOTE

By the end of December, 1884, the whole of the expedition was in process of concentrating at Korti. At Korti the Nile fetches a wide arc north-eastward. The chord of the arc, running south-eastward, runs from Korti to Metemmeh, and Shendi, which stands on the farther, or east, bank. From Korti to Metemmeh is 176 miles across the desert. Shendi was the rendezvous at which the troops were to meet Gordon's steamers sent down by him from Khartoum. Wolseley's object in sending Lord Charles Beresford with the Naval Brigade was that he should take command of the steamers, which, filled with troops, were to proceed up to Khartoum. The first business of the Desert Column under General Sir Herbert Stewart, was to seize the wells of Jakdul, which lay 100 miles distant from Korti, and to hold them, thus securing the main water supply on the desert route and an intermediate station between Metemmeh and the base at Korti. Having obtained possession of the wells, the Guards' Battalion was to be left there, while the remainder of the Column returned to Korti, there to be sufficiently reinforced to return to Jakdul, and to complete the march to Metemmeh. Such was the original idea. The reason why sufficient troops and transport were not sent in the first instance, thereby avoiding the necessity of the return {248} of the greater part of the Column to Korti, and its second march with the reinforcements, seems to have been the scarcity of camels.

When the Desert Column made its first march, Lord Charles Beresford and the Naval Brigade were still on their way to Korti. The first division under the command of Lord Charles marched with the Desert Column on its return.

The first Desert Column numbered 73 officers, 1212 men and natives, and 2091 camels. It consisted of one squadron of the 19th Hussars, Guards' Camel Regiment, Mounted Infantry, Engineers, 1357 camels carrying stores and driven by natives, Medical Staff Corps, and Bearer Company. Personal luggage was limited to 40 lb. a man. An account of the march is given by Count Gleichen, in his pleasant and interesting book (to which the present writer is much indebted) _With the Camel Corps up the Nile_ (Chapman & Hall). Some years previously the route from Korti to Metemmeh had been surveyed by Ismail Pasha, who had intended to run a railway along it from Wady Halfa to Khartoum; and the map then made of the district was in possession of the Column. The enemy were reported to be about; but it was expected that they would be found beyond the Jakdul Wells; as indeed they were.

The Desert Column started from Korti on the afternoon of Tuesday, 30th December, 1884. The Hussars escorted a party of native guides and scouted ahead. The Column marched the whole of that night, in the light of a brilliant moon, across hard sand or gravel, amid low hills of black rock, at whose bases grew long yellow savas grass and mimosa bushes, and in places mimosa trees.

At 8.30 on the morning of the 31st December they halted until 3 p.m., marched till 8.30 p.m., found the wells of Abu Hashim nearly dry, marched on, ascending a stony tableland, and still marching, sang the New Year in at midnight; came to the wells of El Howeiyat, drank them dry and bivouacked until 6 a.m. on the morning of the 1st January, 1885.

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All that morning they marched, coming at midday to a plain covered with scrub and intersected with dry water-courses; rested for three hours; marched all that night, and about 7 a.m. on the morning of 2nd January, entered the defile, floored with large loose stones and closed in with steep black hills, leading to the wells of Jakdul. These are deep pools filling clefts in the rock of the hills encompassing the little valley, three reservoirs rising one above the other. Count Gleichen, who was the first man to climb to the upper pools, thus describes the middle pool.

"Eighty feet above my head towered an overhanging precipice of black rock; behind me rose another of the same height; at the foot of the one in front lay a beautiful, large ice-green pool, deepening into black as I looked into its transparent depths. Scarlet dragon-flies flitted about in the shade; rocks covered with dark-green weed looked out of the water; the air was cool almost to coldness. It was like being dropped into a fairy grotto, at least so it seemed to me after grilling for days in the sun."

When the Desert Column reached that oasis, they had been on the march for sixty-four hours, with no more than four hours' consecutive sleep. The time as recorded by Count Gleichen was "sixty-four hours, thirty-four hours on the move and thirty broken up into short halts." The distance covered was a little under 100 miles; therefore the camels' rate of marching averaged as nearly as may be two and three-quarter miles an hour throughout. A camel walks like clock-work, and if he quickens his speed he keeps the same length of pace, almost exactly one yard.

The Guards' Battalion, to which were attached the Royal Marines, with six Hussars and 15 Engineers remained at the Wells. The rest of the Column left Jakdul at dusk of the day upon which they had arrived, to return to Korti, bivouacking that night in the desert.

The detachment at Jakdul made roads, built forts, and laid out the camp for the returning Column. On 11th {250} January, a convoy of 1000 camels carrying stores and ammunition, under the command of Colonel Stanley Clarke, arrived at Jakdul.

In the meantime, on 31st December, the day after which the Desert Column had started for the first time, Lord Wolseley had received a written message from Gordon, "Khartoum all right," dated 14th December. Should it be captured, the message was intended to deceive the captor. The messenger delivered verbal information of a different tenure, to the effect that Gordon was hard pressed and that provisions were becoming very scarce.

At the time of the starting of the Desert Column upon its second march, when it was accompanied by the first division of the Naval Brigade under the command of Lord Charles Beresford, and by other reinforcements, the general situation was briefly as follows.

The River Column, which was intended to clear the country along the Nile, to occupy Berber, and thence to join the Desert Column at Metemmeh, was assembling at Hamdab, 52 miles above Korti. It was commanded by General Earle. The four steamers sent down the river from Khartoum by General Gordon in October, were at Nasri Island, below the Shabloka Cataract, half-way between Khartoum and Metemmeh, which are 98 miles apart. Korti and Berber, as a glance at the map will show, occupy respectively the left and right corners of the base of an inverted pyramid, of which Metemmeh is the apex, while Khartoum may be figured as at the end of a line 98 miles long depending from the apex. The Desert Column traversed one side of the triangle, from Korti to Metemmeh; the River Column was intended to traverse the other two sides.

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