482 LETTERS TO DR. SCHWEINFURTH. 



tlie south and to Gondokoro, where they could find food, and 

 I was myself engaged in an inspection of the fortifications, 

 when, on April I 8, I was again honoured by despatches from 

 Keremallah. The letters contained the usual invitations to us 

 all to join the champions of the faith, but the most important 

 communication was the news that Khartum had fallen. I 

 should find the details, he said, in an enclosed copy of a letter 

 from the Mahdi. This letter, dated Rebi-ul-Akhir 12, 1302 

 (January 28, 1885), contained the news that Khartum was 

 taken by storm on the morning of Monday, Rebi-ul-Akhir 9 

 (January 25), and that every one in it was slain except the 

 women and children. Gordon, the enemy of God, had refused 

 to surrender, and he and his men had fallen ; the Mahdi 

 had lost ten men only. The letter, written in old-fashioned 

 Arabic, and imitating in its expressions the older chapters of 

 the Koran, concluded with an injunction to Keremallah to act 

 in a similar manner here and in the Bahr-el-Ghazal. No 

 mention is made about a steamer being sent to the Meskra- 

 er-Rek, although it was such an important matter. I have 

 returned no answer at all to these last letters. 



On April 19, the soldiers from Makraka came safely to 

 Beden and Rejaf, without being attacked again. On the 

 2 1st the boat which had been sent to Bor with corn came 

 back ; the garrison still refused to come here — they must 

 therefore take the consequences. On the 23d a reinforce- 

 ment of 130 men marched into Lado, and on the 24th I 

 called together a council of all the officers to discuss the 

 measures to be adopted to save us from famine, and to guard 

 against unnecessary exposure to danger. After mature de- 

 liberation, and when I had retired for half an hour, resigning 

 the chair to Major Rihan Aga, in order that the decision 

 might be quite impartial, the following resolution was car- 

 ried, in the presence of Captain Casati :— «- " Considering that 

 there is not corn enough in Lado, Rejaf, Beden, &c, to 

 support the men that have come from Makraka as well as 

 our own people, that the next harvest is still far off, that by 

 sending out foraging parties we should exhaust our meagre 

 supply of ammunition and be left at the mercy of the Negroes, 

 while, on the other hand, it is impossible to procure corn by 



