A PATROL ON TEE ATBARA. 
My force was made up as follows 
Approximate strength. 
One Comp. Arab battalion under an Egyptain Captain ... 102 
Beni Amers under Idris Arroda . 66 
Hadendowas under Mustapha. 100 
Hadendowas under Minni Ali. 36 
Shukryas. 16 
Hassibullah’s band (miscellaneous) . 60 
Self and Staff . 4 
Medical. 2 
383 
The Hadendowas and Shukryas were armed with Remingtons, a 
weapon which missed fire on an average about three times out of ten 
after all the worst rifles had been picked out. The remainder were arm¬ 
ed with a much better weapon, the Italian Vetterli. Many of the men 
were quite respectable shots and nearly all had seen fighting before. 
For uniform, the irregulars wore a more or less ancient tarboosh, their 
remaining garments being decidedly “ mufti.” The men of the Arab 
battalion had a white garment and a green cummerbund in addition to 
their tarboosh. All carried about 40 cartridges per man in bandoliers, 
some of these, however, being in a very bad state and expensive in 
cartridges. Other rounds were stowed about their person as best they 
could. The Egyptian Captain and his command were most efficient 
and much better disciplined than the irregulars, being organized as 
regular troops with all the mobility of irregulars—typical of the 
Italian native troops of Erytrea. Mustapha with his Hadendowas had 
held Adarama against one attack by the Dervishes and only retired 
from that place at the end of March when threatened by Osman Digna 
with overhelming numbers. Hassibullah was a Shukrya—a regular 
brigand chief—a brave and dashing man though rather excitable. 
He knew more about desert warfare than any of the others and had 
been much employed by both the Egyptian Government and the Ital¬ 
ians. His company was composed of scallywags from all parts of the 
Soudan. All these troops were confirmed looters and Hassibullah 
was a prince at it. The remaining sheikhs call for no special remark. 
They were good fellows but hardly fit to be trusted with any important 
job. My staff consisted of (1) Ibrahim, brother of the chief sheikh of 
the Hadendowas and an old shooting friend of mine before I was taken 
on for service. He acted as aide-de-camp and proved an excellent 
staff officer: (2) Sergt. Nicklin, the English N.C.O. of the 16th 
Egyptian battalion who having obtained permission to come with me, 
was placed in charge of transport and reserve ammunition and stores. 
He is a worthy type of Kipling's “Sergt. What's 'is name." He was 
assisted by (3) Aohmet Awad, a most intelligent Arab who was son of 
the Sheikh of the Algadens, now wiped out by the Dervishes. Both 
he and Ibrahim spoke excellent Arabic without any Soudan patois, and 
this was of importance to me with my limited knowledge of the lan¬ 
guage. I must not omit to mention my chief scout, Adlan, a Shukrya, 
the finest specimen of a Soudanese Arab I have met. A man of fine 
