282 
THE ^.EASTERN SOUDAN. 
A PP eax?ance 
and 
C50M.s-4i-tTta-tS.0M.. 
are bad shots; it 
Ji-M Ea,a?e£», of 
bloodshed. 
Small and light build, wiry and hard in appearance 
and capable of making long and rapid marches on 
little food and water, and consequently of great 
fighting value in a country like the Soudan. They 
is difficult to instil into them fire discipline; no 
amount of training would ever do that. 
I will for one moment draw your attention to the 
map, one cannot help being struck by the number 
of places that have been the scenes of blood-shed 
and contest within the last twenty-five years, viz., Dongola, Abu Harried, 
Sinkat, Suakin and Tokar, and Saati not marked but twenty miles 
west of Massowah, where Italians and Abyssinians met in 1889, also 
Adua, Magdala, and then Gallabat, where the Dervishes fought the 
Abyssinians, Gedarif, Kassala, Metemma on the Nile, Abu Klea and 
north-east of El Obeid, the scene of Hicks Pasha's defeat. There is 
hardly a place you can point out on this map that has not been the 
scene of recent fighting. 
In conclusion, I wish to place on record the very 
cordial relations which have been always exsisting 
between us and the Italian officers. They did every¬ 
thing they could possibly do to help us, and always treated us with the 
very greatest hospitality and courtesy, anything they had in their stores 
that we required they gave us, including rifles and plentiful supplies of 
ammunition, the lending of the two mountain guns to which I have 
already referred was a very kindly act, I shall always feel that we owe 
them a great deal. (Loud and prolonged applause.) 
Italian 
courtesy. 
DISCUSSION. 
The Chairman invited discussion on the lecture, and specially requested three 
officers who had been in the Soudan, Colonel Williams, Count Gleichen and 
Major Benson to join in it. 
Lieut.-Colonel W. H. Williams, it. A.: General Maurice, ladies and gentlemen, 
I think it a great honour to be allowed to say a few words after the charming 
lecture that my friend Colonel Parsons has given us this afternoon. His thrilling 
account of what has happened in that region has been most enchanting, and 
having passed some years in Egypt, and also at the other extremity of the Soudan, 
I have followed all and everything that has happened in Egypt with the greatest 
interest. The lecturer speaks of the slaughter of the blacks at the capture of 
Kassala. I took a number of Sudanese who had been part of the old Egyptian 
garrison with me to Uganda in 1890, and the tales they used to tell me of the 
old garrisons then were even more thrilling than what we have heard this after¬ 
noon. We talk a great deal about what some of our garrisons have done, and 
very rightly so ; but I think the British public little knows what some of these 
black men have done and how they have stood under every sort of provocation. 
Some of the tales of these old garrisons, if ever written, will be most interest¬ 
ing, and they reflect the greatest credit on these poor black men who, in spite of 
every sort of neglect, have remained faithful to their ruler, H.H. The Khedive 
(applause). I do not wish to talk about the 32nd and 37th Field Batteries of 
which I feel sure you have heard more than enough, but I should however like 
to say a word or two about the Egyptian Artillery. I spent some time in Egypt 
