684 
THE SUDAN PAST AND PEESENT. 
In his fights in the open, too, though he still adhered to his plan of 
drawing his enemy into an ambush, he now invariably employed his 
black rifle-bearing skirmishers to harass and worry his foe, whilst his 
sword and spearmen collected in some convenient depression or behind 
some rising ground, awaiting the favourable opportunity to charge. 
The story of the terrible siege and eventual fall of El Obeid are too 
well known to need repetition here, suffice it to say that the capture of 
this town placed the Mahdi in possession of the entire province of 
Kordofan. Darfur, too, with its brave Governor Slatin, who had 
fought no less than 27 battles, was exhausted, and was only awaiting 
the final disaster of Hicks to surrender. 
Already the spirit of revolt had permeated as far south as Bahr el 
Ghazal with the result that, a few months later, Lupton Bey, deserted 
by his garrison, was forced to surrender. 
It was also about this time that the redoubtable Osman Digna was 
despatched into the Eastern Sudan with orders to raise the tribes. 
With what effect this ubiquitous leader carried out his instructions is 
now a matter of history; for upwards of seven long years he kept 
the slender Egyptian foothold of Sawakin in a state of almost constant 
siege; only to be eventually driven off some 18 months ago by a hand¬ 
ful of Egyptian troops. 
But whilst all these stirring events were going on in the Sudan, 
still greater changes had taken place in Egypt. Arabi had been 
crushed at Tel el Kebir, and Egypt was in occupation of British 
troops ; the old Egyptian Army had been disbanded and a new one, 
under the Sirdarship of Sir Evelyn Wood, was in course of organisa¬ 
tion. The number was fixed at 6000 men, Lord Dufferin pointing out 
with a sagacity which was justified later on, that this was irrespective 
of events in the Sudan. 
Meanwhile Colonel Stewart had been sent to the Sudan to inquire 
into the condition of affairs; he arrived there on 16th December, 
1882, and early in January, 1883, he wrote to Sir Edward Malet “ the 
new year has begun unfavourably for Egyptian interest,” and in a 
Jong series of exhaustive reports, perhaps, no man has been more 
exactly justified by events. 
Still the situation never seemed to be realised, and in spite of the 
steadfast determination of the British Government not to become in¬ 
volved in the Sudan question, the fact that it was inseparable from that 
of Egypt, daily grew more and more apparent. It is not my place to 
discuss the political situation at this period, but I will pass rapidly on 
to military facts and to the unfortunate despatch of General Hicks 
and an armed rabble of 10,000 Egyptians into the Kordofan deserts. 
The utter annihilation of this force allayed all doubts as to the Mahdi's 
divinity and was the death-blow to Egyptian military authority in the 
Sudan. Space does not admit of a description of this terrible slaughter, 
but the main features of it are well known. Deficient in a knowledge 
of the military topography of the country, the doomed expedition, cut 
off from communication with its base on the river by illimitable deserts, 
its footsteps dogged by a dervish force which occupied each camp as it 
was evacuated, drawn on into a deep forest by false guides, it was 
