From Korti to Khartum

agree with more recent information. In preparing the Journal for publication, I have omitted several passages which were of interest only to myself and to my friends; and I have made many verbal alterations, which were rendered necessary by the haste with which it was written. The Journal was not written with a view to publication; but on my return to England, some friends, who had seen it, strongly advised me to publish, as they thought that some fuller account of the attempt to reach Khartum in General Gordon's steamers than has yet appeared should be given to the public. My reluctance to publish has delayed its

appearance.

I thought at the time that, if we had reached Khartum before it fell, the

presence of two armed steamers with a small detach

ment of British soldiers (twenty) might

have turned the scale in General Gordon's favour. The fuller knowledge which I now possess of the condition of the garrison, and of the determination of the Mahdi to attack Khartum before the English arrived, leads me to believe that if the steamers had left Gubat a week earlier, the result would have been the same; and that even if it had been possible for them to have reached Khartum on the 25th January, their presence would not have averted the fall of the city.

The failure of the Relief Expedition to attain its object was deeply and sincerely regretted by every one in the force-by no one more so than by myself, for General Gordon was not only a brother officer but a personal friend. It failed; but, to quote Lord Wolseley's words, "this was from no lack of courage or of discipline, of dash or