VII.

ARMS AND MEN.

THE campaign of 1897, which opened with General Hunter's advance from Merawi on Abu Hamed, ended with the occupation of the Nile valley as far as Ed Damer, seven miles beyond the junction of that river and the Atbara. At the beginning of March, when I reached the front, the advanced post had been withdrawn from Ed Damer, which had been destroyed, and established at Fort Atbara in the northern angle of the two rivers. Between that point and Berber, twenty-three miles north, was stationed the army with which it was proposed to meet the threatened attack of Osman Digna and Mahmud.

It was not possible to use the whole force at the Sirdar's disposition for that purpose. The AngloEgyptian strategical position was roughly a semicircle, with Omdurman and Khartum for a centre, so that the Khalifa held the advantage of the interior. The westward horn of the semicircle was the

garrisons of Dongola, Korti, and Merawi; the eastward that of Kassala. In advance of the regular garrisons, friendly Arabs held a fan-shaped series of intelligence posts in the Bayuda desert, and at Adarama, Gos Redjeb and El Fasher on the upper reaches of the Atbara. The Dervishes maintained one desert post at Gebra to the north-west of Omdurman, and one to the north-east at Abu Delek. But hemmed in as they were, they had the manifest advantage that they could always strike at the newly recovered province of Dongola by the various routes across the Bayuda desert. So that Korti and Merawi had to be garrisoned, as well as Kassala.

The garrisons, though they never so much as saw the enemy, played, nevertheless, an indispensable part in the Atbara campaign. The infantry of the force immediately under the Sirdar's eye was divided into four brigades-three Egyptian, one British. The division of the Egyptian army, counting three brigades, was under the command of Major-General Archibald Hunter.

If the Sirdar is the brain of the Egyptian army, General Hunter is its sword-arm. First and above everything, he is a fighter. For fourteen years he has been in the front of all the fighting on the Southern border. He was Intelligence Officer during the anxious days before Ginnis, when the Camerons and 9th Sudanese were beset by triumphant dervishes in Kosheh fort, and reinforce

MAJOR-GENERAL HUNTER.

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ments were far to the northward. Going out on a sortie one day, he lingered behind the retiring force to pick off dervishes with a rifle he was wont to carry on such occasions: there he received a wound in the shoulder, which he is not quit of to-day. When Nejumi came down in '89, Hunter was in the front of everything: he fought all day at the head of the blacks at Argin, and commanded a brigade of them at Toski. Here he was again wounded a spear-thrust in the arm while he was charging the thickest of the Dervishes at the head of the 13th. Thereafter he was Governor of the frontier at Halfa, Governor of the frontier at Dongola, Governor of the frontier at Berber-always on the frontier. When there was fighting he always led the way to it with his blacks, whom he loves like children, and who love him like a father. Fourteen years of bugle and bullet by night and day, in summer and winter, fighting Dervishes, Dervishes year in and year out-till fighting Dervishes has come to be a holy mission, pursued with a burning zeal akin to fanaticism. Hunter Pasha is the crusader of the nineteenth century.

In all he is and does he is the true knight-errant -a paladin drifted into his wrong century. He is one of those happy men whom nature has made all in one piece-consistent, simple, unvarying; everything he does is just like him. He is short and thickset; but that, instead of making him unromantic, only

draws your eye to his long sword. From the feather in his helmet to the spurs on his heels, he is all energy and dancing triumph; every movement is vivacious, and he walks with his keen conquering hazel eye looking out and upward, like an eagle's. Sometimes you will see on his face a look of strain and tension, which tells of the wound he always carries with him. Then you will see him lolling under a palm-tree, while his staff are sitting on chairs; light-brown hair rumpled over his bare head, like a happy schoolboy. When I first saw him thus, being blind, I conceived him a subaltern, and offered opinions with indecorous freedom: he left the error to rebuke itself.

Reconnoitring almost alone up to the muzzles of the enemy's rifles, charging bare-headed and leading on his blacks, going without his rest to watch over the comfort of the wounded, he is always the samealways the same impossible hero of a book of chivalry. He is renowned as a brave man even among British officers: : you know what that means. But he is much more than a tilting knight-errant; he is one of the finest leaders of troops in the army. Report has it that the Sirdar, knowing his worth, leaves the handling of the actual fighting largely to Hunter, and he never fails to plan and execute a masterly victory. A sound and brilliant general, you would say his one fault was his reckless daring; but that, too, in an army of semi-savages, is a necessary quality of generalship. Furthermore, they say he is

Above all, "General

as good in an office as he is in action. he can stir and captivate and lead men. Archie" is the wonder and the darling of all the Egyptian army. And when the time comes that we want a new national hero, it may be he will be the wonder and the darling of all the Empire also.

The First Brigade of Hunter's division was still quartered in Berber. It consisted of the 9th Sudanese under Walter Bey, 10th Sudanese (Nason Bey), 11th Sudanese (Jackson Bey), and 2nd Egyptian (Pink Bey). The brigadier was Lieutenant-Colonel Hector Archibald Macdonald, one of the soundest soldiers in the Egyptian or British armies. He had seen more and more varied service than any man in the force. Promoted from the ranks after repeated and conspicuous acts of gallantry in the Afghan war, he was taken prisoner at Majuba Hill. He joined the Egyptian army in 1887, and commanded the 11th Sudanese at Gemaizeh, Toski, and Afafit. At Gemaizeh the 11th, ever anxious to be at the enemy, broke its formation; and it is said that Macdonald Bey, after exhausting Arabic and Hindustani, turned in despair to abusing them in broad Scots. Finally, he rode up and down in front of their rifles, and at last got them steady under a heavy fire from men who would far rather have killed themselves than him. In the campaigns of '96 and '97 he was intrusted with a brigade; he showed a rare gift for the handling of troops, and wherever the fighting was hardest there was his