With Kitchener in the Soudan : a story of Atbara and Omdurman

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The reconquest of the Soudan will ever be mentioned as one of the most difficult and at the same time the most successful enterprises ever undertaken. The task of carrying an army hundreds of miles across a waterless desert, conveying it up a great river bristling with obstacles, defeating an enormously superior force unsurpassed in the world for courage, and finally killing the leader of the enemy and crushing out the last spark of opposition, was a stupendous one. After the death of Gordon and the retirement of the British troops there was no force in existence that could have barred the advance of the fanatical hordes of the Mahdi had they poured down into Egypt. The native Egyptian army was as yet in the earliest stage of organization, and could not be relied upon to stand firm against the wild rush of the Dervishes. Fortunately time was given for that organization to be completed, and when at last the Dervish forces marched north they were repulsed. Assouan was saved, and Wady Haifa became the Egyptian outpost.

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