[JOURNAL.]
Vide note as to pruning down on outside.—C. G. G.
September 10.—Colonel Stewart, MM. Power and Herbin, left during the night for Dongola, viâ Berber.
Spy came in from south front, and one from Halfeyeh reports Arabs will not attack, but will continue the blockade.
Sent off two sets of telegrams by a spy, who will go to Shendy.
Yesterday, when the messenger went out to deliver my answer to the Arabs, in response to Mahdi’s letter, though he had a white flag, they fired on him, and tried to capture him. They use the white flag, and find it respected by us, and that we let their men go back. They chain any men we send to them.
It is wonderful how the people of the town, who have every possible facility to leave the city, cling to it, and how, indeed, there are hundreds who flock in, though it is an open secret we have neither money nor food.[7] Somehow this makes me feel confident in the future, for it is seldom that an impulse such as this acts on each member of a disintegrated mass without there being some reason for it, which those who act have no idea of, but which is a sort of instinct. Truly I do not think one could inflict a greater punishment on an inhabitant of Kartoum than to force him to go to the Arabs.