I have ordered the sale of five hundred ardebs of Government dhoora: no one family to purchase more than two ardebs.
The capture of the steamers at Berber cuts off the Arabs of Berber from those on other side.
With the young soldier who escaped were three others, but their hearts failed them, and they were recaptured. I fear they will suffer, but no physical suffering will change the heart, hence I do not believe in purgatory.
The Towfikia steamer went up to Giraffe, and as the Arabs had a sort of sneaking affection for the place, we put down twenty self-exploding mines, to deter them from going there. The worst of it is, our domestic matches have run out, and we cannot make any substitute, so we have to fall back on the powder-hose, connecting groups of ten. I think good wire entanglements, with mines, will defend any place, if one has anything like moderate troops behind the parapet. Wire entanglement ought to be twenty yards in depth, mixed with it the earthmines. No field artillery will neutralize their effects, and only a continuous bombardment of days would destroy them.
A man has come in from Shendy, who corroborates the advance of the expeditionary force and the defeat of the Arabs. Another came in, who says the Abbas passed down safely, and that the steamers Mansowrah and Saphia are on their return, but says nothing of capture of the two steamers at Berber.
Another escaped soldier came in.
The Arabs took the man with the flag of truce (I sent out with letter to Abdel Kader, the old sheikh) into their lines; he took a letter from the Ulemas to the Mahdi.
Tolerably good information says that the Mahdi has written to the tribes about here, telling them to submit to our authority, and to fight no more, to pay taxes, &c.; that if he is the Mahdi, then Turks and all men will eventually acknowledge him, without any more fighting, &c. We have this from two separate sources. I think he feels that to fail here would lead to his fall, and so he will come to terms in order to keep Kordofan, as I originally proposed to him.
Faki Mustapha (the man who commanded Arabs on left bank), has sent in to say he never wrote the impertinent letter E,[64] to which his seal was not.