The fighting force can take the guns of the steamers, if they need artillery; they are very good guns and have field carriages with limbers. I shall not send down the castellated barges or the Krupp guns. Should you cross the desert en masse, the way to guard your communications is to occupy, with a company, all the wells in a good large radius, for the Arabs cannot come down on your line of communication, not being able to get water. This is the only way to deal with the Bedouins, or slave hunters.
The elephants came up by the wells of Gabra,[80] direct from Debbeh to Kartoum. Care should be taken on approaching Omdurman, for there are rather a timid lot there (fellaheen).
You must consider whether you will not send down those dreadful Bashi Bazouks, the scum of Alexandria, and the fellaheen soldiers, on arrival, for they are of little use, and eat us up.
For my part, I should not hesitate to ride down with three hundred men (having taken precaution to have made arrangements with the Kababish tribe) from Kartoum to Debbeh.
There is no difficulty in making flying bridges across the Nile with the country boats, however wide, using telegraph wire twisted in six or eight strands.
Seyd Mahomet Osman’s little boy, aged nine years, was caught by Arabs, and behaved like a hero: “He was not going to be a Dervish. He was as much the Mahdi as Mahomet Achmet; and they might kill him if they liked, &c. He was going to stay with the Government and Gordon Pasha.” They left him alone.
The Sandjak described the scene as splendid: the little fellow with flaming eyes, gesticulating and stamping with fury.
“U. S. C.,[81] 6.30 p.m.—Did you ever hear of such a thing? ——[82] is appointed —— to ——. A more barefaced job never was perpetrated. Why, the man has done nothing, absolutely nothing. Atrocious! But what can you expect? The whole lot of them are off again, a regular autumn flight! What! eh! you will see them all at Christmas” (waxing more wrath). “I declare I have half a mind to go to the Mahdi,” &c. Page interrupts: “Lady —— is waiting in the brougham.” Collapse and exit.
I cannot too much impress on you that this expedition will not encounter any enemy worth the name in an European sense of the word; the struggle is with the climate and destitution of the country. It is one of time and patience, and of small parties of determined men, backed by native allies, which are got by policy and money. A heavy lumbering column, however strong, is nowhere in this land. Parties of forty or sixty men, swiftly moving about, will do more than any column. If you lose two or three, what of it—it is the chance of war. Native allies above all things, at whatever cost. It is the country of the irregular, not of the regular. If you move in mass you will find no end of difficulties; whereas, if you let detached parties dash out here and there, you will spread dismay in the Arab ranks. The time to attack is the dawn, or rather before it (this is stale news), but sixty men would put these Arabs to flight just before dawn, which one thousand would not accomplish in daylight. This was always Zubair’s tactics. The reason is that the strength of the Arabs is their horsemen, who do not dare to act in the dark. I do hope you will not drag on that artillery: it can only produce delay and do little good. I can say I owe the defeats in this country to having artillery with me, which delayed me much, and it was the artillery with Hicks which, in my opinion, did for him.[83]