In October, 1886, Wad en Nejumi, the victor of El-Obeid, was sent by the califa to invade Egypt. The advance of this army was delayed by trouble within the Sudan; but the califa, having at length beaten his enemies, in the year 1889 sent large reinforcements northwards to carry on the campaign against Egypt with vigour. The Egyptian troops, with one squadron of hussars, fought a decisive engagement with Wad en Nejumi on August 3rd of the same year. The dervish leader, many of his emirs, and twelve hundred Arab warriors were slain; four thousand more were taken prisoners, and 147 dervish standards were captured. The ever-increasing progress of Egypt during the next ten years, together with the accounts received from escaped prisoners of the reign of terror and inhumanity which obtained in the Sudan, brought the question of the reconquest of the lost provinces once more into prominence. The Italians had met with a fearful disaster in fighting against the Abyssinians at the battle of Adowa on March 1,1896. They were holding Kassala within the ex-Egyptian territory by invitation from England, and a reason was presented for attacking the dervishes elsewhere in order to draw off their army from Kassala. With the appointment of Sir Henry Kitchener, on March 11,1896, as sirdar of the Egyptian army, the final period of hostilities was entered upon between Egypt and the independent Arabs of the Central African Provinces. General Kitchener was ordered to build a railroad up the Nile, and to push forward with a well-organised Egyptian army, whose chief officers were Englishmen. The whole scheme of the invasion was planned with consummate forethought and deliberation, the officials and advisers in charge of the enterprise being chosen from the most tried and able experts in their several provinces. Lieut.-Col. E. P. C. Girouard, a brilliant young Canadian, undertook the work of railroad reconstruction. Col. L. Bundle was chief of the staff, and Major R. Wingate head of the Intelligence Department, ably assisted by the ex-prisoner of the califa, Slatin Bey. The army consisted in the beginning almost entirely of Egyptian and Sudanese troops, together with one battalion of the North Staffordshire Regiment. There were eight battalions of artillery, eight camel corps, and sixty-three gunboats which steamed up the Nile.