During Wednesday's march, 17th August, we crossed the low shoulders of many rocky ridges. They are called "jebels" (hills), but most of them, including Jebel Egeda, which we passed, are little, if any, higher than Primrose-Hill, London, though it is not a conical, but a long, barn-roofed range. Near there I saw an enormous native cemetery. It extended to perhaps fifty acres, the pebble-covered mounds over the graves dotting the bare desert and the sides of the hills. I have an impression that there are ancient funeral mounds near there, and that the burying-place of Aliab is older than the invasion of the Arab Jaalin. There were fragments of sculptured stones, granite, and blocks of sandstone, and I noticed one broken memorial slab covered with Greek characters. Farther on we had to turn aside to avoid wadies and khors, up which the Nile had flowed. We were able to water the animals at some of those places. The mules and horses buried their noses in the flood and drank greedily, and the camels also had a fine, long-necked thirst. We were ourselves too parched to care about the impurities of the Nile, and soldiers and officers swallowed great draughts of the soupy stuff. Late in the afternoon of the 17th the column turned to the river to bivouac at Kitaib, a twenty-two miles journey for the day. Too late it was found that the ration depot there, from which the column was to draw fresh supplies, was upon the farther side of a newly-made inlet. The column had to repack, and turn west to round the creek. We reached Kitaib No. 2 about six p.m. Part of the battery mules and transport, however, got leave to remain at the first halting-place, as they stood in no need of supplies, and I unpacked by myself, bivouacking under a clump of tall mimosa trees hard by a vast deserted village and a long grove of date palms. I believe that over a score of men lost the road that night and ultimately wandered to the river and got to the front by steamer. There were several cases of heat exhaustion and sunstroke, but happily few of a serious nature. Two troopers, who floundered through the marshy land, got taken aboard a gunboat when they were utterly prostrate. Others, whose horses went lame or had to be killed, were ordered down to the Nile to secure passage on as best they could. In the darkness, as I was eating my evening meal by candle-light, two Lancers shouted and rode up. They had the too common but true story to tell of having missed the track. I found supper and breakfast for them, and started them off with their troop at eight o'clock next morning, the 18th August, for the column left Kitaib at a late hour. My servants were glad of the soldiers' arrival, for they were terribly afraid of robbers, the district being infested with marauding natives. During the night several fugitives from Omdurman passed us going north. Eighteen Shaggieh, who had escaped in a sail-boat, were but four days out from Khartoum. They professed to be delighted to get away.