Metemmeh had been made a slaughter-pen by the dervishes under Mahmoud. It was truly an awful Golgotha. Dead animals lay about in all directions in thousands, without and within the long, straggling, deserted town. I rode up and looked at the remains of the little fort and the loopholed walls on the south end of Metemmeh, close to which I had ridden on 21st January 1885, and got hotly fired at for my pains. Then I walked over the ruins of the Guards' triangular fort at Gubat. The place was still capable of defence, and the trenches and rifle-pits were much as we left them on 13th February with General Buller. As for the graves, they were intact. The big earthwork we all helped to raise near the river was covered with water, except a corner of the western parapet. It was, however, partly thrown down, and the ditch and slopes were overgrown with grass and bushes. Then I rode away to Abu Kru battle-field and had a look at what remained of the zereba, the little detached fort I had asked might be built, and the graves of our dead. Some of these had been rifled. Heaps of dead animal bones lay about, for we lost many camels that 19th January 1885. The enemy had gathered up and buried all their own dead. So overgrown was the place that it was barely recognisable. I stood, however, again where Stewart received his fatal wound, where Cameron, of the _Standard_, and St Leger Herbert lay with soldier comrades, and I wandered round to where Lord Charles Beresford worked the Gardners against the dervishes outside Metemmeh, whilst I found the range for him through my glasses, by watching the spatter of the bullets upon the sand. That night my thoughts were full of bygone scenes and doings in the most heroic campaign of modern history, Stewart's magnificent ride from Korti to Metemmeh. There came back to me the pain felt on the receipt of the evil news of Gordon's death, brought to us by Stuart Wortley, and of the slaughter at Khartoum, all of which might so easily have been averted but for----