On 22nd January the Admiralty renewed their expression of their very high appreciation of Warren’s services, and the Commander-in-Chief of the army, H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge, informed him of his high satisfaction at receiving a very favourable report from the Admiralty on the able manner in which he had carried out the duty entrusted to him, and his own appreciation of the ‘hazardous services’ he had performed. Warren, who was already a brevet-colonel,[2] was promoted to be a Knight Commander of St. Michael and St. George on the Queen’s birthday, 24th May, and the Admiralty congratulated him in a letter of 25th May 1883, expressing the gratification felt by the Board at this mark of the Queen’s approval of the most valuable services which he had rendered to her Majesty’s Government throughout the whole time he was engaged in investigating the circumstances of the murder of Professor Palmer and his party, and in bringing the guilty persons to justice. Lieut.-General Sir Andrew Clarke, Inspector-General of Fortifications, wrote to him in January 1883: ‘You are doing your mission right well; we are all proud of you.’ Lord Northbrook wrote in the same sense, and afterwards told Sir Charles Warren that his exertions had saved the country an expenditure of at least two millions on an expedition into the desert, which must have been undertaken had he been unsuccessful. Warren received the Egyptian medal and bronze star, and was also decorated by the Khedive with the third class of the Order of the Mejidie. CHATHAM, 1883-4 On his return home he resumed his duties at Chatham as the head of the Surveying School. In 1884, when General Gordon was shut up in Khartoum and completely cut off by the Mahdi, Warren volunteered to go through Abyssinia and open communication with his old friend. He was for some time in correspondence with Mr. W. E. Forster on the subject, and Lieut.-General Sir Andrew Clarke highly approved of the proposal, and wrote a minute in favour of it. In the end, however, the idea was abandoned when it was decided to send a relief expedition under Lord Wolseley. Warren found time during 1883 to write a pamphlet giving a concise account of the military occupation of South Bechuanaland in 1878-9, and he also contributed to the Professional Papers of the Corps of Royal Engineers ‘Notes on Arabia Petræa and the Country lying between Egypt and Palestine.’ BECHUANALAND EXPEDITION, 1884-5