We said good-bye to Wad Hamed on 26th August. Cross and I had, with several others, selected to go by river rather than by land, as this would afford us an opportunity of seeing the cataract of Shabluka, which had become a household word in the army because of the possibility of Dervish resistance at this point. The rest of the correspondents accompanied the two British brigades toward Beled Hagir, our next camping site, just south of the cataract, and opposite Rojan Island. As we were leaving Wad Hamed about forty Gaalins arrived on the bank, and were embarked on the _Metemmeh_. These friendlies were wonderfully spick and span, with nice clean clothes. Some of them were equipped with large Dervish swords, while others had only sticks, which they carried with a jaunty air at the "shoulder," in anticipation, no doubt, of the Remington rifles which would be issued to them before the fight. They were accompanied to the bank by a fine old sheikh in flowing snow-white robes, and their farewells to the venerable chieftain were very impressive. In the Sudan people are not content with a single handshake. When one group is saying good-bye to another the interchange of courtesies and caresses is interminable. One man falls on the other's neck, without actually touching his face or shoulder,--rather after the manner of a stage kiss,--and then handshaking goes on _ad libitum_ all round, the same two people often clasping and unclasping their hands half a dozen times or more, according to the degree of intimacy. The Shabluka cataract, through which the flooded Nile rushes with amazing violence, lies in a gorge which has evidently in remote ages been torn through the limestone ridge by the river. A width of a thousand yards is here suddenly compressed into a hundred yards, and in the face of the terrific current which is thus produced, our gunboat could barely forge ahead at the rate of one and a half miles an hour. It is an open secret that the new gunboats built for the Nile service by Thorneycrofts are regarded as failures by naval experts. One of them, the _Sheikh_, can only make two miles an hour against the ordinary Nile current in August. Even in the moonlight one could realise the amount of damage which might have been inflicted by an effective occupation of Shabluka, upon a force advancing up the river. When we passed the forts, constructed, after the manner of Dervish engineers, on a level with the water, we found them deserted, and their guns had been removed. But if the enemy, who were posted here up to last May, had maintained their position, we should have been compelled to halt and drive them out of it from the land side, for none of our slow gunboats could have forced the gorge had it been lined with artillery.