Behind some rocks we came across the skeleton of a sniper, still clad in a few rags of tattered blue. By his side were four used and three unused cartridges; and a bullet-hole in his forehead explained the latter. Under another skeleton the soft sand was caked into a solid lump, where the blood had flowed from the fatal wound. A group of bodies in the open plain marked the site of a last stand; and the bones of two jackals near by suggested the scene of savage feasting and quarrelling which took place under the moon for many nights after the slaughter. The battle was fiercely contested, and under the blazing summer sun it must have been a severe test of endurance to the Egyptian officers and men, most of whom were used to the more temperate climate of the north of Egypt. One portly officer told me that his tongue swelled in his mouth from thirst, and after the battle it was a good six hours before he could swallow more than a few drops of water at a time. We spent the night at Derr, the capital of Lower Nubia, and early next morning steamed down to the temple of Amada, which stands on the left bank a few miles down stream. Our next stop was at Korôsko, where the river bank is lined with the ruins of the barracks of the British troops stationed there during the troubled days of the ’eighties. We climbed up a hill behind these ruins, on the summit of which a guard-house is erected, where a view is to be obtained of the valley along which the road to the Sudan leads out. It was along this road that General Gordon made his way to Khartûm in 1884. In this valley one may still see the tracks of the carts and gun-carriages of the ill-fated expedition which set out from here under Hicks Pasha and was utterly annihilated in the desert. The tracks pass down the valley and disappear amongst the hills; and even so the expedition disappeared and was swallowed up. Some of the enemy, now good servants of the Government, will tell you how false guides misled the troops, and how they were shot down as they lay exhausted by thirst within a mile of the wells. At the mouth of this valley there is the cemetery, where some forty British officers and men lie buried. The tombstones, badly engraved by the regimental sculptor, and almost all bearing the one remembered text, “God is Love,” cut in shaky letters, are inclined, as my friend put it, to give one the hump; and we walked back in silence to the steamer, leaving our fellow-countrymen to the complete stillness of this now deserted corner of the world, where, at all events, they must sleep sound.