whole understanding rested simply on an exchange of “words of honour” between the leaders on both sides, and it was loyally adhered to. Lord Salisbury, Sir Stafford Northcote, Mr. Gladstone, Lord Hartington, and Sir Charles Dilke, met and settled all serious disputes over the question of redistribution, and the Bill was introduced on the 1st of December. On the 4th of the month the measure was read a second time, the House of Lords having passed the Franchise Bill. On the 6th of December Parliament adjourned till the 19th of February, 1885, when the Redistribution Bill was to be finally dealt with in Committee, _de die in diem_. The autumn Session did not close till the Government obtained a vote of credit of £1,000,000 for military operations in Egypt. The decision to send an expedition to Khartoum by way of the Nile was arrived at with manifest reluctance by the Ministry, and of all the courses open to them, including those which had been suggested by Gordon and rejected by Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville, it was the most objectionable and hazardous.[192] Lord [Illustration: SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE (AFTERWARDS LORD IDDESLEIGH). (_From a Photograph by Barraud, Oxford Street._)] Wolseley arrived at Cairo early in September, and the Mudir of Dongola not only held back the Mahdi, but furnished a base of operations to the English force. Down to the end of 1884 Lord Wolseley contrived to shroud his proceedings in a veil of mystery. Beyond the facts that he had railway transport to Sarras, that after that point, the expedition and its transport were conveyed up the falling river in whaleboats guided by Canadian boatmen,[193] that Lord Wolseley’s sanguine anticipation of a rapid advance had been falsified, that dangers and difficulties, which he ought to have foreseen, had been encountered, that it had been necessary to stimulate the [Illustration: THE CITADEL, CAIRO.]