The Safia,
Being Under Steam, Made Some Attempt To Escape - Whither, It Is Impossible
To Say - And Commander Keppel By A Well-Directed Shell In Her Boilers
Blew Her Up, Much To The Disgust Of The Sirdar, Who Wanted To Add Her
To His Flotilla.
After this incident the expedition continued its progress up the White Nile.
The sudd which was met with two
Days' journey south of Khartoum did not in
this part of the Nile offer any obstacle to navigation, as the strong
current of the river clears the waterway; but on either side of the channel
a belt of the tangled weed, varying from twelve to twelve hundred yards in
breadth, very often prevented the steamers from approaching the bank to
tie up. The banks themselves depressed the explorers by their melancholy
inhospitality. At times the river flowed past miles of long grey grass and
swamp-land, inhabited and habitable only by hippopotami. At times a vast
expanse of dreary mud flats stretched as far as the eye could see.
At others the forest, dense with an impenetrable undergrowth of
thorn-bushes, approached the water, and the active forms of monkeys
and even of leopards darted among the trees. But the country
- whether forest, mud-flat, or prairie - was always damp and feverish:
a wet land steaming under a burning sun and humming with mosquitoes
and all kinds of insect life.
Onward and southward toiled the flotilla, splashing the brown water
into foam and startling the strange creatures on the banks, until on the
18th of September they approached Fashoda. The gunboats waited, moored to
the bank for some hours of the afternoon, to allow a message which had
been sent by the Sirdar to the mysterious Europeans, to precede his arrival,
and early in the morning of the 19th a small steel rowing-boat was observed
coming down stream to meet the expedition. It contained a Senegalese
sergeant and two men, with a letter from Major Marchand announcing the
arrival of the French troops and their formal occupation of the Soudan.
It, moreover, congratulated the Sirdar on his victory, and welcomed him
to Fashoda in the name of France.
A few miles' further progress brought the gunboats to their destination,
and they made fast to the bank near the old Government buildings of the
town. Major Marchand's party consisted of eight French officers or
non-commissioned officers, and 120 black soldiers drawn from the Niger
district. They possessed three steel boats fitted for sail or oars, and a
small steam launch, the Faidherbe, which latter had, however, been sent
south for reinforcements. They had six months' supplies of provisions for
the French officers, and about three months' rations for the men; but they
had no artillery, and were in great want of small-arm ammunition.
Their position was indeed precarious. The little force was stranded,
without communications of any sort, and with no means of either
withstanding an attack or of making a retreat. They had fired away most of
their cartridges at the Dervish foraging party, and were daily expecting
a renewed attack.
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