His Own Headquarters Were Established At Hosh-Ben-Naga,
A Little Village About Five Miles Further South.
A delay of more than a
fortnight followed, during which the gunboats exercised the utmost
vigilance.
The Suakin-Berber road was again closed for caravans, and the
Sirdar himself proceeded to Berber. On the 11th of March the remnants of
the Jaalin tribe, having collected at Gakdul, re-occupied the now abandoned
Metemma, to find its streets and houses choked with the decaying bodies
of their relations. On the 13th the Egyptian look-out station, which had
been established on Shebaliya island, was attacked by the Dervishes,
and in the skirmish that ensued Major Sitwell was wounded. On the same day
the enemy were reported moving northwards to Aliab, and it became evident
that Mahmud had begun his advance.
He started from Shendi with a force which has been estimated
at 19,000 souls, but which included many women and children, and may have
actually numbered 12,000 fighting men, each and all supplied with a month's
rations and about ninety rounds of ammunition. The Sirdar immediately
ordered the Anglo-Egyptian army, with the exception of the cavalry and
Lewis's Egyptian brigade - which, with three squadrons, held the fort at the
confluence - to concentrate at Kunur. Broadwood, with the remaining five
squadrons, marched thither on the 16th; and the whole cavalry force,
with the Camel Corps in support, on the three subsequent days reconnoitred
twenty miles up the Nile and the Atbara.
Meanwhile the concentration was proceeding apace.
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