But Towards The End Of August Trustworthy
Information Was Received By The Intelligence Department, Through The Agency
Of Friendly Tribesmen,
That the Khalifa, with all his army, was encamped
at Jebel Gedir - that same mountain in Southern Kordofan to which
Nearly
twenty years before he and the Mahdi had retreated after the flight from
Abba Island. Here among old memories which his presence revived he became
at once a centre of fanaticism. Night after night he slept upon
the Mahdi's stone; and day after day tales of his dreams were carried
by secret emissaries not only throughout the Western Soudan, but into the
Ghezira and even to Khartoum. And now, his position being definite and his
action highly dangerous, it was decided to move against him.
On the 13th of October the first Soudanese battalion was despatched
in steamers from Khartoum, and by the 19th a force of some 7,000 men,
well equipped with camel transport, was concentrated at Kaka, a village on
the White Nile not far north of Fashoda. The distance from here to Jebel
Gedir was about eighty miles, and as for the first fifty no water existed;
the whole supply had to be carried in tanks. Sir Reginald Wingate, who was
in command of the infantry, reached Fungor, thirty miles from the enemy's
position, with the two leading battalions (IXth and Xth Soudanese) on
the 23rd of October, only to find news that the Khalifa had left his camp
at Jebel Gedir on the 18th and had receded indefinitely into the desert.
The cast having failed, and further progress involving a multiplication of
difficulties, Lord Kitchener, who was at Kaka, stopped the operations,
and the whole of the troops returned to Khartoum, which they reached
in much vexation and disappointment on the 1st of November.
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