n Monday, August 29th, at which all the Generals, including
the Brigadiers, were present, it was decided to remain until the next
day in Um Terif. The flotilla had been unable to concentrate in time,
the strong current and head wind making most of the vessels unduly
late in arriving from El Hejir. A piece of good news came to us from
the friendlies over the river. They were wont to march abreast with
us, moving up the east bank. We could usually see them across the half
mile or more of water that intervened, streaming along in their
conspicuous garments under the mimosa and palms, or treading through
the bush and long grass. On their way to their encampment opposite
they had fallen in with a small band of dervishes who were busily
looting a village. The natives of the place had offended the Khalifa
by absenting themselves from Omdurman, and so were being cruelly
maltreated. Major Stuart-Wortley's Arabs ran forward and opened a
sharp rifle fire upon the raiders, who replied with a few shots and
then bolted. A hot pursuit was instituted and five of the dervish
footmen were caught. The friendlies also had the luck to capture a
dervish sailing boat laden with grain. That evening at sunset, a few
Baggara horsemen and footmen were seen upon the nearest hills watching
the Sirdar's camp.

It was at Um Terif that the army, with all its equipment, was for the
first time got together within the confines of the same encampment.
From there also it set out next day in battle array, ready to
encounter the Khalifa's full strength. In the clear atmosphere of the
early morning and in the late afternoon when the bewildering mirage
and dancing haze had vanished, from any knoll could be seen the large
village of Kerreri. There the Mahdists had built a strong mud-walled
fort by the bank of the Nile. They had besides blocked the road with a
military camp big enough to shelter in huts and tukals several
thousand men. Information brought us by natives, spies and deserters,
was to the effect, that only a small body of dervishes had been left
at Kerreri under Emir Yunis for the purpose of observing the movements
of our army. Kerreri, which the Arabs pronounce with a prolonged Doric
or Northumbrian roll of the r's, as though there were at least a dozen
of them in the word, is upon the margin of a belt of rough gravel,
stone, and low detached hills that extend to the southward, to
Omdurman and beyond. The alluvial strip by the Nile, along which we