h a
course desirable.

"The officer in command of the Blue Nile flotilla is authorised to
go as far as the foot of the cataract, which is believed to
commence about Rosaires. He is not to land troops with a view to
marching beyond the point on the river navigable for steamers.
Should he, before reaching Rosaires, encounter any Abyssinian
outposts, he is to halt, report the circumstance, and wait for
further instructions.

"In dealing with any French or Abyssinian authorities who may be
encountered, nothing should be said or done which would in any way
imply a recognition on behalf of Her Majesty's Government of a
title to possession on behalf of France or Abyssinia to any
portion of the Nile Valley."

Although everybody engaged in the Fashoda expedition was repeatedly
warned not to disclose anything about it, and to forget all they had
seen or heard, I was enabled very shortly after the event to wire, day
by day, the whole story of the enterprise. It was General Grant, who,
during the Civil War in the United States of America, terribly vexed
at the newspaper correspondents, on one occasion vowed he would send
them all away and not have a press-man in his army. "Then, General,"
said the American journalist addressed, "may I ask what are you going
to do without soldiers, every man of them can speak and write?"
General Grant saw the absurdity of the position and smiled, and there
was an end of the matter. It was, perhaps, a choice of one of two
evils, either accepting and making the best of the situation to allow
the trained journalists to remain, or to prepare to meet a tremendous
inundation of wild letter-writing from all ranks that would find its
way into the public press and do incalculable harm. "Other times,
other manners," and those modern generals discredit themselves who
fail to recognise at the close of the nineteenth century that the
schoolmaster and the press must be reckoned with.

The information given me by the reis of the "Tewfikieh" proved
accurate in almost every detail. I confess that, at the time, knowing
the Arab indifference to exactness in dates, I did not credit his
assertion that Marchand had reached Fashoda six weeks before the
dervishes attacked him. Floating down stream in a small steam launch,
aluminum row-boats, and other craft, the Frenchmen arrived off Fashoda
on the 10th of July. In 1892-93 the French Government had begun
sending mil