THE MAZES OF THE ARAB MIND.

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tion of the enemy-angarebs and women's trinketboxes being littered all over the place.

The Dervishes are almost certainly falling back before us on to positions determined beforehand, where they expect advantage from scrub, and it would be no surprise here if a decisive battle were fought some distance north of Omdurman.

The Intelligence Department naturally keeps its own counsel, since a daily interchange of spies between the hostile headquarters is now easy.

It is safe to say that all the advantage of information is on our side, all the stories of the deserters being carefully sifted by men accustomed to thread the tortuous mazes of the Arab mind.

The Intelligence Department camp is to-day strewn with plum-coloured, thin-cheeked dervishes squatting in groups on the ground munching biscuit, the first earnest of the renewed blessings of civilised rule.

It must not, however, be inferred from this that the Khalifa's trusted fighting men are deserting.

These are so detested on account of half a generation of barbarities that they know there is no asylum left them in all Africa: they will die resolutely.

Wady Abid, Aug. 30 (9.40 a.m.)—We are again on the march, the army advancing ten miles to Sayalanother stride towards Omdurman.

Major Stuart-Wortley's friendlies have captured

five prisoners, together with a barge laden with grain, after a brush with some dervishes on the right bank of the Nile.

During the storm which continues to rage here the British outposts last night heard the patter of hoofs, and suddenly a dervish horseman rode up, shouting Allah!" and hurled his spear over their heads; then, wheeling round, he galloped away unhurt.

XXXI.

THE RECONNAISSANCES.

REVEILLE at four had forestalled daybreak; at five we were between dawn and sunrise. Inside the swarming zariba of camp Sayal impatient bugles were hurrying whites and blacks under arms. Outside it the desert dust threw up a sooty film before the yellow east; the cavalry and camel - corps were forming up for the day's reconnaissance. Four squadrons of British 21st Lancers on the left, nine squadrons of Egyptian horsemen on the right with the horse guns, they trotted jangling into broad columns of troops, and spread fan-wise over the desert.

The camel-corps stayed a moment to practise a bit of drill of their own. One moment they were a huge oblong phalanx of waving necks and riders silhouetted against the sunrise; a couple of words in Turkish from their Bey and the necks were waving alone with the riders in a square round them; an instant more and camels and men had all knelt down. The camelcorps was a flat field of heads and humps hedged with