Those instructions were more easy to give than to obey. Wolseley
decided to send a flying column across the desert from Korti to
Metammeh and thence to Khartoum; and a second up the Nile. With the
luckless flying column went part of the 19th Hussars, under
Lieutenant-Colonel Barrow. Major French was second in command.

On December 30, General Herbert Stewart's little force, with its
thousand odd men and two thousand camels, was on parade for inspection
near Korti. At first there was some doubt as to how the camels would
stand the attack of the Mahdi's wild warriors.

"In order to test the steadiness of our camels as regarded noise and
firing, the 19th Hussars one day at brigade drill charged on the
unprotected mass of camels, cheering and yelling. Everybody expected
to see them break their ropes and career wildly over the desert. The
only result was that one solitary camel struggled to his feet, looked
round and knelt down again; the others never moved an eyelid.

"That was satisfactory: and as firing into them with blank cartridges
and over them with ball had already been tried ... with no visible
result, the general opinion was that they would stand charging niggers
or anything else in creation with equanimity. Sad to say we came to
the conclusion that it was want of brains _pur et simple_ that caused
our steeds to behave thus docilely: any other animal with a vestige of
brain would have been scared to death, but, as it was, no one
regretted their deficiency."[1]

[Page Heading: THE KITCHENER WAY]

Before the corps set out from Korti, Sir Herbert Stewart sent for the