Towards the end of the journey the camels, terribly strained by their privation of water, began to die, and it was evident that the force would have no time to spare.  One young camel, though not apparently exhausted, refused to proceed, and even when a fire was lighted round him remained stubborn and motionless; so that, after being terribly scorched, he had to be shot.  Others fell and died all along the route.  Their deaths brought some relief to the starving inhabitants.  For as each animal was left behind, the officers, looking back, might see first one, then another furtive figure emerge from the bush and pounce on the body like a vulture; and in many cases before life was extinct the famished natives were devouring the flesh.

On the 5th of February the column reached Kohi, and the Kordofan Field Force, having overcome many difficulties and suffered many hardships, was broken up, unsuccessful through no fault of its commander, its officers, or its men.

For nearly a year no further operations were undertaken against the Khalifa, and he remained all through the spring and summer of 1899 supreme in Kordofan, reorganising his adherents and plundering the country —­a chronic danger to the new Government, a curse to the local inhabitants, and a most serious element of unrest.  The barren and almost waterless regions into which he had withdrawn presented very difficult obstacles to any military expedition, and although powerful forces were still concentrated at Khartoum, the dry season and the uncertain whereabouts of the enemy prevented action.  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.