DISASTROUS EGYPTIAN EXPEDITION.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3112, 18 June 1881, Page 3

DISASTROUS EGYPTIAN EXPEDITION.

Writing from Alexandra under date February 28, the Time's correspondent relates the following sad incident: —" Passing to another subject, Gessi Pasha has lately arrived at Khartoum from the G-azelle Eiver. It was under his command that a small army of black Soudan soldiers hunted down the slave dealers of that disfcriot and rooted out the slave-trade for ft time. Bufc the experiences of his return northwards must have been even more terrible to him than those of his long, harassing campaign against the slavere and their armed bands. The story is a shocking one. He started in a steamer towing a flotilla of rafts and boats, with a caravan of gome 500 people, soldiers and others, last September. They had food enough for the ordinary journey. But the expedition was completely blocked by the sudd —the vegetable growth of the Nile, which in extreme tropical latitudes converts the river into a vast impenetrable marsh and stops all traffic as completely as the ice does in a northerly river. Baker in his " Ismailia," describes how he fought his way through the sudd in sixty days with his steamers and his 1,000 men by dint of the incessant use of epades and hatchets. Gordon was the best part of two years in conveying his, steamer to the equatorial lakes on account of this same sudd. The waterway to the Equatos was again opened for a time by Ismail Pasha Eyoitb. But the fatal obstacle forms again with tropical vigor, and must be a perpetual barrier to the development of the Nile as a means of communication with the lakes Albert Nyanza. This will at any rate, be the opinion of Gessi. He and his party got caught in a ohaos of marshes with every channel blocked by sudd, and there they remained for three months until provisions failed and the people died of fever by scores. I regret to say that such were their final extremities that the living were forced to feed upon the dead. The remnant of the expedition were finally rescued by a steamer of great power sent southwards to their aid which •ucceeded in forcing a temporary passage by which the flotilla was able to get out into deep water."