RELIEF OF GENERAL GORDON.

West Coast Times, Issue 4685, 4 August 1884, Page 2

RELIEF OF GENERAL GORDON.

Recent accumulations of men, stores, and launches at Assouan has occasioned a surmise that a British force is to be employed from this base to relieve Khartoum. The route would be — 1. From Cairo to Assiout, 254 miles by train 2. From Assiout to Assouan, 334, miles hy steamers carrying men, and towing barges also laden with men. 3. From Assouan, a distance of seven miles, by a railway constructed to avoid the cataract and carry goods to the smaller boats o£ the Upper Nile at Philae. 4. From Philae to Korosko the distance is 111 miles, and is traversed by steamers of 40 horse power of from sft. to 7ft., draught each, which by towiiig a barge each could transport collectively 1000 men. 5. From Korosko to Abu Hamad, 230 miles across the desert, with camels for transport. Cameia make the journey in eight or ten days. There is water half way, but it is bitter, and though relished by camels, is unfit for human beings. This is a desert utterly barren, consisting of successive ranges of rocky hills traversing bare plains 6. At Abu Hamad the Nile is again touched, and. its course thence to Khartoum, 441 miles, has but one cataract, which can be passed even at low Nile by small steamers and boats towed by hand from the shore. Thus a force following this route would reach Khartoum after 1377 miles of travel. Military critics, however scoff at the idea of! such an expedition being undertaken; and the one practicable route is unhesitatingly declared to be from Souakim to Berber, a distance of 250 miles, and so on by the Nile to Khartoum. A. military railway from the port to the Berber base could, it is said, be laid, and the desert, which is nothing like so formidable as the Korosko wilderness, would thus be deprived of its terror.