N. 4 Degrees 54 Minutes, Shortly Before November; He Would
Then Secure Three Months Of Favourable Weather For An Advance
Inland.
Having promised Mek Nimmur that I would lay his proposals for
peace before the Governor-General of the Soudan,
I called upon
Moosa Pasha at the public divan, and delivered the message; but
he would not listen to any intercession, as he assured me that
Mek Nimmur was incorrigible, and there would be no real peace
until his death, which would be very speedy should he chance to
fall into his hands. He expressed great surprise at our having
escaped from his territory, and he declared his intention of
attacking him after he should have given the Abyssinians a
lesson, for whom he was preparing an expedition in reply to an
insolent letter that he had received from King Theodore. The King
of Abyssinia had written to him upon a question of frontier. The
substance of the document was a declaration that the Egyptians
had no right to Khartoum, and that the natural boundary of
Abyssinia was the junction of the Blue and White Niles as far
north as Shendy (Mek Nimmur's original country); and from that
point, in a direct line, to the Atbara; but that, as the desert
afforded no landmark, he should send his people to dig a ditch
from the Nile to the Atbara, and he requested that the Egyptians
would keep upon the north border. Moosa Pasha declared that the
king was mad, and that, were it not for the protection given to
Abyssinia by the English, the Egyptians would have eaten it up
long ago, but that the Christian powers would certainly interfere
should they attempt to annex the country.
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