CURRENT LITERATURE.
Three Months in the Soudan. By Ernestine Sartorial!. (Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co.)—Here is another book about that unlucky Egyptian campaign in the Soudan. The author heard much of what had been going on, of Hicks Pasha's march, and of all the other disastrous events which incompetence, ill-luck, and irresolution seem to have combined to bring about. Her personal experiences (thistly relate to life at Suakin. Of this place and its people she draws some picturesque sketches—as, for instance, of the Bongs, slave, Furajulla, distinguished, among other things, for having knocked over one after another a guard of four Turkish soldiers who had insulted him. Suakin was not an agreeable place, and Mrs. Ballerina found her volunteered duties as " president of the mess" exceedingly onerous; though, as there was little to be got beyond canned pro- visions, they might be considered exceedingly simple. The book
concludes with an account of the battle of El Teb derived from eye- witnesses. One touch in their descriptions is very significant. " Without actually seeing it, no one could believe bow the troops fired in the air. They did not put their rifles to their shoulders, bat, holding them close to their cartridge-boxes, loaded and touched off the trigger as fast as possible."
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