Graphic (The).

Cairo to Khartoum,

£300

London, The Graphic, 1884.
strip-map of the Nile in two vertical columns, from the confluence of the Blue Nile and the White Nile at Khartoum, lower right, to Cairo, upper left, with 49 vignette views of landmarks and monuments along its course, topped and tailed with a larger view of each city, the view of Khartoum also with a small plan above. Issued as a supplement to The Graphic on October 25th, 1884, the descriptive captions to each vignette are interwoven with small details about the advance of the Nile Expedition, the rescue mission led by Sir Garnet Wolseley to relieve the siege of Khartoum where General Gordon was fighting against the Sudanese forces of the rebel Mahdi. Gordon had arrived in the February of that year, under instructions to withdraw the Egyptian garrison to safety. Instead, he argued the case for defending the city in order to prevent the Mahdi’s Islamic uprising from overrunning the whole of Sudan. This was flatly rejected by Gladstone, the British prime minister, though the worsening situation compelled him to authorise Wolseley’s mission, in July, to rescue Gordon. Although the upbeat narrative of this map tells of Gordon’s interim successes, even of his triumphant sortie to recapture the town of Berber, the Nile Expedition took until the end of January, 1885, to arrive, by which time Khartoum had fallen and Gordon apparently beheaded,.