3-074-824 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Major Baron Alfred von Seckendorff, prisoner in the Soudan, 1883. 'In the confused and uncertain rumours that have as yet reached Cairo, with regard to the European survivors of Hicks Pasha's army...there is...some mention of a wounded European officer, who is described as very tall, and having a yellow beard. This is believed to be Major Baron Alfred von Seckendorff, of the Austrian army, who was Adjutant-General on the staff of Hicks Pasha; and there seems reason to hope that his life has been spared. We have received from his cousin, Professor Baron Arthur von Seckendorff, of Vienna, Privy Councillor and Director of the Cultivation of Forests, a photograph of the gallant Major, which is reproduced in our Engraving. The last private letter received from him by his Vienna friends was dated Sept. 25, at Duem, on the White Nile...It describes the fatiguing twelve-days' march from Khartoum to Duem, with 11,000 men and 6000 beasts, camels, horses and mules, and says, "We hope to be in Obeid in five weeks, if we do not die of thirst on the road." For, as he states in another part of his letter, "the lack of water is terrible; all the wells on the road are destroyed; when we march from here we leave the Nile, and other rivers there are none...".' From "Illustrated London News", 1883.