[SHEET MUSIC; SOUDAN CONTINGENT] The Harp of the Southern Cross : Australia’s message.

A$135 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

/ by Karl Wilhelm Goergs . Author of Echoes of Australia c. Cover: For the Patriotic Fund . Sydney : [K.W. Goergs?], 1885. Folio (345 x 250 mm), disbound, decorative covers featuring a diagram of the Southern Cross with the date March 3rd, 1885 (closely trimmed at top and bottom edges), [2] pp music notation (arrangement for voice and piano) and lyrics; rear cover with full listing by name of all members of the New South Wales Soudan Contingent (the heading Authentic list of the Contingent has been cropped) and below it a list of contributors to the Patriotic Fund with amounts contributed (cropped at the foot); scattered foxing to covers and inside pages, else good. Very scarce. Trove locates only two copies (NLA; SLNSW). Sudan (New South Wales Contingent) March-June 1885. In the early 1880s the British-backed Egyptian regime in the Sudan was threatened by an indigenous rebellion under the leadership of Muhammed Ahmed, known to his followers as the Mahdi. In 1883 the Egyptian government, with British acquiescence, sent an army south to crush the revolt. Instead of destroying the Mahdi s forces, the Egyptians were soundly defeated, leaving their government with the problem of extricating the survivors. The difficulties of evacuating their forces in the face of a hostile enemy quickly became apparent, and the British were persuaded to send General Charles Gordon, already a figure of heroic proportions in England, to consider the means by which the Egyptian troops could be safel

• Binding: Hardcover

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