la three new and very powerful gunboats had been ordered in
England. These were to be brought in sections over the railway to a
point above the Second Cataract, and be fitted together there. It
was thus necessary to wait, firstly, for the railway to reach Kosheh;
secondly, for the Nile to rise; thirdly, for the old gunboats to ascend
the Cataract; fourthly, for the new gunboats to be launched on the clear
waterway; and, fifthly, for the accumulation of supplies. With all of
these matters the Sirdar now busied himself.

The reconstruction of the railway to Akasha and its extension beyond
this place towards Kosheh was pressed forward. By the 26th of June
Akasha was reached. Thenceforward the engineers no longer followed an
existing track, but were obliged to survey, and to make the formation
for themselves. Strong fatigue parties from the Egyptian and Soudanese
battalions were, however, employed on the embankments, and the line
grew daily longer. On the 24th of July the first train ran across the
battlefield of Firket; and on the 4th of August the railway was working
to Kosheh.

Kosheh is six miles south of Firket, and consists, like most places
in the 'Military Soudan,' of little more than a name and a few ruined
mud-huts which were once a village. On the 5th of July the whole camp
was moved thither from the scene of the action. The reasons were clear
and apparent. Kosheh is a point on the river above the Dal Cataract
whence a clear waterway runs at high Nile to beyond Dongola. The camp at
Firket had become foul and insanitary. The bodies of the dead, swelling
and decaying in their shallow graves, assailed, as if in revenge, the
bodies of the living. The dysentery which had broken out was probably
due to the 'green' water of the Nile; for during the early period of the
flood what is known as 'the false rise' washes the filth and sewage off
the foreshore all along the river, and brings down the green and rotting
vegetation from the spongy swamps of Equatoria. The water is then
dangerous and impure. There was nothing else for the army to drink;
but it was undesirable to aggravate the evil by keeping the troops in a
dirty camp.

The earliest freight which the railway carried to Kosheh was the first
of the new stern-wheel gunboats. Train after train arrived with its
load of steel and iron, or with the cumbrous sections of the hull, and
a warship in pieces--engines, armaments, fittings and stores--soon lay
stacked by the s