for seven days a week.

To the complication of machinery was added the confusion of tongues.
Natives of various races were employed as operatives. Foremen had been
obtained from Europe. No fewer than seven separate languages were spoken
in the shops. Wady Halfa became a second Babel. Yet the undertaking
prospered. The Engineer officers displayed qualities of tact and temper:
their director was cool and indefatigable. Over all the Sirdar
exercised a regular control. Usually ungracious, rarely impatient,
never unreasonable, he moved among the workshops and about the line,
satisfying himself that all was proceeding with economy and despatch.
The sympathy of common labour won him the affection of the subalterns.
Nowhere in the Soudan was he better known than on the railroad. Nowhere
was he so ardently believed in.

It is now necessary to anticipate the course of events. As soon as the
railway reached Abu Hamed, General Hunter's force, which was holding
that place, dropped its slender camel communications with Merawi and
drew its supplies along the new line direct from Wady Halfa. After the
completion of the desert line there was still left seventeen miles of
material for construction, and the railway was consequently at once
extended to Dakhesh, sixteen miles south of Abu Hamed. Meanwhile Berber
was seized, and military considerations compelled the concentration of
a larger force to maintain that town. The four battalions which had
remained at Merawi were floated down stream to Kerma, and, there
entraining, were carried by Halfa and Abu Hamed to Dakhesh--a journey of
450 miles.

When the railway had been begun across the desert, it was believed that
the Nile was always navigable above Abu Hamed. In former campaigns it
had been reconnoitred and the waterway declared clear. But as the river
fell it became evident that this was untrue. With the subsidence of the
waters cataracts began to appear, and to avoid these it became necessary
first of all to extend the railway to Bashtinab, later on to Abadia, and
finally to the Atbara. To do this more money had to be obtained, and the
usual financial difficulties presented themselves. Finally, however, the
matter was settled, and the extension began at the rate of about a mile
a day. The character of the country varies considerably between Abu
Hamed and the Atbara River. For the first sixty miles the line ran
beside the Nile, at the edge of the riparian belt. On the right was the
c