antage thus gained was to some extent
neutralised by the difficulty of marching over such broken ground in the
darkness.

Throughout the whole length of the course of the Nile there is no more
miserable wilderness than the Monassir Desert. The stream of the river
is broken and its channel obstructed by a great confusion of boulders,
between and among which the water rushes in dangerous cataracts. The
sandy waste approaches the very brim, and only a few palm-trees, or here
and there a squalid mud hamlet, reveal the existence of life. The line
of advance lay along the river; but no road relieved the labour of the
march. Sometimes trailing across a broad stretch of white sand, in which
the soldiers sank to their ankles, and which filled their boots with
a rasping grit; sometimes winding over a pass or through a gorge of
sharp-cut rocks, which, even in the moonlight, felt hot with the heat of
the previous day--always in a long, jerky, and interrupted procession of
men and camels, often in single file--the column toiled painfully like
the serpent to whom it was said, 'On thy belly shalt thou go, and dust
shalt thou eat.'

The column started at 5.30 in the evening, and by a march of sixteen
and a half miles reached Mushra-el-Obiad at about midnight. Here a
convenient watering-place, not commanded by the opposite bank, and the
shade of eight or ten thorny bushes afforded the first suitable bivouac.
At 3.30 P.M. on the 30th the march was continued eight and a half miles
to a spot some little distance beyond Shebabit. The pace was slow, and
the route stony and difficult. It was after dark when the halting-place
was reached. Several of the men strayed from the column, wandered in the
gloom, and reached the bivouac exhausted. General Hunter had proposed to
push on the next day to Hosh-el-Geref, but the fatigues of his troops in
the two night marches had already been severe, and as, after Abu Haraz,
the track twisted away from the river so that there was no water for
five miles, he resolved to halt for the day and rest. Hosh-el-Geref was
therefore not reached until the 1st of August--a day later than had been
expected; but the rest had proved of such benefit to the troops that the
subsequent acceleration of progress fully compensated for the delay. The
column moved on again at midnight and halted at daybreak at Salmi. In
the small hours of the next morning the march was resumed. The road
by the Nile was found too difficult for the