oum offer no difficulties, and
the line will be laid within a year from the time when the money is
granted the Sirdar for its construction.

Since the foregoing was written, the requisite amount has been voted
Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, and the contracts for material have been
issued and signed. About a quarter of a million sleepers have to be
delivered in Egypt before the end of June 1899. The Atbara and forty
small khors will be bridged, and the work be completed in twelve
months. It is intended that the terminus shall be on the east bank
opposite Khartoum.

All the trains on the Halfa-Atbara line carried goods, ordinary
passengers being incidental. Four of my colleagues, Major Sitwell, of
the Egyptian army, and myself got places in a horse-box. In the next
truck to us, likewise a horse-box, were five English officers,
returning to duty with Gatacre's, or rather Wauchope's, brigade at
Darmali. In that same horse-box truck we five contrived to cook, eat,
sleep, and dress for two round days, for, as I have stated, there were
no restaurants or buffets within 1000 miles of the desert railway. The
wayside stations were but sidings or halting-places where the
locomotives drew coal and water, of which small supplies were usually
stored under an Egyptian corporal's guard. Ours was a long and heavy
train, and more than once on the up grade to No. 6 or Summit station
out from Halfa the engine came to a standstill, "to recover its
breath," as the negroes said. In the horse-box we got along together
for the most part very comfortably, accommodating ourselves to the
situation. Such a picnic as we had then made it less of a puzzle to
the common understanding how certain creatures are able to do with a
tight-fitting shell for their house and home. If Major Girouard, R.E.,
had not left the direction of the Soudan military railways--which
under the Sirdar he built--to join the Board of the Egyptian lines, we
should, I believe, have had better provision made for passengers.
Ziehs, or porous native clay-jars to hold cool drinking water, and
various other little accessories to lighten the hardships of the trip
would surely have been provided. Later on, the officials took care to
have ziehs and plenty of cool drinking water in the carriages and
trucks of all trains carrying troops, so that the men had at least
plenty to drink.

On our way up we passed Wauchope's brigade encamped at Es Selim and
Darmali. Colonel Macdonald's 1st and Co