United States or French Guiana ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
While we were enjoying a few months' repose, the elements were hard at work. Every day, without exception, and generally for several hours of the night, the lightning flashed and thunder roared with little intermission, while the rain poured in such torrents that the entire country became perfectly impassable, with the exception of the hard ground of the Atbara valley.
That great river and the Atbara were then excessively low. The Blue Nile was also low at the same time.
The lofty wooden lookout staging, called the Eiffel Tower, had been removed, and its timbers converted to other purposes. On the completion of the railway to Dakhala, Abadia had become but a secondary workshop centre. Newer and larger shipbuilding yards and engine works were erected by the Atbara.
We now travelled in this delightful manner; there were great numbers of guinea-fowl throughout the country, which was the same everlasting flat and rich table land, extending for several hundred miles to the south, and dotted with green mimosas; while upon our left was the broken valley of the Atbara. The only drawback to the journey was the rain.
Thus was the great river at work upon our arrival on its bank at the bottom of the valley. At this point of interest the journey had commenced; the deserts were passed; all was fertility and life. Wherever the sources of the Nile might be, the Atbara was the parent of Egypt! This was my first impression, to be proved hereafter.
The power of the Atbara depended entirely upon the western drainage of the Abyssinian Alps; of itself it was insignificant until aided by the great arteries of the mountain-chain.
Gregory was now employed in the transport department, and journeyed backwards and forwards, with large convoys of camels, to the head of the railway. The line was completed to Berber, but the officers charged with its construction were indefatigable; and, as fast as the materials came up, it was pushed on towards the Atbara.
Gregory supposed that Mahmud's plan was to cross the Atbara, which was fordable at several points, and to attack the fort there; in which case, he had no doubt the Arabs would be driven off, with much loss.
There was no longer the vast sandy desert with the river flowing through its sterile course on a level with the surface of the country, but after traversing an apparently perfect flat of forty-five miles of rich alluvial soil, we had suddenly arrived upon the edge of a deep valley, between five and six miles wide, at the bottom of which, about 200 feet below the general level of the country, flowed the river Atbara.
Nasri Island as a base of concentration was, as I have intimated, a blind. Although we correspondents were not permitted to go up the river, or indeed move beyond the Atbara, until the Sirdar and headquarters had started, yet we kept ourselves fully informed of all that was happening at the front.
Word Of The Day