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To join the navigable reaches, and thus preserve the continuity of the communications, a complex system of railways and caravans was necessary. In the expedition to Dongola a line of railway was required to connect the two navigable reaches of the Nile which extend from Assuan to Wady Halfa, and from Kerma to Merawi.
Another subaltern of Engineers, Lieutenant Manifold, who managed this part of the military operations against the Arabs, had also laid a line from Merawi to Abu Hamed, so that immediate correspondence was effected round the entire circle of rail and river. The labours of the Railway Battalion and its officers did not end with the completion of the line to Abu Hamed. The Desert Railway was made.
Broadwood, with nine squadrons of Egyptian cavalry, was already on the western bank of the river opposite Atbara; and was to be joined at Metemmeh by the camel corps, and another squadron of horse from Merawi. On the 3rd of August the six Soudanese battalions left Fort Atbara for the point of concentration, a few miles below the cataract.
It will be good to fire at them. Much better this, bey, than to load stores at Merawi." Gregory was much gratified, that evening after mess, at the kindly manner in which the members of the staff all shook hands with him, and said that they were sorry that he was going to leave them. General Hunter was dining with the Sirdar.
It is lucky, indeed, that we did so; for our horses were getting very done up, and I had begun to think that they would not reach our destination alive." In the afternoon, the adventurers started with the boats going up to Merawi and, the next morning, arrived at the camp. The Dervish patches had been removed from their clothes, as soon as they arrived at Ambukol.
The whole journey by rail from Merawi to Dakhesh occupied four days, whereas General Hunter with his flying column had taken eight a fact which proves that, in certain circumstances which Euclid could not have foreseen, two sides of a triangle are together shorter than the third side.
Major Pink, with a large number of troops from Merawi, succeeded in hauling the sailing boats through. A large column of laden camels was, at the same time, being pushed forward by the caravan route from Korosko.
The troops in Berber would have to draw their supplies by a long and slender line of camel communication, winding along all the way from Merawi, and exposed, as a glance at the map will show, throughout its whole length to attack. More than all this: to advance to Berber must inevitably force the development of the whole war.
As good a march in its way, if not better in some respects than that of the 5th Egyptian battalion from Suakin to Berber, was the tramp of the 17th Egyptian also a fellaheen regiment from Merawi to Dakhala. They made a record rapid tramp, following the Nile, up to Dakhala. At Dakhala I frequently saw and conversed with the Sirdar, Generals Rundle and Gatacre, Colonels Wingate and Slatin Pasha.
Until the railway was forced on to Berber a peculiarly inconvenient line of supply had to be used; and strings of camels, scattering never less than 30 per cent of their loads, meandered through the rough and thorny country between Merawi and Abu Hamed.
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