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This time we were just south of the Wadi Ghuzzeh, on a hill which was beautifully green and fresh. All the lower ground round it had been used for camps for the best part of a year, but this hill had been so prominent and so fully under observation from Ali-el-Muntar, that it could not be occupied so long as the Turks held Gaza.
The river towns have changed but little in the last hundred years, and the sketch of Hit might have been made only yesterday. Within three days after the rise, the waters of the Wadi Hauran subsided sufficiently for us to cross, and I received orders to return to Baghdad. The rain had brought about a change in the desert since we passed through on our way up.
Another under Captain B. Norbury occupied the hill station of Sinkat. Important censorship work at Wadi Halfa was entrusted to Captain J.H. Thorpe, and, when he was invalided, to Lieutenant L. Dudley, who fell later in action on Gallipoli. At Khartum a half company, under Captain C. Norbury, was on arrival transformed immediately into the British Camel Corps.
We had several ups and downs, and passed wadis running in close to us before we began to descend by what must have been a fearful road for the camels, down the two precipices and the two flights of rolling stones, into the Wadi bin Ali. The way was far better than that of the day before; the very Jabberi never saw such a road as that, they said.
Tell him that the next time he asks me to come and see him, whether it is in England or Wadi Halfa, I will accept the invitation." "Which way will you go?" "To Wadi Halfa," said Feversham, pointing westwards over his shoulder. "I shall take Abou Fatma with me and travel slowly and quietly down the Nile. The other Arab will guide you into Assouan."
It seemed that he had found for himself some perfectly simple and natural explanation. At times, too, she asked herself why Durrance had told her of that meeting in Wadi Halfa, and of Feversham's subsequent departure to the south. But for that she found an explanation a strange explanation, perhaps, but it was simple enough and satisfactory to her.
The Wadi bin Ali is not very wide and the ground is bare, though there are many villages scattered about. At rather a large one, where the wadi forks, and which we reached at eight o'clock, we were to begin our ascent. To our dismay the camels were made to sit down and the camel-men said we must stay there the night, as there was no water up above.
Opposite, across the Wadi Imaish, which ran east and west, roughly N.N.E. from Foka, was the dominating ridge of Zeitun, some hundreds of feet higher than Foka and under 1800 yards away; to the N.N.W., perhaps 2000 yards off, was the crest of Khirbet Kereina, fully as high as Foka; and, as if these two dominating positions in front, giving first-class artillery observation, were not enough, there was also a hill, subsequently known as Hill A, which was just about the same height as Foka, was held by some Turks with one or two machine guns, and fired slap into their right rear from the south-east.
The 54th Division was in the Gaza defences with all its transport allotted to the divisions taking part in the forward move, but as the 54th had five days' rations in dumps close at hand it was able to maintain itself, and the railway was being pushed on from the wadi Ghuzze with the utmost speed.
An old and confidential relation of his was to accompany us all the way, and the Wazir Salim-bin-Ali came as far as our first camp, two hours off, in the Wadi Hadira. Here we could plainly see the formation of these valleys, abrupt at the end and like a circus, not made by streams descending, but like creeks and bays of a gigantic fiord. There is not much cultivation in the little valley.
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