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Updated: June 1, 2025
On the 26th Lewis's brigade was ordered to march across the loop from Kosheh to Sadin Fanti, and reinforce the brigade at Absarat. The distance of thirty-seven miles was far too great to be accomplished without a system of watering-places. This the Sirdar rapidly organised.
The section of thirty-two miles from Akasha to Kosheh must, with the exception of ten miles of embankment completed in 1885, at once be newly made. And, finally, the section from Kosheh to Kerma must be completed before the Nile flood subsided. The first duty, therefore, which the Engineer officers had to perform was the reconstruction of the line from Sarras to Akasha.
Kosheh is six miles south of Firket, and consists, like most places in the 'Military Soudan, of little more than a name and a few ruined mud-huts which were once a village. On the 5th of July the whole camp was moved thither from the scene of the action. The reasons were clear and apparent.
Before the capture of Dongola, however, this distance was shortened by the fact that the river at high Nile is navigable between the Third Cataract and Kerma. In consequence it was at first only necessary to construct the stretch of 108 miles between Wady Halfa and Kosheh.
There was nothing else for the army to drink; but it was undesirable to aggravate the evil by keeping the troops in a dirty camp. The earliest freight which the railway carried to Kosheh was the first of the new stern-wheel gunboats.
On the 14th the first gunboat, the Metemma, approached the Cataract. The North Staffordshire Regiment from Gemai, and the 6th and 7th Egyptian Battalions from Kosheh, marched to the 'Gate' to draw the vessel bodily up in spite of the current. The best native pilots had been procured. Colonel Hunter and the naval officers under Commander Colville directed the work.
Track-laying commenced south of Kosheh on the 9th of October, and the whole work was carried forward with feverish energy. As it progressed, and before it was completed, the reach of the river from the Third Cataract to Kenna ceased to be navigable.
The extension of the line from Kosheh to Kerma was therefore of vital importance. The survey was at once undertaken, and a suitable route was chosen through the newly acquired and unmapped territory.
Meantime, railway making had been pushed on apace, and the line reached Kosheh, a distance of 76 miles, by the end of April; but rapid as this was, it was as nothing to the achievements of the following year. On June 7th a considerable force of dervishes was attacked and utterly defeated by the Egyptian army, whose conduct delighted their officers and gave them all confidence in the future.
The North Staffordshire Regiment were, to the intense relief of officers and men, warned to hold themselves in readiness for an immediate move. The mounted troops had already returned to the front from the camps in which they had been distributed. At last the miserable delay was over. From Kosheh to Kerma, the first Dervish position, the distance by river is 127 miles.
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