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In the Abu Hamed phase the supplies were so regulated that a convoy travelling from Murat Wells along the caravan route arrived the day after the fight; and thereafter communications were opened with Merawi. The unexpected occupation of Berber, following Abu Hamed, created the most difficult situation of the war.
They were still a hundred miles away, but camels travel fast and far, and the resources of the enemy were uncertain. It appeared that progress would be checked, but on the 7th of August General Hunter, marching from Merawi along the river bank, attacked and took Abu Hamed an operation which will be described hereafter. Work was at once resumed with renewed energy.
It is now necessary to anticipate the course of events. As soon as the railway reached Abu Hamed, General Hunter's force, which was holding that place, dropped its slender camel communications with Merawi and drew its supplies along the new line direct from Wady Halfa.
The existence of a perpetual clear waterway from the head of the Third Cataract to Merawi enabled the gunboats at once to steam up the river for more than 200 miles, and in the course of the following month the greater part of the army was established in Merawi below the Fourth Cataract, at Debba, or at Korti, drawing supplies along the railway, and from Railhead by a boat service on the long reach of open water.
He therefore directed General Hunter to push forward, with only one brigade, leaving the rest to hold Merawi; and ordered the camel corps, and the friendly Arabs, to advance across the desert as far as the Gakdul wells, where their appearance would lead Mahmud to believe that they were the advance guard of the coming army.
During that year's high Nile, he passed his gunboats over the long stretch of cataracts betwixt Merawi and Abu Hamid, and ran them up the river where they co-operated with the land forces, regulars and friendlies.
Riding swiftly with a small escort across the desert from Merawi, he crossed the Nile at the Baggara Cataract and reached Berber on the 10th of September. Having inspected the immediate arrangements for defence, he withdrew to Abu Hamed, and there busily prepared to meet the developments which he well knew might follow at once, and must follow in the course of a few months.
The four battalions which had remained at Merawi were floated down stream to Kerma, and, there entraining, were carried by Halfa and Abu Hamed to Dakhesh a journey of 450 miles. When the railway had been begun across the desert, it was believed that the Nile was always navigable above Abu Hamed. In former campaigns it had been reconnoitred and the waterway declared clear.
The headquarters had, months before, been moved to Merawi, some eighty miles higher up, situated at the foot of the fourth cataract. Although he had enjoyed the journey, Gregory was glad when the steamer drew up against a newly constructed wharf at Merawi. Now he was to begin his duties, whatever they might be. At the wharf were a large number of Soudanese soldiers.
They could not understand why they should not have been allowed, after the capture of Metemmeh, to march across the desert to Merawi, and annihilate the infidels assembled there. It was true that these had repulsed the force defending Dongola, but this was a comparatively small body; and it was the gunboats, and not the Egyptian troops, who had forced them to evacuate the town.
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