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The other advance was not so fortunate; something went wrong with the supplies both of water and ammunition, and strong opposition was encountered. Also, it was impossible country to campaign in; practically roadless, and very much broken up with wadis and rocky precipices, which made it most difficult to maintain communications, even though a mounted brigade was thrown in to help.
It was suggested that remains of these streams were to be seen in the side ravines, or wadis, of the Nile valley, which run up from the low desert on the river level into the hills on either hand.
The slopes were swept by machine-gun and rifle fire, and the beds of the wadis were enfiladed. The ascent on the far side was steeply terraced. Men had alternately to hoist and pull each other up under fire, and finally to expel the enemy from the summits in hand-to-hand fighting. Under these conditions no rapid advance could be looked for.
When we reached the tableland we had to go a long way round to avoid a good many little wadis which were all quite steep, before we reached the water. At the edge of the tableland are some little shelters used by hunters to shoot gazelle, which come down the gullies that to us appeared, inaccessible. Near the water the soldiers made us climb down to the first story of a small wadi, where we sheltered under a shelf of rock which overhangs the whole end of it. When I was cool, I clambered up and found a hollow or depression above our heads, with a few tufts of grass and some shrubs, so I took down some bits of shrubs as 'samples on appro' to the horses, and as they did approve, they were sent up to graze. We lay on our saddle-cloths till three, pretty hungry, when the eight camels came, and a good long time after the others arrived also the relation of the sultan Sal
At present, the rain-water runs immediately off from the surface and is carried down to the sea, or is drunk up by the sands of the wadis, and the hillsides which once teemed with plenty are bare of vegetation, and seared by the scorching winds of the desert.
The lorries generally kept off the ill-made unrolled Turkish road which had been constructed for winter use and, except for slight deviations to avoid wadis and gullies cut by Nature to carry off surplus water, the supply columns could move in almost as direct a course as the flying men. When the heavens opened all this was altered. The first storm turned the top into a slippery, greasy mass.
A mist helped us, and we got down unmolested and had taken over the new line by 5 P.M. The track down into the wadi was so steep and slippery from the rain that donkeys were actually lowered down in some places by their tails. There were three mountains with steep wadis in between, and each company was given a hill which formed an isolated post.
The desert between Palestine and Egypt was his chief camping-ground. He had occupied the wadis of Mount Seir before the Edomites had entered them, and a part of the later population of the country traced its descent from a mixture of the Bedâwi with the Edomite. The Egyptians had many names for the Bedâwin hordes.
On the 8th those extortionate men of Wadi al Ain sent to say they would take us by the Wadi bin Ali, turning out of Wadi Hadhramout at Al Gran, crossing the Wadis bin Ali and Adim, and reaching Sa'ah, where we could branch off for Bir Borhut.
Four teams were hooked into a gun, but the ground made it impossible for more than half a dozen horses at a time to be in draught, and when at last the position was cleared the horses slithered down the sides of the wadis, and guns and waggons overturned at the bottom in hopeless and inextricable confusion.
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