At first
the efforts of so many unskilled workmen, instructed by few experienced
officers, were productive of results ridiculous rather than important.
Gradually, however, the knowledge and energy of the young director and
the intelligence and devotion of his still more youthful subordinates
began to take effect. The pace of construction increased, and the labour
was lightened by the contrivances of experience and skill.
As the line grew longer, native officers and non-commissioned officers
from the active and reserve lists of the Egyptian Army were appointed
station-masters. Intelligent non-commissioned officers and men were
converted into shunters, guards, and pointsmen. Traffic was controlled
by telephone. To work the telephone, men were discovered who could read
and write - very often who could read and write only their own names,
and even that with such difficulty that they usually preferred a seal.
They developed into clerks by a simple process of selection. To improve
their education, and to train a staff in the office work of a railway,
two schools were instituted at Halfa. In these establishments, which were
formed by the shade of two palm-trees, twenty pupils received the
beginnings of knowledge. The simplicity of the instruction was aided by
the zeal of the students, and learning grew beneath the palm-trees more
quickly perhaps than in the magnificent schools of civilisation.
The rolling stock of the Halfa-Sarras line was in good order and
sufficient quantity, but the eight locomotives were out of all repair,
and had to be patched up again and again with painful repetition.
The regularity of their break-downs prevented the regularity of the road,
and the Soudan military railway gained a doubtful reputation during the
Dongola expedition and in its early days. Nor were there wanting those
who employed their wits in scoffing at the undertaking and in pouring
thoughtless indignation on the engineers. Nevertheless the work
went on continually.
The initial difficulties of the task were aggravated by an unexpected
calamity. On the 26th of August the violent cyclonic rain-storm of which
some account has been given in the last chapter broke over
the Dongola province.
A writer on the earlier phases of the war [A. Hilliard Atteridge,
TOWARDS FREEDOM.] has forcibly explained why the consequences were
so serious:
'In a country where rain is an ordinary event the engineer lays his
railway line, not in the bottom of a valley, but at a higher level on
one slope or the other. Where he passes across branching side valleys,
he takes care to leave in all his embankments large culverts to carry off
flood-water. But here, in what was thought to be the rainless Soudan,
the line south of Sarras followed for mile after mile the bottom of the
long valley of Khor Ahrusa, and no provision had been made, or had been
thought necessary, for culverts in the embankments where minor hollows
were crossed.
