The Beginning
Of The Long-Expected Advance Was Hailed With Delight By The British
Officers Sweltering At Wady Halfa And Sarras.
On Sunday, the 15th
of March, three days after the Sirdar had received his orders, and before
the first reinforcements had started from Cairo, Colonel Hunter, who
commanded on the frontier, formed a small column of all arms to seize and
hold Akasha.
At dawn on the 18th the column started, and the actual
invasion of the territory which for ten years had been abandoned to the
Dervishes began. The route lay through a wild and rocky country - the
debatable ground, desolated by years of war - and the troops straggled into
a long procession, and had several times for more than an hour to move in
single file over passes and through narrow defiles strewn with the
innumerable boulders from which the 'Belly of Stones' has derived its name.
The right of their line of march was protected by the Nile, and although
it was occasionally necessary to leave the bank, to avoid difficult ground,
the column camped each night by the river. The cavalry and the Camel Corps
searched the country to the south and east; for it was expected that the
Dervishes would resist the advance. Creeping along the bank, and prepared
at a moment's notice to stand at bay at the water's edge, the small force
proceeded on its way. Wady Atira was reached on the 18th, Tanjore on the
19th, and on the 20th the column marched into Akasha.
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