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.
