From Abadia To The Atbara The Last
Stretch Of The Line Runs Across A Broad Alluvial Expanse From Whose Surface
Plane-Trees Of Mean Appearance, But Affording Welcome Shade, Rise, Watered
By The Autumn Rains.
The fact that the railway was approaching regions
where rain is not an almost unknown phenomenon increased the labour of
construction.
To prevent the embankments from being washed away in the
watercourses, ten bridges and sixty culverts had to be made; and this
involved the transport over the railway of more than 1,000 tons of material
in addition to the ordinary plant.
By the arrival of the reinforcements at Berber the fighting force at the
front was doubled: doubled also was the business of supply. The task of
providing the food of an army in a desert, a thousand miles from their
base, and with no apparent means of subsistence at the end of the day's
march, is less picturesque, though not less important, than the building
of railways along which that nourishment is drawn to the front. Supply and
transport stand or fall together; history depends on both; and in order to
explain the commissariat aspect of the River War, I must again both repeat
and anticipate the account. The Sirdar exercised a direct and personal
supervision over the whole department of supply, but his action was
restricted almost entirely to the distribution of the rations. Their
accumulation and regular supply were the task of Colonel Rogers, and this
officer, by three years of exact calculation and unfailing allowance for
the unforeseen, has well deserved his high reputation as
a feeder of armies.
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