The Cholera Spread Steadily Southward Up The River, Claiming Successive
Victims In Each Camp.
In the second week of July it reached the new camp
at Kosheh, whence all possible precautions to exclude it had proved vain.
The epidemic was at first of a virulent form.
As is usual, when it had
expended its destructive energy, the recoveries became more frequent.
But of the first thousand cases between Assuan and Suarda nearly eight
hundred proved fatal. Nor were the lives thus lost to be altogether
measured by the number. [The attacks and deaths from cholera in the
Dongola Expeditionary Force were as follow: British troops - 24 attacks,
19 deaths; Native troops - 406 attacks, 260 deaths; Followers - 788
attacks, 640 deaths.] To all, the time was one of trial, almost of terror.
The violence of the battle may be cheaply braved, but the insidious attacks
of disease appal the boldest. Death moved continually about the ranks of
the army - not the death they had been trained to meet unflinchingly,
the death in high enthusiasm and the pride of life, with all the world to
weep or cheer; but a silent, unnoticed, almost ignominious summons,
scarcely less sudden and far more painful than the bullet or the sword-cut.
The Egyptians, in spite of their fatalistic creed, manifested profound
depression. The English soldiers were moody and ill-tempered. Even the
light-hearted Soudanese lost their spirits; their merry grins were seen no
longer; their laughter and their drums were stilled. Only the British
officers preserved a stony cheerfulness, and ceaselessly endeavoured by
energy and example to sustain the courage of their men. Yet they suffered
most of all. Their education had developed their imaginations; and
imagination, elsewhere a priceless gift, is amid such circumstances a
dangerous burden.
It was, indeed, a time of sore trouble. To find the servant dead in
the camp kitchen; to catch a hurried glimpse of blanketed shapes hustled
quickly to the desert on a stretcher; to hold the lantern over the grave
into which a friend or comrade - alive and well six hours before - was
hastily lowered, even though it was still night; and through it all
to work incessantly at pressure in the solid, roaring heat, with a mind
ever on the watch for the earliest of the fatal symptoms and a thirst that
could only be quenched by drinking of the deadly and contaminated Nile:
all these things combined to produce an experience which those who endured
are unwilling to remember, but unlikely to forget. One by one some of the
best of the field army and the communication Staff were stricken down.
Gallant Fenwick, of whom they used to say that he was 'twice a V.C. without
a gazette'; Polwhele, the railway subaltern, whose strange knowledge of the
Egyptian soldiers had won their stranger love; Trask, an heroic doctor,
indifferent alike to pestilence or bullets; Mr. Vallom, the chief
superintendent of engines at Halfa; Farmer, a young officer already on his
fourth campaign; Mr. Nicholson, the London engineer; long, quaint,
kind-hearted 'Roddy' Owen - all filled graves in Halfa cemetery or at the
foot of Firket mountain. At length the epidemic was stamped out, and by
the middle of August it had practically ceased to be a serious danger.
But the necessity of enforcing quarantine and other precautions had
hampered movement up and down the line of communications, and so delayed
the progress of the preparations for an advance.
Other unexpected hindrances arose. Sir H. Kitchener had clearly recognised
that the railway, equipped as it then was, would be at the best a doubtful
means for the continual supply of a large force many miles ahead of it.
He therefore organised an auxiliary boat service and passed gyassas and
nuggurs [native sailing craft] freely up the Second Cataract. During the
summer months, in the Soudan, a strong north wind prevails, which not only
drives the sailing-boats up against the stream - sometimes at the rate of
twenty miles a day - but also gratefully cools the air. This year,
for forty consecutive days, at the critical period of the campaign,
the wind blew hot and adverse from the south. The whole auxiliary boat
service was thus practically arrested. But in spite of these aggravating
obstacles the preparations for the advance were forced onwards, and it
soon became necessary for the gunboats and steamers to be brought on to
the upper reach of the river.
The Second Cataract has a total descent of sixty feet, and is about
nine miles long. For this distance the Nile flows down a rugged stairway
formed by successive ledges of black granite. The flood river deeply
submerges these steps, and rushes along above them with tremendous force,
but with a smooth though swirling surface. As the Nile subsides, the steps
begin to show, until the river tumbles violently from ledge to ledge,
its whole surface for miles churned to the white foam of broken water,
and thickly studded with black rocks. At the Second Cataract, moreover,
the only deep channel of the Nile is choked between narrow limits,
and the stream struggles furiously between stern walls of rock. These dark
gorges present many perils to the navigator. The most formidable, the
Bab-el-Kebir, is only thirty-five feet wide. The river here takes a plunge
of ten feet in seventy yards, and drops five feet at a single bound.
An extensive pool above, formed by the junction of two arms of the river,
increases the volume of the water and the force of the stream, so that the
'Gate' constitutes an obstacle of difficulty and danger which might well
have been considered insurmountable.
It had been expected that in the beginning of July enough water would
be passing down the Second Cataract to enable the gunboats and steamers
waiting below to make the passage. Everything depended upon the rise of the
river, and in the perversity of circumstances the river this year rose much
later and slower than usual.
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