The completion of the line was accelerated by nearly a month through the
fortunate discovery of water.
At the beginning of July a well was sunk in
what was thought to be a likely place at 'No. 4 Station,' seventy-seven
miles from Halfa. After five weeks' work water was found in abundance at a
depth of 90 feet. A steam-pump was erected, and the well yielded a
continual supply. In October a second well was sunk at 'No. 6 Station,'
fifty-five miles further on, whence water was obtained in still greater
quantity. These discoveries modified, though they did not solve, the water
question. They substantially increased the carrying capacity of the line,
and reduced the danger to which the construction gangs were exposed.
The sinking of the wells, an enterprise at which the friendly Arabs
scoffed, was begun on the Sirdar's personal initiative; but the chronicler
must impartially observe that the success was won by luck as much as by
calculation, for, since the first two wells were made, eight others of
greater depth have been bored and in no case has water been obtained.
As the railway had been made, the telegraph-wire had, of course,
followed it. Every consignment of rails and sleepers had been accompanied
by its proportion of telegraph-poles, insulators, and wire. Another
subaltern of Engineers, Lieutenant Manifold, who managed this part of the
military operations against the Arabs, had also laid a line from Merawi
to Abu Hamed, so that immediate correspondence was effected round the
entire circle of rail and river.
The labours of the Railway Battalion and its officers did not end with
the completion of the line to Abu Hamed. The Desert Railway was made.
It had now to be maintained, worked, and rapidly extended. The terminus at
Halfa had become a busy town. A mud village was transformed into a
miniature Crewe. The great workshops that had grown with the line were
equipped with diverse and elaborate machines. Plant of all kinds purchased
in Cairo or requisitioned from England, with odds and ends collected from
Ishmail's scrap heaps, filled the depots with an extraordinary variety of
stores. Foundries, lathes, dynamos, steam-hammers, hydraulic presses,
cupola furnaces, screw-cutting machines, and drills had been set up and
were in continual work. They needed constant attention. Every appliance
for repairing each must be provided. To haul the tonnage necessary to
supply the army and extend the line nearly forty engines were eventually
required. Purchased at different times and from different countries,
they included ten distinct patterns; each pattern needed a special reserve
of spare parts. The permutations and combinations of the stores were
multiplied. Some of the engines were old and already worn out. These broke
down periodically. The frictional parts of all were affected by the desert
sand, and needed ceaseless attention and repair. The workshops were busy
night and day for seven days a week.
To the complication of machinery was added the confusion of tongues.
Natives of various races were employed as operatives. Foremen had been
obtained from Europe. No fewer than seven separate languages were spoken
in the shops. Wady Halfa became a second Babel. Yet the undertaking
prospered. The Engineer officers displayed qualities of tact and temper:
their director was cool and indefatigable. Over all the Sirdar exercised
a regular control. Usually ungracious, rarely impatient, never
unreasonable, he moved among the workshops and about the line, satisfying
himself that all was proceeding with economy and despatch. The sympathy of
common labour won him the affection of the subalterns. Nowhere in the
Soudan was he better known than on the railroad. Nowhere was he
so ardently believed in.
It is now necessary to anticipate the course of events. As soon as the
railway reached Abu Hamed, General Hunter's force, which was holding that
place, dropped its slender camel communications with Merawi and drew its
supplies along the new line direct from Wady Halfa. After the completion of
the desert line there was still left seventeen miles of material for
construction, and the railway was consequently at once extended to Dakhesh,
sixteen miles south of Abu Hamed. Meanwhile Berber was seized, and military
considerations compelled the concentration of a larger force to maintain
that town. The four battalions which had remained at Merawi were floated
down stream to Kerma, and, there entraining, were carried by Halfa and
Abu Hamed to Dakhesh - a journey of 450 miles.
When the railway had been begun across the desert, it was believed that
the Nile was always navigable above Abu Hamed. In former campaigns it had
been reconnoitred and the waterway declared clear. But as the river fell
it became evident that this was untrue. With the subsidence of the waters
cataracts began to appear, and to avoid these it became necessary first of
all to extend the railway to Bashtinab, later on to Abadia, and finally to
the Atbara. To do this more money had to be obtained, and the usual
financial difficulties presented themselves. Finally, however, the matter
was settled, and the extension began at the rate of about a mile a day.
The character of the country varies considerably between Abu Hamed and the
Atbara River. For the first sixty miles the line ran beside the Nile,
at the edge of the riparian belt. On the right was the cultivable though
mostly uncultivated strip, long neglected and silted up with fine sand
drifted into dunes, from which scattered, scraggy dom palms and prickly
mimosa bushes grew. Between the branches of these sombre trees the river
gleamed, a cool and attractive flood. On the left was the desert, here
broken by frequent rocks and dry watercourses. From Bashtinab to Abadia
another desert section of fifty miles was necessary to avoid some very
difficult ground by the Nile bank. 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.
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