The Egyptian Frontier Force Had Always Been Kept In A Condition Of
Immediate Readiness By The Restless Activity Of The Enemy.
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.
The huts of the mud village were crumbling back into the desert sand.
The old British fort and a number of storehouses - relics of the Gordon
Relief Expedition - were in ruins. The railway from Sarras had been pulled
to pieces. Most of the sleepers had disappeared, but the rails lay
scattered along the track. All was deserted: yet one grim object
proclaimed the Dervish occupation. Beyond the old station and near the
river a single rail had been fixed nearly upright in the ground. From one
of the holes for the fishplate bolts there dangled a rotten cord, and on
the sand beneath this improvised yet apparently effective gallows lay a
human skull and bones, quite white and beautifully polished by the action
of sun and wind. Half-a-dozen friendly Arabs, who had taken refuge on the
island below the cataract, were the only inhabitants of the district.
The troops began to place themselves in a defensive position without delay.
On the 22nd the cavalry and Camel Corps returned with the empty convoy to
Sarras to escort to the front a second and larger column, under the command
of Major MacDonald, and consisting of the XIth and XIIth Soudanese, one
company of the 3rd Egyptians (dropped as a garrison at Ambigole Wells),
and a heavy convoy of stores numbering six hundred camels. Starting from
Sarras on the 24th, the column, after four days' marching, arrived
without accident or attack, and MacDonald assumed command of
the whole advanced force.
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