When the Desert Column made its first march, Lord Charles Beresford and the Naval Brigade were still on their way to Korti. The first division under the command of Lord Charles marched with the Desert Column on its return.
The first Desert Column numbered 73 officers, 1212 men and natives, and 2091 camels. It consisted of one squadron of the 19th Hussars, Guards' Camel Regiment, Mounted Infantry, Engineers, 1357 camels carrying stores and driven by natives, Medical Staff Corps, and Bearer Company. Personal luggage was limited to 40 lb. a man. An account of the march is given by Count Gleichen, in his pleasant and interesting book (to which the present writer is much indebted) With the Camel Corps up the Nile (Chapman & Hall). Some years previously the route from Korti to Metemmeh had been surveyed by Ismail Pasha, who had intended to run a railway along it from Wady Halfa to Khartoum; and the map then made of the district was in possession of the Column. The enemy were reported to be about; but it was expected that they would be found beyond the Jakdul Wells; as indeed they were.
The Desert Column started from Korti on the afternoon of Tuesday, 30th December, 1884. The Hussars escorted a party of native guides and scouted ahead. The Column marched the whole of that night, in the light of a brilliant moon, across hard sand or gravel, amid low hills of black rock, at whose bases grew long yellow savas grass and mimosa bushes, and in places mimosa trees.
At 8.30 on the morning of the 31st December they halted until 3 p.m., marched till 8.30 p.m., found the wells of Abu Hashim nearly dry, marched on, ascending a stony tableland, and still marching, sang the New Year in at midnight; came to the wells of El Howeiyat, drank them dry and bivouacked until 6 a.m. on the morning of the 1st January, 1885.
All that morning they marched, coming at midday to a plain covered with scrub and intersected with dry water-courses; rested for three hours; marched all that night, and about 7 a.m. on the morning of 2nd January, entered the defile, floored with large loose stones and closed in with steep black hills, leading to the wells of Jakdul. These are deep pools filling clefts in the rock of the hills encompassing the little valley, three reservoirs rising one above the other. Count Gleichen, who was the first man to climb to the upper pools, thus describes the middle pool.
"Eighty feet above my head towered an overhanging precipice of black rock; behind me rose another of the same height; at the foot of the one in front lay a beautiful, large ice-green pool, deepening into black as I looked into its transparent depths. Scarlet dragon-flies flitted about in the shade; rocks covered with dark-green weed looked out of the water; the air was cool almost to coldness. It was like being dropped into a fairy grotto, at least so it seemed to me after grilling for days in the sun."
When the Desert Column reached that oasis, they had been on the march for sixty-four hours, with no more than four hours' consecutive sleep. The time as recorded by Count Gleichen was "sixty-four hours, thirty-four hours on the move and thirty broken up into short halts." The distance covered was a little under 100 miles; therefore the camels' rate of marching averaged as nearly as may be two and three-quarter miles an hour throughout. A camel walks like clock-work, and if he quickens his speed he keeps the same length of pace, almost exactly one yard.
The Guards' Battalion, to which were attached the Royal Marines, with six Hussars and 15 Engineers remained at the Wells. The rest of the Column left Jakdul at dusk of the day upon which they had arrived, to return to Korti, bivouacking that night in the desert.
The detachment at Jakdul made roads, built forts, and laid out the camp for the returning Column. On 11th January, a convoy of 1000 camels carrying stores and ammunition, under the command of Colonel Stanley Clarke, arrived at Jakdul.