The railway journey from Luxor to Shellal, a village on the river bank just above the first cataract, where the railway terminates, ought to have taken about eight hours, but it took over sixteen. All the trains have third-class carriages or rather trucks, and an excellent object lesson in Oriental procrastination was afforded at the moment when the train started. All night long crowds of natives had been sleeping on the ground just outside the station with all their curious goods and chattels—beds and bundles and babies—around them. Scarcely one of them made the slightest effort to get on board the train until the whistle went, and then a terrific scramble took place. "Gyppies" of all sizes, sexes, and ages rushed wildly down the line, trying to hurl their baggage into the carriages and then climb up after it. This went on for some three hundred yards, and despite the increasing speed of the train most of these procrastinating creatures contrived to find some sort of place on it. If they failed, they simply went to sleep again till the day following, when they tried again.
The traffic on this line was enormous, and the rolling stock available could scarcely bear the unusual strain put upon it. We were repeatedly stopped on the way by a variety of accidents. First of all a carriage got off the rails; then an axle became red hot from lack of grease, and set fire to the woodwork; and finally a train in front of us left the metals, and a long interval elapsed while two lengths of rail were taken up and straightened. The line has, from motives of false economy, been laid in a miserably inefficient manner, and an official casually informed me that trains ran off the rails about three times a week. One of the most difficult things to deal with was the transport of horses and mules. Sometimes one saw a loose box filled with sixteen mules all kicking together, and on the steamers accidents continually happened amongst the crowded horses.
As we ran past Assouan down to the water's edge at Shellal, the graceful temple of Philae in midstream was flooded with an orange glow from the setting sun. Along the bank a forest of slender masts and lateen sails stood out against the sky. Across the river the strange rocks, bared of all earth and vegetation and polished smooth by the flying sand, have assumed the oddest shapes, and look for all the world like the primeval work of some Titanic infant at play.
The sight of a luggage van at a terminus was enough to drive any inexperienced voyager to utter despair. When we arrived at Shellal the moon had not yet risen, and the feeble light of a few lanterns was all we had wherewith to disentangle our separate lots of luggage and stores from the general mélange. The chaos of luggage was fearful. Under the weight of two of our store cases an officer's sword had been bent almost into the prophetic pruning hook, and a band-box belonging to our one lady passenger had, with all that it contained, been squashed absolutely flat. Everybody had to see after his own possessions or he was lost. Later on, as the boat steamed off from Shellal, an officer who had entrusted the embarkation of his horse to his säis was horrified to see the man calmly sitting on the bank smoking a cigarette with the horse beside him.
During our stay at Shellal we slept in the garden of a shabby one-storeyed house, dignified with the title of the "Spiro Hotel." This was run by one of those ubiquitous Greeks who invariably turn up in the East where there is any chance of making money. All along the line of advance to Omdurman we were accompanied by Greeks, who trafficked in bread, fresh meat, and the like. Like the Irishman and the Jew, the Greek seems to flourish the more the further he is removed from his native country.
By this time our horses had caused us such signal inconvenience, and it was becoming so difficult amid the congested traffic to find room for them, that Cross and I determined to do without our mounts. Accordingly, we sold one to an officer at a slight profit, and sent the other back to Cairo. If British officers could march on foot to Khartum from the point where rail and river failed us, why shouldn't we? If one is taking part in a campaign where there is a probability of a reverse, a sound horse may be useful; but one felt on the present occasion that, if any running away was to be done, it would not fall to our lot.
At Shellal a brother of Ali's, called Mahmoud, suddenly turned up from some quarter or other, and we annexed him at a moderate rate of pay. His was the most unskilled labour I have ever witnessed. He generally drove the tent pegs into the ground sloping inwards, and with the notches inside instead of out! When he loaded a camel, he would place a Gladstone bag on one side and a heavy box of stores on the other, and then looked quite surprised when the camel rose and the whole structure fell with a crash to the ground. At times like these his imbecile features would be illumined with a fearful smile, and if we rebuked his folly and menaced him with punishment, his grin became broader and broader. When on one occasion I smote him with a thorn stick, his mirth became so uproarious that we abandoned all hope of his reformation, and merely gave Ali orders that in future his brother's activities were to be strictly confined to the hewing of wood and drawing of water.
A large base hospital, with two hundred beds, had been established at Assouan, and throughout the line of advance strenuous efforts were being made to cope with any demands upon the medical service. It is generally admitted that at the Atbara fight the medical arrangements were not as complete as they might have been, and considerable confusion is said to have been produced by the inadequacy of the accommodation for the wounded. This time, however, Surgeon-General Taylor had arrived on the scene, and throughout the campaign there was no cause for complaint. In addition to base hospitals at Assouan, Atbara, Rojan Island, and elsewhere, each brigade had no less than five field hospitals attached to it. The National Aid Society proffered its assistance, undertaking to send its own transport; but the Sirdar refused the offer, with the idea probably that an army in the field ought to supply its own medical requirements. Some of the officials of the Society were, I heard, incensed at this refusal; for they alleged, with some reason, that during a campaign nobody "goes sick" unless he is practically too ill to move about, and that the voluntary assistance rendered by the Society may be of the greatest service to a large number of devoted men who, despite their sufferings, are too keen and patriotic to enrol themselves on the sick-list—the only means of securing treatment from the Army Medical Corps. Just before we embarked, a batch of invalided men passed northwards on their way to Cyprus, where the climate is comparatively cool in August. Sunstroke was beginning to claim its victims; a sergeant and a private of the Northumberland Fusiliers had already succumbed to the heat, which, amid the rocks of Philæ, was driving the quicksilver up to 110° in the shade. The Nile was still rising perceptibly day by day, and in one spot I saw hundreds of tons of Government stores—reserve supplies for ten thousand men—which would have to be moved, as the waters gave promise of reaching an abnormal height this year. Scores of natives found employment about the landing-stage as porters, and were perpetually fighting over the division of the luggage and the bakshish. I noticed four of these men, during a frantic struggle on the river bank, collapse into the water, where they still continued their combat of words and blows, even when occasionally submerged—
Quamquam sunt sub aqua sub aqua maledicere tentant.
We journeyed towards Wady Halfa in the old stern-wheeler Ibis, which was crowded with officers of the Lancashire Fusiliers, and as it towed a large barge on either side full of the rank and file of the 2nd Battalion, we made slow progress. There is but little incident to chronicle on a Nile voyage, and it is difficult to understand why, even in winter, people select the Nile as the river par excellence for steamboat tours. The eye falls continually upon bleak hills and dreary sand plains on either bank, relieved only by occasional patches of dhurra and date palms, while the monotony which hangs like a pall over everything Egyptian—landscape, architecture, sculpture—becomes in time most oppressive and wearisome. The fact is, that were it not for the social pleasures one may, or may not, derive from several weeks' sojourn on one of Cook's steamers, nobody except a few souls really interested in the antiquities of Upper Egypt would undertake this voyage.