becomes
strikingly obvious.

Those people at home who, from time to time, asked querulously, "What are
we doing in Egypt?" should have seen Kantara in 1915, and then again
towards the end of 1916. Failing that I would ask them, and also those
kindly but myopic souls who said: "What a picnic you are having in Egypt!"
to journey awhile with us through Kantara and across the desert of Northern
Sinai. For the former there will be a convincing answer to their query; the
latter will have an opportunity of revising their notions as to what really
constitutes a picnic.

And we will start now, while the scent is hot, for already the infantry
have begun their march and guns and waggons are rumbling along the roads
from Suez to Kantara, the gate of the desert.

CHAPTER IV

KANTARA AND THE RAILWAY

At this point it would be as well to confer with the map once more. Be
pleased to imagine that we have trekked northwards from Suez, through the
beautiful little town of Ismailia, "the emerald of the desert," thence to
Ferry Post, which was a position of considerable importance when the Turks
attacked the Canal in February 1915, and finally to Kantara, where we will
pause to see if an answer can be found to the query propounded in the
preceding chapter.

If our inquiring friends had sailed down the Canal in 1915 they would have
seen at Kantara--had they noticed the place at all, which is unlikely--a
cluster of tents, a few rows of horse-lines, some camels, a white-walled
mosque, and a water-tank close to the water's edge; while their nostrils
would have been pungently assailed by the acrid smell of burning
camel-dung.

It is at least probable that the last-named would have made the most
striking impression. (It is still a powerful characteristic of Kantara.)
Certainly they would never have guessed from its appearance what Kantara
was destined to become: the terminus of the great military railway running
across the desert and through Palestine, a military port of the utmost
value, the beginning--or end--of the main road into Palestine, and the
biggest base in Egypt.

They are to be excused; no one would. Kantara did not unduly lift its head
in those days, and one did not, perhaps, at a first glance fully appreciate
its unique geographical position; for it is situated within easy reach of
Port Said and Suez, the two great termini of the Canal, and is thus
conveniently near the sea.

Moreover, the Turks were only some f