, and occupied
only by supplies and railway material, which continued to pour south at
the utmost capacity of the transport. Eleven thousand troops had been
massed at and beyond Wady Halfa. But no serious operations could take
place until a strong reserve of stores had been accumulated at the
front. Meanwhile the army waited, and the railway grew steadily. The
battalions were distributed in three principal fortified camps--Halfa,
Sarras, and Akasha--and detachments held the chain of small posts which
linked them together.

Including the North Staffordshire Regiment, the garrison of Wady Halfa
numbered about 3,000 men. The town and cantonment, nowhere more than 400
yards in width, straggle along the river-bank, squeezed in between the
water and the desert, for nearly three miles. The houses, offices, and
barracks are all built of mud, and the aspect of the place is brown and
squalid. A few buildings, however, attain to the dignity of two storeys.
At the northern end of the town a group of fairly well-built houses
occupy the river-front, and a distant view of the clusters of
palm-trees, of the white walls, and the minaret of the mosque refreshes
the weary traveller from Korosko or Shellal with the hopes of civilised
entertainment. The whole town is protected towards the deserts by a
ditch and mud wall; and heavy Krupp field-pieces are mounted on little
bastions where the ends of the rampart rest upon the river. Five small
detached forts strengthen the land front, and the futility of an Arab
attack at this time was evident. Halfa had now become the terminus of
a railway, which was rapidly extending; and the continual arrival and
despatch of tons of material, the building of sheds, workshops, and
storehouses lent the African slum the bustle and activity of a civilised
city.

Sarras Fort is an extensive building, perched on a crag of black rock
rising on the banks of the Nile about thirty miles south of Halfa.
During the long years of preparation it had been Egypt's most advanced
outpost and the southern terminus of the military railway. The beginning
of the expedition swelled it into an entrenched camp, holding nearly
6,000 men. From each end of the black rock on which the fort stood a
strong stone wall and wire entanglement ran back to the river. The space
thus enclosed was crowded with rows of tents and lines of animals and
horses; and in the fort Colonel Hunter, commanding the district known as
'Sarras and the South,'