down stream, so the whole length ran out
before the opposite bank was reached. The steamer "Melik" was the
telegraph ship, and paid the cable out from a wooden reel placed on
her stern quarter. A few days after the failure she was employed
picking up the wire, most of which was recovered by Captain Manifold,
R.E., who was the director of military telegraphs in the last as in
the three previous expeditions against the dervishes. The recovered
line was relaid across the Atbara, which is barely a third of the
width of the Nile. From the south bank of the Atbara two land lines
pass up the east shore of the Nile. Upon a lofty corresponding pair of
trestles an overhead wire was also hung across the smaller river. A
few miles south of Dakhala a cable had been laid to an island and
thence to the west bank. From the latter point an ordinary land wire
ran along the desert to Metemmeh. Later on it was laid to Omdurman.
The line was put down step by step as the troops advanced. Thus an
alternative system of telegraphic communication with Khartoum was
early provided for.

It stirred the blood of everybody in our dull camp to see detachment
after detachment of the second British brigade detrain. Most of us
turned out and like schoolboys followed the drums and fifes as they
played the troops to their camping-ground. A half-battalion of the
Grenadier Guards, led by Colonel Villiers-Hatton, arrived at Dakhala
on the 6th of August. Hale and strong the big fellows looked in their
campaigning khaki. "First-class fighting material," as Arabs and
negroes, who are by no means poor judges, were openly heard to confess
in their interchange of confidences. There is always much camp chaff
and yarning amongst "Tommies"--and their officers, too, for that
matter--at the expense of England's picked battalions. "Have you seen
the 'Queen's Company,' my man," asked a subaltern of the Grenadiers
one day of a private in the Northumberland Fusiliers. Now the "Queen's
Company" are all over six feet in stature, and there was a friendly
rivalry in grenadiership between them and certain Fusilier regiments.
The question was asked when the troops were marching over undulating
but rather bare ground where the tufted grass was little over knee
high. It happened the officer had been detached on other duty, and was
anxious to rejoin his command. "I think, sir," said the Northumbrian,
saluting respectfully, "that they have got lost in the long grass."
The subaltern