WARS OF THE NINETIES. 114 growing rich with the leave and licence of the Khalifa. The Jaalin were determined to'strike' so soon as they could do so with any hope of success. The Khalifa knew it and determined to force their hand. Mahmoud's army, the westernarmy whichafterwards fought us at the Atbara, was marching along the river from Omdurman. The Jaalin were ordered to hand overall their cattle and sheep that their flocks might feed the army of theFaithful. There was further a certain matter about women, and the Jaalin are the most moral of the Arabs of the Soudan. Abdullah Wad Sud, the head of the Jaalin tribe, determined to resist. To submit was ruin, and even if they had to fight, there were the English at Korti.

tioned for the construction of the Soudan line that the engineershad to devote their energies to getting the bridges, embankments, and roadbed ready,laying very little of the track. Early in i8q7 the great bridge over the Nile at Nagh Hamadi was finished, and then the line was opened to Luxor. Up to this point a broad gauge had been used, but from Luxor south a narrower gauge— that of the existing Shellal line— was adopted, with the result that passengers have to change carriages, and all goods have tobe transferred to another train at Luxor.

Theline to Assouan was to have been opened for traffic by the end of i8q7, but there was still much work to be done when the new year began. During the Atbara campaign stores for the front andreinforcements going up had to be put on board steamers at the railheadbetween Luxor andAssouan. It wouldbe a great saving of time andlabour ifthey could be run through by rail to Shellal at the head of the First Cataract. The slow methods of the Egyptian Railway Department made the Sirdar anxious. He wantedto begin at once the accumulation of stores on the LTpper Nile for the summer campaign, so after the victory of the Atbara the first thing he did was to take under his own supervision the completion of the worknear Assouan. Inspired by his restless energy,the officials and engineers pushed their operations rapidly forward,and by the end of April the trains were running through to Shellal.

" They fortified their town, and with only a few rifles amongst them they kept off the whole of Mahmoud'sarmy for three days. At theend of that time their ammunition failed. The town was taken, and 2,000 of the Jaalin fell. As for the prisoners, they were drawnup inline — the first lost his head, the second his hand, and the thirdhis feet, and so onin rotation;and when the work was finished the sheikh was led alongthe line of dead and mutilated,and asked what powerhis tribe had now. He himself was taken a prisoner to Omdurman, and walledin so that he might neither stand nor sit. He died slowly of thirst and hunger, his groans and ravings the while clearly audible in the great mosque— a warningto the disobedient!"

Reading this record, one appreciates at its true value the work done by the Sirdar and his gallant army, and one can think more calmly of the unavoidable carnage that marked the victories of the campaign.

Meanwhile Captain Girouard and therailway battalion were pressing forward with thecompletionof the new branch of the Soudanrailway. In May they brought the line past Berber,and up to its terminus at the fortified camp of Dakhala,at the junction of the Atbara and the Nile. This was to be the temporary terminus of the railway,butplans were prepared for bridgingthe Atbara, andcarrying the line on to Khartoum after the summer campaign. For the present the line of communications wascomplete to the Atbara. Dakhala campcould bereached in four or five days fromCairo. The first train tookone to Luxor. Another train ran on to Shellal, seven miles south of Assouan. Then a sternwheel steamer went on by the Nile to \\ ady Halfa, whence the trains on the Soudan railway ran to AbuHamed, Berber, andDakhala. and powerful engines, specially built for the Soudan railway,and the general improvement of the line,had madea speed of twenty miles an hour possible, instead of the ten miles th considered good running when the first lii After the battle of the Atbara there was a pause of five months in the actualoperationsin the field,butit wasa timeofbusy preparationfor the finaladvance. Immediately after the battle the Sirdar hurried down to Assouan to give his personal attention to the improvement of an important link in his line of communications withCairo. The LowerNile railway from Cairo to the First Cataract had been in progress for years. In 1896 Balliana, nearly two hundred miles from Assouan, had been the railhead. From that point everything had to be conveyed south by steamers, boats and barges, then sent round the cataract by a short line of railway, about seven miles long, known as the Shellal line. It had originally been intended that the Nile railway should reach Assouan by the end of 1896,but so much of the material was requisi-