WARS OF THE NINETIES. 14
The same day orders were issued for the calling out of the reserves to bring the army up to the full war strength,and for the despatch of all available men to the front. There were no British troopssouth of Cairo; but theNorth Staffordshire Regiment was now ordered to Wady Haifa to act as a reserve, and detach- ments ofArmy Service Corps menand engineers
were sent up the river. These were soon fol- lowed by the machine-gun detachments of the Staffords and the Connaught Rangers. The formation of two new infantry battalions of Egyptian troops and oneof Soudanese was also decreed, and steps weretaken to enrol transport men and workmenfor the layingof therailway
ing up trains of trucksfromAssouan,longstrings
of camelsmoving off southwards by the caravan track along the riverside. A large flotilla of Nile boats, a number of barges, four gunboats, and seven stern-wheel steamers, were available for the navigation of thereach of the river to Haifa. Each steamer or gunboat made the voyage
towing a barge on each side and a number of sailing-boats astern. At Haifa stores for the front,and material for the railway, werelanded and conveyedby train to Sarras. By the time a consignment from Cairo reached that point it had travelled rather more than 800 miles, and had been transhipped at least four times. This will give some idea of the labour involved in ac- These last formed a " Rail-
way Battalion," 800 strong, under British Royal En- gineer officers. Material for
the railway was obtained by transferring to the Upper Nile an enormous quantity
of the materialcollected for the line from Girgeh to Luxor on the lower river. Camels were bought at all
the great caravan centres alongtheNile,andconveyed up to Assouan on barges on
which wooden awnings or stables had been erected. For
* weeks the river be-
cumulating supplies for the expedition at the front. To the popularimagination war is all marching and fighting. But for one day of battle
there are a hundred of the dull work of collecting and forwarding the necessary supplies, without which an army cannot live and march and fight.
The first active operations of the campaign were carried throughby the force already in garrison on the frontier under Colonel (afterwards General) Archibald Hunter. tween Cairo and Assouan was busy with steamers crowded with khaki-clad
GENERAL ARCHIBALD HUNTER.
{Photo: Bassano.) The newsof the coming ad- vancehadbeen received with enthusiasm by our officers soldiers,and towingbargeswhich conveyedmen and stores,horses andcamels, to the front.
The Lower Nile railway was open to Girgeh for public traffic, but had been completed a little further to the station of Balliana, a large river- side village. Balliana was made an advanced base for the expedition. It was fed with stores by the railway from Cairo, and became the starting-point of the long strings of barges that
were slowly towed up the river to Assouan. It was necessarily alongbusiness, for the river was so lowthat the steamers were often agroundin the daytime, and had always to tie up to the bank for thenight.
Shellal,at the head of the First Cataract and opposite to the world-famous temples of Philæ,
was the starting-point for the second stage of the river journey. A busy place was the Nile bank at Shellal all through the summer of 1896. Steamers andbarges were loading, engines haul-
at Haifa. To quote the words of one who was there at the time, "It seemed too good to be true. We all worked with a will to get things started and something done, for we were afraid the Government would change its mind at the last moment and cry halt." Hunter certainly lost no time. The nearest permanent Dervish garrison was at Suarda, more than a hundred miles away, but they frequently had a camp at Akasha, and it was considered advisable to push forward a column to turn them out if they were there, and, if they were not, to seize the place and fortify it against them before they heard of the coming Egyptian advance in force. On Sunday,March 15, Hunter issued orders for a flying column to push on to Akasha. It was to be composedof the 13th Soudanese infantry under Major Collinson, a mountain battery, a squadron of cavalry under Major Broadwood,