22 WITH THE CAMEL CORPS UP THE NILE.

and tow from the shore, and eventually arrived at

the steamer very late for dinner.

The following day we arrived at Wady Haifa,

having done the distance from Assouan (180 miles)

in four days.

Wady Haifa, though marked on all maps as a

town, is really nothing of the sort. There are (or

rather were, when we arrived) ten or twelve mud

hovels, but besides these there are none but buildings

connected with the railway, which starts from here

and at that time finished thirty-five miles off, somewhere

n the desert. This is the identical railway begun

by Ismail on the right bank of the river, and intended

to communicate with Khartoum. Would that Gordon

had not put a stop to this magnificent enterprise,

as he did when he was Governor of the Soudan, in

'79

! If it had only been continued as far as Dongola,

what a different ending there would have been to

the expedition

! Wady Haifa to Dongola that

was the chief natural obstacle the river difficult of

navigation, and making an unnecessarily large bend

(in fact, three sides of a square instead of straigh