THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN fought with appalling vigour for his place on the top of the already filled trucks, shouting as he did so after the manner of the Egyptian, and everybody yelled orders to everybody else. At length with much straining and groaning the wheezy engine moved out of the siding with its load, and as we passed an adjoining building a glimpse was caught of the Commandant employed in giving instructions to his subordinates on all points connected with the working of the machinery which had to feed an army some six hundred miles away, and to provide the materials for keeping three thousand men at work in the desert between Wadi Haifa and Abu Hamed. In the office of the Commandant there was no confusion, and the sight of the solitary British officer quietly shouldering his responsibilities, and carrying out the orders of a Sirdar, who would not only be obeyed, but obeyed quickly, was one not easily forgotten.

Once through the cutting, the tents of the Bisharin Arabs to the left of the line became visible, and, as of old, we saw some of the men trying to sell wretched camels which they swore by God were as " strong as railway engines, and swifter than birds." A little further on we came to the place where the line from North End joins the Shellal Railway. Nineteen years ago the points at the junction were worked by a man who was mortally afraid of the pack of fierce jackals which made their way from the desert through the railway cutting into the town each night. As soon as he heard their cries he took refuge in a sort of sentry-box which stood near, and refused to come out whether trains were waiting to pass over the points or not. The whole line was in 1887 infested with jackals, which were attracted thither by the carcases of the stray camels that were either killed outright or were badly wounded by passing trains.

' When a camel finds himself in front of a train he appears to become fascinated by it, and loses his head completely ; sometimes he tries to run away from it, but in the end he stands still on the line and looks at it, and is then overtaken and run down. The sentry-box had now disappeared, and in its place stood a station with platforms, and at one end of it a signalbox with semaphores and all necessary machinery. On one platform was a weighing machine, which, I was told, had been 70