THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN Governments decided to send an expedition to Dongola. It was clear that if, as was possible, Kasala fell into the hands of the Dervishes (for the Italians were unable to protect their garrison in that town), the whole Nile Valley would be at the mercy of the Mahdiists. On March 12th, Colonel (now Sir) Archibald Hunter was ordered to advance from Haifa and to occupy Akasha, and British troops began to move up the Nile the same day. In a very short time the little frontier town of Haifa became a vast depot for stores and the munitions of war, and the base from which all supplies had to be sent to the front. It was well-nigh impossible to believe that the Haifa to which I came in 1897 was the same place which I had seen ten years before. In 1887 there was neither quay nor landing stage, and disembarking from a boat of any considerable size was a matter of difficulty. Strewn along the bank, lying in the mud, were a number of fine machines for workshops, and pieces of large machines which had been brought to Haifa by Isma'il's orders, but as no means existed for lifting them from their barges to the top of the bank they had been dropped into the mud, and, of course, left there. There they lay for years until the inevitable Englishman or Scotsman arrived, and dragged them into the Haifa workshops, where I have seen some of them working at the present day. On the bank itself I saw a few locomotives tied up in bazaar cotton, but as the working parts of many of them had been removed, and they belonged to an obsolete class, it was some time before they could be used. Between 1887 and 1897 a strong river wall had been built along the bank for a considerable distance, and lines of rail to connect it with the main track had been laid. Storehouses and workshops had come into being, and work went on in them by day and by night. In 1890 the Nile gauge now in use was built by Captain H. G. Lyons.

After leaving the steamer I made my way to report myself at Headquarters, where I was received by my old friend Colonel (now Sir) J. Grenfell Maxwell, the Commandant. With characteristic kindness he gave me quarters in his house until such time as a train started for the south. There was no time for talk, for every minute of his day, and sometimes a great part of his night ' More correctly 'Ukasha.

86 1