WADI HALFA also, had to be devoted to his work. Theoretically, every one knows what a serious matter the transport of goods and materials is in time of war, but when to this is added the task of providing the sleepers and rails necessary for laying from one to three miles of railway each day, and food and water for 3,000 workmen in the desert along one single line, Tind for 10,000 soldiers at the end of another single line, about two hundred miles long, very few who have not actually seen transport operations in progress are able to realize how great the burden becomes.

After the heat of Kalabsha and Korosko the comparatively cool temperature of Haifa was very pleasant, and the afternoon of the day was profitably spent in obtaining tinned food and stores necessary for a six months' sojourn in the Sudan. In this matter I found the help of Captain Blunt invaluable, and many of the creature comforts which I enjoyed later in the year at Gebsl Barkal I owed to his forethought. I was quite accustomed to preparing for journeys in Mesopotamia, where villages are to be found on the road comparatively often, and where food, more or less bad, can be generally obtained, but the arid wastes of the Sudan were new to me, and, but for the friendly and practical advice of Colonel Maxwell and his colleague, Captain Blunt, I should have fared badly. Speaking generally, the country between Haifa and Kerma, i.e., for at least two hundred miles, produced nothing which was available for purchase by the traveller, and everything he was likely to require he had to carry with him. The Dervishes had cut down palm trees by the hundred, they had eaten up nearly all the sheep, goats, and cattle which they found north of Kerma, and when the Egyptian army arrived the inhabitants of scores of villages were on the verge of starvation.

On the day following my arrival at Haifa, Colonel Maxwell arranged that I was to leave for Kerma by a train which started about noon. As a rule a train consisted of a locomotive, one or more water tanks, and as many loaded trucks of all classes and sizes as the engine could haul, but on this occasion the railway authorities attached to the train for my use an old and battered four-wheeled coach which was commonly known as " Yellow Maria." It was a coach with a history. It was made for Isma'il Pilsha, and had been employed for some years on his railway 87