MERAWI IN 1897 officers were always the best of friends, and the enthusiasm with which the blacks received them, and the pains they took to carry out their orders, spoke volumes for the training which they had received from Grenfell, Kitchener, Rundle, Maxwell, Lewis, Macdonald, Hunter, Townshend, and others.

During the hottest hours of the day, i.e., between 12.30 and 3.30 p.m., a certain amount of relaxation was permitted, but the cHck of the needles in the telegraph tent rarely ceased, and so long as they were moving work of some kind or other had to go on somewhere in the camp. From one point of view this was an exceedingly good thing, for without plenty of occupation life in the Sudan at that time would have been almost unendurable. To a civilian the number of British officers employed at Merawi seemed too few, but the Sirdar had very little money at his disposal, and he had to consider carefully the spending of every pound. The result of all this was that every officer was working at high pressure, and the few civilians who were permitted to come to Merawi marvelled at the spirit which thev put into their work and the cheeriness which they displayed. Camping at Merawi was no picnic, for everything had to be done " on the cheap," especially as the Sirdar was obliged to maintain another force at Berber, and to keep his stern wheelers going between that place and Matamma, and to provide for the laying of the Haifa-Abu Hamed Railway, and the support of the three thousand men who were occupied in its construction. Every officer too was in a state of tension, for no one knew exactly what was going to happen. The Dervishes had evacuated Berber, it is true, but only because 187 the captain of general rundle's steam launch.