FROM CAIRO TO THE ATBARA 33

vigorous defence might reasonably have been expected, but it was afterwards found that an exodus of the women brought about the total evacuation of the town, which our advancing forces thus occupied without any fighting whatever. Still it was too early to speculate on the amount of opposition our troops were likely to encounter. Whether there would be one or more sharp struggles before we found ourselves face to face with the ramparts of

Omdurman ; whether even then those ramparts would be held by Dervishes driven to bay and fighting with their old desperate courage, or we should bivouac in a deserted city—all these

things, we felt, lay verily on the knees of the gods !

Our first taste of discomfort was provided by the night journey to Luxor. Soon after leaving Cairo the motion of the train raises an

almost continuous cloud of dust, which pene-

trates into the carriages, scheme one never so wisely. One may put the glass windows up or merely raise the wooden venetians according

as one prefers the alternative of being almost asphyxiated by too little air or stifled by too

much dust. Even with the windows up the