THE LINE OF RAILWAY. 22 [ From Debbeh the line was to run near the Nile, along that portion of its course (about 220 miles) where the rapids known as the second and third cataracts render navigation difficult or impossible, to cross the river at Kolbe and to reach Wady Haifa, from which the river to Philas, at the head of the first cataract, is always navigable. Thence to Assouan a short line of railway had been constructed to avoid the first cataract, and from that point water communication is open to Siout, the southern terminus of the upper Egyptian railway. There are 2>3 miles of rails laid from Angash, about 4 miles north of Wady Haifa, and about 22 miles further of permanent way to a point within 1 1 miles of the Nile.

As the line was left in 1878 so it is to-day. Running along the right bank of the river for some twelve miles, it leaves it just at the head of the " Shelal el Amka," or Second Cataract, and passing along a broad inland valley, cuts off a bend of the river, at the same time avoiding the broken ground of the Nile bank at the rapids of Wady Matuga. From the fourteenth to the twentythird mile the line again follows the river, and after skirting the eastern foot of some rough hills, and then again following the course of the Nile for a short distance, it once more turns inland, striking the river at the Sarras Station, a little south of the village of that name. Here, for all practical purposes, is at present the terminus of the line; for from this point, in order to avoid the heavy works that would have been necessitated by carrying the line along the broken and in many places precipitous river bank, the route across the Murat desert was selected.

Of course some of the difficulties of the journey were to be avoided by a certain number of men, who travelled on the short line of railway skirting the cataract at Assouan and the longer line between Wady Haifa and Sarras, while some of the stores and heavy cargo could also be conveyed for that distance, and consequently the whaler-boats assembled at Jamai (23 miles south ot Wady Haifa) and then proceeded to Sarras (32 miles south of Wady Haifa) to take in stores. In October Lieutenant-colonel Alleyne, R.A., went up the Nile in whaler-boats as far as 1 ).il (123 miles south of Wady Haifa), and reported, as he had done