THE ROUTE OF THE DESERT COLUMN. 1 3 march to Abu- Haifa, to the next wells, continued from the afternoon till lonof after dark over some rouoh country till the fires of a camp were seen at a distance — the camp of the 19th Hussars as it turned out, whose officer, Major Barrow, had left the column at Howeiyat and gone straight on. There was a good deal ot suffering for want of water during the night march, especially on the part of the Sussex men, who had lost the contents of the faulty water-skins served out to them at Korti, and as the supply at Abu-Haifa was short when they reached that place men were set to work to open new holes in the gravelly ground. The water was fresh and sweet, but muddy, and after much trouble to induce the men to come up in regular order for a supply of a pint or more for drinking before they camped down, and a subsequent supply for cooking, three tin biscuit-boxes were sunk in the ground to act as rough strainers or filters and reservoirs, from which the men could bale out water.

We have in a previous page already noted some account of the arrival of the troops at the wells at Gakdul.

The route of the desert column to Gakdul lay at the foot of the long range of Jebel-el-Jilif, which is broken by many ravines, so that after rain-storms there are numerous water-courses which carry off the rain from the mountains. These streams at such times issue from wild gorges, and are said to drain some distant plains, the proof of which is to be found in the quantities of dry brushwood and small timber strewn about, and evidently the collected drift-wood of some such Hood. After issuing from these gorges the streams run over a slope of boulders and rubbish which they have brought down with them, and there the water spreads in numerous irregular channels and reunites at the foot of the slope, afterwards following well-defined sandy channels, the banks of which are frinoed with trees; after running thus for distances of from a mile to three miles, they again branch off in various directions into smaller channels and are lost in a verdant plain on the south, where it is said that during the rains water is to be found to a depth of three or four feet. In the sandy channels just mentioned, holes are dug, which are, in fact, " the wells," such as