In the old days of vacillation and weakness, which ended in the surrender of the Sudan, and thus spread untold miseries over thousands and thousands of square miles, the selection of Wady Halfa as the frontier of Egypt was made in defiance of the best expert opinion on the subject. But if the advice of, at anyrate, one of the experts consulted by the Conservative Government of the day had reached England a little earlier, it seems very probable that El Debbeh, the obvious and natural frontier post under the circumstances of the time, would have been chosen instead of a spot two hundred and fifty miles farther north. The advice in question was, I believe, given to Lord Salisbury on a Monday; but as the fate of the Government was already sealed, and it was known that the Thursday following would see the Ministry out of office, there was no time to effect the proposed change, and Wady Halfa was thus left as the temporary frontier town of the Khedive's loyal provinces, and an enormous tract of country, which would have been protected by a garrison at El Debbeh, was left to Dervish control and devastation. As we neared the end of our journey the train again skirted the Nile, and whenever we halted crowds of natives grouped themselves along the line, either to sell eggs and dates or simply to stare. The railway is still a source of never-ending wonderment. The simple unmechanical minds of these Arabs seem to regard an engine as a being endowed with life and will-power; and quite recently a village sheikh near Berber protested to a railway official against the cruelty of forcing a small engine to draw a long line of heavily laden trucks. All these people are really ex-Dervishes, and I noticed a fair number of the genuine "fuzzy-wuzzies" amongst them. One of their sheikhs came up and informed us that when we got to Omdurman the Khalifa would fight like _Sheitan_ (the devil). These natives appeared to vastly enjoy the blessings of peace. How vividly impressed they must have been by the constant succession of trains passing across the desert, laden with fighting men and countless tons of stores, visible evidences of the power and wealth of the conquering _Inglizi_! As we approached Abu Hamed, the scene of the sharp, brief fight last year, we noticed some object roll along the side of the line; and when the train pulled up we learnt that a non-commissioned officer had fallen off one of the carriages. In a few minutes the missing Fusilier picked us up, walking along quite coolly without having sustained a scratch. On a subsequent journey another poor fellow was not so lucky, for he fell off in the same way, and was instantly cut to pieces by the wheels.