require. The only use of the herds of ponies which they have brought with them is, to carry very large kits for the men’s use—a matter of no advantage whatever to the public service, and, on the contrary, involving great expense, as these ponies were brought from India at the public expense, and have now to be fed and watered. I shall probably have to return to this subject during the campaign, as this system is one which has been strongly advocated and as strongly attacked among Indian officers. The railway continues to creep forward, and the first engine made a trial trip to-day upon it. Although there is little more to do than to lay the sleepers into the sand and to affix the rails, there is at present only a mile complete. One dry watercourse has been crossed, and here iron girders have been laid; but these nullahs should be no obstacle whatever to the progress of the work, as parties ought to be sent forward to get the little bridges, or any small cuttings there may be, finished in readiness, so that no pause may be occasioned in the laying the line. The country, with the exception of these little dry watercourses, which are from three to five feet deep, is perfectly flat; and the railway might, at any rate, be temporarily laid down with great ease and rapidity, especially with such a number of men as are employed upon it. As the work is being carried on at present without either method or plan or judgment, it is impossible even to predict when it will be finished to Koomaylo. It is a great pity that the matter was not put into the hands of a regular railway contractor, who would have brought his plant, gangers, and plate-layers from England, _viâ_ Egypt, in three weeks from the date of signing the contract, and who would, with native labour, have had the line open to Koomaylo, if not to Sooro, ere this. I am not blaming the engineer officers who are in charge of the railway. They exert themselves to the utmost, and have no assistance in the way of practical gangers and platelayers, and have neither tools nor conveniences of any kind. Indeed, the actual laying down of a line can hardly be considered engineers’ work. An engineer makes the surveys and plans, and sees that the bridges, &c., are built of proper materials; but he is not a professed railway-maker, and is ill-calculated to direct a number of natives, who neither understand his language nor have a conception of what he is aiming at. It needed a body of thorough navvies, a couple of hundred strong, such as we had in the Crimea, to show the natives what to do, and to do the platelaying and skilled portion of the work themselves. When I say the railway has been, and will be, of no use to the advancing expedition, I of course except the line of rails down upon the pier and up to the stores, as this has been of the very greatest utility.(3)