It is scarcely within the power of words to describe the savage desolation of the regions into which the line and its constructors plunged.  A smooth ocean of bright-coloured sand spread far and wide to distant horizons.  The tropical sun beat with senseless perseverance upon the level surface until it could scarcely be touched with a naked hand, and the filmy air glittered and shimmered as over a furnace.  Here and there huge masses of crumbling rock rose from the plain, like islands of cinders in a sea of fire.  Alone in this vast expanse stood Railhead—­a canvas town of 2,500 inhabitants, complete with station, stores, post-office, telegraph-office, and canteen, and only connected with the living world of men and ideas by two parallel iron streaks, three feet six inches apart, growing dim and narrower in a long perspective until they were twisted and blurred by the mirage and vanished in the indefinite distance.

Every morning in the remote nothingness there appeared a black speck growing larger and clearer, until with a whistle and a welcome clatter, amid the aching silence of ages, the ‘material’ train arrived, carrying its own water and 2,500 yards of rails, sleepers, and accessories.  At noon came another speck, developing in a similar manner into a supply train, also carrying its own water, food and water for the half-battalion of the escort and the 2,000 artificers and platelayers, and the letters, newspapers, sausages, jam, whisky, soda-water, and cigarettes which enable the Briton to conquer the world without discomfort.  And presently the empty trains would depart, reversing the process of their arrival, and vanishing gradually along a line which appeared at last to turn up into the air and run at a tangent into an unreal world.

The life of the strange and lonely town was characterised by a machine-like regularity, born perhaps of the iron road from which it derived its nourishment.  Daily at three o’clock in the morning the ‘camp-engine’ started with the ‘bank parties.’  With the dawn the ‘material’ train arrived, the platelaying gangs swarmed over it like clusters of flies, and were carried to the extreme limit of the track.  Every man knew his task, and knew, too, that he would return to camp when it was finished, and not before.  Forthwith they set busily to work without the necessity of an order.  A hundred yards of material was unloaded.  The sleepers were arranged in a long succession.  The rails were spiked to every alternate sleeper, and then the great 80-ton engine moved cautiously forward along the unballasted track, like an elephant trying a doubtful bridge.  The operation was repeated continually through the hours of the burning day.  Behind the train there followed other gangs of platelayers, who completed the spiking and ballasting process; and when the sun sank beneath the sands of the western horizon, and the engine pushed the empty trucks and the weary men home to the Railhead camp, it came back over a finished and permanent line.  There was a brief interval while the camp-fires twinkled in the waste, like the lights of a liner in mid-ocean, while the officers and men chatted over their evening meal, and then the darkness and silence of the desert was unbroken till morning brought the glare and toil of another long day.