Speed was therefore essential; for if the Dervish garrison in Abu Hamed were reinforced from Berber, the flying column might not be strong enough to take the village.  On the other hand, the great heat and the certainty that the troops would have to fight an action at the end of the march imposed opposite considerations on the commander.  To avoid the sun, the greater part of the distance was covered at night.  Yet the advantage thus gained was to some extent neutralised by the difficulty of marching over such broken ground in the darkness.

Throughout the whole length of the course of the Nile there is no more miserable wilderness than the Monassir Desert.  The stream of the river is broken and its channel obstructed by a great confusion of boulders, between and among which the water rushes in dangerous cataracts.  The sandy waste approaches the very brim, and only a few palm-trees, or here and there a squalid mud hamlet, reveal the existence of life.  The line of advance lay along the river; but no road relieved the labour of the march.  Sometimes trailing across a broad stretch of white sand, in which the soldiers sank to their ankles, and which filled their boots with a rasping grit; sometimes winding over a pass or through a gorge of sharp-cut rocks, which, even in the moonlight, felt hot with the heat of the previous day—­always in a long, jerky, and interrupted procession of men and camels, often in single file—­the column toiled painfully like the serpent to whom it was said, ‘On thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat.’

The column started at 5.30 in the evening, and by a march of sixteen and a half miles reached Mushra-el-Obiad at about midnight.  Here a convenient watering-place, not commanded by the opposite bank, and the shade of eight or ten thorny bushes afforded the first suitable bivouac.  At 3.30 P.M. on the 30th the march was continued eight and a half miles to a spot some little distance beyond Shebabit.  The pace was slow, and the route stony and difficult.  It was after dark when the halting-place was reached.  Several of the men strayed from the column, wandered in the gloom, and reached the bivouac exhausted.  General Hunter had proposed to push on the next day to Hosh-el-Geref, but the fatigues of his troops in the two night marches had already been severe, and as, after Abu Haraz, the track twisted away from the river so that there was no water for five miles, he resolved to halt for the day and rest.  Hosh-el-Geref was therefore not reached until the 1st of August—­a day later than had been expected; but the rest had proved of such benefit to the troops that the subsequent acceleration of progress fully compensated for the delay.  The column moved on again at midnight and halted at daybreak at Salmi.  In the small hours of the next morning the march was resumed.  The road by the Nile was found too difficult for the Maxim guns, which were on wheels, and these had to make a detour of twenty-eight miles into the desert while the infantry