Including the North Staffordshire Regiment, the garrison of Wady Halfa numbered about 3,000 men.  The town and cantonment, nowhere more than 400 yards in width, straggle along the river-bank, squeezed in between the water and the desert, for nearly three miles.  The houses, offices, and barracks are all built of mud, and the aspect of the place is brown and squalid.  A few buildings, however, attain to the dignity of two storeys.  At the northern end of the town a group of fairly well-built houses occupy the river-front, and a distant view of the clusters of palm-trees, of the white walls, and the minaret of the mosque refreshes the weary traveller from Korosko or Shellal with the hopes of civilised entertainment.  The whole town is protected towards the deserts by a ditch and mud wall; and heavy Krupp field-pieces are mounted on little bastions where the ends of the rampart rest upon the river.  Five small detached forts strengthen the land front, and the futility of an Arab attack at this time was evident.  Halfa had now become the terminus of a railway, which was rapidly extending; and the continual arrival and despatch of tons of material, the building of sheds, workshops, and storehouses lent the African slum the bustle and activity of a civilised city.

Sarras Fort is an extensive building, perched on a crag of black rock rising on the banks of the Nile about thirty miles south of Halfa.  During the long years of preparation it had been Egypt’s most advanced outpost and the southern terminus of the military railway.  The beginning of the expedition swelled it into an entrenched camp, holding nearly 6,000 men.  From each end of the black rock on which the fort stood a strong stone wall and wire entanglement ran back to the river.  The space thus enclosed was crowded with rows of tents and lines of animals and horses; and in the fort Colonel Hunter, commanding the district known as ‘Sarras and the South,’ had his headquarters.

From Sarras the army seemed to have chosen a double line of advance.  The railway reconstruction followed the old track which had been prepared through the desert in 1885.  The convoy route wound along by the river.  Both were protected from attack.  The 7th Egyptians guarded Railhead, while the chain of small posts secured the road by the Nile to Akasha.  The advanced base grew during the months of April and May into a strong position.  Only once did the Arabs venture to approach within artillery range.  A small body of horse and camel men made a sort of haphazard reconnaissance, and, being seen from the outpost line, were fired on at a great distance by a field-gun.  They fell back immediately, but it was believed that the range was too great for the projectile to have harmed them; and it was not until two days later that the discovery on the spot of a swollen, blistering corpse, clad in bright jibba, apprised the delighted gunners of the effect of their fire.  Warned by this lucky shot the Dervishes came no more, or came unseen.