Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/13

Rh the obstinate taciturnity of the military authorities to confirm.

Nor apart from these immediate premonitions of a forward movement could even the civilian aforesaid have failed to appreciate the cogency of the standing arguments for an advance. Every league of the Nile Valley from Assuân to Wady Haifa, and every line in the conformation of Wady Haifa itself is eloquent of them. For near two hundred miles of water-way you travel through a land of almost desolation; often between rocks or desert reaching to the very river brim, never with more than the narrowest ribbon of tilth or herbage interposed between them and the stream. At the end of your journey you come to a so-called frontier "post," which might as well have been anywhere else in the wide wilderness for all that Nature has done to help man strengthen it. Another ten score