The Column rode off at 2 o'clock p.m. amid a chorus of good wishes from our comrades. I rode my white donkey, County Waterford, which had been sent up to Korti by boat, We marched ten miles; halted at sunset and bivouacked, and started again half an hour after midnight. The moon rode high, and it was very cold; but the cold was invigorating; and the hard gravel or sand of the track made good going. Desert marching with camels demands perpetual attention; the loads slip on the camels and must be adjusted; a native driver unships the load and drops it to save himself trouble; camels stray or break loose. By means of perpetual driving, the unwieldy herd creeps forward with noiseless footsteps, at something under three miles an hour.
Although the camels were so numerous, their numbers had been reduced to the bare requirements of that small mobile column, which alone could hope to achieve the enterprise.
At 10 o'clock a.m. on the 9th, we halted for four hours in a valley of grass and mimosa trees; marched till sunset and came to another grassy valley and bivouacked. On the 10th we started before daylight, and reached the wells of El Howeiyat at noon, very thirsty, and drank muddy water and breakfasted; marched on until long after dark over rough ground, the men very thirsty, the camels slipping and falling all over the place, and at length bivouacked. Starting again before daylight on the 11th, we came to the wooded valley set among granite hills, where are the wells of Abu Halfa, men and animals suffering greatly from thirst. The wells consisted of a muddy pond and a few small pools of bitter water. More holes were dug, and the watering went on all the afternoon and all night.
Next morning, 12th January, we loaded up at daylight, and marched across the plain lying beneath the range of yellow hills, broken by black rocks, called Jebel Jelif; entered a grassy and wide valley, ending in a wall of rock; turned { 255} the corner of the wall, and came into a narrower valley, full of large round stones, and closed in at the upper end by precipices, riven into clefts, within which were the pools of Jakdul. We beheld roads cleared of stones, and the sign-boards of a camp, and the forts of the garrison, and stone walls crowning the hills, one high on the left, two high on the right hand. In ten days the little detachment of Guards, Royal Marines and Engineers under Major Dorward, R.E., had performed an incredible amount of work: road-making, wall-building, laying-out, canal-digging and reservoir-making. All was ready for Sir Herbert Stewart's force, which took up its quarters at once.