To do this more money had to be obtained, and the usual
financial difficulties presented themselves. Finally, however, the matter
was settled, and the extension began at the rate of about a mile a day.
The character of the country varies considerably between Abu Hamed and the
Atbara River. For the first sixty miles the line ran beside the Nile,
at the edge of the riparian belt. On the right was the cultivable though
mostly uncultivated strip, long neglected and silted up with fine sand
drifted into dunes, from which scattered, scraggy dom palms and prickly
mimosa bushes grew. Between the branches of these sombre trees the river
gleamed, a cool and attractive flood. On the left was the desert, here
broken by frequent rocks and dry watercourses. From Bashtinab to Abadia
another desert section of fifty miles was necessary to avoid some very
difficult ground by the Nile bank. From Abadia to the Atbara the last
stretch of the line runs across a broad alluvial expanse from whose surface
plane-trees of mean appearance, but affording welcome shade, rise, watered
by the autumn rains. The fact that the railway was approaching regions
where rain is not an almost unknown phenomenon increased the labour of
construction. To prevent the embankments from being washed away in the
watercourses, ten bridges and sixty culverts had to be made; and this
involved the transport over the railway of more than 1,000 tons of material
in addition to the ordinary plant.
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