NEWS FROM EGYPT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 190, 20 January 1915, Page 7

NEWS FROM EGYPT.

mission of oi;r; troops. STKAXCE SCEXES IX A XEW LANK. (iiy Captain C. W. ]}i.»an, oflicial corres- 1 pondent with the Australian Forces).

Cairo, December 7. I While tlic Australian Imperial. Force, ■ with tlie New ZealanJws, was steaming up the lied Pea, about tliree days out of > Suez, a wireless message, forwarded by Sir George Reid, arrived, stating that tile British (iovcrnnienl, had come to a J decision, the ell'ect of which may lie j stated, 011 ollicial authority, that the j Australians and Xcw Zealandcrs should disembark in Egypt "for the defence of tlie country and for training." They were to go into camp at once near Cairo, and were told officially from (ireat I!ritain that they were to to the front from Egypt. Although this intimation came without any preface, and the llagship had to obtain leave to steam ahead at once with all possible speed to make preparations, it cannot be said that the order was unexpected. There was too much to lie said in favor of it for it to be anything like a real surprise. Ever since early in Xovember, when the news was lirought to us at sea that Britain and Russia had declared war on Turkey, \ the chance of our being disembarkecj in j Egypt had been discussed on board. 1 am told that the officers of the Emden, who, of course, were fairly well posted from the newspapers which they had found on captured setamers, were convinced that we should never get beyond Suez, because the Canal would have been blocked by a Turkish invas-1 ion before we reached it. BEST POSSIBLE TLAX. j

It was not that reason wliicli appealed tn us, and, of course, wo found the canal perfectly free, and passed through it without the least sign of interference, but the arguments for landing in Eg'ypt wore so obvious that many thought it likely from the first. To begin with, it would probably save the lives of at least 200 or 300 horses. To stand for a couple of months in a stall which fits you almost like a glove with no movement, at' all, except an occasional walk round a passage in the ships when the weather is so lino that the vessel is scarcely rolling, would not improve the health of n human being, and the horses became very weak upon it. To take a very large force of them at the end of a long voyage straight from the tropics into the Bay of Biscay to brave a very bitter winter as best as they could in their summer coats would certainly have meant a very big mortality. ' Landing in Egypt- would avoid all this,' and subsequent loss in the transfer- | ence from there to England or to the Continent when they were stronger and iin condition being almost negligible. We would save at least £IO,OOO in Ihorscflesh by doing our training in ; I'.gypt, and the men would be quarter- I ed in a climate more like their own than ' in any place on the Continent. Being ' further south than England, they would have at least two more hours of daylight, every day to devote to training than in England; and, whereas in England there would be at this time of the year two or three days in every week on which, with all the goodwill' in the world, useful training would be impossible, in Egypt we should be able to train every day under a blue sky, which thousands of people from Europe and, America come across the world every winter to enjoy. In the, meantime, we would count as a factor in the military situation front the moment we landed. Last, but not least, if a Turkish armydid move against Egypt, we should be there for active service, ' which would probably be as strenuous as that in any part of the war.

SITE Oli' THE GAMPS. Near tlii; Great "Pyramids is a camping ground which is used every year for tlie army manoeuvres in Egypt. As a matter of fact, the ground is formed by a shallow valley between two ridges, one of which is honeycombed with the ancient tombs which' lie at the foot of the Great Pyramids, and which are being excavated. The work is going on every day whilst our troops are drilling in tlie valley below. The authorities decided to put the First Australian Divission (that is, the whole force, except the Light, Horse Brigade) on this camping ground; and the New Zealanders at Zeitun, just outside the suburbs of the citv, close to a big camp of territorials and to the rifle range.,

Each of these camps is on the edge ! of the desert. It is not easy to explain , their site, but any Australian, who ' knows the Lower Kivcrina, or the Darl-' ing will understand it. The Nile, like ' the river Mnrra-y about Euston or Mil- j dura or Murray bridge has an inner 1 bank and an outer bank. That is to say, the actual normal stream runs between comparatively narrow bamcs of grey or black soil, which is really river silt brought down from the mountains and swamps of Abyssinia, just as the Darling brings it down from the Queensland Hills, but if you cross the flats you will always find back from the river—sometimes six miles back from it, sometimes half a mile, sometimes actually overshadowing it—the higher level of country through which the Nile has originally cut its way. You come upon it quite suddenly, as in Australia, a line of steep sandhills facing you. or limestone cliffs, not very high. You cliinb them, and you are in a different country of a different color, a different soil, a different vegetation. Only here the difference is far sharper than in Australia. There arc no great redgums on the flats—there are practically no nat- 1 ivc trees at all, but the whole river flat is gridironed with teeming cultivation, like a Chinese market garden. That is on the black soil. You climb up the pink sandhill, and you are in a desert the sheer desert, which stretches away, hundreds upon hundreds of miles to the other side of Africa. Tlie transition from one to tlie other is absolutely instantaneous—you can step from the richest cultivation in the world on to its most hopeless wilderness in a single stride. It was on the edge of this desert plateau, looking out from tne west over the river valley, and towards their ancient capital, that a certain family of Egyptian kings of 2000 years B.C. built themselves the huge tombs which the world knows as the Pyramids. It is on the edge of this desert that the camp of the Australian Infantry and the Artillery is laid out. The camps of the New Zealanders and the Light Horse Brigade are on the edge of the similar dry plateau opposite, to the east of the Nile.

SPEEDY ROAD-BUILDING. The moment those camp sites wore decided upon, the authorities in Egvpt turned loose upon them a whole flood of labor. TTnlf a dozen different departments were involved in it. The Works Department, began to build roads that cut, through the garden of the famous Mona TTouse Hotel the hotel for the Pyramids. It piled up an embankment 10 feet high through the gum trees, then cut quarres into the liilK-. nnd brought: stone on camels through the sand. Tt lay down on the top of this embankmcr'. ■■■ Hi' irrypv, >•;i, l]( . ~ bron ! ntacsuhuiikort road, which half :i

| dozen steam rollers flattened out until i you could ride si bicycle ut" drive a car at any speed along it, and it continued that road and its brunches to a length of two miles through the desert. It built reinforced concrete reservoirs, high on bath sides of the valley, laid a reticulation of mains from them nil over t'le camp, and built, row upon row oi troughs for the horses. Then a Belgian eiutractor laid half a mile of electric tramway along the embanked road, ami t'le, military authorities, or, in other words, the improvised stall', chiefly consisting of territorials, collecti'd sacks of

fodder down it, and the military engiir eers put together other and lighter tramways, and somebody put up street lights. They only began this a fortivglit ago, and the roads have been completed and carrying a constant procession of carts ever since we arrived here. THE IMPASSIVE n:\TTIAX.

| The Australian and New Zealand j forces came round to Alexandria for disI embarkation. is one night's journey through the Mediterranean Sea from Port Said. We found the harbor there crowded with shipping. There were French, Creek, Italian, and manvi "British ships alongside the quay, but by far the biggest, collection was thai/ of German ships. There were 1-1 or lo of them lying in the harbor, several Norddeutscher-Llovd and German-Aus-tralian liners amongst them. They wore mostly steamers; and had been la,id up the Canal, and after a long delay had been ordered to leave it. The British and French waited for them outside, and . brought them to Alexandria. The Orvieto was the first ship to come alongside the wharf. She carried General Bridges, and the headquarters staff of the Australian forces and the Fifth Infantry Battalion from Melbourne.'There, was no demonstration at all. From first to last, the Egyptian population has merely looked on impassively when our troops have gone through. The one interest which a large section of the population takes in us wherever we go is to make money out of us, to which task it devotes itself single-mindedly, and without any foolish scruple as to the mean: - .

A number of the New Zealand transports followed the Orvieto to the quays, and a little later the Euripcdes. which met with the only misfortune of importance that occurred during the whole voyage. On tl'ie very last night of it, between Port Said and Alexandria, some 000 of the mot on board of her, mostly belonging to the 4th Infantry Battalion, fell ill with something suspiciously like ptomaine poisoning. They were unable to laud that das', and some of them had to be eventually- brought on to ilena Hotel, at- the Pyramids, which has been turned into a hospital for the Australian troops. iAs far as 1 know, none of the cases are now serious.,

A STRANGE LAND. It was afternoon before the first train left for Cairo. It contained the greater part of the sth Infantry, some engineers and other details. Each man carried ,a tin of bully beef and some biscuits—rations for 24 hours. These biscuits were whole-meal, and were made in Australia. They were excellent. I have hoard several officers say that they'were the best ration biscuits tliev had ever tasted. For the better half of the afternoon and until svell on into the dark the troop train wound through the teeming flats of the Nile delta. Every scrap of vegetation in this country is grosvn under irrigation, every square of that delta is utilised, and the men were intrested in everything—buffaloes working in the fields, camels and donkeys ridden or else driven along the paths, so piled lip with maize or green fodder that, all you could see. of the animal svas the head protruding from a wandering load, women with their faces veiled, men fish. | ing in the ditches only a few inches wide, which ran around the fields. It I was long after dark svhen the first trainload of Australians reached Cairo. 'They | detrained at a long platform, which, I like everything else, seemed to have | been specially made for the purpose, I within the course of the previous two I days. There svas a hot cup of coffee | svaiting for them by the side of the , train. The heavy luggage was put on to ' the trams, and then the Fifth Infantry, ' in full marching kit, and with its band 1 at its head, turned out of the station | gates and up the lighted streets,

TO SLEEP; IN THE DESERT. ] It so happened that the Fifth Battalion's route towards the Nile bridges j led it past the famous Kasr El Nil barracks, which face the river. The sounds o"f tfee band orought out the territorials quartered there, and they igave the Fifth the finest reception that force has received. Half an hour later, after crossing the second branch of the Nile, ■the men, passing out of the suburb' of Gizeh, along the straight road, bordered with lebbakh trees, first saw before them in the moonlight the distant shape of the great Pyramid. For nearly two hours they marched towards it before j the road turned off near the foot of it through a plantation of gum trees and >wattlcs, for all the world like a bit of Australia itself, down a newly-made road 011 to the desert. It was already midnight, but the baggage had to be taken up the valley and unloaded before sleep could be thought of. Tke new road at that time stopped short a little way before reaching this point, and the task of (logging the native lorries through that stretch of sand showed beyond argument the value of the roads. Its work finished, the regiment threw itself down where it was, wrapped itself in its blankets under the moon and thr stars, and slept.