January 13, 1916. 
LAND A N D W A T E R 
whicli was taken by the Turkish Army in their 
first abortive attempt against the Canal last 
February. It is towards this line that the railwa>! 
is now making for El Audja. The trail thence 
makes its way fairly directly from well to well 
until it comes at about X to the edge of the drift 
sand region and the end of the mountain groups, 
Maghara and Yelleg, between which it has passed. 
This edge of the drift sand region is here not 
30 miles from the Bitter Lakes — the nearest 
jioint of the Canal — and is not 40 from the most 
vulnerable points in the neighbourhood of Ismailia 
where the chief blow was delivered last February. 
Tlie water supply upon this central route remained 
throughout history until modern times of the very 
scantiest, the wells far apart and often unservice- 
able. In one place there was at least "50 miles 
without any trace of water, in another over 40, and 
such water as could be fcund on the rare spots 
marked as wells was quite innufficient for an}- 
considerable force. It was clearly not to the 
advantage of anyone possessing Egypt to improve 
that supply by using the methods of modern 
science. 
The third line of advance from i^sia to the 
Isthmus of Suez was described in some detail in 
Land and Water a year ago. It has been used 
for centuries by the Egyptian Pilgrimage " to 
Mecca and has in some ways an advantage over 
the main caravan route along the coast, so far as 
mere going is concerned, thoiagh the water supply 
is much worse and the road leads nowhere except 
to the Arabian Desert. It starts from the Head of 
the Gulf of Akaba and the fortified point of the 
same name, climbs up a precipitous escarpment 
and makes for the central point of Nakhl (line 
3. 3, 3 on Sketch II), the Well of the Palm Tree, 
about half way across the desert, and rather more 
than 100 miles from Akaba. 
At Nakhl are cisterns of water, but the road 
from the Gulf to Nakhl is >very ill supplied. 
Proceeding westward from Nakhl you have the 
same desert condition until the wells within a 
day's march of Suez are reached, but the point of 
this road is that it has the best surface of any 
trajectory across the Desert Peninsula. It runs 
over a fairly broad plateau of hard ground with 
only two difficult portions, the first the steep 
climb up of several thousand feet from the Gulf of 
Akaba, the second the descent down to, and the 
crossing of, the drift sand near the Suez Canal ; the 
belt of which drift st\nd is, however, at this place 
not more than a day's march across. 
Between the second and the third of these 
three roads, the Wady-el-Arish, a depression 
lunning across tlie Desert from south to north, 
furnishes a convenient junction ;but it is upon the 
surface almost ent'ixely waterless. 
Along what line the enemy will push his main 
communication an d therefore the extension of his 
railway we have ao public information. But it 
seems most proba.blc that it will be along the 
second of the thre« roads (2, 2, 2), which would 
leave him at a coi avenient distance from the sea 
and danger therefrom, and which would put his 
main force in position for an attack upon the 
central portion of the Canal which, as we have 
already said, is the' Jiiost vulnerable. 
The sea route he certainly cannot take for all 
the first part of it is exposed to fire from a Fleet, 
and if lie ran his 1 .-aihvay further inland he would 
have difficulty with the natvuc of the ground. 
Both along the cc ast and further inland this way 
has to deal main' iy with drift sand, that capital 
obstacle to railwa y construction in desert regions ; 
it has for a deca ide held iip the French railway 
extension southw rard from the Algerian border. 
It is unlikely tha t he would divert his line up the 
