Series 03: John Brady Nash letters, January 1914-December 1915 - Page 319
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[Page 319]
An early chat you will think with you. Could not sleep, in bed at 11 O'C last night. Writing for some of my officers. As Col. Martin will not be here until Saturday I am in charge till then. Wish he was a stronger man, then we might make shove things along, as there is plenty of work to do here. Our first task of Campaigning was yesterday, it was shaking some of the picnickers up, stern reality was not imagined by them before. Dare say they think me somewhat of a martinet. If so cannot be helped, I cannot put up with slackers and the incompetent, other where is place for them.
A donkey brays, he must have waked up, his voice again, may be greeting the risen sun. Lazy beggar! Should have been awake to greeting the coming of the sun.
What of the valley of the Nile, its delta, from Alexandria to Cairo. Well. Extend the flats around Maitland for about 150 miles; consider the lucern, the sorgum, the vegetables, & other greenery upon them; traverse them with canals running in many directions; with a many times enlarged Hunter river here & there; then dot them with men women and children clothed in flowing garments, every one working in the fields, – No fences or like dividing lines – with donkeys, camels, buffaloes, goats sheep; erect upon them mud houses of all shapes and varying cottage sizes, mere hovels some others more pretentious, all covered with some vegetable material; occasionally a more pretentious structure built of brick or stone painted white rising to three or four stories, no doubt being the home of some haughty aristocrat; add to all innumerable forms of primitive pumps which distribute the water from the canals to the fields. A busy population truly, intent on getting from the land every ounce of food possible, as have done some of their ancestors daily for some six thousand years. The older one grows, more does he wonder