MEDITERRANEAN TO SUDAN which I crossed on the railroad from Wady Haifa, where I left the steamer Ibis, to Berber. That region is about the dreariest and most desolate on earth. It is all sand and rocks, with here and there a low barren mountain. The Nubians themselves call it “the stone belly, ” and the name is well chosen.

The road through Nubia is a part of the Sudan military railway that extends from Wady Haifa to Khartum. It is one of the iron gateways to the Sudan, the other being the railway which the British have built from Atbara to Port Sudan and Suakim on the Red Sea. The military line is almost as long as from New York to Detroit and the Port Sudan line from the Red Sea to Arbara, where it connects with the military line, is less than half that length.

The Port Sudan road vies with the military railways in being one of the dirtiest railroads ever constructed. Its whole route is across the Nubian Desert. There is no vege¬ tation at all between Atbara and the Red Sea until with¬ in about nine miles of the coast, and then only a scanty growth of thorn bush and scrub that feeds small flocks of camels and sheep.

This Red Sea road was opened about 1905. Since then it has been carrying a large part of the trade of the Sudan. Mohammedan pilgrims from Central Africa and the Lower Nile valley use it on their way to and from Mecca, and occasionally tourists come to Khartum via the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, and this railroad.

The military line from Wady Haifa is the one built by General Kitchener during the war with the Mahdi. Constructed in less than eighteen months by the British engineers and soldiers, it is one of the most remarkable *53