CAIRO TO KISUMU the neighbourhood of the Red Sea the salt air and the alkali water.”

“ I suppose the lack of water is one of your chief difficul¬ ties, is it not?” 1 asked.

“Yes. This railroad is over three hundred miles long and the track is laid through the sand. For about one third of the distance inland from the Red Sea the country is mountainous, but the rest of it is flat. There are no streams, so we have to rely on artesian wells for our water supply. We have bored a number, but we find that the water in many places is salt. We struck one well which had three per cent, of salt in it, and another in which the water was one per cent. salt. Of course such water is useless for our locomotives.

“We are having trouble also in getting a good water supply at Port Sudan. We sunk one well to a depth of eight hundred feet and struck a good flow of fresh water. We had hardly completed, it, however, before the salt water began to seep in, and we are now drilling again. There are some stretches along the route where there is no water whatever. In such places we have to carry our supply with us. For this we have tanks of galvanized iron, each of which will hold about fifteen hundred gallons.”

From Atbara I took a later train to continue my journey on toward Khartum. About one hundred miles south of Atbara we stopped at Shendi, where the Queen of Sheba is said to have lived. This is a station on the east bank of the Nile five hours or more from Khartum. It is a considerable town with railroad shops. I saw great piles of steel ties such as Captain Midwinter mentioned.

Shendi consists of an old and a new town. The latter has been laid out by the British and has a park in the 158