ACROSS AFRICA BY AIR AND RAIL Blue Nile, where a great new dam, which is to furnish more water for irrigating Egypt and the Sudan, is now un¬ der construction. The British have also built a railway from Sennar west to El Obeid, in Khordofan. This line crosses the Blue Nile at Kosti. From Sennar, the fourteen hundred miles to Lake Albert is covered by Nile steamers and by ground transport, which may be automobile, horseback, or bullock wagon. From the southern shore of Lake Albert is another gap which must be covered with ground transport to gain the shores of Lake Victoria, and after Victoria is crossed by steamer. Lake Tanganyika must be reached overland. From Lake Tanganyika to Broken Hill is a gap of four hundred and fifty miles which will soon be bridged by railroad construction. From Broken Hill we have the railway to Cape Town. A rail¬ road extends northward from Broken Hill to Bukama in the Congo copper-mining district of Katanga, but it does not fit into the scheme of an all-British steam route to Cairo.

Another important railway development, also the work of the British, resulted from the World War. The Turks had organized an army to capture control of the Suez Canal, and to meet this attack the British pushed a great ex¬ peditionary force into Palestine. They did this by build¬ ing a swinging railroad bridge across the canal at Kantara and laying a railroad two hundred and fifty-six miles through the Sinai and Palestine deserts to Haifa. During these operations, Kantara, normally a small garrisoned railroad town, mostly sand and cinders, became the great¬ est military base in all history. Besides the soldiers, brought from all corners of the British Empire, the British organized the Egyptian Labour Corps, for which more 165