CHAPTER XX KHARTUM A FTER the intensely hot and dust-filled six-hundredf\ mile journey across the desert from Wady Haifa /""l it is good to be here amid the palm gardens and the lime trees of Khartum. I am in the flourish¬ ing capital of the Sudan, once, and not so long ago at that, the centre of an exceedingly prosperous slavetrade and later the scene of the massacre of General Gordon and of Kitch¬ ener’s fierce fights with the Mohammedan fanatics.

Khartum lies at the junction of two of the chief rivers of North Africa, giving it navigable highways to Abyssinia and to the rich lands along the watershed of the Belgian Congo. It has railroads connecting it with the Mediter¬ ranean, and with the exception of one stretch of less than six hundred miles, where the cataracts are, it has the main stream of the Nile to give it cheap freight rates to Europe.

It has opened a railroad to Suakim, on the Red Sea, and in time it will undoubtedly be one of the great stations on the principal route by steamer and rail from Cairo to the Cape.

I called upon the Governor of Khartum this afternoon and asked him to tell me the story of the city. Said he: “The buildings which you see here are all new, but the town is older than some of the mushroom cities of the United States. It was born before Chicago, being founded by Mehemet Ali a century ago. It grew remarkably 167