OMDURMAN, STRONGHOLD OF THE MAHDI English well, and as he understands both Turkish and Arabic, he was able to tell me all about the city as we went through.

I came down the Blue Nile from Khartum in a skiff. The distance is about five miles, but we had to tack back and forth all the way, so that the trip took over two hours. The mamour met me on landing. He had a good donkey for me, and we spent the whole day in going through the city, making notes, and taking the photo¬ graphs which now lie before me.

The people are stranger than any I have ever seen so far in my African travels. They come from all parts of the Sudan and represent forty or fifty-odd tribes. Some of the faces are black, some are dark brown,and others are a rich cream colour. One of the queerest men I met during my journey was an African with a complexion as rosy as that of a tow-headed American baby and hair quite as white.

He was a water carrier, dressed in a red cap and long gown. He had two great cans on the ends of a pole which rested on his shoulder, and was trotting through the streets carrying water from one of the wells to his Sudanese customers. His feet and hands, which were bare, were as white as my own. Stopping him, I made him lift his red fez to see whether his hair was white from age. It was flaxen, however, rather than silver, and he told me that his years numbered only twenty-five. The mamour, talking with him in Arabic, learned that he was a pure Sudanese, coming from one of the provinces near the watershed of the Congo. He said that his parents were jet-black but that many men of his colour lived in the region from whence he came. I stood him up against the mud wall in the street with two Sudanese women, each 191