14 PAST AGES OF CONQUEST more detailed examination, is subject to considerable modification.

In the north-west, away from the life-giving river which enriches the Dongola province, the country, almost entirely desert, is relieved by oases and peopled by nomad Arabs ; while the district called the Atbai, in the extreme north-west bordering the Red Sea, while more or less desert in character, becomes mountainous, healthy, and has a rainfall diu'ing two months of the year which enables vegetation to exist in favoured spots. Through this district the Berber-Port Sudan railway runs to the Red Sea.

Kordofan in the west of the Sudan, on the left bank of the river, in common with Darfur on its remote side, has a considerable rainfall at one season, but the land soaks it up like a sponge. The country is characterized by groups of considerable hills, which in Darfur rise to a height of about 6,000 feet. Facing Kordofan, on the east of the river south of Khartoum, is the rich-soiled Ghezireh, flat, with occasional hills, backed by the district of the Blue Nile and tributaries, and with the Kassala province still farther behind, bordering Abyssinia, in all of which there is land of great fertility adapted to the cultivation of cotton or grain, and only waiting for water.

South of Kordofan and the Sobat, 500 miles upstream from Khartoum, is the land of superfluity, where water constitutes an embari-as de richesse, and the country suffers in consequence. Here are