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 vege-

tation 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 con-

siderable 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 up-

stream from Khartoum, is the land of superfluity,

where water constitutes an embari-as de richesse,

and the country suffers in consequence. Here are