DONGOLA PROVINCE OF THE ANGLO-EGYPTIAN SUDAN By LOUIS C. WEST Dongola Province, the most northern but one of the administrative divisions of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, lies between the parallels of 160 0' and 190 40' N. west of an irregular line in about 320 30' E. (Fig. 1). Essentially, however, it comprises the Nile Valley from the Third Cataract to the Fourth Cataract, both of which, except for a few months each year when the Nile reaches the highest point of its annual rise, effectively bar river navigation. There are at present two practicable ways by which the traveler may enter the province. The first and easiest is by the branch railroad which extends to Kareima at the foot of the Fourth Cataract from Abu Hamed, which has rail connections with Egypt, Khartum, and the Red Sea ports of Port Sudan and Suakin. The other available route is by camel or horse from Wadi Halfa at the foot of the Second Cataract through the Batn el Hagar to Kerma at the head of the Third Cataract. This is the historic trade route into the Sudan which we know was in use as early as the Sixth Egyptian Dynasty, some 4,500 years ago.

On the rocks which face the river at Tombos, six or seven miles from Kerma, are the well-known inscriptions carved by the generals of Thothmes I to record the fact that his armies had reached the fertile plain of Dongola and that his empire stretched from this point to the Euphrates. During the war with the Mahdi and his successor the Khalifa, the English built a railroad for military purposes from Wadi Halfa to Kerma; but service over this was discontinued some seven or eight years ago, and the rails were in large part removed. The reason given was that the sharp gradients on the line made its operation unprofitable; the real reason seems to have been an effort to force the province to use the railroad at the southern end of the district and in this way to come into closer economic touch with the rest of the Sudan. So far this effort has been a failure: the profitable export business with Egypt which might have been easily developed has been crippled and no corresponding gain made in the amount of trade with Khartum. That such efforts forcibly to divert the direction of a country's trade are unscientific is shown by the long lines of camels which daily cross the dismantled railroad line near Kerma on their way to and from Wadi Halfa.

SOIL AND AGRIOULTURE With a more industrious population Dongola would be a land of amazing prosperity. Its soil is said to be the most fertile in the Sudan, but as a result of universal disease, of successive low Nile floods, and of a generally indolent population there is only a narrow strip of cultivation along the river. From Kareima to Ambigol the land on both sides of the river is 22