THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN .

which had recently been opened, and seventeen and a half hours were occupied in performing the journey of one hundred and twenty miles. The dust was suffocating, the rattle deafening, and the road-bed was so uneven and the curves so short that it was a marvel how the coaches kept on the rails at all, and all this in spite of the fact that tens of thousands of tons of railway material and stores had rolled over the line on their way to the Sudan. I thought with regret of the Sirdar's Military Railway, and wished that the line I was on had been surveyed and laid by my friends the young officers of the Royal Engineers.

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