CHAPTER VIII.

• THIRD MISSION, 1903.

VISITS TO KHARTUM, SOBA, WAD BA NAGAA, NAGAA, bIR, MASAWWARAT AS-SUFRA, ETC.

On my return to London in 1899 I reported to the Trustees of the British Museum on the condition of the pyramids of Bagrawiya, and that it was impossible to carry on at that time excavations on the Island of Meroe, because there were no men available for digging purposes among the civilian population. The few natives who dwelt on the river bank were busily employed in cutting down the small trees and shrubs, and in digging up the thorn bushes and making small clearings on which to grow dhurra, and they had neither the time nor the desire to take part in excavations for antiquities. The only men on the Island capable of doing real hard work were the Egyptian soldiers of the Railway Battalion, but all these were employed in the important task of continuing the Sudan Military Railway from the Atbara to Kharttim.

In the winter of 1900-1901 I was sent to Egypt on business by the Trustees, and whilst I was in Luxor Sir F. R. Wingate, K.C.B., who had succeeded Lord Kitchener as Sirdar of the Egyptian Army and Governor-General of the Sudan, gave me the opportunity of going to meet him at Khartum to talk over the possibilities of the Sudan as a field for archaeological research. I gladly accepted his very kind offer, and ten days after the receipt of his telegram I arrived in Khartum. The British had been in possession of the town for sixteen months only, but the progress which had been made in building and in laying out roads and streets was extraordinary. The most prominent object in the town was, of course, the new palace, part of which stood on the site of the old Egyptian Government Palace VOL. I. 321 Y