GORDON AND THE MAHDI. 13

substantial style, and the new city soon became the centre of a vast trade in ivory, gum arabic, ostrich

feathers,grain, cattle, and slaves. Khartoum in fact had always been the point where the slave-traders fittedout

their expeditions, stored their captives, and found a market for their human cattle.

destruction of 800 TurkishBashi-Bazouks,surprised there in 1820 by the Bishareen, when all who escaped the Bedouin swords and spears were driven into the river

and drownedin the cataracts below. The other caravan route is toSuakimon theBed Sea,some two hundred and

eighty milesdistant, and the chief port of the Soudan,

whencemost of the captured slaves used to be shipped.

Suakim, or Sowagin, as it is called by the natives, Khartoum,prior to the uprising of the Mahdi,had a mixed population of some fifty to sixty thousand,more

thanhalf of whom were slaves. SeveralEuropeanconsuls used to be resident there, the city being the commercial centre of the Soudan trade,wdhch is estimated to have amounted to thirteen millionssterlingper annum. Many of the houses of Khartoumare more substantiallybuilt

signifies " together with the gin, or fairy." According to tradition,there was an island in the Bed Sea,inhabited by sevenvirgins only. One day,some fishermen visiting theplace weresurprised to find all the women enceinte. The latter ascribedtheir conditionto the genii,and their

THE CITY OF KHABTOUM.

thanthose of other Soudan towns, acertainnumberbeing constructed of stone, while the residences of the richer merchants arc alike spacious and comfortable. The small colony ofEuropeans congregated at Khartoum used to be continually changing, as the city, which is proverbially unhealthy,especially during the rainy season, proved a perfect graveyard to European residents.

Descending the Nile from Khartoum, in the direction of Egypt, the first place of importance is Berber, some two hundred miles distant, with a populationvariously estimated at from five to ten thousand. The houses of Berber,like those ofmost of the Soudan towns, arebuilt of sun-dried bricks;and, like Khartoum. Berber owesits importance entirely to itsposition. It is the Nile port

at which goods are shipped up the river to Khartoum, and is the great entrepot of nearly the whole of the Soudan export trade, which at this point leaves the no longer navigable upper river, and finds an outletby the

two great caravan routes, the one to Korosko on the Nile (which thence becomes the only highway),by way of Abou Hamed, a miserable town, memorable for the

mysteriously begottenoffspring are said to have been the original colonists of themainland, and to have founded

the town of Suakim. The entrance to the harbour of Suakim is narrow and long, and outside there are dangerous reefs. The town, whichisbuilt of whitecoral, stands on anisland united to the mainland by a cause-

way, which Colonel Gordon had constructed while Governor-General of theSoudan. The populationnumbers about eight thousand. Nearly twohundred milesnorth- westof Berber is oldDongola,ahalf-deserted ruined town on the Easternbank of the Nile,and some fifty or sixty mileslowerdownon the opposite side of the stream is new Dongola,known by the Arabs as Ordeh.

Kassala, which nextto Khartoum is thelargest town in the Soudan, having a population of about fifteen thousand, stands on a hill,almostmid-way— some two hundred miles distant from each— betweenKhartoum and Massowah, a Bed Sea port nigh the Abyssinian frontier. Kassala has long been the head-quarters of collectorsof wildanimals for the zoologicalsocieties and menageries ofEurope and America. Hyænas abound in