PROPOSED SUAKIM-BERBER RAILWAY. 193 potentate would give his assistance in clearing the route or holding it against the insurgent Arabs till the evacuation of Khartum was completed and the refugees were able to enter Abyssinia or to get to Massowa; but King John remained much the same sort of personage as Gordon had found him, and could not be trusted to carry out his promises, besides which he would promise little or nothing except on the guarantee that Massowa should be handed over to him to become the port of Abyssinia.

Even this might have been accomplished it there had been more time, but it would have had a very doubtful result, since the dishonesty, cruelty, and treachery of the king and his chief officers were proverbial. It was, in fact, suspected that the taint of insanity could alone account for some of his eccentric ferocities.

At any rate, no project for taking the Kassala route was concluded, and very soon it became obvious that the government was pushing forward preparations for a regular advance from Suakim, and it was with surprise, not unmixed with satisfaction, that we began to understand that preparations were being made to " smash the Mahdi" with the aid of the latest resources of civilization.

A railway was to be constructed from Suakim to Berber, and the camel would give place to the locomotive, which would be continuously at work conveying troops, arms, stores, ammunition, and water across that vast expanse of desert. The railway, which a good many people had said years before should have joined the Red Sea port with the great entrepot of the merchandise of Egypt, the Soudan, and the Equatorial Provinces, was now to be constructed, and though there were those who represented that during the progress of the work every yard of it would have to be watched and defended night and day, not only against the surrounding hostile tribes, but against the silting and sinking of the sand, the remarkable celeritv with which the scheme: was devised and the materials provided in England and transported to Suakim was regarded as a cause for considerable satisfaction.

Earh- in June the first freight of plant for the proposed military line consisted of seven or eight hundred tons of railway iron, and the same vessel that carried it took from Woolwich the necessary Vol hi. 43