4 SERVICE AND SPORT IN THE SUDAN

rail and boat. Both my companion and I would

have been quite lost at the railway station had it not

been for the kindly offices of Captain Brakenridge,

R.A.M.C., who, like a good Samaritan, accompanied

us from Abdin barracks to the station, and, finding

that the native staff officer on duty there spoke no European language, acted as interpreter for us.

At Shellal we transferred ourselves and our belong-

ings from the train to the steamer, which was moored

within sight of Philae. Pen and brush have, as far as

mortals can guide them, done justice to the Nile. It

is grand and terrible. As a tourist does, I have de-

voured its history and taken in its every reach ; as an

old stager I have been bored by the sameness of its

low sandstone containing hills, narrow strips of culti-

vation, and limited view. But before I left the spirit

of the great river god entered me, and I loved it. Its

half-mile-broad torrent, now calm, now rough ; the

clumps of scraggy date palms ; its temples, its villages, its

very hills and monotonous yellow sand ; the groaning

of the Sakias, the creaking of the Shadufs ; the people on the banks, some engaged in work, some in languid

play, some travelling clad in sky-blue gallabias on

diminutive donkeys, some lazily squatting on the banks —to leave it was to leave a friend. If drinking of

the Trevi fountain brought me back to Rome, surely, O Father Nile, I have drunk enough of your life-

giving waters from source to mouth to bring me back

to your broad bosom !

Just north of Haifa we entered the Sudan. At

the town itself we made another change into a train