Chapter XVI: The New Khartoum

No one whose lot it has been to travel through the night on the plains of a tropical country can forget the amazing effect produced when the sun, with one great leap, as it seems, springs clear above the horizon. All in a moment the world’s face is altered. Its features are the same, yet utterly changed. The traveller, however hardened, can scarcely fail to wonder at the transformation. A journey to the Soudan to-day produces a very similar impression on one whose mind is full of the memories of the dark past. The din of battle has hardly ceased to echo, but the transformation is complete.

Even after Egypt, with all its fascinations, rich with the remains of ages of civilization, full to the brim of questions and problems deeply interesting to the student of history, archæology, politics, or economics, the Soudan, with its triple capital, Khartoum, Omdurman, Halfaya, comes upon you with a freshness and charm that are indescribable. Travelling by the ordinary methods, you may go from Alexandria to Khartoum in about six days. It is well worth while, even for anyone who has been up and down the whole length of Egypt, to take the whole journey in one piece. There is all the excitement of starting for a new country, and at the same time an opportunity to gather into a focus all the old impressions. Easily and smoothly you swing through the fertile cotton-fields of the Delta, and its populous cities and villages, prosperous but dirty, and at Cairo you settle down into a most comfortable sleeping-car for the night journey to Luxor.

Early next morning you are in the cane-fields of Upper Egypt, with the river close on one side and the desert on the other. At Luxor you must change on to the narrow gauge for Assouan, and there is time to refresh yourself with bath and breakfast, and to look across at the Plain of Thebes and the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, or to ride a donkey out to Karnak. From Luxor to Assouan it is hot and dusty enough, and you are glad to rest there for the night. Next day you embark at Shellal, above the Dam, for Wadi Halfa, a voyage of some 200 miles. Coming down, the steamers do it in about twenty-four hours, but upstream it is a leisurely voyage of three days. There is plenty of time to see the interesting antiquities of Nubia, and, above all, the famous rock-hewn temple of Abu Simbel, the colossal statues of which are, perhaps, the most impressive of all the monuments of Egypt. It is, besides, a most beautiful reach of the river; the hills come down to the water in bold and rugged outlines, showing to perfection in the pure, dry, desert air.

The effect of the Dam is clearly seen as far as Korosko. First of all, at Shellal the boat is moored amid a grove of palm-trees, the temples of Philæ are knee-deep in water, and the Nubian villages look quaint enough as they stand on the edge of the desert, forlornly mourning their strip of cultivated land, most of which the greedy Reservoir has swallowed up. Probably a great part of these people will now migrate to Dongola, but the loss of the land—for which, indeed, compensation has been paid—is really a small matter to them. Hardly anywhere is an able-bodied male to be seen; all are away making their living as sailors or servants elsewhere, leaving the women and old men to keep their homes. These Nubian boatmen are a most happy and thrifty people, ready to work all day and dance all night, always to the accompaniment of a song.

The boundary between Egypt and the Soudan, settled by the Convention of 1899, runs along the twenty-second parallel; not far beyond this is the frontier town of Halfa. There is no mistaking the signs of British rule. The whole place is rigidly clean, an extraordinary contrast to the filth of the Egyptian villages. The streets are well laid out and scrupulously swept, and shady avenues of trees are springing up. But at present Halfa is not particularly interesting, except as the railway terminus of the Soudan. It is twenty-eight hours to Khartoum. Nothing can be more comfortable than the well-appointed sleeping-car train, which runs twice a week. Starting at eight in the evening, you strike right across the Nubian Desert, most desolate and forlorn of countries. The very stations have no names, but are known merely by their numbers.

In the morning you come to Abu Hamed, back to the Nile once more. Abu Hamed is just at the elbow of the river, where it turns to the west for its great circuit by Merowe and Dongola. Here was the scene of one of the stiffest fights in the Soudan Campaign, when General Hunter made his dash from Korti, in 1897, further down the Nile, to seize the point for which the new railway was making from Wadi Halfa, and here are the graves of Fitzclarence and Sidney, officers of the 10th Soudanese, who fell in the battle. Around this spot a ghostly legend hangs. It happened that the other white officers of the battalion were wounded on the same day, and the black troops marched back to their bivouac without any of their white leaders. A black regiment is always accompanied by its women on the march, and these have high notions of military honour. They would have nothing to do with men who dared to return alive from the field on which their officers had fallen. The warriors quailed before their wives, and serious trouble was brewing, till a black sergeant, who lay dying of his wounds, solved the difficulty. ‘Tell the women,’ he said, ‘that enough of us are dead to guard the spirits of the white men in the other world. I myself will mount the guard.’ There are innumerable witnesses to testify that he has kept his word. The lesson was not lost. It was the same battalion which later, at the Atbara, raced the Camerons for the enemy’s zareba, and, catching their Colonel as he ran in front of them, bore him heels foremost right through the camp, securely hedged by a living wall of bodies, because a second loss like that of Abu Hamed was not to be thought of.

From here onward the journey is full of interest. Berber is springing up again from its ruins; it even boasts two stations, but it has not an attractive look as a place to live in; there is as yet nothing more than the mud huts of the country, and it is the hottest place in the world. Next comes the Atbara River, though not the scene of the battle, for that was thirty miles upstream; then Shendi, of fiery memory, but now the Crewe of the Soudan, and finally, late at night, you step out of the train at Halfaya, the railway terminus. One glance at the sky will show you that you are really in the tropics. Canopus is shining fiercely in the east. Right overhead the giant Orion strides across the vault. Northwards the Great Bear stands like a huge note of interrogation in the sky, and just over the opposite horizon the Southern Cross is looming up.

Halfaya stands on the northern bank of the Blue Nile, near its junction with the White. It is destined to be the workshop and commercial quarter of the capital. At present the Government steamboat factories and workshops are still at Omdurman, a legacy from dervish days. But already the necessary buildings are springing up, and as trade increases the railway terminus will attract more and more to its immediate vicinity. The Blue Nile, just before its junction, divides into two channels, which embrace the fertile island of Tuti. Opposite Halfaya, and along the southern bank of the island, the river runs in a glorious sweep due east and west for two or three miles. Here, facing northwards, stands Khartoum, with as imposing a situation as any capital could wish for.

A well-made road runs all along the river-front, which is being gradually embanked and walled. Right in the centre rises the white Palace, the official residence of the Governor-General, a handsome building, on the site of Gordon’s old palace, set in a lovely garden. On either side of it stretch a succession of Government offices and the neat residences of Government officials, to the new, spacious, and comfortable hotel on the one side and the Gordon College and British barracks on the other, pleasantly variegated with gardens and groves of palm-trees, acacias, limes, and bananas. Behind this Government belt, the town is carefully laid out into wide streets and squares in two other belts. The second of these contains, or will contain, houses and shops built by private persons, but of a good class and on approved plans; the third is open for the erection of any buildings that the owners choose to construct. Finally, close to Gordon’s rampart are the Soudanese barracks, and, right outside, the native villages, laid out in squares allotted to different tribes, where you may see huts of every shape, characteristic of many different parts of Africa.

Considering that three years ago Khartoum was nothing more than a dirty dust-heap, the work that has been accomplished by the Royal Engineers is truly wonderful. Of course, the city is still in the hands of the builders; everywhere are gangs of workmen levelling roads, preparing foundations, making bricks of Nile mud, carrying, hammering, digging, building. Women, too, are employed. Their principal duty is bearing water for the lines of young trees that will one day make each street a shady avenue. Already the town is lighted with lamps far better than many an Egyptian city, and it is hoped that in a short time a tramway will be in working order.

From November to March the climate is very delightful: it is hot, of course, at times, but the north wind blows steadily and coolly practically every day, and sometimes the nights are even cold. Even if it is hot, there is always the Blue Nile to refresh the eyes. It is a comfort to find that the Blue Nile is really blue—as blue as any Italian lake. One is so often told that it is called blue because of the mud it brings down during the flood—the mud which causes the ‘red’ water so dear to the Egyptian cultivator. But anyone who looks at it cannot fail to realize that its name is derived from its clear and limpid waters, and not from its muddy flood-time. One of the most charming scenes in Khartoum is the view of these blue waters seen from the windows of the Soudan Club through a green maze of palms and lime-trees.

Khartoum, with its bungalows, offices, shops, and banks, is a civilized town, summoned up out of nothing, as it were, by an enchanter’s wand. Far different is Omdurman. Here, too, the engineers have been at work, clearing, demolishing, and cleaning. Only those who marched in after the battle four years ago and saw those foul labyrinths of streets can realize how much has been accomplished. But though purified and greatly shrunk, of course, within its limits in the Khalifa’s time, Omdurman remains a real Central African city, with nothing European about it. It was originally intended to move all the inhabitants over to Khartoum; but the natural convenience of its position on the left bank of the river, just at the junction of the two Niles, makes it impossible to carry out this intention. Its population is actually increasing at present, and it seems far better to let natural forces work their way, and retain it as the native quarter of the capital, distinct from the seat of government. It possesses, too, a wide sloping foreshore, or beach, exactly suited to the feluccas which ply upon the river.

This beach is one of the great sights of Omdurman, and a fascinating spectacle it is. On a busy day it is absolutely crowded with traders and porters from all parts of the Soudan. It is the great market-place for gum from Kordofan, feathers from Darfur, ivory from the Bahr el Ghazal, dhurra from the Blue Nile country, and everything else that comes in by boat or camel. All day long the porters go to and fro, carrying their loads and chanting their monotonous songs, chiefly tall, broad-chested, but spindle-shanked negroes from the Nile Valley, Dinkas, Shilluks, Bongos, or Bari, with here and there a short, thick-set, sturdy hillman from Southern Kordofan or Dar Nuba. Women equally diverse in type sit sorting the different qualities of gum. Naked children, brown and black, tumble and chatter in every direction. It is difficult to drag one’s self away, so strange and novel and varied are the sights.

But Omdurman has much more to show. First and foremost the Khalifa’s house, the only two-storied building in the town, and built of brick. It is occupied now by the British inspectors. Hard by are the ruins of the Mahdi’s tomb, too solidly built to be entirely destroyed, but even its partial demolition has been sufficient to put a complete stop to pilgrimages. In front is the great square in which the Khalifa used to preach to his assembled dervishes. It is surrounded by a high wall excellently built, said to be the work of the German Neufeld. It is witness now of scenes very different from those of the old fanatical days, so far removed in everything but time—perhaps the parade of a Soudanese battalion, a football match, or the arrival of a string of camels laden with gum from El Obeid.

In the Beit el Amana are some interesting relics of the past. Here are the brass cannon taken originally by the Mahdi from the Egyptians, and piles of captured dervish muskets of every shape and form, swords and caps; and here, too, is the Khalifa’s carriage, a ramshackle, broken-down old four-wheeled chariot. It is a puzzle how it ever got to Omdurman. It looks as if it were built for some quiet old maiden lady in a French provincial town, but it fell on a strange master in its old age; and Slatin Pasha, now Inspector-General of the Soudan, had to run as a footman before it. Close by is the great broad street leading northwards, by which the British troops marched in on the battle. Every step is reminiscent of the last evening of days of the dervish tyranny.

But the most fascinating sight of all is the sook, or market. The mixture of races is amazing. It would take a trained scientist to catalogue them all. From a camel to a silver bracelet, there is nothing dear to a native that cannot be bought. Here are made and sold the angarebs, or native bedsteads, woven with string across a low four-legged wooden framework. As yet these people have not much mechanical ingenuity, and their appliances for working in wood and iron or other metals are rude in the extreme. The past in the Soudan has not been conducive to the development of the arts, but there is promise for the future.

One feature of the place is the curiosity shops, full of many strange spears and shields, knives and sabres, and occasionally an iron gauntlet or coat of mail such as the dervishes wore; but these are rare now. These Arab shopmen know how to drive a hard bargain, and love nothing better than chaffering over a price. All curiosities are called ‘antiquos.’ There is an annual flower-show in Khartoum, at which a prize is given for the best ‘antiquos.’ A Soudanese turned up who was very anxious to compete for this prize with a live porcupine, which he insisted was an ‘antiquo.’ He was allowed to exhibit at last, but not for competition, on condition that he himself led it about by a string, as the authorities could not undertake its charge. With more justice a live tortoise is also commonly offered for sale as a very choice ‘antiquo.’ In another quarter are the rope-makers, twisting their long coils of fibre in exactly the same way as they have been twisted for centuries; further on, the basket and net makers are weaving dried reeds in curious patterns. Yet another part is entirely devoted to the needs of women. Here are combs and strings of all kinds of beads, unguents, and the strange preparations they use for fixing the small plaits in which they tie their hair; cinnamon bark and other scents, without which no wedding is complete; cooking-pots and other articles of their scanty domestic furniture; even dolls of most weird and fantastic shapes and material, and many other quaint trifles. The whole place is crowded with women, black and brown, many of them tall in stature, easy and graceful in their movements, and, however ugly they may be in other respects, nearly all with the most beautifully shaped arms.

It is a strange contrast to go a little further on through the western outskirts of the town, and to find a game of polo proceeding on the hard desert sand. And beyond, again, in the middle of these great spaces, far from the rush and turmoil of the town, are the quiet graves of two or three of those who have laid down their lives in this far country, and shall see their homes no more.

It would take a long time to get tired of merely riding about in Omdurman and watching the thousand and one sights of such a place, and reflecting on the stranger scenes that must so frequently have been enacted there less than five short years ago. But if you want a gallop in the desert, nothing is more delightful than to pass along the broad street leading northwards through the deserted quarters of the once huge city, and to ride, with the keen wind blowing freshly in your face, to Gebel Surgham, the hill which overlooks the field of Kerreri, that historic field of bloodshed. The merest novice can easily follow every phase of the battle, and see where wave after wave of the dervish hosts rushed madly but heroically to their doom. Some of their skulls still lie bleaching in the sun. There, too, is the khor where the Lancers made their famous charge. Or you may take boat, and sail past the mud forts that saluted the steamers which came just too late for the watcher anxiously straining his eyes to see them from the palace in Khartoum. Almost every spot has its own historic interest. Perhaps as you skim along before the wind a battered old paddle-steamer labours creaking past, towing a string of barges. It is one of Gordon’s gunboats, once more patched up and restored to duty.

But of all the sights and interests of this fascinating place, by far the most impressive, as in Cairo itself, is the ancient and mighty river. Khartoum and Omdurman are what they are because here the two great tributaries join their forces and set out across the waterless desert on their great mission to Egypt. The spot where the Blue and White rivers meet, and for some distance flow side by side unmingled, would be still in many ways the most notable in all Northern Africa, even if Khartoum and all its eventful history were blotted out.