The Nile 



Then Khartoum is seen in the distance as a 

 line of palm-trees surmounted by white minarets. 

 Here the two Niles meet. Soon Omdurman 

 comes into view, a mud-built straa-orjinor town 

 some eight miles in length. It is the largest 

 market on the Nile, and seems lost in the forest 

 of masts of the native craft that bring down the 

 country's produce from the fertile plains of the 

 Blue Nile. 



The river flows on, with a bluer tint in the water 

 now, past the barracks of the Sudanese soldiers, 

 under the crumbling walls of former Dervish forts, 

 past Jebel Surgam, the site of the battlefield that 

 knocked fanaticism out of time for a while. 



Gradually the river grows shallower and more 

 rocky, till, some sixty miles down, the Shabluka 

 cataract bars navigation. Here we leave the 

 mighty river for a time, but it still flows on. 



Past Berber and Dongola, the scenes of many 

 a bloody battle and sanguinary encounter with 

 the Khalifa's hordes, the Nile surges on its way 

 between black ironstone crao-s and billows of 

 gleaming yellow sand, now roaring over the 

 rocky barriers that extend across the river bed in 

 the shape of cataracts, now washing the base of 

 some bold precipitous cliff, now lapping the sand- 

 strewn edge of some quiet bay. 



We meet it again next at Haifa, where a still 

 more palatial — if possible — steamer than we had 

 met before is waiting to enable us to continue our 



59 



