CONTOUR OF THE SOUDAN DESERTS. 345 



of railway to the Soudan, " out of about 800 miles " 

 which were levelled "only one single stretch of eight 

 or nine miles " was found to be " really plain and 

 almost level," * all the rest is described as rolling ground, 

 with isolated hills of various sizes showing upon the 

 horizon, while from Abu Gusi south east to Khartoum, a 

 distance of some 200 miles, the country partakes almost 

 of a mountainous character the caravan route which 

 of course selected the lowest ridges, climbing " up and 

 down slopes of 100 and 150 yards in height."! It 

 is therefore clear from the account given by the railway 

 engineers, that the great desert region through which 

 the Soudan railway would have had to pass, has a 

 surface quite as varied as that of most plain countries. 



Then as regards the supposed entire sterility of the 

 desert, we are assured by the same authority that during 

 the many months that the different parties of surveyors 

 spent, in exploring the country, they " never fed one 

 camel in the desert, and not one died of hunger. " 

 All this shows how erroneous are the popular notions 

 of what " a desert " is. 



The essential characteristic of the true desert is that 

 of a country possessed of a rainless, or nearly rainless, 

 climate where drought may be said to be almost 

 continuous; for in the desert proper there is no regular 

 rainy season; any rains that do fall are intermittent, 

 and altogether uncertain in their character. Some 

 years, rains even torrential rains** may fall for a few 



* Desert Life, by B. Solymos (Railway Engineer) 1880, p. 35. 



t Ibid., p. 35. Ibid., p. 59. 



** This was well illustrated in the first days of August 1896, while 

 these pages were in the press, by a British camp being nearly swept away 

 by a sudden flood in the Nubian Desert, during the Soudan Campaign 

 then in preparation. 



