CHAPTER II 



THE DESERTS 



(i) THE EASTERN GATEWAY OF SUDAN 



THE Sudan, from whichever direction it is approached, 

 lies beset by deserts by loo-league deserts. Should 

 the traveller elect to ascend the Nile from Egypt, he 

 finds himself confronted at the frontier by 500 miles 

 of Sahara, to be traversed ere he reaches Khartoum. 

 This is the Nubian Desert " Devastation, Desolation, 

 Damnation," is Steevens's terse trilogy thereof, and no 

 more apt description need be sought. For this Nubian 

 Desert, lying wholly north of tropical rainfalls, is 

 absolutely waterless, and all who have witnessed its 

 appalling sterility will agree with Steevens's anathema. 1 

 These Nubian Deserts I have endeavoured to describe 

 in a subsequent chapter "the Northern Gateway of 

 Sudan " so will here turn to the alternative route by way 

 of the Red Sea, or what I call "the Eastern Gateway." 

 A short ten days' voyage from Marseilles (or seventeen 

 days by long-sea from London) lands the traveller at 

 our magnificent new British harbour of Port Sudan, 

 with its mile-long quays and modern equipment calculated 

 to handle even the expanding exports from Sudan for 

 many a year to come. Still even here, he is separated 

 from Khartoum by 575 miles of sterile mountain ranges 

 and Saharan wastes once a serious obstacle ; but to-day 

 British enterprise has provided a desert-railway, with 



1 With Kitchener to Khartoum, by G. W. Steevens. 



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