24 SAVAGE SUDAN 



Khartoum, Kassala, and Kordofan ; and naturally that 

 climatic favour is reflected in the relative fauna and 

 flora. Trifling", admittedly, is the difference : it may be 

 diagnosed as representing that between a minus quantity 

 and a minimum. 



There suggests, itself a sort of weird grandeur in the 

 very immensity of these vast voids even a tinge of 

 romance as horizon after horizon reveals a changeless 

 panorama to eyes that ache with the glare of sun-blistered 

 sand. From sunrise to sunset there may come no very 

 palpable change in aspect, no relief nor hope of relief 

 that is not merely the mocking deceit of the mirage. 

 That is the Sahara. But examine these deserts in closer 

 detail and it will be found that separate landscapes, how- 

 ever arid, may display distinct individualities, since there 

 are "qualities" which differentiate even the sternest 

 sterility. 



To describe on paper the beauties of a more or less 

 featureless void would certainly stretch-out the resource 

 even of a master of words. I will only risk these half- 

 dozen lines which I scribbled down on the summit of one 

 of the rocky "jebels" or koppies which, like islets in 

 an ocean, stud the desert plains: "From this loo-foot 

 elevation we command a wide sweep of typical wilderness. 

 The colour-effects alone, combined with 'distances' that 

 are Turneresque (but not to be expressed in terms), 

 forbid any unqualified verdict of condemnation. Low 

 sand-ridges radiate afar in irregular curves like rollers 

 in the Atlantic, their crests spangled with black volcanic 

 debris strewn in ordered disarray, Save a few stunted 

 mimosas and tufts of starveling grass that show up even 

 paler than the sand itself, no vestige of vegetation can 

 be discerned, and the wide intervals are often carpeted 

 with stones. One of the nearer stone-flats being com- 

 posed of the dark volcanic lava aforesaid but embedded 

 amidst yellow gravel gives (under the tropical sun) the 

 illusory effect of a stretch of purple heather! Another 



