THE NORTHERN GATEWAY OF SUDAN 401 



It is when the homeward-bound traveller quits the 

 Nile at Abu-Hamed (559 kilometres north of Khartoum), 

 and thence cuts directly across the chord of the river's 

 great western bend that the acme of desolation is reached. 



No adequate adjectives exist, superlatives sound paltry 

 even had the supply not been exhausted in attempting 

 the previous description. Nothing short of a personal 

 view can convey a living sense of the hideous outrage 

 of these 232 miles of Nubian Desert. 



Throughout the whole of that distance reigns a 

 solitude and a deathly silence that is speechful. Horizon 

 succeeds horizon, each in turn a sweeping, swelling, sun- 

 scorched void, unbroken save by mountainous masses of 

 wind-sculptured sand, or by protruding jebels of plutonic 

 rock, black as Erebus ; but never a vestige of water, or 

 of life, or of green thing. I find in my diary one note 

 of a solitary thorn-tree, alone and leafless, mocking the 

 deadly spaces. 



Abhorrent to every human sense, there yet exists a 

 sort of abstract fascination in this "howling wilderness." 

 That morning I awaited the dawn, watched the cruel 

 sun rise over the rim, watched all day till he dipped in a 

 panoply of hues that for brief moments glorified almost 

 beautified the whole horrid abomination of desolation. 



At intervals during the transit the whole earth within 

 the circlet of vision was sand, sand, sand nothing but 

 glowing, glistening, red-hot sand ; anon over the rim 

 peered the blue outlines of distant mountains, perhaps 

 100 miles away by the Red Sea. 



The ten "stations" have no names only numbers. 

 There are no places in the desert capable of bearing a 

 distinctive name they are merely water-tanks for the 

 supply of the engines, the water brought by other engines 

 for the purpose. From "Station No. 6" there branches off 

 a side-track to a gold-mine. More important, however, 

 than problematic treasure is the rather less problematic 

 fact that the big Barbary wild sheep (Ovis lervia] may 



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