402 SAVAGE SUDAN 



be met with on desert jebels a day or two's camelry 

 beyond the mine (Um Nabardi) in particular, at Jebel 

 Raffit 



The whole course of the track is punctuated by bones 

 that protrude from the devouring sand : great big bones 

 not all camel-bones lie here in scattered units, else- 

 where in piles, marking where some caravan has 

 perished in mass. Eloquent these in their silence, 

 bespeaking the murderous mission of the desert. 



At salient angles, fences flank the line to save it from 

 being swallowed up bodily by engulfing sandstorms ; as, 

 on North- British lines, similar safeguards are provided to 

 hold back the driving snow. 



It was here that, in 1898, Kitchener drove through his 

 desert-railway pushed it forward complete at the rate 

 of a mile a day 



" O'er sandy deserts, scorched and dun 

 Stretched boundless 'neath a fiery sun " 



to the reconquest of the Sudan. Thirteen years earlier 

 (in 1885) the foredoomed Gordon-relief Expedition or 

 its "desert-column" had traversed the desert afoot, only 

 to reach Khartoum too late ; its gallant efforts and yet 

 more gallant lives sacrificed to vacillation at home. 



How easy to-day is the transit ; between dawn and 

 dusk a corridor-carriage on a tropical train de luxe conveys 

 you across this Gehenna, which but a score of years 

 ago demanded weeks of labour, resolution, and suffering 

 to traverse. The least imaginative mind must perforce 

 try to recall those scenes the slow plodding trek, trek, 

 trek, man and beast day after day sweltering ankle-deep 

 under a tropic sun that blistered, the furnace-like rays 

 from above reflected and intensified by the molten sands 

 below ; the agonies of thirst, of parched lips and torrid 

 tongue; of aching eyes pelted by whirling "sand-devils" 

 that cut and sting like molten shot and actually chisel-out 

 the hard volcanic rock ; so the traveller struggled through 

 or sometimes ended short. 



