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The National Geographic Magazine 



than both the other two, from Khartum 

 nearly 600 miles to Lake No, the junction 

 of the Bahr-el-Ghazal and Bahr-el-Jebel, 

 is the arable and pastoral land, the home 

 of the Shillook ; then come 300 miles of 

 swamps and sudd, and beyond is the solid 

 earth again, the real tropical jungle, the 

 haunt of the Dinkas, elephants and lions, 

 until between vertical banks the voyage 

 comes to an end under the bluffs of 

 Gondokoro. Of course, in this thousand 

 miles there's a good deal to see, and 

 ample time is allowed in which to see it. 

 To the first stop, for example, El Duem, 

 is no miles, and the running time is 31 

 hours. 



All the way to El Duem the Nile 

 broadens out into a series of lakes much 



Girls at Omdurman 



more expansive than below Omdurman, 

 dangerously shoal in some places, and oc- 

 casionally showing low islands, not more 

 than a foot or two above water at their 

 highest point, which are eagerly seized on 

 and subjected to cultivation by these 

 riverain Arabs, who seem possessed with 

 a genuine and chronic "land hunger." 



For the first hundred miles the desert 

 on either side and the high profile of 

 mountain ranges beyond, as on the Egyp- 

 tian Nile, is plainly visible, the fore- 

 ground being filled, wherever a foothold 

 can be found, with green fields, solid with 

 dense bush vegetation, while the shadoofs 

 or swinging buckets, with which irriga- 

 tion is performed as it has been for thou- 



sands of years, are numerous, many be- 

 ing absolutely new and working for the 

 first season. 



El Duem (in English, "The Two 

 Camps") is a town with a good deal of 

 history already made, and, if signs do not 

 fail, likely to make a good deal more of 

 a better sort in the early future. Port of 

 Kordofan and its great gum trade, was 

 the Mahdi's base of operations more than 

 twenty years ago, when he set out on his 

 crusade which was to end at Mecca and 

 which devasted his own country, and 

 was the first rallying place of the 

 Khalifa, years later, after the rout and 

 panic of Kerreri. It has been selected 

 as the point where the new railroad from 

 Omdurman is to turn off to the westward 

 for El Obeid, the Kordofan capital, and 

 its position must insure to it the im- 

 portance which always belongs to towns 

 commanding both land and water trans- 

 portation. A stroll through the town 

 shows that it is much like others of the 

 Arabs. Low Nile-mud one-story houses 

 line the narrow streets, which, however, 

 boast a few kerosene lamps and wooden 

 lamp posts at the prominent corners, and 

 further evidence of modern improve- 

 ments is given by the policeman who, 

 laying vigorously about himself with a 

 whip, charges a crowd of a hundred rag- 

 ged and dirty urchins crowding around 

 the English ladies and blocking their way 

 so that progress is almost impossible. In 

 the main street, sitting on the ground, 

 a young Arab operates an American 

 sewing machine ; empty Standard Oil 

 cans, now used instead of water jars, and 

 a cheap iron safe or two are all evidence 

 that even in this remote and interior point 

 something of the great outside world has 

 begun to filter. 



By the third day the Nile begins very 

 sensibly to narrow and the character of 

 the country to change. Cultivated fields 

 disappear, the mud villages grow fewer 

 and far between, and the verge of the 

 boundless, illimitable forest is seen to be 

 not far away. From the deck of the 

 steamer, what is called the forest looks 

 more like a vast orchard of civilized trees 



