ALONG THE NILE, THROUGH EGYPT AND THE SUDAN 



383 



Photograph by A. W. Cutler 



THE STREETS OF" CAIRO 



Few cities so combine the ancient and the modern as does Cairo. From the terrace of the 

 tourist hotel to the Suk of the sandal merchants is a stride of centuries. The donkey has a 

 load of clover fodder, and the camel is acting as taxi for two, with excess baggage. 



a floating bridge at Kantara. And the 

 Cape-to-Cairo line is nearly finished, too. 

 How easy, even now, to visualize a Cape- 

 Cairo-Calcutta route, with through trains 

 via Mecca, the Persian littoral, and 

 northern India, tying up at Basra with 

 a Bagdad-i\ntwerp road, and at Bushire 

 with a future Persian-Russian trunk line ! 

 (See Map of Africa, issued as a supple- 

 ment with this number of The Geo- 

 graphic ) 



An old, old prophecy was fulfilled, 

 the Arabs say, when "The Nile came to 

 Jerusalem" — that is, when Allenby's ad- 

 vancing army laid a pipe line as it 

 marched, bringing fresh Nile water with 

 it across the Arabian Desert to Pales- 

 tine. * An amazing accomplishment, cer- 

 tainly, yet quite in keeping with the bold, 

 far-flung sweep of the Cross over this 

 region where so long the shadow of the 

 Crescent has lain. 



In this far - reaching economic up- 

 heaval, white men of various creeds are 

 swarming in to rejuvenate these long- 



* See "An Old Jewel in the Proper Setting," 

 in the National Geographic Magazine for 

 October, 1918. 



abandoned, Biblical regions. British sol- 

 diers are in Bagdad now, and Christian 

 armies have cut and recut the old trails 

 of Genghis Khan, Xerxes, Darius, Marco 

 Polo, and Alexander the Great, and from 

 Cairo to the Cape, 5,000 miles, a Boer 

 flying-man has driven his plane, swooping 

 above reeking jungles where Stanley 

 searched for Livingstone. 



Geographically, Egypt comprises all 

 the land between the Red Sea and the 

 Sahara, and runs from the Mediterra- 

 nean south to the Nubian border, includ- 

 ing the Sinai Peninsula ; in fact, it is 

 about as big as Arizona and, Texas com- 

 bined. But, except for about 12,000 

 square miles along the Nile banks and 

 in the Delta (or a region about equal to 

 Connecticut and Massachusetts), Egypt 

 is practically a desert. 



Its people, including fellaheen (native 

 peasants ) , Copts, Arabs, Greeks, Syrians, 

 Turks, Persians, and Europeans, number 

 over twelve millions. 



Quickly told, the story of modern 

 Egypt is that Napoleon invaded it in 

 1798; then the Albanian adventurer, 



