RECENT GEOGRAPHIC ADVANCES 



397 



the German frontier. This section at- 

 tains its maximum altitude of 4,850 feet 

 near Bulawayo, having followed the 

 crest of the watershed from a point a 

 thousand miles to the south. From 

 Cairo the railway extends to Rahab, 13 0 

 8' north, on the White Nile, 200 miles 

 south of Khartum. With the Uganda 

 Railway extending 600 miles inland from 

 Mombasa, the east coast is well provided 

 with modern transportation. 



NORTH AND SOUTH NIGERIAS 



Perhaps English advances have been 

 proportionately greater in the Nigerias 

 than elsewhere, their 13 millions of na- 

 tives affording a broad field. They ac- 

 cept transition well, in general, and have 

 been largely utilized in railway and other 

 construction work. The road from Bo- 

 ero, the navigable head of the Niger, 

 to Zungeru and Zaira, is under extension 

 to Kano. Steamboats on the Niger, well- 

 kept roads, 4,000 miles of telegraph and 

 telephone lines are transforming this part 

 of central Africa. Technical schools and 

 church missions are doing their part in 

 modifying the habits of the people. 



H Y DRO LO G l C A L, SURVEYS IN EGYPT 



Important as have been the financial 

 reforms and advantageous as are the 

 transportation facilities afforded by Brit- 

 ish rule in Egypt, they yield in perma- 

 nent value to the assured benefits of the 

 surveys for conserving and extending 

 the water supply of the watershed of the 

 Nile. The regimen of the Blue and the 

 White Nile has been thoroughly studied 

 and the hydrological conditions accu- 

 rately determined. As supplementary to 

 the conservative methods now in opera- 

 tion, the accumulated data indicate that 

 Egypt must turn to the annexed Sudan, 

 with its millions of square miles of con- 

 tributory watershed, for additional sup- 

 plies. As is known, the great Assuan 

 dam insures timely water supplies for 

 the midsummer crops of lower Egypt, 

 and its increased height has enlarged the 

 irrigated sections by an area larger than 

 that of the State of Rhode Island. An 

 added regulating dam at Esna, upper 



Egypt, brings under cultivation waste 

 land equal in area to Connecticut. The 

 solution of the sudd (compact vegeta- 

 tion masses choking the river channels) 

 problem in southern Sudan will largely 

 increase the water from the equatorial 

 lakes. 



Captain Lyons, in Egypt, and Colonel 

 Taylor, and successors, in the Sudan, 

 have run a practically unbroken line of 

 levels from the Mediterranean to Lake 

 Victoria, 3,500 miles. Sudan surveys 

 show the whole region on a scale of 

 1 : 250,000 with a fair accuracy. 



KHARTUM AND THE SUDAN 



Signs of changed conditions are no- 

 where more strikingly evident in the 

 Sudan than in the transformation of the 

 place of Gordon's murder. The collec- 

 tion of wretched huts, under dominion 

 of a religious fanatic, has given way to 

 a modern city, the center of peaceful 

 justice, religious tolerance, thriving trade, 

 and technical education. A city of 40,- 

 000, Khartum is the seat of government, 

 a center of Coptic Christianity, is within 

 nine days of London, and in touch with 

 the world by railway, telegraph, and 

 steamer. The demoralizing slave trade 

 has forever vanished, peaceful trade con- 

 ditions exist, and the environs, the most 

 densely inhabited parts of the Sudan, are 

 becoming prosperous through advanced 

 opportunities and improvements in ag- 

 riculture. 



Its most distinctive advance was the 

 establishment of Gordon Memorial Col- 

 lege, the recognized center of modern 

 education and scientific research for two 

 millions of natives. It trains native 

 youth for teaching or for the law, teaches 

 the arts of surveying or engineering, and 

 opens up a new world to the ambitious 

 natives. American interest attaches to 

 this college, owing to the endowment of 

 its research laboratories by one of our 

 well-known generous citizens, Henry S. 

 Wellcome. Through the laboratories, 

 pathological and economic researches 

 have been made along the Nile and its 

 tributaries for a thousand miles to the 

 south of Khartum. 



