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north to Port Sûdân. The harbour at Port Sûdân is to have a rolling-lift bridge, with a waterway 400 feet wide; it will provide for two sets of railway track, and accommodate foot and vehicular traffic. The bridge machinery will be worked by two electric motors of 50 h.p., and the time occupied in either opening or closing the bridge will be 40 seconds. It will be the second largest rolling bridge in the world.

From Sawâkin the line runs north, and then ascends a very hilly plateau about 3,000 feet high, which runs parallel to the coast. It then strikes in a south-westerly direction across the desert to the Atbara, which it reaches about 20 miles from the junction of that river with the Nile. From this point it follows the course of the Atbara until it reaches the Wâdî Halfa-Khartûm line, about a mile north of the iron bridge (Atbara Junction). The total length of the line is 331 miles, and there are 25 miles of sidings; the line was laid on the telescopic system. The steepest gradient is 1 in 100, and the sharpest curve 5 degrees. The cost of the line was £E. 1,375,000, or about £E.4,150 per mile of main line. Work was begun at both ends simultaneously, that at Atbara being under the direction of Major E. C. Midwinter, D.S.O., R.E. At the Sawâkin end much blasting of rock had to be done, and the wash-outs which took place in the hills here were heart-breaking. Drinking water had to be distilled from sea-water, every ton of which was carried in tanks into the desert. Scarcity of labour was another difficult matter. Colonel Macauley hired numbers of Arabs from the neighbourhood of Sawâkin, and set them to work, but these men preferred brigandage or robbery to manual labour, and as they could not be induced to do the earth work of the line they had to be sent away. A few Abyssinians were employed in bridging, but the bulk of the work on the line was done by the Nubians of the Nile Valley, and the fellahîn from Egypt. The

Egyptian cannot be surpassed as a labourer. Systematic work on the line began in October, 1904, and on October 15th, 1905, the first train from Halfa entered Sawâkin. A few weeks later the state of the permanent way made it possible to run through trains at regular intervals, and from January 1st, 1906, a bi-weekly service of trains was established. The line, it is true, passes through a desert, from

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which little traffic is to be expected, but it is important to remember that it will tap all the fertile districts of the Sûdân. The produce of the Dongola Province will be brought to the main Halfa-Khartûm line by the branch which runs from Karêma, near Gebel Barkal, to No. 10 station in the Abû Ḥamed Desert, and it will find its outlet at Sawâkin via Atbara. From the south will come the gum, cotton, and cereals of Dâr Fûr, from the east the

products of the Blue Nile and Kasala Provinces, and when the lines from Al-Obêḍ to Duwêm on the White Nile, and from Kasala to some point on the new Red Sea line, have been made, the Sûdân will become self-supporting. The Red Sea Railway will take no trade from Egypt because, practically speaking, there is none to take; on the other hand it will create a trade, which but for this railway could never come into being. Already the price of coal at Khartûm has been reduced from £4 10s. to £2 10s., and coals are now cheaper than wood! Steel girders are now £7 per ton instead of £10 as formerly, and cement now costs £4 per ton instead of £7. Formerly farmers sold their dhurra at Khartûm for 5s. or 6s. per ardeb, but now it can be transported to the Red Sea for 3s. per ardeb, and sold at Red Sea ports at 20s. per ardeb. The new railway has brought Kharţûm nearer to the sea by 900 miles! It was formally opened by Lord Cromer on January 27th, 1906, at Port Sûdân. Among those who carried out the work the official account of the opening mentions Mr. Bakewell, Lieut. W. B. Drury, R.N., El-Mirali Mahmud Bey Kheirallah, Ali Effendi Shauki, Hussein Effendi Yusri, Hassanain Effendi Rifat, Mohammed Effendi Ali, Mohammed Effendi Fadil, Ibrahim Effendi Es-Sayyid, and the following Officers and Civilian Engineers :-Colonel G. B. Macauley, R.E., Capt. E. C. Midwinter, R.E., Capt. W. E. Longfield, R.E., Capt. M. E. Sowerby, R. E.; Lieut. S. F. Newcombe, R.E., Lieut. P. C. Lord, R.E., Hon. A. Pelham, Mr. C. E. Hickley, Mr. R. W. Windham, Mr. J. C. Hodgson, Mr. G. B. Macpherson Grant, Mr. H. V. Hawkins. In his speech Lord Cromer pointed out that the serious development of the Sûdân began from that day. So long as the country was separated from the rest of the world by a waste of burning desert, and so long as communication could only be kept up by a line of railway and river steamers over a distance of 1,200 miles, that being the distance from

the mouth of the Atbara to Alexandria, any very rapid progress was out of the question. Port Sûdân and the railway are open on equal terms to the trade of all the world. There are no differential rates or duties to favour the trade of any one nation.

The following are the stations on the line:

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The fare from Atbara Junction to Sawâkin is 307 piastres,

first class.

The river Atbara, or Mukrân, the Astaboras of Strabo, which flows into the Nile on the east bank, is at this point about 450 yards wide, and in the rainy season has a depth of water in it which varies from 25 to 30 feet. It brings down the entire drainage of Eastern Abyssinia, and has four tributaries, the Setit, Royân, Salâm and Ankareb rivers; it carries into the Nile more soil than any other of the Nile tributaries, and the dark brown colour of its waters has gained for it the name of Bahr al-Aswad or "Black River." For more than 150 miles before its junction with the Nile its hed is perfectly dry from the beginning of March to June, and the late Sir Samuel Baker says that "at intervals of a few miles there are pools or ponds of water left in the deep holes below the general average of the river's bed. In these pools, some of which may be a mile in length, are congregated. . . . crocodiles, hippopotami, fish, and large turtle in extraordinary numbers, until the commencement of the rains in Abyssinia once more sets them at liberty by sending down a fresh volume of water." The rainy season begins in Abyssinia in May, but the torrents do not fill until the middle of June. From June to September the storms are terrific, and every ravine becomes a raging torrent, and the Atbara becomes a vast river. "Its waters are dense with soil washed down from most fertile lands far from its point of junction with the Nile; masses of bamboo and driftwood, together with large trees and frequently the dead bodies of elephants and buffaloes, are hurled along its muddy waters in wild confusion." The rains cease about the middle of September, and in a very short time the bed of the Atbara becomes a "sheet of glaring sand," and the waters of its great tributaries, though perennial streams, are absorbed in its bed and never reach the Nile. The velocity of the Atbara current is so great, and its waters so dense, that in flood it forces the water of the Nile across on to the western bank. The railway is

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