Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1885-03-27
THE CITY OF KHARTOUM.
DESCRIPTION OF THE PLACE wEHRH
GORDON FELL.
Che Picturesque City on the Milo
Its Streets and Surroundings
Fa.nI Desert Winds.

che Picturesque City on the Milo
Its Streets and SurrOundiIigs-
FataI Desert Winds.
Khartoum is no exception to the ruin
Gus aspect that marks all Arab towns
when seen from distance. 1t needs all
the picturesqueness of the graceful palms
that rise above it in every direction, the
white-sailed boats that fit along its
shores like butterflies, the noble sweep
of the Blue Nile on one side and the
White Nile on the other, the rich blue
sky and dazzling sunlight, to counteract
the depressing effect of this mass of fiat
rooted, Witty gray, tomb-like houses
amid the dim, boundless emptiness of
the eternal desert, along the horizon of
which quivers film of intense heat like
the Teek from a furnace mouth. During
the wet season the narrow, crooked,
filthy streets are mere ponds, breathing
stencil and fever. Many of the "houses"
are circular mud burrows topped with
pointed .thatch of corn stalks, while the
high, blank walls encircling the count
Jess gardens enhance indescribably the
dreary effect.
! About 10S miles north of Khartoum,
and almost midway to Berber, lies the
Fortified village of Ell Metemneh, con-
hected with Shendy, on the opposite
bank, by clumsy native ferry-boat, on
which an Arab stands upright with a
strip of canvas held outstretched above
his head to do duty for mast and sail,
two others holding this living mast firm,
and fourth steering. Shendy has never
recovered its destruction by Nlehemet
Ali's son-in-law in 1921, and the sole
token of its former greatness is the huge
crumbling fort overlooking the river, the
present "town" being cluster of low
novels two miles distant, grouped around
wide, bare market-place.
In the hollow between the Upper Nile
and its great westward bend beyond Abu-
Hamed lies the Bayuda Desert, across
which the British marched to Metemneh
(via Abu-Klea) from Korti, General
Wolseley's present headquarters. The
latter place, overhanging the Nile from
steep bank shaded by clustering trees,
is pleasant enough, despite the perilous
shoals around its landing place. The
now memorable hating place of Jebel-
Gakdul lies little to the north of Abu-
| Klea.
But here, as everywhere else in the
Eoudan, the life-giving stream is power
less to nourish anything beyond the spot
on which it flows. TIE waters of the
Nile itself are frequently sprnkled with
the powdery sand of the mighty deserts
which have pushed their borders to
within less than mile of its edge. So,
too, with the oasis of GaIdul, or of Abu-
EZlea. Before tho refreshing drops have
dried upon your beard you are once more
amid the hot, brassy glaze and the dead,
crushing silence of 1.-The land where
all things are forgotten" Waves Of
burning rock or lifeless sand, wearying
your aching eyes with their grim same
ness, surge up one beyond another into
the dim horizon, while the bleaching
! bones of skeleton start from the drift
ing sands at your feet in gloomy warning
of what your own fate may soon be.
Here it is that the fatal kamsin," Cr
hot wind of the desert, which ill-fated
! British troops are now encountering a
full week before its wonted time, blows
in all its fury. In the old Arabian
legends one often finds caliph or pasha
mpatiently exclaiming at the close of a
long winded story, "By Allah thy talk
ing is worse than the hot blast of the
wildernessm No one can fully appreei-
ate this rough hewn sarcasm who has
not been in Arabia or the Nile valley in
the earlier weeks of March. Everything
looks suddenly dim and blurred, as if
seen through wet pane of glass, and all
at once you feel gust of sitting, prick
ly heat and quaIm of overwhelming
nausea. Your eyes smart and burn, your
temple veins throb as if they would
burst, your skin seems one vast pincush-
ion filled with red hot needles, and in
another moment you are staggering as if
stunned by heavy blow, and cropping
blindIy for any support that you can find,
to the utter refutation of the polite Ital-
ian proberb that nothing can face the
sirocco except 'un porco ed un Inglese "a
hog or an Elglishman). Woe to any sick
or wounded European who meets its de-
,stroying blast in mid desert !-DdUid
Her, in Harpers Weekly