The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-05-23
THE NAVIGATING sOUDAN.
Three Times 1t Has Beaten Civiliza-
ton, but It's Time Has Come.

q. w. Stevens, in the London Mail.
To walk around Wady Balfa is to read
the lookout whence Egypt has strained
her vision up-Nile to the vast, silent, torrid
murderous desert land, which has been
her undoing, and is now to be her triumph
again: On us English, too, the Soudan
has played its fatal witchery, and half the
tale of Halfa is our own as well as Egypts.
On Its buildings and up and down its sandy,
Wlndy streets we may trace all the stages
OF OF the first conquest, the, loss, the bitter
failures to recover. the slow recommence-
ment, the presage of final victory.
You can get the whole tale into a walk
white building; it is the Egyptian military
hospital, and one of the largest, solidest
structures Of Halfa In shape and style,
station-and that is just what it was meant
to be. That was the northern terminus of
lsmail Pasha's great railway to Khartoum,
which was to have run up river to Don
COLA and Debbeh, and thence across the
Bayuda. by Gakdul and Abu Klea, to
M M The scheme fell short. like
stopped 1t, and paid for his unforesight
with his life, The railway never reached
Its fiftieth mile The upper part of it was
chopped the sleepers into firewood. and
twisted the telegraph wires to spear heads;
the part nearer Halfa lay half-derelict for
many years, till 1t was aroused at length
to play it's part in the later act of the trag-
edy of the Soudan.
central part of Halfa every street is also a
railway-you see a battered, broken -winded
engine. 1t was here in 1884. That is one of
the properties Of the second act-the nerve
less efforts to hold the Soudan when the
Mahdi began to rip 1t loose. / remember
thirteen and fourteen years ago being enor-
mously proud and joyful about Tan1ai and
Abu Klea. / was very young. Read over
the tale again now-the faltering and the
folly, and the failure-and you will feel that
If Egypt has Bakers Teb and Hicks's ruin
to wipe out, England was not so very far
from suffering precisely the same humilia-
tions. And in the end we failed with what
less we still remember, and gave the Sou
dan away. The second act is not a merry
one.
The third was less tragic. but it was per-
hapS even harder to play We pass by
mud-walled quadrangle which was once
the artillery barracks; through the gateway
you look across sand to the mud ramparts
of Halfa. That is the stamp OF the days of
reorganization, or retrenchment, of difficult
ties and discouragements. and unconquer-
able undlsappointed work. Those were
the days when the Egyptian army was in
the making. when Halfa was the frontier
fortress. There are Old barracks all over
1t, where the full fighting force of Egypt
used TO sleep half awake The brown TANKS
or these nils beyond the rifle range. just a
couple OF miles or so desertward, have seen
dervlshes stealing UP in broad day, and in
soiently slashing and stabbing in the main
streetS or the bazaar Yet this time was not
all unayenged insult: the long years be-
tween 1893 and 1886 saw Gennis and Toski
smashed to pieces. Little by little Egypt
resolution.
And now we have come to the locomotive
sheds and the fitting shops. the boiler
houses. ana the storerooms; we are pack