Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1907-01-09
M61E$5& M&tE 501f5 aR w. q 81 - II

SAAS O~OSNA ~ am VI 6AOOO CAOCtOA C1AO
tourist, the upper reaches of the Nile
offer great inducements. Leaving
Cairo by train, one starts from
what will one day be the northern ter
minus of the great Cape to Cairo"
railway, and travels steadily south
wards over the desert for two days.
Then a change is made to a Nile
steamer, which southwark, ever
southwark, slowly FORCES it's way
against the current Of that mighty
river whose history goes back to such
remote impenetrable ages of antiquity
In another two days Wady Halfa is
reached, and thence a light military
railway bears the weary and DISNEY
e1ed traveller at length to Khartoum.
Over 20 years have passed since Cor
don't magnificent defense of the city
against the Mahdi's hordes and his
tragic fate at the hands of the Der.
wishes, thrilled all England to it's
depths. For the following IA years
the town was practically an abandon
ed ruin, the khalHa holding his court
at Omdurman, on the other side of the
river. Then, with the reconQuest of
the Soudan by Lord Kitchener, in
1898, everything was changed, and
Khartoum arose proudly from it's ruins
to be once more the capital of that
vast desert empire whose resources
are as yet hardly realized and are alb
solutely undeveloped. The old palace,
where the great general met his death,
was merely ruined shell, haunted,
as the superstitious natives averred
by his uneasy spirit, so it was decided
to erect a new palace wherein the sir
dar and his retinue might be fittingly
housed. On the site of the former
building arose the Gordon college,
really fine educational institution.
Since then have risen in rapid success
sion a military hospital, an English
church and a hotel, with lines of bar
racks and officers quarters, dominat-
ing the quaint huts and low narrow
city,
In the summer months it is said of
Khartoum by those who have the mis-
fortune to remain there that, had
Dante visited it he would. have added
another canto to his Inferno" only
the opinion is generally expressed in
language more terse than polite. The
thermometer stands at 1872 degrees
In the shade, and the pitiless sun
blazes down on the hot glazing desert,
varied by periodical sandstorms, when
the wind whirls down on the unhappy
place with terrific violence, burying
everybody and everything under a
layer of choking sand In addition. all
the myriad descendants of that swarm
Of flies who constituted the fourth
plague of Egypt lead one to fervently
sympathize with the unfortunate SUBJ
jects of King Pharaoh.
But with the month of October a
change comes DER the scene. The
mercury gradually falls until it
reaches 85 degrees or so, a freshness
creeps into the dry bracing atmos-
phere, the nights become cooler and
more restful, and the season is at
hand. Those lady members of the
English colony who have betaken
themselves to Cairo, Alexandria, or
even England, return, like birds to
their nests, for the feminine element
during the hot weather consists solely
of the missionaries and a couple of
enforcedly stoical army medical Sis
tiers. The quaint curiosity shops in
the bazaar furnish up their goods, the
English church holds on Sunday a
fair-sized and smartly-dressed congre-
cation, the hotel shows signs of life.
and finally, with a grand flourish of
trumpets the Sirdar and Lady Win
gate arrive, take up their abode in the
palace, and another season has begun.