The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-06-14

|
 Dean, of New York were the sensation The noted contralto showed her Joy at
 speedily journey to the Bayreuth Wag1 1 leading nart
 
 base of scared hills, without a leaf, Sf patch of green, the twinkle of moy$ tain torrent ah-
 Great Work in Railroad Bxe,a;u Through this ruined wil1~uInS the heat of tropical .s1ls ness, 5si III ards men made thdssl.a lniiel Siiou racine mace onsfked down the rails at inc wa1 fo,, tff gang ahead preparing Between tl,l@Fthe next as it came along. Decemh s.f le fiery May and that fierce ant of 1T the young Canadian lieuten- and ~ engineers got the road begun n,,S flnished-never less than a mile of l' ails laid in a day, sometimes three miles. Often as you have read of that wonderful achievement, 1t is not till ,you are looking from the windows of
 the desert train that you comprehend 1 its full meaning
 "The glare of the level yellow plain lmakes your eyes ache; you are glad when a mirage comes to rest them, so | that the jagged rocks on the horizon seem floating in sheets of cool white water and the fronds of delusive palms wave mocixingly on the horizon line And you may think of the men worlin g
 against time there in the open, not in
 the winter, but in July-think what the dust and the furious sun, and the burn ing sand, and even the cruel irony of the mirage, must have been to them. | At Abu Hamed, where the Nile is touched again and there are groves and
 fields, you slip comfortably into a we'll
 kept bath they have ready for you at
 the railway station, and with soap and 1 hot water wash off the desert dust and go back to your car, refreshed and clean. for breakfast
 Way Trodden to Save Gordon And then you glide past Berber, where roofless mud houses still tell of
 the ruin wrought by the dervishes be- fore we came to stay the devastation, over the great iron bridge across the
 Atbara and the branch line to the Red Sea coast which Girouards successors
 have built; along the river, past Shen- dy and Metemmeh and in sight of that
 other desert of the Nile bend which our men trod wearily In the fruitless ad- vance that came too late to save Cor don. The sun has set, and the pail of the tropical evening rests darkly on the land, as your journey ends at the
 railway station of Khartoum.
 Fifteen years ago, when 1t fell into the hands of the victors of Kerreri. Khartoum was heap of ruin and rub- Ibish Founded by Mehemet Ali in 1884, it had been town of some importance and pretension as the center of Egyp- tan rule in the Soudan. For that req son, as soon as Mohammed Ahmed. the Mahdi, got possession of the town he set about to destroy 1t utterly.
 'The public buildings were burned, the private dwellings, mostly of mud
 were dismantled, the inhabitants, or such of them as had escaped massacre, were commanded to transfer them
 selves to Omdurman, some three miles laway on the opposite bank of the Nile.
 Where Kitchener Found Ruins l This village became an immense hu- man warren, and. under the Khalifa, it was nearly the largest town, measured by population, in all Africa. Within sight of its fostering alleys Khartoum crumbled to death in the sun. When Kitchener entered it, on September 8, 1898, to hold the funeral services over IGordon and hoist the two flags on a wrecked battlement of Gordon's palace. it was lifeless and vacant. An entirely
 new city had to be created"
 And that new city has been created, as MT. Low goes on to tell:
 | Ut lies in the midst of a brown and yellow wilderness which we do wrong to call desert. since it needs but water
 to reclothe it with a garment of yer dure. The water is there In the two mighty rivers-the Blue Nile. blue with the SCOUT from the Abyssinian hills. and the White Nile, whitened by the flood from the lakes of the Equator that mingle their streams at this point. The water is there, but it is not easy. for political and other reasons, to filter 1t over this thirsty land.
 l ''The city of Khartoum, however, is lallowed to take it's toll, and it shows the result in a wealth of greenery. of bloom and foliage, and rustling branch, 1 which delight the tired senses after the glare and barrenness of the long, hot journey from the north. All along the river front and in the gardens behind 1t, and especially in those of the pal
 aces. the slender. willowy date palms bow their stately heads like tall youn g princessss, as If in acknowledgment of the nosegays of red and yellow blos- sons which the perkinsonia, the pon- settia, the mustard tree. the sisiban, the lfowerng thorn of the Soudan, and oth- CT lesser shrubs toss to their knees. ''The streets have been planned, as I
 have said. with a generous amplitude, and, though there are many vacant
 spaces in them still they give promise
 of becoming handsome boulevards with
 time. Enterprising Greeks and ventur-
 ous Italians have established thriving shops which give to the main thor oughfares busy mercantile appear
 ance. Behind these streets is the quar- ter of the natives, and 1t is a ma tive quarter cleaned, regulated and deodor- ized
 The houses are of mud or mud bricks, like those of Egypt but they are spaced out with a vigilant regard to sanitation and q conscientious, neg feet of their owners feelings on the l. accumulation and disposition of super fNQus dirt. In this part, the govern