Cairo to Kisumu

After the intensely hot and dust-filled six-hundred-mile journey across the desert from Wady Halfa it is good to be here amid the palm gardens and the lime trees of Khartum. I am in the flourishing capital of the Sudan, once, and not so long ago at that, the centre of an exceedingly prosperous slave trade and later the scene of the massacre of General Gordon and of Kitchener’s fierce fights with the Mohammedan fanatics.

Khartum lies at the junction of two of the chief rivers of North Africa, giving it navigable highways to Abyssinia and to the rich lands along the watershed of the Belgian Congo. It has railroads connecting it with the Mediterranean, and with the exception of one stretch of less than six hundred miles, where the cataracts are, it has the main stream of the Nile to give it cheap freight rates to Europe. It has opened a railroad to Suakim, on the Red Sea, and in time it will undoubtedly be one of the great stations on the principal route by steamer and rail from Cairo to the Cape.

I called upon the Governor of Khartum this afternoon and asked him to tell me the story of the city. Said he: “The buildings which you see here are all new, but the town is older than some of the mushroom cities of the United States. It was born before Chicago, being founded by Mehemet Ali a century ago. It grew remarkably fast, so that at ten years of age it was made the seat of the government of the Sudan and became an important commercial centre. It was here that Gordon made his effort to break up the slave trade and here that he was killed. He was butchered on the steps of a building on the site of the present Governor-General’s palace. Then the Mahdist leader declared that Khartum should be wiped out. He destroyed all the houses and made the inhabitants come to his new capital, Omdurman, which he had laid out on the other side of the White Nile about five miles to the south. When the people left they tore off the roofs and pulled out the doors of their houses and carried them along to use in their new houses at Omdurman.

“After that, for years, and until Kitchener came, Khartum was nothing but a brick pile and a dust heap. Omdurman had swallowed up not only its whole population, but that of a great part of the Sudan; for the Khalifa forced the tribes to come there to live, in order that he might have their men ready for his army in times of war. The result was that Omdurman had more than a half million inhabitants while Khartum had none.

“Then we had the war with the Khalifa, whom we finally conquered,” the Governor continued. “After we had reduced the greater part of Omdurman to ruins, we began planning the building of a great city. The idea at first was to force the people to move from Omdurman to Khartum, but it was finally decided that it would be far better to have a native city there, and to make this place the government and foreign centre, with a manufacturing and commercial town at Halfaya, or Khartum, North, on the northern bank of the Blue Nile.

“The Khartum of to-day was laid out after somewhat the same plan as your capital at Washington; at least the reasons that determined the plans were the same. As I recall it, Washington was plotted at about the time of the French Revolution by a French engineer. Major L’Enfant laid out the city so that it could be easily defended in case of a rebellion and at the same time be beautiful. For that reason the streets were made to cut one another at right angles with avenues running diagonally through them, forming squares and circles, where one cannon could command many streets. Lord Kitchener had the same idea as to Khartum. He directed his architects to make the streets wide, with several large squares, and to have the whole so arranged that guns placed at the chief crossings could command the whole city. The result is Khartum as you now see it.

“The town is laid out in three great sections, and all building plans must be submitted to the government architects before permits of construction can be issued. The section along the Nile is devoted to the government buildings and the residences of the officials and others who can afford good houses. Back of that there are streets where less pretentious houses may be built, while farther back still and more to the south is a third section of houses for natives. The town is so planned that it can grow along these lines, and we believe it will some day be one of the largest and most beautiful of the cities of interior Africa.”

I have now been in Khartum over a week and find it most interesting. In coming to it, I rode for hours and hours through the sands and rocks of Nubia, and it was not until I was within a few miles of Halfaya that I saw signs of vegetation. The train then entered a region of thorn bushes ten or fifteen feet high; farther on patches of grass bleached by the sun were to be seen, and closer still other evidences of cultivation. The Arabs were digging out the thorn bushes on the edge of the desert and stacking them up in piles for fuel. There were a few animals grazing on the scanty grass.

Out of such dull and cheerless desert surroundings rises a city of green. All along the river, for a distance of more than two miles, runs a wide avenue shaded by trees and backed by buildings and private houses in beautiful gardens. From one end of it to the other this avenue is a succession of parks. It begins with the botanical and zoölogical gardens, where all the trees of the tropical and sub-tropical regions grow luxuriantly and where one may see the soap tree, the monkey-bread tree, and other curious examples of Sudanese flora. There are several lions and tigers in the garden, and there is also a mighty giraffe which I photographed this afternoon as he was taking a bite out of a branch at the height of a two-story house.

Next to the zoölogical garden is the Grand Hotel, a long, bungalow-shaped structure shaded by date palms, while beyond are the two-story homes of many officials, all well shaded. The first public building on this avenue is the post and telegraph office. Beyond it are the offices of the Military Bureaus with public gardens behind them. Directly on the river and in front of a wonderful garden is the great white palace in which the Governor-General of the Sudan lives and has his offices. Farther along the avenue are the Sudan Club and the hospital. Away at the south rise the large buildings of the Gordon Memorial College, with the British barracks at the end of the street. On the edge of the river are the inevitable sakiehs raising the water to the tune of their monotonous creakings. They start at seven o’clock every morning. Their wheels are never greased and as they move they screech and groan and sigh. There is one in front of the Grand Hotel which serves as my alarm clock, for sleep is murdered at the moment it begins.

In Khedive Avenue, which runs parallel with the embankment, is a statue by E. Onslow Ford, of General Gordon on an Indian camel. So far as I know this is the world’s only camelestrian statue. It is a work of fine art and full of the spirit of the famous hero it represents.

The business parts of Khartum are on the streets back from the river. There is one great square devoted to the markets. This must cover ten or more acres, and the Abbas Square, a little farther west, in which the mosque stands, is fully twice as large. The business section has two banks and a large number of stores managed chiefly by Greeks. There are more Greeks here than any other foreigners, and next to them come the Italians, some of whom have important establishments. One of the biggest of all is the house of Angelo Capato, a man who might be called the Marshall Field of the Sudan, for he has a large business here, with branches all over the country and desert stores far up the Nile. The stores have covered porches in front of them or they face arcades which keep off the sun.

The mosque of Khartum is one of the most beautiful buildings in Africa. It is a great two-story structure of white stone with minarets rising high above it. The galleries of the minarets have a lacework of stone around them and the towers are covered with Arabic carvings. The building is named after Khedive Abbas Hilmi who, I am told, furnished much of the money for its erection.

Khartum has also a big Coptic church as well as one built by the Church of England and the schools and chapels of the United Presbyterian Mission of our country. So, you see, notwithstanding its position on this far-away part of the globe, it has abundant religious facilities.

I have been interested in watching the women doing construction work here in Khartum. Wherever new houses and business blocks are going up, the masons and mechanics have their women helpers. The labourers come from all parts of the Sudan, so that the women of a half-dozen tribes may be working on the same building. The wages are far beyond those of the past, and, although they are still but a few cents a day, here in Central Africa they mean riches.

These women labourers are strapping black girls, straight and plump, and so lightly dressed that one can see all the outlines of their forms. Some have but a thin sheet of blue cotton wrapped loosely around the shoulders with another wound about the waist so that it falls to the feet. The upper garment is off half the time, leaving the girl bare to the waist. Her plump bust shows out in the bright sun as she raises her arms high to steady the load on her head. These African natives, both men and women, pull out all the hair on their bodies, going over them once a month for this purpose. This custom is common in many parts of the world. It is done among some of the Indians of the Amazon, among the Jewesses of Tunis, who are shaved from head to foot just before marriage, and among the Moros of our Philippine Islands, who carry along little tweezers to jerk out the hairs.

The wages these women receive are pitifully low. Ten or fifteen cents a day is big money for a woman, while even a man can be hired for twenty cents or less. For such sums the women unload the stone boats on the Nile, wading out into the river and coming back up the banks with two or three great rocks piled high on their heads. They carry sand in baskets, and spread it over the stones on the highways, and sit down on the roadsides and break stones for macadamizing. They carry the mortar up the scaffolding to the masons, and quite an army of them is employed in bringing water in five-gallon kerosene oil cans from the Nile. Some of the streets are sprinkled with this water, and many of the gardens of Khartum are kept moist in this way. At the Grand Hotel we have a half-dozen women who carry water all day long to irrigate the garden. Some of the girls are tall. To-day I had a photograph taken of myself standing beside one who overtopped me some inches. She objected to my having her picture, and as she was a husky young negress it was for a time undecided whether I should succeed.

I have asked some questions here as to labour. The builders tell me it is almost impossible to get what they want, and that the more wages they pay the greater the danger of a labour famine. The trouble is that the natives will not work if they have money, and when wages are high they work so much the less. All they need is their food, and a family can live on five cents and less per day. The food consists chiefly of boiled dura or sorghum meal and the drink is a native beer which costs almost nothing. A man can get a suit of clothes for a dollar, while a woman can be outfitted for less. When food is cheap, the prices of labour rise, and when it is dear, they fall. The native reasons that he ought to be paid more for his work when the food prices are low, for in such a case he can easily get food ahead, and why should he work at the ordinary wage when he has all he wants? When the food goes up the labourers need the work to pay for it and their competition brings wages down.