A Sudan Picture.

Hokitika Guardian, 9 April 1921, Page 4

A Sudan Picture.

SUDAN. A few singular black goats scamper away, but they are not.much alarmed, for they know the queer cream-coloured train does no harm in spite of its whistling and fuss. A few white-clad figures run to the station to greet their friends, and all is still as before.

Front my verandah I can discern few signs of life beyond the buzzing of a hornet and the occasional bray ol a donkev.

1 watch the little red-breasted sparrows which haunt the water jar stud the quick lizards that suddenly appear from nowhere and are gone like a streak of lightning. Beyotld the train and the little group of men and donkeys rise up great blue Hills of jagged outline, but everywhere else the scene is as fiat as a Dutch landscape.

Stunted, shapeless trees about the size of tin English hawthorn are dotted here and there, and great monstrous birds perch on them, then rise and spread great wings of white and black and plane gracefully away. Smaller birds, more blue than the blue bird that Maeterlinck dreamed, skim flashing in the sunlight, happiness incarnate.

Beyond the faded "waving corn” arc st:etches of red sand, and beyond that the sky, blue and white as an English May day. The air is soft, a faint breeze conies from the north over the long stretches of flat country. The train will pant slowly on. carrying my letters for England, which will presently be carried tip the brown waters of the Nile in a flat white steamheat, and by train and sea and train reach London.

In England there should be sneezing and shivering and much concern about thick clothes. Here there is (now) tin absolutely perfect climate, continued sunshine, and no strikes.

The servants sing at their work, tlie little girls go merrily to the well, the grain is: plentiful this year, and everyone seems pleased. The only exception 1 can think of is little Aysha from yonder straw beehive, and she is troubled because tlie thorns hurt her led and she does not possess any red shoes.

"Give me shoes, () lady! Give me shoes!”

When I bear her little crooning song again I shall ride to market and buy the dearest little flat tomato-coloured shoes you ever saw. and there will be no more complaining in our streets—unless it. be the plaint of the ringdoves.