THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, MARCH 20, 1906.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7999, 20 March 1906, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, MARCH 20, 1906.

It only seems the other day that the world was looking on at the tragio drqma that was being enacted in the heart of Soudan. . Yet twenty-one years have gone by sinoe UorJou met his death at the olose of the heroio def ( enoe of Khartoum. Now one oan travel from the Bed Sea to the Ivfll© by rai'way, this new route to Khartoum being 909 miles, shorter than the old Nile route. The idea of a railway from the Red Se* to the Nile is no new conception. It floated for a moment through the restless head of Ismail Pasha. But it will he more generally remembered as an alternative route, discussed but not adopted, for the prosecution of the British campaigns in the Soudan. Its possibilities were thus oanvasßed at the time of Lord Wolseley's reliaf expedition, but Lord Wolseley chose to adhere to an advauceup the Nile.

The plan of action then vesolved on was for the expedition to work its way up tbe river, grappling with the difficulties of the cataracts aa it best could; while from ' Korti the camel corps, under Sir Herbert Stewart, was detached to make straight across tbe desert for Motammeb, whence tbe late Sir Charles Wilson, who succeeded Sir Herbert after his lamented death, made tbe last dash by steamer for Khartoum. Whether the railway plan would havo been feasible in the circumstances of 1384-85, and whether, if bo, it would have had a more successful result than actually happened, is one of the unsolved problems of history. Many competent' judges thought that it would. When later on the time came for LordKitcbeuer to make his decisive advance on Khartoum, the question of routes again came forward for discussion. Berber, like Metammeh, was a strategic point, likely to be firmly held against ns by the Dervishes. A Suakiu-Berber line would have involved throwing out the railway towards a point in tbe enemy's hands, and across desert where it would not have been very difficult for him to cut communications. The route chosen \vas, therefore, from Wady Haifa to Abu Hammed, at the northern angle of the great bend made by the Nile. Thence the Railway had to be carried on to the confluence of tbe Nile and tbe Atbara, since it was found that oven above Abu Hammed cataracts we r e not entirely disposed of. When this was done the Soudan lay open for conquest, and the long labours of organisation and engineering were triumphantly requited. It is with this point, in many respects the key to the Soudan, that the new Red Sea line is linked. Its construction has been carried on under all sorts of difficulties, many of them being of a disheartening kind. In the autumn [ and winter the rains oome down in a deluge, and have continually swept the unfinished works away. Torrid summer heat has tried the endurance of th e European personnel to the utmost. The native labour available was very far from effective, and almost all the new material had to be brought over-sea from England or elsewhere. In these circumstances it says much for the energy cf Lieutenant Colonel Macauley, the director of the railways, and his subordinates that this, desert railway, 312 miles long, has been completed in less than sixteen months.