KHARTOUM TO-DAY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10037, 6 May 1910, Page 7

KHARTOUM TO-DAY.

The visitor's first impression of the Anglo-Egyptian Soudun cannot fail to be a very pleasant une. The visitor sees from the river, as he steams up, along banks of shady trees,green and I grateful in the heat of the March sun, with here and there brilliant, blossoms gleaming, crimson, yellow, and mauve. Behind the trees can be caught glimpses of cool verandahed houses, lying back jn their gardens. About the middle glistens the palace ot the Governor-General, with the flags of Britain and Egypt floating from its roof. Out of the ruin 3 of Gordon's house this imposing emblem of British dominion has sprung. The houses of the European are scattered everywhere. A GLIMPSE INTO THE FUTURE. "Someday," they say these far> sightad Englishmen and Scotsmen and Irishmen, not forgetting Welshmen, "some day this vast country will, instead of being mostly desert, be covered with vheat fields and cotton fields. Work and water will turn the barren sand inta one of the great ' producing countries of tbe world. In that day Khartpum will no longer be the h c adplace of a province which is i still looked upon as the Cinderella of the British Empire and treated accordingly. "It will be the capital of a rich and powerful Dominion. Whether it will be fitted to play this impoitant partin the wurld-drama, and set an example to other capitals,cepends upon us," said these Britons, filled with a great hope and pride; and they mapped out the place accordingly. Even in the native town away back from the river there is order and design Psssing throught the vast open space of Abbos Square, which will in time rank as one of the finest in the world, you come to the markets, rows and rows of straw hut? with a man or a weman squatting in each, ready to chaffer interminably for the eggs or tomatoes or the chnkens or the green , stuff spread on the ground outside. For a complete contrast go over to Omdurman.

WHAT THE ENGLISH HAVE ACCOMPLISHED.

Eleven years ago it was death or captivity almost worse than death to any white man found in the Khalifa' 3

sphere of murder, robbery, and rape. To-day you step into a steam tramway car in Khartoum, which takes

y/>u tj a steam ferry; and from that again you board another car and are set down in the heart of this onceterrible Omdarman. Even in what is still a completely native rabbit warren of a city there are aiens of the tidying-tip process on every side. "Police Post" you see written up at frequent intervals. '"Government

School," "O.M.S. Dispensary," the placard of an English firu insurance office or a storehouse,the tall, spindleshanked, but eminently soldierly Soudanese sentries at the barracks, the numbered armlets which the donkey boys must wear—all tell the same story,- not of "civilisation," but of straightening out.

There are some who think our work may one day be done in Egypt and the Egyptians capable of walking alone in the way of honest, firm governing without favour 01 fear. But in the Soudan, whatever may happen in Egypt, Britain has taken up the white man's burden for good.