A TOUR OF THE SUDAN

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 18848, 10 April 1931, Page 7

A TOUR OF THE SUDAN

INTERESTING SIGHTS. I have been to-day over the field of Omdurman, traced the line of the British advance, seen where the -Ist Lancers charged and were ambushed, and stood on the spot where a friend of my youth, the young Hubert Howard, was killed Just in the shadow of the Khalifa's house (writes J. A. Spender in the “London News Chronicle” of February 11). The battlefield is a vast sun-smitten yellow and brown desert with streaks of flashing light marking the course of the river on the north and one or two lumps of basaltic rock rising steeply out of it. Low on its southern rim is the town of Omdurman, and looking back one can make out the battered remains of the Mahdi's tomb and behind it the long line of low mud houses on the northern limit of the town. To-day it is a solitude, but one thinks of the horde of dervishes —that “low white cloud” with their spears flashing in the morning sun—which rushed out of Omdurman on September 2, 1898, and were mowed down by the British guns. It was a grim business, but if ever bloodshed was Justified by results it was the bloodshed on that day. In the 32 years that have followed, the town of Omdurman has been converted from a filthy slave-mart, the home of corruption and cruelty, into a populous, thriving and cheerful native city, and Khartoum, across the river in the apex of the triangle between the Blue and the White Nile is the centre of a peaceful and highly efficient administration which extends over a territory as big as Europe, bar Russia, and joins up with the Belgian Congo on one side and British East Africa on the other. I am staying in the palace of tne Governor-General, built on the ruins of the old palace in which Gordon stood his last siege, and a tablet in the entrance hall marks the spot where he fell. From my windows I look across the river towards the desert and the low mountains on its rim—the view which Gordon scanned so eagerly day by day for signs of the relief which came too late. Moored on the opposite shore is his rr,p r . the Bordein. which now looks much as he left it and as he used it to prospect down the river, with the wooden palisading and rough sheetiron shelter against gun-fire still on its decks.

It is nothing but an old Thames steamboat of the type in use in the sixties, and its funnel has a scalloped top according to the fashion of that period. All along the river front is a broad and shady avenue flanked on the landward side by the public offices, the headquarters of the soldiers and the houses of the officials—spacious houses with deep verandahs and charming gardens surrounding them. A little back from the river is the Anglican Cathedral and close by the bishop’s house, which seems to be thronged at all hours by natives and English. I hardly know how to describe the radiating influence which Bishop Gwynne exerts over both communities. His propaganda is to be a standing example of the Christian life to both Mohammedan and Christian, and the love and affection that go out to him are among the memories of this country that I shall always cherish. I had the pleasure of many hours talk with him. and he gave me a sped- | ally warm welcome as an old friend of i his distinguished brother, the editor of ; the “Morning Post.”

A bridge across the White Nile at the end of the Avenue connects Khartoum with Omdurman. The latter Is still, as I have said, an almost wholly native city consisting mainly of mud houses. But they are modern mud houses, built on a careful plan and scrupulously clean. A few brick houses for offices, schools, and the housing of officials, give a European touch, but the whole is an example of how a native town may be kept native, constructed at small cost, and yet avoid the dirt, smells, overcrowding, and accompanying diseases that afflict most Eastern cities.

Doctors, schoolmasters and schoolmistresses are the main instruments of progress in this city. So many are working so zealously that it seems invidious to name any, but the work being done for girls by Miss Evans looks to an onlooker like a stroke of genius. But the centre of education for Khartoum and for the whole Sudan is Gordon College, where a few English teachers with a large native staff—all under the splendid leadership of Mr J. G. Matthew, the departmental head, and Mr C. W. Williams, the warden —are turning out young Sudanese to man the Government Departments and passing a good many on to the Kitchener School of Medicine, where presently they will be qualified to run the little hospitals and medical stations which are being multiplied all over the country under the control of the English medical staff. Gordon College has always in front of it the eternal problem of education in the East —how to provide a sufficiency of literates for the needs of administration without creating a discontended intelligentsia, for whom no employment can be found. It seems easy to say draw the line at a given point, but with an effervescing zeal for education as the mark of progress running through the population, and parents demanding that their sons shall have the same rights and chances as other people’s sons, the thing is, in practice, very difficult. Gordon College tries to divert the stream into science, agriculture and handicraft. Its laboratories are the centres of the special research work that the country needs —qualities of soil and seed, ways of irrigation, etc. A devoted man (Mr King) is on the way to rid the country of one of its worst afflictions, the swarms of locusts which come suddenly from East and South and devour its crops.