Apart from the important gum trade of which El Obeid is the centre, the Sudan is pre-eminently a pastoral country. The number of its cattle, sheep and goats is estimated at "several millions"; it has thousands of square miles available for cotton-growing, already carried on there for centuries, and it has wide possibilities in other directions, besides; though stock-raising and cotton cultivation should alone suffice to ensure for the Sudan a future of great wealth and commercial importance.
Beyond the districts immediately served by the extension there are others which are to be brought into touch with the railway, either direct or via the Nile, by means of a "roads system" linking up towns and villages with a number of highways extending to all the frontiers of the Sudan. On these roads and highways motor traction will, it is hoped, be gradually substituted for transport animals, the troubles caused by the tsetse fly and other pests being thus avoided.
The scheme here in question is certainly an ambitious one, considering that the Sudan covers an area of 1,000,000 square miles, and is equal in extent to the whole of British India; but already the outlook is most promising. For twelve years before its rescue from heathenism by the British and Egyptian forces in 1898, Khartoum, which formerly had a population of 50,000, was represented by the mass of ruins to which it had been reduced by order of the Khalifa. To-day it is a large, beautiful, and well-built city, possessed of a Governor-General's palace, cathedrals, a mosque, schools, hospitals, hotels, broad streets, public gardens, boulevards, imposing business premises, a good water supply, electric light, tramways, ferries, and other essentials of a capital city of the most progressive type. Khartoum itself has now about 30,000 inhabitants; in Khartoum North, on the other side of the Blue Nile, there are 20,000, and in Omdurman 70,000, a total of 120,000 for the three sister cities. Not only, also, have the natives, once living under the terror of their oppressors, settled down to peaceful pursuits, but many thousands of immigrants have come into the Sudan from West Africa (a striking testimony of the confidence felt by native tribes in the justice and security of British rule), while great expansion has taken place in the commercial interests of the Sudan and more especially in the export of cattle and sheep.
In the bringing about of these developments, affecting the peace and prosperity of so huge a country and of so many millions of people, the Sudan Military Railways have played a leading part. They rendered possible, in the first instance, the conquest of the Sudan, and then (save for the now abandoned line from Wady Halfa to Kerma) they became, with their extensions and improvements, the system of "Sudan Government Railways," having their branches to-day both from Atbara to Port Sudan and Suakin, on the Red Sea, and from Abu Hamed to Kareima, on the south side of the great Nile bend, whence there is free communication by water to the third cataract at Kerma. Concurrently, also, with the carrying out of the railway extension schemes, and in order to make greater provision for the prospective increase of traffic, 460 miles of the line north of Khartoum were relaid with 75-lb. rails, in place of the 50-lb. rails originally used, and the whole of the track from Khartoum to El Obeid was also laid with the heavier rails.
So we are enabled to regard military railways from still another point of view—that, namely, in which they may develop into lines of permanent communication and promote the blessings of peace and security no less than afford unquestionable advantages in the prosecution of war. Other examples of a similar kind might be offered from the history of British rule in Africa; but the record of what has been accomplished in the Sudan may suffice to establish the further claim here presented as to the varied purposes that military railways may serve.
FOOTNOTES:
[36] See lecture by Capt. C. E. Luard, R.E., on "Field Railways and their general application in war." Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, vol. xvii, 1873.
[37] "The Abyssinian Railway." By Lieut. Willans, R.E. Papers on Subjects Connected with the Duties of the Corps of Royal Engineers. New Series. Vol. xviii. 1870.
[38] "The Construction of Military Railways during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-8." By Captain M. T. Sale, R.E. Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, vol. xxiv, 1881. "De la Construction des Chemins de Fer en temps de guerre. Lignes construites par l'armée russe pendant la campagne 1877-78." Par M. P. Lessar, Ingénieur du Gouvernement russe. Traduit du russe par M. L. Avril. Paris, 1879.
[39] "The Sudan Military Railway." By Lieut. M. Nathan, R.E. "Professional Papers of the Corps of Royal Engineers, Occasional Papers," vol. xi, 1885.