Cairo to Kisumu

by Frank G. Carpenter

The railroads of Egypt and the Sudan are under the government, and I find both systems pay. Those of Egypt earn about six per cent. on their capital stock and their working expenses are only about seventy-three per cent. of the gross receipts. The business is rapidly increasing. They carry some twenty-six million passengers a year and some five million tons of freight. Egypt now has something like fifteen hundred miles of railroads which belong to the government, and in addition more than seven hundred miles of agricultural roads managed by private parties. The earnings of the latter are increasing, for they carry more freight and passengers from year to year.

The main lines are managed by Egyptian and European officials. The superintendents of departments, who receive three thousand dollars and upward a year each, are mainly Europeans, while the inspectors and sub-inspectors, who get from eighty dollars to two hundred and forty dollars a month, are in the main foreigners. Under these men are the native guards, track workers, and mechanics of various kinds, who receive smaller wages. They are almost all Egyptians, there being some twenty-four hundred of them to about one hundred and fifty Europeans.

The Sudan roads go through a thinly populated country, but the receipts are already considerably more than their working expenses and are rapidly increasing.

The Alexandria-Cairo division of the Cape-to-Cairo road taps one of the richest countries on earth. I mean the delta of Egypt, which is more thickly populated than most other parts of the globe. The distance from Alexandria to Cairo is one hundred and thirty-three miles, and all the way is through rich farm lands. There is no desert in sight until you reach Cairo. Cotton is piled up at every depot, there are vast loads of it on the canals which the track crosses, and at the stations cars of cotton bales fill the side tracks.

The next division above Cairo goes to Asyut, which is two or three hundred miles farther south. Then comes the road from Asyut to Luxor, ending with the narrow-gauge line from Luxor to Aswan. These divisions are through the narrow part of the Nile valley, with the desert in sight all the time. The river winds this way and that, but the railroad is comparatively straight, and is often far off from the river amid the sand and rocks. Such parts of the line are uncomfortable going. At times the sands are blinding, the dust fills the cars, and our eyes smart. These discomforts are somewhat less in the first-class cars. All of them have shutters and double windows to keep out the dust, and the inner window panes are of smoked glass to lessen the glare. With the shutters up it is almost dark and when both windows are down the interior has the appearance of twilight. When clear glass alone is used the rays are blinding and the sun comes through with such strength that it is not safe to have it strike the back of one’s neck. In addition to the double windows and shutters there are wooden hoods over the car windows, so that the direct rays of the sun may not shine in. The cars have also double roofs, and the doors have windows of smoked glass. There is so much dust that it comes in when everything is shut tight, and the porter has to sweep up every hour.

I found the conditions even worse in the Nubian Desert, which I crossed on the railroad from Wady Haifa, where I left the steamer Ibis, to Berber. That region is about the dreariest and most desolate on earth. It is all sand and rocks, with here and there a low barren mountain. The Nubians themselves call it “the stone belly,” and the name is well chosen.

The road through Nubia is a part of the Sudan military railway that extends from Wady Halfa to Khartum. It is one of the iron gateways to the Sudan, the other being the railway which the British have built from Atbara to Port Sudan and Suakim on the Red Sea. The military line is almost as long as from New York to Detroit and the Port Sudan line from the Red Sea to Atbara, where it connects with the military line, is less than half that length.

The Port Sudan road vies with the military railways in being one of the dirtiest railroads ever constructed. Its whole route is across the Nubian Desert. There is no vegetation at all between Atbara and the Red Sea until within about nine miles of the coast, and then only a scanty growth of thorn bush and scrub that feeds small flocks of camels and sheep.

This Red Sea road was opened about 1905. Since then it has been carrying a large part of the trade of the Sudan. Mohammedan pilgrims from Central Africa and the Lower Nile valley use it on their way to and from Mecca, and occasionally tourists come to Khartum via the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, and this railroad.

The military line from Wady Halfa is the one built by General Kitchener during the war with the Mahdi. Constructed in less than eighteen months by the British engineers and soldiers, it is one of the most remarkable examples of railroad building on record. A large part of it was laid in the hottest time of the year and at the rate of one and a quarter miles per day, and once, more than three miles were laid in one day. Yet the work was so well done that heavy trains could travel safely over it even when making twenty-five miles an hour. It was built through a waterless desert which had never been mapped until the railroad surveyors went over it. During its construction the survey camp was kept about six miles in advance of the rail head. The road was built through a hostile country where there was constant danger of attack by the Dervishes.