[Illustration: The Bisharin are desert folk, whose chief possessions are their wells and flocks. They pity city dwellers and scorn those who till the soil. This aged warrior has his short spear and rawhide shield.] [Illustration: Villages of mud huts spot the banks of the Upper Nile for hundreds of miles. The dates grown along here are sweeter and larger than those from farther down the river.] [Illustration: The Bisharin inhabit the desert beyond the narrow green strip along the Nile. Their matting tents are easily moved from place to place in their search for pasturage.] 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.