The wages these women receive are pitifully low. Ten or fifteen cents a day is big money for a woman, while even a man can be hired for twenty cents or less. For such sums the women unload the stone boats on the Nile, wading out into the river and coming back up the banks with two or three great rocks piled high on their heads. They carry sand in baskets, and spread it over the stones on the highways, and sit down on the roadsides and break stones for macadamizing. They carry the mortar up the scaffolding to the masons, and quite an army of them is employed in bringing water in five-gallon kerosene oil cans from the Nile. Some of the streets are sprinkled with this water, and many of the gardens of Khartum are kept moist in this way. At the Grand Hotel we have a half-dozen women who carry water all day long to irrigate the garden. Some of the girls are tall. To-day I had a photograph taken of myself standing beside one who overtopped me some inches. She objected to my having her picture, and as she was a husky young negress it was for a time undecided whether I should succeed. I have asked some questions here as to labour. The builders tell me it is almost impossible to get what they want, and that the more wages they pay the greater the danger of a labour famine. The trouble is that the natives will not work if they have money, and when wages are high they work so much the less. All they need is their food, and a family can live on five cents and less per day. The food consists chiefly of boiled dura or sorghum meal and the drink is a native beer which costs almost nothing. A man can get a suit of clothes for a dollar, while a woman can be outfitted for less. When food is cheap, the prices of labour rise, and when it is dear, they fall. The native reasons that he ought to be paid more for his work when the food prices are low, for in such a case he can easily get food ahead, and why should he work at the ordinary wage when he has all he wants? When the food goes up the labourers need the work to pay for it and their competition brings wages down. [Illustration: The British believe Khartum will some day be one of the largest and most beautiful cities of Africa. They have made along the river front a boulevard and park, in which are the government offices and the residences of officials and others.] [Illustration: From Khartum, where the Blue and the White Nile come together, navigable waterways extend into Abyssinia and the rich lands of the watershed of the Belgian Congo, while to the north flows the main stream of the Nile.] [Illustration: Founded only one hundred years ago, Khartum rapidly became a slave-trade centre but was utterly wiped out by the Mahdists who killed Gordon. Not until Kitchener came was the city built anew on modern plans.] CHAPTER XXI EMPIRE BUILDING IN THE SUDAN