[Footnote 4: I am writing of the neighbourhood of Lat. 22° N. About Suakin conditions are better, at least for plant life.] [Footnote 5: Actual temperature of the wind 100° to 115° Fahr.] [Footnote 6: Besides the completest possible system of harbour lights, the quays, etc., with every facility for handling cargo, the needs of shipping are well provided for by a large stock of coal electrically handled, tugs and water barges, and a complete dockyard for repairs of any kind up to a considerable magnitude. Since 1910 a salvage tug has been stationed here and the slipway at the dockyard has been completed and is in use. The town water supply, though healthy, is slightly brackish (though much less so than most desert wells), but the very large condensing plants produce and sell fresh water very cheaply. The railway of course runs alongside the shipping, the Customs godowns are liberally and conveniently planned, and the railway bridge rises vertically upwards so that any vessel may pass up to the dockyard without obstruction. A first-class hotel has just been opened. Spite of the harbour’s being practically tideless its water is perfectly pure, all garbage being collected in barges and towed out to sea, where they are emptied at a distance of about five miles from land. The whole town is a fine example of what can be done by scientific forethought given free scope and a clear desert site, unhampered by the presence of partially obsolete arrangements and conflicting vested interests, and keeping ever in view the great extensions of every department which the increasing trade of the Sudan will soon need.] [Footnote 7: Many of the smaller mosques in Egypt, particularly those near the deserts (e.g. Suez and Belbês) are very similar.] [Footnote 8: The population of my own tiny village well illustrates the cosmopolitan nature of all commercial and administrative activity in the Sudan; including Government _employés_ we have: British: one, myself. Syrians: two, my assistant and a carpenter. Italian: one, engineer—we communicate in Arabic. Egyptians: about six. Arabians: also about six, including natives of Sinai in the north and the Yemen and Hadramaut in the south. Hamites: the natives of the country. Negroes: these include several distinct nationalities, e.g. Nubas and Nilotic tribes. Swahili: one, from Zanzibar. Elsewhere Greeks abound, as in so many countries. We all speak Arabic, which was however the mother tongue of only a dozen individuals, and even these speak three or four different dialects!] [Footnote 9: I am at a loss for a name for this particular Hamitic nation. The names Hadendoa, Bisharia and so on, are those of large tribal subdivisions of one nationality, which again is but one out of several distinct Hamitic peoples. The name “Beja” is not known to any native I have met.]