Assouan has for many centuries marked the border line of Egypt proper. To the south is the land of the warlike blacks, who have been trouble-makers from the beginning of time. This First Cataract is the usual terminus of tourist travel, but those who wish to see Nubia and the Soudan board a small steamer, pass through the locks of the new dam, and go by river 210 miles to Wadi Halfa, thence by rail 576 miles to Khartoum. It is here, about thirteen hundred and fifty miles up stream, that the White and Blue Niles converge and bring down from the rainy equatorial regions the floods of muddy water which are the annual salvation of Egypt. Ten years ago Khartoum seemed as inaccessible as the North Pole. It was headquarters for the most desperate swarm of frenzied fanatics that ever swept a region with fire and sword. They had wiped out British armies and put Gordon's head on a pole. They were in a drunken ecstasy of Mohammedan zeal, eager to fight and ready to die, and they got all that they were looking for. It is less than eight years since Kitchener went down to call on them. Of all the cold-blooded and frozen-featured military tacticians of the inexorable school, Kitchener stands pre-eminent. General Grant in his grimmest moment was absolutely emotional and acrobatic as compared with Kitchener. He carried ice water in his veins, and his mental machinery ticked with Birmingham regularity. He did not get excited and dash into the open trap, as all the others had done. He moved slowly but relentlessly into the dread country and built a railroad as he went along. He carried everything that a British army needs--marmalade, polo ponies, Belfast ginger ale, tinned meats, pipe clay, etc. "We cannot stampede them, because stampeding is their specialty," said Kitchener, "but I will lick them by algebra." He did not say this, because he never said anything, but this is what he indicated by his calm preparations. He knew that the dervishes were frothing at the mouth and praying Allah to give them another chance to swim in gore, so he simply edged up to within striking distance of them and picked out his ground and waited. A kinetoscope hero would have galloped up and down the line shouting, "Up, men, and at them!" But Kitchener was not a hero. He was business manager of an abattoir. His object was not to win a great battle, but to exterminate a species. And he probably did one of the neatest jobs of house cleaning on record.