From here onward the journey is full of interest. Berber is springing up again from its ruins; it even boasts two stations, but it has not an attractive look as a place to live in; there is as yet nothing more than the mud huts of the country, and it is the hottest place in the world. Next comes the Atbara River, though not the scene of the battle, for that was thirty miles upstream; then Shendi, of fiery memory, but now the Crewe of the Soudan, and finally, late at night, you step out of the train at Halfaya, the railway terminus. One glance at the sky will show you that you are really in the tropics. Canopus is shining fiercely in the east. Right overhead the giant Orion strides across the vault. Northwards the Great Bear stands like a huge note of interrogation in the sky, and just over the opposite horizon the Southern Cross is looming up. Halfaya stands on the northern bank of the Blue Nile, near its junction with the White. It is destined to be the workshop and commercial quarter of the capital. At present the Government steamboat factories and workshops are still at Omdurman, a legacy from dervish days. But already the necessary buildings are springing up, and as trade increases the railway terminus will attract more and more to its immediate vicinity. The Blue Nile, just before its junction, divides into two channels, which embrace the fertile island of Tuti. Opposite Halfaya, and along the southern bank of the island, the river runs in a glorious sweep due east and west for two or three miles. Here, facing northwards, stands Khartoum, with as imposing a situation as any capital could wish for. A well-made road runs all along the river-front, which is being gradually embanked and walled. Right in the centre rises the white Palace, the official residence of the Governor-General, a handsome building, on the site of Gordon’s old palace, set in a lovely garden. On either side of it stretch a succession of Government offices and the neat residences of Government officials, to the new, spacious, and comfortable hotel on the one side and the Gordon College and British barracks on the other, pleasantly variegated with gardens and groves of palm-trees, acacias, limes, and bananas. Behind this Government belt, the town is carefully laid out into wide streets and squares in two other belts. The second of these contains, or will contain, houses and shops built by private persons, but of a good class and on approved plans; the third is open for the erection of any buildings that the owners choose to construct. Finally, close to Gordon’s rampart are the Soudanese barracks, and, right outside, the native villages, laid out in squares allotted to different tribes, where you may see huts of every shape, characteristic of many different parts of Africa.