It would take a long time to get tired of merely riding about in Omdurman and watching the thousand and one sights of such a place, and reflecting on the stranger scenes that must so frequently have been enacted there less than five short years ago. But if you want a gallop in the desert, nothing is more delightful than to pass along the broad street leading northwards through the deserted quarters of the once huge city, and to ride, with the keen wind blowing freshly in your face, to Gebel Surgham, the hill which overlooks the field of Kerreri, that historic field of bloodshed. The merest novice can easily follow every phase of the battle, and see where wave after wave of the dervish hosts rushed madly but heroically to their doom. Some of their skulls still lie bleaching in the sun. There, too, is the khor where the Lancers made their famous charge. Or you may take boat, and sail past the mud forts that saluted the steamers which came just too late for the watcher anxiously straining his eyes to see them from the palace in Khartoum. Almost every spot has its own historic interest. Perhaps as you skim along before the wind a battered old paddle-steamer labours creaking past, towing a string of barges. It is one of Gordon’s gunboats, once more patched up and restored to duty. But of all the sights and interests of this fascinating place, by far the most impressive, as in Cairo itself, is the ancient and mighty river. Khartoum and Omdurman are what they are because here the two great tributaries join their forces and set out across the waterless desert on their great mission to Egypt. The spot where the Blue and White rivers meet, and for some distance flow side by side unmingled, would be still in many ways the most notable in all Northern Africa, even if Khartoum and all its eventful history were blotted out. CHAPTER XVII THE NEW SOUDAN Khartoum would be a sad place to visit if it were nothing more than a city of memories. Happily, it is no longer so. It has indeed a history behind it, full of lessons and warnings which cannot be ignored. But the Khartoum of to-day is looking forwards, and not backwards; it is the young capital of a young country. It is barely four years since the final defeat and death of the Khalifa, and it is only from that date that the establishment of settled government can be reckoned.