As for imports so for exports Suakin was the chief channel of trade before the rebellion. But a good deal also went by Korosko and the Nile, principally gum, senna, coffee, and ostrich feathers. An inappreciable amount, probably, also filtered through to Egypt by Assouan or Assiout. Far the biggest item of the recorded trade was gum. The export for three years was— _Kantars._ 1879 144,706 1880 135,646 1881 150,861 Next came cotton, cleaned and uncleaned, averaging about 20,000 kantars per annum. Coffee amounted to about 7,000 kantars, principally from Kassala and the Abyssinian frontier. The Soudan is a land of strange diseases, but it is also a land of medicines. Besides tamarinds, as much as 3,300 kantars of senna was exported in 1880. Ostrich feathers from Kordofan and Darfur came to about 200 kantars, and there was also about half that amount of guttapercha from the Bahr el Ghazal. Miscellaneous exports included skins and hides, mother-of-pearl from the coast, mats from Kassala, and ivory. To-day gum-arabic is still easily first among the exports. The best kind of gum is the white gum produced from the gray-barked acacia, called hashab; there are also inferior kinds called talh, or latch, produced from the red-barked acacia. The gum is used for giving a glaze to linens and other woven fabrics, for stiffening cotton-stuffs and calicoes, and for making sweets and chewing mixtures. Kordofan is the home of the gum trade; a good deal, but chiefly the inferior kinds, comes from the forests of Sennar and Kassala, but nearly all the best white gum comes from Kordofan, especially the part round Taiara between Duem and El Obeid. Here there are limitless forests of hashab. The taking of the gum does not permanently injure the tree, and the only obstacles to its gathering are the distances to be travelled without water, and the lack of labour. Every new well means a fresh productive area, and people migrate temporarily from other parts of the Soudan for the gum harvest. Most of it is brought down by boat from Duem, some directly on camels from El Obeid to Khartoum, where it is sorted on the beach. Of this first-rate white gum the Soudan has practically a monopoly, and when the Soudan was closed to trade its price went up enormously. This naturally brought out substitutes: inferior gum from West Africa came into use, and glucose also took its place. Still, there was a good demand for it after the re-occupation of the Soudan, and in 1900 the price was still 65s. per cwt. Since then the production has gone up by leaps and bounds, but, unfortunately, this has been accompanied by a great fall in prices, at one time as low as 27s. 6d. per cwt. The figures of the export trade are: _Kantars._ 1899 41,963 1900 60,912 1901 170,781 1902 220,000