But the most promising feature in the old returns is the 20,000 kantars of cotton, even though as yet the trade has not revived. Though the figure is in itself insignificant, it is a proof that the thing can be done. Cotton is indigenous in the Soudan. It grows wild in Fashoda, although the native Shilluks seem never to have taken advantage of this circumstance, preferring to go completely naked. Most of the former cotton export came from Kassala. The Khor Gash, a tributary of the Atbara, comes down in flood during July and August, and partly inundates the plain, leaving behind a rich alluvial deposit—splendid cotton soil. There was formerly a cotton factory in Kassala town. In the districts of Gallabat and Gedaref cotton is now actually being grown, and it is proving the foundation of increasing trade with Abyssinia. Abyssinian merchants eagerly buy up all that can be grown. Further south, in Sennar Province, the valleys of the Dinder and the Rahad were once very famous for cotton, which was also largely imported into Abyssinia. Here, too, the cultivation is increasing as the people settle down. The district of Tokar, near Suakin, along the Khor Baraka, produces, perhaps, the best quality of all the cotton in the Soudan. It, too, in former days produced very much more than now. While along the Nile itself, in the neighbourhood of Khartoum and in Berber and Dongola Provinces, enough cotton is grown to supply small local industries, in which a rough white cloth is woven, one of the few local manufactures in the Soudan. Beyond a doubt, not only is there a great deal of land admirably suited to grow cotton in the Soudan, but also the climatic conditions, given only water, are peculiarly favourable. Cotton and its culture are thus no novelties to the inhabitants of the Soudan. The point is the water; it all comes back to water and irrigation. If the Soudan is to be of any real interest to the cotton-spinners of Lancashire, its export must be counted not by a few paltry tens of thousands of kantars, but by hundreds of thousands, perhaps by millions. And for that there must be irrigation works on a large scale. The soil is there in the Ghezireh and elsewhere, the climate is there, the water is there, and the irrigation works will come. But once again, there is no need for hurry. The interests of the whole Valley of the Nile have to be considered. The undertaking is too large to be gone into without the utmost care and patient deliberation.