Such words coming from Lord Cromer are full of hope and encouragement for the administrators of the Soudan. The man who found means to overcome the financial difficulties of the Reservoir works at Assouan is more than likely to surmount those of the Suakin-Berber Railway. In the long-run Egypt herself will benefit as well as the Soudan. Of course, most of the trade now passing through Egypt will return to its natural channel by Suakin and the Red Sea. The Customs now taken at Alexandria will go directly to the Soudan, but as soon as this happens a corresponding reduction can be made in the Egyptian contribution. Nor will purely Egyptian trade with the Soudan suffer. The Nile Valley route will remain, but it will be cheaper for goods from Lower Egypt to travel via Suez and Suakin. The import as well as the export trade of the Soudan will be vastly encouraged, and every step forward in prosperity will make her a better market for the goods of Egypt as well as those of other countries. Once the railway is made, but not till then, there is a possibility of the revenues of the Soudan improving sufficiently to make the country self-supporting, and able to dispense entirely with any annual grant from Egypt. It is calculated that the construction of the new railway will cost £2,500,000. Taking this as a basis, and assuming that Egypt was able to make an arrangement under which the money should be repaid by annual instalments over a period of ten years, with interest at 5 per cent., it would involve an average annual addition to her expenditure of £318,750, or a total cost of ten times that sum. If the period was twenty years, the average annual cost would be £185,625, or, say, £200,000. It is rash for an outsider to speculate on such subjects, and the figures are merely given as a rough illustration; but it seems certain that Egypt could easily bear any such burden. Nor does it appear a sanguine forecast to estimate that within ten years of the completion of the railway the revenues of the Soudan will have so greatly benefited, both by the direct cheapening of supplies, fuel, and other material, and by the development of trade generally, that at least a saving of £200,000 a year will accrue to Egypt, even if she still finds it prudent to contribute something. What future capital Egypt will have to find must be uncertain. The whole situation will be changed by the advent of the railway. But if all the signs of the times can be trusted, whatever her expenditure may be, she will have no reason to repent of it. NOTE.—Since the above was in print, new light has been thrown on the subject by a passage in the Note on the Budget for 1904 by Sir Eldon Gorst, Financial Adviser to the Khedive: