KHARTUM
After the intensely hot and dust-filled six-hundred-mile journey across
the desert from Wady Halfa it is good to be here amid the palm gardens
and the lime trees of Khartum. I am in the flourishing capital of the
Sudan, once, and not so long ago at that, the centre of an exceedingly
prosperous slave trade and later the scene of the massacre of General
Gordon and of Kitchener’s fierce fights with the Mohammedan fanatics.
Khartum lies at the junction of two of the chief rivers of North Africa,
giving it navigable highways to Abyssinia and to the rich lands along the
watershed of the Belgian Congo. It has railroads connecting it with the
Mediterranean, and with the exception of one stretch of less than six
hundred miles, where the cataracts are, it has the main stream of the
Nile to give it cheap freight rates to Europe. It has opened a railroad
to Suakim, on the Red Sea, and in time it will undoubtedly be one of the
great stations on the principal route by steamer and rail from Cairo to
the Cape.
I called upon the Governor of Khartum this afternoon and asked him to
tell me the story of the city. Said he: “The buildings which you see here
are all new, but the town is older than some of the mushroom cities of
the United States. It was born before Chicago, being founded by Mehemet
Ali a century ago. It grew remarkably fast, so that at ten years of
age it was made the seat of the government of the Sudan and became an
important commercial centre. It was here that Gordon made his effort to
break up the slave trade and here that he was killed. He was butchered
on the steps of a building on the site of the present Governor-General’s
palace. Then the Mahdist leader declared that Khartum should be wiped
out. He destroyed all the houses and made the inhabitants come to his new
capital, Omdurman, which he had laid out on the other side of the White
Nile about five miles to the south. When the people left they tore off
the roofs and pulled out the doors of their houses and carried them along
to use in their new houses at Omdurman.
“After that, for years, and until Kitchener came, Khartum was nothing
but a brick pile and a dust heap. Omdurman had swallowed up not only
its whole population, but that of a great part of the Sudan; for the
Khalifa forced the tribes to come there to live, in order that he might
have their men ready for his army in times of war. The result was that
Omdurman had more than a half million inhabitants while Khartum had none.
“Then we had the war with the Khalifa, whom we finally conquered,” the
Governor continued. “After we had reduced the greater part of Omdurman
to ruins, we began planning the building of a great city. The idea at
first was to force the people to move from Omdurman to Khartum, but it
was finally decided that it would be far better to have a native city
there, and to make this place the government and foreign centre, with a
manufacturing and commercial town at Halfaya, or Khartum, North, on the
northern bank of the Blue Nile.
“The Khartum of to-day was laid out after somewhat the same plan as your
capital at Washington; at least the reasons that determined the plans
were the same. As I recall it, Washington was plotted at about the time
of the French Revolution by a French engineer. Major L’Enfant laid out
the city so that it could be easily defended in case of a rebellion and
at the same time be beautiful. For that reason the streets were made to
cut one another at right angles with avenues running diagonally through
them, forming squares and circles, where one cannon could command many
streets. Lord Kitchener had the same idea as to Khartum. He directed his
architects to make the streets wide, with several large squares, and to
have the whole so arranged that guns placed at the chief crossings could
command the whole city. The result is Khartum as you now see it.
“The town is laid out in three great sections, and all building plans
must be submitted to the government architects before permits of
construction can be issued. The section along the Nile is devoted to
the government buildings and the residences of the officials and others
who can afford good houses. Back of that there are streets where less
pretentious houses may be built, while farther back still and more to the
south is a third section of houses for natives. The town is so planned
that it can grow along these lines, and we believe it will some day be
one of the largest and most beautiful of the cities of interior Africa.”
I have now been in Khartum over a week and find it most interesting. In
coming to it, I rode for hours and hours through the sands and rocks of
Nubia, and it was not until I was within a few miles of Halfaya that I
saw signs of vegetation. The train then entered a region of thorn bushes
ten or fifteen feet high; farther on patches of grass bleached by the sun
were to be seen, and closer still other evidences of cultivation. The
Arabs were digging out the thorn bushes on the edge of the desert and
stacking them up in piles for fuel. There were a few animals grazing on
the scanty grass.
Out of such dull and cheerless desert surroundings rises a city of
green. All along the river, for a distance of more than two miles,
runs a wide avenue shaded by trees and backed by buildings and private
houses in beautiful gardens. From one end of it to the other this avenue
is a succession of parks. It begins with the botanical and zoölogical
gardens, where all the trees of the tropical and sub-tropical regions
grow luxuriantly and where one may see the soap tree, the monkey-bread
tree, and other curious examples of Sudanese flora. There are several
lions and tigers in the garden, and there is also a mighty giraffe which
I photographed this afternoon as he was taking a bite out of a branch at
the height of a two-story house.
Next to the zoölogical garden is the Grand Hotel, a long, bungalow-shaped
structure shaded by date palms, while beyond are the two-story homes
of many officials, all well shaded. The first public building on this
avenue is the post and telegraph office. Beyond it are the offices of the
Military Bureaus with public gardens behind them. Directly on the river
and in front of a wonderful garden is the great white palace in which the
Governor-General of the Sudan lives and has his offices. Farther along
the avenue are the Sudan Club and the hospital. Away at the south rise
the large buildings of the Gordon Memorial College, with the British
barracks at the end of the street. On the edge of the river are the
inevitable _sakiehs_ raising the water to the tune of their monotonous
creakings. They start at seven o’clock every morning. Their wheels are
never greased and as they move they screech and groan and sigh. There is
one in front of the Grand Hotel which serves as my alarm clock, for sleep
is murdered at the moment it begins.
In Khedive Avenue, which runs parallel with the embankment, is a statue
by E. Onslow Ford, of General Gordon on an Indian camel. So far as I know
this is the world’s only camelestrian statue. It is a work of fine art
and full of the spirit of the famous hero it represents.
The business parts of Khartum are on the streets back from the river.
There is one great square devoted to the markets. This must cover ten
or more acres, and the Abbas Square, a little farther west, in which
the mosque stands, is fully twice as large. The business section has
two banks and a large number of stores managed chiefly by Greeks. There
are more Greeks here than any other foreigners, and next to them come
the Italians, some of whom have important establishments. One of the
biggest of all is the house of Angelo Capato, a man who might be called
the Marshall Field of the Sudan, for he has a large business here, with
branches all over the country and desert stores far up the Nile. The
stores have covered porches in front of them or they face arcades which
keep off the sun.
The mosque of Khartum is one of the most beautiful buildings in Africa.
It is a great two-story structure of white stone with minarets rising
high above it. The galleries of the minarets have a lacework of stone
around them and the towers are covered with Arabic carvings. The
building is named after Khedive Abbas Hilmi who, I am told, furnished
much of the money for its erection.
Khartum has also a big Coptic church as well as one built by the Church
of England and the schools and chapels of the United Presbyterian Mission
of our country. So, you see, notwithstanding its position on this
far-away part of the globe, it has abundant religious facilities.
I have been interested in watching the women doing construction work here
in Khartum. Wherever new houses and business blocks are going up, the
masons and mechanics have their women helpers. The labourers come from
all parts of the Sudan, so that the women of a half-dozen tribes may
be working on the same building. The wages are far beyond those of the
past, and, although they are still but a few cents a day, here in Central
Africa they mean riches.
These women labourers are strapping black girls, straight and plump, and
so lightly dressed that one can see all the outlines of their forms. Some
have but a thin sheet of blue cotton wrapped loosely around the shoulders
with another wound about the waist so that it falls to the feet. The
upper garment is off half the time, leaving the girl bare to the waist.
Her plump bust shows out in the bright sun as she raises her arms high to
steady the load on her head. These African natives, both men and women,
pull out all the hair on their bodies, going over them once a month
for this purpose. This custom is common in many parts of the world. It
is done among some of the Indians of the Amazon, among the Jewesses of
Tunis, who are shaved from head to foot just before marriage, and among
the Moros of our Philippine Islands, who carry along little tweezers to
jerk out the hairs.
The wages these women receive are pitifully low. Ten or fifteen cents a
day is big money for a woman, while even a man can be hired for twenty
cents or less. For such sums the women unload the stone boats on the
Nile, wading out into the river and coming back up the banks with two
or three great rocks piled high on their heads. They carry sand in
baskets, and spread it over the stones on the highways, and sit down on
the roadsides and break stones for macadamizing. They carry the mortar
up the scaffolding to the masons, and quite an army of them is employed
in bringing water in five-gallon kerosene oil cans from the Nile. Some
of the streets are sprinkled with this water, and many of the gardens
of Khartum are kept moist in this way. At the Grand Hotel we have a
half-dozen women who carry water all day long to irrigate the garden.
Some of the girls are tall. To-day I had a photograph taken of myself
standing beside one who overtopped me some inches. She objected to my
having her picture, and as she was a husky young negress it was for a
time undecided whether I should succeed.
I have asked some questions here as to labour. The builders tell me it
is almost impossible to get what they want, and that the more wages they
pay the greater the danger of a labour famine. The trouble is that the
natives will not work if they have money, and when wages are high they
work so much the less. All they need is their food, and a family can
live on five cents and less per day. The food consists chiefly of boiled
dura or sorghum meal and the drink is a native beer which costs almost
nothing. A man can get a suit of clothes for a dollar, while a woman can
be outfitted for less. When food is cheap, the prices of labour rise, and
when it is dear, they fall. The native reasons that he ought to be paid
more for his work when the food prices are low, for in such a case he can
easily get food ahead, and why should he work at the ordinary wage when
he has all he wants? When the food goes up the labourers need the work to
pay for it and their competition brings wages down.
[Illustration: The British believe Khartum will some day be one of the
largest and most beautiful cities of Africa. They have made along the
river front a boulevard and park, in which are the government offices and
the residences of officials and others.]
[Illustration: From Khartum, where the Blue and the White Nile come
together, navigable waterways extend into Abyssinia and the rich lands
of the watershed of the Belgian Congo, while to the north flows the main
stream of the Nile.]
[Illustration: Founded only one hundred years ago, Khartum rapidly became
a slave-trade centre but was utterly wiped out by the Mahdists who killed
Gordon. Not until Kitchener came was the city built anew on modern
plans.]