ABSTRACT
I remarked one day on which there was a difference of 45° between 6 a. m. and 4 p. m.—–45° to 90°. At about eleven o’clock we reached Wadi Halfa, 802 miles from Cairo. The houses of the town are scattered along the eastern bank for several miles, and are mostly single-story mud huts; a few of them are of two stories, and have whitened walls. Groves of palms line this bank, but the opposite is all desert. Wadi Halfa is so called from the halfa (called alfa throughout Barbary) or coarse grass which springs up everywhere outside the irrigated portions of land. The town is about in latitude 21° 50′ north and longitude 31° 20′ east. It contains 4,000 Egyptian troops, officered by Englishmen. A permanent garrison has been stationed here since the war in the Soudan. There are many negro soldiers, and these are said to be quite as brave as the Egyptians, and much truer. There are several mud forts, mounting small repeating guns, and outlying citadels for pickets in every direction on the summit of the ridges and knolls and even upon the opposite bank of the river. The town itself contains nothing of any special interest, but there is a narrow-gauge railway running from here around the cataract, which it is worth employing for a trip as far south as possible.
