The Government charges 1⁄2 piastre per kanter for weighing. One millième (one thousandth part of £E. 1) was charged last season per kantar for grading. This year it has been raised to two millièmes per kantar, as two Government classifiers have been appointed.

The town of Tokar is quite modern. It has broad streets, and the houses, although mostly built of mud bricks, are certainly an improvement on the rough huts made of shrubs, palm leaves, etc., which one sees generally in the Sudan; only one small portion of the town is built of rough huts. During the summer season Tokar has only 10,000 inhabitants, but during the period of sowing there will be 15,000 in the town. During the picking season, I am told, as many as 20,000 people are busily engaged in and around Tokar. The influx consists mostly of natives from the surrounding mountains and from the interior of the Sudan, who are attracted by the high wages.

The possibilities of cotton growing in the Tokar district depend, in the first place, on the construction of permanent channels for the Khor Baraka. The cost of the scheme is estimated at £80,000, while the revenue resulting from additional land brought under cultivation and from more regular cultivation of existing land has been estimated by Government officials as likely to produce £10,000 per annum.

KASSALA DISTRICT.

I

This is situated near the Eritrean frontier, and the journey to and from the nearest railway station takes about one month. was therefore unable to visit the place, and must content myself with reporting what I have heard from persons acquainted with the conditions of this province, and with quoting from Government reports.

The conditions are undoubtedly similar to those at Tokar. Instead of the river Baraka we have in Kassala the river Gash, which floods the country between July 7 and September 15. Unfortunately, the rains coincide with the flood. There are three kinds of irrigation. Up stream of Kassala town a weir is

run across the Gash and a canal taken off. In this vicinity three types of irrigation have been tried. The first corresponds to ordinary "sagia" irrigation (water wheel), small feeder canals being taken off the main canal, which supply water whenever required during the flood. Land so irrigated is termed "nili." the second and third are types of basin irrigation, but differ in that the land receives a soaking of seven to ten days, is then emptied, and sown, receives further flush irrigation according to the state of the crops and the length of the floods. In the third type the basin is kept full from twenty-five to thirty days, is then emptied, and receives no further watering. These basins range from 20 to 100 feddans in area. Under the name of Debeloweit another basin is known. Down stream of Kassala a canal is taken off the Gash to fill a large bottle-shaped basin. This must be emptied between the end of August and September 3, and is provided with an escape regulator for that purpose.

July, August, and the first half of September are compara

tively cool; from then to November the temperature is high. October is generally a very hot month.

Cotton does best on land which has received one long flooding, say, twenty-five to thirty days. Afifi has given the highest yield of the various cottons tried, but Abassi cotton was more favorably reported upon by the Alexandria merchants. Owing to the neighborhood of the Italian colony of Eritrea, seed which was of an American kind was obtained by the natives from the Società Cotonniera di Agordat, but this turned out to be of a shorter staple than the Egyptian kinds.

Some of the cotton raised in the district is exported via Eritera, but the bulk is sent via Port Sudan. Altogether the cotton crop may be estimated at about 4,000 kantars, but, judging from the reports of Government officials who have been stationed there, a possibility of very great extension exists, as there are 120,000 acres of suitable land. This, however, cannot take place until Kassala is linked up by railway with other centres of population. As far as I could ascertain, the Government favor the construction of the railway line to Kassala in preference to that of Suakin to Tokar. If I may venture to express an opinion, I think that the Tokar line is needed more, and, whilst the cultivation in the Kassala Province is still a doubtful item, we know positively that Tokar produces a good cotton in fairly large quantities. Moreover, the construction of the Tokar line would require much less capital, and I think would prove to be a remunerative investment from the start, whilst the Kassala line would no doubt in the future pay, but the first years would see only a small return on the money. It was mentioned to me that the railway might be taken from Suakin via Tokar to Kassala, but this would undoubtedly necessitate the construction of tunnels, and so far the Sudan railway does not pass through any tunnels.

USHR.

Ushr (Calotropes procera), or Sodom's Apple, grows wild in very large quantities on the outskirts of the desert between

Trinkitat and Tokar. There are also 8,000 to 9,000 feddans of land near Kassala where this plant grows profusely. The natives have so far used the stem for making ropes, and the fibre which the plant produces has been used in Europe for the purpose of stuffing cushions, mattresses, etc., but latterly there has been invented in Saxony a process which renders possible the spinning of this fibre, and during the last season as many as 40,000 bales of this lint have been imported from India into Germany. As this plant does not seem to grow as freely in India as in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, it might be worth investigating whether it could not be cultivated, or whether it would pay to collect the fruit from the wild plants

and export it. I have seen many plants on which there were ripe and unripe bolls together; some were in flower and some bolls had withered away. I was told that there would be a great difficulty in collecting the fibre, as the stems contain a milky substance which flows out as soon as they are broken, and this substance is extremely poisonous. Another disadvantage is that the fine fibres fly about when the plants are touched,

and easily injure the eyes of the pickers. The fibre is very light in weight.

The natives are said to use small portions of the milky substance for adding to a certain kind of beer they brew. The wood of the Ushr plant gives the best charcoal, and even to this day it is used by some nomadic tribes for obtaining a light by rubbing two sticks together and igniting them by friction.

THE GEZIRA.

Gezira means island, but in this case the land which is situated between the White and Blue Niles south of Khartoum is understood, although it does not form a perfect island. In travelling from Khartoum through the Gezira plain, one is struck with the apparently absolute flatness of the country. On the horizon one sees mirages constantly, which, I am informed, are possible only in exceedingly flat stretches of land; lake and trees will appear on the horizon, and when one approaches them one finds it has been nothing but an optical illusion. The Gezira plain contains about four millions acres of land, and the soil is of a very fine dust-like silt. Some people believe in the theory that this soil has been formed by the excretions of white

The appearance of water on the horizon is an optical illusion; it is merely the heated atmosphere in the sunlight. This photograph also shows the level

character of the Gezira plain.