Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 March 1885 — Climate of the Soudan. [ARTICLE]

Climate of the Soudan.

[From the Pall Mall Gazette.] We published a few days ago an interview with Sir Henry Green on the subject of the employment of Indian sepoys in the Soudan. The following remarks by Sir Henry upon climatic influences, which we had not space to print then, may be of interest now: “And what about the climate, Sir Henry?” said our representative. “Well, those who have been in Scinde are not likely to be scared by the Soudan. As I spent most of my li e in those baking deserts, I can not share the alarm expressed by many concerning the prospects of a summer in the Soudan. In Scinde we have heat so terrible that sometimes you may see horses roll over with sunstroke in all directions, but I have very seldom seen any European down with sunstroke. The cause is the excessive dryness of the heat. When the air is so dry you perspire profusely, and the perspiration saves your life. When the atmosphere is damp, the perspiration is checked, and after sunset men die like rotten sheep of heat-apoplexy. In the Persian campaign we camped out from October to October near Peshawur, one of the hottest places you can find in all Asia, and our sick was only 2 per cent.; while ®n board the ships in the roads it was almost impossible to live. Dry heat can be borne to almost any extent with comparative impunity. I have seen French regiments come in from the desert with nothing on their heads but kepis, under a blazing sun which would have decimated the ranks had there been the least humidity in the atmosphere. “As regards the making of the railway between Suakin and Berber, that railway would probably have been made long ago but for Lord Granville. Everything was arranged; the Duke of Teck was to be the Chairman; we had a very powerful and influential directorate. A financial house had agreed to raise all the money that was needed, the Egyptian Government was to guarantee 4 per cent., the whole work was completed on paper, when it was suddenly brought to nothing by the antipathy of the Pashas of Ca ro to any scheme which diverted the Soudan traffic from the Nile to the Red Sea. ‘You have taken away half our trade by making the canal,’they said, ‘and now you want to take away the rest by your railway.’ The scheme was stifled; but one word from the Government would have secured its execution. That word Lord Granville emphatically refused to say. The Soudan lay altogether beyond the sphere of our interests, they said. So the railway was never commenced, with results which you know only too well. I naturally disbelieve the stories as to the necessity for running through tubular tunnels on account of the sand-storms and moving sand-hills. The other day Florida strawberries were selling in Baltimore at $1.50 per quart, while in some parts of Florida it was difficult to give the luscious fruit away. The ineomes of Baron Mayer Karl and Willy de Rothschild have been respectively rated, for taxation, at Frankfort, at $1,140,000 and Nobway has the smallest number of inhabitants to the square mile of all the countries in Europe. In Misonla, M. T., guns are discharged as fire alarms.