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56 u chapter five Trekking to Khartum, 1905 In March of 1905 Lizzie was traveling with Eck, Carrie, and Mary Jane Brinton. Their destination was Khartum. It was only eight years after General Kitchener had subdued the Madhi and the Dervish hordes at the Battle of Omdurman on September 2, 1898. The country was under British control, and the British had inducted the children of the Khalifa into their civil service. Lizzie’s descriptive account of the trip into Upper Nubia gives new and exciting details about travel at that time by train and boat. Eckley returned in 1909 to finance a major excavation at Wadi Halfa,1 near Buhen. The trip to Luxor was enhanced by Lizzie’s excitement at seeing her two nieces: Anne Wickham Sinkler and Emily Wharton Sinkler, the daughters of Charlie and Anne Sinkler. Emily was a great flirt and had many British beaux and admirers. She had green eyes, masses of auburn curls worn atop her head, and was petite. Anne was a lovely, petite brunette with green eyes. Their excitement over a trip from the South Carolina Low Country to Egypt was captured in the enthusiasm of their arrival. Lizzie described shrieks of laughter and hugs and kisses. Lizzie’s letters were to her brothers Wharton and Charlie and to her sister-in-law Anne. The journal entries 1. Wadi Halfa is an important archaeological site in Upper Nubia. It was near Abu Simbel and across the Nile from Eck’s camp at Buhen, a town of the Old Kingdom . It had a Middle Kingdom fort and temples of Isis and Min built by Amenophis II and the Horus of Buhenbuilt by Hatshepsut, Tuthmosis III, and Taharqua. The latter two temples are now removed to Khartum. Note that both Lizzie and her contemporaries referred to “Wadi” as “Wady” (John Baines and Jaromir Malek, Atlas of Ancient Egypt [New York: Facts on File, 1980], 187). Trekking to Khartum, 1905 57 plus the letters give a vivid description of this part of the world shortly after the British had made it accessible for travel. Lizzie and her party were treated to the care of a very knowing dragoman, Raschid. Lizzie noted that Raschid had accompanied the Kaiser on his famous trip to Palestine. Having a personal guide in Egypt would have given Lizzie and Eck an added sense of security.2 Following is Lizzie’s journal entry. Our next visit to Egypt was most interesting, for our object then was Khartoum, only six years after General Kitchener had captured it in his bloody battle of Omdurman.3 We landed at Naples, which is always 2. “The Kaiser was out of sorts. Neither England nor Russia seemed inclined to offer him any advantages so he decided to try his hand in the Middle East. For months he had talked about a trip to Constantinople, and the Holy land, which was under Turkish rule, and on October 12, 1898, he finally set forth, accompanied by the Empress and a suite of fifty. He sailed on the Hohenzollern to Constantinople and spent several days as the Sultan’s guest. . . . He then took ship to Haifa, from which the imperial party proceeded to Jerusalem by horse, camping each night by the roadside. Despite the splendid tents and the many servants, the heat was so overpowering, and the flies so bad, that most of the entourage regarded the pilgrimage as a severe ordeal. The Emperor, however, remained enthusiastic, and his entrance into Jerusalem on October 19th was staged as a magnificent spectacle. Mounted on a black charger, dressed in gleaming white with a gold eagle at the top of his helmet,William led his brilliantly arrayed court through the gates of the Holy City” (Virginia Cowles, The Kaiser [New York: Harper & Row, 1963], 164–65). 3. Beginning in June 1896, the British general Horatio Herbert Kitchener began the task of retaking the Sudan from the Khalifa and the Dervishes. He began with the construction of a railroad to transport troops and supplies for the campaign. His force was made up of British officers with Egyptian and Sudanese troops. His first destination was Dongola. After capturing that, Kitchener constructed a new rail line 225 miles across the Nubian desert from Wadi Halfa to Abu Hamed. Reinforced by British troops in January 1898, General Kitchener defeated a large Dervish army under Mahmud in April 1898 on the dusty hot desert plain of the Atbara. Kitchener now assembled a force of 8...

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