Page:A Prisoner of the Khaleefa.djvu/267

Rh in case of accidents. Smelting, casting, moulding, and modelling were all carried on in the place. The storeroom was filled with every imaginable tool and article required for the smithy, carpenters' shops, and the boats. All the metal of the Soudan had been collected here. There were parts of cotton presses; sugar-mills; bars of steel and iron; ingots of brass and copper; iron, copper, and brass plates; the heavier class of tools and implements; and I was assured by Osta Abdallah, a rivetter in the shops in Gordon's time, that there was material in the place to build three more boats and keep the whole fleet going for many years. He did not exaggerate either. All other administrations were supplied by the Khartoum arsenal with whatever they required in the way of tools, furniture, iron and other metal work, cartridge presses and steel blocks for coinage; and very efficiently indeed was the work turned out.

The little time I spent in the arsenal was of course fully occupied with the coinage question. Two men were kept constantly engaged casting square steel blocks for the Omdurman mint; these blocks were polished and cut in Omdurman, and twenty-five sets were generally in use at the same time. Possibly two hundred men were employed in the melting of the copper and casting it into moulds the size and thickness of the dollars. The discs were next passed on to the people who gave them the impression; this was obtained by placing the disc on the lower block, and then hammering the upper block upon it. The impressions produced were in the main very poor; the