CHAPTER XIII

THE UNITY OF NILELAND

It is no longer possible to think of our occupation of Egypt as merely

a stepping-stone on the road to India—‘the Englishman reaching

far over to his loved India.’ Still less can it be looked upon

solely as a means for the regeneration of Egypt and the education

of her people till they are able to pass from a state of tutelage

and stand securely by themselves. Certainly, great strides have been

made in this direction. If Egypt were the whole matter we might hope

that in time, but not in one or two generations, a race of native

administrators might rise up, to whom the affairs of that country

might safely be left. But Egypt is only a portion of the great

country of the Nile. Looking southward from Alexandria or Suez,

the horizon is only bounded by the sources of the Nile, and these

do not well up at Assouan, as Herodotus was told. We might hope

that the Egyptians would be capable of managing Egypt; but not the

most sanguine enthusiast could imagine a period of time sufficient

to make them capable of managing the Soudan. A cry of ‘The Soudan

for the Soudanese’ would hardly be more ridiculous. The story of

the binding of the Nile, incomplete as that story is at present,

makes one thing, at least, perfectly clear, and that is, that all

Nileland is one country. No divided sovereignty is possible; there

must be one firm hand over all.

It would have needed a preternaturally keen eye to perceive that

from the moment we began to patch the old Barrage the occupation

of the whole Valley of the Nile was inevitable. Looking back, it

is easy to see how it all followed in logical sequence. Everything

depended on the Nile. The more Egypt was developed, the greater

grew the need for the regulation of the water. The rulers of Egypt

need have troubled little about the fate of countries divided from

them by so many leagues of rainless desert, but for the link of the

all-important river.

It sounds a far cry from the snows of Ruwenzori, the lakes and swamps

of Equatorial Africa, or the rain-swept hills of Abyssinia, to the

cotton-mills of Lancashire. The Egyptian peasant, lifting water

on to the fields of the Delta, knows that the connection is close

enough. We have our own direct commercial interest in holding the

Valley of the Nile, and Egypt is still on the road to India. Apart,

therefore, from the duties which rest upon us as a civilized Power, we

are doubly responsible for the welfare of the people of the Nileland.

Fifty years ago a distinguished English sailor travelled to Khartoum

and El Obeid, and published an account of his journey in a little

volume entitled ‘A Ride across the Nubian Desert.’ In eloquent

words he describes the wonders of the Nile’s course, and continues:

‘Surely the hand of the Almighty has traced it across the desert

that it might be the union of distant nations. . . . Its mission

is not yet accomplished; it is waiting to be the road to civilize

Africa. But it is not an Eastern nation, and not the Mohammedan

religion that can do it; and I am one of those who hope and believe

that Providence will destine it for England. An English Government

and a handful of Englishmen could do it. Cities would rise up at

Assouan and Khartoum, whose influence would be felt over the whole

interior. . . . I know, alas! the spirit of the age is against such

thoughts, and there are even men who would wish to abandon our Empire;

but I speak the voice of thousands of Englishmen who, like myself,

have served their country abroad, and who do not love her least,

who will never consent to relinquish an Empire that has been won

by the sword, and who think the best way to preserve it is often by

judicious extension.’

On many a stricken field the author of these prophetic words, Captain

Sir William Peel, V.C., the hero of the Naval Brigade in the Crimea

and the Mutiny, proved the sincerity of that love for his country

of which he spoke so warmly. And now, after so many years and so

many vicissitudes of fortune, an English Government and a handful

of Englishmen are grappling with the work on which his heart was set.

PART II

THE NEW SOUDAN

CHAPTER XIV

THE PAST

As with modern Egypt, so with the modern Soudan: the name of

the Albanian tobacco-seller is writ large upon the pages of her

history. In spite of the ancient connection between Egypt and

Ethiopia, in spite of the dependence of Egypt upon the Soudan for her

water, the warlike tribes of the south remained for more than 1,000

years free from any attempt at domination by their neighbours. It

was Mehemet Ali who, in the year 1819, laid the foundations of the

empire which reached its furthest limits under the Khedive Ismail,

an empire of which the brief but disastrous history brought nothing

but misery and ruin to the Soudanese, and made the Soudan a name of

fear and trembling to every Egyptian peasant.

About A.D. 700 Arabs of the tribe of Beni Omr, driven out of Arabia,

crossed the Red Sea, and began to settle about Sennar, on the

Blue Nile. By degrees these fugitives, reinforced by other tribes,

some from Arabia direct, some, it is said, by way of Egypt and the

countries further west, swelled to an invading host and permeated

the whole of the Northern Soudan, and the original inhabitants were

largely converted to Islam. In the Sennar region the two principal

negro tribes were the Fung and the Hameg. The conquerors, while they

imposed their language and religion on the conquered, seemed to have

been absorbed into their ranks; for the distinction between Arab

and negro diminished, and the old tribal names reappeared. In 1493

Amara Dunkas, a sheikh of one of the Fung tribes, was recognised as

king of all the Fungs, and conquered all the country on both sides

of the Blue Nile from Khartoum to Fazokhl. The negroes who remained

in the country were merged in the Fungs. The remainder emigrated to

the mountains of Southern Kordofan, where, under the name of Nubas,

they have ever since maintained themselves in a somewhat precarious

independence against the raids of the Arabs of the plains. About

the same time was founded the Sultanate of Darfur, which in time

extended its dominion to the banks of the Nile. South of these two

powers the Shilluks and other negro tribes continued, as before,

generally engaged in some petty warfare, and regarded as a convenient

reservoir of slaves by their Arab neighbours.

The Fung dynasty lasted 300 years, and attained a very considerable

position. About A.D. 1600 in the reign of Adlan, Sennar even became

famous for learning, and was the resort of many scientists and

philosophers from Cairo and Bagdad. In the reign of King Baadi,

1719-1758, the fame of the kingdom of Sennar reached its height. A

quarrel arose with Abyssinia on account of some presents from the

King of France which had been intercepted by Baadi. The Abyssinian

King invaded Sennar with a great host, but met with the most signal

defeat. So great an event was heralded throughout the Mohammedan

East. The bazaars of Constantinople and Delhi were alike filled with

the renown of Sennar. Once more crowds of learned and celebrated

men flocked into the country from every quarter. But it was the last

flicker of sunlight before the night fell. Baadi himself was deposed

and exiled on account of his bad administration. The Hameg tribe,

long subject to the Fungs, began to lift their heads. By 1790 the

kingdom of the Fungs had disappeared, and for thirty years the Hameg

continued supreme. Fire and sword was their sole notion of supremacy;

it was no mere theory with them. The country was utterly given over

to anarchy when Mehemet Ali determined to interfere.

The motives that prompted him were many; possibly, ardent

irrigationist that he was, the desire to secure the upper waters of

the Nile may have been among them; but beyond a doubt, like Cambyses

of old, his principal object was gold. Extraordinary rumours were

current as to an El Dorado in the south. Every officer and man

who took part in the expedition entertained the most extravagant

notions of gold-strewn districts. By means of this, and also by

securing the profitable traffic in slaves, Mehemet hoped to be able

to win sufficient resources to carry out his ambitious schemes in

Asia and Europe. It was also very convenient at the moment to find

employment for his irregular troops. It would be a mistake, however,

to explain his action wholly by such reasons as these. All through

his life ran the dream of posing as a second Napoleon. It is curious

to find that along with the army he sent a number of learned men

and skilled artisans, while it was announced that the object of the

invasion was to introduce the benefits of a regular government of

civilization. Mehemet Ali had closely studied the methods of his

great model.

But of all these designs only one, and that the worst, was destined to

be fulfilled. The slave-trade had always flourished in the Soudan. The

Arab States were founded upon slavery. Along the great Arbain road,

the desert ‘track of the forty days’ from Darfur to Assiout,

yearly caravans containing slaves as well as other merchandise passed

into Egypt; the Nile route served the same purpose, and from the Red

Sea ports there was a constant export trade to Arabia and Turkey. All

this was nothing compared to the dimensions which the trade assumed

under Egyptian rule. It became practically the sole trade of the

country; it reached like a pestilential blight even as far as the

Equator. Bitterly did the Soudan suffer for the Napoleonic ideas

of Mehemet, and bitter, but deserved, was the penalty which Egypt

had to pay for her misgovernment in the end. Even to-day among the

remotest tribes the name of ‘Turk’ stands for loathing and terror.

The army, commanded by Ismail, son of the Viceroy, reached Sennar

without opposition. Thence, accompanied by his brother Ibrahim,

he advanced to Fazokhl in search of the famous gold-mines in the

Beni Shangul. But the gold proved disappointing. Ibrahim returned

to Egypt, destined to win fame as the butcher of the Peloponnese

in the Greek War of Independence. The Arabs rose against Ismail,

and he had to return to defeat them. Unsuccessful in his quest for

gold, he had devoted all his energy to the slave-trade, but his

cruelties and barbarities were too much even for a people familiar

with the Hameg. The local chief at Shendi, appropriately named El Nemr

(the Tiger), invited him to a banquet. While he and his followers,

contrary to the precepts of their own Koran, drank freely of the

forbidden wine, straw was silently piled high about the house and

fired. To a man they perished in the flames.

Meantime, Achmet Bey, the Defterdar, had conquered the province of

Kordofan from the Sultan of Darfur. Hearing of Ismail’s fate, he

marched towards Shendi to avenge him. The story of what happened,

as told by the Egyptians, wears an ugly look. The details are

wanting, but, at any rate, few were left to tell the other side of

the story. At Metemmeh, on the bank of the Nile opposite Shendi, the

people sent messengers to sue for pardon. It was granted. But when

the Defterdar marched into the town a lance was thrown at him. The

pardon was at once rescinded, and a general massacre ensued. El

Nemr himself, however, had fled to Abyssinia. He, at any rate, had

no faith in Egyptian promises. The Defterdar then marched towards

Khartoum, and at Tuti Island another great slaughter took place. It

was a bad beginning. To the native Soudanese the distinction between

the benefits of a regular government of civilization and the fire

and sword of the Hameg must have seemed slight indeed.

To build aright on such foundations would have been difficult

for a nation of born administrators. For the Egyptians it was

impossible. There were among the Egyptian Governors of the Soudan

honest and righteous men, but, amid a crowd of officials bred and

trained in an atmosphere of corruption and slavery, their spasmodic

efforts after good only gave fresh opportunities for evil. Military

stations were established in various parts of the country for the sake

of security, and they became fountains of slave recruits to swell the

ranks of the army. The navigation of the White Nile was declared free,

and it became the favourite route of the slave-traders. Khartoum,

from a village of skins and reeds, rose to be a city of bricks and

the capital of the Soudan, but also a convenient and central market

for a huge slave-trade. The Abyssinians, who espoused the cause of the

Sennar rebels, were beaten back into their mountains, but the savage

methods of warfare only brutalized and demoralized the victors. It

speaks volumes for the barbarous character of the times that when

Adlan, the leader of the Abyssinians, was captured by Kurshid,

reputed the best of the Governors of the Soudan, he was immediately

impaled. The annals of these years are filled with stories of famine

and rebellion, and, to add to the general desolation, cholera and

other diseases constantly ravaged the country.

But worse was to come. Down to 1853 the southernmost Egyptian

station was only 120 miles south of Khartoum. The annexed provinces

of Kordofan, Sennar, and Kassala (or Taka) groaned under oppression

and tyranny, but the negro inhabitants of the Upper White Nile and

the Bahr el Ghazal were still comparatively unmolested. In that year

the English Consul in the Soudan started a trading expedition up

the river. Other traders followed, who established stations far up

the country. Peaceful trading soon succumbed to the temptations of

the slave-trade. For the sake of protection, it began to be found

necessary to employ bands of armed Arabs or Nubians. Gradually the

European traders disappeared; by 1860 the last of them had sold

their stations to their Arab agents. No greater curse was ever let

loose upon a country than these human locusts, and the Egyptian

Government was directly responsible. Under the shallow pretence of

legitimate commerce, trading monopolies were leased to these traders

in various districts. The fact that the Government had not a shadow

of claim even by right of conquest to the territories leased was

no obstacle. All the country south of Kordofan and Darfur along

the White Nile or the Bahr el Ghazal was regarded as peculiarly

suitable for these nefarious bargains. The Khartoumers, as they

were called, because they had their headquarters in the capital,

established themselves everywhere, and became practically independent

potentates. With their armed bands of brigands they raided the native

tribes, and even used them to fight against each other. Only the

Dinkas, protected by the impenetrable marshes of the sudd region,

and the powerful and warlike Azande, or Niam-Niam, in the south,

were able to maintain themselves. But the Bongo, a numerous and

peaceful agricultural people, were easily reduced. The fact that

they had attained a higher civilization than their neighbours (for

they smelted the iron found in their swamps with furnaces of clay

and rude bellows, and worked it with stone hammers on anvils of

granite, made pottery, and even had some acquaintance with surgery)

only made them the more valuable in the slave-market. The Jur, Dembo,

and Golo tribes were likewise among the principal sufferers. Anarchy

is but a mild term for the condition of affairs.

Some of these unhappy victims may have heard the news on their

way to the northern slave-market that slavery was abolished in the

Soudan. If so, it cannot have done much to sweeten their bondage

or to heal the strokes of the lash, yet a viceregal decree to that

effect had been solemnly promulgated at Berber in 1857. It was

characteristic of many of the descendants of Mehemet Ali that they

inherited great part of his intellectual vigour and wide sweep of

imagination without any of his executive capacity. Said Pasha, who

became Viceroy in 1854, visited the Soudan and clearly recognised the

failure of his foreign empire. A large force had to be maintained to

screw exorbitant demands out of a discontented population. Agriculture

was depressed, and every other industry was perishing under a system

of taxation vicious in itself, and collected by methods which might

have made a Verres blush. He determined to evacuate the country. But

the burden of the Soudan, so lightly taken up in greed of gain, was

not to be so lightly laid aside. Egypt was now holding a wolf by the

ears. The officials who battened on the ruin of the country opposed a

strenuous resistance. Things had come to such a pass that the sheikhs

and notables of the provinces themselves feared that the withdrawal

of one devil would be followed by the entry of many. Said contented

himself with reorganizing the government and announcing a number of

reforms of a drastic and far-reaching nature, and then returned to

Egypt. It was the first of many reorganizations and many reforms,

all of which were as effective as the decree for the abolition of

slavery. The plan of much talking and little doing became a fixed

principle of Soudan policy.

The story of the tax on sakiehs (water-wheels) affords a good

illustration of Egyptian methods. One of Said’s reforms was to

fix this tax at 200 piastres per annum. In less than nine years it

had risen to 500 piastres. Jaaffar Pasha, who finally raised it to

this extent, declared openly that he fixed it at that rate in order

to see how much the peasants would really pay, and he hoped after a

three years’ trial to be able to arrive at a just assessment. It

was not a very scientific plan of taxation in any case, but,

unfortunately, Jaaffar was removed before the scheme had time to

work out, and his successors, absolutely indifferent to his motives,

retained the tax, and even further increased it. It was calculated

that on average land the tax often far exceeded the net returns

for one sakieh. Even a ruined wheel was liable to the full amount,

and if an owner returned to it after an interval he was saddled with

the whole of the arrears. On the same principle taxes continued to

be charged on land and trees that had long since been carried away

by the floods. The natural results followed. Many cultivators were

ruined and reduced to beggary, others fled the country, and much

land went out of cultivation. In 1881 more than 2,000 sakiehs were

lying derelict in Berber and Dongola.

By the time Ismail Pasha came to the throne in 1863 it had

become abundantly clear that the Egyptians were unfit to govern

the Soudan. It looked as though in a few years the whole country

would have become a wilderness, totally uninhabited save for a few

wanderers, whose sole occupation would be selling each other into

slavery. And yet the next few years witnessed an enormous extension

of the Egyptian Empire, and Ismail himself enjoyed, until the bubble

burst, a great reputation as a genuine and whole-hearted reformer. Nor

was that reputation wholly undeserved. Strange compound that he

was of vast ambitions but changeable resolution, of far-reaching

sagacity but reckless carelessness, a Westerner in the conception of

his ideals but an Oriental in every sense in his pursuit of them, he

proved himself in his treatment of the Soudan, as in other spheres,

to possess many of the elements of greatness. If he failed, it was

partly because the evil was beyond cure: the impending catastrophe

was too great to be averted. His employment of Baker and Gordon and

other Europeans showed that he realized the incapacity of Egypt to

perform the task by herself. That was in itself a great step forward;

undoubtedly it staved off for a little the day of retribution. His

eager support of the project of a railway to Khartoum, first mooted by

his predecessor, Said, showed a sound appreciation of the position,

though his ineffective attempts to carry it out showed his weakness

as clearly. But the whole hierarchy of Egyptian officialdom was

rotten to the core. The best of rulers without good ministers is

predestined to failure.

To add to a falling house must always be a desperate remedy. No

other course seemed open to Ismail, if he was really to cope with

the slave-trade. So long as the basin of the Upper Nile remained

in the hands of the ‘Khartoumers,’ the sources of the traffic

flowed as briskly as ever, and at the same time the Red Sea ports

afforded every facility for export. Accordingly, in 1866 Ismail

purchased the districts of Suakin and Massowah from the Turks by an

increase of tribute. In 1869 he took a still more important step,

and determined to annex the whole basin of the Nile. He invested Sir

S. Baker with absolute and despotic powers over the whole country

south of Gondokoro. No better choice could have been made. An

administrator of the best type, energetic and high-minded, Baker

was also no stranger to the scene of his mission. He had already in

1861 conducted an expedition up the White Nile to join hands with

Speke and Grant in their investigations of the sources of the Nile,

and in 1864 he had discovered the Albert Nyanza.

A strong man was needed. The Khedive seemed in earnest, but he

was occupied with the Suez Canal and other matters nearer home. His

representatives in Khartoum took quite another view; it was the custom

of the Soudan Government to take away with one hand what it gave with

the other. Baker’s appointment bore the ominous date of April 1, and

the fact may well have recurred to him when, on arriving at Khartoum

towards the close of the year, he discovered that the territory he

was sent to annex had already been leased by the Governor-General to

a couple of notorious slave-dealers. Every conceivable obstacle was

put in his way by the officials. But, in spite of all opposition,

he organized his expedition, and after a journey of incredible

difficulty and labour, for the real channel of the river was blocked

by sudd, he reached Gondokoro in May, 1871, and formally annexed

it as ‘Ismailia.’ Next year he passed south, and proclaimed

Unyoro an Egyptian province, organized a number of military posts,

and entered into friendly relations with M’tesa, King of Uganda. For

the time the slave-traffic in these new provinces was crushed. In 1873

Baker returned to Cairo with a record of successful work behind him,

which must have astonished no one more than the Khedive himself.

But once the strong hand was removed, the stone which had been heaved

uphill with so much labour rolled swiftly down again. Less than a

year elapsed between the departure of Baker and the arrival of Colonel

Gordon, on his appointment as Governor-General of Equatoria. Even in

that short time the Egyptian occupation had become merely nominal. Two

posts only were held, Gondokoro and Fatiko. Three large slave-trading

stations were in full swing on the Bahr el Zeraf alone, whilst on

the Bahr el Ghazal the notorious Zubehr had established himself as a

practically independent potentate, and was even preparing on his own

account an invasion of Darfur. The situation called forth Gordon’s

fullest energies. Never did he perform better work than during his

three years in Equatoria. As far as it could be done under Egyptian

supremacy, he checked the slave-trade and laid the foundations of

good government. The country was organized and divided into districts

with proper garrisons both along the Sobat and the White Nile. The

tribes were peaceful and contented. Communication was established

with the great lakes; Lake Albert Nyanza was for the first time

circumnavigated. A treaty was made with M’tesa, King of Uganda,

recognising his independence, and Emin Bey was sent to represent

Egypt at his Court. In 1876 Gordon returned to England.

In Egypt, meantime, the Khedive’s reckless extravagance was fast

hurrying him to disaster. But the more involved he became, the more

he extended his ambitions, like a ruined spendthrift who must keep up

his credit at any cost. Extension of his Empire became a mania. After

Equatoria came the turn of Darfur in 1874. Darfur had maintained its

independence for over 400 years under an unbroken line of Sultans. One

of them, Abd-el-Rahman the Just, had entered into correspondence with

Napoleon during his occupation of Egypt, and congratulated him upon

his defeat of the Mamelukes. Napoleon replied in a remarkable letter:

_‘To the Sultan of Darfur, 12 Messidor, Year VII. In the Name of

God, compassionate and merciful; there is no other God but God! To

the Sultan of Darfur, Abd-el-Rahman._

‘I have received your letter, and understand its purport. When your

caravan arrived I was absent in Syria punishing and destroying my

enemies. I pray you send me by the first caravan 2,000 black slaves,

over sixteen years of age, healthy and strong. I will buy them from

you. Order your caravan to come immediately, without delay. I have

given orders for its protection all along the route.

‘BONAPARTE,

‘_Commander-in-Chief_.’

Many motives combined to make Ismail desire the annexation of

the country. There were longstanding frontier grievances. Its

commerce and slave-trade were still considerable, and Ismail

hoped to profit by the one as well as to suppress the other. The

copper-mines of Hofrat-en-Nahas in Southern Darfur were also a

powerful attraction in view of his failing treasury. They were

reported to be extraordinarily rich, with veins standing 2 feet out

of the ground. And, since Zubehr could not be prevented from his

proposed expedition, the only course seemed to be to join him in the

conquest. Accordingly, an expedition was despatched from the north,

while Zubehr co-operated from the south. The Sultan and two of his

sons were killed in battle, and another troublesome province was

added to the Khedive’s dominions. Zubehr was made a Pasha, but

was refused the governorship, which he claimed as his right. For a

moment he seemed inclined to assert his independence, but in the

end he rashly determined to press his case in person at Cairo,

leaving his son Suleiman to fill his place in his absence.

The same year saw the annexation of Harrar at the request of the

Mohammedans in that country. Raouf Pasha, who had been left in

charge at Gondokoro after Baker’s departure, was sent for that

purpose. He showed that he had learnt but little wisdom or mercy

from his association with Baker and Gordon, for he commenced his

administration by strangling the late Sultan, a wholly unnecessary

act. Egyptian territory had been extending down the Red Sea coast for

some years previously, at the expense of Abyssinia. Little was gained,

except some friction with the King of Abyssinia, for the occupation

was generally quite nominal, and the tributes imposed by Egypt were

seldom or never paid. Still, Egypt now possessed the coast-line as

far as the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, and the purchase of the port of

Zeila from Turkey in 1875 extended her possessions to Cape Guardafui

and beyond, and consolidated her position, such as it was, in Harrar,

and what is now Somaliland. But even this did not satisfy the Khedive.

Gordon had clearly perceived that it was impossible to properly

control the Equatorial provinces without an outlet to the Indian

Ocean, to replace the long and precarious line of communication

by the Nile. He therefore advised the Khedive to occupy Mombasa

from the sea, while he himself co-operated from inland by way of

the Victoria Nyanza. Although the difficult nature of the country

and the inferior quality of his troops soon convinced Gordon that

it was impossible for him to carry out his part in the project,

a naval expedition, known as the Juba River Expedition, set out in

1875 under the command of McKillop Pasha. Missing the mouth of the

Juba River, which had been selected by the Khedive as their objective,

without any great knowledge of the geography of these regions, they

ran further south, but encroached on the territory of the Sultan of

Zanzibar. At the instance of Great Britain the expedition was given

up, but no objection was raised to the recognition of the Khedive’s

authority as far south as the tenth degree of latitude.

It was not long before the folly of all this extravagant expansion

began to appear. Abyssinia had had many causes of quarrel with Egypt,

and, in fact, the relations between the two countries had consisted

of a state of intermittent war or at best armed neutrality since the

time of Mehemet Ali. But the purchase of Zeila thoroughly alarmed

King John, and he took steps to protect his rights. War followed,

disastrous to Egypt. A first army under Arendrup, a Dane, was, after a

few preliminary successes, totally annihilated. A second was hastily

fitted out and despatched. It was a model of all an army should not

be, and had not King John been diverted by the fear of his rebellious

vassal, Menelik, it would no doubt have suffered the fate of the

first. As it was, it managed to return to Massowah after two or three

months’ tedious and inglorious campaigning and one severe defeat.

The falling house had been extended in every direction, but it

was falling still. The Abyssinian trouble was not the only sign

of weakness. The internal condition of the provinces was as bad as

ever; the whole country was restless and disturbed; the feebleness

of the Government was increased by the huge distances over which

its garrisons were scattered; the slave-trade, openly favoured by

the officials whose duty it was to suppress it, was recovering

from the blows which had been dealt it. One more heroic effort

was made to set things right. Gordon was recalled to Egypt and

made Governor-General of the whole Soudan, including Equatoria and

the Red Sea provinces. He was specially charged with the duty of

settling matters with Abyssinia, of suppressing the slave-trade,

and of improving communications.

It was with the utmost reluctance that Gordon returned to the

Soudan. Under existing conditions his task was a hopeless one,

and he knew it. His letters show how clearly he foresaw the coming

catastrophe. He was aware that, while the Egyptian Government

was concluding an anti-slavery convention with England, it was at

the same time intriguing almost openly with Zubehr, the prince of

slave-dealers. Less than half-hearted support was to be expected from

Cairo. At the very moment that he needed them most, great part of his

troops were withdrawn to serve in the Russo-Turkish War. Immediately

on assuming the reins of government he found himself confronted by

a serious rebellion in Darfur; at the same time the slave-dealers in

the south were gathering in force under the leadership of Suleiman,

Zubehr’s son. But Gordon faced the peril undismayed. His activity

was almost superhuman. Hastily patching up a temporary arrangement on

the Abyssinian frontier, he travelled to Khartoum by way of Kassala,

Gedaref, and Sennar. Here he spent some time in carrying out a

number of reforms, and in May set out to deal with the rebellion in

Darfur. Darfur had had its first experience of Egyptian rule, and

Harûn, a member of the deposed royal house, had taken advantage of

the general discontent. There flocked also to his standard the nomad

Arab tribes, who had stood aloof when Darfur was first conquered,

but now saw their hereditary trade threatened. But Gordon in a few

months had drawn together his scattered garrisons and scattered the

rebels by a display of force. By the almost unsupported exercise

of his personal influence he next dispersed the combination of

slave-dealers under Suleiman, and by the end of the year he was back

again at Khartoum, after another visit to the Abyssinian frontier

and a round by Suakin and Berber.

Early in the next year he made the tour of all the Red Sea provinces,

including Harrar. But in spite of all this ceaseless activity, the

close of the year 1878 found things worse than ever. Trouble was

once more stirring on the Abyssinian frontier. The northern provinces

were quiet, but their quiet was the torpor of exhaustion. In Darfur

Harûn had once more reappeared, and in Kordofan, too, a rising had

taken place. In the Bahr el Ghazal Suleiman had this time revolted

in good earnest. Only Equatoria was comparatively happy under the

rule of Emin. Unyoro had been given up, and the Somerset Nile was

now the southern boundary. Gessi had been despatched by Gordon to

the Bahr el Ghazal, and in March he himself undertook an expedition

to Kordofan and Darfur, with the object of pacifying the country

and preventing help being sent to Suleiman. At the same time he

made great efforts to put down the slave-trade, and captured many

caravans. In June he was able to return to Khartoum, and left for

Cairo to confer with the new Khedive Tewfik. The short remainder

of his time as Governor-General was occupied with his mission to

Abyssinia, and in December he left for England.

Meantime Gessi had been performing marvels in the Bahr el

Ghazal. Gessi is one of the heroic figures of Soudan history. An

Italian by birth, he served in the Crimea as interpreter to the

British troops. In 1874 he joined Gordon in Central Africa. Thanks

to his energy, a dangerous rising of the Shilluks at Fashoda was put

down, and it was he who circumnavigated Lake Albert. The rising he

had now to face was most serious. Zubehr, before he left for Cairo

after the conquest of Darfur, had assembled his officers and made

them swear to revolt when he should send them word that the time

was ripe. That time was now come. Their organization was complete;

their following was numerous and well-equipped; they had already

proved the incapacity of the Government troops. It seemed that

there was nothing to stop them from dividing the Soudan provinces

among themselves, and finally throwing off the yoke of the hated and

despised Egyptian. They even announced that they intended to seize

Egypt itself. But they had reckoned without Gessi. With a handful of

troops, inferior in quality as well as in number, short of supplies

and ammunition, impeded by floods and generally cut off from his

base by the sudd, in two notable campaigns he utterly broke their

power, seized and shot Suleiman and his principal confederates,

and completely liberated the Bahr el Ghazal.

His end was characteristic of the fate of those who, in those dark

days, dared to serve the best interests of Egypt. In spite of his

successful administration of his province, he found his position

made impossible for him after Gordon’s departure. In September,

1880, he resigned. After nearly perishing in the sudd, which blocked

his steamers, he reached Khartoum. But there, under the new regime,

he was no welcome guest. He struggled on to Suez, where he soon

after died, unrecognised and unrewarded, utterly worn out by his

exertions and privations. When such a man met with such treatment, it

was clear that there was no chance of the regeneration of the Soudan

under Egyptian rule. The last ray of hope had been extinguished with

Gordon’s departure.

CHAPTER XV

THE PAST—_Continued_

Gordon’s successor at Khartoum was Raouf Pasha, the very man

whom he had dismissed from his post as Governor of Harrar two years

before for oppression and other malpractices. The appointment was

not of good augury, and the improvements which had been made in

the administration fell rapidly to pieces. The slave-traders began

to lift their heads; once more the caravans, with their miserable

human freight, began to journey towards Egypt or the Red Sea; once

more the horde of tax-collectors felt themselves set free to levy

their exactions at their will. The critical position of affairs in

Egypt itself was reflected in the Soudan. Economy and retrenchment

were the order of the day; under such a Government they were not

likely to mean anything else than an increase in the burden on the

provinces. Colonel Stewart, in his report on the Soudan, published

in 1883, graphically describes the character of the irregular

Bashi-Bazouks who were employed to collect the taxes.

‘Many, if not most of these men,’ he says, ‘are very indifferent

characters. They are mostly swaggering bullies, robbing, plundering,

and ill-treating the people with impunity. Probably for every

pound that reaches the Treasury they rob an equal amount from the

people. They are a constant menace to public tranquillity, and

before any amelioration can be expected they must be got rid of. As

soldiers they are valueless, having no discipline, nor, except in

talk, do they exhibit any extraordinary courage. Compared with that

of negroes and Egyptians their pay is high.’

A last paper reorganization took place in 1882. Schools were to be

set up, a proper system of justice established, the slave-trade was

to be again suppressed. A capable Governor-General, Abd-el-Kader,

who might have made a great mark in happier times, was appointed to

supersede Raouf. But it was too late. The promised reforms could be

no more than acknowledgments of past deficiencies. Egypt had wasted

the golden opportunities created for her by Baker and Gordon. The

day of retribution was at hand. From every quarter of the horizon the

clouds had long been gathering, and the tempest was now to burst. In

August, 1881, the Mahdi had proclaimed himself publicly during the

Feast of Ramadan as the prophet foretold by Mahomet.

Sheikh Mohammed Ahmed, strangely enough the son of a carpenter, and

a little over thirty years of age, was a native of Dongola, but had

been living for some time in the neighbourhood of Khartoum, where he

had acquired a great reputation for sanctity. The Soudan was then, and

still is, a soil peculiarly suitable for the growth of prophets. The

creed of Islam, as is well known, has a peculiar fascination for the

natives of Africa, owing, perhaps, to the simplicity and directness

of its essential formula. But it has generally only overlaid, and

not displaced, the old superstitions of pagan days. The people are

naturally credulous and excitable, and in the entire absence of any

education or learning there has been nothing to restrain them. Almost

any holy man can gain some kind of a following—at any rate for a

time. But the Mahdi was more than an ordinary prophet, and the times

were ripe for rebellion.

The venality and corruption of the Egyptian officials had produced

widespread discontent among the agricultural and trading classes. The

oppressive exactions of the tax-collectors had reduced many to ruin

and beggary. It seemed that any change of rulers must be a relief. The

spasmodic efforts to suppress the slave-trade had seriously alarmed

the nomad tribes, whose chief source of wealth it was. The one thing

wanted was some strong influence to bind together the discordant

elements of revolt. It was found in the idea preached by the Mahdi

of the regeneration of Islam by force of arms. After the long years

of wrong and oppression the promise of universal equality, with one

law and one religion for all, was sweet to hear. To the people that

sat in darkness it seemed that a great light had indeed arisen. The

four great sects of the Mohammedan Soudan sank their differences in

favour of the Prophet of the new dispensation. The stern character

of his teaching, his earnest denunciation of earthly vanities and

pleasures, his prohibition of the use of intoxicants and smoking, did

much at the outset to rouse the fanatical fervour of his adherents. It

was a social as well as a religious revolution. The simple jibbeh,

or cotton shirt, became the badge of his followers and the emblem

of his doctrine.

The course adopted by the Egyptian authorities was well calculated

to increase his prestige. First they ignored, then they underrated,

his power. Feeble attempts were made to seize him, which failed

utterly. At first Sennar was the centre of disturbance; a little

later the Mahdi appeared in Southern Kordofan. A small force of

regulars was sent against him in December, 1881; they fell into

an ambush and were utterly destroyed. In June, 1882, Yusuf Pasha,

Governor of Fashoda, with several thousand men, set out to crush

him finally. Yusuf had distinguished himself in Gessi’s famous

campaign. That an experienced leader of disciplined troops could

have anything to fear from a crowd of half-naked Arabs seemed to

him utterly impossible; so he neglected every precaution, with the

inevitable result of annihilation. Throughout the Soudan it was

regarded as little less than a miracle. The warlike tribes of the

west began to flock to the Mahdi’s standard. His fame spread to the

farthest extremities of Darfur. By the end of 1882 he had three armies

in the field. Everywhere the Egyptian garrisons were beleaguered. The

hated tax-collectors and outlying bodies of troops were the first

to feel the vengeance of the rebels. Early in 1883 came the fall

of El Obeid, after a most gallant resistance under Mohamed Pasha

Said. The Egyptian Government made a desperate attempt to regain

their position. Hicks Pasha arrived at Khartoum with 10,000 men,

mostly raw recruits, and advanced into Kordofan. Betrayed by their

guides, suffering terribly from heat and thirst, deficient alike

in courage and discipline, the expedition was beaten before it set

out. On November 5 the massacre, for it was nothing else, took place,

and only 300 survivors were left. The effect was tremendous. On the

one side it was decided to abandon the Soudan and withdraw all the

garrisons, and Gordon was sent to carry out this task; on the other,

a gigantic impulse was given to the cause of Mahdism.

Great as Gordon’s influence had once been, it was impossible for

it to outweigh the religious fervour of the Mahdists. His position

was immensely weakened when it became known that his final object

was the evacuation of the Soudan. Many waverers felt that they

must in the end be left at the mercy of the Mahdi, and wavered

no more. Gordon’s view was that the only way to evacuate the

Soudan with honour and safety was to hold on to Khartoum, crush

the enemy if possible, and then to retire, leaving behind some

form of government capable of maintaining order. The only man, in

his opinion, capable of such a position was Zubehr. But his views

were not shared, perhaps hardly understood, by the authorities at

home. The British Government, committed sorely against their will

to a military occupation of Egypt, and earnestly desiring to make

it as short as possible, were most unwilling to undertake further

responsibilities in the Soudan. The conflict of opinion produced

paralysis. Neither policy was completely adopted. British troops

moved up to Assouan. In the Eastern Soudan the disaster of El Teb,

where once more the Egyptian troops under Valentine Baker allowed

themselves to be slaughtered like sheep, and the fall of Sinkat,

forced the Government to take military action. General Graham,

starting from Suakin, won brilliant victories at El Teb and Tamai,

and relieved the garrison at Tokar. But the proposal to make a dash on

Berber, now in the hands of the Mahdists, was vetoed, and Graham’s

troops retired. Meanwhile in the Nile Valley the golden hours were

flying fast. Gordon stood firmly by his policy of holding Khartoum,

partly in the hope, growing daily fainter, of being able to turn the

scale by his own personal exertions and influence, partly with the

intention of forcing the British Government to change what seemed

to him their disastrous and dishonourable policy of abandoning

the Soudan to the rebels. On their side, the Government drifted,

hesitating and temporizing, reluctant to reverse their settled

policy of peace. And so the tragic game was played. Month by month

the investment of Khartoum grew closer. Slatin Bey in Darfur, after

fighting twenty-seven battles in the course of 1883, was deserted

by his troops and forced to surrender. El Fasher was reduced in the

following January. In the Bahr el Ghazal, Lupton Bey, the successor

of Gessi, after holding out for eighteen months, shared the same

fate, and was brought in a prisoner to Omdurman. In the east the

garrison of Gedaref made terms with the enemy. The Mahdi was able

to concentrate his forces at the important point.

Only in August, 1884, a relief expedition was decided on, and at the

end of December two columns started from Korti, one along the Nile

towards Abu Hamed, the other across the desert by Gakdul Wells to

Metemmeh and Khartoum. But the effort that might have succeeded six

months earlier was too late. Two days before the relieving steamers

arrived the weak defences of Khartoum had been stormed, and Gordon

had fallen.

For the moment it seemed that Gordon’s death would do what he

himself could not do when alive. Great preparations were made for

a new campaign in the autumn. The columns, which had drawn back to

Merowe after much severe fighting, were quartered for the summer

along the river. General Graham was again despatched to Suakin

with orders to crush Osman Digna, and a railway from that place to

Berber was begun. For two months there was hard fighting at Hashin,

at McNeill’s Zeriba, and at Tamai. But the hot fit passed. The

railway, which had been begun without any survey, quite in the

familiar Egyptian fashion, was given up. The whole Nile Valley

was left unoccupied as far as Kosheh. The dervishes pushed on, and

occupied Dongola, and, though decisively beaten at Ginnis at the end

of the year, they continued to maintain a harassing border warfare.

The Mahdi died in June, 1885, carried off by a malignant fever,

or, as some say, poisoned by a woman, whilst in the middle of

his preparations for the invasion of Egypt. His successor, the

Khalifa Abdullahi, a Baggara of the Taaisha tribe from Darfur,

took up his plans. To the children of the desert Egypt might well

seem an easy and attractive field for plunder. They had had a rough

experience of the quality of British troops in action, but these new

antagonists had always followed up their victories by retreat and

evacuation. They had no reason to doubt the continuation of the same

nerveless policy. The British Government talked loudly of abandoning

Egypt itself. Any resistance by Egyptian troops unsupported seemed

an absurdity. But unexpected obstacles arose. A revolt in Darfur,

war with Abyssinia, and the opposition of the great Kabbabish tribe,

combined to delay the Khalifa’s advance. Not until 1889 did he send

his best general, Wad el Nejumi, forward. Nejumi pressed on without

misgivings. Only Egyptian troops were guarding the frontier. But

the Egyptian battalions, trained and led by British officers,

were no longer mere droves of frightened sheep. Under Wodehouse

at Argin, and under Grenfell at Toski, they first checked, and

then annihilated, Nejumi’s army. Thenceforward the dervish power

steadily declined. The recapture in 1891 of Tokar, Osman Digna’s

chief base of supplies, put an end to his influence in the Suakin

district. Raiding and frontier warfare continued till 1896, but

there was no serious fighting, until the Dongola Expedition in 1896

marked the opening of the well-prepared campaign which ended in the

complete overthrow of the Khalifa’s power.

Once more the day of punishment for the guilty had dawned. In the

disasters and defeats inflicted by the Mahdi, in the horrors of the

sack of Khartoum and many another town, Egypt had paid the penalty for

her sins against the Soudan. In blood and shame she had reaped a full

harvest. But the unhappy Soudanese had only thrown off the yoke of one

master to find themselves under that of one much more terrible. Even

before the Mahdi’s death plunder and success had corrupted the

new faith, and dimmed the first glow of religious fervour. The

Khalifa, under the guise of religion, had developed into a cruel

and bloodthirsty tyrant. He and his principal supporters, Arabs

from Western Darfur, regarded themselves as conquerors in a foreign

land. Especially since he had brought his own tribe, the Taaisha, to

settle in Omdurman, he had made it his policy to depress the power

of the Nile Valley tribes like the Jaalin and the Danagla. On them

fell the brunt of his military expeditions. Executions, massacre,

and confiscations, were the order of the day. The inhabitants of

whole districts, especially in the once-populous country along

the Blue Nile, were forced to come and live at Omdurman, which

grew into a city of 400,000 inhabitants. This concentration, by

at once creating a great demand and withdrawing the agricultural

population from their proper occupation, produced the most terrible

famines. Everything was sacrificed to the supremacy of the western

Arabs. In ten years more damage was inflicted upon the country by

this pack of human wolves than in all the sixty years of Egyptian

dominion, bad as it was. Slatin Pasha estimates that 75 per cent. of

the population perished. Great as the abominations of the slave-trade

had been before, they were never greater than under the Khalifa’s

rule. The export of slaves was forbidden, but from all parts of the

country they were brought in droves to the market at Omdurman.

The slave-dealing tribes had been the principal instrument of

vengeance upon Egypt. It was now their turn for chastisement. The

Egyptian Sirdar, Sir H. Kitchener, who fought with the railway as well

as with troops, advanced to Dongola in September, 1896, and the banks

of the river were again occupied up to Merowe. Next year Abu Hamed and

Berber were taken, and the new railway laid from Wadi Halfa across

the Korosko desert. Early in 1898 the battle of the Atbara was won

by the Anglo-Egyptian troops. In September the great battle of the

campaign was fought at Kerreri, Omdurman was taken, and the Egyptian

flag was once more flying at Khartoum, this time with the British flag

beside it. By the end of the year the authority of the new rulers

was established, after some difficult and troublesome campaigning,

throughout the Eastern Soudan as far south as Fazokhl and Famaka;

gunboats, though blocked in the Bahr el Gebel, had proceeded up the

Bahr el Ghazal and hoisted the flags near Meshra el Rek. Before the

end of 1899 the Khalifa and the remnant of his supporters still in

the field had fought their last fight. In the hour of their downfall

the dervish chieftains displayed a splendid courage worthy of their

race. Proudly disdaining to be fugitives in the lands they had ruled,

they perished to a man with their faces to the foe.

But of far greater importance than the final destruction of the

Khalifa were the events that followed on the fall of Omdurman,

which are inseparably connected with the name of Fashoda. Since

the time when the Khedive Ismail was pursuing his wild career of

annexation without attracting any particular attention except from

the natives of the countries annexed, the whole position of affairs

had entirely altered. In every direction European Powers had appeared

upon the scene. In the east Massowah had been handed over to the

Italians in 1885, and they had inflicted several severe defeats

upon the dervishes. In 1893 a British Protectorate had been declared

over Uganda and Unyoro, and in 1895 the British flag was hoisted at

Duffile. The Belgians from the Congo Free State had pressed on to the

Nile, and in 1897 an expedition under Chaltin was successful in taking

Rejaf, which had long been the southernmost dervish post on the river.

Most serious of all was the French movement from the Upper Ubanghi

district of French Congoland into the Bahr el Ghazal province. The

Belgians had already made considerable expeditions in this quarter,

and had penetrated as far north as Hofrat-en-Nahas in Southern

Darfur. In 1894 they made over their claims to the French. The

French Governor of the Upper Ubanghi, M. Liotard, immediately began

to lay his plans with great energy and forethought for the solid

establishment of French power in the Valley of the Nile. At the end

of 1895 he crossed the Congo-Nile watershed, and seized Tembura on

the river Sueh, an affluent of the Bahr el Ghazal. He also occupied

Dem Zubehr, on the Bahr el Homr. Captain Marchand arrived with

reinforcements from France in 1897, and after spending some time in

consolidating his position by occupying posts throughout the country,

he set out on the final stage of his journey. After great difficulties

and some fighting with the dervishes, he reached Fashoda just eight

weeks before the fall of Omdurman.

The French preparations had not escaped the attention of those

responsible for Egypt. As far as the Khalifa was concerned, the

advance of the Anglo-British troops might have been delayed for some

time; but in view of the French advance it was absolutely necessary

for Egypt to reassert her rights in the Soudan emphatically and at

once. Immediately after the occupation of Omdurman Lord Kitchener

hastened on to Fashoda, and found Marchand already there. The

situation was grave. For France it was galling in the extreme to

be foiled just in the moment of success, but for Egypt the question

was vital. The stake at issue was not the possession of a few acres

of swamp, but the control of the summer water-supply. Marchand’s

mission was by no means the mere freak of an adventurous traveller,

anxious to hoist his country’s flag. It was undertaken as part of

a policy skilfully planned and deliberately pursued.

It was no mere coincidence that in the previous year the Bonchamps

Expedition had set out from Abyssinia, and endeavoured, though vainly,

to join hands with Marchand from the east. Firmly based in the Bahr

el Ghazal, masters of the Upper Nile Valley, and joining hands with

Abyssinia, the French would have been in the end complete masters of

the fate of Egypt. If the French had insisted, there must have been

war. Happily, they gave way, and by the agreement of 1899 withdrew

all their posts in the Bahr el Ghazal. The boundary of the Soudan

was fixed along the Nile-Congo watershed.

Thus the Soudan emerged at last, and finally, it may be hoped,

from her ordeal of blood and fire. Her history will be no longer a

record of tyranny, rebellion, war, and famine, but of steady progress

under a just and civilized government. The work of Baker and Gordon

is bearing fruit at last. Great as were the joy and relief with

which the downfall of the dervish tyranny was hailed throughout the

Soudan, it was largely due to faith in the word and just dealing of

Englishmen—a faith that was first established by them and those

who worked with them—that the whole country settled down so quickly.

Among all the pioneers of good government in the Soudan one name

stands out conspicuously. Most of the ease and success with which the

present government works is due to the realization of the reforms

recommended in Colonel D. H. Stewart’s Report on the Soudan. The

rulers of the Soudan are the first to acknowledge their obligation to

that masterly document, an epitome of keen observation and practical

wisdom. Fortunate is the country that is served by such men as he. A

few months after he had completed his report he returned with Gordon

to Khartoum. He, at least, had no delusions as to their prospects

of success. And yet he went as cheerfully and lightly as though

“Tendens Venafranos in agros

Aut Lacedæmonium Tarentum.”

To die treacherously murdered on the Nile bank was a sorry fate for

such a man. The road to the Soudan is strewn with the bones of many

victims. But of them all it may be said, and especially of him:

Their work lives after them, and their memory is nobly avenged.

CHAPTER XVI

THE NEW KHARTOUM

No one whose lot it has been to travel through the night on the plains

of a tropical country can forget the amazing effect produced when

the sun, with one great leap, as it seems, springs clear above the

horizon. All in a moment the world’s face is altered. Its features

are the same, yet utterly changed. The traveller, however hardened,

can scarcely fail to wonder at the transformation. A journey to the

Soudan to-day produces a very similar impression on one whose mind is

full of the memories of the dark past. The din of battle has hardly

ceased to echo, but the transformation is complete.

Even after Egypt, with all its fascinations, rich with the remains

of ages of civilization, full to the brim of questions and problems

deeply interesting to the student of history, archæology, politics,

or economics, the Soudan, with its triple capital, Khartoum,

Omdurman, Halfaya, comes upon you with a freshness and charm that are

indescribable. Travelling by the ordinary methods, you may go from

Alexandria to Khartoum in about six days. It is well worth while,

even for anyone who has been up and down the whole length of Egypt,

to take the whole journey in one piece. There is all the excitement

of starting for a new country, and at the same time an opportunity

to gather into a focus all the old impressions. Easily and smoothly

you swing through the fertile cotton-fields of the Delta, and its

populous cities and villages, prosperous but dirty, and at Cairo

you settle down into a most comfortable sleeping-car for the night

journey to Luxor.

Early next morning you are in the cane-fields of Upper Egypt,

with the river close on one side and the desert on the other. At

Luxor you must change on to the narrow gauge for Assouan, and there

is time to refresh yourself with bath and breakfast, and to look

across at the Plain of Thebes and the Valley of the Tombs of the

Kings, or to ride a donkey out to Karnak. From Luxor to Assouan

it is hot and dusty enough, and you are glad to rest there for the

night. Next day you embark at Shellal, above the Dam, for Wadi Halfa,

a voyage of some 200 miles. Coming down, the steamers do it in about

twenty-four hours, but upstream it is a leisurely voyage of three

days. There is plenty of time to see the interesting antiquities of

Nubia, and, above all, the famous rock-hewn temple of Abu Simbel,

the colossal statues of which are, perhaps, the most impressive of

all the monuments of Egypt. It is, besides, a most beautiful reach

of the river; the hills come down to the water in bold and rugged

outlines, showing to perfection in the pure, dry, desert air.

The effect of the Dam is clearly seen as far as Korosko. First of

all, at Shellal the boat is moored amid a grove of palm-trees, the

temples of Philæ are knee-deep in water, and the Nubian villages

look quaint enough as they stand on the edge of the desert, forlornly

mourning their strip of cultivated land, most of which the greedy

Reservoir has swallowed up. Probably a great part of these people

will now migrate to Dongola, but the loss of the land—for which,

indeed, compensation has been paid—is really a small matter to

them. Hardly anywhere is an able-bodied male to be seen; all are

away making their living as sailors or servants elsewhere, leaving

the women and old men to keep their homes. These Nubian boatmen are

a most happy and thrifty people, ready to work all day and dance

all night, always to the accompaniment of a song.

The boundary between Egypt and the Soudan, settled by the Convention

of 1899, runs along the twenty-second parallel; not far beyond this is

the frontier town of Halfa. There is no mistaking the signs of British

rule. The whole place is rigidly clean, an extraordinary contrast to

the filth of the Egyptian villages. The streets are well laid out

and scrupulously swept, and shady avenues of trees are springing

up. But at present Halfa is not particularly interesting, except

as the railway terminus of the Soudan. It is twenty-eight hours to

Khartoum. Nothing can be more comfortable than the well-appointed

sleeping-car train, which runs twice a week. Starting at eight

in the evening, you strike right across the Nubian Desert, most

desolate and forlorn of countries. The very stations have no names,

but are known merely by their numbers.

In the morning you come to Abu Hamed, back to the Nile once more. Abu

Hamed is just at the elbow of the river, where it turns to the west

for its great circuit by Merowe and Dongola. Here was the scene of

one of the stiffest fights in the Soudan Campaign, when General

Hunter made his dash from Korti, in 1897, further down the Nile,

to seize the point for which the new railway was making from Wadi

Halfa, and here are the graves of Fitzclarence and Sidney, officers

of the 10th Soudanese, who fell in the battle. Around this spot a

ghostly legend hangs. It happened that the other white officers of

the battalion were wounded on the same day, and the black troops

marched back to their bivouac without any of their white leaders. A

black regiment is always accompanied by its women on the march, and

these have high notions of military honour. They would have nothing

to do with men who dared to return alive from the field on which

their officers had fallen. The warriors quailed before their wives,

and serious trouble was brewing, till a black sergeant, who lay

dying of his wounds, solved the difficulty. ‘Tell the women,’

he said, ‘that enough of us are dead to guard the spirits of the

white men in the other world. I myself will mount the guard.’ There

are innumerable witnesses to testify that he has kept his word. The

lesson was not lost. It was the same battalion which later, at the

Atbara, raced the Camerons for the enemy’s zareba, and, catching

their Colonel as he ran in front of them, bore him heels foremost

right through the camp, securely hedged by a living wall of bodies,

because a second loss like that of Abu Hamed was not to be thought of.

From here onward the journey is full of interest. Berber is springing

up again from its ruins; it even boasts two stations, but it has not

an attractive look as a place to live in; there is as yet nothing

more than the mud huts of the country, and it is the hottest place

in the world. Next comes the Atbara River, though not the scene

of the battle, for that was thirty miles upstream; then Shendi,

of fiery memory, but now the Crewe of the Soudan, and finally,

late at night, you step out of the train at Halfaya, the railway

terminus. One glance at the sky will show you that you are really in

the tropics. Canopus is shining fiercely in the east. Right overhead

the giant Orion strides across the vault. Northwards the Great Bear

stands like a huge note of interrogation in the sky, and just over

the opposite horizon the Southern Cross is looming up.

Halfaya stands on the northern bank of the Blue Nile, near its

junction with the White. It is destined to be the workshop and

commercial quarter of the capital. At present the Government steamboat

factories and workshops are still at Omdurman, a legacy from dervish

days. But already the necessary buildings are springing up, and as

trade increases the railway terminus will attract more and more to

its immediate vicinity. The Blue Nile, just before its junction,

divides into two channels, which embrace the fertile island of

Tuti. Opposite Halfaya, and along the southern bank of the island,

the river runs in a glorious sweep due east and west for two or three

miles. Here, facing northwards, stands Khartoum, with as imposing

a situation as any capital could wish for.

A well-made road runs all along the river-front, which is being

gradually embanked and walled. Right in the centre rises the white

Palace, the official residence of the Governor-General, a handsome

building, on the site of Gordon’s old palace, set in a lovely

garden. On either side of it stretch a succession of Government

offices and the neat residences of Government officials, to the new,

spacious, and comfortable hotel on the one side and the Gordon College

and British barracks on the other, pleasantly variegated with gardens

and groves of palm-trees, acacias, limes, and bananas. Behind this

Government belt, the town is carefully laid out into wide streets and

squares in two other belts. The second of these contains, or will

contain, houses and shops built by private persons, but of a good

class and on approved plans; the third is open for the erection of

any buildings that the owners choose to construct. Finally, close to

Gordon’s rampart are the Soudanese barracks, and, right outside,

the native villages, laid out in squares allotted to different

tribes, where you may see huts of every shape, characteristic of

many different parts of Africa.

Considering that three years ago Khartoum was nothing more than a

dirty dust-heap, the work that has been accomplished by the Royal

Engineers is truly wonderful. Of course, the city is still in the

hands of the builders; everywhere are gangs of workmen levelling

roads, preparing foundations, making bricks of Nile mud, carrying,

hammering, digging, building. Women, too, are employed. Their

principal duty is bearing water for the lines of young trees that

will one day make each street a shady avenue. Already the town is

lighted with lamps far better than many an Egyptian city, and it is

hoped that in a short time a tramway will be in working order.

From November to March the climate is very delightful: it is hot,

of course, at times, but the north wind blows steadily and coolly

practically every day, and sometimes the nights are even cold. Even

if it is hot, there is always the Blue Nile to refresh the eyes. It

is a comfort to find that the Blue Nile is really blue—as blue as

any Italian lake. One is so often told that it is called blue because

of the mud it brings down during the flood—the mud which causes

the ‘red’ water so dear to the Egyptian cultivator. But anyone

who looks at it cannot fail to realize that its name is derived from

its clear and limpid waters, and not from its muddy flood-time. One

of the most charming scenes in Khartoum is the view of these blue

waters seen from the windows of the Soudan Club through a green maze

of palms and lime-trees.

Khartoum, with its bungalows, offices, shops, and banks, is

a civilized town, summoned up out of nothing, as it were, by

an enchanter’s wand. Far different is Omdurman. Here, too,

the engineers have been at work, clearing, demolishing, and

cleaning. Only those who marched in after the battle four years

ago and saw those foul labyrinths of streets can realize how much

has been accomplished. But though purified and greatly shrunk, of

course, within its limits in the Khalifa’s time, Omdurman remains

a real Central African city, with nothing European about it. It was

originally intended to move all the inhabitants over to Khartoum;

but the natural convenience of its position on the left bank of the

river, just at the junction of the two Niles, makes it impossible

to carry out this intention. Its population is actually increasing

at present, and it seems far better to let natural forces work their

way, and retain it as the native quarter of the capital, distinct from

the seat of government. It possesses, too, a wide sloping foreshore,

or beach, exactly suited to the feluccas which ply upon the river.

This beach is one of the great sights of Omdurman, and a fascinating

spectacle it is. On a busy day it is absolutely crowded with

traders and porters from all parts of the Soudan. It is the

great market-place for gum from Kordofan, feathers from Darfur,

ivory from the Bahr el Ghazal, dhurra from the Blue Nile country,

and everything else that comes in by boat or camel. All day long

the porters go to and fro, carrying their loads and chanting their

monotonous songs, chiefly tall, broad-chested, but spindle-shanked

negroes from the Nile Valley, Dinkas, Shilluks, Bongos, or Bari,

with here and there a short, thick-set, sturdy hillman from Southern

Kordofan or Dar Nuba. Women equally diverse in type sit sorting the

different qualities of gum. Naked children, brown and black, tumble

and chatter in every direction. It is difficult to drag one’s self

away, so strange and novel and varied are the sights.

But Omdurman has much more to show. First and foremost the Khalifa’s

house, the only two-storied building in the town, and built of

brick. It is occupied now by the British inspectors. Hard by are

the ruins of the Mahdi’s tomb, too solidly built to be entirely

destroyed, but even its partial demolition has been sufficient to

put a complete stop to pilgrimages. In front is the great square in

which the Khalifa used to preach to his assembled dervishes. It is

surrounded by a high wall excellently built, said to be the work of

the German Neufeld. It is witness now of scenes very different from

those of the old fanatical days, so far removed in everything but

time—perhaps the parade of a Soudanese battalion, a football match,

or the arrival of a string of camels laden with gum from El Obeid.

In the Beit el Amana are some interesting relics of the past. Here

are the brass cannon taken originally by the Mahdi from the Egyptians,

and piles of captured dervish muskets of every shape and form, swords

and caps; and here, too, is the Khalifa’s carriage, a ramshackle,

broken-down old four-wheeled chariot. It is a puzzle how it ever got

to Omdurman. It looks as if it were built for some quiet old maiden

lady in a French provincial town, but it fell on a strange master in

its old age; and Slatin Pasha, now Inspector-General of the Soudan,

had to run as a footman before it. Close by is the great broad street

leading northwards, by which the British troops marched in on the

battle. Every step is reminiscent of the last evening of days of

the dervish tyranny.

But the most fascinating sight of all is the sook, or market. The

mixture of races is amazing. It would take a trained scientist to

catalogue them all. From a camel to a silver bracelet, there is

nothing dear to a native that cannot be bought. Here are made and

sold the angarebs, or native bedsteads, woven with string across a

low four-legged wooden framework. As yet these people have not much

mechanical ingenuity, and their appliances for working in wood and

iron or other metals are rude in the extreme. The past in the Soudan

has not been conducive to the development of the arts, but there is

promise for the future.

One feature of the place is the curiosity shops, full of many strange

spears and shields, knives and sabres, and occasionally an iron

gauntlet or coat of mail such as the dervishes wore; but these are

rare now. These Arab shopmen know how to drive a hard bargain, and

love nothing better than chaffering over a price. All curiosities are

called ‘antiquos.’ There is an annual flower-show in Khartoum,

at which a prize is given for the best ‘antiquos.’ A Soudanese

turned up who was very anxious to compete for this prize with a live

porcupine, which he insisted was an ‘antiquo.’ He was allowed to

exhibit at last, but not for competition, on condition that he himself

led it about by a string, as the authorities could not undertake its

charge. With more justice a live tortoise is also commonly offered

for sale as a very choice ‘antiquo.’ In another quarter are the

rope-makers, twisting their long coils of fibre in exactly the same

way as they have been twisted for centuries; further on, the basket

and net makers are weaving dried reeds in curious patterns. Yet

another part is entirely devoted to the needs of women. Here are

combs and strings of all kinds of beads, unguents, and the strange

preparations they use for fixing the small plaits in which they tie

their hair; cinnamon bark and other scents, without which no wedding

is complete; cooking-pots and other articles of their scanty domestic

furniture; even dolls of most weird and fantastic shapes and material,

and many other quaint trifles. The whole place is crowded with women,

black and brown, many of them tall in stature, easy and graceful in

their movements, and, however ugly they may be in other respects,

nearly all with the most beautifully shaped arms.

It is a strange contrast to go a little further on through the western

outskirts of the town, and to find a game of polo proceeding on the

hard desert sand. And beyond, again, in the middle of these great

spaces, far from the rush and turmoil of the town, are the quiet

graves of two or three of those who have laid down their lives in

this far country, and shall see their homes no more.

It would take a long time to get tired of merely riding about in

Omdurman and watching the thousand and one sights of such a place,

and reflecting on the stranger scenes that must so frequently have

been enacted there less than five short years ago. But if you want a

gallop in the desert, nothing is more delightful than to pass along

the broad street leading northwards through the deserted quarters of

the once huge city, and to ride, with the keen wind blowing freshly

in your face, to Gebel Surgham, the hill which overlooks the field

of Kerreri, that historic field of bloodshed. The merest novice can

easily follow every phase of the battle, and see where wave after wave

of the dervish hosts rushed madly but heroically to their doom. Some

of their skulls still lie bleaching in the sun. There, too, is the

khor where the Lancers made their famous charge. Or you may take boat,

and sail past the mud forts that saluted the steamers which came just

too late for the watcher anxiously straining his eyes to see them

from the palace in Khartoum. Almost every spot has its own historic

interest. Perhaps as you skim along before the wind a battered old

paddle-steamer labours creaking past, towing a string of barges. It is

one of Gordon’s gunboats, once more patched up and restored to duty.

But of all the sights and interests of this fascinating place, by far

the most impressive, as in Cairo itself, is the ancient and mighty

river. Khartoum and Omdurman are what they are because here the two

great tributaries join their forces and set out across the waterless

desert on their great mission to Egypt. The spot where the Blue and

White rivers meet, and for some distance flow side by side unmingled,

would be still in many ways the most notable in all Northern Africa,

even if Khartoum and all its eventful history were blotted out.

CHAPTER XVII

THE NEW SOUDAN

Khartoum would be a sad place to visit if it were nothing more than a

city of memories. Happily, it is no longer so. It has indeed a history

behind it, full of lessons and warnings which cannot be ignored. But

the Khartoum of to-day is looking forwards, and not backwards; it is

the young capital of a young country. It is barely four years since

the final defeat and death of the Khalifa, and it is only from that

date that the establishment of settled government can be reckoned.

The Sirdar, Sir Reginald Wingate (the post of Governor-General

of the Soudan is still combined with the command of the Egyptian

Army) might well have despaired of the task which confronted him

of administering those vast regions, 1,000,000 square miles in

extent, when he succeeded to his post. The difficulties to be

faced were enormous. It seemed as if every germ of civilization

had been extinguished by the dervish rule. Everywhere villages were

deserted; lands, once fertile, had gone out of cultivation; actual

famine was seriously threatened. The decrease of population was

extraordinary. Whole tribes enumerated in Colonel Stewart’s list

had totally disappeared. When the British troops reached Metemmeh

in the final march to Khartoum, they found the place a shambles. The

once powerful tribe of the Jaalin had been massacred almost to a man

by the Baggara dervishes. That was but one instance out of many of

the Khalifa’s methods of government.

From a country so wasted and desolate it seemed hopeless to expect a

revenue for many years. The fabric of administration had to be built

up again from the very bottom, and there was no money to do it with,

far less to provide for that capital expenditure always necessary

in a new country. Only Suakin, Halfa, and Dongola, from their longer

military occupation, possessed even the rudiments of the machinery of

government. No money was to be expected from England. More than that,

every British officer in the Soudan was turning longing eyes to the

war in South Africa. It was difficult to get new men with such an

attraction elsewhere. Yet in spite of this it may be fairly said that

the Soudan government has come safely through the troublous period

of infancy. Sheer hard work on wise and statesman-like lines has had

its due effect, and the British officials, most of them soldiers

whose abilities would have brought them to distinction elsewhere

could they have been spared, can so far congratulate themselves on

the result of their patient labours.

Though greatly shrunk within its former limits, the Anglo-Egyptian

Soudan is still of very great extent. On the north the boundary

with Egypt is now the twenty-second parallel, following this line,

which passes just north of Wadi Halfa, right across the desert to the

Tripoli border on the west, and to the Red Sea on the east. It then

follows the coast past Suakin as far as a point about seventy miles

south of Tokar, where it meets the Italian colony of Eritrea. Here,

turning inland, it runs south-west, crossing the river Gash just above

Kassala, down to a point on the Setit River, another tributary of the

Atbara. Here Abyssinian territory begins, and the boundary trends

more to the south than before, going by Gallabat and crossing the

upper waters of the Rahad and the Dinder, tributaries of the Blue

Nile, till it reaches the Blue Nile itself just above Famaka and

Fazokhl. Hence it runs right south to the west of the Beni Shangul

hills, across the Baro, Pibor, and Akobo rivers, all in the Upper

Sobat district, till it reaches a point where the sixth degree

of north latitude cuts the thirty-fifth degree of longitude east

of Greenwich. The sixth parallel is roughly the line of division

between the Soudan and the Uganda Protectorate as far as the Nile,

the southernmost Soudanese post on the Nile being at Mongalla, and

the northernmost British at Gondokoro. On the other side of the Nile

the boundary, starting from Lake Albert, runs north-west for a very

long distance along the Nile-Congo watershed, first along the Congo

Free State, then along French Congoland, till it reaches the borders

of Darfur. The corner, however, between the Nile and this line, as far

west as the thirtieth degree of longitude east, and as far north as a

point nearly opposite Mongalla, is known as the Lado Enclave, and is

still held by the Belgians, being leased by them during the life of

King Leopold. On reaching Darfur the boundary runs northwards along

the western edge of that country to about the thirteenth parallel,

and thence north-west across the desert to the borders of Tripoli.

In this vast area, some 1,200 miles in length and 1,000 in breadth

at the broadest part, there is naturally an immense variety of

country. The Northern Soudan is, with the exception of a strip of land

along the Nile, almost a desert; it is, in fact, a lesser Egypt. Up

to Shendi it is a rainless country. From Shendi to Khartoum, and

some way south, there is a regular but not extraordinary rainfall

during the months of July, August, and September. Further south,

about parallel 13°, tropical rains begin, becoming heavier and

longer towards the Abyssinian hills on the one side and the Upper

White Nile and the Bahr el Ghazal on the other. With the rainfall

the character of the country changes. To the west of the White

Nile, between parallels 15° and 11°—that is, nearly as far

south as Fashoda—the country of Kordofan and Darfur stretches in

vast plains or steppes, covered with low thorny trees, mimosa and

gum trees, and prickly-grass. Water is scarce, and stored in wells

and the trunks of baobab-trees. There are occasional hills, which

become greater and more numerous towards the west and the south. In

Southern Kordofan the plains and valleys between the hills are rich

in vegetation and huge trees. They are impassable during the rains,

and also after them, until the long grass has been cleared by burning.

The Bahr el Ghazal is a real land of waters, the Punjab of the

Soudan, for it has five principal rivers, all affluents of the Bahr

el Ghazal. Part of the country consists of little but the most

dismal swamps; but nearer to the watershed there is much rolling

country between the rivers. The soil is fertile, and there is an

abundance of forests and parklands. To the east, along the course

of the Atbara, and between the Blue and White Niles, there are

vast level plains of alluvial soil, very fertile when flooded or

after the rains. The country gradually rises towards the Abyssinian

frontier. At wide intervals great masses of rock protrude, some

consisting of excellent granite, better than that in the Assouan

quarries. As the country rises it becomes more and more wooded, until

there is dense jungle, especially near the Blue Nile. The scenery

all along the Abyssinian frontier is described as very beautiful and

mountainous; but most of it is very unhealthy, especially during and

after the rains, when the climate is fearfully hot and oppressive,

and malarial fevers of several kinds are common even among the natives

themselves. The country south of the Sobat near the Nile belongs to

the swamp districts. Further inland is the least explored and most

uninhabited part of the Soudan; it is not likely to attract much

attention at present.

The natives of the Soudan fall roughly into two divisions—Arab

and negro. Generally speaking, the Arabs are all north of a line

drawn east and west some distance below Fashoda, the negroes south of

it. But any precise classification of races is impossible. The Arabs,

as a conquering race, imposed their religion and their language upon

the original inhabitants. Many so-called Arab tribes are really almost

negro. The confusion of blood is very great. Slavery has introduced

a very strong negro element into many tribes whose Arabic descent is

unquestioned. Sometimes, when the original race was not negro, they

have preserved their own language. Thus, the people of Dongola speak

a tongue of their own besides Arabic, and several of the nomad tribes

in the Halfa-Suakin district are apparently not Arabic in descent.

The inhabitants of Kordofan afford an example of the mixture of

blood. The sedentary village population consists of the aboriginal

inhabitants, with an admixture from Darfur. Under the Egyptian

conquest a good deal of Turkish and Levantine blood was introduced,

as well as negro blood from the South by means of slavery. The nomad

tribes are a much superior race mentally and physically, and talk

a much purer Arabic. Their great occupations are cattle-breeding,

carried on by the Baggara tribes, and camel-breeding, carried on by

the Kabbabish and the Beni Gerrar. Besides these there are also the

hill tribes, negroes, very black in colour and small in stature,

peaceful by nature, but warlike when roused by the attacks of the

nomad Arabs. Of all the negro races in the Soudan, these are the

most intelligent and hard-working.

The whole of the Soudan is now directly governed, with the exception

of Darfur, by the Governor-General and his subordinates. Darfur,

though a tributary State, once more enjoys internal independence

under its own Sultan. After the fall of Omdurman Ali Dinar, a

member of the former ruling house, then resident in Egypt, was sent

back to Darfur. The people had been for some time uneasy under the

Khalifa’s hand, and he found little difficulty in establishing his

position. His prestige and power were considerably increased in 1902

by the surrender to him of the last remnant of the dervishes, who

had fled westwards from Bor, on the Nile, their last station. The

remainder of the country is divided into provinces, or mudiriehs,

for the purposes of administration. The capital, Khartoum, with its

sister towns and a district within a radius of ten miles, forms

one province by itself. Immediately south of it is the Ghezireh

(the Island), comprising all the rich and fertile district between

the two Niles, formerly known as the island of Sennar. It is

the kernel of the Soudan. South and south-east of the Ghezireh,

stretching along the Abyssinian frontier, and extending from the

White Nile on one side across the Blue Nile to Gallabat and Gedaref,

is the province of Sennar. North of Sennar, along the upper waters

of the Atbara and the boundary of Eritrea is Kassala. Suakin is the

maritime province. Halfa is the northern frontier district. Dongola

and Berber extend along the Nile. Kordofan, largest of all in extent,

occupies all the country west of the White Nile as far as Darfur. All

these make up the Arab and Mohammedan Soudan. The pagan negro portion

is divided into Fashoda Province, including all the Sobat country,

and the Bahr el Ghazal Province, to the east of the Nile and south

of Kordofan.

Each province is ruled by a Governor, or Mudir, a British officer of

the Egyptian Army; under him are one or two inspectors, also British

officers, and one or two subinspectors, who are English civilians,

members of the newly-formed Soudan Civil Service. The mudiriehs

are subdivided into mamuriehs, or police districts, presided over

by a mamur, or inferior magistrate; all the mamurs are Egyptian

officers. Each province is, in many respects, a little empire by

itself. Where the distances are so great, there must necessarily be a

great deal of decentralization, and every Governor has a great deal

of independence. But he is, of course, subject to the authority of

the Governor-General, and his expenditure is carefully controlled

by the central Finance Department.

The first duty of the provincial Governors is to maintain peace

within their borders, and to make the inhabitants acknowledge the

authority of the Government. In the elder provinces, Halfa, Suakin,

Dongola, and Berber, there was no difficulty. The nomad tribes, the

only possible source of trouble, are regularly paying the tribute,

which has been imposed on them more as a badge of authority than

for revenue purposes. As long as this is paid and they behave

well, they are left to the rule of their own sheikhs, according

to their custom. At Khartoum the presence of a British battalion

insures order among a people who have not forgotten the sound of

bullets. The stories of mutiny among the black troops were greatly

exaggerated. It lasted only for a day, and was nothing more than

a skirmish between two battalions which had a difference over some

women. On the borders of Darfur there was a slight disturbance, but

Ali Dinar is a strong and capable ruler, who understands very well

that it is his interest to be on good terms with the Government,

and the matter has been satisfactorily settled. In South-Western

Kordofan the Nubas in the hills have been accustomed for centuries

to raid each other, and be raided in their turn by the Arabs of the

plains. In such remote regions it is difficult to summarily suppress

customs of this sort, but it is hoped that permanent peace will soon

be established by means of camel-corps patrols. The same applies to

the frontier raids on the Abyssinian side. There was some reluctance

at first to deal drastically with these raiders, for fear of trouble

with Menelik, but now that the boundary has been definitely settled

by the recent agreement, the raiders can be punished without any

question of violating the frontier. In Fashoda Province the tribes,

even the wild and shy Nuers, are settling down quietly, and though

they hate the ‘Turk,’ they are glad to welcome the British.

The Mek or King of the Shilluks, who live on the banks of the Nile

from Lake No to a point above Fashoda, gave some little trouble at one

time. He was very much struck with the institution of tax-collectors,

which he determined to imitate. Accordingly, he put some of his people

into a kind of uniform, and sent them round the villages to collect

women and corn, nominally for the authorities of Khartoum. But

he was informed that, while the Government admired his zeal for

civilization, they felt, at the same time, that his knowledge of it

was so elementary that it was necessary for him to devote some time

to further study before he put his theory into practice. He is now

undergoing a course of tuition at Wadi Halfa.

The Bahr el Ghazal is the most recently occupied province. Posts

are now occupied at Wau, Rumbek, Dem Zubehr, Shambe, Chak Chak,

Tonj, Meshra-el-Rek, and Channamin on the Jur River. The country

was occupied without difficulty. Here the two principal tribes were

the Dinkas in the north and east and the Niam-Niams or Azande in the

south. All the smaller tribes, Jur, Bongo, Golo, etc., had been broken

up by repeated raids, and had fled to one or other of these powerful

neighbours for protection, the protection practically taking the

form of slavery. A tract of 150 miles square had thus relapsed into

absolute wilderness, though once thickly peopled. Now the tribes

from the Dinka side are returning and rebuilding their villages

under British protection, an immense advantage to the country, for

they are hard-working and industrious, while the Dinkas are lazy and

troublesome in civil life, although good soldiers. Early in 1902

one of the Dinka tribes fell upon a convoy and murdered a British

officer near Rumbek by treachery. But the murder was speedily avenged,

and this was the only instance of active hostility. The Niam-Niams,

although cannibals, are much more intelligent and progressive. They

are very well disposed and anxious to trade. The worst enemy in the

Bahr el Ghazal is not any human foe, but disease, especially the

blackwater fever, which has been of a severe type, and more than one

valuable life has been sacrificed to it. Fortunately, as experience

of the country grows, the danger diminishes, and it is hoped that

as the country is developed, with better housing and communication,

and less moving about in the rains, still greater improvement may

be looked for.

On the whole, the Soudan is far more peaceful internally than it

has ever been before. Nothing has had a more pacifying effect than

the spectacle constantly witnessed of British officials roaming the

country unarmed and unescorted. This visible confidence has done much

more than years of campaigning could ever do. There have been, it is

true, one or two occasions when troops have had to be employed. The

Soudan is still full of combustible materials. Fanaticism and ignorant

superstition combined are dangerous elements. But the Government

has taken to heart the lesson taught by the rise of the Mahdi. When

troops are sent, care is taken that they shall strike swiftly and

effectively. A new Mahdi appears in the Soudan once or twice a

year. Once a woman proclaimed herself, and gained a considerable

following. Sometimes they die away of themselves, but all require

to be carefully watched. Such an one a few months ago had to be

put down by an expedition in Kordofan. His capture and defeat at

once put an end to his divine pretensions. These petty outbursts

are legacies from the unhappy past; under good government they will

become less frequent and less dangerous. Every day the Pax Britannica

grows stronger and more deeply rooted in every direction. Peace once

established, the British officer finds his real work only begun. The

restoration of order was comparatively simple, the kind of business

for which he had been trained. His regimental duties may have

given him some slight acquaintance with accounts and book-keeping,

or the elements of military law and procedure. Every scrap of such

knowledge must be beaten out and made to reach as far as possible,

and so guide him in his financial and judicial duties. But where

will he have learnt to make bricks, to measure land, to make roads,

to pronounce on methods of gathering rubber or gum, or the diseases

of cattle or dhurra? Yet all these things he will have to do,

and many others in the course of his busy days. One of the great

attractions of the Soudan is the splendid keenness of all these

men, soldiers and civilians alike. From Wadi Halfa onwards the same

spirit is observable in everyone you meet. Grumbling you will hear,

but it is the grumbling of keen men. The Governor of one province

is convinced that too much is being spent on the capital. If only

some of that money were given to him, he would soon show startling

developments. Another thinks his trade suffers because the railways

or the steamers are not so good as they ought to be. Another is

dissatisfied because he cannot get a schoolmaster sent him, and so

on. All are not, of course, equally competent (that could not be),

but there are no idlers. All are working heartily for the good of

the Soudan and its people, and the honour of their own country. Many

of the Governors and Inspectors of Provinces have fought in command

of the black battalions against the Arabs. They learned to like the

one and to respect the other. The liking and the respect are repaid

tenfold. There could be no better foundation for sound government, and

from Suakin to El Obeid, and from Halfa to Gondokoro the Englishman

is obeyed and trusted as no ruler of the Soudan has ever been

before. It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to add that all these men

are young. The Sirdar himself, old in experience, is young in years,

and from him downwards, whether on the civil or the military side,

there is hardly a man over forty. The administration of these vast

regions in a tropical climate is no sinecure. A young country needs

youth and activity in its rulers.

It must not be forgotten that we have been immensely assisted in

our task by the Egyptians. All the minor administrative posts

are held by them. Most of the clerks in the various Government

offices are Syrians or Copts from Egypt. Without this small fry

of officialdom, it would have been difficult, if not impossible,

to carry on at all. Many of these Egyptians have done and are doing

their work faithfully and well, but it has been a hard struggle to

fight against the old Soudan traditions. In former days, when a man

went from Egypt to serve in the Soudan, he expected either to die

or to get rich in a very short time. Death was always before his

eyes, so he made haste to be rich while he could. To the fellah

the Soudan meant nothing less than death; his family mourned him

as lost, and lost he generally was; but the official, if he came

back at all, was set up for life. Of course, any case of taking a

bribe or extortion is severely punished whenever detected; but, in

spite of this, corruption undoubtedly does go on to a certain extent,

so much is it in harmony with the traditions of the official and the

expectations of his victim. Moreover, the Egyptian is not very capable

of enduring a bad climate. He seems to give up heart immediately. A

class of natives educated enough to take his place in the Government

service is badly required, but does not at present exist.

A great deal is often talked of the evils of military government,

and, of course, there comes a time when military methods are out of

place. But I doubt very much if any set of civilians could have done

so well with a country like the Soudan as the soldiers have. Whatever

may be the soldier’s fault, what he is told to do, that he will set

to work to do, and very likely he will carry it through successfully,

however little training he may have had, where a cleverer man might

be dismayed by difficulties. In fact, the government is military

because it is mainly carried on by soldiers (there was no one else

to do it), but it is run on civilian lines. Spend a morning in the

office of a Mudir or Governor of a province, and you will go away

with an enhanced opinion of the powers of a British officer.

First of all, you will find him talking fluent, if not always perfect,

Arabic, that most difficult of tongues. An interpreter is present

in case of an emergency, but he is seldom appealed to. In turn, a

bewildering variety of subjects is dealt with. A criminal trial has

to be steered through one of its stages. Next, two sets of villagers

come in with a petition as to a dispute of land-ownership. In a

land which has seen such vicissitudes as the Soudan, questions of

title are numerous and difficult in the extreme; within the last

twenty years the same plot of land may have had several sets of

_bonâ fide_ occupiers, and finally none. The two parties come in

scowling fiercely at each other (they have probably had a fight

already on the land in question), and squat down on the floor,

while their spokesmen step forward to tell their tale. The Mudir is

addressed as the Protector of the Poor, the Shield from Oppression,

and a number of other names. When the matter is disposed of, after

a great deal of hard swearing on both sides, everybody who has

anything to do with it attempts to give his version simultaneously,

and finally the whole crowd has to be thrust out separately by the

police, still talking as they go.

Then comes a succession of applicants with other grievances and

petitions—Greeks alleging some breach of contract, Arab land-owners

demanding remission of taxation or loans for a sakieh, or for sowing

seeds. Next the plan of a house has to be examined, the quality

of certain bricks to be looked into, an auction of river-fisheries

to be held, or a contract about a Government ferry adjusted. Then

there are questions concerning drains or wells, pumps or police,

licenses for boats or liquor, and a thousand and one other questions

of administration. Finally, there is correspondence with headquarters,

to adjust some financial, legal, or educational matter. It is no

use being a Mudir, or, indeed, any other official, under the Soudan

Government, unless you are prepared to work like a horse, and deal

fearlessly with nearly every department of human life.

CHAPTER XVIII

JUSTICE AND SLAVERY

There is no Magna Charta in the Soudan. It is expressly laid down

in the Anglo-Egyptian Agreement of 1899 that the country is to be

governed under Martial Law, and all legislative power resides in the

Governor-General, subject to the approval of H.M.’s representative

in Egypt. But Martial Law is a vague and unsatisfactory term. During

the recent operations in the Transvaal a flying column was sent

to occupy a railway terminus and to secure the rolling-stock

therein. The seizure was successfully accomplished, but when the

engines were examined they were all found to be defective in certain

essential parts of the mechanism. The commander of the column sent

for the railway officials and ordered them to restore the missing

pieces. In vain they protested that they knew nothing of them. The

soldier, an Australian, was a man of few words. ‘I shall shoot

you in the morning,’ said he, ‘unless the pieces are found.’

They objected that such a course was utterly illegal, even under

Martial Law. ‘My view of Martial Law,’ he replied, ‘is that

you must do what I tell you or take the consequences. In any case,

discussion is useless. The shooting-party is ordered at eight.’

The engines were complete in every particular long before the fatal

hour; but such methods, though sometimes necessary in war, are not

suitable to peaceful administration. Martial Law remains a power

in the background, but the Government lost no time in setting up a

system of Civil Justice, and one of its earliest acts was to appoint

a properly qualified Legal Adviser.

It is fortunate that English barristers are accustomed to give

advice on a great variety of matters. The Legal Adviser, especially

at first, when he acted temporarily as Director of Education, had

very multifarious duties. He was at that time the only judge in

the country, and, besides strictly legal matters, had to assist

in drafting regulations relating to customs and commerce, game,

travellers, and many other subjects. But his chief occupation was

the preparation of penal and civil codes. With one exception, which

will presently be noticed, there was no existing foundation to build

upon. Under the old Egyptian rule the criminal law supposed to be

administered was the Khanoon Humayoun, a Turkish code dating from

1837, but this was perfectly unsuitable for use by a civilized

Power. It was wisely decided to make use of Indian and Colonial

experience. A penal code and code of criminal procedure were

promulgated as soon as possible, founded on the Indian codes,

modified to suit the simpler requirements of the Soudan, and made

to resemble courts-martial in their procedure to facilitate their

working by soldiers. This was followed by a civil ordinance, likewise

adapted from the Indian Civil Procedure Code, as used in Burma and

British Bechuanaland. By the end of 1901 a system of civil justice

was at work in all the provinces except Kordofan, Fashoda, and the

Bahr el Ghazal. It has since been extended to Kordofan, and even in

the Bahr el Ghazal and Fashoda a beginning has been made.

In each province the inferior police-court work is done by the

Egyptian mamurs, who exercise summary jurisdiction on a small

scale. All the more important cases are heard by the Mudir, inspectors

and sub-inspectors, who form various courts of differing strength

according to the nature of the trial. Besides the Legal Adviser

there have also been appointed three English judges, all trained

English barristers. Their headquarters are at Khartoum, where they

form the superior court and court of appeal, and they also travel on

circuit in the provinces, either to relieve a particular pressure

of work or to avoid the trouble and expense of bringing up cases

to Khartoum. At present, of course, any very definite or precise

division of duties among the different members of the judiciary is

impossible. The ordinary judicial business has been immensely added

to by the work of Land Commissions, and every available person has

had to be pressed into the service. Naturally, after twenty years of

anarchy, of emigrations and immigrations, and of general unsettlement,

the ownership of the land is a matter of the greatest possible doubt

and confusion, and endless disputes arise. In the early part of

1903 one of the English judges was sitting in Dongola Province on

a Land Commission. His preliminary list alone contained 400 cases;

and Dongola is by no means the most contentious province. But this

work will now soon be completed, and a more complete organization

of the courts will be possible.

Meanwhile the criminal law has been very well administered, and, if

the complete inexperience in such matters of the British officers

who have had to act as judges in the provinces is taken into

account, the administration of the civil law has also been most

creditable. Mistakes are made, of course, but substantial justice

has been done. Confidence in the tribunals, as well as the need for

them, is growing rapidly. The fact that the amount of work done in

the civil courts in 1902 was exactly double what it was in 1901 is

striking testimony to the growing belief in their impartiality.

The only department in which the whole system had not to be built

up again from the bottom was the administration of the Mekhemeh

Sharia, the courts dealing with the sacred Mohammedan law. Just

as in our own country the ecclesiastical courts formerly dealt

with all questions relating to wills or marriages according to the

canon law, so these courts administer the sacred law in all matters

relating to succession, marriage, personal status, and charitable

endowments. Once they covered the whole field, but as the sacred law

was unchanging, or nearly so, other codes had to be introduced to

suit changing conditions, and their action was gradually restricted

to the subjects mentioned. In the old Soudan nearly every place of

any pretensions had one of these courts presided over by a Cadi,

and they doubtless dealt with many matters outside the limit,

for civil cases could be tried by the Cadi, if both parties were

agreed. The Cadi was frequently paid a very small salary, or none

at all, and was expected to make his living out of court-fees and

the presents he received, a system by no means conducive to strict

justice. Now these courts are much fewer in number than formerly,

but each Cadi receives a regular salary, and all the fees go to the

Government. All the Cadis are under the direct supervision of the

Grand Cadi or Cadi of Cadis, assisted by a Mohammedan inspector. It

was very difficult at first to find properly qualified occupants

for these posts. Among native-born Soudanese there were practically

none, and the supply had to come from Egypt. If they were honest,

it was at any rate something to be thankful for. But in days to

come, especially when the Training College at Khartoum has been

more developed, it may be hoped that they will be not only honest,

but also capable, and that they will also possess a sound knowledge

of the law which they have to administer. It is worthy of note that

a Soudanese Cadi has been appointed at El Obeid.

The sacred Mohammedan law is a very delicate matter for Europeans

to deal with. It abounds in defects, but suggestions for reform

coming from a Christian would not be well received. There are also

opportunities for conflict with the ordinary civil courts. For

example, in a question of inheritance a dispute as to whether the

deceased person was a Mohammedan or not could only be properly

settled by the civil court. But all difficulties have been avoided

up to now by tact shown on both sides. The Grand Cadi is a man of

singular enlightenment and ability, and is working hard to improve

the administration of the Mohammedan courts. His remarks on the

general situation, as quoted in Lord Cromer’s Report for 1902,

are worth repeating:

‘What consoles me with regard to the stagnant state of the

Mohammedan law in this country is the fact—deplorable though that

fact be—that this state of stagnation is general throughout the

Mohammedan world. And, although, for many centuries, it has been

the only law applied to the people, time has, on account of the

failure of those in charge to administer it properly, necessitated

the introduction of other codes.

‘The whole responsibility for this decline in the Mohammedan law

must be attributed to the authorities of former times.

‘What renders this condition of things the more regrettable is the

fact that some of the causes which have for long been undermining

the stability of this law have become a part of its traditions,

any digression from which would be considered as a deviation from

the Sharia law. Hence, it is impossible for me to exaggerate the

difficulties which obstruct the way of the reformer. Yet I hope that

we may have a good opportunity in this country to improve this state

of things, and to bring about an unprecedented epoch of advance in

the history of reform.’

Apart from the defects of the religious law, there are many obstacles

to a proper administration of justice in the Soudan. Justice is a new

idea. Colloquial Soudan-Arabic has no very extended vocabulary. A

British officer learning Arabic at Khartoum had impressed upon his

teacher that he only wished to master the ordinary language of the

country. One day a new word turned up. ‘Is that a good word?’ he

asked his teacher. ‘Good?’ said the learned man. ‘I should think

so, indeed. Why, if you use that word, you and I will be the only

people in the Soudan who understand what you mean.’ The word might

well have been the ordinary Arabic term for justice. There has seldom

been any use for it until now in common parlance. To the mind of the

Arab the notion of an impartial tribunal giving final decisions is an

absolute novelty. His natural view is that the judge decides either

according to his own caprice, or according to the greater bribe, or

to please some great man. The image of blind Justice holding equal

scales is very puzzling to him. A judge, therefore, who, when he

has decided a case, thinks he has heard the last of it, is liable

to rude disappointment. The unsuccessful suitor is very likely to

reappear a month or two later and ask for at least a modification

of the judgment. He knows now that a bribe is worse than useless;

so he comes with a terrible tale of ruin and despair to move the

compassion of the Father of the Oppressed and the Protector of the

Poor; or—for he is full of resources—he alleges that the judgment

has not been properly carried out; or that at the trial an important

witness on his side was absent; or that some third party, who had an

interest in the case, never heard anything about the trial at all. It

may be all pure invention, and very often is, for the Arab can be a

fertile liar—that difficulty is not peculiar to the Soudan—but

part of it may be true, and has to be sifted. It is very probable

that some interested party will not know the date of a trial, when

distances are so great and publication impossible other than by word

of mouth, in view of the universal illiteracy. So the decided case

has to be gone into once more. In the present stage of civilization

it is often better to use the wisdom of Solomon than the wisdom of

the code, and justice must necessarily be more or less patriarchal,

for it is of far more importance to gain the confidence of the people

than to abide by the strict laws of procedure.

So, too, in administering the criminal law the magistrate finds

himself sometimes confronted by difficulties which could never be

contemplated by any legal code. Alike in the Mohammedan and the

Pagan Soudan ancient beliefs and superstitions live on, fostered to

an incredible extent by the backward state of the people and the

prevailing ignorance. In the face of the habits of mind produced

by these conditions the principles of jurisprudence lose their

significance. The ordinary rules cannot be justly applied to such

cases. Not long ago a native of Southern Sennar was brought to trial

on a charge of murder. There was no dispute as to the facts. The

victim had been savagely done to death in cold blood. The accused

admitted the deed, but pleaded, in all good faith, a defence which

seemed perfectly natural and satisfactory to himself and every other

native. His brother had recently died, and he had ascertained that

his death was due to the evil eye. In accordance with the moral

code of the district, it became his duty towards his brother to

exact vengeance, and he therefore killed the man whose evil eye

had caused the mischief. In his view and that of all his neighbours

there was no more criminal intent in the act than if he had killed

a poisonous snake.

Another most interesting case is related by the Legal Adviser as

having recently occurred in Dongola Province. Taha Ali and Ahmed

Hamad carried on business in partnership as butchers, and Taha kept

the purse. One day Taha told his partner that ten and a half dollars

belonging to the partnership had been stolen. But Ahmed did not

believe him, and roundly accused him of stealing the money himself. A

violent dispute arose, but at last they agreed to refer the matter

to a holy man then residing in the neighbourhood. This holy man was

a fakir belonging to Timbuctoo, who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca,

and was now returning. At first he was very reluctant to interfere; it

was no business of his, he said; they should go before the mamur. But

the more he refused the more eagerly they insisted. They even said

that if he would not, it was because he could not. It was a poor sort

of fakir that could not find out a little thing like that, and they

would lose no time in proclaiming the fact. At last he consented to

act. First he copied out some passages from some religious books

which he had with him on a native writing-board with European

copying-ink. Then he washed off the writing into a bowl with bread

and water, and divided the bread and water between the two, telling

them that the one in the wrong would shortly become very ill. Each

man consumed his portion of the mess and went away. An hour or two

later Taha Ali was seized with violent pains in the stomach, and,

returning to the fakir, confessed that it was he who had stolen the

money. But in spite of his confession the pains grew worse, and he

died the same day. The authorities stepped in, and the fakir was put

on his trial for poisoning. The facts of the case were undisputed,

and the fakir himself gave evidence on his own behalf. He pointed

out that he had only undertaken to investigate the affair very

reluctantly, as he was well aware that it was not his business,

but he could not damage his reputation as a holy man. He had adopted

the best method of discovering the truth. The man’s death was the

act of God, not his. As for the suggestion that the copying-ink was

poisonous, he was willing on the spot to drink up the remainder of

it, the bottle being still about half full. The medical examination

revealed no sign of poisoning, and the case was referred to Khartoum.

With the view of discovering the drift of the best native opinion

on these subjects, the Legal Adviser told the story to two natives,

one a religious sheikh of very high position, universally respected,

and the other a servant who had been for many years in the employment

of English masters. The sheikh, whilst not doubting that such an

ordeal, if employed by a man of holy life, was a reasonable method of

detecting crime, was inclined to think that this particular fakir was

an impostor. At the same time, he did not consider that he should

be punished, as the death might be due to some cause hitherto

undiscovered. To illustrate his point he repeated a well-known

story of a man who died at his friend’s house immediately after

eating some honey. Great suspicion fell upon the friend, who only

escaped punishment by the discovery of a dead serpent coiled up at

the bottom of the pot. In this case, too, he suggested, a snake might

have spat into the inkpot. The servant went further. He, too, was of

opinion that trial by ordeal was a reasonable method of detecting

crime, and more than that, it was really the only satisfactory and

effective way, far better than any investigation by the best and

wisest of mamurs. The only thing that surprised him in the story

was that the guilty man should have died after confessing his crime;

for this was contrary to precedent. He could only conclude that the

man was exceptionally wicked, and that God had taken this opportunity

to punish him for other crimes.

In such an atmosphere it is no wonder that miracles abound and holy

men thrive. It is exceedingly difficult to know how to deal with

them. Like the magicians of Ancient Egypt, whose descendants they

are, they are sometimes open to the suspicion of establishing their

miraculous reputation by natural but very undesirable methods. At

Berber the Mudir was anxious to embellish the place with avenues of

trees. So he imported some libbek acacias from Egypt, and to insure

their being watered announced that rewards would be given to anyone

in front of whose house a libbek was planted as soon as it attained

a certain size. For a time all went well, and the trees grew and

flourished. But then a local fakir saw his chance. He proclaimed

that watering trees was contrary to the will of God, and threatened

the most terrible penalties on anyone who dared to disregard his

orders. Only one man, a sergeant in a black regiment, was bold enough

to flout the fakir, and to continue watering his tree. Within a short

time the man himself, his wife, and his servant, were all dead. It may

have been a coincidence; it may have been the effect of imagination

acting on uncultured minds; but far more probably, though it could

not be proved, it was due to some wicked contrivance of the holy

man. In the case of the Dongola fakir, a very practical solution

of the difficulty was adopted. He was not punished, but facilities

were given for his return to Timbuctoo. Guilty or not, a man whose

reputation requires such bolstering up is a very undesirable resident.

That the various judges and magistrates administer the law

intelligently and with discretion, and that the people themselves

are more and more contented with the law, and accept it even when

it comes in conflict with old-established ideas, is shown by the

decrease in the number of petitions to the Governor-General. In the

Soudan, as in other Oriental countries, anybody who has a grievance

is allowed to appeal directly to the highest authority, and as the

Governor-General does a great deal of travelling every year, there is

every facility for presenting them. At first they numbered several

thousands every year, but in 1902 they sank to the comparatively

small total of 600. But whilst every endeavour is made to govern

the country on lines acceptable to and understood by the people,

there are, of course, some points on which the policy of a civilized

government is necessarily in opposition to very deep-rooted customs

and habits to such a degree as to completely upset the old basis of

social life. In a minor degree this is true of the partial application

of the game laws to natives, but of far greater importance is our

attitude towards the institution of slavery and the slave-trade.

The occupation of the Soudan has been a tremendous blow to slavery;

one of the principal recruiting-grounds for slaves has practically

been closed. A certain amount of slave-raiding goes on along the

Abyssinian frontier. Descents are periodically made by parties one

to two hundred strong, well armed, from the south-western districts

of Abyssinia. They raid the Barun negroes, and carry off the women

and children. The same kind of thing is apt to happen on the Darfur

frontier, and some of the remote tribes in the same quarter sometimes

raid each other with the object of getting slaves. Some of these,

but not many, find their way to Dongola, or the Ghezireh; others

are taken to Tripoli. Special steps have now been taken by the

Anti-Slavery Department of the Egyptian Government, which now has

its headquarters at Khartoum, to put down this traffic. Two extra

English inspectors have been posted, one at Rosaires, on the Blue

Nile, the other at El Obeid. They are to form small mounted corps

of the best Arabs and patrol the disturbed districts.

Apart from the actual work done, it will be a great thing to enlist

the best of the Arab tribesmen in the Government service, and it

is hoped that they will in time form the nucleus of an effective

native police. These men have been in the past some of the principal

exponents of slave-catching themselves; they ought to be very adept

at their new business. With these exceptions the slave-trade within

the borders of the Soudan has practically disappeared. During the

first year or two captures were occasionally made of small caravans,

but very heavy penalties were imposed. There is still a constant

demand for slaves in Arabia, and once a slave is shipped over the

Red Sea a good profit is assured. But it is too dangerous now for

anyone to try to make a regular livelihood by it. There are still,

however, about twenty cases a year of trials for offences against

the slavery laws, mostly isolated cases of kidnapping a woman or a

child, and probably there is besides a fair proportion of undetected

cases. But the regular trade is pretty well stamped out.