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Title: The binding of the Nile and the new Soudan
Author: Sidney Cornwallis Peel
Release date: October 5, 2023 [eBook #71808]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Edward Arnold, 1904
Credits: Galo Flordelis (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BINDING OF THE NILE AND THE NEW SOUDAN ***
THE BINDING OF THE NILE
AND
THE NEW SOUDAN
[Illustration: _Mehemet Ali,_
_from a painting in the possession of the Oriental Club._
LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD: 1904.]
THE
BINDING OF THE NILE
AND
THE NEW SOUDAN
BY THE HON.
SIDNEY PEEL
LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD
AUTHOR OF ‘TROOPER 8008 I.Y.’
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD
Publisher to H. M. India Office
1904
[_All rights reserved_]
PREFACE
I have tried to tell in outline the story of the regulation of the Nile
and some of its consequences. A rash project, perhaps, for one who is
not an engineer; but, then, this book is not written for engineers, and
politics enter largely into it.
I have had some special opportunities of observation, and I have many
friends to thank for the help which they have given me. In particular I
am much indebted to the _Standard_, whose special correspondent in
Egypt and the Soudan I had the good fortune to be during a part of
1902-1903.
Anyone who wishes to gain a real acquaintance with the principles and
details of Egyptian Irrigation should read the monumental and
interesting work by Sir W. Willcocks, K.C.M.G., on that subject, to
which my indebtedness is large.
The standard work on the Soudan is not yet written. There is but one
man who combines the necessary knowledge, experience, and attainments
to do it, and he, fortunately for the Soudan, is—and will be for a long
time to come—too fully occupied with his arduous and multifarious
duties. I mean, of course, the present Governor-General, Sir Reginald
Wingate. No official of the Soudan Government, least of all he, has
leisure to write a book; but I sincerely hope that the materials for it
are steadily collecting.
S. P.
CONTENTS
PART I
THE BINDING OF THE NILE
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE NILE 3
II. BASIN IRRIGATION 13
III. PERENNIAL IRRIGATION 23
IV. THE CULTURE OF THE FIELDS 32
V. THE DELTA BARRAGE AND THE ENGLISH ENGINEERS 43
VI. THE CORVÉE 59
VII. RESERVOIR PRELIMINARIES 68
VIII. THE DAM AND THE NEW BARRAGES 81
IX. THE INAUGURATION OF THE RESERVOIR 91
X. BRITISH RULE IN EGYPT 101
XI. SCHEMES FOR THE FUTURE 111
XII. THE SUDD 124
XIII. THE UNITY OF NILELAND 134
PART II
THE NEW SOUDAN
XIV. THE PAST 139
XV. THE PAST—_continued_ 159
XVI. THE NEW KHARTOUM 173
XVII. THE NEW SOUDAN 185
XVIII. JUSTICE AND SLAVERY 200
XIX. EDUCATION AND THE GORDON COLLEGE 214
XX. TRADE AND COMMERCE 226
XXI. TAXATION, REVENUE, AND EXPENDITURE 247
XXII. THE COST OF THE SOUDAN TO EGYPT 261
XXIII. CONCLUSION 270
INDEX 278
MAP OF EGYPT AND THE SOUDAN _At end_
PORTRAIT
MEHEMET ALI _Frontispiece_
(From the painting by T. Brigstock in the possession of
the Oriental Club.)
PART I
THE BINDING OF THE NILE
CHAPTER I
THE NILE
Far back in the world’s history a fracture of the earth’s crust
took place in the region which is now Egypt, and the sea filled the
valley as far as a point not much north of Assouan. Into this fiord
ran several rivers from the high ground east and west, bearing
down with them heaps of detritus, and forming small deltas like
the plain of Kom-Ombos. On the sea-bottom were laid down deposits
of sand and gravel, and then the land began to rise. Meantime the
volcanic movements of East Central Africa had shaped the country
into its present configuration, and the rivers which drained from
the great lakes and swamps of the south, and those which flowed down
from the high plateau on the east, combining their waters somewhere
about Khartoum, pushed their marvellous course northwards, and began
the creation of the fertile soil of Egypt. From this time onwards
the climatic conditions must have continued very much what they are
to-day. Changes, of course, there have been in the level of the land;
but the sea-valley had become a river-valley, and year by year the
annual flood increased the cultivable soil, and refreshed it with
moisture, just as it would be doing to-day if left untrammelled by
the devices of man.
Late in the history of the river-valley, but very early in the history
of humanity, this favoured strip of country became the home of men,
who doubtless cast their seed upon the slime left by the retreating
waters, and reaped their crops long before the dawn of history. It is
remarkable and characteristic of the conditions of the country that
tradition ascribes to the earliest King of Egypt, Menes, the first
King of the First Dynasty, the first attempts to regulate the flow
of the river—in other words, the first scheme of irrigation proper.
If it were possible to divert the river from its course, and
effectually to bar its way before it reached the boundaries of Egypt,
what an appalling catastrophe would follow—no mere disaster,
but absolute annihilation! On the coast lands of the Mediterranean
a sparse population might still eke out a miserable existence by
storing the scanty rainfall, but nowhere else. The very oases of the
desert would be dried up, and in a short time the shifting sands of
the Sahara would have overlaid the deposits in the river-valley,
and buried out of sight even the ruins of the past. The waters of
the Nile are, and ever have been, the sole giver of all life in Egypt.
Whoever finds himself in Cairo should lose no time in taking his stand
upon the bridge, and in reflecting upon the history of the water
that goes sliding and eddying beneath him, on the way to perform
its last duties among the cotton-fields of the delta. Some of it
has been travelling for three months from its sources beyond the
Victoria Nyanza, itself over 1,100 metres[1] above sea-level. From
the Victoria Nyanza it has passed down the Somerset Nile into the
Albert Nyanza, thence a five days’ journey to Lado, past Duffile
and the Fola Rapids. From Lado to Bor the fall is still rapid, but
henceforward as far as Khartoum, some 1,000 miles, the stream is
on a very feeble slope. Between Bor and the junction of the Ghazal
River on the left bank is the region of the sudd, floating masses
of compressed vegetation, which, if neglected entirely, block the
course of the river. Here, too, are the wide and desolate marshes,
inhabited by myriads of mosquitoes and that strange, melancholy bird,
the whale-headed stork (_Balæniceps rex_).
The Ghazal River contributes very little to the flow of the Nile,
owing to wide lagoons through which it passes, and which cause great
evaporation. The river then passes sharply to the right, and sixty
miles further on is joined by the Sobat from the eastern hills, which
in flood brings down a volume equal to that of the Nile, but during
summer contributes little or nothing. From the white sediment brought
down by the Sobat the White Nile derives its name and colour. Hence
it flows in a wide bed, a mile across on the average, 540 miles to
its junction with the Blue Nile at Khartoum. Khartoum is still 1,800
miles from the sea, and 390 metres above it. Two hundred miles north
of Khartoum, near to Berber, the Atbara River flows in, and hence
the Nile pursues its solitary way through the desert until, after a
circuitous bend round Dongola, it bursts through the rocky defiles
of Nubia, and emerges at Assouan into Egypt proper. Of the distance
between Khartoum and Assouan about 350 miles consist of so-called
cataracts, during which the total drop is 200 metres; about 750
miles are ordinary channel, with a total drop of nearly 100 metres.
Of all the affluents of the Nile, the Blue Nile (assisted by its
tributaries, the Rahad and the Dinder) and the Atbara have been of
infinitely the greatest importance to Egypt in the past. Not only
do their waters contribute the largest proportion of the annual
flood, but also down them comes the rich volcanic detritus swept
from the Abyssinian hills by the heavy summer rains, which composes
the red-brown silt so dear to the Egyptian cultivator. To understand
the system of irrigation in Egypt it is necessary to have a clear
view of the amount of water derived from the different sources at
different times of the year.
The great lakes and swamps of Uganda, acting as reservoirs, prevent
any great differences in the discharge of water above Lado. At
that place the low Nile discharge is about 500 cubic metres[2] per
second; but, in spite of the Ghazal River and the Sobat, so great
is the loss by diffusion in the marshes and by direct evaporation,
that at Khartoum the discharge is no more than 300 cubic metres
per second. At this time the Blue Nile is giving no more than 160
cubic metres per second at Khartoum, and the Atbara is not running at
all. The loss between Khartoum and Assouan is about 50 cubic metres,
and consequently the amount of water passing Assouan in May in an
ordinary year is 410 cubic metres per second. This is the summer
supply of Egypt.
Meantime heavy rains have been falling about Lado and on the
Sobat. Towards April 15 the river begins to rise, the effect of which
is felt at Khartoum about May 20, and at Assouan about June 10. A
most curious phenomenon accompanies this preliminary increase—the
appearance of the ‘green’ water. It used to be thought that
this ‘green’ water proceeded from the sudd region. During the
previous months the swamps in that country have been lying isolated
and stagnant under the burning tropical sun; their waters have become
polluted with decaying vegetable matter. When once more the rising
river overtops its banks, this fœtid water was supposed to be swept
out into the stream, and finally make its appearance in Egypt. But a
closer examination of the facts, which has only been possible since
the Soudan was re-opened, has caused this view to be abandoned.
The ‘green water’ is caused by the presence of an innumerable
number of microscopic algæ, which give it a very offensive taste
and smell. So far as can be ascertained, their origin is in the
tributaries of the Sobat above Nasser. The rains in April carry
them out into the White Nile, and thence they pass down to Nubia
and Egypt. Under a hot sun and in clear water they increase with
amazing rapidity, and sometimes they form a column 250 to 500 miles
long. These weeds go on growing, drying, and decaying, until the
arrival of the turbid flood-water, which at once puts an end to the
whole process, as they cannot survive except in clear water.
Horrible as the ‘green’ water is, its appearance is hailed with
delight by the Egyptian, for he knows that it is the forerunner of
the rushing waters of the real flood-time, and the first sign of
the coming close of the water-famine. By September 1 the Nile at
Lado has reached its maximum of 1,600 cubic metres. In the valley
of the Sobat the rains last till November, with the result that
by September 15 or 20 the White Nile at Khartoum has attained its
maximum discharge of 4,500 cubic metres per second.
Meanwhile great things have been happening on the Blue Nile and the
Atbara. About July 5 the Blue Nile begins to rise, and the flood
comes down with considerable rapidity till it reaches its maximum of
5,500 cubic metres per second on August 25. The famous ‘red’ water
reaches Assouan on July 15, and is seen ten days later at Cairo. The
flood on the Atbara would begin at nearly the same time as on the
Blue Nile, but for the fact that it spends a month in saturating
its own dry bed and the adjoining country. Once it begins, however,
about July 5, it comes very rapidly, and about August 20 reaches
its maximum, which is usually some 3,400 cubic metres per second,
but occasionally amounts to as much as 4,900.
If these three contributors, the White Nile, the Blue Nile, and the
Atbara, all reached their maximum at the same time, the result in
an ordinary year would be a discharge at Assouan of some 13,000 to
14,000 cubic metres per second, and in occasional years a very great
deal more. But this is not the case. In an ordinary year the Nile is
at its lowest at Assouan at the end of May, discharging no more than
410 cubic metres per second. After the arrival of the ‘green’
water it rises slowly till July 20. By that time the ‘red’
water is fairly on the move, and the rise goes on with increased
rapidity till the maximum is reached, on September 5, of 10,000 cubic
metres. But both date and amount are liable to variation. If the
White Nile flood is a weak one, and the Atbara early, the maximum
may be reached a day or two earlier; but if the White Nile is very
strong it will not be attained until September 20. A late maximum,
in other words, means a good supply of water in the White Nile,
and as the White Nile is the principal source of supply after the
flood is over, this fact is of inestimable importance to Egypt. But
occasionally, as in 1878, this is carried to excess. In that year
the White Nile flood was very late and very high. The maximum was not
reached till September 30, when 13,200 cubic metres per second were
passing Assouan, with very disastrous results in Egypt. All through
the following summer the supply was very good, and at its lowest,
in May, was more than three times as great as the average.[3]
Curiously enough, the preceding year offered a startling contrast. It
was the lowest Nile on record. The maximum was reached on August
20, and was some 3,500 cubic metres below the average, and in the
following May the discharge at Assouan fell to 230 cubic metres per
second, as against the average 410.
By the end of October the Atbara has usually disappeared
altogether, and the Blue Nile falls very quickly after the middle of
September. The White Nile, however, owing to the regulating effect
of its natural reservoirs and the slackness of its current, is very
much more deliberate in its fall, and the results at Assouan are as
follows in a normal year: By the end of September the discharge has
fallen to 8,000 cubic metres per second; end of October to 5,000;
end of November to 3,000; end of December to 2,000; end of January
to 1,500; end of March to 650; and end of May to 410.
In other countries the year is divided into seasons, reckoned
according to the position of the sun and the temperature, or according
to the rainfall. In Egypt the state of the all-important river is
the principal factor in determining the seasons. These are, first,
the months of the inundation, or Nili, August to November; second,
the winter, or Shitwi, December to March; and, third, the summer,
or Sefi, April to July, when the river is at its lowest. Nowhere
else do the actual seasons correspond with the nominal in a manner so
regular and unfailing. But, of course, within these limits there is a
great variation in the amounts of both the maximum and the minimum of
the volume of the Nile, and the dates at which they occur from year
to year. During the twenty-six years 1873-1898 the maximum flood at
Assouan varied from the exceptional height of 9·15 metres above zero
on the gauge to the equally exceptional 6·40 metres. And the dates
on which these maxima were attained varied from October 1 in the
first case to August 20 in the other. The dates on which the volume
of water passing through reached its minimum varied from May 8 to
June 24; while the worst lowest on record was ·71 metre below zero,
and the best was 1·88 metres above it. (Zero, it should be explained,
is the lowest level which the river would touch in an average year.)
These figures are the result of the free and unimpeded flow of the
Nile. To us, with our wider field of observation, with our knowledge
of the sources of the Nile, and preciser information as to the
conditions prevailing in those distant countries, the behaviour
of the river seems, after all, but the resultant of many natural
causes, and capable of prediction, and even regulation. But to
those who, living in a country where rain was practically unknown,
knew nothing of the tropical lakes or the rain-shrouded hills of
Abyssinia, and who merely saw the great river issuing from the
burning deserts of the south in flood at the very time when other
rivers were parched and dried, how marvellous it must have seemed,
and how inexplicable must have appeared those occasional variations,
threatening destruction, on the one hand by excessive inundation, and
on the other by famine and drought! Few floods in the history of Egypt
can have been higher than that of 1878, and few lower than that of
1877, when 1,000,000 acres were left without water. But several great
famines have been recorded in the past. Perhaps the worst of these
began in A.D. 1064. A succession of low Niles took place, lasting for
seven years, like the seven lean kine of Pharaoh’s dream. Terrible
results followed. Even human flesh was eaten, and the Caliph’s
family had to flee to Syria. Similar disasters occurred in A.D. 1199.
Such extraordinary catastrophes are rare, but their possibility is
always present to the minds of those responsible for the government
and welfare of Egypt. We shall see what steps have been taken to
guard against them, and first we shall examine the different systems
of irrigation which have prevailed, and the nature of the services
which the water, whose variations we have described, is made to
perform before it finally reaches the sea.
CHAPTER II
BASIN IRRIGATION
There are two kinds of irrigation in Egypt—basin and perennial
irrigation. Basin irrigation is the ancient and historical method
of the country. Tradition ascribes its invention to the first King
of Egypt, and it is obviously designed to take full advantage of
the annual flood. Practically the same as it was 7,000 years ago,
it may be seen in Upper Egypt to-day.
The cultivable land from Assouan to the Delta is, with the exception
of the Fayoum, that altogether remarkable province, a narrow strip
of country, varying in breadth from a few miles to nothing at all,
sometimes on both sides of the river, sometimes only on one. Being
of deltaic formation, the land is highest near the river, and slopes
away towards the desert. As the river flows from south to north,
there is, of course, also a general slope of the country in the
same direction. Earthen dykes are run at right angles to the river
as far as the desert, a dyke parallel to the river and close to
its bank connects them, and so a basin is formed, enclosed on the
fourth side by the desert. Thus the land is arranged in a series of
terraces. Usually these basins are arranged in a series, one basin
draining into its neighbour, the last of the series discharging back
again into the Nile. Sometimes a second dyke, parallel to the river,
divides the lower land near the desert from the higher; sometimes
the arrangement is still further complicated by other dykes, making
enclosures within the area of the original basin.
The object of the basins is to regulate the supply of the
flood-water. Each series of basins has special feeder canals to
lead into them. These are shallow, and have their bed about halfway
between the high and low level of the Nile. They are therefore dry
in the winter and summer, and only run during the flood. The heads
of these canals, where they take off from the Nile, remain closed by
dams or by masonry regulators till the silt-bearing flood is coming
down in sufficient strength. Then about August 10 or 12 the canals
are opened and the basins filled. The lowest basins in each series
are filled first, then the next lowest, and so on. In a low flood,
as in 1877, there is not enough muddy water to go round, and the upper
basins get no water at all; such lands are called ‘sharaki,’ and
are exempt from taxation. For forty days the flood-water stands on
the land, thoroughly soaking it and washing it, and at the same time
depositing its fertilizing silt. At the end of that time, through the
escape at the lower end of the series, the water is discharged back
again into the Nile. But if the flood is a very high one or very slow
in abating, the date at which the water can be discharged and the
basins dried has to be postponed. Fortunately, this seldom happens;
but when it does it has a doubly bad effect. The oversoaking is said
to engender worms, and also the ripening of the crops is postponed
to an unfavourable season of the year.
Against this particular evil there is no remedy, but since the British
occupation a great deal has been done to improve the system of basin
irrigation, and prevent a large amount of sharaki even in years of
low Nile. These measures consist in arrangements for distributing the
‘red’ water more evenly over the whole system, and not allowing
the lower basins only to receive the full benefit, while the higher
merely receive ‘white’ water—_i.e._, water which has already
deposited its silt. Further, since any water is better than none,
the systems of basins have been so managed, where possible, that
the water from an upper system can be drained into a lower one,
and thus make up deficiencies, though with water of an inferior
quality. More attention has also been paid to the angle at which
the feeder canals take off from the Nile, and the slope on which
they are laid, so as to provide as much ‘red’ water as possible,
while diminishing the amount of silting up. The result of this work
is seen in the diminution of the sharaki lands year by year. In 1877
these amounted to nearly 1,000,000 acres, a loss of £1,000,000 in
land-tax. During the next ten years the average was 45,000 acres,
an annual loss of some £40,000. In 1888 the loss was £300,000,
and the Egyptian Government expended £800,000 in remedial works,
which have had an extraordinary effect. In 1899, when the Nile was
exceptionally low, the sharaki lands amounted to 264,000 acres only,
as against nearly 1,000,000 in 1877.
As for the high lands lying immediately between the river and the
basin dyke, only eight or nine times in a century does the Nile
rise high enough to flood them. They are called ‘berms,’ and
are ingeniously irrigated by means of special high-level canals,
which, starting from a point above the head of the basin system, or
perhaps leading down from an upper system, pass by means of a siphon
under the feeder canal. The berms are, of course, also irrigated by
lifting water directly from the Nile itself.
There are forty-five systems of basins in Upper Egypt, most of which,
and those the largest, are on the left bank. Some of the feeder
canals are insignificant, and feed only two or three basins. Others,
like the Sohagia Canal, south of Assiout, feed an extensive system,
and are real rivers when full. The basins themselves are 5,000 to
15,000 acres in extent, and it can easily be understood that when
they are taking in they have an enormous effect in diminishing
the pressure of the flood, and, on the other hand, their discharge
lengthens it out in the lower reaches of the river, when the level
has already fallen very much at Assouan. While the basins are filling
in August and September, they absorb about 2,000 cubic metres per
second. Besides this, a considerable amount is employed in filling the
channel of the Nile itself and its branches. Evaporation, absorption,
and direct irrigation, also play their part, and the result is that
the discharge of the Nile at Cairo is some 2,500 cubic metres less
than it is at Assouan. But during October and November the basins
are discharging. The southernmost ones are empty by October 15,
those in the neighbourhood of Cairo not till about November 30, or
even later. The consequence is that the Nile at Cairo in October
is discharging 900 cubic metres per second more than at Assouan,
and in November 500 more.
In November, therefore, the visitor to Cairo can still get some idea
of what Upper Egypt is like in flood-time. From desert to desert
it stretches, one vast lake, divided by a network of dykes, and
studded here and there with villages raised on artificial mounds,
which year by year rise higher on their own ruins. A greater flood
than usual makes terrible havoc in these villages; for the rising
water soon crumbles their mud walls, and the whole collapses like a
pack of cards. Every mortal thing is living on the dykes, which play
the part of roads; only the water-fowl, emerging in thousands from
their secluded marshes, spread themselves in security over the wide
waters, and here and there an isolated villager may be seen in an
ancient palm-wood tub, paddling and baling by turns. The dykes run
on the same lines as they have run for centuries, and on them the
traveller, on his way to visit the Pyramids of Gizeh or the Tombs
of the Kings at Sakkarah, the burial-ground of ancient Memphis, may
watch the whole life of Egypt pass and repass in long procession, set
as in a frieze. Work in the fields, of course, is at a standstill,
but the villages are humming with preparation for the sowing,
and alive with flocks of goats and sheep, camels, buffaloes, and
asses; even the rats have been forced to the same refuge, and may
be seen popping in and out among the roots of the palm-trees.[4]
Where one basin drains into another the fisherman spreads his net,
and reaps a rich harvest in the rush of the current. At intervals are
stationed pickets of grave watchers, squatting patiently alongside
large bundles of millet or maize stalks. This is all that remains
of the corvée service, and gladly is it borne.
For every villager is interested in the preservation of the dykes,
and apart from ordinary accidents this great lake, owing to the
swift changes of temperature in the neighbouring desert, is liable
to violent storms, which drive great waves against the crumbling
dykes, and would soon break them if left alone. The millet stalks
are put down to break the force of the waves. Each village omdeh, or
headman, is responsible for these arrangements, and he, too, may be
met upon the dykes, a picturesque figure in flowing black and white,
mounted on an ambling Arab pony, going round to see that all his
sentinels are on duty. How near the past is brought, when you enter
the tombs and find painted on the walls, or figured out in stone,
the same people engaged in the same pursuits, as though Egypt had
not been since then for thousands of centuries coveted and seized
in turn by so many invading nations! The cultivator of the soil,
moulded by the unchanging and imperious demands of the great river,
to which he owes his whole subsistence, has retained the customs,
and even the features, of those remote forerunners, who are his
ancestors in everything, except, perhaps, by descent of blood.
Under the Pharaohs and under the Romans the whole of Lower as well
as Upper Egypt was under basin irrigation, and the whole country was
cultivated. In those days Egypt was the granary of the Mediterranean,
and at the time of the Arab conquest, A.D. 700, her population was
estimated to number 12,000,000. Under Arab rule began that period
of deterioration which lasted for 1,100 years, and which, had the
system of irrigation been less natural to the physical conditions
of the country and less simple, would have resulted in an absolute
abandonment of cultivation, and reduced Egypt to the state in which
Mesopotamia, once the garden of the world, finds itself to-day. Even
as it was, by A.D. 1800 the population was brought down to about
2,000,000, and all the northernmost and greater half of the Delta
had become a neglected and uncultivated swamp. War, famine, and
pestilence, in turn, had played their part; but the fundamental cause
of all was the misgovernment, which had neglected the irrigation. For
in basin irrigation, as, indeed, with all irrigation, two things are
of the utmost importance: the first, to get the water on to the land;
and the second, to drain it off again. Salt is the great enemy to be
fought. Not only do the Nile waters contain a large quantity of salts,
in solution, but the strata underlying the alluvial deposits, being
of marine origin, are also rich in salts. If the water is allowed
to stand on the land, evaporation takes place, until nothing but
a salt efflorescence is left. While if the land be so water-logged
that the level at which water can be obtained by digging is brought
near to the surface, the water containing salts from below is drawn
upwards by means of capillary attraction, and once more evaporation
takes place, leaving the salts in the soil. It is clear that as
the natural level of the land approaches sea-level it becomes more
and more troublesome to provide proper means of carrying off the
water. Accordingly, the northernmost parts of the Delta were the
first to suffer, and gradually the line of cultivation receded.
Nor was this all. No one looking at a map of the Delta can fail
to have been struck by that extraordinary feature of the northern
coast-line, the great lakes. At the present time there are in the
Delta about 3,430,000 acres of land cultivated or under reclamation,
and another 500,000 acres of waste land. North of these lie 1,180,000
acres, either permanently covered by the lakes or else flooded
by them from September to December. Between the lakes and the sea
is a belt of sand-dunes or sandy plains, pierced occasionally by
openings. The sand-dunes are constantly being augmented by the
prevailing north-west winds. These lakes or lagoons are for the
most part extremely salt, and are distributed as follows, beginning
from the west: Lake Mareotis, 70,000 acres; Edku, 60,000 acres;
Borillos, 180,000 acres, and as much more during flood and early
winter; and Lake Menzalah on the east, largest of all, 490,000 acres,
and flooding 200,000 acres more at the same time of year. All these
waste lands, now known as the Berea, were cultivated in Roman times,
some being occupied by vineyards, others by wheat, and it would seem
that the lakes were kept from extending landwards by dykes. But
when the land was allowed to go out of cultivation no one had any
interest in looking after the regulation of the lakes. First, the
passage through the sand-dunes became silted up, because, as the
basins decreased in number, less water was drained from them into the
lakes at the time of the inundation. Then, after the closing of the
openings, the water gradually rose, breached the neglected dykes,
and completed the ruin of the land. Once the openings in the dunes
are closed, the lake has to rise to a considerable height before it
can force its way through again, owing to the continuous action of the
sand driven by the wind. In this way it came to pass that neither of
the lakes had more than one opening into the sea, and consequently,
rising in flood-time above sea-level, invaded the lands to the south.
Another cause may have possibly contributed to the same
effect—namely, a sinking of the coast lands. Nowhere is this a more
probable explanation of the facts than in the neighbourhood of Lake
Manzalah. Before the Arab conquest much of what is now a shallow lake
was famous for its gardens, palm-groves, vineyards, and wheat-fields;
besides its agricultural villages, it contained towns famous for
their cloth and cutlery manufactures, like Tunah, Damirah, Dabik,
and, above all, Tinnis. But at the time of the conquest these towns
were already islands in the lake, a position which enabled them to
be the last stronghold of Coptic resistance to the Moslems.
Whatever the cause or the combination of causes—and the history
of these tracts remains very obscure—the results were the retreat
southwards of the cultivated area, with the consequence that, after
over 1,000 years of Mohammedan rule, Egypt found herself in the
weakened and impoverished condition already described; saved only
from annihilation by the system of basin irrigation, of which the
traditions survived, though in a diminished area, stubbornly preserved
from age to age by her industrious and conservative peasantry.
CHAPTER III
PERENNIAL IRRIGATION
It was the Viceroy Mehemet Ali who revolutionized the methods of
Egyptian agriculture, and introduced what is known as perennial
irrigation—that is to say, irrigation all the year round, as
opposed to irrigation during the flood only. In all the annals of
the East there are few more striking figures and few histories
more exciting than that of the Albanian tobacco-seller, who,
rising high in the favour of Sultan Mahmoud, was sent to Egypt
as Viceroy in 1810. Adopting a method well known in Cairo, and
well calculated to secure the respect, and even the affection, of
Orientals, he consolidated his power by the treacherous murder of
the Mamelukes, and thoroughly organized the military resources of
his province. Summoned to the aid of the Sultan, his armies bloodily
stamped out the successful rising of the Greeks in the Peloponnese,
and left to himself he would have settled the question of Greek
independence once for all. But his summary proposal to transport the
whole Christian population, and repeople the Morea with Mohammedan
plantations, provoked the intervention of the Powers, and at Navarino
he suffered the complete loss of his fleet. Undismayed, he conceived
the idea of making himself master of the Turkish Empire. His armies
overran Syria, and easily overcoming the Turkish opposition, he
threatened Constantinople itself. Once more, if left to himself, he
would have succeeded in his object, but once more the slow processes
of European diplomacy at last resulted in action. British guns gave
the death-blow to his hopes at Acre, and Turkey was saved from her
ambitious vassal, though Egypt remained a practically independent
State, and her sovereignty became the hereditary appanage of the
house of Mehemet.
In the region of domestic policy this strange combination of barbarism
and genius proved that he retained the commercial instincts of
the tobacco-seller as well as the far-reaching ideas and the
drastic methods of the despot. He perceived the advantages which
would accrue from the cultivation of cotton and the sugar-cane,
hitherto unknown in Egypt. These crops are impossible under a
system of basin irrigation; for though they require to be watered
all through the summer, they would be ruined by complete inundation,
and the shallow flood canals are well above the summer level of the
river. But difficulties were nothing to Mehemet Ali. The corvée was
called out, and the unfortunate fellaheen were set to work to dig
new canals and reconstruct the existing water-ways in the Delta,
so as to render them capable of conveying water during the period
of low Nile. At the same time the dykes along the banks of the Nile
and the canals were very much strengthened, so as to keep out the
flood; the old basin dykes were obliterated, and arrangements made
for irrigating the land from the new canals.
Of course, perennial irrigation in itself had always existed in
Egypt. It would have been indeed strange if the principle applied
by anybody who daily waters a window-box had not occurred to the
Egyptians. The Nile berms were often enclosed to protect them from
inundation, and watered directly from the river all the year round,
while within the basins themselves considerable tracts were irrigated
from wells. But never before had special canals been provided by
Government for perennial irrigation. The advantages of perennial
irrigation are that crops like cotton and sugar can be grown,
which would otherwise be impossible, and that two, or even three
crops, can be produced in a year, instead of only one. The land
is therefore increased in value, but, on the other hand, there are
serious objections. First of all, the land is deprived of the full
benefit derived from the annual renewal of the soil by the silt
deposit. Agriculture becomes a much more intricate and difficult
process; the exhausted soil has to be constantly refreshed and
stimulated by dressings and manures. The basin irrigator makes less
profits, but he has less risk and less anxiety; he can only ride a
donkey, while the perennial irrigator can ride a horse. But behind
the horseman sits black Care. A low summer supply means to him the
waste of many weeks’ labour and much expenditure in preparing and
sowing his fields; the basin irrigator does nothing till the flood
is over, and should the inundation not cover a part of his land,
it merely means that that part lies fallow for another year, and
suffers no deterioration. A breach in the dykes during the flood is
inconvenient to the one, no doubt, but fatal to the other, for it
means the ruin of his growing cotton or sugar. And under perennial
irrigation it is much more likely to occur, for the basins act as
a safety-valve in the inundation, and, while they lengthen out the
period of the flood in Lower Egypt, enormously decrease its volume
at any given time; but when the same lands are receiving only an
occasional watering, the volume that rushes to the sea is by so much
the greater, and the pressure on the dykes is heavily increased.
If Mehemet Ali had been content to preserve the old basin dykes, the
vivifying effects of the flood-water might have been occasionally
applied, and some of these dangers averted. But, as we have seen,
everything had to give way to the immediate cultivation of cotton, and
the dykes were levelled. Nor was this the only error committed. The
new canals were faulty in slope and alignment. Too often their
subsidiaries were constructed merely with the object of carrying
water to the lands of powerful and favoured individuals, without
regard to the general interest. It was found in consequence that
an enormous silting up of the canals took place every year. But the
Viceroy, with all the forced labour of Egypt at his free disposal,
took little heed of this, and vast numbers of men were dragged from
their homes every year to redig the canals. Even so it was impossible
for the task to be completed before the next flood came round. The
lower reaches of the canals remained choked with mud and weeds, and,
worst of all, proper drainage was neglected.
When Napoleon was in Egypt in 1798, his master mind, accustomed
to go to the root of many matters in spite of all the alarms and
distractions of war, perceived how much might be done by a regulation
of the water at the point of the Delta. His idea was to close each
branch of the river alternately during the flood, and so double its
effect. Mehemet Ali proposed to apply the same principle to low-water,
and began to close the head of the Rosetta or left-hand branch of the
Nile with an enormous stone dam, so as to divert the whole supply
into the Damietta branch. Linant Pasha, then chief of the French
engineers, who had been brought over to advise upon the new works,
persuaded him to abandon this design, and proposed instead to build
a barrage upon each branch, constructing them in the dry, and then
diverting the Nile into its new course by means of earthen dams. The
Viceroy approved, and at once proposed, with characteristic energy,
to dismantle the Pyramids and make use of their material, just as
Sultan Hasan had once stripped the marble casing from the Great
Pyramid to construct his famous mosque. Fortunately, the prosaic
question of transport arrested this design, and new limestone quarries
were opened near Cairo instead. But although workshops were built,
material collected, and foundations dug, Mehemet seems to have lost
all interest in the work, and in 1835 he abandoned it altogether,
and for seven years nothing more was heard of it.
Two things appear to have operated in his mind. It seemed simpler
to keep on digging out the main canals by the help of the corvée,
and cheaper, too, because nothing was wanted but the unpaid labour,
though it was false economy. And, secondly, his ill-regulated but
far-reaching imagination was already busy upon a new idea, nothing
less than the construction of a great reservoir, which should store up
the surplus water of the winter and let it out again in the summer,
thereby, as he supposed, rendering unnecessary the construction of
any minor work like a barrage.
Surely there can be no more curious instance of the irony of fate
than the history of these two great ideas—the Barrage and the
Reservoir. Both in turn have been carried into successful execution by
engineers and statesmen belonging to the very nation which shattered
the ambitions of their first authors. Against the crumbling walls
of Acre, held so stoutly for weeks by the English sea-captain, when
even the notion of a day’s defence seemed a madness, Napoleon’s
dreams of Eastern empire dashed themselves vainly to pieces. Forty
years later the same walls could not withstand for half a day the
guns of their former defenders, and Mehemet Ali in turn saw his own
imperial dreams finally dissolve. Mehemet neglected the Barrage,
because he thought the Reservoir would make it unnecessary; and
yet in the end it was only the successful working of the Barrage
which gave new life to the project of the Reservoir, and made its
completion an absolute necessity.
The Viceroy, perhaps, deserves little credit for his idea. In
matters of irrigation it is often much easier to see what to do
than how to do it; like other great men, he imagined better than he
knew. Undoubtedly he was fascinated by the fame of King Amenemhat
of the Twelfth Dynasty, and his construction of Lake Mœris in the
Fayoum. He constructed a new regulator at the spot where the Bahr
Yusuf enters that extraordinary province, and even built himself
a house there. But whether because of the inherent difficulties of
the subject, or because of foreign complications, nothing was done
until in 1842 his mind reverted to the idea of the Barrage at the
point of the Delta. The Frenchman Mougel had the address to couple
his design with a scheme of military fortifications, and, attracted
by this double advantage, Mehemet at once ordered the works to be
begun, though, unfortunately, his energy was more devoted to making
the point of the Delta the military capital of Egypt than towards
the regulation of the water. By this time, however, Mehemet Ali’s
career was drawing to a close, and in 1848 he died, leaving the work
in which he never more than half believed still unfinished.
It is difficult to conceive anything more humiliating and exasperating
than the position of the French engineers who acted as advisers to the
Egyptian Government. Time has vindicated their reputation, and proved
the excellence of their designs and the soundness of their work;
but in their own day they had to suffer disappointment, and even
disgrace, and to bear the brunt of failure, due not to themselves,
but to the conditions under which they lived. With no authority
to enforce the execution of their plans, hampered at every turn,
sometimes by the incompetence, and always by the unwillingness, of
the Arab engineers through whom they had to work, supported only
occasionally by the uncertain breeze of viceregal caprice, they
struggled bravely on, and deserve the greatest credit for what they
did manage to accomplish. In 1853 Abbas Pasha, the then Viceroy,
dismissed Mougel from his service, to mark his displeasure at the
slowness of the building, and appointed a new man. Little was gained
by the change. The Barrages were nominally finished in 1863, and
an attempt was made to close the gates on the Rosetta branch. But a
settlement took place, and they had to be immediately reopened. Not
till 1872 was the Barrage really used, and then only partially on
the Rosetta branch, and not at all on the Damietta. Still, whereas
before 1872 only 250,000 acres of summer crops had been matured in the
Delta, and that at the cost of enormous labour in clearing the canals,
afterwards the total was 600,000 acres, and the cost of maintenance
was very much less. The ordinary summer supply available for the
Delta canals was increased from 64 cubic metres per second to 150.
This success brought home to the mind of the then reigning Khedive,
Ismail, the advantages of perennial irrigation and the cultivation
of cotton, and he determined to extend the system to Upper Egypt and
the Fayoum, where he possessed huge estates, amassed by fair means and
foul through the agency of the notorious Mufettish, Said. Accordingly,
in 1873 the great Ibrahimiyah Canal was dug. Starting from near
Assiout, it runs for 268 kilometres nearly parallel to the Nile on
its left bank, and supplies perennial irrigation to 252,000 acres
in the provinces of Assiout, Minia, and Beni-Suêf. It also carries
flood-water to a series of basins lying to the west of it, nearer
the desert. Before 1873 the Bahr Yusuf, which feeds the Fayoum, took
its water direct from the Nile, but its head was now transferred to
the left bank of the Ibrahimiyah Canal at Dêrut, and 327,000 acres
in the Fayoum came nominally under perennial irrigation.
It would perhaps have been more reasonable to perfect the irrigation
system of Lower Egypt, and to complete the Barrages entirely, before
embarking on new projects in Upper Egypt. But the temptation to
improve his own lands by simply calling out the corvée to dig canals
was too strong for Ismail; and, indeed, he was not the man to devote
himself to the carrying out of old projects to the exclusion of new
ones. In him the vigorous and practical originality of his grandfather
Mehemet appeared in the form of a fantastic imagination running
riot in all directions, unrestrained by the prosaic considerations
of time and means. Yet with able Ministers he might have been one
of the greatest of rulers. In spite of all the degradation which
his reckless extravagance brought on Egypt, the country owes him
something; for there was generally something great in his ideas,
and time is carrying many of them into effect. It is impossible not
to feel some admiration for the man who, when asked what gauge the
Soudan railway should be, replied, ‘Make it the same as that of
the railways in South Africa. It will save trouble in the end.’
CHAPTER IV
THE CULTURE OF THE FIELDS
It has already been explained that on the Nile berms or high banks,
which are covered by the flood only once in six or seven years, on
islands in the river, and on selected tracts within the basins in the
neighbourhood of wells, it has been the immemorial custom to lift
water on to the fields. Everywhere the two primitive instruments
of ancient Egypt are in common use to-day—the shadoof and the
sakieh. The shadoof is a long pole balanced on a support. From
one end of it is suspended a bucket, and from the other a heavy
counterpoise, equal in weight to the bucket when full of water. The
bucket is made of various materials, very often leather, though
the ordinary kerosene-oil tin of commerce is making its presence
felt here as elsewhere. The shadoof is worked by hand. The bucket
is pulled down into the water, then lifted up by the help of the
counterpoise, and its contents are tipped over into the channel
leading to the cultivated land, where the water is steered by means
of miniature canals and dams into the required direction. I suppose
there could not be a simpler form of unskilled labour than working
the shadoof. Whenever I think of the fellah of Upper Egypt, I think
of the shadoof. Up and down, creak and splash, hour after hour,
day after day, he goes on lifting and tilting, with an amazing and
monotonous regularity. Nothing disturbs him—not even a steamer
grounded on a sand-bank twenty yards in front of him. As he stands,
naked except for a loin-cloth of blue cotton, with his absolutely
dull, impassive features, his magnificent chest and arms but weak
legs, you cannot help wondering which came first, the shadoof or
the shadoof-man, so perfectly are they adapted to each other. Two
piastres are the humble guerdon of the long day’s labour. You can
calculate upon the fellah as you could on a machine. But, in spite
of it all, deep down in his soul lies the sentiment which redeems
him and distinguishes him from a mere machine—his absorbing love
for the soil. Take him away, set him to other tasks—to serve,
for instance, in the army—he will perform his duties with the
same unfaltering regularity and docility; but all the time he is
thinking in his heart of the black soil and the water of Egypt. In
Omdurman I asked a more than usually intelligent Egyptian soldier,
who had been told off to perform some small services for me, ‘Do
you like being in the army?’ Without hesitation came the answer,
‘No.’ ‘What do you want to do?’ ‘I wish to be at home,’
he said, ‘and cultivate the ground.’
With a single shadoof water can be lifted 2½ metres; but when
the bank is high a second or third tier of shadoofs is employed,
and in some places as many as five shadoofs may be seen lifting the
water from one level to another, till it reaches the fields. One man
working twelve hours a day can lift enough water to irrigate an acre
of cotton or corn in ten days.
The sakieh, or Persian water-wheel, consists of a vertical wheel
with a string of buckets attached to it, which, as the wheel turns
round, are let down into the water, come up full, and discharge
their contents into a channel as they come to the top. The wheel is
turned by means of spokes, which catch in a horizontal wheel worked
by oxen, buffaloes, or some other beast of burden. If the lift
is high, the string of buckets may be very long; but if the wheel
itself dips into the water, there may be no string at all, and it
is then called a taboot. The buckets are often earthenware pitchers,
and the wheels themselves are generally of the rudest construction,
and made of palm wood; but new and improved iron water-wheels are
coming into use. Still, whether of iron or of wood, they all seem
to make the same peculiar sing-song whine. There is no sound more
characteristic of Egypt. It has a peculiar penetration. Night and
day it continues. I believe Egyptian music is founded upon it. The
fellaheen say the cattle will not work unless they hear it. Certainly
when one stops, the other stops also.
In the Fayoum, where, owing to the difference in the levels, the
canals have often a very high velocity, there are very ingenious
water-wheels or turbines, which play the part of sakiehs, but are
turned by the force of the current; the water thus lifts itself
continuously.
Where the lift is very little, shadoofs and sakiehs are replaced by
instruments called Natalis and Archimedean screws; but, naturally,
since the introduction of perennial irrigation has so increased
the area to be watered by lift, machinery has had to be called in,
and most of the work is done by pumps worked by steam. Each large
land-owner has his own pump and engine, which can be moved from
place to place, and are also hired out to the smaller men. On very
large estates stationary engines have been erected, which, of course,
are able to raise a much larger amount of water; but as a rule the
machinery employed is a portable eight-horse-power engine and an
eight-inch centrifugal pump.
How different is all this from the lot of the agriculturist in
other lands! For him there is no digging or maintenance of canals;
no apparatus of regulators, dams, sluice-gates, siphons, and drains;
no painful lifting of the water by pumps and engines, shadoofs,
and sakiehs. The rain falls upon his fields from heaven without
any effort of his. He looks to Providence to regulate his supply;
the Egyptian looks to a Government department. But the Egyptian,
as a compensation for his extra labour, has the advantage of greater
certainty. He knows the sun will shine. The rise and fall of the Nile,
variable as it is, can be foretold with greater exactness than that
of any other river—with far greater exactness than the duration
of the rainy season in any country in the world. Nature indeed
made his task simple in the extreme, if he had been content with
one crop a year. Every year the flood thoroughly washed the land,
and kept it free from injurious salts; it also covered them with a
deposit of mud, which relieved him from the necessity of dressing
and manuring the exhausted soil. The Nile silt, though singularly
rich in potash, the principal food of leguminous plants, like peas,
beans, and clover, is, however, very poor in the nitrates on which
cereals depend. But the Egyptian clover, called bersine, has the
property of secreting nitrates from the air, and depositing them
in the soil to an extraordinary extent, so that the land was able
to bear crops of clover and cereals in rotation to an unlimited
extent without any manuring. The desire to grow rich by crops like
cotton and sugar, and by forcing the land to double its output, has
changed all this. Not only has the summer supply of water become of
the utmost importance, but the soil has to be constantly refreshed
with manures. The question of manures is, indeed, only second,
under perennial irrigation, to the question of water.
Wherever cattle and stock are numerous, farmyard manure is used, as
well as the guano from the immense colonies of pigeons, kept for the
purpose in specially built pigeon-lofts throughout Egypt. Between
Halfa and Kena there are inexhaustive supplies of nitrates in the
desert, and north of Kena the mounds which mark the sites of ancient
cities, like Abydos, Ashmunên, Medinet, and the rest, serve the same
purpose. The ruins of the past are thus valued by the agriculturist
not less than by the archæologist, perhaps even more so; for lands
in proximity to them are rented higher in consequence. Year by year
more attention is now paid to the dressing of the soil, as perennial
irrigation is more understood and more studied; besides the natural
resources of the country, an increasing amount of manures is imported
from abroad, and there is little doubt that the growing tendency in
this direction will continue.
But all preparation of the soil is worse than useless labour unless
the necessary amount of water can be provided. This amount varies
both with the nature of the crop, the season of the year, and the
position of the land. The critical time is, of course, the summer,
when the supply of water is least and the heat is greatest, and,
of course, in Upper Egypt, where the sun is strongest, and the loss
by evaporation consequently greater, the demand is more urgent than
in the Delta.
The total amount of cultivable land in Egypt is 6,250,000
acres. Before the completion of the new works, to which period
all the figures in this chapter refer, the total nominally under
cultivation was about 5,750,000 acres. Of this, Upper Egypt claimed
2,320,000—viz., 587,000 nominally under perennial irrigation, and
1,732,000, including 1,435,000 under basin irrigation every year, and
297,000 of Nile berms, which are only flooded once in six or seven
years, and at other times irrigated directly from the Nile by means
of shadoofs and water-wheels. Of the whole of this area only about
20 to 30 per cent. produce double crops in the year; for the amount
of perennial irrigation is but small, and, although the whole of the
Fayoum—329,000 acres—was supposed to be perennially irrigated,
so faulty was the water-supply that the summer crops were only about
30 per cent. of the whole, instead of 50 per cent., which is the rule
in the Delta. It seems, indeed, as though matters had been arranged
expressly for the benefit of the tourist; it is Upper Egypt in the
winter season that he goes to see, and it is then that the fields
are green with corn, clover, and other crops. The following table
shows the different crops, and the acreage devoted to them at the
different seasons in Upper Egypt:
_Season._ _Acreage._ _Crops._
Summer 372,500 Sugar, cotton, vegetables, melons,
summer sorghum (or millet).
Flood 530,000 Flood sorghum, rice.
Winter 2,120,000 Wheat, beans, clover, barley, lentils,
flax (little), onions, vetches.
In Lower Egypt, or the Delta, the total area of fully or partly
cultivated land is 3,430,000 acres, and there are still 500,000 acres
of totally unreclaimed land. All this is under perennial irrigation;
half of it is under summer crops every year, and 40 per cent. produces
two crops a year. The following is a similar table to that given
for Upper Egypt:
LOWER EGYPT.
_Season._ _Acreage._ _Crops._
Summer 1,674,000 Cotton, sugar, vegetables, rice.
Flood 980,000 Maize (nearly all), rice.
Winter 2,139,000 Wheat, barley, clover, beans, vegetables,
flax.
Even if we look only to the summer acreage under crops, it is obvious
that the water-supply in the summer is very important; but when we
look to the value of the crop it becomes much more striking. Far the
most valuable crop in Egypt is the cotton, which is the principal
item in the summer. In Upper Egypt the value of a summer crop is,
on the average, more than twice that of a winter crop per acre,
and in the Delta the proportion is nearly the same. And though
the value of the flood crops is increased by the date-palms, of
which there are 5,700,000 paying taxes in Egypt, and whose produce
is gathered at this season, it cannot be compared with the summer
crops. Sugar-cane is now but little grown in the Delta, and even in
Upper Egypt its acreage is rather less than that of cotton.
Valuable as are the cotton-plant and the sugar-cane, it must never
be forgotten that one of the humbler winter crops, though valued
much lower in point of money, is yet the foundation of well-being in
the others—I mean the Egyptian clover, or bersine, the friend of
beast and man alike. Long before I knew its remarkable properties,
I admired it for its beauty. Green and glossy, it covers acre upon
acre with a luxuriant carpet, in pleasing contrast both to the black
soil and the desert sand, and most refreshing and comforting to the
eye. A bundle of it will satisfy even the grumbling camel; even the
melancholy buffalo looks a shade less depressed when her turn comes
to be tethered in it for her meal. Sheep and donkeys can hardly eat
it down fast enough within the circle of their ropes before it has
grown up again. And all the time it is steadily collecting in the
soil the invaluable globules of nitrate, which will put new life
into the succeeding cotton or corn. The part it plays in preparing
the soil can be estimated by the rotations of crops followed by the
Egyptian cultivator. These are as follows:
ON RICH SOILS.
_Winter._ _Summer or Flood._
First year Clover Cotton.
Second year Beans or wheat Indian corn.
ON POOR SOILS.
_Winter._ _Summer or Flood._
First year Clover Cotton.
Second year Clover Cotton.
Third year Barley Rice or fallow.
Rice and barley have their place, because they are less affected
by the injurious salts, which are the great enemies of the soil’s
fertility.
In Lower Egypt cotton is sown from the end of February to the
beginning of April. The land is well watered before it is ploughed
for the seed, and again when the seed is sown. From then until the
beginning of the flood it is watered on the average about once in
twenty days. The harvest lasts from August 20 to November 10, and
the cotton is picked two or three times over. During this time the
crop is watered about once in every fifteen days, but as the water
is now abundant there is nothing to fear. Indian corn is sown from
July 5 to August 30, and October 15 to November 30 is the period of
harvest. It is irrigated at the time of sowing, twenty days after,
and then once in ten or twelve days. The first two of these waterings
are, of course, the important ones. The earlier it is sown, the better
the crop will be, because it will have better weather for maturing;
but if the flood is late, and consequently the water-supply is low,
the Government may have to resort to a system of rotations in sending
water down the canals, and then the Indian corn crop may be sacrificed
to the interests of the cotton. Rice is the wettest of all the crops;
the kind (called ‘sultâni’) sown in May and reaped in November
is watered once in ten days before the flood, but during the flood
is given as much water as the drains can carry off. The other
kind (called ‘sabaini’) is sown in August, and also reaped in
November. Both in Lower and Upper Egypt it is purely a flood crop,
and takes all the water it can get. The winter crops, wheat, beans,
barley, and clover, are sown in November and December. Wheat and
beans are irrigated twice, barley once, but clover goes on growing
up till June, and takes more water according to the number of crops,
sometimes three or four, that are taken off it.
In Upper Egypt cotton-sowing begins at the same time, but the harvest
is earlier. Sugar-cane is sown in March, and the canes are cut from
December 15 to March 15. Sometimes the same roots are left in the
ground, and produce another crop in the second year; but this is
never of such quality as the first, and the land has probably to
be left fallow after it. Sugar, therefore, though nominally more
valuable than cotton per acre, is more costly in the long-run. It
is watered every twelve or fifteen days. The other crops are the
summer and flood sorghum, grown on the berms or in tracts within
the basins, and irrigated by shadoofs and water-wheels about once
every ten days; and the wheat, beans, clover, and barley, in the
basins. The cereals are usually not watered at all, but the clover
follows the same course as in Lower Egypt.
Summing up these results, we find that the principal crops in Lower
Egypt are cotton and rice. The cotton needs irrigation about once in
twenty days, the rice once in ten days. To provide this amount of
water, a canal should discharge (after allowance has been made for
wastage) 22 cubic metres in twenty-four hours per acre of cotton,
and 40 cubic metres per acre of rice. That is to say, 1 cubic metre
per second will suffice for 4,000 acres of cotton and 2,150 acres
of rice. In Upper Egypt rice is only a flood crop, and cotton and
sugar need about 25 to 30 per cent. more water than in the Delta,
owing to the greater loss from evaporation—that is to say, 1
cubic metre per second will only suffice for 3,000 acres of cotton
or sugar. During the winter the land throughout Egypt requires on
the average a watering once in forty days. But, as we have seen,
it is the summer supply for the cotton that is the really important
thing. We shall see later what the effect of the reservoir is likely
to be in safeguarding and extending these interests.
CHAPTER V
THE DELTA BARRAGE AND THE ENGLISH ENGINEERS
At the date of the English occupation the Delta Barrage was generally
thought to be like the whole fabric of Egyptian Government, rotten
to the core. And so indeed it seemed. No one had ever dared to use,
or apparently even to think of using, the Barrage on the Damietta or
right-hand branch at all. The history of the Barrage on the Rosetta
branch was hardly less inglorious. In 1863 its gates were closed
for the first time, but about ten of its arches began to settle, and
ominous cracks showed. Eventually the threatened part was surrounded
by a coffer-dam, and from 1872 to 1883 it managed to hold up about
1 metre. But even that was precarious. Commission after Commission
had condemned the structure; it was felt that at any moment it might
give way, especially if called upon to bear a greater strain, and it
was actually the settled policy of the Government to rely on huge
and costly pumping-stations instead. It was a paltry result after
the expenditure of £4,000,000 and so much labour.
Then, not for the first or last time, the Anglo-Indians came to the
rescue of Africa. Sir Evelyn Baring himself (now Lord Cromer) during
his service as Financial Member of the Council in India, must have
been impressed by the enormous importance of irrigation. It would not
be difficult to find many points of resemblance between his character
and that of one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of the rulers
of India, Lord Lawrence, different as were their spheres of work;
but certainly they were alike in this. As Lord Lawrence supported
Arthur Cotton in his engineering work, so Lord Cromer supported Colin
Scott-Moncrieff and the band of trusty lieutenants—Willcocks,
Garstin, Ross, Brown, Foster, Western, and Reid—who came with
him. Fortunately for Egypt, these men, trained in the best school of
irrigation in the world, possessed not only the highest scientific
skill and knowledge, but were also animated by the best spirit of
the empire-building Englishman. Deep in them lay the earnest wish and
determination, far stronger even than their enthusiasm and love for
their profession, to alleviate the lot of the unhappy peasantry of
Egypt. It was this heartfelt sympathy for the wrongs of the fellaheen,
ground down by the intolerable burden of the corvée, that sustained
them in their ceaseless labours and enabled them to pass successfully
through those dark days, when the air was full of forebodings of
failure and disaster, whose fulfilment would have pleased so many.
The Barrage is situated, as has been said, a little way back from
the point of the Delta. It is really two Barrages, one on the left
or Rosetta branch of the Nile, with sixty-one arches, 465 metres in
length, and the other on the Damietta branch with seventy-one arches,
535 metres in length. Between the two runs a revetment wall across the
intervening tongue of land, 1,000 metres in length. From a distance
it resembles a bridge of rather fanciful design, with the arches set
unusually close together, and, indeed, for a great part of its career
the functions of a bridge were the only ones it performed. The tongue
of land between has been converted into beautiful gardens, planted
with shady trees and many shrubs and flowers, and even a greensward
resembling grass. Altogether, it is one of the most delightful and
beautiful spots in Egypt, besides being one of the most useful. Here
is the starting-point of the great feeder canals which irrigate the
Delta provinces. On the left, facing north, is the Rayah Behera,
which supplies the province of Behera, to the left of the Rosetta
branch. Between the two Barrages is the head of the Rayah Menoufia,
the canal which feeds the two provinces of Menoufia and Gharbia, lying
between the two arms of the river; while on the right is the Rayah
Tewfiki, which, with its supplementary canals, Ismailia, Sharkia,
and Basusia, supplies the three eastern provinces of the Delta,
Kalyubia, Sharkia, and Dakalia. All these canals are navigable,
as well as the branches of the river, and provided with locks for
that purpose. These great waterways are free to all, and few of the
results of British occupation are more appreciated in Egypt. Formerly
all craft upon the Nile had to pay toll on passing under a bridge,
which did nothing but hinder their progress, while those for whose
convenience it was made passed without charge overhead.
A Barrage, as its name implies, is designed to completely bar
the bed of the river, so as to enable it to feed the canals at a
higher level than would otherwise be the case, and also to allow
the flood to pass through it easily. It needs, therefore, a very
solid foundation from bank to bank, on which the arches which hold
the movable sluice-gates can be securely planted. Its construction
is, therefore, a very different and much more difficult matter than
merely throwing a bridge over the stream, even a bridge with several
spans. The difficulty is all the greater when, as here, the bed
of the river offers nothing more substantial than shifting sands
to build upon. It was for this reason that Linant wished to build
the Barrages at leisure in the dry, and then divert the river from
its old channels, and lead it through when they were completed. But
Mougel chose to build his in the existing bed of the river, thereby
increasing the difficulties of actual construction, though from other
points of view there was much to be said for this plan. At the site
of the Rosetta Barrage the bed of the river was not of uniform depth;
he therefore filled up the deepest part of the channel, which lay on
the right, with loose stones, so as to bring it up to the level of
the bottom on the left-hand side. No cement was used in laying down
this barrier, but the Nile mud filled the interstices and made it
water-tight; when finished, this barrier was 60 metres wide and 10
deep at the deepest part. On this and on the natural sand he built
a platform 46 metres in width and 3·5 metres thick, composed of
concrete overlaid with brick and stonework. On the platform he raised
his arches and piers, all built of brick. Each of the openings for
the sluice-gates, sixty-one in number, was 5 metres wide. Like an
iceberg, that part of the Barrage which is visible above water is
much less than the invisible part below. To further strengthen the
structure and keep it in its place, a mass of rubble pitching or
loose stones was thrown into the river on the downstream side. This
talus was 3 to 16 metres in depth, and at one part extended 50 metres
downstream in a kind of tongue, narrowing down to 2 metres. The
Damietta Barrage was built on a similar plan, but its downstream
talus was not so large. Unfortunately, the concrete used for the
platform was inferior, chiefly owing to the fact that Mehemet Ali,
growing impatient at the slow progress of the work, ordered a certain
amount of material to be laid down every day, and laid down it had
to be in defiance of all engineering requirements. The consequence
was that, as soon as the Rosetta Barrage was subjected to strain,
ten of the arches on the left-hand side, where the platform was
laid down on sand only, settled and cracked. It was patched up by
surrounding the injured arches with a coffer-dam; but the Damietta
Barrage never even had its gates put in.
Such was the structure with which the English engineers had to
deal. Even as it stands to-day, it cannot, of course, compare in
magnitude with many works upon the Indian rivers; but as regards
the difficulties to be overcome, it can compare with almost any
in the world. It would have been far easier to rebuild the whole
thing from the beginning, but at the time the necessary funds were
not forthcoming. They had to take the old structure, with all its
imperfections, and screw it up to work as it was. The country could
not afford to cut off the summer water-supply of the Delta while the
repairs were in progress. The cotton-crop had always to be thought
of. And the period of the year during which the summer canals required
to be supplied was the only period during which work could be done,
for once the flood came down all operations were at an end. It is the
glory of the English engineers that, working under these conditions
and with untrained workmen, they succeeded in their task.
The Government was already paying many thousands a year to a company
for pumping water out of the Rosetta branch into the canals during
the summer, and the first thing Sir Colin Scott Moncrieff had to do
on his arrival was to decide upon a scheme which had been prepared
for erecting new pumping-stations at an initial expense of about
three-quarters of a million, and involving an annual expenditure of
at least another quarter of a million. So hopeless were the prospects
of the Barrage assumed to be, that even this expenditure, with a
doubtful result, was thought preferable to repairing it. Sir Colin’s
arrival was only in the nick of time. He determined to see what could
be done with the resources at hand. The new pumping-station scheme
was set aside, and Mr. Willcocks was put in charge of the Barrage.
There was much literature on the subject. During the last sixteen
years nothing had been done, but much had been written, and more
said. Commissions, expert and inexpert, had issued voluminous and
condemnatory reports, and had even prepared expensive schemes of
repair. Mr. Willcocks (now Sir William) is an indefatigable reader,
and could hardly have been encouraged thereby, till an examination
of the structure itself showed that all the later reports had been
drawn up without reference to facts. It had been observed that
whenever the gates were let down there was very severe action of the
water on the downstream side. The authors of the reports concluded
that the foundations were honeycombed. It is characteristic of the
Looking-glass days of Ismail that no one ever thought of trying to
find out by actual observation whether there might not be some other
cause. But Mr. Willcocks, looking for himself, found that this action
of the water was caused, not by honeycombed foundations, but by open
gratings which intervened between the bottom of the sluice-gates
and the platform. They had been put down originally to keep the
silt away from the bottom of the gates. Someone had fixed them so
as to prevent the gates from being lowered to their full extent and
then they had actually been forgotten. Measures were at once taken to
close these gratings, and eventually to remove them altogether. 20,000
cubic metres of rubble pitching were added to the talus. The Damietta
Barrage was likewise strengthened with various ingenious expedients,
improvised to meet the demands of the moment. Sluice-gates were put
in for the first time and gradually closed. Part of it was closed
by a temporary stone dam. Eventually in the summer of 1884 2·2
metres of water were held up on the Rosetta branch, and 1 metre on
the Damietta. Next year the same nursing process was continued. The
coffer-dam round the weak arches was strengthened, the talus of rubble
pitching below each Barrage was completed, and this year 3 metres were
held up on the Rosetta branch and 1·6 on the Damietta. The effect
was extraordinary. The acreage under summer cultivation was doubled,
rising from 600,000 to 1,200,000 acres. Not only was the supply of
water in the Delta canals greatly increased throughout the summer,
but, as it was delivered at a higher level, there was a great saving
of expense in lifting it on to the land. For the first time the
Egyptians thoroughly realized that a new power had come amongst them.
The experiment had been successful, but temporary expedients
could not last for ever. The more water held up, and the greater
the area of the summer cultivation, the more necessary it became
to insure the stability of the structure. A thorough repair would
cost money. Fortunately, this was now forthcoming. Mr. Willcocks’
success had settled the claim of the Barrage to a share in the famous
Irrigation Million borrowed in 1885.
At the end of 1886 the work was begun, under the charge of Colonel
Western and Mr. Reid, sent specially from India for the purpose. The
operations were spread over four years. In the first year the left
half of the Rosetta Barrage was taken in hand and finished before
the flood, next year the right half. In 1889 and 1890 the Damietta
Barrage was similarly taken in hand and finished. Each year the part
to be repaired was enclosed by earthen dams, and the water pumped
out so as to lay the foundations dry. The whole of the existing
floor was raised, both on the upstream and downstream side, and it
was also considerably lengthened. It was, in fact, enclosed in a
new and reliable suit of armour. The dangers and anxieties of the
work were incessant. The protecting dams were always liable to be
breached. Spring after spring burst out through the treacherous bed
of the river, and threatened the destruction of the year’s work;
and again and again each of them was successively stopped by a number
of ingenious devices. There is no enemy so persistent and so insidious
in its attacks as running water. It is always feeling for and finding
out the weak spots. It never sleeps or slackens by day or by night. It
can only be met successfully by a corresponding activity. While work
was possible, it was carried on unceasingly by night as well as by
day. Sometimes as many as 1,600 men worked through the night. The
upper brickwork was generally sound, but new iron sluice-gates moving
in special grooves were fitted throughout. The whole of the repairs
cost £465,000. It was money well laid out. Not only was the safety
of the Barrage assured, but it was found possible to hold up yet
another metre of water. The area of summer crops matured rose once
more from 1,200,000 to 1,520,000.
It might have been thought that the work was now complete. Both in
1891 and 1892 (a year of specially low summer supply) all the water in
the Nile was held up, and diverted into the canals. Not a drop reached
the sea during the summer without having done duty. But the engineers
were now looking forward to a time when the supply would be greatly
increased. The idea of a reservoir had become an affair of practical
politics. It was necessary to make assurance doubly sure. Accordingly,
in 1896 a new experiment was tried—namely, stock-ramming with clay.
Certain arches in the Damietta Barrage were selected, and in them
five-inch holes were bored right down through pier and platform
alike. When the bore-holes were complete, they were lined with iron
tubes. Clay was then forced through the tube by means of an iron
rammer, and as much as could be made to spread out at the bottom
of the hole was put in and rammed. As far as the clay went, the
experiment was not an entire success; but the boring brought to light
a condition of things in the very vitals of the Barrage which demanded
drastic treatment, for the bore-holes proved the existence of large
cavities in the original platform, and in some places there was free
water communication between one bore-hole and another. Some piers in
the Rosetta Barrage were therefore chosen for a similar experiment,
but this time liquid Portland cement was used instead of clay, and
the results were entirely satisfactory. Few discoveries have been of
more signal service than the invention of Portland cement. It is not
too much to say that it has revolutionized hydraulic engineering by
the facilities it affords for constructing solid works in water. Its
strength and resisting power is enormous, but its greatest quality
is that it hardens and solidifies under the action of water, and,
so far as is known, only goes on getting harder and harder with
time. The borings in the Rosetta Barrage having revealed similar
deficiencies to those in the Damietta, it was decided to apply to
both a thorough dose of this invaluable and invigorating medicine.
In 1897 five holes were bored in each pier of the Rosetta Barrage
(their united length amounted to very nearly 6 kilometres), and
into each was poured a quantity of liquid cement. The necessity
for the treatment was proved by the fact that in some cases the
cement travelled right through from the bore-hole in one pier and
rose through the bore-hole in an adjoining pier till it reached
the top. One pier actually swallowed 439 barrels of cement, while
its neighbour took a lesser but still gigantic draught of 327
barrels. There was no doubt that the cement thoroughly explored
and filled all the cavities existing in the foundations under the
bridge. In all, 3,254 barrels were used in the Rosetta Barrage
alone. In 1898 the grouting process, as it is called, was applied
with equal success to the Damietta Barrage.
To use Sir Hanbury Brown’s homely but expressive image, the process
applied to the Barrage was exactly that followed by a cook who wishes
to finish off a cold pie with its proper complement of jelly. The
jelly is introduced into the pie in the form of warm gravy, which
penetrates into and fills every recess of the succulent interior,
and then solidifies as it cools.
And still the engineers were not satisfied. So treacherous is the
river’s bed that no possible safeguards seemed superfluous. It
speaks volumes for the courage and skill of those who in 1885 held
up 3 metres of water with the old unreformed Barrage, that in 1897,
after the successful execution of such great and costly repairs,
it was still thought advisable to undertake completely new works to
assist in the task of holding up 4, or at the most 5, metres.
It is a principle in hydraulics, not easily understood at first
by the layman, that the pressure upon a weir or barrage in a river
depends entirely upon the difference in level between the water on
the upstream and on the downstream side, and not on the mere volume
of water in the river behind it. In December, 1897, the Caisse de
la Dette voted £530,000 for the construction of two subsidiary
downstream weirs, with the object of relieving the pressure on the
Barrage by raising the level of the water on the downstream side, thus
dividing the head of water to be held up into two—in other words,
by making two steps instead of one. Each weir was to consist of a
core of rubble masonry set in cement, sunk well below the bed of the
river, and protected up and down stream by a long slope of rough stone
blocks or pitching. To make the masonry core thoroughly watertight,
a mass of clay puddle was to be put on either side of it. The weirs
were thus to be a solid dam, blocking the course of the stream up to
such a height that the head of water on the Barrage, at that time
amounting to 4 metres, would be reduced to 2·5 metres. The flood
would pass freely over the top of the weirs. At the same time the
sluice-gates of the existing Barrage were to be heightened, so as to
permit the upstream level to be raised 1 metre more in June and July,
so as to take full advantage of the rising flood and facilitate the
early sowing of maize, a great point with the Egyptian cultivator.
By the summer of 1900 this programme had been completed. The building
of the weir on the Rosetta branch was an especially fine performance,
for which great credit was due to Sir Hanbury Brown and Mr. Brooke,
who were in charge of it. Five hundred metres in length, it was begun
at the end of December, 1899, and actually finished before the flood
began to come down in July. The same Portland cement played a great
part in its construction. It may now fairly be said that the Barrage
is complete at last, and fully equal to every strain that it can be
called upon to bear.
The weirs were constructed not a moment too soon. It so happened
that the summer supply of 1900 was lower than in any previous year
of which records have been kept. In 1889 the river sank to a level
of ·60 metre below zero on the Assouan gauge. In 1878 it fell to
·71 metre below zero, and this was the lowest known before the
summer of 1900. But on three days in that year, May 15, 16, and 26,
the river fell to a level of ·91 metre below zero. The position was
aggravated by the extension of summer cultivation. The total extent
of summer crops had risen still further to over 1,700,000 acres.
To save the valuable cotton crop was the earnest preoccupation of the
Irrigation Department. They were able by the most strenuous efforts,
not merely to save the crop, but so to treat it that it gave a yield
which, only a few years before, would have been considered perfectly
impossible even in a good year. But all their efforts would have been
in vain had it not been possible, thanks to the new weirs, to raise
the level of the water upstream of the Barrage to an extent which
would have been exceedingly dangerous without their assistance, and
so to take full advantage of the rising flood. The mere enumeration
of the special measures which were put into force gives a very good
idea of the difficult duties which devolve on those who control the
water in Egypt:
1. Earthen dams were constructed in both branches of the river to
prevent the inrush of salt water from the sea.
2. Special programmes were laid down for ‘rotations’ on the
canals.
The system of rotations, which was introduced from India, is that
the land-owners are only allowed to pump water on to their lands at
certain intervals. There are several advantages in this. The water
is economized, and as it can thereby be kept at a lower level in
the canals, there is less danger of the soil becoming deteriorated
by excessive saturation. The pumps are allowed to work for a certain
period, according to the district, and then an interval is prescribed,
until the expiration of which they are not allowed to work again. In
1900 the pumps were allowed to work for a period of six days at
a time, and at first twelve days was the interval until the next
pumping. But as the summer wore on, and the river continued to fall,
the interval was gradually extended to twenty-two days—a very
severe measure indeed.
3. All land-owners were warned not to sow rice.
4. They were also forbidden to sow maize until a date should be
announced.
5. Special pumping arrangements were made.
6. There was more than usually careful regulation at the heads of
the canals above the Barrage, so as to insure a proper distribution
of the water available to all the provinces.
7. A special staff was appointed to see that all these regulations
were carried out.
Could any government be more paternal than this—it might even be
said, more despotic? But countries which depend on irrigation have a
natural tendency towards despotism. When water is plentiful they may
be as republican and democratic as you please; but when the crisis
of scanty water comes they must have a strong hand over them, just
as the Roman Republic had to have its Dictator in times of national
peril. It speaks well for the good sense of the Egyptians, and it
proves their implicit faith, built up by sixteen years’ experience,
in the English engineers, that even those stringent regulations were
unhesitatingly obeyed, and that breaches of them were so rare as
to be almost non-existent. They had their reward; for while 1878 is
still remembered as a year of black disaster and distress, in 1900
the cotton crop amounted to no less than 5,250,000 kantars,[5] and
the maize crop, in spite of its late sowing, was also very good. Only
the rice, a comparatively insignificant item, was sacrificed to its
more important rivals. Thanks mainly to the good work done by the
completed Barrage, neither the public nor the private finances of
Egypt suffered the least shock from a year of unprecedented scarcity
of water, even when this was coupled with most unseasonable cold
and fogs in September, which considerably diminished the output of
cotton. Lord Cromer had indeed good reason to write in 1901:
‘Had it not been for the labours of the eminent hydraulic engineers,
who for the last seventeen years have placed their services at
the disposal of the Egyptian Government, the most skilful financial
assistance would not have availed both to place the Egyptian Treasury
in a position of assured solvency and to meet in any adequate degree
the constant demands which are the necessary accompaniment of a
policy of reform.’
Such are the outlines of the long history of the Barrage, designed
by Frenchmen and brought to perfection by Englishmen. Both nations
can share in the credit of the work, and it is pleasant to record
once more the generous and graceful act by which the chief of the
English engineers recognised and acknowledged the merits of his
predecessor. Sir Colin Scott Moncrieff discovered Mougel Bey living
in obscurity and oblivion, weighed down by poverty and neglect. It
was owing to his intercession that the poor old man was rescued from
want, and, by means of a pension granted by the Egyptian Government,
enabled to spend his remaining days in comfort and honour. Both
nations are entitled to be proud of this act of poetic justice,
which added a lustre of its own to the glory of the completed Barrage.
CHAPTER VI
THE CORVÉE
From time immemorial the peasantry of Egypt have been liable to
the corvée in some form or other. In a country depending for its
existence upon the proper maintenance of its dykes, it was only
natural that the whole population should turn out to perform the
necessary work. But a useful custom very easily degenerated into
a galling slavery under Oriental despotism. Rulers with absolute
power of life and death over their subjects, who regarded the land
they ruled as their own personal property, could not be expected to
make much distinction between works carried out for the general
good and those designed merely for their own convenience and
aggrandisement. The Pyramids and others of the mighty remains of
ancient Egypt stand as monuments of the greatness of the Pharaohs,
but no less of the miseries of countless generations under the
system of forced labour, which is known in our time as the corvée,
a term applied sometimes to the forced labour itself, and sometimes
to those who perform it.
In the early chapters of the Book of Exodus there is a brief but
pregnant description of the sufferings of the Israelites when
subjected to the burden.
‘And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour:
‘And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter,
and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their
service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour.’
‘And Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people, and their
officers, saying, Ye shall no more give the people straw to make
brick, as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves. And
the tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay
upon them; ye shall not diminish ought thereof. Let there more work
be laid upon the men, that they may labour therein.’
‘And the taskmasters hasted them, saying, Fulfil your works,
your daily tasks, as when there was straw. And the officers of the
children of Israel, which Pharaoh’s taskmasters had set over them,
were beaten, and demanded, Wherefore have ye not fulfilled your task
in making bricks both yesterday and to-day, as heretofore?’
‘And the officers of the children of Israel did see that they were
in evil case.’
‘And the Lord said, I have also heard the groaning of the children
of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage.’
‘But the children of Israel hearkened not unto Moses for anguish
of spirit, and for cruel bondage.’
Doubtless the amount of forced labour varied from time to time,
according to the ambition or the caprice of the rulers of the
country. But the annual necessity for watching the dykes during the
flood, and repairing them when it was over, never permitted the custom
to fall into disuse, and the knowledge that this great instrument was
always ready to hand must have been a powerful incentive to any King
or Caliph who wished to send his name down to history as the author
of a mighty work. No wonder that after so many centuries of practice
the Egyptians are the most patient and efficient spade-workers in
the world. The wretched peasantry of Egypt must have blessed the
accession of the undistinguished Sovereigns who had no desire to add
to their fame either by building at home or by conquest abroad. To
them the glories of a Rameses or an Amenemhat must have been small
compensation for their ‘anguish of spirit and cruel bondage.’
So long as basin irrigation continued to be universal, there was
much to be said on behalf of the corvée, if the system was justly
and impartially administered. During the months of the flood, and
those preceding it, when the land was lying dry and baked, there
was little or nothing for the agricultural population to do except
to clear the shallow flood canals, repair the dykes, and protect
the river-banks. If the labour was compulsory, it was, at any rate,
everybody’s interest to perform it. The work lay at their own door;
they were not dragged away to a distant province. There must always
have been abuses in practice. The humbler folk did more than their
share, and so on, but in theory it was not bad.
All this was changed with the introduction of perennial irrigation and
the digging of the summer canals. Owing to their depth, and sometimes,
also, to their faulty construction, the silt deposits in them were
very great, and the whole corvée was called out to clear them,
though very few were interested in them. More than that, a man’s
own home was no longer the scene of his labours. The labourers
of one province were called in to work in another. Each year the
corvée worked from January 15 to July 15, clearing the canals and
repairing the banks. From August 1 to November 1 they guarded the
Nile banks in the flood. Every year an extensive programme of work
was sketched out, but before it was finished they had to hurry off
to flood-protection duty. Not only unpaid, they had to find their
own tools, and provide their own commissariat, a double hardship
on men out of their own neighbourhood. During the flood, when they
lived in booths built for themselves on the Nile banks, they had
to find their own lanterns, and even, like the Israelites of old,
their own straw and brushwood, to save the dykes from the action of
the waves. New works were carried out in the same fashion.
Nor was this the sum of their grievances. The increase of summer
irrigation made the months immediately preceding the flood a
very busy instead of a very slack time of year. The value of the
cotton crop made everyone most anxious to secure it, so the larger
proprietors kept their tenants at home for that purpose. The numbers
of the corvée decreased, and the burden of it fell more and more
upon the poor fellaheen. Ministers and high officials from the
Khedive downwards employed the corvée to work on their own private
estates. Other persons, influential by station or by bribery,
secured the like advantage, and robbed their humble neighbours of
their labour, their last remaining possession. Under Said Pasha the
corvée dug the Suez Canal. Under Ismail they dug the Ibrahimiyah
Canal, the sole object of which was to benefit his private estates
in Upper Egypt. Even the splendid carriage-road that runs from Cairo
to the Pyramids of Gizeh was raised on the same foundations that the
Empress Eugénie might travel there in comfort after the opening of
the Suez Canal.
Only a nation inured to slavery could have endured it. Many, indeed,
labouring under the burning sun, unpaid, unfed, and unclothed,
succumbed. But what did that matter when other human beasts of burden
were there to take their place? The activity of the survivors was kept
up by the whip, the traditional motive-power in Egypt. Nominally,
all between the ages of fifteen and fifty were liable to serve, but
there were a multitude of exceptions, including teachers, holy men,
students, certain classes of tradesmen, and others. The law of 1881
laid down that anyone might exempt himself by providing a substitute
or by paying a cash ransom. But as there was no penalty imposed
for not paying, every man of any position freed himself from the
obligation without paying the tax, and the whole burden of the corvée
fell more than ever on the poorer classes. The régime of the kurbash,
or whip, and the grosser abuses of the system, vanished immediately
upon the English occupation, but all the earthwork maintenance was
still performed by this unpaid labour.
It was, as I have said, the spectacle of the dumb misery of the
fellaheen that particularly stimulated the English engineers in
their task of repairing the Barrage. The first relief came in 1884,
when the Nile was held up to a higher level at the Barrage. This
had a twofold effect, for the canals did not require to be cleared
to so great depth; and the higher level of the water enabled them to
be laid on a better slope, which diminished the deposit of silt. In
fact, the partial use of the Barrage in 1884 reduced the amount of
silt deposit by 26 per cent. In 1885 the first step was also taken
in a new direction: £30,000 were advanced towards the experiment
of clearing some canals in the provinces of Menoufia and Gharbiah by
contract. As usual, the gloomiest forebodings were uttered on every
side. It was said the fellaheen would not work voluntarily. The
whip alone was the only stimulus to which they were sensible. The
experiment was bound to fail.
Once more the croakers were wrong. The fellah justified the confidence
of Mr. Willcocks and his colleagues, that he was not unlike other
men, and would work gladly for a wage. And so the struggle for
emancipation went on with increased vigour. In 1886 £250,000 were
provided by the Caisse for the reduction of the corvée, so that
while in 1883 107,000 men had been called out in the Delta alone,
in 1887 the number had been reduced to 27,500. Finally, December,
1889, saw the last of the system, and the performance of earthwork
maintenance by the corvée was finally abolished. The Government
supplemented the £250,000 a year received from the Caisse by another
£150,000. In former days the labour required to clear the canals was
estimated in the Delta alone at £530,000. For the sum of £400,000
Egypt got rid of the burden throughout the whole country. It was
a bargain well worth making at a far higher cost. No greater boon
could have been conferred upon the fellaheen. No longer are their
lives made ‘bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick,
and in all manner of service in the field.’ That ‘evil case’
is ended. They labour indeed, but it is voluntary labour, without
‘groaning and anguish of spirit.’
The Government, of course, retains the right to call out the corvée
in case of any grave national emergency, and every year, too, it is
called out to guard the banks in flood-time. But the flood-corvée is
cheerfully borne. It entails no hardship on the people. Its incidence,
too, has been very much diminished, as the following figures show
(the period of service is 150 days):
_Year._ _Number of Men called out._ _State of River._
1888 59,000 Low flood.
1889 50,000 Medium flood.
1890 48,000 „
1891 45,000 „
1892 84,000 Very high flood.
1893 33,000 Low flood.
1894 49,000 High flood.
1895 37,000 Medium flood.
1896 26,000 „
1897 11,000 Low flood.
1898 19,000 High flood.
1899 8,000 Very low flood.
1900 14,000 Low flood.
1901 9,000 „
1902 5,000 Very low flood.
The figures tell their own tale. Experience and good organization have
enormously decreased the number of men called out, so that it is now
but a very slight burden upon the people. The date of calling out has
also been altered to August 15 instead of August 1. The possession
of the Soudan, and an accurate record of the state of the gauges in
those regions, will also assist in making more accurate forecasts
of the nature of the flood. In 1900 more men were called out than
were required, because the flood came down early and promised to be a
high one, but failed to fulfil expectations. The levels in the Soudan
were known, but, there being no previous experience to judge them by,
no inferences could be drawn from them. But the Soudan readings will
be more and more useful as time goes on.
But even apart from this, there is great hope of a steady diminution
in the numbers called out, and even that, except in years of high
flood, the corvée may not be required at all. The record of the
year 1901 is of remarkable promise in this respect. North of Cairo
no corvée was called out at all, for the first time in the history
of Egypt. The flood was low, but not exceptionally low. In any
year Upper Egypt is responsible for far the greater number, and
this is largely due to the extent of the basin banks which have to
be guarded. It is remarkable that the two districts in which the
greatest number were called out were in charge of native Egyptian
inspectors, who were no doubt influenced by the old tradition that
vast numbers of men should be employed. At any rate, as perennial
irrigation increases in Upper Egypt, fewer men will be required,
concurrently with the disuse of the basin dykes. And it seems likely
that in years to come the whole task will be performed by contract
labour; though the power of calling out the corvée will always be
held in reserve in case of any specially dangerous flood. But in
such a case the difficulty will be rather to prevent the work from
being hindered by excessive numbers. There will be no doubt of the
willingness to serve of practically the whole population.
CHAPTER VII
RESERVOIR PRELIMINARIES
In dealing with the history of the Barrage I have somewhat anticipated
the order of events. It was the prospect of the coming Reservoir and
an increased water-supply in summer that urged on the engineers to
make assurance doubly sure by placing the strength of that structure
beyond all doubt. It is time to pass from the Delta to Assouan.
No country in the world tells its story more readily to the traveller
than Upper Egypt. As he passes up the broad waterway of the Nile,
he may survey the whole life of the land without stirring from the
deck of his steamer. If he has been in Egypt before, he cannot fail
to be struck by the growth of its prosperity; it forces itself upon
him in the bearing of the people, and in the number of their flocks
and herds, now as ever the outward and visible sign of material
well-being. Even the squalid clusters of mud huts, often roofless, or
covered only by a few loose canes, dirty and miserable as they seem to
Western eyes, with nothing substantial among them except the tomb of
some sheikh or the inevitable pigeon-houses, are only proofs of the
genial climate, which makes a roof overhead, and clothing as well,
among the least of the necessities of life. The people themselves,
hard workers as they are, have a happy and prosperous aspect, and
the crowds of naked children, brown as the waters by whose edge they
play, look as cheerful and contented as the vast colonies of pigeons,
which live under very similar conditions to their owners.
On each side of the river-valley, here and there, especially on the
eastern side, coming right to the water’s edge, rise the hills
of the desert. Where the domain of the water ceases a man may stand
with one foot in the bare and barren sand and the other in the most
fertile soil in the world. Everywhere along the bank, hour after
hour, day after day, the traveller may see the peasants lifting the
water with the primitive shadoofs, tier upon tier, up to the level
of the fields, or the oxen turning the sakieh. A hundred times a
day he will have borne in upon him the fact that all he sees, from
the kid upon the dykes to those obelisks of modern Egypt, the tall
chimneys of the sugar factories, owes its existence absolutely to
the water. Close behind the teeming villages and the luxuriant crops,
the palm-trees and the acacias, the sugar-canes and the maize-fields,
rise the gaunt limestone rocks and the sandy desert, fit emblems of
the famine that is ever ready to swoop down should the water fail.
Even as late as December, steaming up the 550 miles of river, often
half a mile or more across, between Cairo and Assouan, against the
strong current, watching the majestic sweep of those wide waters
pouring irresistibly towards the sea, it is hard to realize the
anxiety of later months. But May or June has a very different tale
to tell. To take and store the precious water, which now during
the flood and winter rushes down in untold volume, to be lost and
squandered in the sea, and use it to feed the lean summer months,
is almost absurdly obvious. No wonder that since Mehemet Ali gave
so great a stimulus to the cultivation of cotton and sugar the idea
of the Reservoir has been constantly in the minds of the rulers of
Egypt. The strange thing is that so many hundreds, even thousands,
of years should have elapsed without any attempt of the kind
being made. Perhaps it was due partly to the reverence felt for
the mighty and inscrutable power of the great river, partly to the
passive fatalism innate in the Oriental mind. A few years ago Sir
Benjamin Baker asked a prominent and representative land-owner in
Egypt, a Pasha, and a descendant of the Prophet, what he thought of
the prospects of a Nile Reservoir. With a shrug of his shoulders,
he replied that ‘if it had been possible it would have been done
4,000 years ago.’
He reasoned wiser than he knew. At the second cataract above Wadi
Halfa there are marks upon the rocks and other indications which go
to show that a Dam once existed at that point, used to regulate the
flow of the Nile. Swept away by some unrecorded disaster, no other
direct knowledge of it remains. But it is far from unlikely that
Herodotus, in his account of Lake Mœris in the Fayoum, has mixed up
some tradition of this ancient work in Nubia. At any rate, whatever
be the truth about Lake Mœris, his account proves beyond all question
that the idea of a Reservoir was familiar to the ancient Egyptians.
The tradition of a Reservoir somewhere on the upper waters of the
Nile lingered long in Egypt. There is a curious reference to it in
a book of travel by F. Vansleb, a Dutchman who visited Egypt about
the year 1670. The fertility of the Nile flood is caused, he says,
by a fall of dew, which usually takes place on June 17, just after
the appearance of the ‘green’ water. This dew purifies the foul
water, and makes it swell by fermentation. ‘Some of the country,’
however, he proceeds, ‘that are ignorant of the true causes of this
increase, imagine that it proceeds from a large pond in Ethiopia _in
the river itself_, which the Abyssins begin to open about June 12,
and let the water out by degrees, more and more till September 14,
by which time they begin to shut it again. But this is a foolish
fancy of the Copties.’
We have seen how the tradition of Lake Mœris fascinated Mehemet
Ali; but the methods of Haroun-al-Raschid were not suited to
solid engineering works, as the history of the Barrage too plainly
shows. None of his descendants, with the exception of the Khedive
Ismail, had the wit to conceive or the ability to execute such an
undertaking, and Ismail’s fantastic imagination was fully occupied
in other directions. Fortunately for Egypt, the project had to
wait until the success of the Barrage made the time ripe for its
execution, and until skilful brains and strong hands were ready to
plan and carry it out in the most efficient manner possible.
There were three problems to be faced: first, Where could such a
Reservoir be erected? second, What arrangements could be devised to
avoid the danger of large silt deposits, which would soon seriously
diminish the capacity of the Reservoir, and, if allowed to accumulate,
render it in no long time entirely useless? third, Supposing that
the difficulties of site and design could be overcome, where was the
money to be found? During the first years of the British occupation,
while Egypt was still painfully struggling upwards from the abyss
of bankruptcy into which she had been cast by the mad whirlwind of
extravagance in Ismail’s reign, it was no time for the inception
of original works on a grand scale. But in 1890 the matter became
an affair of practical politics, and was at last seriously taken in
hand. Meantime discussion had been raging as to the best locality
for the Reservoir. An American gentleman, Mr. Cope Whitehouse,
took up the case of the Wadi Rayan, a depression in the desert to
the south-west of the Fayoum. This, he maintained, was the real
site of the ancient Lake Mœris, and here the Reservoir ought to
be. He had no professional knowledge, and he was utterly wrong in
his ideas; but his vehement method of controversy kept the subject
thoroughly alive. The whole land was filled with his clamour, and
every expert was forced to give his own views in self-defence. The
debate served a useful purpose. Gradually it came to be recognised
that the river-bed itself was the proper place for storing the water
by means of a Dam. Authorities differ as to whom belongs the credit
of first making this suggestion, or, rather, of first reviving the
tradition of the past; but it seems pretty clear that Sir Samuel
Baker suggested the construction of a Dam at the first cataract at
Assouan as far back as 1867.
However that may be, in 1890 the Government took the matter up,
and charged Mr. W. Willcocks with the task of examining the river
north of Wadi Halfa, reporting upon the best available site for
the Dam, and preparing a design for it. After a careful survey,
his plans were completed in 1894, and his design for a Reservoir
at Assouan was then submitted to an International Committee of
Engineers, consisting of Sir Benjamin Baker, M. Boulé, and Signor
Torricelli. Mr. Willcocks’ plans were, with some modifications,
accepted by a majority of the Commission, and to him belongs the
honour of having designed the Dam. The selection of the Assouan
site solved the first of the three difficulties. There is at this
point an extensive outcrop of granite clean across the valley of
the Nile, which it was thought would give sound rock everywhere at a
very convenient level for the foundations of the Dam. Moreover, the
trough of the river above the cataract and a long way south of it is
exceptionally deep, and this makes it possible for a greater amount
of water to be stored up behind the Dam. But the prime necessity was
for a solid foundation. Elsewhere in Egypt the bed of the Nile is
composed of shifting sands, on which it would have been impossible
to build a Dam capable of holding up so great a head of water.
Mr. Willcocks’ design solved the second difficulty, the problem of
constructing a Dam strong enough for the purpose, and yet of avoiding
the danger of filling up the Reservoir by too great accumulations
of silt. The other great Dams in the world, as, for instance, that
built by Sir Arthur Cotton on the Godavery River, in India, are
solid throughout. They are planned so that the rising flood shall
pass freely over the top of them. But the Assouan Dam is of a type
previously unknown, and its success ought to stimulate perennial
irrigation in many parts of the world where such projects have
hitherto proved failures. Its principle is that even the highest
flood shall pass, not over it, but through it. To this end it is
pierced with 180 openings, which are like tunnels in the great mass
of masonry. The openings are controlled by powerful sliding-gates
worked from above. During the months of the flood every gate will
be up, and the ‘red’ water, carrying all its heavy burden
of silt, will pass through without impediment. Later in the year,
about the end of November, when the flood has subsided and very much
less matter is carried in suspension, the sluice-gates begin to be
gradually closed, and by the end of February the Reservoir is full,
without having affected the normal discharge of the river in any
appreciable degree. From April to July the water thus stored up is
let out by degrees for employment, according to the state of the
river and the requirement of the crops. By the time the next flood
begins to come down all the stored water will have passed out, and
every sluice will be once more open to give free passage to the
rising stream. Although the Nile in December and January carries
an insignificant amount of sediment compared to that brought down
in August and September, it yet brings down a very considerable
quantity, far greater than most other rivers at any time, and quite
enough to go a long way towards silting up the bed of the Reservoir,
if it was allowed to remain. But for this the river provides its own
remedy: every year the force of the flood will act like a gigantic
broom, sweeping the floor of the Reservoir. The sluices, arranged in
sets of five, are distributed at different levels, according to the
formation of the river-bed on the upstream side, so as to facilitate
this process to the utmost. During the months of the inundation the
Nile at Assouan pours down for weeks together a volume of 10,000
tons of water per second, and sometimes as much as 14,000 or 15,000
tons per second. The rush of this stupendous mass is sufficient to
assure us that there will be no silting up of the Reservoir.
Two of the difficulties had been thus overcome, when, from a new and
unexpected quarter, a storm sprang up, which very nearly brought
to a standstill the rising fabric of Egyptian prosperity. The
project of the Reservoir would have raised the level of the water,
and held up the river above the Dam to a head of 100 feet; this
would have involved the temporary submersion every year of the
island of Philæ, with its famous Temple of Isis, Pharaoh’s Bed,
and other monuments. A terrific hubbub arose. Archæological and
antiquarian societies, which until then had sometimes belittled
the monuments of Philæ as belonging to an inferior period, poured
in their protests. People who had never heard of Philæ before,
but who were none the less influential for that, joined in the
outcry. Diplomatists, whose one desire was to embarrass our progress
in Egypt, took up the cause of Art with a will. These champions
of humanity at large forgot the poor fellaheen, to whom the extra
water means all the difference between misery and happiness; nothing
would satisfy them but the complete abandonment of the project. The
engineers fought stoutly in the interests of Egypt; they offered to
raise the whole of the monuments bodily, or to transport them to
the neighbouring island of Bigeh; but, though they saved the Dam,
the original design was lost, and the Dam to-day is 33 feet lower
than it ought to have been. The foundations of Philæ have been
underpinned and strengthened, the island will only be partially
submerged, and the injury to Egypt can only be faintly estimated.
Was the sacrifice worth it? The value of Philæ lies in its beauty
more than in its antiquarian interest. No one who has witnessed
night after night the glorious sunsets on the Nile, the mysterious
charm of the changing waters, the dark belt of palms reflected in
the river below and standing out in strong contrast against the
sky, the limestone cliffs of the desert clear-cut in the dry air,
and flushing pink in the radiance of the indescribable after-glow,
no one who has seen the Temples of Karnak, could hesitate to make
so small a sacrifice, in comparison, for the sake of the river-side
people. Moreover, Egypt is rich in treasures of the past, as yet
undiscovered, and wanting only money for their development, which the
Reservoir would in time supply. And how few people visit Philæ at
all! Surely, even in a country a thousand times poorer than Egypt in
artistic and archæological interests, the well-being of the living
and of the unborn should have prevailed.
If all those who joined to swell the uproar had been really
disinterested lovers of the beautiful, there would have been small
reason to complain of their insistence. Enthusiasts can hardly be
expected to listen to the voice of reason, and Philæ has charms
to soften the heart of the most savage utilitarian. Its fate is a
mournful necessity, but it is a necessity, for the question of the
Reservoir had come to be a question of existence for Egypt. Even the
advantage gained by the opposition in lowering the height of the
Dam is only a delay. On the pylon of the Temple of Isis at Philæ
is carved a huge representation of the Pharaoh of the day, one of
the most degenerate of the Ptolemies, catching his defeated enemies
by the hair of their heads with one hand, an uplifted sword in the
other. The whole is a copy of the work of his warlike ancestors, and
even as a copy it is a delusion and a sham; for he won no victories,
defeated no enemies, and, indeed, scarcely ventured outside the walls
of his harem. The apparent victory of these lovers of Philæ, to call
them by their more honourable title, was not less delusive. Philæ
is doomed. Between half drowned and wholly drowned there is not
much difference in the case of an island, certainly not a difference
worth fighting for, and the Dam will be raised to its full height,
perhaps as soon as Egypt is ready for the extra water.
The financial difficulty remained. In spite of the prosperity of
Egypt, she is, as everyone acquainted with her history is aware,
bound hand and foot by international fetters in matters financial. The
Caisse de la Dette, founded to protect Egyptian creditors against
the dangers of bad administration, has remained to be an obstacle
to any improvements that must benefit these interests. The practical
outcome of the system is that, if the Caisse be hostile—and hostile
it has often been—no public work like the Nile Reservoir can be
carried out without the imposition of extra taxation to the amount
of double the annual expenditure required.
Time passed, the need became more pressing, but the prospects of the
Reservoir seemed further off than ever. Besides the regulation of her
water-supply, Egypt had on her hands the question of the Soudan. From
every point of view the reconquest of that province and the upper
waters of the Nile was a prime necessity; no one could tell how long
the war might last, or how great the expense might be. It seemed
impossible that she could bear the cost of two such enterprises
simultaneously, and under such circumstances her credit would not
have been sufficient to raise the capital sum required on anything
like reasonable terms. Not only so, but by the peculiar constitution
of Egyptian finance it was illegal for her to raise a loan without the
consent of the Caisse, a consent which it was impossible to obtain.
But, fortunately for Egypt, there were a few men with clearer
vision and more faith in the future, and chief among these was
Lord Cromer. The statesman who had controlled the tangled destinies
of Egypt through so many dark years, and baffled so many tortuous
intriguers, as well as more open foes, was not the man to despair
in such a situation. In 1897 the first negotiations were quietly
opened with Sir E. Cassel. Then came the vote of the majority of
the Caisse to grant £500,000 towards the Soudan Railway, and the
successful action taken in the Courts against that vote. Everyone
knows how this seeming defeat was turned to overwhelming victory
by the decision of the English Government to grant £750,000 for
the railway on certain conditions. The enemies of England in Egypt
received a staggering blow.
But the story was not yet complete. In April, 1898, Sir E. Cassel
arrived at Cairo; in one day the details of the arrangements to
finance the Dam were settled; all that night the lawyers drafted the
necessary documents; a Council of Ministers was hastily called in the
morning, and the contracts were signed. Sir E. Cassel was to provide
the necessary funds for the execution of the work, £2,000,000;
repayment by the Egyptian Government was to be deferred altogether for
five years, and then to be spread over a period of thirty years. The
first payment of about £78,000 is included in the Budget for 1903.
Looking back now after five years of prosperity, when Egyptian
securities have actually increased in value, while Consols themselves
have so greatly declined, it is easy to see that the statesman and
the financier were justified in their faith. But in those days
it needed a clear vision and a stout heart to calculate thirty
years ahead—nay, even five—in a country so much the sport of
international politics. The Soudan Campaign was not yet ended;
behind the dervishes there loomed vague possibilities of worse
complications. The Egyptian Government made a good bargain then,
though it would doubtless make a better now. But it was then, and
not now, that the business had to be settled.
CHAPTER VIII
THE DAM AND THE NEW BARRAGES
Once the financial difficulty was settled, no time was lost in
setting to work. As soon as the flood of 1898 began to subside,
Messrs. Aird and Co., the contractors, were busy with the foundations
of the Dam. Five years was the period allowed by the contract,
but a succession of low Niles gave unusual facilities for the work,
and everything was completed before the flood of 1902, a year before
the specified time.
From its vast proportions, the Dam is infinitely more impressive to
the imagination than any other of the irrigation works in Egypt. But
from an engineering point of view its construction was a plain,
straightforward business compared with the difficulties of building
a Barrage, where the river-bed offered no more solid foundation than
shifting sands. Still, there was a moment, on the first uncovering
of the river-bed, when its fate seemed to hang in the balance. The
Assouan site had been selected principally because the outcrop of
granite, there running clean across the valley, would give, it was
thought, solid foundation at a convenient level. It was found that
in some places the rock was rotten to a depth of 40 feet. It was an
anxious moment, both from an engineering and a financial point of
view. Every foot of rotten rock meant a considerable addition to the
calculated expense, besides modifying the building plan. Once more
Lord Cromer’s strong will saved the situation. On the financial side
he stood on firm ground, and he proved as good an engineer as he had
been a financier. Solid rock was reached, and the work went steadily
forward. Ten thousand men was the usual sum of those employed, and
of these 800 were Italian stone-cutters specially brought over to
deal with the tough granite of which the Dam is built. Granite and
Portland cement are the two great materials used for welding the
fetters of the Nile.
The Dam is about one mile and a quarter in length, and at its
deepest point it is 126 feet high. Sixty-five feet of water can be
held up when the reservoir is full, and it is capable of storing
about 1,200,000,000 cubic metres of water—that is to say, about
the same amount of water as passes through Assouan in a single day
when the flood is at its height. The face of the wall is a slope
on the downstream side, and its width at the bottom corresponds
approximately to its height. Seven hundred and eighty thousand cubic
yards of masonry have been used. On the western side a ladder of
four locks gives passage to boat and steamer traffic at all seasons.
All parts of Egypt are to benefit in a greater or less degree from the
extra summer supply. The original calculation assumed an amount to be
distributed of 1,065,000,000 cubic metres. It was allotted as follows:
_Cubic Metres._
South of Assiout 170,000,000
Assiout to Cairo with the Fayoum 510,000,000
Gizeh Province 85,000,000
Lower Egypt 300,000,000
This division meant that 52,000 acres could be reclaimed to
cultivation in the Fayoum, and 120,000 acres in the Delta. Further,
south of Assiout 200,000 acres could be converted to perennial
irrigation by means of pumps upon the Nile banks. In Middle Egypt
458,000 acres could be converted to perennial irrigation, and in
Gizeh Province 106,000.
A low Nile on the average comes about once in five years, but
assuming that it happened every year, these results may be expressed
in terms of money on the basis that conversion to perennial irrigation
increases the yield per acre by £2 annually, and that reclaimed land
produces a yield valued at £5 annually. This gives an increase of
value in the annual yield:
£E
South of Assiout 420,000
Middle Egypt and Fayoum 1,176,000
Gizeh Province 212,000
Lower Egypt 600,000
-----------
Total £E2,408,000
while the direct annual gain to the State Exchequer in rental and
taxation would amount to £E378,400.
This does not exhaust the full extent of the benefits of the
Reservoir on which a money value can be placed. For some time
Egypt had been living beyond her real resources in the matter of
water. Encouraged by a series of good years, the acreage of cotton
had been greatly extended. The cotton-plant is very hardy, and
can retain its vitality for a certain period on a very scanty and
irregular supply of water. Cultivators, especially in the Delta,
had taken advantage of this quality up to the very hilt, and the
annual crop had reached an amount of 6,000,000 kantars.
Taking the not very high price of 175 piastres per kantar (1 kantar =
nearly 100 pounds), the annual value reached £10,000,000. A season
like that of 1889, when the summer supply was very low, and not the
lowest on record, would mean the loss of at least one-tenth of this
amount, and even more, in spite of the most successful working of
the Barrage, and the most careful system of rotations. Against such
a loss the Reservoir is a complete insurance, and, as a low year
cannot safely be reckoned as occurring less than once in five years,
the annual value of such insurance must be set down as £200,000. The
figures give some idea of the value of the new supply. The estimate
does not err on the side of exaggeration. It was framed in the most
cautious and conservative manner possible, and, in fact, it would
be by no means rash to put the total annual value a good deal higher.
According to the financial arrangement, the first payment towards
defraying the cost of the works was included in the budget for 1903,
but no fresh taxation for the purpose was to be imposed till 1904,
and even then the full amount of direct benefit to the Exchequer will
not be realized till 1910. Time is thus given for the full effects
of the change to be felt, and the Reservoir will be paid for out
of its own profits. The alteration of the basin lands to the new
system must take some time, and their cultivators will thus be given
full opportunity to familiarize themselves with the new methods of
agriculture which they will have to employ.
The scheme of distribution allotted nearly 50 per cent. of the
Reservoir supply to the Fayoum and the province between Assiout and
Cairo. Just south of Assiout is the head of the great Ibrahimiyah
Canal, which not only supplies these provinces, but also feeds the
Bahr Yusuf, which waters the Fayoum. It was necessary, in view of
the increased discharge, to widen the upper reaches of this canal,
and to provide it with a new regulating head. But more than this
was required to insure its receiving the proper proportion of water
whenever the sluice-gates of the Dam were opened. Accordingly, at
the same time that the foundations of the Dam at Assouan were laid,
a new Barrage was begun at Assiout just downstream of the head of
the Ibrahimiyah Canal.
In principle the Assiout Barrage is exactly the same as that at
the point of the Delta, and the difficulties of construction were
also exactly similar, for in both cases the foundations had to be
laid on the same shifting sands, and as each section of the work
was undertaken a portion of the river had to be diverted from its
course by means of temporary earthen dams. The shifting nature
of the river-bed, the almost personal malignity of the water,
constantly bursting through in countless springs, each of which had
to be separately dealt with and suppressed, called forth the highest
exercise of engineering skill. But the experience gained in the long
struggle with the imperfections of the earlier Barrage infallibly
told its tale. Every difficulty was successfully encountered, and
the Assiout Barrage was completed by the summer of 1902, and was able
to hold up the 10 feet of water required of it, without any failure,
at the first attempt.
The visible part of this Barrage, which is just over half a mile
in length, consists of a viaduct or bridge with 111 archways, each
16 feet 5 inches in width, closed by strong iron gates, working in
grooves made in the supporting piers, and raised or lowered from
above. In contrast to the Delta Barrage, it is built throughout of
stone, and not of brick. At the western end is a lock, the largest
in Egypt, through which the largest of the boats that ply upon
the Nile can easily pass. Below the water lies the strength of the
structure. The viaduct rests upon a solid platform of granite and
cement, 10 feet deep and 87 feet wide, set at a suitable depth below
the bed of the river. As a further precaution against the action of
the water, there are also below the platform two continuous lines
of iron sheet-piles, with hermetically sealed joints. With such a
series of obstacles to encounter, the danger of the water forcing
its way through underneath the Barrage is small indeed. The whole
amount of masonry used in this Barrage is 220,000 cubic yards.
The prosecution of these great works in Upper Egypt by no means
exhausted the activity of the Irrigation Department; indeed, it
would almost seem that the building of Barrages has become part of
its ordinary routine, for a third remains to be chronicled. This
is the Zifta Barrage on the Damietta branch of the Nile, halfway
between the point of the Delta and the sea. Because it lies in a
district unvisited by tourists, though very important commercially,
its construction has not been heralded by any blowing of trumpets. Yet
it is a work of the very first class, and deserves to be reckoned
among the greatest of the triumphs of the department. Built on the
same plan as the Assiout Barrage, and, like it, capable of holding up
10 feet of water, it is designed to secure a better distribution of
the supply north of the Delta Barrage. As the area of the cultivated
land extended gradually northward, it became apparent that the canal
system taking off from above the original Barrage was becoming
too long to admit of the water in times of pressure reaching the
northernmost parts of the country. There were some who held that a
second Barrage, with a new system of canals taking off from it, should
have been erected on the Damietta branch, even in preference to the
new stone weirs, which have increased the strength and distributing
power of the old one. The dispute has been happily settled by the
adoption of both projects, and with the Zifta Barrage completed
in time for the summer of 1903, and the new supply from Assouan,
the reclamation of the northern lands will go steadily forward.
It has been already pointed out that it is almost as important to
get the water off the land as to get it on, and the proper drainage
of the Delta lands has been the necessary complement of all the new
schemes. Though eclipsed by the splendour of the Reservoir and other
creations more taking to the eye, the performance of the engineers
in this direction during the last few years has been sufficient
to make them very memorable in irrigation annals. Since 1896 about
1,000 kilometres of new drains have been dug, and nearly as great
a length of existing drains remodelled. It has cost the Egyptian
Government close upon a million of money, but that this expenditure
has not been thrown away is proved by the great rise in the value
of all the lands affected.
The Zifta Barrage cost about £500,000, the Assouan Dam and the
Assiout Barrage £3,200,000. Apart from the ordinary expenditure on
maintenance and the suppression of the corvée, the twenty years ended
1902 have seen an expenditure of £9,000,000 devoted to irrigation
and drainage. There could be no greater proof of the wisdom of those
who have directed Egyptian policy during that period. However pressed
they have been at different times by demands for immediate expenditure
on other objects when resources were low, they have always adhered
steadily to a policy of liberality towards public works likely to be
of a remunerative character. In no other country do economic laws work
out their results with greater directness and certainty. Reproductive
expenditure is really worthy of its name, and brings its visible
and tangible fruit almost without a moment’s delay. As they have
sown, so have they reaped. There can be no comparison between this
expenditure and the benefits it has conferred upon Egypt. Three
salient examples may be given to point the force of these remarks.
First, the works undertaken by Colonel Ross to improve the system
of basin irrigation in Upper Egypt. 1877 was a year of very low
flood, and nearly 1,000,000 acres were sharaki—that is, entirely
exempted from taxation owing to absence of irrigation. In 1899, a
worse year—in fact, the lowest flood of the century—the sharaki
lands were no more than 250,000 acres, a result mainly due to the
successful reforms carried out by Colonel Ross in 1888-89. 1902 was
a year very similar to 1899, and the sharaki acreage was no more
than 140,000 acres.
Second, the case of the Assiout Barrage. The work was finished a
year before the time named in the contract. On August 15, 1902, the
usual date of filling the basins, the flood was exceptionally low,
and it was decided to lower the gates of the Barrage. By so doing
the water-level of the canals was raised by 1½ metres, an increase
which was more than sufficient to avert the threatened disaster. The
money value of the crops thus secured to the land-owners of the
Fayoum and Middle Egypt is estimated at not less than £600,000. The
cost of the new works at Assiout, including the new regulator on the
Ibrahimiyah Canal, was about £875,000. Thus, in the first year of
their existence they nearly repaid their whole cost, and that, too,
as it were, by a sidewind; for the Barrage’s real function is to
hold up the river in the low summer season, and not in the flood.
Third, the case of the Assouan Reservoir itself. The summer supply
in 1903 has been the lowest on record; the discharge at Assouan has
fallen to 200 cubic metres per second. By means of the Reservoir
this supply has been actually doubled. Had the flood been late
in coming down, it would have been impossible to distribute the
water at so liberal a rate. The Soudan gauges gave warning that
an early flood was to be expected, and thus the authorities were
able to calculate with certainty, and open the sluice-gates with
much greater freedom. But the calculation would have been a useless
exercise unless there had been a store to draw upon. At the lowest
computation the loss avoided may be reckoned at a couple of millions.
The administrators of Egypt have had many difficulties and obstacles
in their path, but to be able to point to such results is a great
compensation; their efforts need no formal monument.
CHAPTER IX
THE INAUGURATION OF THE RESERVOIR
December 10, 1902, was the official date of the inauguration of the
Reservoir, a memorable day in the history of Egypt, and worthy to
be marked with red even in the unchanging Mohammedan calendar.
The making of the Dam has been a great time for Assouan. The town has
thriven and prospered beyond all knowledge since the days—not so
very long ago—when two British battalions occupied the barracks
on the hill overlooking the river to the south. The barracks are
crumbling to pieces now, and only one or two blockhouses remain as
memorials of the past state of siege and fear of dervish raids. The
tide of war has rolled far away and spent itself utterly in remote
corners. The whole of the Soudan lies between Assouan and the frontier
of any possible enemy. Even the yellow fort is untenanted save by a
few policemen. True, for four years an army of 10,000 men has been
marshalled here, but it was an invasion of the arts of peace, creative
and not destructive. Possibly the inhabitants would have liked their
occupation to go on for ever; but even the best of times must have an
end, and it was a good occasion for a holiday. In every Nile village
flags and bunting were flying. For once the fields were deserted, and
everywhere the people crowded to the bank in the hope of catching a
glimpse of the Khedive and his distinguished guests. Here and there
the gaffirs, or local policemen, lined the shore, standing stiffly
to attention, or saluting with their Remingtons in the regulation
attitude of European soldiers, which contrasted quaintly with their
loose, flowing robes and white turbans.
At Assouan the faithful subjects of the Khedive surpassed
themselves. Sunny Assouan lends itself readily to a festal
garb. Situated where the Nile broadens out after emerging from
the rocky defile of the cataract, the town has a most picturesque
aspect at all times; its embanked river-front makes it the neatest
of all the cities of Upper Egypt. Elephantine and the Sirdar’s
Island rise green and smiling out of the broad bosom of the river;
the perpetual blue sky makes everything doubly attractive to the
Northern visitor. Dressed for the festival, it was a charming
scene. Triumphal arches of the sacred yellow and brown, gorgeous
hangings and many-coloured festoons, bore testimony to the Oriental
love of vivid hues; steamers and dahabiehs, moored in line along the
shore as well as along Elephantine Island, vied with each other in
their decorations, and numerous feluccas were plying to and fro,
half hidden by their burdens of flags and palm-leaves. At night
thousands of lamps decorated shore and river alike, and the whole
scene resembled nothing so much as a Henley in Regatta Week, with
its illuminations unrestrained by doubts of weather. To the ear,
however, the voices of the night told a very different tale. The
crooning song of the Nubian boatmen, ‘Great is the Prophet,
praise be to him!’ accompanying the creaking of their clumsy oars
with monotonous persistency, sounded weird and barbaric over the
twinkling waters. The bustle in the town, too, was no mere ordinary
festal murmur; for this was the month of Ramadan, and the feast of
lamps meant a great deal to all faithful Moslems. All day long they
have abstained from food or drink, and the going down of the sun is
keenly welcomed as the end of one day more of fasting.
The secret of the prosperity of Assouan lies in its granite. It is
the granite bed of the river at this point that makes the Reservoir
possible; here are the granite quarries from which the Dam was
built, and from which every ruler of Egypt who wished to raise a
monument for all time has drawn his supplies. Nothing that I have
seen in this country brings the past so near as these quarries. Here
lies a rough-hewn obelisk, just ready to be rolled away; here an
enormous block of stone half hollowed into a bath for an Emperor,
or a sarcophagus for an Apis bull, designed by some mighty ruler
who ‘thought in continents,’ and recked little of the lives and
labours of thousands provided he gratified his whim. But suddenly
death or some other fate intervened, and a feebler or more merciful
generation has never taken up the work. You may see the marks of
the wedges on some great face of rock, as fresh as if it was only
yesterday that Pharaoh’s workmen had driven them in and poured
water on the wood till it swelled and burst the stone; down below
is the fallen piece still waiting for the mason who never came back
to it. Perhaps some of the very stones cut by Cheops or Rameses have
been smoothed and planed and set in the Great Dam.
Passing along the raised causeway, down which so many great monuments
have been rolled slowly to the river, I came through a long stretch
of burning desert to a spur on the northern extremity of the granite
hills. Here, unexpectedly, I found myself overlooking the lake
formed by the filling of the Reservoir. Graceful lines of palm-trees
showed where the banks of the river had once been. Philæ was but an
insignificant speck on the blue waters, overpowered by the fantastic
piles of granite boulders that hem in the valley. In the far distance
rose some lofty hills, crowned by dazzling sand that might easily
have been mistaken for snow. The Dam builders have been accused of
vandalism, but they have created a standing pool in the wilderness of
surpassing beauty. The view of the lake was not the only attraction
of the spot; at my feet lay a colossal statue of Osiris, destined
for some temple, but never moved from the spot where it was hewn.
Ancient Egypt may well look on with scornful wonder at our pride in
our achievements. The Great Pyramid at Gizeh contains three times as
much solid masonry as the Dam, cut from these same quarries. Every one
of those huge blocks had to be dragged to the river, and carried down
600 miles, before it was hoisted into its place. As an achievement of
mechanical power the Great Dam cannot compare with the Great Pyramid;
but when at last I climbed a little hill hard by the river, below
the Reservoir itself, and saw the whole length of the great stone
rampart, stretching right across the valley, the contrast between
the world of Pharaoh and our own came strong upon me.
Pharaoh, to whom time and life were nothing, out of the misery of the
forced labour of his subjects, raised a perfectly useless monument
of his own folly; yet he achieved his object, and made his tomb one
of the wonders of the world. We, with the free labour of voluntary
workers—paid, fed, and cared for, instead of being driven by the
whip—have dared to harness Nile himself. It is a work vital to the
interests of millions of dwellers by the river. Yet who can say that
the fame of the Pyramid will not endure the longer? Hundreds of years
after the time of Cheops a mighty Dam was built in Southern Arabia
for a like purpose of irrigation; it lasted for eight centuries or
more, and its bursting in 100 A.D. is mentioned in the Koran. Its
ruins remain to this day, and show that it was larger than the Nile
Dam. Eight hundred years is a long life for a reservoir, but if this
one lasts a quarter of that period it will have repaid its cost many
hundred times over.
Certainly it looks strong enough to last as long as the Nile
itself. Strength, and nothing but strength, shows in every stone of
it. Square, solid, and massive, it runs from shore to shore in an
absolutely straight line, without the slightest attempt at any trace
of ornament or decoration. Clearly, effect has been the last thing
thought of. Even the sluice-gates have absolutely plain rectangular
openings, and it detracts from the symmetry of the design that,
owing to engineering exigencies, they are not all of one height,
but run in sections of five, some of them lower than others. The
top of the wall runs in a simple, unbroken level; there is nothing
to catch the eye as it travels up the steep face of masonry except
the slightest change in the angle of the slope to a nearly complete
perpendicular. The wall simply leaves off because its builders thought
it high enough for the present. Along the broad surface of the summit
runs a tramway, with plenty of room for a man to walk on either side,
flanked by perfectly plain, solid parapets as high as the waist,
and more than a yard thick, of a piece with the masonry below.
On the eastern side the Dam is unostentatiously built into the
living rocks; no arch or pylon marks its start. On the western
side it is flanked by a ladder of four immense locks, set in a
mountainous embankment. The gallows-like arms of the draw-bridge,
hideous in appearance, but a marvel of mechanical ingenuity, over
the upper gate of the highest lock are the only break in the long,
unrelieved level. The hard gray colour of the granite strengthens
the general impression, though in time every part exposed to the
action of the water will be coated with the shining black varnish
which the Nile mud always lays on granite, and it will look exactly
the same as the natural bed of the stream.
How different all this is from the prettiness of the Delta Barrage,
with its brickwork, originally designed and built under French
influence, adorned with archways and towers, of which the lovely
garden, with its flowers and shrubs, its green lawns and leafy
trees, on the tongue of land which it crosses, seems a natural
and appropriate part! The Assouan Dam is the work of a practical,
unimaginative race. Its builders have had before them the problem
of harnessing the great river with a yoke that cannot be broken;
they had to hold up a reservoir containing 100,000,000 tons of water,
so that for 140 miles the river is turned back upon itself; and they
have succeeded.
In December all but a few of the sluice-gates are shut, for the
reservoir has to be filled. But imagine it at the height of the flood,
when the collected rainfall of half a continent is crashing past at
the rate of nearly 1,000,000 tons a minute, and through each of the
180 openings shoots a solid cube of dark water to dash thundering
in clouds of white foam on the rocks below, and rush tumultuously
down the swirling slopes of the cataract. Think of the huge bulk of
water held up when the reservoir is full. Then you will understand
something of the difficulties of the work. Solidity and strength
could not but be the first and overpowering idea in the minds of the
builders. The longer you look, the more you are impressed. The vast
dimensions of the Dam grow upon you from moment to moment. There is,
after all, a fierce beauty in those uncompromising features, grimly
set in the determination to hold the river in bondage. The massive
structure is in harmony with the forces of Nature. Feeble and puny
it may be compared with even the least of their handiwork, but it
is impossible not to feel that its builders have been inspired with
a spark of the same creative power. They drew their plans, and dug
and built and strove their best to control the great river. They
have succeeded because a portion of that spirit of Nature against
which they struggled has passed into their work.
Is it too much to hope that a scheme of decoration may yet be found
in consonance with these ideas? Some day the Dam will be raised to
the full height of the original design, thus doubling the present
capacity of the Reservoir. Then will be the time to finish the work
magnificently, and make of it a stately monument, to be the glory
of Egypt as well as the foundation of her material prosperity. The
subject is worthy of a great artist. Only a scheme conceived on
grand lines, perfectly simple and bold, can have the least chance of
success. Anything else would be as ridiculous as a proposal to place
a statue of ordinary dimensions on the top of the Great Pyramid. The
difficulties are great, and so would be the expense, so great, indeed,
that it would be far better to avoid any attempt at decoration,
unless the results are to be admirable beyond all question. Are
there no possible successors to the architects of Karnak?
The ceremony of inauguration was, like the masonry of the Dam itself,
sensible and solid, but it was not impressive. Those who arranged
its details had forgotten the vastness of the theatre in which it
was performed. From the purely spectacular point of view it was a
failure. Egypt has no money yet to spend on functions. Perhaps a
better stage management might have made a better display without
any greater expense. The material benefits of English rule would be
appreciated none the less gratefully for a little gilding. But the
Englishman in Egypt has had other things to think about than the
organization of what the native would call ‘fantasias.’ So he
fell back on the established custom of his own country. Wherever he
goes he carries with him law and order and equity and righteousness
and commonsense, and he also carries a peculiar kind of public
ceremonial routine. Everybody knows it. The invited guests arrive
in special trains, and perspire in top-hats and frock-coats for an
interminable time, until Royalty arrives full of gracious smiles amid
a cheering crowd. The distinguished persons pass into a pen carpeted
with red baize, where all the notables are assembled. Somebody
makes a perfectly inaudible speech, which receives a gracious and
inaudible reply. A button is pressed here, a lever turned there,
and several extraordinary things begin to happen in consequence. Then
a number of good men and true receive some well-earned decorations,
Royalty graciously departs, and everybody presses home as best he can,
while the band plays the National Anthem. The whole is accompanied
by the clicking of innumerable cameras, and nobody quite realizes the
importance of the occasion until he reads about it afterwards. At the
Nile Reservoir all this happened in due order with the necessary local
variations. The officials wore red tarbushes instead of top-hats,
and every sensible person carried a cotton umbrella over his head.
But apart from the ceremonial, the scene was deeply interesting. If
the day’s routine was insignificant, it was because the overpowering
presence of the Dam itself dwarfed every other presence. And
the names of those assembled there recalled vividly the thrilling
history of Egypt during the last twenty years. There were statesmen
and diplomatists, soldiers and engineers, men of business and men
of letters, all of whom, in some field or other, had done their
part in building up the fallen country. Some, too, were there who,
submitting contentedly before the logic of accomplished facts,
burying old rivalries and animosities, had come in no unfriendly
spirit to witness the realization of much that it had once been their
policy to hinder. But if all the rest had been absent, the presence
of one man, the Chief, whose wise counsel and guiding hand had been
everywhere, would have been sufficient to represent all that these
twenty years have meant to Egypt. Well might Lord Cromer and the
irrigation engineers review their work with satisfaction. To them
the Reservoir means the successful culmination of a great policy
long and steadily pursued, nothing less than the establishment of
the prosperity of Egypt upon a sure and certain basis: for that is
what the regulation of the Nile involves. In Egypt, at any rate,
they require no formal monument. Their praise stands clearly writ
on the face of every cultivated field throughout the country.
CHAPTER X
BRITISH RULE IN EGYPT
At the inauguration of the Nile Reservoir at Assouan, it was
an Egyptian Minister of Public Works who read an Arabic speech
congratulating the Khedive on the completion of the great work which
is to make his name famous among the rulers of Egypt. Among all the
flags that decorated the town and the craft on the river, the most
infrequent was that of England. A casual observer, knowing nothing
of the country, might easily have overlooked the number of Englishmen
wearing the tarbush, that red badge of Egyptian officialdom, and gone
away thinking that even the presence of the brother of the King of
England marked nothing but a compliment paid by one great Power to
another. He might well have been astonished to be told that the Dam,
which will confirm and increase the prosperity of Egypt, is no less an
evidence of the stability of British rule. It is just possible that
immediately after our first occupation we might have been able to
evacuate the country—not, indeed, without danger to our hold upon
the highroad to India, or without detriment to the true interests of
Egypt, but at least without loss of honour to ourselves. Since then,
in spite of the efforts of our statesmen at home, it has become more
and more impossible.
Among the guests at Assouan there might have been seen a quiet-looking
old gentleman, with a gray beard and bushy whiskers, beaming
benevolently through gold-rimmed spectacles. His figure was that of
a man, once sturdy and square-set, over whose head had passed years
of ease and good living. At the first glance, in his frock-coat and
tarbush, he looked like any other comfortable Turkish gentleman. Yet
there was no one present with a more interesting past than he. For
this was Mukhtar Pasha, who bears the proud title of Ghazi, ‘the
victorious,’ the hero of the Caucasus in the Russo-Turkish War. He
came to Egypt in 1887 as special Turkish Commissioner, to arrange for
the British evacuation under the Drummond-Wolff Convention. It is well
known how France and Russia at the last moment intervened to prevent
Turkey from ratifying the agreement. A special Providence guards
the British Empire against the efforts of its rulers. But Mukhtar
remains as Turkish Commissioner in Egypt without duties, and probably
without pay, a reminder of past eccentricities of British policy.
We have travelled far from the days when it was seriously proposed by
Conservative statesmen to make Turkey responsible for civilization
and good government in Egypt. To-day no one in his senses could
wish to put an end to British rule. Let a man start from Assouan
and survey the great series of irrigation works—the Reservoir,
the Assiout Barrage, the Regulator of the Ibrahimiyah Canal, the
Koshesha Regulator, the Barrages and Weirs at the point of the
Delta and at Zifta; let him examine the intricate system of canals,
siphons, wheels, drains, dykes, and sluices, by which the water is
distributed over the cultivated lands, and let him reflect on what
would happen if all this were left in Egyptian hands. Inevitably,
sooner or later, the whole thing would come to ruin, and the greater
the height of prosperity to which the country has attained under the
system of perennial irrigation, the greater would be its fall. Egypt
has been called the classic land of baksheesh, and it will not lose
its character in a generation or two. Imagine a Government in need
of money; what better thumbscrew could an Oriental despot wish for
than the command of the water-supply? When a land-owner knew that
he could be ruined by the shutting of a sluice-gate, he would pay
anything without a struggle. The golden goose would be killed in
every direction. Even under a well-intentioned Government it would
only be regarded as natural for a local official to make free use of
such unrivalled opportunities to supplement his pay. Corruption is
not a vice in Oriental eyes; it is the habit of centuries. That is
why, with every extension of scientific irrigation, the need for
European supervision becomes greater, and since we can allow no
Power but ourselves to hold Egypt, European means British.
An amusing instance of the native way of looking at such matters
occurred in connection with the making of the Reservoir. A certain sum
was allotted for the compensation of those who would be flooded out
of house and home. Some of the Assouan people saw their chance. It
does not take much to build a native house. In a short time the
Government inspectors had the pleasure of being shown a number of
brand-new buildings on the foreshore, with the whitewash still
wet upon them. Great was the disappointment of these ingenious
speculators. In another case a man was building a boat; he was
repeatedly warned to move his work, but would not. Only when the water
began actually to rise did he become seriously alarmed, and sent down
a letter of remonstrance. Again the position was explained to him;
but again he advanced his request that the gates might be opened,
accompanied with a hint that he might be willing to make some small
acknowledgment of his obligation. Realizing at last the futility of
his demand, he exclaimed in despair, ‘What is the use of your Dam
if you cannot let the water out to save my boat?’
The two great principles of British policy in Egypt have been
irrigation and low taxation. Irrigation is the vital necessity to
Egypt. Other departments of Government, however urgent their claims
might be, have had to wait and to be starved until the reproductive
works could be established and set going. Every penny that could be
spared had to be cast upon the waters. At the same time we found the
people overburdened with taxation on account of the Public Debt, and
also bound hand and foot in the meshes of the usurer. We could not,
however powerful we might be, hope to hold securely a country with
11,000,000 of population, unless we have something else than mere
force to look to. To the Egyptians we are aliens by race and religion,
we have no ties of custom or intermarriage; we have nothing but their
material interests to appeal to. If we can make them prosperous, if
they can save money without fear of confiscation, if we can secure
to them the fruits of their labour, we have done a great deal to
strengthen the basis of our rule.
There is no doubt that the fellaheen do appreciate the benefits of
British rule; it would be strange if they did not. The corvée is
gone. Not only has taxation been enormously reduced in amount, but its
method of collection has been made equitable and regular. Whereas in
former days the tax-collector was in league with the money-lender,
and contrived to demand his payments at times when it was certain
that the cultivator of the soil would have no money, and would have to
pledge his growing crops to raise the amount, now the time of payment
is adjusted to suit the harvests. Moreover, the new Agricultural
Bank lends to the fellaheen at a rate far below that demanded
by the Syrian, Greek, or Coptic usurers; the State gives a small
guarantee, and the Government tax-collectors collect the interest
and instalments of the loans at the same time as the taxes. The
Egyptians are naturally a thrifty people; they are taking advantage
of this plan, and are very punctual in their repayments. When the
scheme was first started, it was met with grave disapproval by the
professed economists. The fellaheen, they said, will borrow first
from the Bank, and will then execute a second mortgage, and borrow
more on the same exorbitant terms from their old blood-suckers. But
Lord Cromer’s keen insight into the character of the people has
once again been justified.
It is true that a generation is growing up that knew not Ismail. These
have lived only in the new order of things, and have no personal
reminiscences to sharpen their enjoyment of the present; but even
so the number of those actually discontented must be few, and the
number of those who would carry their discontent into action still
fewer. More than this, perhaps, it would be foolish to expect. In the
East a reforming nation could not be really popular, except among
fighters. And the Egyptians are no fighters—they are peaceable
people, who love their homes; no one joins the army except by the
necessity of conscription. Even the reformatory school-boy cannot
be induced to volunteer for so much as the band. Honour and glory
are nothing to them; they seek no bubble reputation at the cannon’s
mouth. Again, the Englishman endeavours to establish impartial justice
in the Courts. That is all very well if your opponent is a richer
man than you; but what if you could have outbid him quite easily? It
is a good thing to be free from the fear of being bastinadoed and
fined because your neighbour has given false evidence against you,
or because he has influence with the police. But if you, which is
at least as likely, wish to do the same to him, how do you profit
by the reform?
Then, too, the alien rule may be just and righteous and full of
solid benefit, but it is dull. In old days a man might be maltreated
and flogged, he might have his property confiscated, he might even
lose his life, according to the whim of his ruler, but the same
whim might equally make him Grand Vizier. Such fluctuations appeal
to the Oriental imagination. A veiled Protectorate must always be
something of a mystery to an Egyptian; the personal rule of a despot,
Effendina, the Lord of all, is much more suited to his instincts. At
any rate, it is difficult to discover much outward manifestation
of an appreciation of British rule; but it would be wrong to argue
too strongly from that. The fact is rather, indeed, a proof of the
lightness of the governing hand. The Egyptians know very well that
we shall never resent any opposition; they have confidence in our
forbearance. But if time should bring a change once more—and there
have been many changes in the past—it would be an evil day for
those who had been too open in their support of English rule. It is
well to be on the safe side.
If you take an intelligent and prosperous Egyptian, old enough to
remember the days of Ismail—for example, a lawyer who has saved
enough money to make a considerable investment in land, the prime
ambition of every native, a man who speaks a couple of European
languages, has had a good education himself, and is very likely
sending his son to Oxford or Cambridge—and question him upon British
rule in Egypt, he will probably tell you something as follows:—
‘No one who has eyes to see can question the benefit of the
British occupation. The country has attained such prosperity as never
before. We knew very well that no other European nation would have
ruled us with such a single eye to the well-being of the natives. We
realize the devotion and ability of the British officials. We would
rather have you than any other rulers, and we are well aware that
if you went we might easily become subject to a King Stork. In
such a case your popularity would become enormous. Doubtless we
should clamour for your return. But we cannot help dreaming of the
glories that might have been ours if our Khedives had not wasted
their chances. Who can say how great an African empire might have
existed? Long before European nations began to take a hand in
the partition of Africa, we held the whole valley of the Nile to
Uganda. With a wise Government and such a starting-point, what limits
could have been set to our dominions? By the folly of our rulers we
squandered it all, and came to ruin. You have drawn us out of the pit,
but you thrust your benefits upon us at the point of the bayonet. In
spite of them, and perhaps unreasonably, we sigh for rulers of our
own faith and race, and we would sacrifice something of our prosperity
if we could feel ourselves the authors of what remained.’
Such longings are natural and creditable, and if the men who feel them
were capable or numerous enough to form a real governing class, the
prospects of the future might be different from what they are. But
they are not; and these dreams must remain dreams—for some time
to come, at any rate. Such discontents are the inevitable outcome
of the progress of our educative work in Egypt. Nothing illustrates
it better than the recent movement among the Egyptian officers of
some of the Soudanese battalions. These men had been trained on a
British model; they had gained much experience in the stern school of
actual warfare, and yet they found the higher ranks of the Service
barred to them, and filled by a succession of British officers,
younger and less experienced than themselves. Their discontent was
natural, but their disappointment was also inevitable. In spite of
their training and experience, to have given them the promotion they
wished for would have been to ruin the efficiency of the army. You
cannot make bricks without straw, however scientific your methods.
It would be very easy to exaggerate the importance of such
murmurings. They are as nothing in the face of the rising
tide of prosperity which has come to the mass of the labouring
population as the result of our rule, and which is its overwhelming
justification. In the Delta provinces, in Middle and Upper Egypt,
in the Fayoum, the undeniable facts rise up and confront you. Wages
have increased in some places as much as 50 per cent., and with
the rise has gone an enormous improvement in all the conditions of
life. The fellaheen are building better houses, they are better fed,
disease is less, they are happier every way. And as labourers they
well deserve it. Many faults they have, but nowhere in the world
can a more industrious, patient, and hard-working people be found.
In the Mosque el Azhar, the Mohammedan University of Cairo, the
interpretation of the Koran is the principal subject of study,
and it is said that weeks and months, and even years, are spent by
professors and pupils in subtle and ingenious dissertations on such
a question as, Who is your neighbour? Is a man living over your head
more worthy of the name than one who lives next door? And so on. If in
these reforming days these pundits turn their attention to politics,
they will find an almost equally insoluble problem in attempting
to define the exact nature of British rule in Egypt. To them the
question may safely be left. But while the learned few are labouring
through its intricate maze with the most agreeable lack of success,
the unlearned many will have their own simple answer. They only know
the thing was done; it matters nothing by what authority. The water
came to them regularly in due season, and the wilderness was made
to blossom like the rose.
CHAPTER XI
SCHEMES FOR THE FUTURE
The completion of one programme by the construction of the Reservoir
and the works dependent upon it does not mean stagnation. Irrigation
is an ever-growing and ever-living science. There can be no standing
still. Even in the ordinary routine there are thousands of details
always pressing forward for fresh consideration. It takes but a few
years for a daring innovation to become old-fashioned. The system of
perennial irrigation in Egypt is so young that there is still much
to be learnt. It means a totally new style of agriculture. Nothing
but constant experiment and constant watchfulness will enable the
engineers to distribute the water to the best advantage. The best
methods of reclaiming new land, and of preventing the deterioration
of the old, the maintenance and improvement of existing locks,
weirs, regulators, barrages, and other masonry, the care of canals
and drains—these and an infinity of other matters fill the life of
the irrigation engineer, so that, always interesting, it is also at
times even exciting. Decisions of great and immediate importance have
to be constantly and promptly taken. Their duty touches very nearly
the lives of all who dwell and labour within their districts. There
can be no question of any folding of the hands to slumber. But beyond
all this, it is the peculiar good fortune of those whose care is the
water-supply of Egypt that they have to travel in thought or in fact
over half a great continent, and discuss schemes of a magnitude and
extent enough to stagger the imagination of the boldest dreamer. The
Anglo-Egyptian army at Omdurman opened an entirely new chapter in
the history of the control of the Nile.
No one can hold Egypt securely unless he holds also the whole
valley of the Nile. The sources of the river in hostile, or even
in indifferent, lands must always be a grave cause of danger, or,
at the best, anxiety. If tradition be correct, the Abyssinians on
more than one occasion made use of their position on the Nile as
a powerful lever in negotiations with Egypt. Vansleb, the Dutch
seventeenth-century traveller already quoted,[6] is not perhaps
perfectly trustworthy as to his facts, but at least he is evidence as
to the tradition. He had in his possession, he says, a copy in Arabic
of a letter written by David, King of Ethiopia (_i.e._, Abyssinia),
surnamed Constantine, to ‘Abu Seid Barcuk, King of Egypt, in the
year of martyrs 1193, in which he threatens in two distinct places
to turn aside the river Nilus and hinder it from entering into
Egypt,’ so as to cause all the inhabitants to perish with hunger,
if he ‘continues to vex the Copties.’ Vansleb also says that
‘the King of Ethiopia hindered the current of Nilus and turned
it out of Egypt in the days of Mostanser, one of the califfes of
Egypt, which obliged him to send the Patriarch of the Copties with
rich presents to the King of Ethiopia, to entreat him to take away
the bank, which he had raised to turn aside the river. The King of
Ethiopia having granted this request for the sake of the Patriarch,
the river increased in one night 3 cubits, which was sufficient to
water the fields.’ Doubtless the tradition is founded on fact;
if the country in question had been occupied by a Power with any
engineering skill, there is little doubt that this method of pressure
would have been oftener adopted.
The danger is by no means an imaginary one, and this is recognised in
the latest treaty between the Government of the Soudan and Abyssinia,
concluded May 15, 1902, in which it is laid down that no work shall
be constructed across the Blue Nile, Lake Tsana, or the river Sobat,
which shall arrest the flow of their waters into the Nile, except
by mutual agreement.
If even now it is thought necessary to make formal treaty
arrangements on the subject with Abyssinia, much more real would be
the apprehension if the Soudan Government were hostile to Egypt. But
quite apart from any hostility, an important question might arise. We
have seen what great efforts have been made in Egypt under the system
of perennial irrigation to secure a good supply of water in the
summer months; it is then that the river is at its lowest; the best
of reservoirs can only supplement the natural flow of the river. At
the very time that it would be easiest to do it, an interference with
that natural flow would be most disastrous. The mere employment of
a considerable amount of water on irrigation in the Soudan during
the summer months might have a very serious effect. The possession
of the Soudan practically guarantees to Egypt the safety of her
water-supply. The fact that the sources of the White Nile are in
purely British territory, and that in the Soudan itself the British
flag flies side by side with the Egyptian, gives thus a more and
more permanent aspect to the British position in Egypt.
It is calculated that at the present moment another 3,500,000,000
cubic metres of water over and above the present summer supply,
including the Assouan Reservoir, would amply suffice for all possible
requirements in Egypt. When the Dam is raised to its full height,
about 1,000,000,000 cubic metres more will be provided. If only
Egypt were to be considered, the remainder of the water required
could be stored in a similar reservoir built somewhere above Wadi
Halfa. Egypt could then be developed to its very fullest extent,
but ‘such a work,’ as Sir W. Garstin remarks, ‘would leave
untouched the countries bordering the river to the south. Their
interests must be safeguarded by such a scheme as will insure them
a proportional share in the prospective benefits.’
From every point of view the interests of the Soudan are vital
to Egypt. Bitterly has she suffered from the neglect of those
interests in the past. Misrule and oppression caused the Mahdi’s
rebellion, with all its burden of shame and suffering. With a more
intelligent enemy the loss of the control of the Nile might have meant
irretrievable disaster. She knows now that a prosperous and contented
Soudan is the best safeguard against rebellion. Upon England, too,
rests the responsibility for the welfare of those vast provinces,
once so shamefully abandoned to barbarism and ruin. English arms
have retrieved that disgrace. It would be impossible to allow the
Soudan to get nothing and Egypt everything, even if such a course
were not certain to be fatal to both.
At present far-reaching schemes are being carefully inquired into,
under the guidance of Sir W. Garstin. Fortunately for Egypt, she
possesses in him an adviser of unsurpassed experience, cool, careful,
and level-headed, upon whose final judgment she may confidently
rely. He has already made a report, after personal observation, upon
the White Nile and its main affluents, and he has recently returned
from a journey to Lake Victoria Nyanza and Lakes Albert and Albert
Edward, the results of which have not yet been published. Another
expedition was also sent in 1902-1903 to explore Lake Tsana and
the upper course of the Blue Nile. A mass of information is being
collected and quietly digested, and in due time the policy to be
pursued will be settled on. For the moment there is no occasion
for hurrying. It will take time for Egypt to make full use of the
advantages of the Assouan Reservoir. The Soudan, though rapidly
progressing, is hardly yet in a position to reap the advantage of
such changes on a great scale. When the engineers have completed
their observations, there will still be the financial aspect of
the question to take in hand. Schemes involving the regulation of
2,000 miles of river cannot be subjected to too great scrutiny before
arriving at a decision. It would be rash to speculate on what course
will be finally adopted, before all the data are known, but it will
not be out of place to give some indication of the rival projects
in view, and to glance at some of the arguments for and against.
All the schemes aim at establishing a control over the head-waters of
the Blue or the White Nile, and so increasing the supply in the river
when it is most scanty. Anyone can see that the Blue Nile depends
upon Lake Tsana, which is across the Abyssinian frontier, and the
White Nile upon the Lakes Victoria and Albert Nyanza. Proposals
have been made for regulating the outflow from each of these lakes,
or from them all, and also for preventing the waste of water which
now takes place in the swamp country south of Fashoda. Up till now
the plan of building a dam at the point where the Blue Nile emerges
from Lake Tsana has been most in favour.
It has several great advantages. This lonely lake is situated
some 6,000 feet above sea-level, in a wild and desolate country in
Northern Abyssinia. It is 3,300 square kilometers in extent, and very
deep. During six months in the year there are very heavy rains in the
area which drains into the lake. Between Lake Tsana and Khartoum, a
distance of 1,350 kilometres, the Blue Nile falls over 1,000 metres,
and its rocky bed makes it very suitable as a channel for carrying
the water. It is deep and narrow, with high, steep banks, and so the
less liable to evaporation. For every metre by which the level of
the lake was raised, 3,300,000,000 cubic metres would be stored,
and it is obvious that, if the level were raised 4 or 5 metres,
there would, after making a proper deduction for evaporation, be
ample water to supply the greatest demand in Egypt, and also plenty
besides available in the Soudan. There are also strong arguments for
irrigation works on the Blue Nile. After the Cataracts of Rosaires,
which are roughly speaking about halfway between Khartoum and Lake
Tsana, the river passes through fertile plains consisting of rich
alluvial soil, extending to a great distance on both sides. At
present these lands yield only small returns, dependent as they are
upon a somewhat capricious rainfall. With proper irrigation they
would be most productive, and the water coming down from Tsana might
be utilized, without any great difficulties, by a system of canals
starting from this point, assisted by barrages and weirs. Further,
the river would thus be rendered navigable at all seasons of the year,
and would thus become an effective trade route in the most promising
part of the Soudan. The great objection is that Lake Tsana lies wholly
within Abyssinian territory. Nothing could be done without some very
definite arrangement with the Emperor Menelik, and one that would
be irrevocable by any successor of his who might be less friendlily
disposed. Nothing, in fact, would be absolutely satisfactory unless
complete sovereignty over the Reservoir district were assured
to the Soudan Government. In view of the fact that the whole of
this region is perfectly valueless to Abyssinia, or, indeed, to
anybody else, except for purposes of water-storage, it does not seem
impossible that by some cession of territory, or other compensation
elsewhere, a satisfactory arrangement may be come to. But even so,
the remoteness of the lake and the difficulties of transport would
prevent the immediate realization of the scheme. Without a railway
from some point in the Nile Valley it would be practicably impossible
to collect the necessary materials and supplies, and such a railway
will not be an affair of this year or next.
Precisely on the points where the Lake Tsana scheme is weakest the
schemes for utilizing one or both of the great lakes of Uganda are
strongest. Precisely where it is strong they are weakest. Any works
damming the exits of Lake Victoria Nyanza or Lake Albert would be
wholly within British territory. They would also be in a region much
more easily accessible from the sea. Lake Victoria has already railway
communication with Mombasa, and the transport of material, and also
of coolie labour from India would be comparatively easy. In the case
of Lake Albert, a railway would have to be built from Lake Victoria;
but this would be of service to the country apart from any irrigation
works, and would, indeed, practically establish through communication
by boat and railway between Mombasa and Alexandria. But here their
advantages over Lake Tsana end. The whole region is very much subject
to earthquakes. The strain to which great masonry works would be
subjected might be very severe. The country through which the White
Nile passes is very unsuited to large irrigation works. Much of it is
swamp, and the low slope of the land is ill-adapted for canals. The
soil, too, is poor and light compared with the rich alluvial tracts on
the Blue Nile, which would of course receive no benefit. Practically
only the provinces north of Khartoum would receive any benefit from
the increased supply, and in them the cultivable land can never be
more than a mere strip along the river, so circumscribed are they
by the desert ridges. In any case they would be equally benefited by
water coming from the Blue Nile. Besides this, the negro population
living on the White Nile is very much less advanced, and less likely
to form an industrious agricultural population than the inhabitants
of the Eastern Soudan.
Nor is the bed of the White Nile well adapted for carrying the
water. From Lake Albert to Khartoum the distance is 2,100 kilometres,
and the total drop is only 300 metres. It flows slower through a
hotter country. Except between Duffile and Rejaf it is very wide
and shallow, without any banks to speak of, and with a sandy or
muddy bottom. For at least half its course it runs through swamps,
and between Bor and Lake No alone it is calculated to lose half its
volume by dissipation and evaporation in the marshes. But for the
important contribution made by the Sobat, the volume reaching Khartoum
would be very much smaller than it is. If, then, a considerable extra
supply of water is to be brought down from the equatorial lakes,
the scheme must involve a permanent improvement in the channel of
the Bahr el Gebel, as the upper portion of the White Nile is called.
This, according to Sir W. Garstin, can only be effected in one way,
by embanking the river for its whole length between Bor and Lake No,
a distance of 624 kilometres. When it is considered that all supplies
would have to be brought from Khartoum, 1,000 kilometres distant;
that during four months of the year work is impossible, owing to
the incessant rains; that the local tribes can never be relied upon
for labour; that the climate is exceedingly bad and unhealthy at all
seasons; and that the actual engineering difficulties in making the
banks would be by no means small, some idea may be formed of the cost
of such an undertaking. It is estimated that to complete it in five
years’ time would involve an expenditure of £3,700,000. Another
proposal, which is really independent of the Reservoir question, is
to use the Bahr el Zeraf to carry the extra summer supply at present
wasted in the marshes. The Bahr el Zeraf is a branch of the Nile,
taking off near Shambe, and entering the river again below Lake No
before the junction of the Sobat. The cost of preparing the Bahr
el Zeraf channel by means of dredging and embanking is estimated
at £1,250,000, and in addition certain supplementary works would
be required.
Until the result of Sir W. Garstin’s observations on the Albert Lake
are known, it will be impossible to make any accurate comparison of
the qualifications of the two lakes Victoria and Albert for being
utilized as reservoirs. Lake Victoria, which lies between the two
‘Rift Valleys,’ is encircled by a low and shelving shore. It
covers approximately about 70,000 square kilometres. The Somerset Nile
flows out of it, and finds its way into Lake Albert. Lake Albert is
the northernmost of the chain of lakes in the western Rift Valley, and
into it drains the Albert Edward Lake by means of the Semliki River,
partly fed by the glaciers of Mount Ruwenzori. The Nile issues from
it at the northern end, not so very far from where the Somerset Nile
enters. Lake Albert is surrounded by mountains and cliffs. There is
comparatively little flat shore round it. Its area is roughly about
5,000 square kilometres. For every metre that the surface of each lake
was raised, Lake Victoria would store 70,000,000,000 cubic metres,
and Lake Albert 5,000,000,000. These enormous figures are enough to
show that, even when the largest allowance has been made for loss by
evaporation, dams of no great height on either lake would suffice
to store quite sufficient water for all possible needs in Egypt,
and all of the Soudan that could be touched by water coming down
the White Nile.
A very small rise in the level of Lake Victoria would give a very
large reserve of water, and therefore the works regulating its outflow
would be of less dimensions, and so, presumably, less subject to
damage by earthquakes. Being nearer the sea, they would, moreover,
be easier of construction. But Sir W. Garstin so far totally rejects
the idea of Lake Victoria. He says:
‘The amount of water which could be stored even by a very small rise
in the levels would be far beyond any possible requirements. This
lake may consequently be omitted altogether from any projects for
water-storage. Much of the country adjoining Lake Victoria Nyanza
is densely populated, and the villages are situated close to the
shores. Any considerable rise in the water-levels would flood a large
and populous area of country. It must not, moreover, be forgotten
that about half the area covered by this lake falls within German
territory. As the inhabitants of the southern half of this lake would
derive no benefit from such a reservoir, it is quite conceivable
that they might view any such proposal with disfavour.’
He proceeds to argue that Lake Albert, on the other hand, is specially
adapted by its conformation for the purpose.
‘With a regulating dam at a point on the river below its exit,
the Albert Lake could well be used to store up water during the
rainy season, which would be discharged into the river during the
months of low supply. In this way a double purpose would be served:
the volume of the river in flood would be diminished, and in summer
would be largely increased. The lake has an enormous catchment area,
and it seems probable that its levels could be, without serious
difficulty, raised to the required height.’
In all probability the arguments will be found to be conclusive in
favour of a dam at the exit to Lake Albert, but the reasoning against
a regulator for Lake Victoria does not appear at first sight very
cogent. Sir W. Garstin tells us that three years ago the mean water
level of the lake averaged some 8 feet lower than it did twenty years
earlier. But between January 1 and June 1, 1901, the level rose 3
feet 3 inches. When such fluctuations already occur in the ordinary
course of Nature, it would seem that some very useful regulation
might be carried out without causing the least inconvenience to
any dwellers on the shore, German or otherwise. All these remarks,
however, were written quite tentatively by Sir W. Garstin before
he had personally examined these regions, and his next report will
be certain to give fuller information on the matter. Perhaps in the
end both lakes will be subjected to the yoke of the engineers.
Such in brief outline are the gigantic schemes which are now engaging
the attention of the irrigation authorities of Egypt. Great as are
the achievements of the past, they look almost petty before these
visions of the future.
CHAPTER XII
THE SUDD
If the White Nile carried its waters in a channel in any way
resembling that of the Blue Nile, there would be small cause for
anxiety over the summer supply of Egypt. As far as Lado, indeed,
the Bahr el Gebel, or Mountain River, as it is called, does flow
with as good a slope and as sound a rocky bed as any Egyptian could
desire. Then it enters upon the great plain which extends practically
as far as Khartoum, but until Bor is reached it has not to encounter
more than the ordinary troubles of a flat country. The swamps are
still well above the summer level of the river, and the loss of volume
is not great. At Bor, however, the real difficulties begin, and the
‘shorn and parcelled river strains’ miserably along for some 350
miles through the real sudd country. The river that leaves Lado in
April or March with a volume of 600 cubic metres per second is reduced
to less than half this amount by the time it emerges from the maze on
the further side, and that, too, although it has nominally received
at Lake No through the Bahr el Ghazal the drainage of a vast province.
Lake No is the remains of an inland sea which once covered all
this desolate region. Gradually this lake became silted up with
peaty deposits, and formed a series of swamps and lagoons through
which the Bahr el Gebel from the south and the Bahr el Ghazal from
the west wander in a series of loops and curves without any certain
banks. The smallest rise in the level of the river floods an immense
tract of country, and at all times of the year the sudd region is one
gigantic evaporating pan. The Bahr el Ghazal, so far as any active
contribution to the volume of the Nile is concerned, is practically
lost altogether, though by spreading out over the marshes it fills a
space which the Bahr el Gebel would otherwise occupy, and so helps
to form a sort of reservoir, which prevents any rapid fall in the
level of the White Nile.
All these swamps are covered with a dense growth of reeds and
water-weeds. Of these, the most important is the papyrus, which grows
in great abundance, and often reaches a height of 10 to 16 feet. Once
the papyrus was common in Egypt, but now it is not found north of
Abu Zeid, 190 miles south of Khartoum. In Europe it is not found,
except on the river Anapo in Sicily, where, however, it does not
attain anything like the same luxuriant growth. There are also great
stretches of the reed called in Arabic ‘um soof,’ or the mother
of wool. It is no wonder that the party sent by Nero to explore the
river was intimidated by these interminable forests of papyrus and
reeds, and turned back. No travellers have a good word to say for
this country, unless they only pass through it extremely quickly. It
is monotonous and desolate in the extreme, the air is always hot
and steamy, and after dark mosquitoes rage in countless myriads.
As far as Shambe the banks of the river are fairly well defined, but
there are numbers of breaches in them, through which the water spills
into the marshes. In a distance of seventy-five miles Sir W. Garstin
counted 129 of these breaches, usually about 4 yards wide; nearly
all of these were on the eastern side. These channels are deeply cut
with vertical sides, as if dug by hand, and the loss of water through
them is very great. The marshes on the eastern side drain off into
the Bahr el Zeraf, which takes off near Shambe, and, cutting off
the corner, rejoins the Nile below Lake No. Greatly diminished by
this loss, the Bahr el Gebel continues on its way, its bank being
often nothing more than a line of papyrus separating it from large
lagoons or dense thickets of reeds. As long as the channel is clear,
tortuous and winding though it is, a great deal of water is able to
pass; but under certain circumstances the channel becomes blocked
by bars of solid vegetable matter, called sudd. Upstream of the
obstruction the level rises, and, spreading out over the marshes,
more and more water is lost in evaporation.
Sudd occurs both in the Bahr el Ghazal and the Bahr el Gebel,
but it is of different kinds. The Ghazal sudd is very much less
substantial than that of the Gebel. It is chiefly composed of masses
of the smaller swimming plants, which grow in Lake Ambadi and other
shallow lagoons on that river and its affluents. But on the Gebel
the principal constituents of the sudd are the papyrus and the
‘um soof’ reed. Both these plants grow with their roots bedded
in the soil below the shallow water of the lagoons. Strong gales are
prevalent in these latitudes, and these loosen the roots, so that, if
the storms are accompanied by flood, large masses of the plants are
set free, and begin drifting over the lagoons. Quantities of earth
remain clinging to their drifting roots, and thus they are driven
backwards and forwards by the wind. The storms come generally just
before the flood, and thus there is plenty of water for the reeds
to float in. Eventually they are driven, whole acres at a time,
into the channel of the river, and are carried down the stream. But
the channel being very narrow and winding, they soon get caught up,
and a block occurs. New masses come down, and these are sucked by
the stream under the original block, till a dense mass is formed,
sometimes as much as over 20 feet thick, and so solid that a man
can walk over it. If left to themselves, these blocks may last a
very long time, and cause the river to change its course; or else
by increased pressure the block is burst, and a great wave passes
down the river, which sweeps all other blocks away. Years of high
flood are generally followed by a great deal of sudd.
It appears that the conditions on the river between Lake No and Shambe
are much more favourable to blocking by sudd than they used to be. In
1840 Mehemet Ali sent a scientific expedition under D’Arnaud to
explore the White Nile. At that time the main stream through the
sudd country was much bigger and stronger. No mention is made of
the Bahr el Zeraf at all, which looks as though it was of much less
importance, at any rate. They noticed, however, a number of openings
in the banks between the river and the swamps, some natural, but some
artificial, made by the natives for fishing purposes. It is plausibly
argued by Sir W. Willcocks that these openings were later widened
by the natives to enable them to escape in their canoes from the
slave-dealers, and then by the slave-dealers themselves, escaping
in their turn from Government patrol boats. All these spills would
drain into the Bahr el Zeraf, which gradually became a navigable
stream in its lower part. In 1863 Sir Samuel Baker ascended the Bahr
el Gebel without any difficulty; but in that year there was a very
high flood and a great deal of sudd. Returning in 1865, Baker found
the river north of Lake No considerably blocked. In 1870 Baker was
unable to ascend the Bahr el Gebel with his expedition to Equatoria,
and went by the Bahr el Zeraf. He cut through the sudd in that stream
with prodigious labour, and had finally to cut a ditch through 2,000
feet of solid clay. Even then the Bahr Zeraf level was so much below
that of the Bahr el Gebel that he could not get his boats through
until he had dammed the Zeraf behind them so as to lift them up. In
1873 he says he found the canals much improved by the force of the
stream. All this naturally contributed to weaken the power of the
main stream and render it very liable to sudding.
In 1874, when the river was low, the sudd was cleared away by
Ismail Pasha Ayoub, then Governor-General of the Soudan, and all
through Gordon’s time in Equatoria there was free passage, but the
channel had dwindled very much. The heavy flood of 1878 brought the
sudd down again worse than ever, where it remained until cleared
by Marno in 1880. It was in that year that Gessi, on his way back
from his province, was caught and suffered such hardships in the
sudd on the Bahr el Ghazal. He was only rescued by the appearance
of Marno. Unfortunately, no record has been left of the methods
which Marno employed in the work, but he spoke of it as quite an
easy matter.
Little is known of the state of the sudd during the years of the Mahdi
and the Khalifa; but in 1898 Lord Kitchener found the Bahr el Gebel
blocked by sudd immediately above Lake No; and about the same time
Colonel Martyr, coming from Uganda, was unable to penetrate more
than 20 miles north of Shambe for the same reason. As soon as the
Khalifa had been finally crushed, operations to clear the channel
were immediately undertaken. In the first three months a length
of 80 miles of river had been cleared, including 5 miles of actual
sudd in eleven blocks, besides three more blocks which broke away
of themselves. The blocks that came away of themselves represented a
very large amount of sudd. After one of them had burst, the floating
weed took thirty-six hours to pass a given point. The effect produced
by the sudd in damming up the river is illustrated by the fact that
when the third block, which was nearly 20 feet thick, was removed,
the upstream level fell 5 feet in four days, and all the swamps and
lagoons began to drain into the river.
The amount of labour was prodigious. At one place, owing to the
enormous masses of um soof and papyrus that kept pressing into the
river, no less than eleven clearances had to be made in one year. Five
gunboats and 800 dervish prisoners, besides officers and guards,
were employed. Sir W. Garstin gives an interesting description of
the methods by which the sudd was removed:
‘In the first place, the papyrus and reeds on its surface were
burnt (curious to relate, these green reeds burn readily when
the marsh is dry), and in a few hours’ time the surface of the
sudd was an expanse of blackened stalks and ashes. As soon as
the fire had died down, gangs of men were landed from the steamer
and employed in cutting trenches on the surface of the sudd. These
trenches averaged from 0·60 to 0·80 metre in width, and from 1 to
1·25 metres in depth—_i.e._, as deep as the men could work. The
surface was thus divided into a number of rectangular blocks some
3 metres by 4 metres. To these blocks were attached, one by one,
steel hawsers and chains. This done, the steamer downstream went full
speed astern. It invariably took several pulls to detach a block,
and in some instances as many as nine were necessary. Both hawsers and
chains kept constantly breaking, although the former were calculated
to stand a strain of 35 tons per square inch, and the latter as much
as 60 tons. As soon as a block was detached from the mass, it was
allowed to float downstream. It was curious to see the green reeds and
papyrus which had been confined beneath it reappear on the surface of
the water. A horrible stench prevailed from the rotting vegetation.’
In 1900-1901 four more blocks were removed. An experiment was
made to break up one of the blocks by means of explosives, but
it was found that the sudd, though very solid, was too elastic,
and the only effect was to make large holes in it and no more. The
old method had to be once more resorted to. By the end of 1901
only 23 miles of the channel remained uncleared, but this proved
to be the most difficult of all. One block was actually 7 miles in
length. Portions of the sudd had rotted, and, sinking to the bottom,
completely filled up the channel, so that there was no stream at all,
and it was impossible to tow pieces away and float them downstream
by the usual process. To get up the river it is still necessary to
go round by a series of lagoons, in which navigation is difficult,
and operations have been suspended for the present.
The sudd in the Bahr el Ghazal was much easier to remove, and great
progress has been made, so that now the whole of that river is free,
and boats can even ascend the Jur River to Wau.
It is very difficult to ascertain the precise effect of the removal
of the sudd on the water-level in Egypt. But it is certain that as
each block was removed a quantity of water drained off the marshes
and helped to diminish the fall of the river in summers of very
small supply. Most of this water, spread out over a large surface,
must otherwise have been evaporated and lost altogether. There can
be no doubt that the improvement of the channel has been a permanent
gain to Egypt of a very substantial kind, to say nothing of the
advantage to the Soudan from the opening up of such an important
line of communication. Those who laboured at the task deserve the
highest praise. The river was so low that all communication with
Khartoum was cut off for several months, and transport of supplies
was always difficult. Besides this, the climate is always unhealthy,
and the mosquitoes at night are almost beyond endurance.
Under present conditions it will require constant care and
watchfulness, especially in years of high flood, to prevent the sudd
from frequently obstructing the river. But if the danger is to be
permanently removed, the main channel must be so much improved by
widening and deepening it that it will carry a greater volume. This
will at the same time prevent the water from being dissipated in the
marshes, and diminish the chances of any obstruction. The necessity
for some work of this kind, if there is to be a reservoir at Lake
Albert or Lake Victoria, has already been referred to. The clearing
of the sudd is only the essential preliminary to the greater scheme.
One point remains to be noticed. Under the old basin system in Egypt
there could hardly be too high a flood, nor did a low summer Nile
create any extraordinary difficulties when there was so little summer
cultivation. But with perennial irrigation a high flood becomes a
matter of supreme anxiety, and the preservation of its dykes is the
anxious care of every village. On the other hand, all the schemes
for reservoirs aim at increasing the summer supply. If the Bahr el
Gebel was trained so as to bring down more water in summer, it would
also bring down more in flood, though the swamps would still act as
an escape for the waters beyond a certain rise. It might therefore
become a matter of great importance to Egypt to actually diminish
the supply during the flood, especially as year by year more of the
basin land is converted to perennial irrigation. Regulators at Lakes
Victoria and Albert would serve in some degree for flood protection
as well as for storage against summer use. It is calculated that the
complete closing of the outlet of Lake Victoria at the Ripon Falls
would only raise the surface of the lake 20 inches in a year. But
it would be far more effective if some of the flood-waters of the
rivers—_e.g._, the Blue Nile and the Atbara—which are fed by
the rains of Abyssinia could be intercepted before they reached
Egypt. A large irrigation during the flood and early winter along
the Blue Nile might indeed actually lengthen out the flood in Egypt,
whilst depriving it of danger through excess at any one period.
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.
The benefits of the abolition of slave-raiding and kidnapping are
immediate and obvious to everyone. Even the Arab can understand them,
but he finds it very difficult to appreciate our attitude—which,
needless to say, is uncompromising enough—towards slavery as a
domestic institution. It is the one serious complaint which he has
against the new government. His domestic habits and customs have been
completely based on slavery for centuries. Slavery is permitted and
recognised by the Koran. In most cases the slaves themselves have been
treated more like members of the family than as slaves, and no doubt
many of them have had far happier lives than they would have had in
their own villages. Nor is it difficult to point to evils which have
arisen from the emancipation of the slaves. It is a melancholy fact
that many of the towns in the Soudan are crowded with freed slaves,
too lazy to do anything but steal, while the women have recourse to
an even less reputable occupation. It is easier to break down the
social system of centuries than to build up a sounder fabric in its
place. But the thing had absolutely to be done if the Soudan was
to have a real regeneration. Even when the slaves have been well
treated, the demoralization caused by slavery has been great. The
Arabs have all the vices of a slave-owning people. It was a good time
to make an absolutely fresh start. All changes of such magnitude are
bound to produce dislocations. The evils of the change will die out
with the present generation. The good must be waited for patiently,
but it is sure to come.
CHAPTER XIX
EDUCATION AND THE GORDON COLLEGE
Probably the last thing that a military government might be expected
to take an interest in is education, and yet few educational
establishments are so widely famous as the Gordon College at
Khartoum. As yet it owes its reputation to the fact that it was
founded by one great soldier in memory of another, not to its
achievements; it was born great. But already it has justified
its founders; its mere existence marks an extraordinary contrast
between the character of the present régime in the Soudan and that
of any preceding.
Whenever the Soudan is mentioned, the first question asked is,
‘How is the Gordon College getting on?’ and the question cannot
be answered in a word. The actual building is indeed for the present
complete. It is a handsome structure of native red brick, built
in the Moorish style, but retaining the collegiate character. It
occupies two sides of a square, the front facing on the river. In
the centre is the principal entrance, and over it a tower. If the
original design is finally carried out, the whole quadrangle will
be completed. Along the inside runs a cool and airy cloister,
with winding stairs leading to the upper story; the class-rooms
are spaciously designed. Its commanding position at the east end of
the town makes it a conspicuous landmark for many miles round. From
no point is this so remarkable as from the hill of Surgham, which
overlooks the battlefield of Kerreri. Here is summed up much of the
past and the future of the Soudan. On the one hand is the scene of
the final overthrow of the forces of darkness and ignorance by war;
on the other the symbols of that longer contest for the conquest of
the Soudan by the peaceful arts of science and learning.
With the eye of faith it is easy to look forward into the future, and
to imagine the time, generations hence, when the Gordon College will
be a true centre of learning for all these vast territories. Then it
will stand, a completed quadrangle, in the middle of large gardens,
its own territory, as green and cultivated as they are now arid
and dusty. Its halls and class-rooms will be crowded with picked
students from all the provincial centres, not vainly pursuing a dry
and vain scholasticism, as in the other degenerate Universities of
the Mohammedan East, but eagerly following in the paths of living
science, and learning by practical teaching in the laboratory
and workshop to wrest from Nature her secrets, and to absorb the
principles underlying practice in the departments of chemistry and
medicine, mechanics, agriculture, and the arts. Perhaps once more,
in years to come, the culture and science of the Arabs will be as
famous as they were in the great days of Arab dominion.
It is a long way to travel from such stimulating forecasts to the
actual state of learning and education in the Soudan to-day. There
was not much learning under the Egyptians, but at least a certain
amount of theological study went on. Under the Khalifa even that was
sedulously discouraged, and the books were ordered to be destroyed
because he feared that they might tend to discredit the unorthodox
doctrine of Mahdism. Reading and writing were not likely to flourish
under a ruler who, possessing neither of these arts himself, and
entertaining strong suspicions of those who did, was wont to give
drastic expression to his views. As a consequence, there never was a
country more absolutely and wholly illiterate. Writing is practically
an unknown art, and reading hardly less so. It is perfectly useless
to post a Government Proclamation unless a competent person is
stationed by it to read it out to any passer-by. At the same time,
there flourishes the most exaggerated respect for a written document,
which is regarded as a kind of magic book, and cases have been known
in which swindlers have extorted large sums of money by going round
exhibiting a paper professing to be an order to pay issued by the
Government. Obviously, education has had to be on very humble lines
at first, and must continue so for some time.
Was, then, the Gordon College a too ambitious attempt to anticipate
the future? Is it a mere white elephant, doomed to be a vain monument
of an ill-directed wave of enthusiasm? Such a view is far from the
truth. It would be strange indeed if a project so dear to the heart
of Lord Kitchener was of such a nature. Certainly, it is impossible
to start a complete University right away with a building and an
endowment of some £4,000 a year. Time is of the essence of the
question. It is possible to argue that the money used in the building
might have been more advantageously expended in other ways. But,
apart from the fact that the subscribers doubtless wished to see
some immediate result for their munificence, I am sure that it was
the right policy to build at once.
For the Gordon College, though not yet a University, is much more
than a college. It is the centre of all the new educational and
intellectual influences in the Soudan. Its director is also head
of the Education Department; the activities of both are inseparably
connected. It acts as an extraordinary stimulus upon the authorities
in the direction of education. It would have been so easy and so
natural for a Government so hard beset for money to neglect education
for other objects, apparently more practical and more immediately
pressing. The actual material presence of the college makes it
impossible for its claims to be overlooked. Very likely without it
there would not have been an Education Department at all. Secondly,
but for the existence of the building, the Soudan would certainly
never have obtained such valuable gifts as those of Mr. Wellcome’s
bacteriological laboratory and Sir W. Mather’s complete technical
workshop apparatus, containing all that is necessary for the
establishment and organization of departments for manual training and
technical instruction. Thirdly, the building itself has been already,
and will be to an increasing extent, of the greatest use; and,
moreover, there is still about £100,000 of the original endowment
remaining, the income from which is playing a great part, as will
be shown, in providing the beginnings of education in the Soudan,
and so laying the foundations for the future work of the college
itself. Lord Kitchener was wiser than his critics. Among his many
claims to fame, none is greater than the clearness with which he saw
that a sound educational system is one of the fundamental requirements
of the Soudan, as well as a substantial foundation for our rule.
In 1901 the Soudan Government spent £1,421 on education, in
addition to the Gordon College endowment; in 1902, £3,577; and
in 1903 something over £6,000. With such resources as these, it
is obvious that nothing heroic could be attempted. Only the more
immediate needs could be attended to. Looking to the necessity for
the education of a class of native public servants, it was most
important to establish some sound primary schools, in which the boys
should be given a fair general education in reading, writing, and
arithmetic, besides a certain amount of history and geography and
English. Four of these schools are now in existence; two of them,
those at Halfa and Suakin, were established some eight or nine years
ago by the Egyptian Government, and have only recently been handed
over to the Soudan; they are in an efficient condition. The most
interesting, considering their recent establishment, are those at
Khartoum and Omdurman. That at Omdurman was the first, the direct
offspring of the Gordon College. It now numbers over 200 pupils, and
is in a most flourishing condition. There are constant applications
for admission, partly, no doubt, from the reason that pupils of the
school are thought likely to obtain Government employment, but partly
also from a real appreciation of the advantages of education.
The school course is divided into four years, and the curriculum is
based on the Egyptian one—modified to the extent that no subjects
are taught in English, except English itself. An inspection of the
school made it clear to me that, at any rate, in the subject which
I could understand—the teaching of English—the methods were
thoroughly sound, and the results good. Pupils in their last year are
also taught land-measuring. The reason is the great demand which comes
from every province for land-measurers—a most important thing in
view of the assessments for the land-tax—while no trained men are
available. This part of the work is taught both in the class-room
and practically in the field. I am certain that in a very short
time there will be land-measurers available of very good ability,
so excellent was the quality of some of the work done.
Some, of course, of these boys are the sons of Egyptians in the
Government service, to whom it is a great blessing to be able to get
a good education for their children on the spot. But far the majority
of them—at least 90 per cent.—are genuine Soudanese, some of
them members of good Arab families, whose fathers were prominent
in the service of the Khalifa. Originally it was intended that this
school should be transferred to Khartoum, and housed in the college
as soon as the general exodus took place. But as Omdurman shows no
signs at present of diminishing, and is, indeed, once more increasing,
the school has been kept on, and another started on similar lines in
Khartoum itself. This school is also flourishing, but it naturally
contains a larger proportion of the Egyptian-born pupils; altogether
it has about 120 scholars. This school is now housed in the Gordon
College itself.
Book-learning is not the only channel of instruction employed. I had
the good fortune to be umpire in the first football match between
Khartoum and Omdurman schools, in the mosque square at Khartoum. It
was a hot afternoon, and I felt as though I should get a sunstroke
whilst umpiring; but these boys, all hatless as they were, played
with great energy, and appeared to derive nothing but benefit from
the heat. They played a good game, and it was pleasant to see
that what they lacked in experience they made up in courage and
determination. All the players, of whatever shade of black or brown,
and the shades were very various, showed a spirit which augurs well
for the future. Anybody who can play football with energy in Central
Africa must have good stuff in him. The match was drawn.
In another direction also an encouraging start has been made. There
is at present in the Soudan no skilled native labour; blacksmiths,
tinsmiths, carpenters, and bricklayers, are all in demand, and have to
be imported from outside at great trouble and expense. In the hope of
meeting this demand, an industrial school has been established at the
Dockyard Works, which are now on the river at Omdurman, but which will
eventually be moved to Halfaya. The head of the Steamboat Department
agreed to take in sixty boys as apprentices. These are divided into
two shifts of thirty each, and they alternately receive a day’s
schooling and do a day’s practical work at their separate trades
as carpenters, fitters, or riveters. In school their time is divided
between reading, writing, and arithmetic, and also drawing. The plan
has been found to answer admirably. Not only does the education they
receive improve their intelligence as workers, but some of the boys
have shown such proficiency in drawing that they are able to copy
engineering and building designs with such accuracy as to be able
to relieve the English superintendents of a good deal of work. Many
of these boys are sons of men employed in unskilled labour at the
works, who take the greatest interest in seeing their sons advance
so far beyond themselves. Many applications for admission have to
be refused, and there is little doubt that when Sir W. Mather’s
technical school at the Gordon College is in full swing, it will
fill a great need in the requirements of the country.
On the whole, the most difficult task which the Director of Education
has to face is that of diffusing the elements of knowledge among
the masses of the people. The great distances to be covered alone
impose a tremendous obstacle. But it is extremely important that at
least a portion of the population should be able to understand the
outlines of the machinery of government as laid down in notices and
proclamations, so as to be able to protect themselves against the
exactions of minor officials and the frauds and deceits practised on
them by wandering rogues. It has wisely been determined to proceed
along the lines laid down by Mohammedan tradition. The kuttabs, or
preliminary schools, are a well-known part of the ordinary religious
organization. They are supposed to give instruction in reading and
writing and the Koran, and there are many of them scattered over
the Soudan, as in other Mohammedan countries. They are, in fact, a
sort of private elementary school, something like the old dames’
schools once existing in parts of England. Unfortunately, they are
almost entirely useless at present. The teachers are incredibly
ignorant. What little instruction they give is confined to teaching
by rote certain passages from the Koran, the meaning of which is
understood by neither pupil nor teacher. The buildings are usually
filthy to the last degree. The idea is to establish model kuttabs
in different parts of the Soudan, and to make them as efficient as
possible, so as to improve the others by their example. To quote
the words of the Director:
‘The process of formation has been in all cases the same. With
the help of the Mudir, a suitable building is put up; then the
least incompetent sheikh that can be procured is installed. After
confidence has been established, and the nucleus of a school formed,
he is superseded by a trained teacher from Egypt, who, under the
local supervision of the Mudir and occasional supervision from my
office, begins to reduce chaos to order.’
Progress has not been very rapid. Lack of money and lack of competent
schoolmasters sadly hamper all operations. But kuttabs are now
established, attached as a sort of junior class to the schools at
Khartoum, Omdurman, Halfa, and Suakin. A model kuttab has been
established at Berber, which is reported to be doing well, and
another is being built at Dongola. The like is also being attempted
at Wad Medani, a populous town on the Blue Nile, capital of the
province of Sennar, with about 40,000 inhabitants. Reference has
been made to the lack of trained schoolmasters. Egypt itself feels
this difficulty, and Egypt is at present the only source of supply
on which the Soudan can draw. It was to meet this demand—at least,
so far as the kuttabs are concerned—that a small training college
for native sheikhs was opened in the beginning of 1901 in connection
with the school at Omdurman. At first this interesting experiment
was not very successful. The students, who all belonged to the best
Arab families, were all proud, ignorant, and lazy; and as Arabs they
were inclined to despise the Egyptian schoolmasters, whose task it
was to teach them. But now there is a great improvement. They have
increased in number to about thirty, and only lack of room prevents
a further increase. I watched them doing their own lessons, and also
receiving practical instruction in teaching by taking a class of the
school under the guidance of a master. It was impossible to doubt
the value of the experiments. They were nearly all fine-looking,
intelligent young men, some of them really handsome, with the keen,
clear-cut features that mark the pure-bred Arab. Three of them had
come from distant Kassala, where at present there are no means of
education whatever. The course lasts three years. At the end of it
they are to be examined as to their fitness, and they will then be
drafted off either to teach in their kuttabs or else to some posts in
connection with the native Courts. Whether as schoolmasters or Cadis,
they will be most useful elements in the development of the Soudan.
In the negro portion of the Soudan, inhabited by the pagan tribes,
the people are so backward in civilization that the question of
education does not at present arise, or, if it does arise, assumes a
totally different aspect. Here is the field for the missionary. Two
missions are already established—one, the American Medical Mission,
on the Sobat; and the other, the Austrian Roman Catholic Mission
at Taufikieh, on the White Nile. Both are doing good work, and
both are to be encouraged and assisted by the Government. In other
parts of the Soudan it must be remembered that we are dealing with
a fanatically Mohammedan population, and any suspicion that the
Government was trying to proselytize would immediately wreck all
schemes of education, and probably be the signal for grave disorders.
It will be a long time before the schools turn out sufficient pupils
to fill the Government Civil Service, and there does not seem to be
any danger of producing mere ‘babus,’ hanging about and relying
on a certain knowledge of English to procure them a job. The teaching
of English is entirely confined to those boys who are going to make
use of it in the Government Service or in commercial pursuits, where
its knowledge is required. For the ordinary mass of the population
nothing is to be gained by an imperfect knowledge of English. The
authorities are unquestionably right in discouraging such teaching;
the supposed political advantages of it are small, if not entirely
imaginary. The Soudan can never be a real white man’s country;
its rulers must always be speakers of Arabic, and its people will do
far better to employ their time in more useful ways than struggling
with a foreign language.
The Gordon College is the centre of education, but even now its
activities are not confined to mere teaching. It is proposed to form a
collection of books dealing with the Soudan, its peoples, its natural
history, and its various productions, accompanied by specimens to
illustrate them, and some progress has been made. Mr. Wellcome’s
valuable bacteriological research laboratory is in full working order,
and a skilled expert from Scotland has been in charge of it for
some months. He is doing a work of great importance, not only to the
Soudan, but also to the scientific world in general. The Soudan is a
land where strange diseases both of men and animals abound. There is
a wide field for research. The scientific and systematic examination
of these obscure subjects is already bearing fruit, and cannot fail
to ameliorate the conditions of life in these tropical regions for
the European as well as for the native.
Lord Cromer has promised that more shall be done for education in
the future. There is no need for hurry; indeed, it is essential that
the educational system shall be built up slowly with caution and
patience. But in time each province will have its own primary and
technical schools, whose pupils will be selected from the elementary
kuttabs. Afterwards, when all this has been carefully organized, the
provincial schools will in their turn pass on their more promising
students to Khartoum to receive the higher education which will then
be demanded. Then the Gordon College will at last become a real
college. In it the germ of a most hopeful future is contained. If
the work proceeds on the same sound lines as hitherto—which there
is no reason to doubt—great days are coming. The Arab is capable
of a very high degree of civilization, and has a great intelligence,
which has as yet had no chance of development. And in those days, I
doubt not, those who founded the Gordon College, and first kindled the
fire of learning, will be praised by its students as sincerely and as
deservedly as the benefactors of any of our own Western foundations.
CHAPTER XX
TRADE AND COMMERCE
Sir Rudolf von Slatin, Inspector-General of the Soudan, who possesses
an unrivalled experience of the country, reports that ‘the
whole situation in the country is very satisfactory. Everywhere
I went, from north to south and from east to west, I found that
villages and cultivation had increased. The population is larger
and wealthier; flocks and herds are more numerous; security
prevails, and general satisfaction is expressed with the present
rule.’ Once more, or, rather, nearly for the first time, life and
property are safe. Relieved from the scourge of war and tyranny,
people are everywhere resuming their old occupations. They have
even recovered from the shock of finding themselves under just and
settled government, and are no longer content merely to exist. New
wants are being felt, and with the advance of material prosperity
trade and commerce are springing up.
There are, however, considerable obstacles to the development of
trade. First of all there is a lack of labour. Partly this is due
to lack of population, but partly also to other causes. Slavery has
left its mark, and many of the Arabs are too proud and too lazy
to take part in manual labour; in laziness, though not in pride,
many of the negro tribes are fully their equals. Secondly, there
is the difficulty of communications in so vast a country, and the
lack of transport. Thirdly, the Soudan is very poor, and capital is
wanting. Still, every year shows an improvement in these respects.
The population is steadily growing, partly by natural increase, and
partly by immigration from neighbouring countries of people who had
fled during the rebellion. Attempts have also been made to assist the
increase by colonization. A number of old soldiers from the Soudanese
battalions, who are enlisted for life, were permitted to retire,
and with their wives and children were established in villages on
the Nile and at Kassala. The villages were organized on a more or
less military basis, with a well-known non-commissioned officer as
chief. Each colonist was allotted two or three acres of good rain
or pasture land, or an acre of Nile foreshore. He was given grain
for sowing, besides a quantity of dhurra sufficient to support him
until his crops grew. Markets were also started. Unfortunately, the
experiments were generally unsuccessful. The colonies at Dongola and
Berber failed altogether. It was found that the black when released
from the strict discipline of the regiment was more anxious to enjoy
doing nothing, after the manner of his ancestors, than to work,
and if he saw a chance of living by begging or stealing he was apt
to leave his cultivation alone, and go off to some town.
At Hellet Abbas, on the White Nile, it was found that if the rains
were good the colonists would prepare the ground and sow the crop,
but if it came to artificial irrigation and shadoof work they soon
tired of this heavier labour and left the crops to wither. Happily,
a much better account comes from Kassala. The Mudir of that province
reported:
‘The colony of blacks established at Kassala continues to thrive,
and in every way justifies its existence. They have a well-laid-out
village, and are eager to cultivate along the Gash, and have also a
fair amount of rain crops. Labourers can nearly always be obtained
from amongst them for public works, and there are some very fair
masons who are permanently employed. I wish we had the means of
teaching some of them carpentry and blacksmith’s work as well. They
have acquired a good deal of small stock.
‘Those of Gedaref are not so thrifty, and are lazy; they do not
cultivate so much or so well, but I hope for improvement.’
Transport and communications are indeed vastly better than they
were in Egyptian days. The railway from Halfa to Khartoum makes an
all-important difference. It has already given an immense stimulus
to the export trade; without it there would have been quite another
tale to tell of the last five years. But except in the province
of Berber it does not tap any local resources. Great part of it
lies in an uninhabited desert. Every train leaving Halfa has to
carry with it 1,520 cubic feet of water. And there are 200 miles
of river between Halfa and the outer world at Assouan, and then
700 miles more to the sea. Carriage of goods over such a mileage,
with its necessary transhipments, is a long and costly business,
nearly prohibitive for bulky articles. Coal, for example, is seldom
less than £4 a ton at Khartoum, and often nearer £6. No one who
had to build a railway in the Soudan for commercial purposes only
would think of crossing the desert to Halfa; his first thought would
be to connect Khartoum with the sea-board at Suakin.
There is also the railway from Halfa to Kerma, thirty miles
from Dongola. But this, too, was laid down in haste for military
purposes. It is laid so badly, with such sharp curves and such
steep gradients, owing to the nature of the country, that no heavy
trains can run on it, and with the present rolling-stock an engine
has sometimes to make three or four starts before it can master an
ascent. It is worked at a loss of about £20,000 a year, and it has
become a serious problem whether the money so spent could not be
employed much more advantageously elsewhere, so many are the claims
on the Soudan Exchequer. It would be far better to take up the whole
line, and relay it from Dongola to connect with the main-line at Abu
Hamed. For not only is this a much easier country, but the southern
part of the province, which is the richer, and inhabited by a more
industrious and hard-working population, would be opened up. But at
present no money is forthcoming either for this or for the complete
repair of the existing line. So poor Dongola is in the tantalizing
position of having a railway, and yet not being able to take full
benefit of it. It is actually suffering from a surplus of foodstuffs,
and is a year behindhand in its exports.
The province is famous for its dates; not only is it a great exporter
of the ordinary fruit, but it also produces a golden date, which is
said to be the best in the world, better, even, than the Algerine
date, so well known in Europe. It has also abundance of irrigable
land as good as Upper Egypt, which it very much resembles in general
climatic conditions. As its numerous and interesting antiquities show,
it once supported a very large population; but now a great deal of
land is lying waste, and the population, though increasing very fast,
is still not more than about 100,000. With better communications
its prospects are very good. When Egypt becomes overcrowded, as it
must in time if the present rate of increase is maintained, Dongola
will offer a fair field to Egyptian immigration. The conditions
of life are so similar to those in Egypt that it cannot fail to be
the most attractive part of the Soudan. Even as things are, owing
to the partial advantage afforded by the railway and facilities of
transport by boat-carriage on the Nile, the trade of the province is
increasing. Cotton goods and luxuries like tea, sugar, coffee, and
perfumeries, are the principal imports, and cereals are exported as
well as dates. The people are wealthier, and anxious to buy such goods
as cutlery, crockery, soap, agricultural implements, and hardware,
but well-to-do traders have not as yet exploited the field, as they
would do if the railway difficulty were solved.
Once Khartoum is connected with the sea by railway, the principal
obstacle in the way of trade will have been removed, and, fortunately,
this is no longer a mere vision of hopeful men. Practically the
railway has already been begun. It will strike across the desert to
the Atbara, crossing the mountains near Sinkat, and then run along it
to join the main-line near where it crosses that river. If the railway
does not come to Berber itself, Berber will probably travel up the
Nile to meet it. Arab towns are not very difficult to shift. The
whole route has been carefully surveyed, and a good deal has been
spent in improving the port of Suakin. Materials are being rapidly
collected. This time careful preparations are being made; there will
be none of those kaleidoscopic changes of policy which were so fatal
in 1885. It may confidently be expected that in two or three years’
time there will be something to show very much more substantial than
a tennis-court at Dover built of much-travelled material, the only
result of our former exertions. For the construction of the line the
Government will be its own contractor. The Soudan Railway Department
has a very capable staff, and they will be able to do the work as
efficiently as any outside contractor, and much more cheaply. It is
hoped that as far as possible native labour may be made use of. It
is a hopeful indication of a change of spirit among the Arabs that
the local sheikhs have agreed to bring their tribesmen to work;
the experiment is worth trying even if it fails. No such thing has
ever happened in the Soudan before.
Meantime Suakin is looking eagerly forward. Its inhabitants have
naturally suffered by the complete diversion of trade to the Nile
Valley route. Very few of them can even afford to repair their houses,
and the town shows signs of decay. Most of the people are unemployed,
and labour is very cheap. There was formerly a good deal of trade with
India and the Red Sea ports, but most of this has fallen away, and
nearly all the Indian merchants who formerly had their headquarters
there have left. But now that the desert which shuts off the Soudan
from the sea is really to be bridged over, there will be a great
change. The one seaport of these immense territories cannot fail to
be a busy and prosperous place.
Once the new line is completed, the distance from Khartoum to the
sea will be reduced by about two-thirds, to some 450 miles, with a
proportionate reduction in expense of carriage, and it will then be
possible to think of building other feeder lines in various parts of
the Soudan. A branch line to Kassala and on to Gedaref and Gallabat
along the Abyssinian frontier will tap a very rich district and
open up the Abyssinian trade. Possibly in the distant future such a
line may be continued southwards so as to connect with Uganda. In
the recent agreement with Abyssinia, powers have been taken to
build in Abyssinian territory for this purpose. But this is still
a long way outside practical politics. Of far more importance for
the immediate development of the country would be a light railway
from Omdurman or Duem to El Obeid, or across the rich Ghezireh from
Duem to Wad Medani on the Blue Nile, or, again, from near Wad Medani
to Gedaref. Easy communication with the sea will render it possible
to bring the necessary plant into the country at a reasonable cost,
and the experience gained as to material and labour in building the
Suakin line will also be invaluable.
Meanwhile the provincial Governors are doing all they can to improve
the caravan routes and roads. In great part of the Soudan this
is simply a question of increasing the number of wells; metalled
roads are scarcely necessary as yet, outside a few towns. Wheel
traffic is almost non-existent; the camel and the ass are the great
public carriers. It is rather strange that the camel has not been
more used for pulling wheel transport than he has. One camel can
pull three or four times as much as he can carry. All the heavy
machinery of the Nile Valley Gold Mining Company, working in Nubia,
has been transported in this way from the river, a distance of sixty
miles. Rarely a camel may be seen hauling a plough in Egypt. But
there are limits to the use of camels. They cannot breed successfully
south of parallel 13°, and in all the country south of this the
serut fly makes it almost impossible for either them or horses to
live at certain seasons of the year.
Above all, access to the sea will greatly stimulate the use made of
water carriage within the country. In the Nile and its tributaries the
Soudan possesses a system of natural trade-routes unequalled in Africa
for internal commerce. The river traffic, though already growing,
is merely in its infancy. The Government has a considerable fleet of
steam and sailing vessels between Wadi Halfa and Assouan, and also on
the Blue and White Niles. They are also encouraging an English company
which has placed some steamers and steam-barges on both rivers. On
the Blue Nile there is regular steamer communication with Rosaires,
426 miles from Khartoum, during high Nile, about six months in the
year, and even in low Nile most of the river is navigable by native
boats. On the White Nile, now that the sudd has been cleared, steamers
and native boats can ply the whole year round up to Gondokoro. In time
the Sobat may prove a very good route for trade with Abyssinia. And
the Bahr el Ghazal, with its network of waters, is in this respect
the most fortunate of all the provinces. Many of its waterways are
still blocked by sudd, but every year the navigation is improving. A
serviceable channel is now available on the Jur River as far as Wau,
and large steamers will eventually be able to get up even much further
than this. The other rivers will in time be opened up. In a country
where at present everything has to be carried on men’s heads, this
will be an extraordinary benefit from every point of view, and if
the province answers at all to its old reputation as one of the most
fertile spots of Africa, it will do very well, in spite of mosquitoes,
serut flies, malaria, guinea worm, and all its other plagues.
As for the lack of capital both for private enterprise and public
works, that, like the lack of population, can only be cured by
time. Overhasty development could only do harm, even if it were
possible. As trade improves and agriculture develops, the people will
become more wealthy, and the two will react upon each other. That
large sums will be invested by private capitalists or firms is not
to be expected for years to come. But even now an Englishman is
erecting flour-mills at Wad Medani, and if his venture succeeds
it may be followed by others. The Government is doing all in its
power to encourage agriculture by small loans for the purchase of
seeds, water-wheels, and cattle to work them. Perhaps some form of
State-supported Agricultural Bank will be established.
The Soudan is an agricultural country; in that direction alone
can real progress be made, and the progress depends mainly upon
irrigation. Between the Atbara and the Blue Nile, and between the
Blue Nile and the White Nile, there is, as has been pointed out,
a great field for irrigation works on a large scale, but the amount
of crops now grown by direct irrigation is very small. Along the
Blue Nile water-wheels are numerous for the first ten miles above
Khartoum. There used to be 3,000 between Khartoum and Berber, but
in 1898 there were no more than seventy; and though the number has
increased, it has yet nothing like reached the old level. The same
is true of the rest of Berber Province and of Dongola. There is also
a certain amount of irrigation on islands in the White Nile above
Khartoum. When the river is falling, large mud flats appear in the
centre of the stream. To these the people transport their cattle and
belongings; they sow their seed in the mud, build themselves huts,
and set up shadoofs to water the growing crops of wheat, barley,
dhurra, and onions. They begin operations towards the end of January,
and in good soil the crops are harvested by May.
What perennial irrigation can do is shown by the gardens at Khartoum,
where lemons, figs, oranges, pomegranates, bananas, vines, and all
kinds of vegetables, grow in profusion all the year round. But at
present nearly all the crops are rain crops. The height to which
water has to be raised out of the Blue Nile is too great for extended
irrigation by mere lift. For the first 150 miles from Khartoum the
banks are 26 to 30 feet over the summer level, and further south
33 to 39 feet, the difference between summer and flood level being
about 23 feet. The soil of the Ghezireh is a rich alluvial deposit
sometimes 150 feet deep. The inhabitants build small dykes across the
general slope of the country so as to prevent the rain running off
too quickly, and sow their seed as soon as the rain has fallen. The
result as described by Sir R. Wingate a year or two ago is as follows:
‘I recently rode from Wad Medani on the Blue Nile to opposite Duem
on the White Nile, eighty miles across a perfectly flat plain sown
almost throughout its entire length with dhurra, which was standing
6 to 8 feet high. As there is only one crop sown during the short
rainy season, and as this is planted and harvested within a period of
sixty to eighty days, it follows that, if a system of irrigation were
possible in the Ghezireh it would become a huge granary capable of
supplying, not only the whole Soudan, but other countries as well.’
But, of course, any schemes for utilizing the waters of the Nile
have always to be considered in reference to the prior claims of
Egypt. It is only to Egypt that the Soudan can look for the money
necessary to carry out great works, and, naturally, Egypt would
not allow irrigation to be developed in the Soudan unless her own
needs were amply safeguarded. Whenever Egypt undertakes the great
works contemplated on the Upper Nile, the Soudan will share in the
benefit. That will not be for a long time to come, and meanwhile the
Soudan has opportunity to develop her resources and her population so
as to be able to seize the chance when it comes. There seems to be no
reason, however, why works on a small scale should not be undertaken,
subject always to the question of expense, to utilize in the Soudan,
by means of basin irrigation on the Blue Nile or the Atbara, some
of the flood-water during July, August and September, which is only
an embarrassment to Egypt now that perennial irrigation is adopted
so universally in that country. It is only in the preceding summer
months, when the Nile is low, that Egypt is forced to watch the
proceedings of her neighbour with such a jealous eye. It would be
rash to prophesy exactly when irrigation works will be undertaken,
or what form they will take; but it is certain that they will come,
and when they do, their effect upon the Soudan will be immense. The
subject is of peculiar interest to England; the lands in question
are capable of producing other crops than cereals, and, as will
presently be shown, for none are they more suitable than for cotton.
Quite apart from any such speculations upon the future, the external
trade of the Soudan is capable of great expansion under present
conditions. An examination of the returns of imports and exports
during the last years before the rebellion is a very useful guide
to the capacities of the country. The figures are taken from Colonel
Stewart’s report.
There are no returns of imports except for the port of Suakin, but
these embrace practically the whole. Of course, a certain amount
came in by the Nile Valley route, just as now a certain amount
comes in by Suakin instead of by the railway. The position has been
practically reversed, and for purposes of comparison it is fair to
take the imports formerly entering the port of Suakin and those now
carried by the railway. The most important item was cotton goods,
which amounted to about 25,000 to 30,000 kantars annually. Linens were
about 200 to 300 kantars, and woollens 100 to 300 kantars. There was
also a certain amount of silks and silk thread and sewing cotton. The
Indian trade brought in a good deal of grain and tobacco. In 1881
the import of Indian rice amounted to 20,000 kantars. Petroleum
(6,000 kantars), oil, zinc, copper, and iron, appear in the list,
as well as flour and provisions of various kinds in large quantities,
and candles, boots, and clothes. The peculiar tastes of the Soudanese
in luxuries are reflected in the large imports of sandal-wood, and
scents and perfumery, especially fish-scent (700 tons, or 15,400
kantars, a year). Both men and women are particularly fond of strong,
greasy scents. In all native festivities and entertainments these
scents are a very prominent feature, and a native marriage can
be smelt a very long way off. Last, but not least, comes a very
peculiar item: in one year no less than 11,000 dozen umbrellas were
imported. There is certainly enough sunshine in the Soudan, and
in parts of it rain also, to justify a large number of umbrellas,
but it is difficult to believe that 132,000 umbrellas would find a
ready sale in the Soudan to-day. Perhaps the Khalifa particularly
disliked the umbrella-carrying class.
In 1901 the imports of cotton goods had already reached their former
level, amounting to about 28,000 kantars. But the trade is growing
rapidly: in 1902 the imports had risen to 38,000 kantars. Considering
that the population is no more than a third of what it was in 1881,
this is striking testimony of the good effects produced by just
government and a railway. The imports from India have, of course,
fallen away. Scents are far below their former figure, but the
imports of flour and rice have risen; 343 tons of flour and 43 tons
of rice were carried in 1901, and 733 tons of flour and 108 tons of
rice in 1902. Tobacco, oil, and petroleum are also increasing. There
is also a very important article of import which reflects both the
improved purchasing power of the Soudan and the increased production
in Egypt; this is sugar. The railway carried 1,700 tons in 1901, and
nearly 3,000 tons in 1902. Soap, likewise of Egyptian manufacture,
also appears in the returns to the extent of some 140 tons a year.
As for imports so for exports Suakin was the chief channel of trade
before the rebellion. But a good deal also went by Korosko and
the Nile, principally gum, senna, coffee, and ostrich feathers. An
inappreciable amount, probably, also filtered through to Egypt by
Assouan or Assiout. Far the biggest item of the recorded trade was
gum. The export for three years was—
_Kantars._
1879 144,706
1880 135,646
1881 150,861
Next came cotton, cleaned and uncleaned, averaging about 20,000
kantars per annum. Coffee amounted to about 7,000 kantars, principally
from Kassala and the Abyssinian frontier. The Soudan is a land
of strange diseases, but it is also a land of medicines. Besides
tamarinds, as much as 3,300 kantars of senna was exported in
1880. Ostrich feathers from Kordofan and Darfur came to about 200
kantars, and there was also about half that amount of guttapercha
from the Bahr el Ghazal. Miscellaneous exports included skins and
hides, mother-of-pearl from the coast, mats from Kassala, and ivory.
To-day gum-arabic is still easily first among the exports. The best
kind of gum is the white gum produced from the gray-barked acacia,
called hashab; there are also inferior kinds called talh, or latch,
produced from the red-barked acacia. The gum is used for giving a
glaze to linens and other woven fabrics, for stiffening cotton-stuffs
and calicoes, and for making sweets and chewing mixtures. Kordofan
is the home of the gum trade; a good deal, but chiefly the inferior
kinds, comes from the forests of Sennar and Kassala, but nearly all
the best white gum comes from Kordofan, especially the part round
Taiara between Duem and El Obeid. Here there are limitless forests
of hashab. The taking of the gum does not permanently injure the
tree, and the only obstacles to its gathering are the distances to be
travelled without water, and the lack of labour. Every new well means
a fresh productive area, and people migrate temporarily from other
parts of the Soudan for the gum harvest. Most of it is brought down
by boat from Duem, some directly on camels from El Obeid to Khartoum,
where it is sorted on the beach. Of this first-rate white gum the
Soudan has practically a monopoly, and when the Soudan was closed
to trade its price went up enormously. This naturally brought out
substitutes: inferior gum from West Africa came into use, and glucose
also took its place. Still, there was a good demand for it after the
re-occupation of the Soudan, and in 1900 the price was still 65s. per
cwt. Since then the production has gone up by leaps and bounds, but,
unfortunately, this has been accompanied by a great fall in prices,
at one time as low as 27s. 6d. per cwt. The figures of the export
trade are:
_Kantars._
1899 41,963
1900 60,912
1901 170,781
1902 220,000
The trade has now far outstripped its former limits. To a young
country, a profit of some £200,000 a year divided between the
merchants and producers on the one side and the Government on the
other by means of royalties and railway receipts is no mean advantage.
As for the other former exports, the trade in ostrich feathers
from Kordofan and Darfur has begun again, and there seems no reason
why it should not be developed. Ostriches are farmed successfully
in Egypt near Cairo, and the conditions are even more favourable
for their establishment in the Soudan. Nor is it unlikely that the
Soudan will be able to supply a part of her own tobacco and sugar,
which now bulks so largely in the imports. In former days the
sugar-cane was cultivated largely in Dongola and along the Nile
in Berber Province. The fertile plains around Kassala bore crops
both of sugar-cane and tobacco. The district of Fazokhl, beyond
Rosaires on the Blue Nile, used to produce 1,000 kantars of tobacco
per year. It is also found in Fashoda; and in the south-western
part of Kordofan, where the soil is the richest in the province,
both tobacco and sugar-cane grow easily wherever there is water,
to say nothing of the Bahr el Ghazal. The coffee came principally
from that part of the country which has since been taken over by
Italy or Abyssinia, and, though it is grown in Kassala, the trade
in it is not likely to come to very much. This coffee, however,
which is of the Abyssinian kind, and not a first-class coffee,
is still quoted in the London market at about 50s. per cwt.
But the most promising feature in the old returns is the
20,000 kantars of cotton, even though as yet the trade has not
revived. Though the figure is in itself insignificant, it is a proof
that the thing can be done. Cotton is indigenous in the Soudan. It
grows wild in Fashoda, although the native Shilluks seem never to have
taken advantage of this circumstance, preferring to go completely
naked. Most of the former cotton export came from Kassala. The Khor
Gash, a tributary of the Atbara, comes down in flood during July
and August, and partly inundates the plain, leaving behind a rich
alluvial deposit—splendid cotton soil. There was formerly a cotton
factory in Kassala town. In the districts of Gallabat and Gedaref
cotton is now actually being grown, and it is proving the foundation
of increasing trade with Abyssinia. Abyssinian merchants eagerly
buy up all that can be grown. Further south, in Sennar Province,
the valleys of the Dinder and the Rahad were once very famous for
cotton, which was also largely imported into Abyssinia. Here, too,
the cultivation is increasing as the people settle down. The district
of Tokar, near Suakin, along the Khor Baraka, produces, perhaps,
the best quality of all the cotton in the Soudan. It, too, in former
days produced very much more than now. While along the Nile itself,
in the neighbourhood of Khartoum and in Berber and Dongola Provinces,
enough cotton is grown to supply small local industries, in which
a rough white cloth is woven, one of the few local manufactures in
the Soudan. Beyond a doubt, not only is there a great deal of land
admirably suited to grow cotton in the Soudan, but also the climatic
conditions, given only water, are peculiarly favourable.
Cotton and its culture are thus no novelties to the inhabitants
of the Soudan. The point is the water; it all comes back to water
and irrigation. If the Soudan is to be of any real interest to the
cotton-spinners of Lancashire, its export must be counted not by a few
paltry tens of thousands of kantars, but by hundreds of thousands,
perhaps by millions. And for that there must be irrigation works on
a large scale. The soil is there in the Ghezireh and elsewhere, the
climate is there, the water is there, and the irrigation works will
come. But once again, there is no need for hurry. The interests of
the whole Valley of the Nile have to be considered. The undertaking
is too large to be gone into without the utmost care and patient
deliberation.
It is eminently satisfactory that the Government is fully alive to
all the possibilities. They have started an experimental farm at
Shendi, where trials are being made of different sorts of cotton,
of different methods of culture, and of different periods of sowing,
as well as calculations of the cost of production and of carriage to
the ginning factories in Egypt. Already some most interesting and
important results have been obtained. It has been definitely shown
that the cotton which is sown in June and July promises better, both
in quality and quantity, than that sown in the autumn or in March
and April. At that time the heat is not so great, and the river
is rising, so that the cultivator gets his water during the most
necessary time at the least cost, because with the least effort. If
this is confirmed, it is extremely important, for the water will be
taken at a time when the Nile is high, and when, therefore, Egypt can
afford to allow it to be used without suffering in the least degree,
apart altogether from new Reservoir works.
As regards quality, it appears that the cotton grown, if not so
good as the very best kinds of Delta cotton, is at least as good as,
or better than, the best American, both in colour and staple. It is
calculated that at the present time 1 acre producing 4 kantars will
produce gross receipts of 1,060 piastres, against an expenditure of
1,000 piastres, showing a profit of 60 piastres, or 12s. 6d. per
acre. But when the new railway has reduced the cost of fuel for
the pumps, and also the cost of carriage, the expenses will be no
more than 700 piastres, showing a profit of 360 piastres per acre,
or 75s. It is estimated that the new railway will reduce the cost
of freight by 50 piastres per kantar, and, wherever the Soudan has
its own ginning factories, the profits will, of course, be all the
greater, because only the prepared product will be carried. There is
at present sufficient local demand for cotton to make it generally
more profitable to sell it on the spot than to carry it to Egypt,
but as the production increases it will soon outstrip the local
demand. Any private capitalist investing money in cotton in the
Soudan would be able to buy and clear land on the river in Berber
or Dongola at from £5 to £6 per acre, so that he would get a very
reasonable return on his investment. He would have the further
advantage that in the Soudan two of the worst cotton diseases,
‘worm’ and ‘hog,’ are unknown.
Cotton and corn are the two great foundations on which the hopes of
commercial prosperity in the Soudan are founded. The Negro Soudan
is still comparatively unexplored, and its resources cannot be
estimated. There is, however, a chance that the Bahr el Ghazal will
do great things in rubber. Rubber-trees are known to be plentiful;
rubber has already been produced in small quantities, and specimens of
absolutely first-class quality have been obtained. But it has yet to
be shown that the best kind of creepers are numerous, and also that
they can be successfully tapped without killing the plants. So far,
it does not seem likely that the Soudan has any great sources of
wealth underground. Iron is found and worked in small quantities in
the Bahr el Ghazal, and at least two ore beds are known in Kordofan,
but there is no fuel to work them, and no means of transporting the
ore. As for gold and the precious metals, several prospecting licenses
have been issued and search is being eagerly made, but, except the
copper mines of Hofrat-en-Nahas, nothing has been discovered at
present. The only known gold-bearing district, the Beni-Shangul,
is now included within the territories of Abyssinia. Gold was
formerly worked in this district by the Egyptians, not at a profit,
and perhaps, in any case, it is no great loss to the Soudan (even
if it had not already been occupied by the Abyssinians), for that
gold may not be discovered in the Soudan is the earnest prayer
of every official in the country. The true wealth of the Soudan,
such as it is, lies in its water and its soil. A find of coal would
be a very different matter, and much more valuable than gold, but,
though discoveries are constantly being rumoured, coal is not yet.
No account of the commerce of the Soudan would be complete without
a mention of those wonderful people the Greek traders.
It is well known how, on the day after the Battle of Omdurman,
a Greek arrived in the town and opened a store with all kinds of
goods brought somehow from Suakin. This man is now a prosperous
and wealthy merchant, with large shops in Khartoum and Halfa, and a
finger in every sort of commercial undertaking. He is no longer alone
in the field. Whether it be true or not that trade follows the flag,
undoubtedly the Greek trader follows the British flag. They are said
to be principally Ionian Islanders, so perhaps they have a hereditary
liking for it. Just as from Alexandria to Halfa every town in Egypt
has its Greek traders, carrying on business as storekeepers, dealers,
and innkeepers, so, from Halfa to Gondokoro, from Suakin to El
Obeid, every town in the Soudan has its Greeks. They are ubiquitous;
in Khartoum and Omdurman alone they number about 800. One wonders
what they were all doing before the Soudan was open. Some of them,
no doubt, stayed on right through the Khalifa’s time.
As a vulture scents carrion from afar, so the Greek scents any
possible opening for trade with the natives. The gum trade,
the feather trade, the corn trade, all are in his hands. There
is nothing that a native wants, however humble, from beads and
kerosene-tins to silver, that he will not sell, exactly in the
form required. Naturally a gambler, there is no speculation that
he will not undertake, no risk he will not run. He can stand any
climate, he can live in native huts, and eat native food. He may
be unscrupulous in his dealings, and he has to be sharply watched
by those in authority, but as a trade pioneer in a new country he
is invaluable, and his enterprise contributes largely to make life
possible for more exacting Europeans in desolate places. Some day,
perhaps, when the Arab has mastered his methods of trade, he will
find his match, but at present he holds the field.
CHAPTER XXI
TAXATION, REVENUE, AND EXPENDITURE
At the beginning of every year the Soudan Budget, with the estimates
of receipts and expenditure for the year, has to be submitted to
the Egyptian Council of Ministers. The total amount to be granted
to the Soudan from the Egyptian revenues is then decided, and any
consequent alterations in the Budget made. The Governor-General
and the Financial Secretary are responsible for seeing that the
total sum so granted by Egypt is not exceeded, but while this limit
is observed, credits can be transferred from one head to another
without reference to Cairo. Any special or unforeseen expenditure can
be defrayed by Egypt by special grants sanctioned by the Egyptian
Council of Ministers, and the Egyptian Minister of Finance has at
all times the right of inspection, audit, and supervision of the
Soudan Government accounts. Practically, of course, this means
that the finances of the Soudan are subject to the control of the
British Financial Secretary and the British Consul-General at Cairo,
but that the Soudan Government exercises a very wide discretion as
to the disposal of its revenues once realized.
The revenues of the Soudan are therefore at present made up from
three sources: first, taxation, fees, licenses, etc.; secondly,
the receipts of certain earning departments—_e.g._, railway,
steamers, post, and telegraphs; and thirdly, the contribution from
Egypt. Of these the third is still, it must be confessed, the most
important, but the first is steadily growing. Strictly speaking,
the second should not be included, for although the earnings of
these departments are materially increasing, and although without
them very little could be done, their annual accounts do not as yet
show a profit, for various reasons that will be explained.
The principles of taxation are not new. Many of the taxes are the
same in kind as those which were formerly in force not only under
Egyptian rule, but also under the Khalifa’s. It was wisely decided
that no innovations should be introduced based on Western notions,
unless they were unavoidable. The taxes are of a kind to which the
people have long been accustomed, but, of course, great care is taken
that they shall be fixed at a moderate rate, and that no one shall pay
more than is actually required by law. It was the uncertainty of the
amount to be paid, the illegal imposts levied by the collector on his
own account, and the dates at which they were collected, that made the
old taxes so often cruel and ruinous. The uncertainty of the amount
to be paid had, however, an attraction for the Oriental. It varied
with the circumstances of the year. The Government wished to get all
they could, and in a good year they exacted a most excessive amount;
but in a bad year they took little or nothing at all. According
to the Western system a fixed moderate amount has to be paid every
year, and a whole or partial failure of the crop is not considered
any excuse. The latter system is, of course, far the most just and
economically sound, but it lacks the elasticity of the other. It
is the constant endeavour of European administrators in Oriental
countries to endeavour to combine the advantages of both systems. In
the Soudan the system of petitions direct to the Governor-General is
a means to secure this result. When adequate cause is shown, he is
able to remit taxation wholly or partly, and there have been several
cases in which he has done so, notably in Berber and Dongola Provinces
in 1900, when the low Nile caused a great deal of land to be thrown
out of cultivation. Of course, such remissions are inclined to play
havoc with a Budget framed on careful estimates. It cannot be helped,
and at any rate it is only one of many difficulties which have to
be encountered in balancing a Soudan Budget. Unforeseen expenditure
often becomes necessary, but happily during the last two or three
years the receipts have been increasing unexpectedly also.
Although the taxes remain the same in principle, a comparison with
the former state of things shows the difference in the methods
of assessment and collection to be so great as to amount to a
revolution. Then, as now, the Government in the Soudan was, according
to the general rule in the East, the admitted owner of the soil,
and the cultivator had to pay a tax amounting to one-tenth of the
produce for its use. The actual sum to be paid included all other
taxes, as house-tax, animal-tax, and so on. Each district was rated
at so much in the Budget; this sum was divided among the villages
and communes until the individual cultivator was reached. The nomad
and other tribes which did not cultivate the soil were assessed
at an annual tribute, according to their wealth in camels, cattle,
and horses. In Berber and Dongola the tax was not on the produce of
the land, but on the instruments of irrigation. It varied according
to the instrument and according to the quality of land. One sakieh
was calculated to be capable of watering 8 acres, and if more land
was cultivated an increase was made in the tax. It has already
been mentioned how these water-wheels were often taxed in a sum
far beyond their possible earning capacity. It was the same with
the assessment of the districts and the tribute of the tribes. The
official estimates were seldom or never realized as far as the public
exchequer was concerned (although the bullying tax-collectors took
much more for themselves). Arrears accumulated, in spite of every
effort, and became a direct incentive to discontent and revolt. In
the year 1879 the deficiencies of the amounts actually received
below those estimated ranged in the different provinces from 10 to
60 per cent. The figures of the Budget were, in fact, pure fancy,
especially when the country was disturbed. But the thing was even
worse than it looked. Districts and tribes, though they might not pay
all that was asked, paid a great deal more than they could afford,
and consequently, as the money had to be found somehow, they found
it by indulging in the only prosperous trade—that of slavery. In
other words, the Soudan lived largely by expending its capital.
Owing to the alteration in the boundaries of the Soudan, it is
somewhat difficult to calculate what the amount raised in taxation
from the present territories amounted to. As nearly as can be made
out, it was about £360,000 a year nominally, with a nominal deficit
on the whole administration in the same provinces of £70,000 a
year. Absolutely nothing was spent in the development of the country;
salaries, rations, and clothes for the army of occupation made up
almost the whole of the expenditure.
As compared to this, the actual sums raised in the Soudan by taxation
during the last four years have been as follows:
£E.
1900 95,000
1901 155,000
1902 190,000
1903 200,000[7]
But the conditions are so different that nothing can really be deduced
from this comparison. The figures show clearly that the country is
advancing steadily. The burden is lightly borne. It would be very
easy to exact far more than this without any positive discontent,
but it would be a most unwise policy to do so, for it would be at
the expense of its future progress.
The taxes are no longer assessed by the district. The tribute from the
nomad tribes is the only exception to the rule that the Government
deals directly with the individual taxpayer. They are no longer
collected by irregular and irresponsible bullies; they are payable
at the most convenient seasons, and they are moderate in amount. So
great a difference in detail is almost a difference in principle;
but the names are the same. Of the whole collected the receipts from
land-tax and ushur are about a quarter—_i.e._, about £50,000
a year. The land-tax proper is no longer levied according to the
instruments of irrigation, but, as in Egypt, according to the acreage
and situation of the irrigated fields. Land irrigable by wells and
foreshore land irrigable by flood pays 20 piastres (4s.) per acre;
land on the mainland irrigable by water-wheels and shadoofs, 30
to 40 piastres; and land on islands similarly irrigable, 50 to 60
piastres. All other lands—that is to say, lands which depend for
their water-supply not on irrigation, but on rainfall—are taxed at
the rate of 10 per cent. _ad valorem_ on their produce. This tithe
is called ushur. At first it was paid almost entirely in kind, but
it is now collected as far as possible in money, and, as the money
in circulation increases, payment in kind—a most inconvenient form
of payment—will be altogether abolished. The date-tax—2 piastres
(5d.) on every date-palm that has begun to bear fruit—is akin to
the land-tax. It produces some £15,000 a year.
The land-tax in some form will be the staple of the future revenues of
the Soudan. Every year as population increases and more land comes
under cultivation it will form a larger proportion of the total
receipts. In many of the remote parts of the country, owing to the
great distances and the small number of officials, it is hardly yet
in working order, but with improved organization all may be expected
to bear their just share of taxation, and the receipts will benefit
accordingly. Any large scheme of irrigation and cotton culture will,
of course, send up this branch of revenue by leaps and bounds. Second
in importance to the land-tax, and for the time being exceeding it,
come the royalties charged on exports of gum, ostrich-feathers,
ivory, india rubber, and a few other articles, at the rate of 20
per cent. by weight. The extraordinary growth of the gum-trade is
mainly responsible for this item, which makes up another quarter of
the taxation revenue. Ivory receipts can hardly be expected to come
to very much, but ostrich-feathers and rubber will probably show a
marked increase in future years.
Other minor receipts were estimated in the Budget for 1902 as follows:
£E.
Animal-tax 9,500
Tribute from tribes 8,000
Ferries and fisheries 4,000
Sale of salt 1,530
Stamped paper 1,200
Customs 5,400
Slaughtering dues and market fees 5,200
Road-tax 2,000
Rent of Government lands 1,300
Boat-tax 1,000
All these taxes are familiar in the Soudan. Some of them, especially
those small in their results—and there are a good number more of
less importance than those named—will probably be abolished as soon
as the country is able to stand the immediate loss. But as yet even
the most objectionable in principle do not act as restrictions to
trade. They only distribute the burden of a very light taxation, so as
to make all classes contribute something, and the Government is still
so poor that even a few hundred pounds are of very great importance.
The Customs are set down as producing only £E5,400, and this demands
a word of explanation. £4,500 of this is taken at the port of Suakin,
the remainder on the land frontier in Kassala and Sennar. The Customs
on the land side, small as they are, show a steady increase; those
at Suakin have been constantly decreasing, as trade is more and
more diverted to the Nile Valley route. But all Customs duties on
goods coming to the Soudan on this side are levied at the Egyptian
ports, and retained by Egypt. The duties are 20 per cent. per kilo
on tobacco, and 8 per cent. _ad valorem_ on all other goods. In the
year 1903 it is estimated that the sum thus retained by Egypt will
amount to £E70,000, but this has not been taken into account in
calculating the Soudan revenues.
As for the profit-earning departments, their profits are as yet
invisible—invisible, that is, as far as their accounts are
concerned, though visible enough in the increasing prosperity of
the country. Still, the actual takings of the railway and the post
and telegraphs mark progress. They stand for three years:
_Railways._ _Post and Telegraphs._
£E. £E.
1900 38,412 7,900
1901 75,808 9,000
1902 85,000[8] 11,000[8]
But these receipts are far from being any criterion of the actual
amount of work done. They exclude all that was done on Government
account. Up till 1903 all passengers, goods, and messages on behalf
of Government were carried free of charge. But it was found that this
system tended to extravagance. A department, for example, wishing
to buy dhurra for Khartoum, was apt to buy it at Dongola, possibly
at a cheaper rate, and have it brought by rail for nothing, rather
than buy it locally and disburse something for the cost of local
camel or mule transport. This was good business for the department,
which had only a certain credit allotted to it, but waste from the
point of view of the railway, by which the cost of transport was
borne. Now each department is charged in the books of the railway
or post-office for all services actually rendered. The change is,
of course, only one of book-keeping, but it is a good instance of
the way in which good book-keeping works towards economy. With this
alteration the working of the profit-earning departments makes a
much better appearance. The estimates for 1903 are:
_Receipts._ _Expenditure._
£E. £E.
Railways 143,970 143,777
Post and telegraphs 24,428 34,800
Steamers and boats 69,028 86,223
The maintenance of the army in the Soudan is the item most affected
by this alteration. The sum to be paid to the Egyptian War Department
is set down at £E193,658 for 1903 as against £E122,548 for 1902.
The Steamers and Boats Department has been too recently organized
for an opinion to be formed upon its working, but the Railways are
soundly and economically managed. The increase of traffic has made
it possible to reduce the ratio of working expenses, though the
high price of fuel is still a great obstacle. Besides the ordinary
expenditure there has also been a good deal of capital expenditure,
which was very necessary considering the haste with which the line
was laid down as a purely military railway. These sums are: In 1899,
a special credit of £E390,000 for the completion of the line from
the Atbara to Khartoum; in 1900, a special credit of £E15,000 for
culverts and bridges on the same portion of the line, and a loan
of £E55,000 for general development and purchase of rolling-stock;
and in 1902-1903, a loan of £E528,000 (spread over five years) for
the same purposes; and a special advance of £10,000 for the survey
of the proposed Suakin-Berber line. All these sums, together with an
advance of £E31,000 for the improvement of the harbour at Suakin,
have been found by Egypt. The Soudan pays 2½ per cent. on the loans.
The nature of the country makes it inevitable that the postal service
should show a loss for some time; but the telegraph service would
show a profit over actual working expenses, but for the fact that
so much is expended every year on extension, and this is credited to
ordinary expenditure. £E18,500 was, however, borrowed from Egypt in
1900 to meet a special difficulty. The wooden poles were sometimes
devoured by white ants, and were also liable to rot. After various
experiments it was found best to bolt the poles on to steel bases, and
it was to meet this emergency that the loan was contracted. The new
plan has been found to answer admirably, and it has also facilitated
telegraph extension, because the shorter poles (12 ft. 6 in. instead
of 18 ft.) make a much more convenient load for a camel. Besides the
wires along the railway, there is now telegraphic communication from
Berber to Suakin, Suakin by Tokar to Kassala, Kassala to Gedaref,
and Gedaref to Gallabat. A line from Gedaref connects at Messalamia
with a line down the Blue Nile from Khartoum by Wad Medani to Sennar,
which then crosses over to Goz Abu Goma on the White Nile, and
is continued to Fashoda. Another line runs from Khartoum to Duem,
on the White Nile, and thence to El Obeid. In time the telegraph
will be continued south to Uganda, and whenever this takes place the
telegraph tariff convention arranged by Mr. Cecil Rhodes for through
communication between Alexandria and Cape Town will come into force.
If the gross takings of the railways, post and telegraphs, and boats,
are included in the revenues of the Soudan, the Budget wears a more
imposing aspect than if only the net expenditure of each of these
departments is included. The estimates for 1903 stand thus:
£E. £E.
Expenditure—Civil 624,226
Military 193,658
-------
817,884
Receipts 428,163
-------
Deficit 389,721
By starving the administration it would be possible to make this
deficit a great deal less, and, on the other hand, it would be very
easy to make it a great deal more. A country which has been going
steadily, even rapidly, backwards for so many years affords unlimited
opportunity for capital expenditure. Indeed, a large part of its
ordinary expenditure is really capital, so far as it is incurred
for permanent buildings, railways, telegraphs, and all the other
machinery, not only of government, but of elementary civilization,
which were all entirely wanting. The item of public works bulks
very large in the civil expenditure. It is inevitable that the
expenditure should increase with the development of the country,
but it is a satisfactory symptom that it is not increasing so fast
in proportion as the revenue. The civil expenditure, too, goes up,
while the military expenditure goes down. In the following table
only the net expenditure on railways, etc., is included:
EXPENDITURE.
_Civil._ _Military _Total._
(including
Gunboats, etc.)_
£E. £E. £E.
1899 230,000 281,000 511,000
1900 271,000 282,000 553,000
1901 330,000 222,000 552,000
1902 350,000 193,000 543,000
1903 380,000 193,000 573,000
The richer provinces in the Soudan might prosper very much faster
if they were allowed to devote the whole of their own revenues
to the development of their own resources. But, of course, the
whole receipts have to go into the common purse, and then be doled
out again in the interests of the country as a whole. Naturally,
there is a tremendous fight every year between the Mudirs, who are
responsible for the provincial budgets, and the central Treasury. Two
provinces stand out prominently in the matter of profits—Kordofan
and Dongola. Dongola had pride of place at first, but then Kordofan
passed in a stride, through the revival of the gum trade. But Dongola
is still a good second, in spite of her railway difficulties, through
the date-tax and the land-tax. Two-thirds of the whole amount raised
by this latter tax is supplied by her. Halfa Province, or, rather,
District, also shows a good profit by means of the land and date
taxes. The Ghezireh Province, the kernel of the Soudan, makes a
favourable appearance. Sennar just pays its way. The others all show
a deficit. Khartoum, of course, stands in a different category, as
also Suakin. But Berber and Kassala may soon be expected to redeem
themselves. Fashoda is as yet very undeveloped, and naturally the
Bahr el Ghazal, only just occupied, comes well at the bottom of the
list. That this order of financial merit will be maintained unchanged
is most unlikely.
It will be noticed that the estimated deficit for 1903 was some
£E390,000, and this is Egypt’s contribution towards the current
expenses of the year. The same sum was contributed in 1902, and
it has been agreed that this subsidy shall be continued at the
same figure for some years to come. The approximate amounts so
expended in former years were: 1899, £E385,000; 1900, £E417,000;
and the same in 1901. On the basis of this contribution, which
is called ‘Insuffisance,’ the estimates for the Soudan are
drawn up. Considering all the difficulties in the way of accurate
calculations, it speaks well for the Soudan officials that their
expectations have been so nearly realized. In 1899 and 1900, when
the accounts were finally made up, there were found to be deficits of
£E23,000 and £E40,000. But in 1901 the finances of the country took
a great turn for the better, and, although expenditure exceeded the
estimate, this excess was so much overbalanced by unforeseen increase
of receipts that sufficient surpluses were realized in 1901 and 1902
to make good the deficiencies of the two previous years. During the
years 1899-1903 Egypt has therefore expended close upon £2,000,000 in
these annual grants; she has also paid over, partly as special credits
and partly as loans, another £1,000,000 for capital expenditure on
railways and telegraphs, as already mentioned. There are deductions to
be made from this sum of £3,000,000 in calculating the actual cost
imposed on Egypt by the Soudan; but as these are the actual amounts
on which the Soudan Budget is calculated, they must be set down here.
It sounds, perhaps, a strange thing to say that the Soudan finances
are in a sound condition when such sums have to be contributed by
Egypt, but such is certainly the fact. The great feature is the
recuperative power of the country, so markedly displayed since 1901,
and there can be no doubt that if, with Egypt’s help, the two
principles of low taxation and irrigation can be steadily applied,
they will produce, if not as great, yet a similar result to that
which they have produced in Egypt itself.
CHAPTER XXII
THE COST OF THE SOUDAN TO EGYPT
The Nile Valley presents some peculiar examples of political
organization. At one end of it is Uganda, a British Protectorate
under the administration of the Foreign Office. At the other is
Egypt, nominally an independent despotism, tempered by international
Boards of Control in several departments, notably finance, and paying
tribute to a suzerain Power—Turkey—but in the military occupation
of England. Between comes the Soudan, where, except at Suakin,
the British and Egyptian flags fly side by side. It is ruled by a
Governor-General, joint representative of the King and the Khedive,
whose acts have to be approved by the British Consul-General at Cairo,
and it is jointly occupied by the troops of both Powers. If it is
difficult to decide upon the exact position of Egypt, what shall be
said of the Soudan? International jurists have in it a fair field of
problems on which to exercise their wits, not to mention the peculiar
status of the Lado enclave. But whatever imaginary difficulties
may be conceived, one thing is certain: the hoisting of the British
flag leaves no doubt of the fact that the Soudan is not in any way a
part of the Turkish Empire. The difficulties and complications which
have been caused in Egypt by the Capitulations and the consequences
derived from them definitely cease with the boundaries of Egypt. It
is easy to see that those who framed the Convention of 1899 were
thoroughly determined on this. Article VIII. lays down that the mixed
tribunals shall not extend to the Soudan, except Suakin, and, to
further preclude any chance of international trouble, it is expressly
stated that no Consuls or other foreign representatives shall be
permitted in the Soudan without His Britannic Majesty’s consent,
and that no special privileges shall be accorded to the subjects of
any one or more Powers to trade, reside, or hold property, within
the limits of the Soudan.
Otherwise, there was no reason why the Soudan should not have been
placed in exactly the same position as Egypt, whatever that may
be. In every other respect it is, in fact, in the same position as
though the Egyptian flag flew alone, especially in the matter of
cost. When the British taxpayer is looking at a map of the world
in order to get some satisfaction for his Imperial expenditure,
and casts his eyes over Africa, he doubtless comforts himself with
the reflection that in the Soudan England governs, but Egypt pays,
and wishes that other portions of the Empire were managed on similar
principles. England governs, and Egypt pays, but the division of
labour is not unfair. If the Egyptian finds it hard to realize the
meaning of a veiled Protectorate, the more unsophisticated Soudanese
would find it totally impossible. The flag is a visible symbol which
appeals to him directly, and contributes largely to the maintenance
of peace. Many a tribe submits contentedly to British dominion,
which would indignantly scout the idea of submission to Egypt
alone. As a matter of fact, the British Government does contribute
something in money, for it bears the cost of the British battalion
at Khartoum and its barracks. Still, it is to the Egyptian Treasury,
and not the British, that the Soudan has to look, and it is worth
while to estimate rather closely the sums which Egypt has to find,
and the advantages which it gains in return.
The cost of the Soudan Campaign from the opening of the Dongola
Campaign in 1896 to February, 1899, was £2,345,345, made up as
follows:
£
Railways 1,181,372
Telegraphs 21,825
Gunboats 154,934
Military expenditure 996,223
----------
Total £2,345,345
Since then, up to the end of 1903, the ordinary expenditure of
Egypt in the Soudan has been, as was shown, about £2,000,000, and
the capital expenditure about another £1,000,000. In other words,
the Soudan has cost Egypt nominally about £600,000 a year for the
last five years.
But as a matter of fact the real cost during the five years has
been a good deal less than this. Various deductions ought to be
made. In the first place, Egypt takes all the Custom duties on goods
going through to the Soudan. These came to about £60,000 in 1902,
and were estimated at about £70,000 for 1903, an estimate very
likely to be below the mark. It is safe to reckon that during the
five years they amounted to nearly £200,000. Then, the expenses
of the Egyptian army of occupation in the Soudan are charged to
the Soudan Government. During the first two years these amounted
to about £300,000 per annum. Taking an average of £200,000, we
get a sum of £1,000,000 under this head. If the Soudan had not been
reconquered, Egypt would have had to maintain nearly as large an army
as at present, and although the cost of maintenance is naturally
larger in the Soudan, it would not be unfair to deduct another
£800,000 as money that must have been expended in any case. Of
the capital expenditure, £600,000 was in loans for railway and
telegraph development. Although the prospect of repayment of these
loans is somewhat remote, they ought not to be written off as pure
out-of-pocket expenses, seeing that the Soudan Government pays 2½
per cent. per annum upon them. Two and a half per cent. on £600,000
is equal to 5 per cent. on £300,000. An investment with this return
would be more advantageous to Egypt than extinguishing an equal
portion of her debt, and it is therefore reasonable to deduct that
sum from the total expenditure. All these allowances added together
make up a sum of £1,300,000, bringing the average annual cost to
Egypt during the five years down to £340,000; while in addition to
all this the Egyptian revenues have also directly benefited through
the Railways and Post-office by the extra passengers, goods, letters,
telegrams, and money orders, passing to and fro.
Still, when all deductions have been made, it cannot be denied,
especially as the Soudan still calls loudly for more capital
expenditure, that the reoccupation of that country, from a strictly
financial point of view, though in one aspect philanthropic, is not as
yet philanthropy at 5 per cent. But there are certain solid advantages
which, though their value to Egypt is difficult to calculate in terms
of money, are worth to her many times over the actual sum which the
Soudan costs her.
First of all comes the fact, so often insisted upon, that the whole
of the upper waters of the Nile are now in the secure possession of
those who are responsible for her welfare. This supreme and vital
necessity overshadows all others, and would by itself have forced
her to undertake almost any sacrifice. In fact, as all the water in
Egypt comes through the Soudan, her contribution may be looked upon
as a water-rate calculated at an exceedingly low figure. Secondly,
she is relieved from all fear of foreign invasion. The frontier is
once more at rest, and no longer troubled even by raids. There is
a vast difference between a peaceful and comparatively prosperous
neighbour and a horde of furious barbarians hammering at her gates.
Further, the pacification of the Soudan enabled the burden of
conscription to be diminished. The army was reduced by 5,500 men,
and the period of service was reduced from fifteen years to ten,
of which five have to be spent with the colours, and five in the
reserve or police. Considering how much the Egyptian fellah dislikes
military service, those who are affected by this change probably
regard it as the greatest benefit of all.
A new field has also been opened for Egyptian trade and the employment
of Egyptians. A constantly expanding market at her door for sugar
and other goods is no small advantage. A good deal of the money
spent in the Soudan, though lost to the Egyptian Treasury, is not
lost to Egypt, for it takes the form of salaries for numbers of
Egyptians in the Government service, and the money orders passing
from the Soudan to Egypt show that at least a portion of it returns
immediately. Moreover, the Soudan is gradually losing its old
traditional terrors, and more and more Egyptians, though as yet in
small numbers, are returning to settle there when their period of
service is over.
Lastly, the good name of Egypt has been restored; one of the evil
pages in her history has been finally turned. The country which
she once ruined by her misgovernment and oppression and by her
greedy haste to share in the profits of the slave-trade, and then
abandoned to barbarism, has been rescued, and set moving once more
on the paths of civilization and good government. It is right that
in the days of her prosperity she should do something to assist her
less fortunate neighbour.
It has been said that for the present Egypt will continue her annual
grant to the Soudan of £E390,000 a year. But she will also be called
upon to find some large additional sums. The Soudan requires capital,
but has no credit of her own on which to borrow. The British taxpayer
ought not to be called upon, even if he had not borne his share
already, since it is not his interests, but those of Egypt, which
are primarily concerned. But Egypt herself is not in a position,
owing to international complications, to contract new loans,
nor is it at all desirable to impose additional taxation for the
purpose. Private enterprise, even if it was possible to employ it,
would in the end be too expensive. But the problem is not insoluble,
though difficult. Lord Cromer in his last report gives a most
admirable summary of the position:
‘I hope and believe that, although the difficulties are
considerable, they will not prove insurmountable. A hopeful feature
of the future is to be found in the fact, on which I have dwelt at
some length in my Egyptian Report, that the programme of fiscal
reform in Egypt is now completed. It cannot be doubted that the
people of Egypt are now very lightly taxed. Strongly as I should
object to any increase of Egyptian taxation for Soudanese purposes,
I can see no objection whatever to maintaining such taxes as at
present exist, partly with a view to providing the capital necessary
for the improvement of the Soudan. Indeed, far from there being any
objection, I believe the adoption of such a course to be strictly
in accordance with Egyptian interests; for, until capital is spent,
the Egyptian Treasury cannot hope that any considerable reduction in
the present Soudan deficit will be possible. I am, of course, aware
that the purely Egyptian requirements, such as improved justice and
police, to which allusion is made in my Egyptian Report, must, in this
connection, take precedence of the necessities of the Soudan, great
though these latter be. I am, however, not without hope that, if due
care and deliberation be exercised, if the projects on which capital
is spent be chosen after a thorough examination of their merits
and practicability, and if everything in the nature of undue haste
and precipitation be avoided, money in fairly adequate quantities
may eventually be found both for the improvement of the Egyptian
administrative services and for the development of the Soudan.
‘There can be no question as to the direction in which capital
expenditure is most required. As I have said in my Egyptian
Report, the construction of the Suakin-Berber Railway is absolutely
essential to the well-being of the Soudan. I need only add that all
the testimony which I received during my recent visit to the Soudan
strongly confirmed me in the opinion which I had previously held on
this subject.’
Such words coming from Lord Cromer are full of hope and encouragement
for the administrators of the Soudan. The man who found means to
overcome the financial difficulties of the Reservoir works at Assouan
is more than likely to surmount those of the Suakin-Berber Railway.
In the long-run Egypt herself will benefit as well as the Soudan. Of
course, most of the trade now passing through Egypt will return
to its natural channel by Suakin and the Red Sea. The Customs
now taken at Alexandria will go directly to the Soudan, but as
soon as this happens a corresponding reduction can be made in the
Egyptian contribution. Nor will purely Egyptian trade with the Soudan
suffer. The Nile Valley route will remain, but it will be cheaper for
goods from Lower Egypt to travel via Suez and Suakin. The import as
well as the export trade of the Soudan will be vastly encouraged, and
every step forward in prosperity will make her a better market for the
goods of Egypt as well as those of other countries. Once the railway
is made, but not till then, there is a possibility of the revenues of
the Soudan improving sufficiently to make the country self-supporting,
and able to dispense entirely with any annual grant from Egypt.
It is calculated that the construction of the new railway will cost
£2,500,000. Taking this as a basis, and assuming that Egypt was
able to make an arrangement under which the money should be repaid by
annual instalments over a period of ten years, with interest at 5 per
cent., it would involve an average annual addition to her expenditure
of £318,750, or a total cost of ten times that sum. If the period
was twenty years, the average annual cost would be £185,625, or, say,
£200,000. It is rash for an outsider to speculate on such subjects,
and the figures are merely given as a rough illustration; but it
seems certain that Egypt could easily bear any such burden. Nor does
it appear a sanguine forecast to estimate that within ten years of
the completion of the railway the revenues of the Soudan will have
so greatly benefited, both by the direct cheapening of supplies,
fuel, and other material, and by the development of trade generally,
that at least a saving of £200,000 a year will accrue to Egypt,
even if she still finds it prudent to contribute something.
What future capital Egypt will have to find must be uncertain. The
whole situation will be changed by the advent of the railway. But if
all the signs of the times can be trusted, whatever her expenditure
may be, she will have no reason to repent of it.
NOTE.—Since the above was in print, new light has been thrown on
the subject by a passage in the Note on the Budget for 1904 by Sir
Eldon Gorst, Financial Adviser to the Khedive:
‘The Council of Ministers has authorized the Ministry of Finance
to advance out of the Special Reserve Fund the amount required
for the construction of a railway to connect the Valley of the
Upper Nile near Berber with the Red Sea at Suakin. The preliminary
survey of the proposed line has been completed, and an estimate of
its cost prepared. The total sum required, which amounts to about
£E1,770,000, will be spread over a period of from three to four
years, so that there should be no difficulty in meeting the charge
out of the annual increment of the Special Reserve Fund, but it will
be obviously undesirable to sanction any further large grants out of
the fund during this period. The construction of the railway will be
put in hand without delay, and if no unforeseen contingency occurs,
it may be hoped that it will be available for traffic in about three
years’ time.’
The Special Reserve Fund is made up of the free balance remaining
at the disposal of the Egyptian Government when all other claims on
their receipts have been settled.
CHAPTER XXIII
CONCLUSION
Some time ago a small detachment of Egyptian troops was passing
through a village in a remote and primitive part of Kordofan. A
soldier of the party, going to draw water at the well, there met,
like Jacob, one of the daughters of the people, who helped him in
his task. Out of gratitude for her assistance or admiration for
her charms, he gave her one of the few things he had to offer, a
large red cotton handkerchief. Attired in it, the damsel excited
the admiration and envy of all her fellows, and from this chance
seed arose a demand for Manchester cotton goods. But as the desired
articles could not be purchased for nothing, the supply of charitable
soldiers being limited, the inhabitants had to apply themselves to
the collection of gum in order to be able to satisfy their wants. And
thus the exports improved as well as the imports.
In different forms the same process is going on all over the Soudan,
and the sternest admirer of Arcadian simplicity could hardly deny
that the people are happier and better because of it. The country
is not such an El Dorado that they are likely to be corrupted by
excessive wealth. Their awakening needs can only be satisfied by
means of habits of industry. Thanks to good government they are
able on the one hand securely to enjoy the fruits of their labour,
and on the other hand, they are prevented from taking any short-cuts
to fortune by raiding their neighbours and selling them into slavery.
If it were necessary to justify British interference in the Soudan,
the fact of the repression of slavery would alone be sufficient. If
the slave-trade does still exist, it does so only precariously in a
few remote holes and corners. The markets of Khartoum and Omdurman
and other centres are greater and more various than they have ever
been before, but this one traffic, once their principal feature, is
absent and gone for ever. No change could be greater or eventually
more beneficial in its effects on the whole life and character alike
of the slave-owners, the slave-dealers, and those unhappy tribes
who involuntarily furnished their material.
The establishment of personal liberty and of security for life and
property, elsewhere the commonplaces of government, is not always
the result of civilization in Africa. They are new, at any rate, in
the Soudan. But it would ill become the English rulers of the Soudan
to take any credit to themselves if their five years’ record had
no more to show than this. They must not be content to be judged by
comparison with any former rulers. After the Khalifa’s tyranny,
almost any government would seem mild and beneficent. It is not
enough merely to have stanched the wounds by which the patient was
bleeding to death; the foundations must be laid for his complete
restoration to health and vigour. Judged by this test, however,
they need not fear the verdict.
The chief difficulty is the universal ignorance and superstition that
prevail. But these ancient fortresses are being directly assaulted
every day by the extension of a sound system of education. The
strong administration of equal justice, and the increasing growth
of trade and commerce, work powerfully in the same direction. All
three agents are stimulated by the improvement of communications
by river, road, and railway. There is hope in the fact that, though
the people start from a very low level, their past has not been one
of complete barbarism. Although Egyptian and dervish rule repressed
all habits of industry and culture, the people of the country which
was once the kingdom of Sennar had considerable repute as weavers,
goldsmiths, curriers, and potters. They still practise a native
form of inoculation for small-pox. And, to take their traditions
still further back, it is said that in some places, in the elaborate
dressing of their hair and the use of ornamental sandals on great
occasions, they reproduce the fashions of ancient Egypt. Ed Damer,
near the junction of the Atbara and the Nile, now a paltry village,
had once a university of its own no less than Sennar.
Time, of course, must be allowed for these influences to work. Not in
five years and not in one generation can the evils deep-rooted in the
past be swept away. Though all the reforms have been introduced most
cautiously, and with great regard for the prejudices and traditions
of the people, it is still sometimes necessary to teach a sharper
lesson, and to clearly advertise the fact that if the Government
is benign and merciful it is not because it is weak. When such
occasions do arise, as in the case of the last in the succession of
Mahdis, suppressed a few months ago in Southern Kordofan, there is no
fumbling and delay. The blow is struck at once and decisively. There
is a wonderful difference between a prophet with a divine mission to
regenerate Islam by force of arms slaughtering a rabble of ill-led
Egyptian peasants, and an impostor unable to free himself from prison,
or dangling from a gallows in El Obeid after being captured in the
field and fairly tried with all the forms of law.
Such incidents, when properly handled, are only ripples on the general
calm. There have been rumours from time to time of troubles likely to
arise from the action of the Sheikh-es-Senussi. There were internal
troubles in the kingdom of Wadai, which lies to the west of Darfur,
and it was thought that these might force him to abandon his peaceful
attitude, for his influence is predominant in that country. It would
undoubtedly be dangerous if he were to proclaim a holy war, for he has
many adherents in the Soudan as well as in Egypt. But until now his
sect has been founded on rules of conduct, and he and his predecessors
have steadily refused to adopt a militant attitude. The Mahdi was a
good deal afraid of him, and nominated him as one of his Khalifas,
but he refused to accept the position. It is now announced that the
French have occupied Wadai; we have every reason to welcome them as
neighbours. Wadai was one of the few remaining strongholds of the
slave-trade, and its suppression there will facilitate the operations
of the Slavery Department in Western Kordofan. And should any trouble
arise from the followers of the Sheikh-es-Senussi or any other sect in
that quarter, it will be a great advantage to have the co-operation
of the French, who would have the same interest as ourselves in
speedily putting it down. On the other side, now that the frontier
is settled, there is not likely to be trouble with the Abyssinians,
and the Italians in Eritrea and Massowah are the best of neighbours.
It may some day be necessary to interfere in Darfur, though not
during the reign of the present Sultan, Ali Dinar. Ali Dinar has seen
something of the world; he is a vigorous ruler, and he understands
very plainly that his interests lie in keeping on good terms with
the Soudan Government. But some day Ali Dinar will be gathered to his
fathers, and possibly some Rehoboam will succeed him, who will cause
internal dissensions, or someone afflicted with Napoleonic ideas, who
will have to be chastised. Sooner or later, something of the kind is
bound to happen, but it is to be hoped that a country so remote from
the Nile will continue under its native rulers as long as possible.
What the future political status of the Soudan will be depends upon
the course of events in Egypt. As long as Lord Cromer is there—and
long may it be—everyone may feel easy. But when some lesser man
has to stand as buffer between Egypt and the Foreign Office, it may
make a great difference whether Egypt takes her place as definitely a
part of the British Empire or not. Every year the number of British
civilians in the Soudan service is growing. Great as have been the
services of the officers of the Egyptian army, their employment
has this disadvantage, that they are liable to be called away just
when they are most required, and when they have thoroughly learned
the business of administration. It has been good for the Soudan to
have the choice of some of the most capable officers in the British
Army for her civil work, and a spell of civil administration is
excellent training for the soldier. But a glance at the names of
the governors and inspectors of provinces year by year shows what
a number of changes there are under the system. Some of them will
probably throw in their lot definitely with the Soudan; but this can
only be counted upon in exceptional cases. As administration becomes
more complicated, it will be less possible for the soldier to take up
the reins as he can now. Specially trained men will be more and more
necessary. But at present the Soudan civil service is a water-tight
compartment. Its members are in a doubtful sort of position. They are
not in the Egyptian service, nor in the British Colonial Service, nor
are they definitely under the Foreign Office. Up till now there has
been no difficulty in recruiting the small number of capable civilians
required. But as the number increases there may be some difficulty
in obtaining sufficient candidates of the right stamp. Unless the
country becomes very much more wealthy, it has no great prizes to
offer. But if the whole Nile Valley were in practice regarded as
one country, which it really is, and all under one head, with one
combined civil service, there would be much more scope for able men,
and each part of it would benefit by the possibilities of interchange.
It would be a great piece of organization; but, with Indian experience
before us, there is no reason why it should not be a success. Direct
administration ought not to be in the hands of the Foreign Office,
which has plenty of diplomatic business of its own to look after. In
one department, and that a very important one, the whole of Nileland
will, indeed, be so organized in practice. When the great schemes for
the final binding of the Nile are put in hand, they must be all under
one control, and that control will be exercised from Cairo. It would
be intolerable and impossible that every time it was thought desirable
to open the Reservoir gates, say of Lake Albert, there should have
to be negotiations between district governments or departments. The
water of the Nile has made its powerful political influence felt
throughout the Soudan; in time it will play its part in Uganda.
But such semi-continental speculations are unprofitable except for
those who have some power to realize them. For the present the horizon
of Soudan politics is bounded by the railway. From its completion
all immediate plans of progress must take their start. It would be
foolish to take too sanguine a view. Railway communication between
Khartoum and the Red Sea will not smooth away all the difficulties
of administration. There will still be years of low Nile and scanty
rainfall. There will still be an abominable climate during a large
portion of the year. Mosquitoes, sand-flies, and other insects
will still ply their uncomfortable occupations. Dhurra will still
suffer from curious and unique parasites. Cattle will be subject
to murrain. Perhaps cotton, free from ‘worm’ and ‘hog,’
will discover some new foe to combat. Locusts and white ants will
still occasionally devour what they ought not, and possibly develop
fresh objectionable tastes. New Mahdis, unconvinced by the doom of
their predecessors, may still require to be put down from time to
time. Economic laws cannot be expected to work with the same certainty
and freedom from cross-currents as they do in Egypt. In other words,
the Soudan is a tropical country, subject to surprises: it will have
its ups and downs like other places. These and similar difficulties
it would have to face, railway or no railway. But beyond question,
once the line is open, it will be in a far better position to grapple
with them all, and to reap the benefits of the sound foundations
which are now being solidly and patiently laid by the handful of
Englishmen to whose charge its destinies have been entrusted by
Fate. And whatever else of good or evil the future may have in store,
the Soudan has one treasure which makes it certain that it will never
again be allowed to lapse from the pale of civilization, and that is
not the gold which attracted the attention of its former invaders,
with such disastrous consequences both to conquerors and conquered,
but the inestimable possession of the Nile.
INDEX
Abbas Pasha, 30
Abd-el-Kader, 160
Abd-el-Rahman the Just, 151
Abu Hamed, 168, 175, 176, 229
Abu Simbel, temple of, 174
Abu Zeid, 125
Abyssinia:
Bonchamps Expedition from, 170
coffee from, 239, 241
Egypt—
annexations by, 153
defeat by, 144
defeat of, 154
frontier settlement with, 193, 232, 274
gold district in, 245
Gordon’s arrangement with, 155
Khalifa at war with, 166
Nile, treaty regarding (1902), 113
scenery and climate on frontier of, 189
Sennar triumph over, 140, 141
slave-raiding on frontier of, 211
trade with—
cotton in demand for, 242
railway suggested to open up, 232
Sobat as route for, 233
Achmet Bey, 143
Acre, 24, 28
Adlan, King, 140, 144
Agricultural Banks, 105, 234
Ahmed Hamad, 207
Aird and Co., 81
Akobo River, 187
Albert Edward Lake, 121
Albert Nyanza:
Baker’s discovery of, 149
circumnavigation of, 151, 157
dam on, scheme for, 118-123
regulator at, suggestion of, 132, 133
Alexandria, journey from, to Khartoum, 173-177
Ali Dinar, Sultan of Darfur, 190, 192, 193, 274
Amara Dunkas, 140
Ambadi, Lake, 126
American Medical Mission, 223
Angarebs, 182
‘Antiquos,’ 182
Arabia, slave demand in, 212
Arabic, 198, 224
Arabs:
as engineers, 29
characteristics of, 223, 225
intermixture with negroes, 140
misrule by, 19
slave-trade carried on by, 140, 142
Soudanese settlements of (A.D. 700), 139
Training College for, 204, 222, 223
views on slavery, 213
Ardrup, 154
Argin, 166
Assiout Barrage:
beneficial effect of, 89
construction of, 85, 86
cost of, 88, 89
Assouan:
granite outcrop at, 73, 81, 93; quarries, 93, 94
journey to, from Luxor, 174
maximum flood at, variations in, 11
Nile discharges at, 6-10, 75, 89
prosperity of, 91
‘red’ water at, 8
site of, 92
Assouan Dam:
appearance of, 95-98
Barrage in relation to, 28
beneficial effects of, 82-84
compensation cases arising from, 103, 104
construction of—
difficulties of, 82
numbers employed in, 82
time allowed for, 81
cost of, 88
dimensions of, 82
distribution of water stored by, 82, 83, 85
financial arrangements regarding, 79, 84
inauguration of, 92, 98-102
locks on west side of, 82, 96
nature of, 74, 75
Philæ champions’ effect on, 76
suggestion of, 72, 73
volume of water to be provided by, if raised to full height, 114
Atbara, Battle of the, 168, 176
Atbara River:
basin irrigation on, suggested, 236
disappearance of, 6, 10
flood-water on, date of, 8
intercepting of, suggested, 133
junction of, with Nile, 5
railway to cross, project of, 230
soil in district of, 189
Austrian R.C. Mission, 223
Azande (Niam-Niams), 145, 194
Baadi, King, 140, 141
Babu class non-existent, 224
Baggara tribes, 190
Bahr el Gebel. See Nile, White
Bahr el Ghazal:
Kitchener’s gunboats on, 168
sudd in, 126, 131
waste of, 5, 124, 125
Bahr el Ghazal Province:
finances of, 259
French advance into, 169, 170
Gessi’s exploits in, 157
iron in, 244
nature of country, 189
rubber from, 239, 244
situation of, 191
slave-trade in, 145, 150
Suleiman’s revolt in, 156
tribes in, 194
waterways in, 189, 233
Bahr el Homr, 169
Bahr el Zeraf. See under Nile
Bahr Yusuf, 29, 31, 85
Baker, Sir Benjamin, 70
Baker, Sir Samuel: dam suggested by (1867), 73; travels of (1863 and
1870), 128; Ismail’s employment of, 148, 149
Baker, Valentine, 164
Baksheesh, 103
Bari tribe, 180
Baring, Sir E. See Cromer
Baro River, 187
Barrage, nature of, 46. See also Damietta and Rosetta
Barun negroes, 211
Basin irrigation. See under Irrigation
Belgians, advance of, 169
Lado Enclave leased to, 188
Beni Gerrar, 190
Beni Omr, 139
Beni Shangul, 142, 245
Berber:
colony at, a failure, 227
fakir suspected of murder in, 210
Kitchener’s occupation of, 168
kuttab, model, established at, 222
railway from Suakin to, project of, 165, 230, 231, 244, 256,
267-269, 277
rebuilding of, 177
situation of, 191
telegraph from, to Suakin, 256, 257
Berber Province:
cotton in, 242; prospects of investment in, 244
finances of, 259
irrigation needed in, 235
sakiehs, derelict, in (1881), 148
sugar-cane cultivated in, 241
taxation in, remission of, 249; incidence of, formerly, 250
Berea, 20
Berms, nature of, 16; irrigation of, 32, 37
Bersine (Egyptian clover), 36, 39-41
Blackwater fever, 194
Blue Nile. See under Nile
Bonchamps Expedition, 170
Bongo tribe, 145, 180, 194
Bor, 119, 124, 191
Borillos, Lake, 20
Boulé, M., 73
British rule, native attitude towards, 107-109, 263
Brooke, Mr., 55
Brown, Sir Hanbury, 44, 53, 55
Cadi, office of, 203, 204
Cairo:
journey from, to Luxor, 174
Mohammedan University of, 109
Nile at—
discharges of, 16, 17
‘red’ water, 8
view of, 4
Caisse de la Dette, 78
Camels—breeding of, 190, 233; employment of, 232, 233
Cassel, Sir E., 79
Cattle-breeding, 190
Chak Chak, 194
Chaltin, 169
Channurmin, 194
Cholera, 144
Clover (bersine), 36, 39-41
Coal, price of, 228, 255; absence of, 245
Coast lands, sinking of, 21
Coffee, 239, 241
Commerce. See Soudan, trade
Congo Free State, 169, 187
Copper-mines, 152, 245
Corruption, 103, 197
Corvée:
abolition of, 64, 105
floods, during, 65, 66
Government right regarding, maintained, 65
hardship of, formerly, 44, 59-63
liability to serve in, 63
Mehemet Ali’s use of, 24, 27
periods of demand for, 62
remains of, 18
Cotton crop:
diseases of—‘worm’ and ‘hog’ non-existent, 244, 276
experimental farm at Shendi, 243
hardiness of, 84
irrigation of, 40-42; perennial, required, 24
seasons of, 40, 41
Soudan suitable for, 237, 241, 242;
quality produced, 243
value of, 39
Cotton goods:
Soudanese imports of, 237, 238; demand in Kordofan, 270
Cotton, raw:
Soudanese exports of, 239, 241
Cotton, Sir Arthur, 74
Cromer, Lord (Sir Evelyn Baring): Lord Lawrence compared with, 43,
44; on the Barrage, 58; arranges financial difficulties of Reservoir
scheme, 78, 79, 82; importance of work represented by, 100; insight
of, 105; promise of, regarding education, 225; confidence in, 274;
Report of, quoted, 205, 267, 268
Dabik, 21
Dam. See Assouan Dam
Damietta Barrage:
construction of, 47, 49-53
cost of repairs to, 51
effect of, in 1884, 50
useless condition of, formerly, 30, 43
Damirah, 21
Danagla tribe, 167
Dar Nuba, 180
D’Arnaud, 127
Darfur:
Belgian advance to, 169
disturbance on borders of, 192
feathers from, 180, 239, 241
founding of sultanate of, 140
independence of, 190, 274
Ismail’s annexation of, 151, 152
Khalifa from, 165
nature of country, 188
rebellion in (1877), 155, 156; revolt against the Khalifa, 166
Sultan of, 190, 192, 193, 274
Dates, Dongola varieties of, 229
tax on, 39, 252
Dem Zubehr, 169, 194
Dembo tribe, 146
Dervishes, 165, 166, 186, 191
Dinder River, 187, 242
Dinka tribe, 145, 180, 194
Diseases:
blackwater fever, 194
cholera, 144
malaria, 189, 234
research connected with, 225
Dhurra, 236, 276
Dongola:
colony at, a failure, 227
dervish occupation of, 165
fakir charged with poisoning in, 208-210
Kitchener’s occupation of, 168
kuttab, model, established at, 222
situation of, 191
Dongola Expedition (1896), 166
Dongola Province:
climate of, 229
cotton in, 242; prospects of investment in, 244
dates in, 229
irrigation needed in, 235
Land Commission in, 202
land-tax, proportion contributed by, 259
language of, 190
Mahdi, the, a native of, 160
population of, 230
profits of, 258, 259
railway in, 229, 230
sakiehs, derelict, in (1881), 148
sugar-cane cultivated in, 241
taxation in, remission of, 249; incidence of, formerly, 250
trade of, 230
Drainage, 87, 88
Duem:
district near, 235
gum from, 240
railway from, suggested, 232
telegraph at, 257
Duffile, 5, 119, 169
Ed Damer, 272
Edka, Lake, 20
Education. See under Soudan
Egypt:
Abyssinia, relations with. See under Abyssinia
Agricultural Bank, 105
cultivable land in, situation of, 13; amount of, 37
finances of—
Agricultural Bank, 105
Caisse de la Dette, 78
international complications of, 78
reproductive expenditure, 88, 104
government of, 261
irrigation. See Irrigation
Egypt, Lower:
crops, table of, 38
irrigation improvement in, due to Dam, 83
Egypt, Upper:
basin irrigation in, 16
characteristics of, 68, 69
crops in—
cotton, 41
rice, 42
summer, 39; increase in, due to Barrage, 50, 51, 55
table of, 38
cultivable land in, 13, 37
Egyptians:
Arab attitude towards, 223
army—
fellaheen’s dislike to service in, 33, 265
officers, grievances of, 108, 109
British rule, attitude towards, 107-109
characteristics of, 106, 109; physical, 33, 180
slave-trade encouraged by, 145, 154, 155
Soudan—
Government posts in, held by, 197, 198, 266
misrule of, 144-148
El Fasher, 164
El Nemr, 143
El Obeid:
gum from, 181, 240
Mahdi’s victory over, 162
railway to, from Omdurman, suggested, 232
slave-trade suppression inspector at, 212
Soudanese Cadi appointed to, 204
telegraph at, 257
El Teb, 164
Emin Bey, 151, 156
Equatoria:
Baker’s expedition to, 128
Emin’s rule of, 156
Gordon appointed Governor-General of, 150
Eritrea, 187, 191, 274
Fakirs, 208-210
Famaka, 168, 187
Fashoda:
French advance to, 169, 170
Shilluk rising at, 157
telegraph to, 257
Fashoda Province:
cotton wild in, 241
finances of, 259
natives of, 193
situation of, 191
tobacco in, 241
Fatiko, 150
Fayoum:
exceptional character of, 13
irrigated lands in, 31; increase of, due to Dam, 83
Mœris, Lake, in, 29
water-wheels in, 34
Fazokhl:
British and Egyptian advance to, 168
Fungs at, 140
Ismail’s advance to, 142
tobacco produced at, 241
Feathers, exports of, from Soudan, 180, 239, 241; tax on, 253
Fellaheen. See Egyptians
Finance. See under Egypt and Soudan
Football, 220
Foster, E. W. P., 44
French:
engineers, work of, 29. See also Mougel
Fashoda, advance of, 169, 170
Wadai occupied by, 273
French Congoland, 187
Fuel, price of, 228, 255
Fungs, 140, 141
Gallabat:
cotton grown at, 242
railway to, suggested, 232
telegraph at, 257
Garstin, Sir W.: surveys by, 44, 115, 123, 126; quoted, 114, 121,
122, 130; cited, 119, 122
Gash. See Khor Gash
Gedaref:
colony at, 228
cotton grown at, 242
Mahdi’s success at, 164
railway to, suggested, 232
telegraph at, 257
Gessi, 129, 157, 158
Gharbia, 45, 64
Ghazal River. See Bahr el Ghazal
Ghezireh (Island of Sennar):
profits of, 259
railway in, suggested, 232
situation of, 191
soil of, 191, 235, 236, 242
Ginnis, 165
Gizeh, irrigation improvement in, 83
Pyramids of, 63, 94
Godavery Dam, 74
Gold:
Nile Valley Gold Mining Company, 232
prospecting licenses for, 245
undesirability of, for Soudan, 245
Golo tribe, 146, 194
Gondokoro (Ismailia):
Baker’s arrival at (1871), 150
boats plying to, 233
position of, 187
Gordon, General: Ismail’s employment of, 148; Governor-General of
Equatoria, 150; attitude of, towards slave trade, 150, 151; advises
occupation of Mombasa, 153; recalled to the Soudan, 155; quells
Darfur rebellion, 155, 156; tours of, 156; returns to England, 157;
sent to evacuate the Soudan, 163; death of, 165
Gordon College:
bacteriological research laboratory at, 217, 224
buildings and situation of, 178, 214-217
character of, 217, 224
funds of, 216, 217
technical workshop apparatus at, 217, 221
Goz Abu Goma, 257
Graham, General, 164, 165
Granite at Assouan, 73, 81, 93; in the Atbara region, 189
Greek traders, 245, 246
Grenfell, General Lord, 166
Guinea worm, 234
Gum:
exports of, from Soudan (1879-1881), 239; (1899-1900), 240
price of, 240
sorting of, 180
substitutes for, 240
tax on, 253
uses of, 239
Guttapercha (rubber), 239, 244; tax on, 253
Halfa (see also Wadi Halfa):
British appearance of, 175
primary school at, 218, 222
situation of, 191
Halfa Province, profits of, 259
Halfaya:
characteristics of, 177
industrial school to be removed to, 220
Hamegs, 140, 141, 143
Harrar, 152, 153, 156
Harûn, 156
Hashab, 239, 240
Hashin, 165
Hellet Abbas, 227
Herodotus, 70, 134
Hicks Pasha, 162
Hofrat-en-Nahas, 152, 169, 245
Hunter, General, 176
Ibrahim, 142
Ibrahimiyah Canal, 30, 63, 85, 89
India:
administrators from, 43
Soudanese trade with, formerly, 231, 237, 238
Indian corn (maize), 40, 55
Iron, 146, 244
Irrigation:
basin—
extent of system in Upper Egypt, 16
improvements in, 15
invention of, 13
method of, 13-15
expenditure on, in twenty years, 88
perennial—
advantages and disadvantages of, 25, 26
Corvée hardships incidental to, 61
high flood in relation to, 132
Mehemet Ali’s schemes of, 23-26
pumping-engines, 35; system of rotations, 56
responsibilities connected with, 111, 112
Soudan, in, need and scope for, 234-236, 242, 243
Islam, 160, 161
Ismail, Khedive: corvée employed by, 30, 31, 62; characteristics of,
31, 71; Soudan under, 139, 148; annexations by, 149, 169; slave
policy of, 149; impending ruin of, 151
Ismail Pasha Ayoub, 128
Ismail (son of Mehemet Ali), 142, 143
Ismailia (Gondokoro), 150
Italians, Massowah under, 169, 274
stone-cutters, 82
Ivory, 180, 239, 253
Jaaffer Pasha, 147
Jaalin tribe, 167, 186
John, King of Abyssinia, 154
Juba River Expedition, 153, 154
Jur River, 131, 194, 233
Jur tribe, 146, 194
Justice, idea of, 205, 206
Kabbabish tribe, 166, 190
Kantar, equivalent of, 84
Karnak, 174
Kassala:
colony at, 227, 228
cotton factory formerly at, 242
railway branch to, suggested, 232
situation of, 191
sugar-cane and tobacco cultivated at, 241
telegraph at, 257
Kassala Province (Taka):
coffee from, 239
cotton from, 241
educational facilities non-existent in, 223
Egyptian tyranny over, 144
finances of, 259
Kerma, 229
Kerreri, 168, 183
Khalifa Abdullah: Mahdi succeeded by, 165; advance of, 166; tyranny
of, 167, 186; fall of, 168; house of, 180; carriage of, 181;
learning suppressed by, 216
Khanoon Humayoum, 201
Khartoum:
British battalion at, maintenance of, 263
climate of, 179
court of appeal at, 202
fall of, to the Mahdi, 165
football at, 220
gardens at, 235
Gordon besieged in, 164
Gordon College at. See Gordon College
Greek traders in, 246
gum sorting at, 240
journey to, from Alexandria, 173-177
mudirieh of, 191
mutiny at, 192
Nile, discharges of, 6, 8; view of, 179
primary school at, 218, 219, 222
quarters and condition of, 178, 179
situation of, 5, 177
slave-trade centre at, 144
Suakin, railway connection with, project of, 230, 231, 244, 256,
267-269, 277
telegraph to Duem from, 257
Khartoumers, 145, 149
Khor Baraka, 242
Khor Gash, 187, 228; alluvial deposits of, 241, 242
Kind, payment in, 252
Kitchener, Lord: advance of, blocked by sudd, 129; successes of,
168; interest of, in Gordon College, 216-218
Koran, study of, 221, 222
Kordofan:
Achmet’s conquest of, 143
cotton goods, demand for, in, 270
Egyptian tyranny over, 144
feathers from, 239, 241
gum from, 180
iron in, 245
Mahdi, a, captured in, 162, 195, 272
mixed race in, 190
nature of country, 188
Nuba settlers in, 140; raiding by, 193
profits of, 258
rising in (1878), 156
situation of, 191
tobacco and sugar-cane in 241
Korosko, 174; desert, 168
Korti, 165, 176
Kosheh, 165
Kurshid, 144
Kuttabs, 221-223
Lado, Nile discharges at, 6, 8
Lado Enclave, 188, 261
Lakes, 20, 21
Lawrence, Lord, 44
Linant Pasha, 27, 46
Liotard, M., 169
Lupton Bey, 164
Luxor, 174
McKillop Pasha, 153
Mahdi, the (Sheikh Mohammed Ahmed): rising of, 160-165; death of,
165; tomb of, 181; attitude of, towards Sheikh-es-Senussi, 273
Mahdis, various, 195, 272, 276
Maize (Indian corn), 40, 55
Malaria, 189, 234
Mamurs, 192, 202
Manures, 36, 37
Marchand, Captain, 169, 170
Mareotis, Lake, 20
Marno, 129
Martial law, 200
Martyr, Colonel, 129
Massowah:
Egyptian army’s retreat to, 154
Ismail’s purchase of, 149
Italian possession of, 169, 274
Mather, Sir W., 217, 221
Mehemet Ali: career and works of, 23-29; scientific expedition
despatched by, 127; Soudanese Empire founded by, 139, 141, 142;
otherwise mentioned, 70, 71
Mekhemeh Sharia, 203
Menelik, King, 154, 193
Menes, King, 4, 13
Menoufia, 45, 64
Menzalah, Lake, 20, 21
Merowe, 165, 168
Meshra el Rek, 168, 194
Messalamia, 257
Metemmeh:
Achmet’s massacre at, 143
Jaalin massacred at, 186
relief expedition to, 165
Military government, nature of, 198
Missionaries, sphere of, 223
Mœris, Lake, 29, 70
Mohamed Pasha Said, 162
Mohammed Ahmed, Sheikh. See Mahdi
Mohammedan law, sacred, 203, 204
Universities, 215
Moncrieff, Sir Colin Scott. See Scott-Moncrieff
Mongalla, 187
Mombasa, Gordon’s advice regarding, 153; railway, 118
Mosque el Azhar, 109
Mosquitoes, 126, 132, 234, 276
Mougel Bey, 29, 30, 46, 58
M’tesa, King, 150, 151
Mukhtar Pasha, 102
Mudirs, 191, 192, 258
Napoleon, 27, 28; letter of, to Abd-el-Rahman, 151
Navigation of canals, freedom of, 45
Negroes:
Arabian intermixture with, 140, 189, 190
Barun, 211
Nejumi, 166
Neufeld, Charles, 181
Niam-Niams (Azande), 145, 194
Nile River:
Bahr el Zeraf—
course of, 126-128
scheme regarding, 120
slave stations on, 150
Blue-
course of, between Lake Tsana and Khartoum, 116
exploration of (1902-1903), 115 flood on, date of, 8; suggestion
of intercepting, 133
height of banks of, above Khartoum, 235
irrigation works on, arguments for, 117, 236
junction of, with White Nile, 184
Khartoum, discharges at, 6, 8; viewed from, 179
traffic on, 233
cataracts of, 6
course of, 5
Dam. See Assouan Dam
Damietta branch of—
Barrage on. See Damietta Barrage
Mehemet Ali’s plan regarding, 27
Zifta Barrage on, 87
deflection of, by ancient enemies of Egypt, 112, 113
discharges of, 6-10, 75, 89
‘green’ water, 7
floods, corvée during, 65, 66
gauges of, 66
importance of, 4, 112, 113, 184, 277
low, period of recurrence of, 83, 84
‘red’ water, 8
Reservoir. See Assouan Dam
rise of, dates of, 7-9
Rosetta branch of, Barrage on. See Rosetta Barrage
Somerset, 5, 120, 121
special measures regarding, in 1900, 56, 57
sudd in. See Sudd
sunsets on, 76
weirs on, to relieve Barrage, 54
White-
Austrian R.C. Mission on, 223
Bahr el Gebel—
Baker’s ascent of, 128
channel of, 119, 124
course of, 125
danger from excessive flood in, 132
sudd in, 126, 129
Baker’s expedition up (1861), 149
bed of, 119
discharge of, maximum, 8
garrisons on, 151
‘green’ water in, 7
importance of, 9
islands in, irrigation on, 235
junction of, with Blue Nile, 184
Mehemet Ali’s scientific expedition sent to, 127
name of, 5
population on, 119
slave-trade along, 145
traffic on, 233
Valley of, 118
Zero, meaning of, 11
Nile Valley—
Administration of, varieties in, 261
trade route by, 231, 237, 254, 268
Nile Valley Gold Mining Company, 232
Nileland, one authority for, 135, 275, 276
Nili, 11
No, Lake, 119, 120, 193; origin of, 124, 125
Nubas, 140, 193
Nubia:
antiquities of, 174
Gold Mining Company in, 232
native boatmen in, 175
Nubian Desert, 135, 175
Nuers, 193
Omdurman:
buildings, etc., in, 181, 182
characteristics of, 179, 180
Government factories at, 177
Greek traders in, 245, 246
growth of population of, under Khalifa, 167
industrial school at, 220, 221
Kitchener’s capture of, 168
market of, 168, 181, 182, 271
primary school at, 218, 219; training college in connection with,
204, 222, 223; kuttab in connection with, 222
railway to El Obeid from, suggested, 232
situation of, 180
Taaisha tribe settled at, 167
Osman Digna, 165, 166
Ostrich-farming, 241. See also Feathers
Papyrus, 125
Peel, Captain Sir William, quoted, 135, 136
Perfumeries, 183, 230, 237, 238
Philæ, 75-77, 94, 174
Pibor River, 187
Portland cement, 52, 53, 82
Pumping. See under Irrigation
Pyramids, 27, 63, 94
Rahad River, 6, 187, 242
Ramadan, 93
Raouf Pasha, 152, 153, 159
Rayah Behera, 45
Rayah Menoufia, 45
Rayah Tewfiki, 45
Reform, native attitude towards, 106
Reid, Mr., 44, 50
Rejaf, 119, 169
Reproductive works, 88, 104
Reservoir, ancient, 70, 71, 95
modern. See Assouan Dam
Rhodes, Cecil, 257
Rice, cultivation of, 41, 42; imports of, 237, 238
‘Ride across the Nubian Desert, A,’ 135, 136
Ripon Falls, 133
Rosaires:
cataracts of, 117
slave-trade suppression inspector at, 212
steamer communication with, 233
Rosetta Barrage:
appearance of, 96, 97
cement used in, amount of, 53
construction of, 46, 47, 50-53
cost of repairs to, 51
effect of, in 1884, 49, 50
Mehemet Ali’s scheme for, 27
structure of, 44
subsidence in, 30, 43, 47
weir to relieve, 54, 55
Ross, Colonel, 44, 89
Rubber (guttapercha), 239, 244; tax on, 253
Rumbek, 194
Ruwenzori, 135
Sabaini, 41
Said Pasha: corvée employed by, 62; desirous of evacuating Soudan,
146; reforms of, 147
Sakiehs (water-wheels):
numbers of, between Khartoum and Berber, 234, 235
structure of, 34
taxation of, 147, 250
Salt, injurious effect of, 19, 40
Scents, 183, 230, 237, 238
Scott-Moncrieff, Sir Colin: Baring’s support of, 44; decision of, on
pumping-stations, 48; intercedes for Mougel Bey, 58
Seasons, 10, 11, 35
Setit River, 187
Semliki River, 121
Senna, 239
Sennar:
Arabian settlements in (A.D. 700), 139
civilization, former, 140, 141, 272
cotton formerly grown in, 242
Egyptian tyranny over, 144
finances of, 259
kuttab at capital of, 222
Mahdi in, 162
murder case from, 207
situation of, 191
telegraph in, 257
University formerly in, 272
Sennar, Island of. See Ghezireh
Serut fly, 233, 234
Shadoofs, 32-34
Shambe, 120, 126, 194
Sharaki lands, 14, 15, 89, 249
Shilluks:
cotton neglected by, 241
King of, tax-collecting emulated by, 193
Omdurman, at, 180
slaves raided from, 140
Sheikh-es-Senussi, 273
Shellal, 174
Shendi:
climate and soil of, 188
cotton farm at, 243
Crewe of the Soudan, 177
Ismail murdered at, 143
Sinkat, 164, 230
Slatin, Sir Rudolf von, 164, 181; cited, 167; quoted, 226
Slave-trade:
Abyssinian frontier, raiding on, 211
Arabian occupation in, 140, 142; Arabian market for, 212
British measures against, 212, 271
Egyptian responsibility for, 145, 154, 155
Gordon’s suppression of, 150, 151
Ismail’s policy regarding, 149
Khalifa, under, 168
Khartoum a centre of, 144
Soudan, prevalence in, 142, 155; fostered by overtaxation, 250
Wadai, at, 273
Slavery, Arab view of, 213
Small-pox, inoculation for, 272
Soap, manufacture of, 238
Sobat River:
Abyssinian agreement regarding, 113
American Medical Mission on, 223
district south of, 189
garrisons on, 151
‘green’ water from tributaries of, 7
importance of, 5, 119
trade possibilities of, 233
white sediment in, 5
Sobat Valley, rainfall in, 8
Sohagia Canal, 16
Somaliland, 153
Sorghum crops, 41
Soudan (for special towns and districts, see their titles):
agriculture in, importance of, 234, 245
loans for, 234
area of, 188
boundaries of, 171, 175, 186-188
British administration of, 186; native attitude towards, 196
capital of, 173
climates of, 188
colonization in, 227
Convention of 1899, 262
Customs receipts. See Soudan, finances
depopulation of, 185; increase of population, 227, 230
diseases. See Diseases
education—
Cromer, Lord, on, 225
Department of, 201, 217
elementary character of, required, 216
English, teaching of, 224
expenditure on, in three years, 218
Gordon College. See Gordon College
kuttabs, 221-223
primary schools established, 218, 219; kuttabs, 221-223
technical, 217, 220, 221
training college for Sheikhs, 222, 223
Egypt—
army of occupation from, maintenance of, 255, 264
financial relations with. See Soudan, finances
importance of Soudan to, 114, 115, 265
rule of, 144-148
evacuation of, contemplated, 163
finances (see also Soudan, taxation)—
Budget, 247, 249, 250; for 1902, 253; estimates for 1903, 257
capital, dearth of, 234, 266
Customs duties on land side retained by Egypt, 253, 254, 263
Egyptian control of, 247; contribution, amount of, 259, 260,
266; expenditure, 1899-1903, 263
public works, expenditure on, 258
revenue, sources of, 247, 248
sound condition of, 260
flood-gauges in, 66
gold in, rumours of, 141, 142; undesirability of, 245
government of—
British officials, versatility required of, 195, 196, 198, 199;
keenness of, 196; age of, 197; changes among, 275; status of, 275
Egyptian officials, 197, 198, 266
methods of, 190-192
nature of, 261-263
investments in cotton in, prospects for, 244
irrigation. See Irrigation
justice, administration of, 201-203, 206-211
kidnapping in, 212
land-measuring, instruction in, 219
land-ownership in, 198, 202; Government the admitted owner, 249
land-tax. See Soudan, taxation
legal administration in, 201-203, 206, 207
legal adviser in, 201; cited, 207
manufactures of, 242
Mehemet Ali’s influence on, 139, 141
nomad tribes in, 192, 250, 251
penal code of, 201
petitions to Governor-General in, 211, 249
population of, increasing, 227, 230
post and telegraphs, 254, 256, 257
provinces of, 191
railways in—
capital expenditure on, 256, 260, 264
Halfa-Kerma, 229
Halfa-Khartoum, 228
Suakin-Berber, project of, 165, 230, 231, 244, 256, 267-269, 277
takings of, 254, 255
various, suggestion of, 232
skilled labour, dearth of, 220
slave-trade. See Slave-trade
Steamer and Boats Department, 255
Stewart’s report on (1883), 159, 171, 237
taxation in—
amount raised by, annually, 251
date-tax, 252
gum, etc., on, 253
land-tax—
amounts of, 252
assessment of, 219
Dongola, contribution from, 259
proportion of taxation raised by, 252
lightness of, 253, 267
tribute, 192, 250, 251
Ushur, 252
various items in Budget of 1902, 253
telegraphs in, 254, 256, 257
trade in—
Greeks engaged in, 245, 246
Indian, former, 231, 237, 238
Nile Valley route for, 231, 237, 254, 268
obstacles to, 226, 227
returns of imports and exports, 237-239
water-ways for, 233
transport in, difficulties of, 227, 228; improvements in, 232
Turk, native attitude towards, 142, 193
war in, cost of, 263
reservoir project affected by, 78
Soudanese:
Arab, 189, 190
illiteracy of, 216
negro, 189, 190
women—
appearance of, 183
coiffure of, 183
employments of, 178, 180
Mahdi, woman as, 195
military honour regarded by, 176
mutiny at Khartoum concerning, 192
Stewart, Colonel D. H.: report by, on the Soudan, 159, 171, 237;
death of, 171; list of tribes by, 185, 186
Suakin:
Customs receipts at, decrease in, 254
Ismail’s purchase of, 149
primary school at, 218, 222
railway to Berber from, project of, 165, 230, 231, 244, 256,
267-269, 277
situation of, 191
telegraphs from, 257
trade returns at, 237-239
Sudd:
clearing of, 129-132, 233
nature of, 126
obstructions caused by, 127-129, 158
Sueh River, 169
Suez Canal, 62, 149
Sugar, Soudanese imports of, 238, 241, 265
Sugar-cane, 39, 41, 241
Suleiman (son of Zubehr), 152, 155-157
Sultâni, 41
Taaisha tribe, 165, 167
Taboot, 34
Taha Ali, 207, 208
Taiara, 239
Taka. See Kassala
Tamai, 164, 165
Tamarinds, 239
Taufikieh, 223
Taxation:
collection of taxes—
extortion formerly connected with, 159, 160, 248, 250
Shilluk King’s attempts at, 193
time of, 105, 248
principles of, 248, 249
reduction of, 105
remission of, 249
sakiehs, of, 147, 250
slave trade fostered by excessive, 250
Soudan, in. See Soudan, taxation in
Tembura, 169
Tewfik, Khedive, 157
Thames, discharges of, at Teddington, 9 note
Thebes, Plain of, 174
Timbuctoo, fakir from, 208-210
Tinnis, 21
Tobacco, 237, 238, 241
Tokar:
cotton produced at, 242
garrison at (1883), 164
recapture of (1891), 166
telegraph at, 257
Tonj, 194
Torricelli, Signor, 73
Toski, 166
‘Track of the forty days,’ 142
Trade. See Soudan, trade in
Transvaal War, 186, 200
Tribute, 192, 250, 251
Tsana, Lake:
dam at, scheme of, 116-118
exploration of (1902-1903), 115
site of, 116
treaty regarding (1902), 113
Tunah, 21
Tuti Island, 143, 177
Turkey:
Commissioner from, for proposed British evacuation, 102
Soudanese attitude towards, 142, 193
Suakin and Massowah purchased from, 149
suzerainty of, over Egypt, but not over Soudan, 261
Zeila purchased from, 153
Uganda:
administration of, 261
Baker’s relations with, 150
British protectorate over, declared, 169
dams on lakes in, scheme of, 118-123
Gordon’s treaty with, 151
railway along Abyssinian frontier to, suggested, 232
Soudanese boundary of, 187
swamps in, 6
telegraph tariff to obtain in, 257
‘Um soof,’ 126, 129
Umbrellas, imports of, 238
Unyoro, 150, 169
Ushur, 252
Vansleb, F., quoted, 71, 112
Victoria Nyanza, dam on, scheme for, 118-123
regulator at, suggested, 132, 133
Wad Medani;
district from, to Duem, 235
flour-mills at, 234
kuttab, model, at, 222
railway to, suggested, 232
telegraph at, 257
Wadai, 273
Wadi Halfa (see also Halfa):
railway from, 168
voyage to, from Shellal, 174
Wages, increase in, 109
Wau, 131, 194, 233
Water-wheels. See Sakiehs
Wellcome, Mr., 217, 224
Western, Colonel, 44, 50
Whale-headed stork, 5
White ants, 256, 276
White Nile. See under Nile
Whitehouse, Cope, 72
Willcocks, Sir William: work of, on Rosetta Barrage, 48, 49; report
of, on Nile Dam, 73; cited, 128; otherwise mentioned, 44, 64
Wingate, Sir Reginald: position of, 185; age of, 197; quoted on
possibilities of irrigation, 235, 236
Wodehouse, General, 166
Yusuf Pasha, 162
Zeila, 153
Zifta Barrage, 87, 88
Zubehr, 150, 152, 155, 157, 163
THE END
* * * * *
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD
[Illustration: MAP OF EGYPT and the SOUDAN 1904
_London: Stanford’s Geogl. Estabt._
London: Edward Arnold.]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: 1 metre = about 39 inches.]
[Footnote 2: A cubic metre of water equals, roughly, 1 ton.]
[Footnote 3: For the purpose of illustration, it is interesting to
compare the discharge of the Thames at Teddington:
_Cubic Metres per Second._
During June the average discharge for the
twenty years ending 1902 was 35
The average in June, 1903, was 178
The discharge on June 21, 1903, was 387
On February 21, 1900, it was 533
And on November 18, 1894 (greatest on
record), it was 1,065
I have given the discharge in cubic metres per second, the unit
generally in use on the Nile. On the Thames the figures are usually
given in gallons per day, which sounds much more imposing. If the
number of cubic metres per second is multiplied by about 1,900,000, it
gives approximately the number of gallons per day. But, after all, the
discharge of the Thames in June, 1903, was not so very far below that
of the Nile during the same month.]
[Footnote 4: The Egyptian peasant, however, refuses to accept the
prosaic evidence of his eyes about these rats, and, like the stout
conservative he is, prefers to believe the old tradition that they turn
to mud during the flood season. Many a man will gravely assert that he
has himself observed the transformation actually in progress.]
[Footnote 5: 1 Kantar = nearly 100 lbs.]
[Footnote 6: _Cf._ p. 71.]
[Footnote 7: Estimated. £E1 = £1 0s. 6d.]
[Footnote 8: Estimated.]
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