474 HORRORS OF MAHDISM 



religions but their own and carry on the slave-trade. 

 I do not believe that in the whole world there is to be 

 found any nook of territory which has shown such 

 astonishing progress from the most hideous misery to 

 well-being and prosperity as the Soudan has shown 

 during the last twelve years, while it has been under 

 British rule. Up to that time it was independent, and 

 it governed itself; and independence and self-govern- 

 ment in the hands of the Soudanese proved to be much 

 what independence and self-government would be in a 

 wolf pack. Great crimes were committed there — crimes 

 so dark that their very hideousness protected them from 

 exposure. During a decade and a half, while Mahdism 

 controlled the country, there flourished a tyranny which 

 for cruelty, bloodthirstiness, unintelligence, and wanton 

 destructiveness, surpassed anything which a civilized 

 people can even imagine. The keystones of the Mahdist 

 party were religious intolerance and slavery, with 

 murder and the most abominable cruelty as the method 

 of obtaining each. 



During those fifteen years at least two-thirds of the 

 popidation, probably seven or eight millions of people, 

 died by violence or by starvation. Then the British 

 came in, put an end to the independence and self- 

 government which had wrought this hideous evil, 

 restored order, kept the peace, and gave to each 

 individual a liberty which during the evil days of their 

 own self-government not one human being possessed, 

 save only the blood-stained tyrant who at the moment 

 was ruler. I stoj^ped at village after village in the 

 Soudan, and in many of them I was struck by the fact 

 that, while there were plenty of children, they were all 

 under twelve years old ; and inquiry always developed 

 that these children were known as " Government 



