MISCELLANEOUS SUBJECTS 475 



which prevails over its million square miles of tropical 

 territory. 



These primary assets even the Dervishes could not 

 destroy. In certain cases the desolation to which they 

 reduced some parts of the country had the contrary effect. 

 It is said, for instance, that the most accessible tracts of 

 gum forest, which provide the principal export from the 

 Sudan, owe their origin to the depopulation resulting 

 from Dervish atrocities. 



Secondly, although the Mahdi and the Khalifa des- 

 troyed most things in their path, there was little 

 industrial capital of which they could make havoc. If 

 an invader razed the mills of Lancashire to the ground, 

 it is doubtful whether the cotton-spinning industry would 

 ever recover from the shock and regain its lost pre- 

 eminence. 



In the Sudan, on the other hand, a primitive form of 

 agriculture, needing only a few simple instruments, has 

 always constituted the main occupation of nearly the 

 whole of the settled population. Thus, under efficient 

 Government, even the maximum period required to. 

 enable agriculture and other industries to recover was 

 unlikely to exceed the time necessary for gaps in the 

 population to be made good. 



As it happens, it has not been necessary to await the 

 consummation of that period, for although the population 

 still numbers only about 3,000,000 the prosperity of the 

 country is such as has never been known before. 



The cause of this progress is that, under the present 

 administration, the means of production in the hands of 

 even the scattered remnant of population now existing 

 have been rendered so effective that the results far surpass 

 those obtained when the number of inhabitants was three 

 times as great as it is now. By the method of simple 

 equation one may arrive at some idea of possibilities 

 under a full complement of population. 



The Sudan has never yet enjoyed conditions which may 

 be described as normal. A peculiar ill fate has per- 

 petually dogged its course. The Dervishes, it is true, 

 scourged the Sudan with scorpions, but it was already 

 accustomed to the whip. 



