MISCELLANEOUS SUBJECTS 481 



resident population of 79,647 men, 98,369 women and 

 77,813 children. If to these is added the resident popu- 

 lation of the Gezira south of the railway and of the 

 adjacent districts, the total amounts to 179,724 men, 

 222,754 women and 204,242 children. 



These numbers offer an ample labour supply on which 

 to draw, especially as they take no account of the future 

 drift of population into the Gezira from the rest of the 

 Sudan and from beyond its borders. 



There are also certain peculiarities in the circumstances 

 affecting the growth of the population in the Sudan which 

 have an important economic bearing. 



Very few children survived the horrors of the Mahdia, 

 and many men in the prime of life perished in the wars of 

 that time. There is thus a curious dearth of young- 

 persons of marriageable age in the population of to-day, 

 and this deficiency will not be made good until the 

 numerous children born during the last fifteen years have 

 reached maturity and have married. 



Consequently, during the next twenty years the ratio 

 of increase in the population should greatly exceed even 

 that recorded since the conquest. 



So much for the labour problem in its numerical aspect. 

 There remains the question of quality. 



A brief reference has already been made to this side 

 of the question, but there are one or two other points of 

 interest connected with it. They may possibly suggest 

 a parallel to some of those who have been engaged in 

 work elsewhere in the tropics. 



It seems open to question whether criticisms of the 

 inefficiency of tropical labour are always entirely 

 justified. Certainly, in the Sudan, the Arab or semi- 

 Arab cultivator has frequently belied the more than 

 indifferent reputation with which he was accredited in 

 the early days, and this fact naturally gives rise to the 

 reflection that possibly the lethargy, improvidence and 

 slipshod temperament, of which we so often hear, may be 

 due, in many cases, rather to lack of opportunity or to 

 absence of incentive than to sheer incapacity. It is 

 easy to see that the results of ignorance and of that 

 tendency to drift which proceeds from the lack of a 



