INTRODUCTORY 13 



strenuous exercises the savage tribes (especially Shilluk, 

 Dinka, and Nuer) form, in the Sudan, a distinct asset of 

 Empire. They represent magnificent human material- 

 to-day, it is true, the rawest of raw material, which will 

 need lengthened processes of manufacture. But, in 

 British crucible, that material is worth the work, however 

 long. The Sudan, not being a "white man's land," can 

 never be "developed " except by aid of its own developed 

 aborigines. Luckily the aborigines are there. By the 

 fanatic wars of the Mahdi and the Kalipha, and the 

 subsequent ravages of disease, they had been reduced, 

 at the time of the reconquest, to one-third of their 

 original numbers ; still there survived some two or three 

 millions of stalwart human beings, quite amenable to 

 cultivation, and physically capable of anything. More- 

 over, under the Pax Britannica, their numbers are now 

 increasing by leaps and bounds. 1 



ARABS. The Sudan is not entirely inhabited by pure 

 savages. One must travel 300 miles south of Khartoum 

 before first encountering these wild seven-foot (?) blacks. 

 All the northern half, stretching across to the Red Sea, 

 is occupied by the adventitious Arab who in bygone 

 age came as a conqueror and still remains the dominant 

 race, boasting a relatively far higher civilisation. In 

 the south, the degree of Arab civilisation tends to fall 

 back. Thus in Kordofan, the Baggara tribe once the 



1 Lord Cromer in Modern Egypt (p. 889) put the population of the Sudan 

 in pre-Mahdi days at 8 millions. Of these, 3^ millions were killed in 

 battle ; while other 3^ millions were swept away by famine and disease 

 chiefly smallpox all directly attributable to Mahdiism. He estimated 

 the existing population in 1911 at 2 millions. 



Beyond all question the wild tribes of the Upper Sudan are "savages" in 

 the fullest interpretation of that term. I have so called them throughout 

 this book ; but always with a sort of subconscious sense of thereby doing 

 a certain measure of injustice to these stark and long-limbed fellow-subjects. 

 The last five years, however, have invested the term " savage " with a new 

 value, never anticipated. A great European nation has proved guilty of 

 deliberate and cold-blooded lets of savagery of bestial savagery from 

 which, I am convinced, Nature's own untutored "savages" of the Sudan 

 would shrink in loathing and disgust. 



