I40 SERVICE AND SPORT IN THE SUDAN 



The road-clearing question was different. We spent 

 our money on the uninhabited portion between our- 

 selves and Dem Idris. The Sultans were induced, 

 protesting loudly, to do their roads as a form of tax. 

 I later understood their objection. — " Why should we 

 clear a path none but ourselves use, and by breaking 

 up the ground ensure the growth of a thick jungle as 

 soon as the rains fall ? " 



A couple of days later I inspected the Jehadia 

 Company, and broke to them the news that in future 

 no carriers would be allowed them when on the move. 

 They were seventy strong, fifty of them the vomit of 

 regiments disbanded for mutiny and assaulting their 

 officers, or Omdurman refugees. The remainder were 

 locally enlisted lads. The whole of the former had 

 some complaint to make, mostly frivolous, but some 

 justifiable. I adjusted the latter — cannot understand 

 why it had not been done before — and promised them 

 on my own authority, in which I was later upheld, as 

 near a realisation of the conditions under which they 

 joined as possible. 



I soon saw that Wahbi Eff. was, as I had been told, 

 a man in a thousand. Having seen a kiln of bricks 

 burned to perfection, I handed over the completion 

 of the buildings to him, and proceeded to follow 

 Major Boulnois' (the governor, R.A.) instructions to 

 patrol. 



The carrier question produced a mild mutiny among 

 the thirty men I was taking with me. I was showing 

 them on parade the best way to carry their blankets 

 when an old soldier of the disbanded 14th Sudanese 



