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 
population, 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 stopped 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 
