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, 3J 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 acts of savagery—of bestial savagery—from 
which, I am convinced, Nature’s own untutored “savages” of the Sudan 
would shrink in loathing and disgust. 
