The River War

Front matter

AN HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF

THE RECONQUEST OF THE SOUDAN

BY

Preface

TO

THE NEW EDITION

THE fact that this book has survived in an expensive form the excite¬ ments of the last three years emboldens me to set a smaller and cheaper edition before the public. The original text has been reduced by nearly a third, the Appendices have been curtailed, the illustrations have been omitted, and by these and some devices of the printer the story, which had hitherto required two heavy' volumes, is now com¬ pressed into one which is lighter to handle and little more than a quar¬ ter of the price to buy.

What has been jettisoned consists mainly of personal impressions and opinions, often controversial in character, which, however just, were not essential to the narrative or to a permanent record, and which some indeed may think to have been not the most valuable part of the book. What remains has been thoroughly revised in the light of better information and subsequent events; the proofs have been diligently read by several authorities, previously inaccessible, and the whole has been corrected and brought up to date. A new chapter is added describing the ultimate destruction of the Khalifa and the end of the war; and I hope the account may be found at once accurate and complete. So far as possible, I have endeavoured to profit by whatever criticisms have been pronounced, and to all my critics—friendly and unfriendly—I desire to make suitable acknowledgments.

WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL.

105 MOUNT STREET, LONDON:

October, 1902.

EXTRACT FROM PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION

THE object of this book is to relate in exact military detail the oper¬ ations directed by Lord Kitchener of Khartoum on the l Ipper Nile from April 1896 to November 1899, which I have called ‘The River War,’ and which resulted in the reconquest of the Egyptian Soudan. But in order that the reader may understand, and even sympathise with the emotions which these events excited, I have prefixed a gen¬ eral survey of the geography, aspect, and history of the country, and have tried to show its connection with Egypt and Great Britain.

I am under great obligations to Colonel Rhodes, who has not only assisted me with his store of knowledge and experience, gained during many years of war in the Soudan, but has also procured me much valuable information which I could not have otherwise obtained.

I desire to acknowledge the help and kindness I have received from most of the principal actors in the River War, from the Cairene authorities, and from the Intelligence Departments. Many of those who have supplied me with narratives, or who have undertaken the no less tedious task of reading the proofs, have done so on the under¬ standing that their names should not he mentioned. I therefore offer them my thanks in a general form.

The maps and plans are the most expensive—perhaps the most important—part of this volume. For their topographical features I am indebted to the Director of Military Intelligence. The positions and movements of the troops are taken from the statements and diagrams of my various informants. I have every reason to believe them correct. It is of course absolutely impossible for anyone to understand a cam¬ paign or an action without continually referring to the map, and I trust that the reader will not be irritated by my repeated exhortations to him to do so.

WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL.

35A GREAT CUMBERLAND PLACE, LONDON:

September 25, 1899.

LIST OF PRINCIPAL WORKS CONSULTED

Fire and Sword in die Soudan (SLATIN), 189.5.

Ten Years’ Captivity in the Mahdi’s Camp (OHRWALDER), 1892. Malidism and the Egyptian Soudan (WINGATE), 1891.

England in Egypt (MILNER), 1893.

Ten Years in Equatoria, 1880-1889 (CASATI). 2 vols.

Life in the Soudan (WILLIAMS), 1882.

The Ruin of the Soudan (RUSSELL), 1892.

’83 to’87 in the Soudan (WYLDE), 1888. 2 vols.

Life of Emin Pasha (SCHWEITZER), 1898.

Lord Cromer (TRAILL), 1897.

Journals at Khartoum (GORDON), 188,5.

Life of Gordon (BOULGER), 1887.

Colonel Gordon in Central Africa (HILL), 1884.

With the Camel Corps up the Nile (GLEICHEN), 1886.

From Kortito Khartoum (WILSON), 188.5.

The Campaign of the Cataracts (BUTLER), 188,5.

The Egyptian Soudan: its Loss and Recovery (ALFORD & SWORD), 1898. Letters from the Soudan (KNIGHT), 1896.

Towards Khartoum (ATTERIDGE), 1896.

Sirdar and Khalifa (BURLEIGH), 1898.

With Kitchener to Khartoum (STEEVENS), 1898.

The Downfall of the Dervishes (BENNETT), 1898.

GO VERNMENT PUBLIC A TIONS

Report on the Soudan, 1883 (Lieut-Col. STEWART), Egypt, No. 11, 1883.

Report oil die Administration of Egypt (Lord CROMER), Egypt, No. 1, 189.5.

Report on the Progress of Reorganisation in Egypt (Mr. VILLIERS STl ’ART), Egypt., No. 2,189.5.

Report on die Administration of Egypt (Lord CROMER), Egypt, No. 1, 1896.

Correspondence respecting the Lawsuit brought against the Egyptian Government in regard to the Appropriation of Money from the General Resene Fund to the Expenses of the Dongola Expedition, Egypt, No. 1, 1897.

Report on die Administration of Egypt ( Lord CROMER), Egypt, No. 2, 1897.

Reports on the Province of Dongola (Sir WILLIAM GARSTIN, Mr. C. E. DAW¬ KINS), Egypt, No. 3,1897.

Report on die Administration of Egypt (Lord CROMER), Egypt, No. 1, 1898.

Correspondence with the French Government respecting the Valley of the Upper Nile, Egypt, No. 2,1898.

Further Correspondence with the French Government, Egypt, No. 3, 1898.

Agreement between H.BM. ’s Government mid die Government ofH.H. the Khe¬ dive, relative to the Future Administration of the Soudan, Egypt, No. 1, 1899.

Decimation relative to the British mid French Spheres of Influence in Central Af¬ rica, Egypt, No. 2, 1899.

Report on die Administration of Egypt (Lord CROMER), Egypt, No. 3, 1899.

Report on die Soudan, 1899 (Sir WILLIAM GARSTIN), Egy pt, No. 5, 1899.

Handbook of the Soudan, 1898 (compiled in the Intelligence Division of the War Office by Captain Count GLEICHEN).

Report on the Nile and Country betw een Dongola, Suakin, Kassala, mid Omdurman, 1898 (compiled in die Intelligence Division of the War Office by Captain Count GLEICHEN).

And various other Blue Books and Official Reports.

Contents

I. THE REBELLION OF THE MAHDI

II. THE FATE OF THE ENVOY

III. THE DERVISH EMPIRE

Chapter I The Rebellion Of The Mahdi

THE north-eastern quarter of the continent of Africa is drained and watered by the Nile. Among and about the headstreams and tributar¬ ies of this mighty river lie the wide and fertile provinces of the Egyp¬ tian Soudan. Situate in the very centre of the land, these remote re¬ gions are on every side divided from the seas by five hundred miles of mountain, swamp, or desert. The great river is their only means of growth, their only channel of progress. It is by the Nile alone that their commerce can reach the outer markets, or European civilisation can penetrate the inner darkness. The Soudan is joined to Egypt by the Nile, as a diver is connected with the surface by his air-pipe. Without it there is only suffocation. AutNilus, aut nihil!

The town of Khartoum, at the confluence of the Blue and White Niles, is the point on which the trade of the south must inevitably converge. It is the great spout through which the merchandise col¬ lected from a wide area streams northwards to the Mediterranean shore. It marks the extreme northern limit of the fertile Soudan. Be¬ tween Khartoum and Assuan the river flows for twelve hundred miles through deserts of surpassing desolation. At last the wilderness re¬ cedes and the living world broadens out again into Egypt and the Delta. It is with events that have occurred in the intervening waste that these pages are concerned.

The real Soudan, known to the statesman and the explorer, lies far to the south—moist, undulating, and exuberant. But there is an¬ other Soudan, which some mistake for the true, whose solitudes op¬ press the Nile from the Egyptian frontier to Omdurman. This is the Soudan of the soldier. Destitute of wealth or future, it is rich in his¬ tory. The names ol its squalid villages are familiar to distant and en¬ lightened peoples. The barrenness of its scenery has been drawn by skilful pen and pencil. Its ample deserts have tasted the blood of brave men. Its hot, black rocks have witnessed famous tragedies. It is the scene of the war.

This great tract, which may conveniently be called ‘The Military Soudan,’ stretches with apparent indefiniteness over the face of the continent. Level plains of smooth sand—a little rosier than buff, a little paler than salmon—are interrupted only by occasional peaks of rockblack, star k, and shapeless. Rainless storms dance tirelessly over the hot, crisp surface of the ground. The fine sand, driven by the wind, gathers into deep drifts, and silts among the dark rocks of the hills, exactly as snow hangs about an Alpine summit; only it is a fiery snow, such as might fall in hell. The earth burns with the quenchless thirst of ages, and in the steel-blue sky scarcely a cloud obstructs the unre¬ lenting triumph of the sun.

Through the desert flows the river—a thread of blue silk drawn across an enormous brown drugget; and even this thread is brown for half the year. Where I lie water laps the sand and soaks into the hanks there grows an avenue of vegetation which seems very beautiful and luxuriant by contrast with what lies beyond. The Nile, through all the three thousand miles of its course vital to everything that lives beside it, is never so precious as here. The traveller clings to the strong river as to an old friend, staunch in the hour of need. All the world blazes, hut here is shade. The deserts are hot, hut the Nile is cool. The land is parched, but here is abundant water. The picture painted in burnt sienna is relieved by a grateful flash of green.

Yet he who had not seen the desert or felt the sun heavy on his shoulders would hardly admire the fertility of the riparian scrub. Un¬ nourishing reeds and grasses grow rank and coarse from the water’s edge. The dark, rotten soil between the tussocks is cracked and gran¬ ulated by the drying up of the annual flood. The character of the veg¬ etation is inhospitable. Thorn-bushes, bristling like hedgehogs and thriving arrogantly, everywhere predominate and with their prickly tangles obstruct or forbid the path. Only the palms by the brink are kindly, and men journeying along the Nile must look often towards their bushy tops, where among the spreading foliage the red and yel¬ low glint of date clusters proclaims the ripening of a generous crop, and protests that Nature is not always mischievous and cruel.

The banks of the Nile, except by contrast with the desert, display an abundance of barrenness. Their characteristic is monotony. Their attraction is their sadness. Yet there is one hour when all is changed. Just before the sun sets towards the western cliffs a delicious flush brightens and enlivens the landscape. It is as though some Titanic artist in an hour ol inspiration were retouching the picture, painting in dark purple shadows among the rocks, strengthening the lights on the sands, gilding and beautifying everything, and making the whole scene live. The river, whose windings make it look like a lake, turns from muddy brown to silver-grey. The sky from a dull blue deepens into violet in the west. Everything under that magic touch becomes vivid and alive. And then the sun sinks altogether behind the rocks, the colours fade out of the sky, the flush off the sands, and gradually everything darkens and grows grey—like a man’s cheek when he is bleeding to death. We are left sad and sorrowful in the dark, until the stars light up and remind us that there is always something beyond.

In a land whose beauty is the beauty of a moment, whose face is desolate, and whose character is strangely stern, the curse of war was hardly needed to produce a melancholy effect. Why should there he caustic plants where everything is hot and burning? In deserts where thirst is enthroned, and where the rocks and sand appeal to a pitiless sky for moisture, it was a savage trick to add the mockery of the mi¬ rage.

The area multiplies the desolation. There is life only by the Nile. If a man were to leave the river, he might journey westward and find no human habitation, nor the smoke of a cooking fire, except the lonely tent of a Kabbabish Arab or the encampment of a trader’s car¬ avan, till he reached the coast-line of America. Or he might go east and find nothing but sand and sea and sun until Bombay rose above the horizon. The thread of fresh water is itself solitary in regions where all living things lack company.

In the account of the River War the Nile is naturally supreme. It is the great melody that recurs throughout the whole opera. The gen¬ eral purposing military operations, the statesman who would decide upon grave policies, and the reader desirous of studying the course and results of either, must think of the Nile. It is the life of the lands through which it flows. It is the cause of the war: the means by which we fight; the end at which we aim. Im agin ation should paint the river through eveiy page in the story. It glitters between the palm-trees dur¬ ing the actions. It is the explanation of nearly every military move¬ ment. By its banks the armies camp at night. Backed or flanked on its unfordable stream they offer or accept battle by day. To its brink, morning and evening, long lines of camels, horses, mules, and slaugh¬ ter cattle hurry eagerly. Emir and Dervish, officer and soldier, friend and foe, kneel alike to this god of ancient Egypt and draw each day their daily water in goatskin or canteen. Without the river none would have started. Without it none might have continued. Without it none could ever have returned.

All who journey on the Nile, whether in commerce or war, will pay their tribute of respect and gratitude; for the great river has be¬ friended all races and every age. Through all the centuries it has per¬ formed the annual miracle of its flood. Eveiy year when the rains fall and the mountain snows of Central Africa begin to melt, the headstreams become torrents and the great lakes are filled to the brim. A vast expanse of low, swampy lands, crossed by secondary channels and flooded for many miles, regulates the llow, and by a sponge-like action prevents the excess of one year from causing the deficiency of the next. Far away in Egypt, prince, priest, and peasant look south¬ wards with anxious attention for the fluctuating yet certain rise. Grad¬ ually die flood begins. The Bahr-el-Ghazal from a channel of stagnant pools and marshes becomes a broad and navigable stream. The Sobat and the Atbara from dry watercourses with occasional pools, in which the fish and crocodiles are crowded, turn to rushing rivers. But all this is remote from Egypt. After its confluence with the Atbara no drop of water reaches the Nile, and it flows for seven hundred miles through the sands or rushes in cataracts among the rocks of the Nubian desert. Nevertheless, in spite of the tremendous diminution in volume caused by the dryness of the earth and air and the heat of the sun—all of which drink greedily—the river helow Assuan is sufficiently great to supply nine millions of people with as much water as their utmost science and energies can draw, and yet to pour into the Mediterra¬ nean a low-water surplus current of 61,500 cubic feet per second. Nor is its water its only gift. As the Nile rises its complexion is changed. The clear blue river becomes thick and red, laden with the magic mud that can raise cities from the desert sand and make the wilderness a garden. The geographer may still in the arrogance of science describe the Nile as ‘a great, steady-flowing river, fed by the rains of the tropics, controlled by the existence of a vast head reservoir and several areas of repose, and annually flooded by the accession of a great body of water with which its eastern tributaries are flushed’; 1 but all who have drunk deeply of its soft yet fateful waters—fateful, since they give both life and death—will understand why the old Egyptians worshipped the river, nor will they even in modern days easily dissociate from their minds a feeling of mystic reverence.

South of Khartoum and of ‘The Military Soudan’ the land be¬ comes more fruitful. The tributaries of the Nile multiply the areas of riparian fertility. A considerable rainfall, increasing as the Equator is approached, enables the intervening spaces to support vegetation and consequently human life. The greater part of the country is feverish and unhealthy, nor can Europeans long sustain the attacks ol its cli¬ mate. Nevertheless it is by no means valueless. On the east the prov¬ ince of Sennar used to produce abundant grain, and might easily pro¬ duce no less abundant cotton. Westward the vast territories of Kordofan and Darfur afford grazing-grounds to a multitude of cattle, and give means of livelihood to great numbers of Baggara or cow-herd Arabs, who may also pursue with activity and stratagem the fleet gi¬ raffe and the still fleeter ostrich. To the south-east lies Bahr-el-Ghazal, a great Ira cl of country occupied by dense woods and plentifully wa¬ tered. Further south and nearer the Equator the forests and marshes become exuberant with tropical growths, and the whole face of the land is moist and green. Amid groves of gigantic trees and through plains of high waving grass the stately elephant roams in herds which occasionally number four hundred, hardly ever disturbed by a wellarmed hunter. The ivoiy of their tusks constitutes the wealth of the Equatorial Province. So greatly they abound that Emin Pasha is pro¬ voked to complain of a pest of these valuable pachyderms:' and alt¬ hough they are only assailed by the natives with spear and gun, no less than twelve thousand hundredweight of ivory has been exported in a single year. 1 Ml other kinds of large beasts known to man inhabit these obscure retreats. The fierce rhinoceros crashes through the un¬ dergrowth. Among the reeds of melancholy swamps huge hippopot¬ ami, crocodiles, and hulfaloes prosper and increase. Anlelope of every known and many unclassified species; serpents of peculiar venom; countless millions of birds, butterflies, and beetles are among the offspring of prolific Nature. Mid the daring sportsman who should survive his expedition would not fail to add to the achieve¬ ments of science and the extent of natural history as well as to his own reputation.

The human inhabitants of the Soudan would not, but for their vices and misfortunes, be disproportioned in numbers to the fauna or less happy. War, slavery, and oppression have, however, afflicted them until the total population of the whole country does not exceed at the most liberal estimate three million souls. The huge area con¬ tains many differences of climate and conditions, and these have pro¬ duced peculiar and diverse breeds of men. The Soudanese are of many tribes, but two m ain races can be clearly distinguished: the ab¬ original natives, and the Arab settlers. The indigenous inhabitants of the country were negroes as black as coal. Strong, virile, and simpleminded savages, they lived as we may imagine prehistoric men—hunt¬ ing, fighting, marrying, and dying, with no ideas beyond the gratifica¬ tion of their physical desires, and no fears save those engendered by ghosts, witchcraft, the worship of ancestors, and other forms of super¬ stition common among peoples of low development. They displayed the virtues of barbarism. They were brave and honest. The smallness of their intelligence excused the degradation of their habits. Their ig¬ norance secured their innocence. Yet their eulogy must be short, for though their customs, language, and appearance vary with the districts they inhabit and the subdivisions to which they belong, the history of all is a confused legend of strife and misery, their natures are uni¬ formly cruel and thriftless, and their condition is one of equal squalor and want.

Although the negroes are the more numerous, the Arabs exceed in power. The bravery of the aboriginals is outweighed by the intelli¬ gence of the invaders and their superior force of character. During the second century of the Mohammedan era, when the inhabitants of Arabia went forth to conquer the world, one adventurous army struck south. The first pioneers were followed at intervals by continual im¬ migrations of Arabs not only from Arabia but also across the deserts from Egypt and Marocco. The element thus introduced has spread and is spreading throughout the Soudan, as water soaks into a dry sponge. The aboriginals absorbed the invaders they could not repel. The stronger race imposed its customs and language on the negroes. The vigour of their blood sensibly altered the facial appearance of the Soudanese. For more than a thousand years the influence of Moham¬ medanism, which appeal s to possess a strange fascination for negroid races, has been permeating the Soudan, and, although ignorance and natural obstacles impede the progress of new ideas, the whole of the black race is gradually adopting the new religion and developing Arab characteristics. In the districts of the north, where the original in¬ vaders settled, the evolution is complete, and the Arabs of the Soudan are a race formed by the interbreeding ol negro and Arab, and yet distinct from both. In the more remote and inaccessible regions which lie to the south and west the negro race remains as yet un¬ changed by the Arab influence. And between these extremes every degree of mixture is to he found. In some tribes pure Arabic is spo¬ ken, and prior to the rise of the Mahdi the orthodox Moslem faith was practised. In others Arabic has merely modified the ancient dia¬ lects, and the Mohammedan religion has been adapted to the older superstitions; but although the gap between the Arab-negro and the negro-pure is thus filled by every intermediate blend, the two races were at an early date quite distinct.

The qualities of mongrels are rarely admirable, and the mixture of the Arab and negro types has produced a debased and cruel breed, more shocking because they are more intelligent than the primitive savages. The stronger race soon began to prey upon the simple abo¬ riginals; some of the Arab tribes were camel-breeders; some were goatherds; some were Baggaras or cow-herds. But all, without excep¬ tion, were hunters of men. To the great slave-market at Jedda a con¬ tinual stream of negro captives has flowed for hundreds of years. The invention of gunpowder and the adoption by the Arabs of firearms facilitated the traffic by placing the ignorant negroes at a further dis¬ advantage. Thus the situation in the Soudan for several centuries may he summed up as follows: The dominant race of Arab invaders was unceasingly spreading its blood, religion, customs, and language among the black aboriginal population, and at the same time it har¬ ried and enslaved them.

The state of society that arose out of this may he easily imagined. The warlike Arab tribes fought and brawled among themselves in ceaseless feud and strife. The negroes trembled in apprehension of capture, or rose locally against their oppressors. Occasionally an im¬ portant Sheikh would effect the combination of many tribes, and a kingdom came into existence—a community consisting of a military class armed with guns and of multitudes of slaves, at once their serv¬ ants and their merchandise, and sometimes trained as soldiers. The dominion might prosper viciously till it was overthrown by some more powerful league.

Ml this was unheeded by the outer world, from which the Soudan is separated by the deserts, and it seemed that the slow, painful course of development would be unaided and uninterrupted. But at last the populations of Europe changed. Another civ il i s ation reared itself above the ruins of Roman triumph and Mohammedan aspiration—a civilisation more powerful, more glorious, hut no less aggressive. The impulse of conquest which hurried the French and English to Canada and the Indies, which sent the Dutch to the Cape and the Spaniards to Peru, spread to Mrica and led the Egyptians to the Soudan. In the year 1819 Mohammed Ali, availing himself of the disorders alike as an excuse and an opportunity, sent his son Ismail up the Nile with a great army. The Arab tribes, torn by dissension, exhausted by thirty years of general war, and no longer inspired by their neglected reli¬ gion, offered a weak resistance. Their slaves, having known the worst ol life, were apathetic. The black aboriginals were silent and afraid. The whole vast territory was conquered with very little fighting, and the victorious army, leaving garrisons, returned in triumph to the Delta.

What enterprise that an enlightened community may attempt is more noble and more profitable than the reclamation from barbarism of fertile regions and large populations? To give peace to warring tribes, to administer justice where all was violence, to strike the chains off the slave, to draw the richness from the soil, to plant the earliest seeds of commerce and learning, to increase in whole peoples their capacities for pleasure and diminish their chances of pain—what more beautiful ideal or more valuable reward can inspire human effort? The act is virtuous, the exercise invigorating, and the result often ex¬ tremely profitable. Yet as the mind turns from the wonderful cloudland of aspiration to the ugly scaffolding of attempt and achievement, a succession of opposite ideas arises. Industrious races are displayed stinted and starved for the sake of an expensive Imperialism which they can only enjoy if they are well fed. Wild peoples, ignorant of their barbarism, callous of suffering, careless of life but tenacious of liberty, are seen to resist with fury the philanthropic invaders, and to perish in thousands before they are convinced of their mistake. The inevitable gap between conquest and dominion becomes filled with the figures of the greedy trader, the inopportune missionary, the am¬ bitious soldier, and the lying speculator, who disquiet the minds of the conquered and excite the sordid appetites of the conquerors. And as the eye of thought rests on these sinister features, it hardly seems possible for us to believe that any fair prospect is approached by so foul a path.

From 1819 to 1883 Egypt ruled the Soudan. Her rule was not kindly, wise, or profitable. Its aim was to exploit, not to improve the local population. The miseries of the people were aggravated rather than lessened: but they were concealed. For the rough injustice of the sword there were substituted the intricacies of corruption and bribery. Violence and plunder were more hideous, since they were cloaked with legality 7 and armed with authority. The land was undeveloped and poor. It barely sustained its inhabitants. The additional burden of a considerable foreign garrison and a crowd of rapacious officials in¬ creased the severity of the economic conditions. Scarcity was fre¬ quent. Famines were periodical. Corrupt and incapable Governors- General succeeded each other at Khartoum with bewildering rapidity. The constant changes, while they prevented the continuity of any wise policy, did not interrupt the misrule. With hardly any exceptions, the Pashas were consistent in oppression. The success of their admin¬ istration was measured by the Ministries in Egypt by the amount of money they could extort from the natives; among the officials in the

Soudan, by the number of useless offices they could create. There were a few bright examples of honest men, hut these, by providing a contrast, only increased the discontents.

The rule of Egypt was iniquitous: yet it preserved the magnificent appearance of Imperial dominion. The Egyptian Pro-consul lived in state at the confluence of the Niles. The representatives of foreign Powers established themselves in the city. The trade of the south con¬ verged upon Khartoum. Thither the subordinate governors, Beys and Mudirs, repaired at intervals to report the state of their provinces and to receive instructions. Thither were sent the ivory of Equatoria, the ostrich feathers ol Kordofan, gum from Darfur, grain from Sennar, and taxes collected from all the regions. Strange beasts, entrapped in the swamps and forests, passed through the capital on their journey to Cairo and Europe. Complex and imposing reports of revenue and expenditure were annually compiled. An elaborate and dignified cor¬ respondence was maintained between Egypt and its great depend¬ ency. The casual observer, astonished at the unusual capacity for gov¬ ernment displayed by an Oriental people, was tempted to accept the famous assertion which Nubar Pasha put into the mouth of the Khe¬ dive Ismail: ‘We are no longer in Africa, hut in Europe.’ Yet all was a hateful sham. 1 The arbitrary and excessive taxes were collected only at the point of the bayonet. If a petty chief fell into arrears, his neigh¬ bours were raised against him. II an Ar ab tribe were recalcitrant, a military expedition was despatched. Moreover, the ability of the Ar¬ abs to pay depended on their success as slave-hunters. When there had been a good catch, the revenue profited. The Egyptian Govern¬ ment had joined the International League against the slave trade. They continued, however, indirectly but deliberately, to make money out of it. ’

In the miserable, harassing warfare that accompanied the collec¬ tion of taxes the Viceregal commanders gained more from fraud than force. No subterfuge, no treachery, was too mean for them to adopt: no oath or treaty was too sacred for them to break. Their methods were cruel, and il honour did not impede the achievement, mercy did not restrict the effects of their inglorious successes; and the effete ad¬ ministrators delighted to order their timid soldiery to carry out the most savage executions. The political methods and social style of the Governors-General were imitated more or less exactly by the subor¬ dinate officials according to their degree in the provinces. Since they were completely hidden from the eye of civilisation, they enjoyed a greater licence in their administration. As their education was inferior, so their habits became more gross. Meanwhile the volcano on which they disported themselves was ominously silent. The Arab tribes obeyed, and the black population cowered.