THE SUDAN.*
NEARLY a quarter of a century has passed since. Lord Kitchener overthrew the Khalifs and freed the Sudanese peoples from his tyranny. From 1898 a small body of British officials, guided in turn by Lord Cromer and Lord Kitchener, Sir Reginald Wingate and Sir. Lee Stack, have been quietly building up a civilized administration in the Sudan. Little has been heard of their work, but the mere fact that the Sudan has had no history spoke volumes for the success of their efforts. They had the advantage of being wholly free from the interference of departmental officials at Cairo ; for the Governor-General is all powerful in the Sudan. Further, they attracted some of the ablest young men in England 'to the service, an appointment in which has come to be regarded as the blue riband of all over. seas services, not excluding India. The general results of their labours are well summarised in an informing book just written • (1) The Sudan in EMI-1MM. By Percy F. Martin. LondOn : Constable. [42s. net.]—(2) Savage Sudan. Br Abel Chapman. London : Gurney and Jackson. [82s. net.]
by Mr. P. F. Martin, who in 1907 and again in 1913 saw much of the country and who has revised his text since the war. He reminds us that the Khalifa had ruined all the towns, destroyed commerce, and almost depopulated the more fertile districts. Barely two million people, out of eight millions, survived the fanatical barbarism of the Mandi and his successor. The work of establishing order and prosperity in the Sudan had to be begun afresh. Egypt, in consideration of being relieved of all anxiety for her southern frontier, had to make a small grant in aid to the Sudan until 1913 ; since that year the Sudan has been self-supporting. The Sudanese Government have always had to exercise a rigid parsimony, and for that reason their achievements are all the more meritorious— especially as the bureaucracy at home set them a very bad example of extravagance. Taxation in the Sudan is very light, and the modest revenue has been used as far as possible to benefit trade and agriculture rather than to support needlessly large staffs of officials.
It is conceivable that the slow and steady development of railways and irrigation, for instance, has been better for the country than the undertaking of grandiose schemes, regardless of cost, would have been. The population is too small to have much surplus labour available for public works. Mr. Martin points out that a number of companies, formed to work mines or to carry out such projects as that of making pulp from the "sudd" in the Upper Nile, have been unfortunate, because their promoters over-estimated the immediate possibilities of Sudanese commerce. The most important project that the Government has now in view is the irrigation of the Gezira, the fertile plain south of Khartum between the White and the Blue Niles, so that cotton may be grown on a large scale. Nothing is impossible for a modern engineer, and the plans for a huge dam on the Blue Nile, near Sennaar, with canals into the Gezira, will doubt- less be carried out some day. Meanwhile it has been proved by experiment at the Government farm at Tayiba that cotton will grow well in the district, and the rural population is slowly increasing. Mr. Martin describes in turn each of the provinces, several of which are as large as the British Isles. He mentions that the too famous Fashoda was long ago re-christened " Kodok," and that it has now ceased to be an administrative headquarters. He gives an admirable account of the methods of government which may be summed up as, " Get a really good man and leave him alone to do his best "—as in the India of long ago. He says a good deal that is new about Mr. Well- come's elaborate excavations on a prehistoric site at Gebel Moya near Sennaar, which are not merely adding to knowledge but are also civilising an unruly and debased tribe. Mr. Martin's book abounds in information and has an excellent large scale map of the country. He rightly protests against the current tendency to speak of " Egypt and the Sudan " as if they were closely related and similar countries. Egypt ruled the Sudan for only sixty years, and did it so badly that the natives rebelled. Egypt has no claim whatever on the country.
In sharp contrast with Mr. Martin's book, Mr. Abel Chapman's new and finely illustrated Savage Sudan is devoted entirely to the wild animals and wilder people of the country. Mr. Chapman is an old and experienced sportsman and naturalist. During the past half-century he has made seven expeditions to Central Africa, and he has penetrated into some of the most remote corners of the Bahr-el-Ghazal in the pursuit of game. Mr. Chapman is not one of those sportsmen whose only desire is to kill or to get skins and tusks. On the contrary, he is a passionate student of wild nature, and expresses as much pleasure at having secured a sketch of a rare animal as he shows after a good shot. His drawings are indeed excellent, and this book is full of them. He writes well, too, and we may say with perfect confidence that this is the best book written on the wild life of the Sudan since Sir Samuel Baker published his
account of his journey to Gondokoro. He intersperses his sporting reminiscences with chapters of topography and thus gradually covers the whole of the country. He knows the Red Sea hills as intimately as he knows the forests of Kordofan or the swamps round Lake N6, and he describes with equal zest the habits of the buffalo or the hippopotamus and the theological views of the Shilluk. Mr. Chapman does not like the Hadendowaa—the " Fuzzy-Wuzzies " whom Osman Digna led at El Teb—and records instances of their brutish stupidity, but for all the tribes of Southern Sudan he has a very kindly feeling. On the Upper Nile he used a small sailing-boat with a native crew, and went where he•pleased, far from the ordinary
track of steamers, in order to make his collections for the Natural History Museum. While in the middle of the swamps of the " Budd," in March, 1919, Mr. Chapman one morning saw a herd of ten elephants marching in single file along an open patch of solid ground, and he was able to sketch the bull-elephant suddenly taking alarm ; on the opposite bank at the same time the dense masses of reeds were alive with elephants, who doubtless know that in these inaccessible jungles they are safe from the hunter. Mr. Chapman is somewhat concerned at the possibility that the pagan tribes, Shilluks, Dinkas and Nuers, of the Southern Sudan, who are all good hunters and whose numbers are increasing rapidly under British protection, may extirpate the big game if they are not restrained. But that is more easily said than done.
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