40 [No. 98 HISTORY > tribes from the border as far as the Bahr el- Jebel have learnt to purchase rifles from Abyssinian merchants by illicit trade in ivory.

These pugnacious and little -known tribes of the south -eastern Sudan and of the Uganda border have thus been able to indulge in their favourite pursuits of inter-tribal feuds with greatly increased ferocity . From 1912 to 1917 there has been constant fighting among the Anuak ( part of this tribe belongs to the Sudan ), Nuer, Beir, Burun, and Dinka peoples,and a succession of punitive patrols has had to bedespatched . Over a large part of the south -eastern Sudan security of life andthe maintenance of order have been uninter ruptedly menaced . So great was the burden on Mongalla province that a new Sobat-Pibor military district was carved out of it in 1912 , with an area of 24,400 square miles, and a complete battalion was assigned to it . Military posts were fortified at Nasser, Akobo, Bonjak , Pibor, and, in 1917 , at Nyerol. Others are urgently needed on the Boma plateau and in the Garjak Nuer district . The land beyond the border remains a sanctuary for marauders, and the strengthening of the military resources of the frontier districts cannot prevent this. The creation of a strong, friendly, and sympathetic Central Government in Abyssinia is the chief need of the immediate future, and the best hope for the restoration and maintenance of order on this , the only one of the Sudan frontiers which is to -day, as it has always been, in a thoroughly unsatisfactory condition.

(1 ) The Uganda Frontier .-Down to December 31 , 1913, the fifth parallel of north latitude was the fron tier between the Sudan and Uganda , ' Mongalla on the Bahr el -Jebel being the southernmost place belonging to the former, Gondokoro the most northerly belong ing to the latter.

When in 1910 the Sudan acquired the Lado Enclave, 1 As it still appears (erroneously) on most published maps , including the 1918 reprint of the War Office Map of Abyssinia (1908 ).

2 See above , p . 33 .