128 [ No. 98 ECONOMIC CONDITIONS which it is necessary for steamers to carry a large amount of firewood .

( d) Land Tenure Under the Egyptian Government titles to land in the Sudan were in a state of confusion, which during the Dervish regime became greatly intensified. Of their own free will or under the orders of the Khalifa , many cultivators left their homes . Their holdings were either deserted or taken up by others ; and when, on the country being freed from oppression , the original owners began to return , boundaries had become obscured and disputes were inevitable . The Mohammedan law of inheritance, by which properties are subject to subdivision among the frequently numerous offspringof the patriarch ,was an additional cause of complication.

Since the British occupation, the Legal Department of the Sudan Government, by means of a land settle ment ordinance providing for registration and cadas tral surveys, has done much to substitute order for confusion . All disputes are now settled on the spot . Titles to land are registered, and practically no land can be bought until it has been registered and surveyed . One of the objects of the ordinance is to provide an equitable basis of taxation for such land as is taxable. All waste lands are claimed as Govern ment property, unless the contrary can be proved.

( 3 ) FISHERIES There is a considerable native fishing industry carried on at Port Sudan and Suakin . The oil sardine ( Sardinella longiceps ), which is tinned for food and used in India as a source of oil, as well as other species of sardinella , occurs in the Red Sea ; and there are other kinds of small fish which collectively are termed sardines. These form the food of the larger surface- feeding fish such as the bayado, the .