PREFACE

a " useless possession," the greater part of the country having

gone out of cultivation, and most of the able-bodied men in it

being brigands. I have tried to show in the chapter on the gold

trade of the SildS.n in ancient times that the main object which

the Egyptians had in occupying the country was the gold which

it contained ; the capture of slaves and cattle was of secondary

importance. To attain this end they maintained a, strong line of

forts from the Third Cataract to Aswan, and the temples which

they built at the termini of important caravan routes were not so much intended for the promulgation of the Egyptian religion, as

to benefit trade. This is proved by the fact that when the mines

in one portion of the country ceased to be profitable, the temples

along the routes leading to them were allowed to fall into decay. The Pharaohs wanted gold, and gold was, obtained at all costs.

Still there is no evidence that under their rule the Sudan ever

fell into the state of misery which it had reached in 1879, when

General Gordon resigned his appointment as Governor-General

of the Sudan. That a trade in slaves between the Sudan and Egypt has existed from time immemorial there is every reason to

believe, but, until the introduction of fire-arms into Africa on a

large scale, it was never accompanied by such wholesale murder and destruction of innocent life and property as is described in

the works of Baker and Petherick. The era of cruelty began with

the rise to power of the Arab merchants, who made the Govern- ment officials partners in the flourishing business of exporting

slaves, and who made an annual payment to the authorities in

Cairo.

The next period of the history of the Sudan begins with the

appearance of the Mahdi in 188 1, and ends with the capture of Omdurman on September 2nd, 1898. Between those years the

harvest sown by the Egyptian administrators in the Sudan was

reaped, and the civilized world stood aghast at the result, and at

the atrocities which the Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad and his

Khalifa, 'Abd-Allah, perpetrated with such striking success, in

the name of religion and liberty. For the facts I have relied on Sir Reginald Wingate's work, Mahdiism, which is the most complete account of the subject extant, and I have also derived much information of a supplementary character from Sir Rudolf

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