MERAWI IN 1897 then the rest of his cattle died. As he pointed to his sun-cracked fields, and told us how many acres had formerly been cultivated, he cursed God and man, and lamented the defeat of the Dervishes, which he declared had brought him to the state of misery in which he then was. This and less serious cases were carefully inquired into by General Rundle, and no pains were spared by him in attempting to secure substantial justice for the sufferers.

Many of the runaway slaves who were skulking in the neighbourhood were brought back to their work, and many, finding that the delights of freedom were not so great as they anticipated, returned of their own free will. The fact was that the slaves had mistaken notions about the meaning of the words "abolition of slavery," and they construed them into meaning abolition of work and a right to live an idle life at the expense of some one else. The negro slave is indolent and indisposed to work, and even the Sudani man who is not a negro will not do any more than he is positively obliged to do to maintain himself. Still, if the Sudan is to prosper the land must be worked, and the prosperity of the country must depend ultimately upon the amount of work done in it under some system of labour. Forced labour of every kind is, of course, an abomination, and has long been abolished by the British in Egypt and in the Sudan, but any attempt to overthrow hurriedl}/ the system by which for thousands of years one class of men has worked for another in return for the maintenance of themselves and their families is to be deprecated. The conditions under which "domestic slaves" live and work have entirely changed under the rule of the British, and the time is probably not far off when men will be paid for their labour in money instead of in kind. In these days no Sudani man need suffer oppression in any form, and what I have seen in his country has convinced me that British officials, whether military or civil, are .a.r more likely to take the side of the " domestic slave " than that of his master.

Disputes as to the ownership of land also formed another subject of difficulty with which the military officers had to deal at Merawi. During the years in which the Dervishes were masters of the country, misappropriation of estates had gone on on a very large scale, and hundreds of people had been grossly wronged. Many who had been dispossessed of their estates appealed to the British 199