134. The British Campaign in the Soudan.

to break the fiery barrier. 'To avenge his son’s death, Mehemet-Ali sent another army under his son-in-law— the famous Defterdar (so-called from his office of registrar or treasurer), whose name still lives in Egyptian traditions on account of his fiendish cruelties. This army of Asiatic Turks showed little mercy to African barbarians. More than 100,000 people were slaughtered between Abou Hamed and Khartoum, and a still larger number, chiefly boys and young women, were sent down as slaves to Lower Egypt. The bloody memories of the conquest were never forgotten, but so thorough had it been that sixty years aapood qanes a gener al anaes at rebellion.

Even the worst evils are often followed by good results. By degrees, order, defective as it might be, arose from absolute chaos. Mehemet-Ali visited the Soudan and his military eye perceived at one glance the strategic importance of the point of land at the junction of the White and the Blue Niles. There he founded Khartoum (lat. 15° 30’) and made it the capital of the Soudan provinces, with a government palace, extensive barracks for troops, an arsenal, a ship-yard, and a growing population which, in 1876, had increased. to more than 40,000. A despotic and often cruel government, establishing strong garrisons at important points, commanded peace and. enforced obedience. Commerce, agriculture, and industry took the place of pillage and mur pclae and were efticiently protected though heavily taxed. Wisnisin which were the frequent consequence of continual wars and rapine, disappeared after a government strong and regular, even if arbitrary and tyrannical, had given the husbandman an assurance of reaping the crop which he had planted.