The British Campaign in the Soudan. 131 Eastern, Central, and Western Soudan. The name is derived from .the Arabie aswad, black, of which the plural is suda; so that Leled-es-Soudan means simply the country of the blacks, or, as we would call it, Nigritia. ee The Egyptian Soudan comprises but a small portion of that immense territory. Its most important provinces are Dongola, Kordofan, Darfour, and Bahr-el-Ghazelle, west of the White Nile. Its eastern boundary is the Red Sea down to Massowah; thence the Abyssinian frontier, between which and the White Nile is the large and fertile province of Sennaar. When Gordon was Governor-General of the Soudan (1874-1879), a chain of Egyptian garrisons, of which Gondokoro was the principal, reached as far as the great lakes, all connected by telegraph with Cairo. This region, claimed by the Khedive as part of his dominions, was called the Equatorial Provinces; but in reality it is occupied by warlike negro tribes—Dinkas, Shillooks, Dowers, and others too numerous to mention, and generally participants in the slave-trade either as hunters or hunted; so that the Khedive’s authority was limited to a small circle around each military post. Even in time of peace and under Ismail’s and Gordon’s strong government those tribes would frequently attack small Egyptian detachments, as when they massacred young Linant and _ his party in 1875. It flattered Ismail’s pride to imagine that his empire extended to the lakes, but in fact, beyond Sennaar on the east, and Bahr-el-Ghazelle on the west, the Khedive’s authority was purely nominal.

Mehemet-Ali, the great-grandfather of the present Khedive, was a man of eminent abilities, but merciless