Page:A Prisoner of the Khaleefa.djvu/430

 

the present generation the history of the Soudan may be said to commence with the date of its partial conquest by Mohammad Ali Pasha, the Viceroy of Egypt. To go further back than this is to compile from various sources, all more or less inaccurate, a mass of information which, where not misleading, would be next to useless to the would-be correct historian. Even the recent history of the benighted country has from force of circumstances been compiled from sources not the most reliable, and it is extremely difficult for the moment to sift the facts from the legends. The Soudan is still an unknown and unconquered land. Small tribes have been magnified into nations, and petty chiefs and sheikhs into kings and sultans who evidenced their exalted position in the possession of a few more sheep, goats, donkeys, and slaves, than their neighbours. No single tribe or sheikh ever held general supremacy over the others; Zubeir was within an ace of making himself the Sultan of the Soudan, when he accepted an invitation to visit Cairo; that was twenty-five years ago, and he is still here. The Soudan was nothing more nor less than a collection of little commonwealths; occasionally a number of these would acknowledge allegiance to one particular headman, and, in such instances, the "nation" might have boasted almost as great a population as some small and obscure provincial town. But that such instances were rare