Page:A Prisoner of the Khaleefa.djvu/431

350 is proved by the facility with which Mohammad Ahmed and Abdullahi set the various sections of tribes fighting among themselves,

When Mohammad Ali established his government, and when later Ismail Pasha attempted to extend his empire, they each took advantage of the chronic anarchy reigning in the Soudan to further their schemes, but the tribes soon found that they had but stepped from the frying-pan into the fire, and waited patiently for the strong man who was to rid them of the thraldom of the now hated and detested Turks, from whom they had hoped so much. From the time when, what the Soudanese call the "Turk" rule, was established, until the rebellion of 1882, nothing whatever was done to develop the natural resources of the country — indeed, the reverse. The only trade the officials fostered was that of slaves, and these were invariably drawn from peaceful and agricultural districts; the adult male population of whole districts was swept away in those raids organized to supply the hareems of Arabia, Algeria, Egypt, and Turkey, with eunuchs and concubines. The mineral wealth of Sennar, Darfur and Kordofan was neglected, as when the soldiers reached the gold, silver and copper mines, they discovered that the precious metals did not exist in the pure blocks they had expected to find, and that to extract the metals meant work.

The population of the half-conquered provinces was robbed in every conceivable manner by tax-collectors, who were seldom or never paid their salaries of from twenty-five to thirty shillings a month, and they were assisted in the duties of tax collecting by companies of irregular soldiers whose salaries also were never paid. Where money was not forthcoming, the taxes were collected in kind, and it may be imagined what the result of tax collecting was. The people were driven farther and farther away from the cultivated lands and watercourses. The "Sudd," that rank growth of weeds which obstruct the navigation of the Nile and its tributaries, was left to accumulate year after year, the little clearances which the inhabitants themselves made formerly,