Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/327





HIS country, which was till recently an Egyptian province, and which, at the commencement of 1883, became the centre of a new state destined probably to have but a short existence, is a perfectly distinct natural region, although without any clearly defined frontiers. On the whole its form is quadrilateral, inclined from the north to the south, parallel with the main stream between the Sobat and Blue Nile confluence. On the south and east Kordofân, or Kordofal, has for its natural frontiers low- lying tracts flooded by the Nile; to the north and west it merges in the steppes roamed over by nomad tribes. The total area of the region, thus roughly defined, may be estimated at 100,000 square miles, or nearly half the size of France. This space is very sparsely populated; in 1875, Prout, an American officer in the Egvptian service, made an official return, according to which the inhabitants of the eight hundred and fifty-three towns and villages of Kordofân numbered 164,740 persons. At the same period the nomad tribes amounted to a total of 114,000 persons, but the governor of the province had made no attempt to number the turbulent mountaineers of the south. The total population of Kordofan can be provisionally estimated at 300,000, giving a density of about three persons to the equare mile. Wars have frequently devastated the country, and it is supposed that the number of people has considerably decreased since the massacres ordered by Mohammed Bey, the terrible "Treasurer," who conquered this region for his father-in-law, Mohammed Ali. Fresh butcheries have again taken place since the Mahdi, or "Guide," has made Kordofan the centre of his empire, and proclaimed the holy war throughout his camps.

By the general slope of the land Kordofân belongs to the Nilotic basins. If the rains were sufficiently abundant the wadies, which dry up at the mouth of the mountain valleys, would reach as far as the White Nile; even the waters rising on the western slope flow to the Nile intermittently, on the one side through the Keilak and the Bahr-el-Ghazal, on the other through the Wady-Melek. In other