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THE SORROW AND HOPE OF 
 THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN 
 
BIRDS-EYE VIEW OF MISSION STATION AT DOLEIB HILL ON THE SOBAT RIVER. 
 
The Sorrow and Hope 
 
 of 
 
 The Egyptian Sudan 
 
 A Survey of Missionary Conditions 
 and Methods of Work in 
 the Egyptian Sudan 
 
 y 
 
 By CHARLES R. WATSON 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 The Board of Foreign Missions 
 of the 
 
 United Presbyterian Church of North America 
 Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY 
 THE BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 or THE 
 
 UNITED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF 
 NORTH AMERICA. 
 
To the 
 
 Men and Women 
 Who Know Christ, 
 
 Who Believe in Prayer 
 
 and 
 
 Who are Resolved to Place 
 First in Their Lives 
 Obedience to the Great Commission 
 
 V 
 
PREFACE 
 
 B ooks on the Egyptian Sudan are not 
 few in number, but books which de- 
 scribe this interesting country from the 
 standpoint of missions may be counted 
 upon the fingers of one hand. “The Egyptian Su- 
 dan” by the Rev. J. K. Giffen, D. D., has been the 
 best known missionary book on this section of Af- 
 rica, and in it the missionary conditions and ex- 
 periences of a decade ago are set forth with a viv- 
 idness and a descriptive power which can scarcely 
 be rivalled. During the past decade, however, 
 .nuch has been done, and still more has been learn- 
 ed of what remains to be done. The present book 
 undertakes to tell the story of what has been ac- 
 complished and to lift the vision of the unfin- 
 ished task. 
 
 To make the book serviceable as a permanent 
 missionary Handbook, and also to provide a set- 
 ting for the missionary work and vision that are 
 presented, the first chapter is devoted to a descrip- 
 
 VII 
 
tion of the country, the second and third chapters 
 present the sorrowful story of Slavery and Mah- 
 dism in the Sudan, and the fourth chapter deals 
 with the people and their characteristics. Then 
 follows an account of existing missionary work 
 and its methods and problems. The book closes 
 with a presentation of the claim and the call of 
 the Land of the Blacks. Important supplement- 
 ary information is presented in the Appendix. 
 
 Special prominence has been given to the mis- 
 sionary work of the United Presbyterian Church 
 of North America, which labors in the Sudan 
 under the name of “The American Mission,” in- 
 asmuch as this book is to be used by the young 
 people of that Church for special missionary 
 study. 
 
 The most valuable aid received from such 
 books as Dr. Giffen’s “The Egyptian Sudan,” 
 Westermann’s “The Shilluk People : Their Lan- 
 guage and Folklore,” and the ofificial publications 
 of the Sudan Government will be evident to every 
 reader. The author wishes to express his indebt- 
 edness not only to these sources of information, 
 but also to those who have aided him personally 
 by reviewing the facts presented as well as the 
 
 VIII 
 
outline followed, and by assisting in the many de- 
 tails connected with the publication of the book. 
 
 The book is sent forth with the earnest prayer 
 that in this day of signal opportunity and of re- 
 newed missionary interest, the Church of Jesus 
 Christ may enter into the now unoccupied fields 
 of the Egyptian Sudan, so that its tribes and peo- 
 ples may “obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow 
 and sighing shall flee away.” 
 
 IX 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter. Page. 
 
 I. The Land of the Blacks 15 
 
 II. A Sorrowful Past 45 
 
 III. Fire and Sword 71 
 
 IV. The People 105 
 
 V. The Day Breaks 129 
 
 VI. The Message of Hope 151 
 
 VII. Challenge and Conquest 179 
 
 Appendix. 
 
 I. Statistics of “American Mission” 209 
 
 II. Statistics of Church Miss. Society 21 1 
 
 III. Khartum Meteorological Notes 213 
 
 IV. Climatic Conditions at Doleib Hill 214 
 
 V. Ethnology of the Sudan 218 
 
 VI. Shilluk Religious Ceremony 220 
 
 VII. Shilluk Folklore 221 
 
 VIII. Extract from Lord Cromer’s Report 224 
 
 IX. Bibliography 227 
 
 Index 229 
 
 XI 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Bird’s-Eye View of Mission Station at 
 Doleib Hill Frontispiece 
 
 Transportation and Travel in the 
 
 Egyptian Sudan Facing page 24 
 
 The River Nile in Nubia “ “ 28 
 
 Relief Map of Northeastern Africa . . “ “ 32 
 
 Types of Land in the Egyptian Sudan . “ “ 36 
 
 Slave Raiding in the Sudan “ “ 52 
 
 Major-General Charles George Gordon “ “ 60 
 
 The Governor’s Palace at Khartum ... “ “ 80 
 
 Tomb and Death of 
 
 The Mahdi’s 
 Khalifa ^ 
 
 Kitchener and Wingate 
 
 Native Houses in Southern Sudan . . . 
 
 Races in the Egyptian Sudan 
 
 Views of Khartum 
 
 Missionary Work 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt in the Egyptian Sudan 
 
 Missionary Agencies 
 
 War Dance of Shilluk Warriors .... 
 Sudanese Types 
 
 96 
 100 
 114 
 124 
 
 136 
 160 
 168 
 176 
 188 
 200 
 
 Diagram Maps pages 25, 42 
 
 XIII 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 The Land of the Blacks 
 
“Ah, the land of the rustling of wings, 
 
 Which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia; 
 
 That sendeth ambassadors by the sea, 
 
 Even in vessels of papyrus upon the waters.” 
 
 — Isaiah. 
 
 “I view the end of the geographical feat as the be- 
 ginning of the missionary enterprise.” 
 
 — David Livingstone. 
 
 “Yesterday, Africa was the continent of history, of 
 mystery, and of tragedy; to-day it is the continent of 
 opportunity; to-morrow, if the Church is true to itself, 
 it will be the continent of triumphant victories for 
 Christ.” 
 
 — Bishop J. C. Hartzell. 
 
I 
 
 THE LAND OF THE BLACKS 
 
 T he lure of the Sudan is difficult to explain. The 
 Here is Steevens’s explanation : “Perhaps ® 
 to Englishmen — half-savage still on the 
 pinnacle of their civilization — the very 
 charm of the land lies in its empty barbarism. 
 There is space in the Sudan. There is the fine, 
 purified desert air, and the long stretching gallops 
 over its sand. There are the things at the very 
 back of life, and no other to posture in front of 
 them, — hunger and thirst to assuage, distance to 
 win through, pain to bear, life to defend, and 
 death to face. You have gone back to the spring 
 water of your infancy. You are a savage again — 
 a savage with Rosbach water, if there is any left, 
 and a Mauser repeating pistol-carbine, if the sand 
 has not jammed it, but still at the last word a sav- 
 age. You are unprejudiced, simple, free. You 
 are a naked man, facing naked nature. I do not 
 believe that any of us who come home whole will 
 think, from our easy-chairs, unkindly of the Su- 
 dan.” 
 
 To many, the lure of the Sudan is the lure of 
 adventure. Here are miles upon miles of unex- 
 
 17 1 
 
 2 
 
 Lure of 
 Sudan. 
 
Adventur*. 
 
 Exploration. 
 
 1 8 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 plored country, villages and whole tribes that 
 have not yet been marked on any map, streams 
 and even rivers whose sources and whose outlets 
 are only roughly known, hilly ranges if not 
 mountains that have not yet been scaled, peoples 
 who have never yet seen a white man, innumer- 
 able forms of vegetable life and of animal life 
 that await identification and classification. All 
 this sounds strange when you add that the capi- 
 tal of this country can be reached in what an 
 American would call a “Pullman sleeper” and 
 with a well-appointed dining-car, and that from 
 Khartum you may go a thousand miles farther 
 .south with quite as much safety and comfort as 
 you would have going by boat from New Or- 
 leans to Cincinnati, and with vastly greater in- 
 terest. Get away, however, from that main line 
 of travel and immediately you are in the desolate 
 desert, the grassy prairie or the marshy jungle, 
 where adventure invites and wild game lures the 
 hunters of Europe and America. 
 
 Until quite recent times, interest in geogra- 
 phical exploration drew men and even women 
 to the Sudan. It was in the sixties that Miss 
 Tinne, grand-daughter of Admiral van Capellen, 
 headed an exploring expedition which pierced to 
 the Sobat and even to Gondokoro, although a 
 doctor and the Baroness van Capellen paid the 
 price with their lives sacrificed to the black water 
 fever. Nor was Miss Tinne the only woman who 
 
THE LAND OF THE BLACKS 
 
 19 
 
 braved the dangers of travel through the Sudan, 
 while the roll of men explorers is a long one and 
 honorable with such names upon it as Bruce and 
 Baker and Schweinfurth and Gordon. 
 
 To ethers, again, the lure of the Sudan is the 
 strange fascination of its sorrowful history. 
 Along these tangled paths of prairie and open 
 forest, or along the scorching caravan routes of 
 the desert, or perchance shut up out of sight and 
 hearing in the slave dhows, have gone through- 
 out the years and decades, countless thousands 
 of slaves, women chiefly and children, but young 
 boys and men too. And for every life that reach- 
 ed the slave markets of Khartum or Egypt, at 
 least two other lives perished along the Via 
 Dolorosa of the slave route, and probably two 
 other lives were sacrificed in the murderous raid 
 that preceded the capture of the living booty. 
 To those who have this interest in the “Land of 
 the Blacks” (for such is the literal meaning of 
 the word “Sudan”), the name of Gordon, the 
 “father and savior of the Sudan,” and the hero 
 and martyr of Khartum, occupies a place of sin- 
 gular honor and of peculiar interest. 
 
 Another ground of interest in the Sudan re- 
 mains to be mentioned. It is the missionary 
 motive and passion. The past century has been 
 preeminently a century of missions. A passion 
 for the extension of the Kingdom of Christ, 
 strangely restrained, almost entirely extinguished 
 
 History. 
 
 Missions. 
 
20 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Tsaiah. 
 
 for even whole centuries, has blazed up once 
 again like a living fire in the heart of the 
 Church, and has become the most powerful as 
 well as the most hopeful feature of modern Chris- 
 tianity. This new missionary impulse of Christi- 
 anity has a driving power that promises to accept 
 nothing less than world conquest. To be sure, 
 the movement is only in its beginnings as yet, 
 but who will despise “the day of small things,” 
 when the missionary program is a world pro- 
 gram. Because there are unconquered king- 
 doms along the two Niles in the great Sudan, 
 the Christian missionary movement adds to the 
 love of adventure and to the fascination of sor- 
 row and suffering and to the lure of exploration, 
 this constraining motive of interest in the Christ- 
 ian conquest of the Egyptian Sudan and in the 
 fulfilment of the prophecy voiced twenty-six cen- 
 turies ago by Isaiah, that “In that time shall a 
 present be brought unto Jehovah of hosts 
 
 . from a people tall and smooth, 
 
 Ever from a people terrible from their beginning on- 
 ward ; 
 
 A nation that meteth out, and treadeth down. 
 
 Whose land the rivers divide — 
 
 To the place of the name of Jehovah of hosts, the 
 Mount Zion.” 
 
 This prophecy cannot find its fulfilment until 
 God’s gift shall have been first carried to that 
 people by the preaching of the Gospel. 
 
THE LAND OF THE BLACKS 
 
 21 
 
 In Kitchener’s victorious campaigns for the 
 conquest of the Sudan, no department of the 
 army was regarded as more vital than the Intel- 
 ligence Department. Colonel Wingate, now the 
 Sirdar, was Chief of the Intelligence Depart- 
 ment, and it was said of him, “Whatever there 
 was to know. Colonel Wingate surely knew it, 
 for he makes it his business to know everything.” 
 
 In the missionary enterprise of the Christian 
 Church, nothing is more important than its In- 
 telligence Department, and there is great need 
 for many a Colonel Wingate who will “make it 
 his business to know.” Devotion to missions 
 must not be made a substitute for a thorough 
 knowledge of missions, else how can the cam- 
 paign be wisely planned? how can the enterprise 
 be properly equipped? how can prayer be cor- 
 rectly focused upon the really vital issues ? While 
 there is much to be learned regarding condi- 
 tions in the Egyptian Sudan, yet there is much 
 that has already been discovered, and it is a plain 
 Christian duty to become familiar with such facts 
 as are vitally related to the Christian conquest 
 of the Sudan. Among such vital facts will be 
 not merely spiritual and religious conditions, but 
 also material and physical conditions. 
 
 The Egyptian Sudan is a vast territory, more size, 
 extensive than most people realize. Its area 
 would cover all the States east of the Mississippi, 
 with enough left over to obliterate England, 
 
22 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Distances. 
 
 Scotland and Ireland. Its greatest length in a 
 straight line, from north to south, is 1,250 miles 
 and from east to west about 1,080. If its south- 
 ern boundary were placed at Key West, Florida, 
 its northern boundary would lie near Toronto, 
 Canada. As a matter of fact, however, the Egyp- 
 tian Sudan lies much farther to the south than 
 this; it lies so far in the tropics that even its 
 northern boundary is three degrees south of Key 
 West, Florida, while its southern boundary is 
 four degrees south of the Panama Canal. Its 
 northern and southern boundaries fall respec- 
 tively in latitudes which are about three degrees 
 north of Bombay, India, and about three degrees 
 south of Ceylon. In describing so great a stretch 
 of country, it would be manifestly unsafe to gen- 
 eralize about anything. 
 
 For practical purposes and in the Orient es- 
 pecially, distances are to be measured not merely 
 in miles, but also in hours and days. To go from 
 Wadi Haifa (the northernmost station) to Khar- 
 tum, 579 miles, by rail, takes about 25 hours. 
 To go from Khartum to Gondokoro, 1,077 miles 
 by river boat, takes about thirteen days. Then, 
 too, it is well to remember that in 1880, Gessi 
 Pasha was blocked for some six weeks by the 
 sudd of the (River) Bahr el Ghazal, lost over 
 100 men, and would have starved, but for a 
 timely relief expedition. So you cannot always 
 be sure of your dates in the Sudan. At Gon- 
 
THE LAND OF THE BLACKS 
 
 23 
 
 dokoro, or slightly beyond, the steamer service 
 ends, but there are still more than one hundred 
 miles to be covered to reach the southern bound- 
 ary. 
 
 North and south, the railroad and then the 
 river, the great natural highway of the Sudan, Travel, 
 afford comparatively easy and rapid modes of 
 travel. For journeys east and west, there are 
 only the time-honored caravan routes and the re- 
 cently-opened railroad from Khartum to El 
 Obeid in Kordofan. 
 
 The chief railway lines are four; (a) from 
 Wadi Haifa to Khartum; this is the line used in 
 entering the Sudan by way of Egypt; (b) from 
 Berber to Suakin, the latter being the port of 
 entry for arrival by way of the Red Sea; (c) 
 from Khartum via Sennar to El Obeid; (d) 
 from Abu Hamed to Kareima. 
 
 The whole history of the Sudan and of mod- 
 ern missionary effort is a commentary upon the 
 problems of transportation and means of com- Gordon’s March, 
 munication. While he was Governor-General of 
 the Sudan, Gordon dealt successfully with many 
 most difficult situations by forced marches, which 
 took his enemies completely by surprise. On 
 one occasion he covered 85 miles on camel in a 
 day and a half and rode up through the lines of 
 an army that had expected to rebel, but thought 
 it had hours in which to formulate its plans. Thus 
 by his amazing rapidity, Gordon solved a situa- 
 tion which bristled with dangers and difficulties. 
 
24 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 On the other hand, not merely the enemy but 
 chiefly difficulties of transportation delayed the 
 expedition sent to relieve him at the time of the 
 siege of Khartum, and reached there after the 
 city had fallen, just two days too late. Difficul- 
 
 Sonsf °° travel and means of communication like- 
 
 wise affect vitally all missionary effort, deter- 
 mining, in large measure, the cost of the enter- 
 prise, the outreach of influence of a given sta- 
 tion or missionary, the number of stations re- 
 quired, the need for medical provision, the regu- 
 lations as to furloughs and mission meetings ; in- 
 deed, the whole character of missionary work is 
 frequently affected by such considerations and 
 conditions. 
 
 Meaning ot The word “Sudan” literally means “the Land of 
 the Blacks,” and as such is really applicable to the 
 black belt of Africa from east to west. The 
 Egyptian Sudan is that portion of the great Su- 
 dan which is in political affiliation with Egypt. 
 
 It will make it easier to refer to different sec- 
 tions of the Egyptian Sudan, if the names and 
 general location of its main political divisions are 
 mastered with clearness and accuracy. The out- 
 line map on page 25 will be of service in this 
 connection. The following are the names of the 
 thirteen provinces into which the Egyptian Su- 
 dan is divided, together with the names of their 
 chief towns : 
 
Transportation and Travel in the Sudan. 
 
 River Boat — Railroad — Train of Porters. 
 
26 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Name of Province 
 Bahr el Ghazal. 
 Berber. 
 
 Blue Nile. 
 Dongola. 
 
 Haifa. 
 
 Kassala. 
 
 Khartum. 
 
 Kordofan. 
 
 Mongalla. 
 
 Red Sea. 
 
 Sennar. 
 
 Upper Nile. 
 White Nile. 
 
 Chief Town 
 Wau. 
 
 El Darner. 
 
 Wad Medani. 
 
 Merowe. 
 
 Haifa. 
 
 Kassala. 
 
 Khartum. 
 
 El Obeid. 
 Mongalla. 
 Port Sudan. 
 Singa. 
 Kodok.* 
 
 El Dueim. 
 
 To these may be added, the Sultanate of Darfur 
 which is a semi-independent kingdom paying tribute to 
 the Sudan Government and having El Fasher as its 
 chief town. 
 
 Each province is again divided into a varying 
 number of Ma’murias, as for example ; 
 
 Upper Nile Province. 
 (42,350 sq. miles.) 
 
 " Abwong. 
 
 Gambela (Trading Post). 
 
 Kaka (Trading Post). 
 
 Khor Alar. 
 
 Kodok. 
 
 Malakal (Site for new Gov- 
 ernment Headquar- 
 ters, and Base of 
 Irrigation Depart- 
 ment.). 
 
 Melut. 
 
 Renk. 
 
 ^ Taufikia. 
 
 *To be changed to Malakal. 
 
THE LAND OF THE BLACKS 
 
 27 
 
 The political boundaries of the Egyptian Su- 
 dan may be roughly indicated as follows : on the 
 north, Egypt at the 22d parallel of north lati- 
 tude ; on the east, the Red Sea, Eritrea and Abys- 
 sinia (the boundary line has recently been ad- 
 justed) ; on the west and the southwest, a line 
 running through the Libyan Desert agreed to by 
 France, then the Sultanate of Wadai and the line 
 of watershed between the Congo and Shari riv- 
 ers on the one side and the Nile on the other; 
 and on the south, the Belgian Congo and Uganda 
 (approximately the 5th parallel of north lati- 
 tude). 
 
 The question is frequently asked. What sort 
 of a country is the Egyptian Sudan ? After what 
 has been pointed out as to the size of the Eg>q)- 
 tian Sudan, no one would expect any single gen- 
 eral description of the country to suffice. How- 
 ever, to bring out more clearly the contrasts 
 which different sections of the Sudan present, 
 two descriptions may be compared with each 
 other : 
 
 “The poor Sudan ! The wretched, dry Sudan ! 
 Count up all the gains you will, yet what a hideous 
 irony it remains, this fight of half a generation for 
 such an emptiness. People talk of the Sudan as the 
 East; it is not the East. The East has age and color; 
 the Sudan has no color and no age — just a monotone 
 of squalid barbarism. It is not a country; it has noth- 
 ing that makes a country. Some brutish institutions it 
 
 Boundaries. 
 
 "Wretched Su- 
 dan.” 
 
28 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 has, and some bloodthirsty chivalry. But it is not a 
 country; it has neither nationality, nor history, nor arts, 
 nor even natural features. Just the Nile — ^the nig- 
 gard Nile refusing himself to the desert — and for the 
 rest there is absolutely nothing to look at in the Sudan. 
 Nothing grows green. Only yellow halfa-grass to make 
 you stumble, and sapless mimosa to tear your eyes; 
 dom-palms that mock with wooden fruit, and Sodom 
 apples that lure with flatulent poison. For beasts it 
 has tarantulas and scorpions and serpents; devouring 
 white ants, and every kind of loathsome bug that flies 
 or crawls. Its people are naked and dirty, ignorant and 
 besotted. It is a quarter of a continent of sheer squalor. 
 Overhead the pitiless furnace of the sun, under foot 
 the never-easing treadmill of the sand, dust in the throat, 
 tuneless singing in the ears, searing flame in the eye, — 
 the Sudan is a God-accursed wilderness, an empty limbo 
 of torment for ever and ever. Surely enough, ‘When 
 Allah made the Sudan,’ say the Arabs, ‘he laughed !’ 
 You can almost hear the fiendish echo of it crackling 
 over the fiery sand.” — Steevens. 
 
 Such is one description and this is the other: 
 
 Pleasant 
 
 Scenes. 
 
 “Trees with immense stems, and of a height sur- 
 passing all that we had elsewhere seen (not even ex- 
 cepting the palms of Egypt), here stood in masses 
 which seemed unbounded, except where at intervals 
 some less towering forms rose gradually higher and 
 higher beneath their shade. In the innermost recesses 
 of these woods one would come upon an avenue like the 
 colonnade of an Egyptian temple, veiled in the leafy 
 shade of a triple roof above. Seen from without, they 
 had all the appearance of impenetrable forests, but, 
 traversed within, they opened into aisles and corridors 
 
The River Nile in Nubia. 
 
 In the Sudan, however, the river flows through a wholly level country. 
 
THE LAND OF THE BLACKS 
 
 29 
 
 which were musical with many a murmuring fount. 
 Hardly anywhere was the height of these less than 
 seventy feet, and on an average it was much nearer one 
 hundred; yet, viewed from without, they very often 
 failed to present anything of that imposing sight which 
 was always so captivating when taken from the brinks 
 of the brooks within. In some places the sinking of the 
 ground along which the gallery tunnels ran would be so 
 great that not half the wood revealed itself at all to 
 the contiguous steppes, while in that wood (out of sight 
 as it was) many a ‘gallery’ might still exist.” — Schwein- 
 furth. 
 
 Both descriptions are true. We need only to 
 note that more than a thousand miles lie between 
 the sections of country which they describe. 
 Steevens was looking out upon the northern des- 
 ert stretches of the Berber Province ; Schwein- 
 furth was either at the southernmost point of the 
 Bahr el Ghazal Province or had already entered 
 the forest region of West-Central Africa. 
 
 With these two descriptions, compare a third, 
 which was written half way between the two 
 points referred to, in the lower Sobat region : 
 
 ‘‘In no place are the trees large. All — or nearly all 
 — are a variety of the acacia. They do not grow very 
 close together, nor is there the thick undergrowth that 
 the pictures in our old geographies led me to expect. 
 You know the sort I mean — those large trees covered 
 with vines, and monkeys making a bridge on which to 
 cross over rivers, with an immense snake hanging from 
 at least one of the trees. Now I do not know that 
 
30 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Varying 
 
 tures. 
 
 there are no such scenes in some parts of Africa, but I 
 do say they are not in this part. I have sometimes heard 
 officials and others talk about ‘timber,’ but in Ohio we 
 would call it brush, or where the trees grew close to- 
 gether we might call it a thicket. Indeed it looks a good 
 deal like a wild plum thicket. Just around where we 
 ate our lunch the trees reminded us of an old apple 
 orchard where about one half of the trees had died 
 away, or some olive orchards I have seen in Italy. But 
 the grass is in no way disappointing. It grows tall and 
 rank everywhere.” — Mrs. Giffen. 
 
 Speaking generally, there are five different 
 sorts of country in the Egyptian Sudan. There 
 is the desert region to the northwest and north, 
 which takes in the greater part of the Provinces 
 of Haifa, Dongola, and Berber, with the excep- 
 tion of course of the cultivable land along the 
 river. Just south of this desert region and to 
 the west of the White Nile, is a country com- 
 monly described as steppes and barren land. 
 The great Province of Kordofan and the Sultan- 
 ate of Darfur represent a region of this sort, save 
 for a large number of cultivable areas which 
 stand out like oases in contrast with the rest of 
 the country. To the east of the Nile and north- 
 ward to the Red Sea, including the Provinces of 
 the Red Sea, of Kassala, of Sennar, and portions 
 of the Blue and White Nile Provinces, there is 
 what may be designated grazing land. The 
 country in the southern Provinces of Bahr el 
 Ghazal, Mongalla and Upper Nile (which in- 
 
THE LAND OF THE BLACKS. 
 
 31 
 
 eludes the Sobat region), is well described as 
 prairie and open forest. Finally, and most im- 
 portant, there are the cultivable lands; these 
 areas dot the Kordofan Province and Darfur, 
 and, for the most part, fringe the Nile and its 
 tributaries. 
 
 These variations in the character of the coun- 
 try in different sections, make for important dif- Pre- 
 ferences in the character of the peoples inhabiting 
 these regions, as we shall see in a later chapter. 
 Their occupations, their customs, their physical, 
 their intellectual and even their religious traits 
 differ according to the areas in which they live. 
 
 It is remarkable that in all this region of Af- 
 rica, which is designated the Egyptian Sudan, fionsf 
 there are no great elevations. Most of the coun- 
 try lies at an elevation of from 500 to 1,500 feet 
 above the sea level, and the rest ranges from 
 1,500 to 3,000, as at Erkoweit, a hill station on 
 the Suakin-Berber railroad. To be sure, there 
 are the Abyssinian mountains to the east and the 
 high peak of Ruwenzori to the south, but these 
 are beyond the boundary lines and do not belong 
 to the Eg}^ptian Sudan. Furthermore, there is 
 as yet no means of communication leading to 
 these more elevated regions. A serious mission- 
 ary problem results from these conditions. In 
 India it is possible for the missionary to escape 
 the debilitating effects of a difficult climate or 
 to counteract their evil influence by withdrawal 
 
32 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Problems. 
 
 for at least a month to the mountains of Northern 
 or of Central India. In Egypt, the Mediterran- 
 ean seashore affords a large measure of relief 
 from the furnace-like heat of Upper Egypt. But 
 what will the missionary to the Sudan do both 
 to keep himself “fit” and to safeguard the health 
 of his family? In missionary service as in mili- 
 tary service, to become “run down” is the poorest 
 economy imaginable. Will he journey to Egypt, 
 a distance of some 1,650 miles from Khartum or 
 some 2,150 miles from the Sobat region? And in 
 Egypt will he find a change of climate sufficient 
 to reinvigorate him, physically ? Or will he go to 
 the hill station of Erkoweit ? Here is relief from 
 'both moisture and heat, but with only a limited 
 tonic value and as yet but little social fellow- 
 ship for which the missionary craves, even more 
 than he does for physical recuperation, after his 
 long and dreary stay in an isolated mission sta- 
 tion. 
 
 In describing climatic and other conditions in 
 the Egyptian Sudan, it will be sufficient for gen- 
 eral purposes to describe conditions in and about 
 Khartum, which will be fairly typical for North- 
 ern Sudan, and then conditions on the Sobat 
 which may be fairly representative of Southern 
 Sudan. 
 
 In the extreme north, there is scarcely any 
 rain, but as you approach the sea or the Abys- 
 sinian hills and as you move southward, the 
 
 Climate. 
 
I'rum I'lyc’s Geogniiiliy. Per. Ginn & Co.. Pnb. 
 
 Relief Map of Northeastern Africa. 
 
 Showing rivers, lakes and mountain ranges of the Egyptian Sudan. 
 
THE LAND OF THE BLACKS 
 
 33 
 
 rains increase and produce a damp climate for 
 two or three months. The rainy season at Khar- 
 tum lasts from the middle of June to September, 
 but after all the rainfall is very slight.^ On the 
 Sobat the rainy season lasts from June to the end 
 of October.2 The hot weather in Khartum 
 reaches its greatest intensity in May, June and 
 July, the maximum temperature in the shade be- 
 ing from iio° to 115° Fahrenheit. During the 
 year ending with June, 1911, there was only one 
 month (December) in which a maximum temper- 
 ature of over 100° failed to be recorded at some 
 time during the month. It is to be remembered, 
 however, that the dryness of the climate goes far 
 to reduce discomfort caused by such heat. On 
 the Sobat, the rainfall is much higher, but the 
 thermometer registers no such extreme heat as at 
 Khartum. 
 
 The natural resources of the Sudan as ex- 
 ploited at present consist chiefly in the forests 
 of Kordofan and the Blue Nile, which produce 
 gum, ebony, furniture woods and fibre; and in 
 those of the Bahr el Ghazal, which produce india 
 rubber, gutta-percha, etc. ; and in the products of 
 animals, such as ivory, ostrich feathers, rhinoc- 
 eros horns, skins, etc. There is doubtless the great- 
 est amount of waste in the exploiting of even these 
 few natural resources. For example, the writer 
 
 'See Appendix III. 
 
 •See Appendix IV. 
 
 3 
 
Agriculture. 
 
 34 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 was told by an ostrich feather dealer at Om- 
 durman, that the common practise in securing 
 feathers is to shoot down wild ostriches, instead 
 of attempting to establish ostrich farms, where a 
 constant supply could be derived from the same 
 birds. What the mineral resources of the Egyp- 
 tian Sudan are, future surveys must reveal, but 
 iron and even gold are known to exist in limited 
 quantities in the western provinces. Unless 
 Western governments discover some way of con- 
 trolling abuses in the exploitation of Oriental 
 labor, it is to be hoped that no great discoveries 
 of mineral wealth in the country will precipitate 
 upon the Egyptian Sudan some of the serious la- 
 bor problems affecting to-day other sections of 
 Africa. 
 
 Apart from what is resulting from the Govern- 
 ment’s efforts to encourage agriculture, agricul- 
 tural activities in the Sudan have been conspicu- 
 ously limited. Only the country lying close to 
 the Nile a:nd its tributaries, is commonly under 
 cultivation, and this merely for the people’s own 
 needs. Progress, however, is being made in 
 Northern Sudan along these lines, and while 
 704,872 fcddans ^ were rep>orted under cultiva- 
 tion in 1905, the report for 1910 announced 
 1,953,200 feddans. The principal crops are durra 
 (a species of millet), beans, lentils, tobacco, se- 
 same, onions, melons, and some wheat and bar- 
 
 'A feddan is 1.038 Of an acre. 
 
THE LAND OF THE BLACKS 
 
 35 
 
 ley. The Province of Dongola is famous for the 
 quality and quantity of its dates. The three lead- 
 ing items of export trade in 1910 were: durra, 
 
 48,354 tons ; gum, 14,082 tons ; and sesame, 
 
 5,647 tons. Very earnest efforts are being put 
 forth to persuade the j>eople of the Sudan to grow 
 cotton, this being a great source of wealth in 
 Egypt, but disinclination to work, and also ignor- 
 ance of the proper methods of work have pre- 
 vented any large or good results in this direction. 
 
 To the ordinary tourist, it would seem that cat- 
 tle raising was the chief occupation of the Su- 
 danese, and indeed immense herds of sheep, goats 
 and cattle are to be seen along the Nile, and es- 
 pecially throughout the Upper Nile Province and 
 the Sobat Region. A special emphasis is laid 
 upon cattle raising among the pagans of this re- 
 gion by the fact that possession of cattle is their 
 only means of obtaining wives. 
 
 To describe the animal life of the Sudan would Animal Life, 
 require an entire volume and whole pages of 
 technical names which would mean little to the 
 ordinary reader. Yet one should observe the 
 wonderful richness of game and great variety of 
 animal life to be encountered in the Sudan. As 
 your train moves southward from Egypt to the 
 Sudan, you look out of the car window and get 
 glimpses again and again of gazelle scurrying 
 through the mimosa brush. Your book will tell 
 you that ariel and ibex, cony and wild sheep. 
 
36 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 River Scenes. 
 
 Snakes. 
 
 hyena and leopard, are to be found also in this 
 region. But it is in Southern Sudan that you 
 find the greatest abundance of game. As your 
 noisy stern wheeler splashes its way up the Nile, 
 the common diversion of the tourist is to stay on 
 deck and watch the sandbanks for crocodiles and 
 then to shoot, if, perchance, he may really hit or 
 kill them and thus rid the Nile of these p>ests. 
 Again and again, black spots in some untroubled 
 waters ahead are pointed out to you as hippo- 
 potami ; but before you get a good look at them 
 they are gone. At some way station a hunter 
 comes on board with his trophies — an elephant’s 
 ear, ivory tusks, buffalo hides. Again your book 
 tells you that there are in this region (the Upper 
 Sobat) elephant, buffalo, rhinoceros, zebra, roan 
 antelope, waterbuck, Mrs. Gray’s waterbuck, 
 white eared cob, Uganda cob, bushbuck, reed- 
 buck, Jackson’s hartbeest, tiang, lion, leopard, and 
 giraffe. One herd of eighty giraffe is recorded. 
 
 The Sobat missionaries have also placed on 
 record a good many interesting stories of en- 
 counters with snakes. The natives point out 
 three kinds. “If one of a certain kind,” they say, 
 “bites you, you will probably die. You may get 
 well, but you will be very ill and most likely will 
 die. If another kind bites you, you will surely 
 die. You may live over night, but you will never 
 get well. If you are bitten by the third kind, 
 they bury you right where you stand.” About 
 
Sandy Desert Land in Northern Sudan. 
 Grass Covered Prairie Land in Southern Sudan. 
 
THE LAND OF THE BLACKS 
 
 37 
 
 a hundred of the poisonous varieties were killed 
 in or about the mission residences each wet sea- 
 son during the early years of the Mission. The 
 following story is well worth repeating, although 
 it has become familiar to many through reading 
 Dr. J. K. Giffen’s “The Egyptian Sudan” : 
 
 “But to the cooking of our crane hangs a tale, the Snake 
 very thought of which makes me feel sick. The bird story.” 
 was large, and I needed a platter on which to serve it. 
 
 Now, our cupboard room is somewhat scarce, and such 
 dishes as are not in constant use are packed away in a 
 box in our pantry. 
 
 “When dinner was ready, I went to get the platter 
 for my bird. As the plate was bottomside up, I had to 
 slip my fingers well under to raise it; as I lifted it out 
 of the box I don’t know whether it was motion or sound 
 that attracted my attention — there being no window in 
 that end of the room, it was rather dark — but some- 
 thing made me peer into the empty space which the 
 meat plate had covered, to find it not empty, but full of 
 snake, and an ugly big head rising up at me. 
 
 “I shrieked. Abbas (the black boy) was in the kitch- 
 en and came on a run, picking up an axe on the way. 
 
 Abbas is wiser than the rest of us concerning snakes. 
 
 As soon as he saw what he had to deal with, he caught 
 the head of the creature between the axe and the pile 
 of plates ; that is, he meant to catch the head, but in real- 
 ity caught it about six or eight inches back of the head. 
 
 Having it thus he could not kill it, but could hold it. 
 
 When I started back — ^for I had put some yards between 
 me and the snake — Abbas said, ‘Keep away and call some 
 of the men.’ Just then Dr. McLaughlin, who had heard 
 my excited tones, called across, ‘What’s up, Mrs. Giffen ?’ 
 
38 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 I answered, ‘A snake — come quick!’ The doctor came, 
 smiling, knowing my terror of snakes. He did not ex- 
 pect to see much, although I was telling him, ‘It is a 
 big one.’ Abbas said, ‘Bring a club,’ but the doctor, 
 after getting a glimpse, wanted to see more of it. 
 Abbas said, ‘Take care of your face! It will spit!’ But 
 the doctor either did not hear or did not comprehend. 
 The next thing I saw was the doctor covering his eyes 
 with his hands, and I heard him say, ‘Give me your 
 apron, quick!’ I did so, and he wiped his face, then 
 said, ‘Give me water, quick!’ Leaving Abbas and the 
 snake to manage their own affairs, I began to help the 
 doctor. The snake had not bitten him, but had thrown 
 venom into his eyes. His face at the time was about 
 two yards from the snake, but it struck him fairly in the 
 eyes, — the doctor says, ‘with the force of a good strong 
 syringe.’ The natives said, ‘The doctor’s eyes are fin- 
 ished. He will never see again.’ And I have little doubt 
 that with one of them it would have been so. But we did 
 everything we could, and that at once. The eyes were 
 bathed and anointed with sweet cream. This gave but 
 little relief, but a strong solution of soda brought relief. 
 The eyes were very red and sore for a time and the 
 sight blurred and dim, but not permanently injured. 
 The snake killed and carried out, and the doctor’s eyes 
 made as comfortable as possible, we turned our atten- 
 tion to dinner again. After dinner was over, Mr. Giffen 
 examined the reptile. It was five feet long and eight 
 inches in circumference in the thickest place, and tapered 
 but little. He could find no fangs at all, but where the 
 point of the tongue should have been there was a small 
 tube-like arrangement, about three-quarters of an inch 
 in length, and as thick as an ordinary lead pencil. At 
 the end of this was an opening. From this, no doubt, 
 it throws the venom. While killing it, Mr. Giffen saw it 
 
THE LAND OF THE BLACKS 
 
 39 
 
 throw the venom. To do this it swelled out its neck 
 until it was as broad as his hand.” 
 
 It is only fair to add that such experiences be- 
 come quite rare after a station has become well 
 established and the land about has been brought 
 under cultivation. 
 
 The bird life of Southern Sudan is calculated 
 to excite the greatest wonder. As the steamer 
 moves southward, little islands will be seen cov- 
 ered with white egrets, suggesting in the distance 
 (if the weather permitted it) the remnant of 
 some snow drift. Beautiful golden-crested 
 cranes, repulsive maribou storks, reed-birds fly- 
 ing in myriads and giving the impression of a 
 flight of locusts, vultures, hawks, owls, pelicans, 
 ibises, spoonbills, and quail, — these, and hun- 
 dreds of other varieties give a new meaning and 
 a vivid literalism to the description of the Sudan 
 by Isaiah : 
 
 “Ah, the land of the rustling of wings which 
 is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia ; that sendeth 
 ambassadors by the sea (bahr, same word for 
 river), even in vessels of papyrus upon the wat- 
 ers. 
 
 “Almost the only large white spot now re- 
 maining unexplored in the Nile basin,” writes 
 Sir Harry Johnston in 1903, “is the district oc- 
 cupied by Nilotic Negroes (Dinka, Nuer, Shil- 
 luk) lying between the Sobat River on the north- 
 
 Birds. 
 
 
40 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Early Explora- 
 tion. 
 
 Herodotus. 
 
 east and the main White Nile on the west and 
 southwest.” Since that time, military expeditions 
 and exploration parties have added at least some- 
 what to our knowledge of that section of the Su- 
 dan. Of course, it is to be recognized that the 
 statement quoted above is to be taken in a very 
 broad and general sense. But if its correctness 
 be admitted at all, the further statement may 
 now be made, that for the Egyptian Sudan the 
 work of map making has now been completed in 
 broad outline at least. Few will appreciate how 
 great a task a modern map of the Egyptian Sudan 
 represents. Fewer still are acquainted with that 
 long list of explorers, soldiers, traders, and ad- 
 venturers who helped to make this map, many of 
 them willingly, others begrudgingly, sacrificing 
 life itself in the effort. 
 
 And the map of the Egyptian Sudan has been 
 2,500 years in the making. In 61 1 B. C., Neku, 
 the son of Psametik I, succeeded to the throne of 
 Egypt. He commanded his allies, the Phoenici- 
 ans, to send an expedition to sail down the Red 
 Sea and along the coast to the land of Punt. Ac- 
 cording to tradition, this expedition circled the 
 entire Continent. In 457 B. C., Herodotus, the 
 father of history, went up the Nile as far as the 
 First Cataract and collected much information 
 concerning the far-stretching land of Ethiopia to 
 the south. Some seventy years later, the phil- 
 osopher Aristotle, recorded the news of Pygmy 
 
THE LAND OF THE BLACKS 
 
 41 
 
 races to the southwest of the Nile. In 274 B. C., 
 Eratosthenes, a Greek philosopher, librarian at 
 Alexandria, sketched for the first known time 
 and with fair accuracy the course of the Nile, in- 
 dicating its Abyssinian tributaries. And does 
 not a reading of Isaiah’s vivid description of the 
 physical characteristics of the Sudan in his “Bur- 
 den of Ethiopia” (chapter xviii), suggest that 
 with his own eyes or with the eyes of some 
 friend, he informed himself as to that wonderful 
 land. But it is Ptolemy (more accurately Clau- 
 dius Ptolemaeus), Greek-Egyptian, who is cred- 
 ited with the first clear indication of the lake 
 sources and of the separate lake sources of the 
 two branches of the Nile, adding hints as to the 
 existence of twin lakes and great snowy ranges 
 called the Mountains of the Moon. “Though not 
 an explorer,” says Sir Harry Johnston, “Ptolemy 
 stands (for his age) in the highest rank of Nile 
 geographers; but he had to wait something like 
 seventeen hundred and forty years before Sir 
 Henry Stanley, by his discovery of the Semliki, 
 the Ruwenzori snow-range, and the last prob- 
 lems of the Nile sources, did justice to that re- 
 markable foreshadowing of the main features of 
 the Nile system due to the genius of the Alex- 
 andrian geographer.” What he contributed 
 set the high water mark of geographical knowl- 
 edge of the Nile watershed for almost 1,800 
 years. 
 
 Ptolemy. 
 
THE COURSE OP THE NILE ACCORDING TO PTOLEMY. 
 
 From the oldest version of Ptolemy’s Maps, in existence about 
 930 A. D., preserved in the Mount Athos Monastery. 
 
THE LAND OF THE BLACKS 
 
 43 
 
 Thus vve come down to modern times and the 
 great period of African exploration. It is not 
 possible to do more than mention names, nor 
 will the list be complete. There are, however, the 
 notable Bruce (1770) and the youthful Browne 
 (1791); Burckhardt (1812) and Thibaut 
 (1839); Pfetherick (1845) Peney (1861); 
 Baker (1864) and Schweinfurth (1868) who 
 contributed so richly not merely to geography, 
 but to botany j nd zoology also ; and a great host 
 of others, traders, explorers and government of- 
 ficials, who surveyed areas large and small in 
 the Egyptian Sudan. 
 
 “In 1839 or 1840 one of the most important 
 affluents of the Nile was discovered by the ex- 
 pedition of Turks and Europeans dispatched by 
 Mohammed Ali to explore the White Nile. This 
 was the Sobat (as it was named by the Nile 
 Arabs), which enters the White River under the 
 ninth degree of latitude. The word Sobat was 
 evidently an ancient Nubian or Ethiopian term 
 which was in existence two thousand years ago, 
 when it was applied to the White Nile (Asta 
 Sobas), in contradiction to the Blue Nile (Ast’- 
 ap>os). At the present day the Sobat is known 
 by the name of Kir on its lower portion, and 
 Baro on its upper course.” 
 
 It is solemnizing to remember what a price has 
 been paid in human lives for the information 
 which our modern map of the Egyptian Sudan 
 
 In Modern 
 Times. 
 
 The Sobat. 
 
44 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 presents. It is also sobering to remember that as 
 yet more lives have been enlisted in geographical 
 exploration than in missions in the Egyptian Su- 
 what Next? dan. As yet more lives have been wholly sacri- 
 ficed to this map-making than have been poured 
 out ujx>n the altar of missionary service in the 
 Sudan. But these two undertakings, that of ex- 
 ploration and that of missions, must not be set 
 over against each other. David Livingstone, the 
 explorer and missionary, was right when he 
 wrote : “I view the end of the geographical feat 
 as the beginning of the missionary enterprise.” 
 The geographical feat has been brought to a sat- 
 isfying conclusion in the Egyptian Sudan. It is 
 time for the Church of Christ to launch in a 
 worthy way and on an adequate scale the mis- 
 sionary enterprise that will win the land for 
 ' Christ. 
 
 “The strings of camels come in single file, 
 
 Bearing their burdens o’er the desert sand ; 
 
 Swiftly the boats go plying on the Nile, 
 
 The needs of men are met on every hand. 
 
 But still I wait 
 
 For the messenger of God who cometh late.’’ 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 A Sorrowful Past 
 
“More has been learned of Africa in the past fifty 
 years than has been known before since the Creation. 
 The world has been both entranced and appalled as its 
 enormous interior populations have come to light, and 
 its natural mysteries have been disclosed, its gigantic 
 problems revealed, its colossal woes uncovered, its pit- 
 eous story of suffering and wrong recited, and the irre- 
 sistible appeal of a sorrow-stricken, world-forgotten 
 continent has been unfolded in current literature.” 
 
 — James 5". Dennis. 
 
 “The East and West, without a breath. 
 
 Mix their dim lights like life and death 
 To broaden into boundless day.” 
 
 — Lord Tennyson. 
 
II 
 
 A SORROWFUL PAST 
 
 T he first historical mention of the land 
 south of Egypt carries us back some 
 5,900 years, to the days of Snefru, 
 who is said to have conquered the land 
 of the Negroes and to have taken captive 7,200 
 men and women and 200,000 head of cattle. The 
 next mention, six hundred years later, refers to 
 an expedition to the “Land of the Ghosts, which is 
 south of the land of the Negroes.” As years pass, 
 the protection of the southern boundary of Egypt 
 becomes increasingly a cause of anxiety to the 
 kings of Egypt. Finally, about 1400 B. C., Na- 
 pata is founded and becomes the far-famed capital 
 of an Ethiopian kingdom. Some six hundred 
 years later, during a period of national decay in 
 Egypt, the Ethiopian hosts sweep northward, and 
 all of Egypt, save a small section of the Delta, be- 
 comes a province of the Ethiopian kingdom, or at 
 least Ethiopia provides the reigning dynasty of 
 Egypt. After that, we see Napata give way to 
 Meroe as the capital and religious center ; and the 
 history of this land becomes shrouded in mystery. 
 
 History B. C. 
 
 47 
 
48 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN. 
 
 Christian Era. Here and there between Egypt and Khartum 
 
 Moslem En- 
 trance. 
 
 and even a short distance south of Khartum, there 
 are to 'be found ruins bearing Christian symbols 
 and inscriptions. These remind us that during the 
 fifth century, A. D., Christianity entered Nubia 
 and conquered it, and it is thought that about 560 
 A. D. Christianity was the established religion of 
 Nubia and Ethiopia. Of course, it is a matter of 
 conjecture how far south the term “Ethiopia” may 
 be said to carry us. In 1092 A. D., there were 
 powerful Christian kingdoms in these regions, for 
 whose authority the Moslem conquerors of Egypt 
 had a wholesome regard. It is interesting and yet 
 saddening and sobering, to reflect that at one 
 time Northern Sudan was nominally Christian. 
 Why was the Christian torch extinguished ? Per- 
 haps we may understand in part if we study the 
 type of Christianity which survives to-day in 
 Abyssinia. 
 
 The last six hundred years have witnessed the 
 irregular yet unfailing encroachments of Islam 
 and Arab civilization upon Sudanese life and ter- 
 ritory, until now the whole of Northern Sudan is 
 claimed by Islam, has succumbed to an Arab civ- 
 ilization, and has to a great degree adopted the 
 Arabic language. 
 
 Such superficial references to almost six mil- 
 lenniums of history can be justified only by the 
 fact that, after all, this Land of the Blacks has 
 not enjoyed any really connected development 
 
A SORROWFUL PAST 
 
 49 
 
 throughout this long period. Furthermore, the 
 historical records of what actually took place are 
 most meager. And, finally, it may be pointed out 
 that if the chief interest of this study centers in 
 the present-day races of the Sudan and in their 
 condition, only those facts of history need be con- 
 sidered that relate themselves vitally to present- 
 day conditions. It is chiefly the events of the past 
 hundred years that have determined the character 
 of the present situation. So overwhelming, so 
 far-reaching has been the influence of the past 
 century, that it may be said to outweigh the influ- 
 ences of entire millenniums and to have engulfed 
 almost all that went before. A fairly accurate ac- 
 quaintance with the history of the Sudan during 
 the nineteenth century, and especially during the 
 latter half of that period, is therefore necessary to 
 a proper appreciation of existing conditions. 
 
 Egypt Annexes the Sudan. 
 
 One hundred years ago, the governor of Egypt, Egyptian 
 one o£ the choicest provinces of the Ottoman Em- 
 pire, was Mohammed Ali, a remarkable person- 
 ality, an alert mind, a military genius, a capable 
 administrator. Hfe it was who wrested Egypt in 
 part from the Sultan, claimed it for himself and 
 for his family as an independent kingdom, save 
 for an annual tribute, and thus established the 
 line of khedivial rulers in the Valley of the Nile. 
 
 He it was also who looked with covetous eyes 
 
 4 
 
50 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Conquest 
 
 Egypt. 
 
 southward and extended the authority of Egypt 
 to the Sudan. His motive was in part political 
 ambition, in part a search for gold mines reported 
 to be in the Sudan, and in part, perhaps, an hon- 
 '’y est desire to bring into a more settled and civilized 
 state its ever-warring petty kingdoms and tribes. 
 That year, 1819, marked the beginning of a move- 
 ment by which Egyptian arms and strategy grad- 
 ually carried the Egyptian flag steadily south- 
 ward. At first the movement of conquest 
 and annexation followed the Nile, for the 
 Egyptian, whether soldier or trader, was 
 afraid of the “man-eating” desert on either side 
 of the river in Northern Sudan, But cupidity 
 and greed soon turned the movement westward 
 toward the rich settlements of Kordofan. At 
 times the tide of conquest was arrested by the 
 courageous resistance of some more powerful 
 Sudanese kingdom, such as that of Darfur; but 
 in the end, the Crescent and the Star were carried 
 forward, the wealth of the conquered tribes in- 
 creased the private fortunes of those sent to gov- 
 ern and extend the Egyptian Sudan, and the land 
 became a part of Egypt’s southernmost prov- 
 ince. At last the Egyptian flag reached to with- 
 in two degrees of the Equator, and there were 
 none to define the limits of authority east or west. 
 
 Rise of Slave Trade. 
 
 It is almost needless to say that the govern- 
 
A SORROWFUL PAST 
 
 51 
 
 merit of the Sudan Province by Egypt was no 
 model of justice, kindness or efficiency. Gover- 
 nors were appointed at Cairo, 1,500 miles away, 
 and he was considered the most successful gov- 
 ernor who caused the greatest revenue to fill, Trade, 
 first of all, his own coffers and then to overflow 
 into the treasury of Egypt. Trade chiefly con- 
 sisted in gum, ostrich feathers, hides and ivory. 
 
 It was not long, however, 'before the trader dis- 
 covered that the largest returns were to be had 
 not from white ivory, 'but from black ivory 
 (slaves). Thus the slave trade sprang up and 
 flourished. The Government leased out to trad- 
 ers vast areas, — sometimes areas that had never 
 yet been annexed, conquered or explored, — to be 
 exploited presumably for ivory. This meant in 
 practice that within these areas the trader could 
 carry on, without let or hindrance, his nefarious 
 traffic in slaves. The Government, of course, 
 would find a way to levy taxes on the slaves as 
 they were driven to the seaboard. In 1861, Sir 
 Samuel Baker journeyed through these regions 
 of Southern Sudan, hoping to join hands with 
 the great explorers. Grant and Speke, in the dis- 
 covery of the sources of the 'White Nile. On that 
 trip and during subsequent service in the Sudan, 
 he had abundant opportunity to note the utter 
 demoralization of the country by the slave trade. 
 
 How was the slave trade carried on? Just how 
 was slave raiding accomplished ? What were the 
 
52 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 profits which maintained this awful traffic? Who 
 might be held responsible for such conditions? 
 Why was it a difficult thing to stamp out both 
 slave trading and slave raiding? These and 
 other questions are answered by him in a clear 
 and comprehensive account which he gives of the 
 whole process and which may well be quoted in 
 full: 
 
 “The amount of ivory brought down from the 
 The How of White Nile is a mere bagatelle as an export, the annual 
 the Trade. value being £40,000 ($200,000). The people for the 
 most part engaged in the nefarious traffic of the White 
 Nile are Syrians, Copts, Turks, Circassians, and some 
 few Europeans. So closely connected with the diffi- 
 culties of my expedition is that accursed slave trade, 
 that the so-called ivory trade of the White Nile re- 
 quires an explanation. 
 
 “Throughout the Sudan, money is exceedingly 
 scarce, and the rate of interest exorbitant, varying, ac- 
 cording to the securities, from thirty-six to eighty per 
 cent. ; this fact proves general poverty and dishonesty, 
 and acts as a preventive to all improvement. So high 
 and fatal a rate deters all honest enterprise, and the 
 country must lie in ruin under such a system. The wild 
 speculator borrows upon such terms, to rise suddenly 
 like a rocket, or to fall like its exhausted stick. 
 
 “Thus, honest enterprise being impossible, dishon- 
 esty takes the lead, and a successful expedition to the 
 White Nile is supposed to overcome all charges. There 
 are two classes of White Nile traders — the one pos- 
 sessing capital, the other being penniless adventurers; 
 the same system of operation is pursued by both, but 
 
Slave Raiding in the Sudan. 
 
 The men are shot down, while the women and children are kidnapped and secured." 
 

 
 ■ 
 
 1 > 
 
 
 
A SORROWFUL PAST 
 
 53 
 
 that of the former will be evident from the description 
 of the latter. 
 
 “A man without means forms an expedition, and 
 borrows money for this purpose at one hundred per 
 cent., after this fashion ; he agrees to pay the lender in 
 ivory, at one half its market value. Having obtained 
 the required sum he hires several vessels, and engages 
 from one hundred to three hundred men composed of 
 Arabs and runaway villains from distant countries, 
 who have found an asylum from justice in the obscur- 
 ity of Khartum. He purchases guns and large quanti- 
 ties of ammunition for his men, together with a few 
 hundred pounds of glass beads. The piratical expedi- 
 tion being complete, he pays his men five months’ wages 
 in advance, at the rate of forty -five piasters ($2.25) 
 per month, and agrees to give them eighty piasters per 
 month for any period exceeding the five months ad- 
 vanced. His men receive their advance partly in cash 
 and partly in cotton stulifs for clothes, at an exorbitant 
 price. Every man has a strip of paper, upon which is 
 written, by the clerk of the expedition, the amount he 
 has received, both in goods and money; and this paper 
 he must produce at the final settlement. 
 
 “The vessels sail about December, and on arrival 
 at the desired locality, the party disembark and proceed 
 into the interior, until they arrive at the village of some 
 negro chief, with whom they establish an intimacy. 
 Charmed with his new friends, the power of whose 
 weapons he acknowledges, the negro chief does not neg- 
 lect the opportunity of seeking their alliance to attack a 
 hostile neighbor. Marching throughout the night, guid- 
 ed by their negro hosts, they bivouac within an hour’s 
 march of the unsuspecting village doomed to an attack, 
 about half an hour before the break of day. The time 
 arrives, and quietly surrounding the village while its 
 occupants are still sleeping, they fire the grass huts in 
 
 Organization 
 
 Deceptive 
 
 Guests. 
 
54 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 The 
 Sore.’ 
 
 all directions, and pour volleys of musketry through the 
 flaming thatch. Panic-stricken, the unfortunate victims 
 rush from their burning dwellings, and the men are 
 shot down like pheasants in a battue, while the women 
 and children, bewildered in the danger and confusion, 
 are kidnapped and secured. The herds of cattle, still 
 within their kraal, or ‘zareeba,’ are easily disposed of, 
 ‘‘Open and are driven off with great rejoicing as the prize of 
 victory. The women and children are then fastened to- 
 gether, the former secured by an instrument called a 
 ‘sheba,’ made of a forked pole, the neck of the prisoner 
 fitting into the fork, secured by a cross-piece lashed be- 
 hind, while the wrists, brought together in advance of 
 the body, are tied to the pole. The children are then 
 fastened by their necks with a rope attached to the wo- 
 men, and thus form a living chain, in which order they 
 are marched to the headquarters in company with the 
 captured herds. 
 
 “This is the commencement of business ; should there 
 be ivory in any of the huts not destroyed by the fire, 
 it is appropriated; a general plunder takes place. The 
 trader’s party dig up the floors of the huts to search 
 for iron hoes, which are generally thus concealed, as 
 the greatest treasure of the negroes ; the granaries are 
 overturned and wantonly destroyed, and the hands are 
 cut off the bodies of the slain, the more easily to detach 
 the copper or iron bracelets that are usually worn. With 
 this booty, the traders return to their negro ally; they 
 have thrashed and discomfited his enemy, which delights 
 him; they present him with thirty or forty head of cat- 
 tle, which intoxicates him with joy; and a present of a 
 pretty little captive girl, of about fourteen, completes his 
 happiness. 
 
 “But "business is only commenced. The negro cov- 
 ets cattle, and the trader has now captured, perhaps, 
 two thousand head. They are to be had for ivory, and 
 
A SORROWFUL PAST 
 
 55 
 
 shortly the tusks appear. Ivory is daily brought into 
 camp in exchange for cattle, a tusk for a cow, accord- 
 ing to its size — a profitable business, as the cows have 
 cost nothing. The trade proves brisk, but still there re- 
 main some little customs to be observed, — some slight 
 formalities, well understood by the White Nile trade. 
 The slaves and two thirds of the captured cattle belong 
 to the trader, but his men claim as their perquisite, one 
 third of the stolen animals. These having been divided, 
 the slaves are put up to public auction among the men, 
 who purchase such as they require ; the amount being en- 
 tered on the papers (serki) of the purchasers, to be reck- 
 oned against their wages. To avoid the exposure should 
 the document fall into the hands of the Government or 
 European consuls, the amount is not entered as for the 
 purchase of a slave, but is divided for fictitious supplies. 
 Thus, should a slave be purchased for one thousand 
 piasters, that amount would appear on the document 
 somewhat as follows : 
 
 Soap 
 
 • 50 
 
 Piasters 
 
 ($ 2.50) 
 
 Tarboush (Cap) 
 
 . 100 
 
 (< 
 
 ($ 5 00) 
 
 Araki 
 
 . 500 
 
 << 
 
 ($25.00) 
 
 Shoes 
 
 . 200 
 
 
 ($10.00) 
 
 Cotton Cloth . . . 
 
 . 150 
 
 {( 
 
 ($ 7.50) 
 
 
 1000 
 
 U 
 
 ($50.00) 
 
 “The slaves sold to the men are constantly being 
 changed and re-sold among themselves; but should the 
 relatives of the kidnapped women and children wish to 
 ransom them, the trader takes them from his men, can- 
 cels the amount of purchase, and restores them to their 
 relatives for a certain number of elephants’ tusks, as 
 may be agreed upon. Should any slave attempt to es- 
 cape, she is punished either by brutal flogging, or shot, 
 
 Dividing 
 
 Spoils. 
 
56 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Becomes a 
 Business. 
 
 or hanged, as a warning to others. An attack, or raz- 
 zia, such as described, generally leads to a quarrel with 
 the negro ally, who, in his turn, is murdered and plun- 
 dered by the trader — his women and children naturally 
 becoming slaves. A good season for a party of a hun- 
 dred and fifty men should produce about two hundred 
 cantars (twenty thousand pounds) of ivory, valued in 
 Khartum at four thousand pounds. 
 
 “The men being paid in slaves, the wages should be 
 nil, and there should be a surplus of four or five hun- 
 dred slaves for the trader’s own profit — worth, on an 
 average, five to six pounds each. 
 
 “The boats are accordingly packed with a human 
 cargo, and a portion of the trader’s men accompany 
 them to the Sudan, while the remainder of the party 
 form a camp or settlement in the country they have 
 adopted, and industriously plunder, massacre, and en- 
 slave, until their master’s return with boats from Khar- 
 tum in the following season, by which time they are 
 supposed to have a cargo of slaves and ivory ready for 
 shipment. The business thus thoroughly established, 
 the slaves are landed at various points within a few 
 days’ journey of Khartum, at which places are agents, 
 or purchasers, waiting to receive them with dollars pre- 
 pared for cash payments. 
 
 “The purchasers and dealers are, for the most part, 
 Arabs. The slaves are marched across the country to 
 different places ; many to Sennar, where they are sold 
 to other dealers, who sell them to the Arabs and Turks. 
 Others are taken immense distances to ports on the Red 
 Sea — Suakin, and Massawa — there to be shipped to 
 Arabia and Persia. Many are sent to Cairo; and, in 
 fact, they are disseminated throughout the slave-dealing 
 east, the White Kile being the great nursery for the 
 supply. The amiable trader returns from the White 
 Nile to Khartum; hands over to his creditor sufficient 
 
A SORROWFUL PAST 
 
 57 
 
 ivory to liquidate the original loan of fi,ooo ($5,000) ; 
 and already a man of capital, he commences as an in- 
 dependent trader.” 
 
 In 1863, there came to the khedivial throne in 
 Egypt one whose ambitious schemes made him 
 well known in Europe and plunged Egypt into 
 enormous national debt, — Ismail Pasha. He vis- 
 ited Europe and England, and was extremely 
 sensitive to what the civilized nations thought of 
 him, for he desired to have his Government count- 
 
 Reforms Begin. 
 
 ed among the enlightened Governments of his 
 time. Detailed reports of conditions in the Su- 
 dan were constantly appearing in print, and the 
 shame and disgrace of any connection with slav- 
 ery had already been emphasized by the long anti- 
 slavery agitations in Great Britain. Ismail 
 Pasha could not fail to observe that the price of 
 a good international reputation involved the sup- 
 pression of the slave trade in the Sudan. Ac- 
 cordingly, orders for the suppression of the slave 
 trade were issued, and Sir Samuel Baker himself 
 was commissioned both to execute these orders 
 and to establish in the Sudan what might at least 
 approximate a good and efficient government. In 
 1873, Sir Samuel Baker retired, having accom- 
 plished much, and Gordon (then Colonel) was 
 invited by the Khedive to carry forward the work 
 so well begun. 
 
58 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Gordon. 
 
 General Charles G. Gordon. 
 
 It is no undue exaltation of an interesting and 
 great personality that injects into the narrative of 
 events in the Sudan, what may seem like a bio- 
 graphical digression. Few are the communities 
 in the English-speaking world that have not at 
 least heard of “Chinese” Gordon. Many are the 
 lives, especially the young lives, that have been 
 stirred and quickened to higher ideals by Gor- 
 don’s career. Even if the re-conquest of the 
 Sudan was inevitable after the Mahdi Rebellion, 
 it may be said that no motive operated so pow- 
 erfully upon British hearts and lives, releasing for 
 this task British resources of life and money, 
 as the memory of Gordon’s martyrdom at Khar- 
 tum. In the Sudan, Gordon’s name is a name to 
 conjure with; at one time, speaking with a vet- 
 eran Arab in the market-place of Omdurman, 
 one who had been all through the experiences of 
 the Mahdi Rebellion, the writer put to him the 
 question, “And Gordon, what did you think of 
 him?” “Ah,” came the reply with evidently sup- 
 pressed feeling, “there was no man like him!” In 
 the open square back of the palace at Khartum, is 
 a statue done in bronze, of Gordon on camel back. 
 They have set him there not looking toward the 
 north where lay his own native land, but toward 
 the south, the Land of the Blacks, — the land of 
 
A SORROWFUL PAST 
 
 59 
 
 the people he loved and for whom he was willing 
 to lay down life itself. 
 
 First, let us get a picture of the man’s physical 
 appearance. “In Colonel Gordon’s appearance,” 
 writes Mr. W. E. Lilley, “there was nothing par- 
 ticularly striking. H'e was rather under the av- 
 erage height; of slight proportions, and with lit- 
 tle of the military bearing in his carriage. . , . 
 
 The greatest characteristic of his countenance 
 was the clear blue eye, which seemed to have a 
 magical power over all who came within its in- 
 fluence. It read you through and through ; it 
 made it impossible for you to tell him anything 
 but the truth, it inspired your confidence, it kin- 
 dled with compassion at any story of distress, and 
 it sparkled with good humor at anything really 
 funny or witty. From its glance you knew at 
 once that at any risk he would keep his promise, 
 that you might trust him with anything and ev- 
 erything, and that he would stand by you if all 
 other friends deserted you.” 
 
 Before coming to the Sudan, Gordon had won 
 an international reputation by his remarkable 
 achievements in suppressing the Taiping Rebel- 
 lion in China and by his leadership of the famous 
 “Ever-Victorious Army.” 
 
 In entering the service of the Khedive, Gor- 
 don was assigned a three-fold task: to establish 
 an efficient government in the Sudan, to carry 
 forward the work of exploration, and to suppress 
 
 Physical 
 
 Traits. 
 
 "Governor of 
 the Equator.” 
 
6o 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 the slave trade. His appointment, however, made 
 him Governor-General only of the Equatorial 
 Provinces with headquarters at Gondokoro. Gor- 
 don was at a serious disadvantage in that his au- 
 thority extended over only a portion of the Su- 
 dan, when the problems of government and of the 
 suppression of the slave trade involved the whole 
 of the Sudan. Furthermore, the authority of the 
 Egyptian Government in the Equatorial regions 
 was a mere fiction. “Beyond the two forts at 
 Gondokoro — garrison 300 men — and Fatiko — 
 garrison 200 men — ^the Khedive had no posses- 
 sions, and there was not even safety for his rep- 
 resentatives half a mile from their guns.” 
 
 For interesting side lights both upon the life 
 and ideals of the man and upon the conditions and 
 problems of his field of work, one must read “Col- 
 A Hard Task, Gordon in Central Africa,” and “Letters of 
 
 Gordon to His Sister.” For three long years — 
 such years as his in the Sudan are longer than 
 the ordinary years of men — Gordon measured his 
 strength and skill against tropical disease and fa- 
 tigue, against the intrigues and deceptions of slave 
 dealers, against the shortcomings of ineflficient 
 agents and subordinates, against dishonesty, greed 
 and cruelty, — and in ninety-nine cases out of a 
 hundred he zvon out. His European staff col- 
 lapsed under the terrific climatic strain. Of those 
 who went up the river with him in May, 1874, all 
 were dead or invalided home in September. He 
 
Major-General Charles George Gordon. 
 
 “Who at all times and everywhere gave his strength to 
 the weak, his substance to the poor, his sympathy to the 
 suffering, his heart to God.” 
 
 Born at Woolwich, 28 Jan., 1833. 
 
 Slain at Khartum, 26 Jan., 1885. 
 
 1 
 
A SORROWFUL PAST 6l 
 
 found his native agents involved in the slave 
 trade ; he caught a native lieutenant letting a slave 
 convoy pass in consideration of a 'bribe of $350. 
 On this occasion he rescued 1,600 slaves, but al- 
 most every journey he took, (and he was always 
 making unexpected or forced marches) brought 
 him upon the tracks of this foul Dragon — the 
 Slave Trade. A few quotations from his letters 
 will best picture his life during both his first and 
 second terms of service in the Sudan : 
 
 “July 28, 1877. — I have just been out to see the 210 
 
 slaves they captured near here It is a sad 
 
 sight to see the poor little starved creatures looking so 
 wistfully at one. What can I do? — I declare solemnly 
 that I would give my life willingly to save the suffer- 
 ings of these people; and if I would do this, how much 
 more does He care for them than such imperfection as 
 I am. You would have felt sick had you seen them. 
 Poor creatures ! Thirty-six hours without food !” 
 
 “Sept. 28. — When near the end of our long weary 
 march, I noticed a very small black boy in the path, 
 who would not get out of it. ... I immediately 
 suspected something, and on going on I came across a 
 lad with a chain of slaves, and I noticed a number more 
 chained together under some trees.” 
 
 “Sept. 4, 1878. — The sight of these ninety slaves was 
 terrible. I did not see them, but a friend of mine says 
 that there were few over sixteen years of age — some of 
 them had babies, some were little mites of boys and 
 girls ! Fancy, they had come over 500 miles of deserts, 
 and were a residue of four times their number.” 
 
 Letters. 
 
62 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Heavy 
 
 lems. 
 
 “March 24, 1879. — The people of Obeid look very 
 black at me, and every one complains that trade is ruined 
 by the stopping of the slave trade. It is weary, up-hill 
 work.” 
 
 “March 31. — This evening a party of seven slave 
 dealers with twenty-three slaves were captured and 
 brought to me, together with two camels. Nothing 
 could exceed the misery of these poor wretches — some 
 were children not more than three years old; they had 
 come across that torrid zone from Shaka, a journey 
 from which I on camel shrink. I got the slave dealers 
 chained at once.” 
 
 “April II. — When one thinks of the enormous num- 
 ber of slaves which have passed into Egypt from these 
 parts in the last few years, one can scarcely conceive 
 what has become of them. There must have been 
 
 thousands upon thousands of them We must 
 
 have caught 2,000 in less than nine months, and I expect 
 we did not catch one fifth of the caravans. Again, how 
 many died en route?” 
 
 “June 18. — Thus in three days, we have caught 400 
 slaves. The number of skulls along the road is appall- 
 ing.” 
 
 In one of his letters, Gordon estimated that in 
 the Bahr el Ghazal Province alone, the loss of life 
 through the slave trade must have amounted to 
 25,000 lives annually. Often, too, when slave 
 caravans were overtaken, it was a problem what 
 to do with the slaves. They might be hundreds of 
 miles from their homes. They were usually worn 
 out by their marching. If liberated, they would 
 
A SORROWFUL PAST 
 
 63 
 
 not know how to return to their native land, nor 
 would they have the strength to do so. To feed 
 them was a greater problem still. Meanwhile his 
 heart was wrung by their sufferings. 
 
 His tenderness of heart, his human interest in 
 those about him, his concern for the most obscure 
 sufferer shine out through the quaint philosophy 
 with which he views and describes tangled and 
 difficult situations. Writing to his own sister he 
 says: 
 
 “I took a poor old bag of bones into my camp a 
 month ago, and have been feeding her up, but yesterday 
 she was quietly taken off, and now knows all things. 
 She had her tobacco up to the last and died quite 
 quietly A wretched sister of yours is strug- 
 
 gling up the road, but she is such a wisp of bones that 
 the wind threatens to overthrow her; so she has halted, 
 preferring the rain to being cast down. I have sent her 
 some durra, which will produce a spark of joy in her 
 black and withered carcass. I told my man to see her 
 into one of the huts, and thought he had done so. The 
 night was stormy and rainy, and when I awoke I heard 
 often a crying of a child near my hut within the en- 
 closure. When I got up I went out to see what it was, 
 and passing through the gateway, I saw your and my 
 sister lying dead in a pool of mud — her black brothers 
 had been passing and passing, and had taken no notice 
 of her — 'SO I ordered her to be buried, and went on. In 
 the midst of the high grass was a baby, about a year or 
 so old, left by itself. It had been out all night in the 
 rain, and had been left by its mother. I carried it in, 
 and seeing the corpse was not moved, I sent again about 
 it, and went with the men to have it buried. To my sur- 
 
 Gordon’s 
 
 Heart. 
 
64 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 prise and astonishment, she was alive. After consider- 
 able trouble I got the black brothers to lift her out of 
 the mud, poured some brandy down her throat, and got 
 her into a hut with a fire, having the mud washed out of 
 her eyes. She was not more than sixteen years of age. 
 There she now lies. I cannot help hoping she is float- 
 ing down with the tide to the haven of rest. The next 
 day she was still alive, and the babe, not yet a year old, 
 seized a gourd of milk, and drank it off like a man, and 
 is apparently in for the pilgrimage of life. It does not 
 seem the worse for its night out, depraved little wretch ! 
 .... The black sister departed this life at 4 P. M., 
 deeply lamented by me, not so by her black brothers, 
 who thought her a nuisance. When I went to see her 
 this morning, I heard the ‘lamentations’ of something 
 on the other side of the hut. I went round, and found 
 another of our species, a visitor of ten or twelve months 
 to this globe, lying in a pool of mud. I said, ‘Here is 
 another foundling!’ and had it taken up. Its mother 
 came up afterwards, and I mildly expostulated with 
 her, remarking, however good it might be for the 
 spawn of frogs, it was not good for our species. The 
 creature drank milk after this with avidity.” 
 
 Realizing that permanent results could not be 
 His Rule Ex- hoped for so long as his own ef¥orts in Southern 
 tended. Sudan were being hampered by a contrary policy 
 
 pursued in Northern Sudan by an Egyptian Gov- 
 ernor-General, Gordon decided, in 1876, to resign 
 from service. The Khedive, however, was loath 
 to lose one whose administration and whose repu- 
 tation had alike proved most valuable to him, and 
 he accordingly agreed to a readjustment whereby 
 Gordon should be appointed Governor-General of 
 
A SORROWFUL PAST 
 
 65 
 
 the entire Sudan, from Egypt and the Red Sea to 
 the southernmost boundary of the Sudan. Thus 
 Gordon entered upon his second term of service 
 in the Sudan, which lasted from 1877 to the close 
 of 1879. Upon his arrival at Khartum, now in- 
 vested with supreme authority, Gordon found it 
 necessary to submit to certain formalities, (which 
 his soul always loathed) connected with his instal- 
 lation into office. The ceremony proved interesting The inaugura- 
 enough to be referred to. There were first certain 
 elaborate ceremonies of reception. Then followed 
 the reading of the Urman (edict) of his appoint- 
 ment. Then came the Cadi’s extended address. 
 
 Then the royal salute was fired. Then the gath- 
 ered officials waited breathlessly for the Gover- 
 nor-General’s response, which would outline the 
 policy of his administration and set forth his pro- 
 gram of government. The Governor-General 
 resfKDnded. The address was somewhat shorter 
 than they expected. It was also quite clear. No 
 manuscript copy was required. No stenographic 
 report was needed. It was simply this : 
 
 “With the help of God, I will hold the balance 
 level” 
 
 In his efforts to suppress the slave trade, Gor- 
 don worked tirelessly. In the three years, — 1877, 
 
 1878 and 1879, — he rode 8,490 miles on camels 
 and mules. His average day’s journey on camels 
 was 32)4 miles. “It is only by hard camel-rid- 
 
 S 
 
66 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 His Devotion 
 to Duty. 
 
 ing that I hold my position among the people,” 
 he wrote in his diary. And indeed he almost 
 gained a reputation for omnipresence. At one 
 time, he heard that a revolt was being planned by 
 certain troops. He rode on camel eighty-five 
 miles in a day and a half, outstripped his escort 
 and arrived alone. The leaders of the revolt 
 were so dumbfounded to see him riding up 
 through the line of soldiers, that they failed to 
 carry out their plans, and declared themselves 
 loyal to the Government. 
 
 It was only at the price of great anxiety that 
 Gordon thus forced crises to a successful issue, 
 either without troops and trusting entirely to his 
 personal influence and leadership, or else accom- 
 panied by forces of whose loyalty he was never 
 certain. More than once he looked death calmly 
 in the face. “In China,” he wrote, “it was other- 
 wise ; I felt confident my troops would stand. 
 Long before you get this, I shall be out of my 
 troubles; so do not pity me, for I have the Al- 
 mighty to guide me, and death is no terror. I 
 only wish )'^ou to know boz(/ worn 1 am through 
 hazmg to lean on God alone. 
 
 “This seems odd, but it is diametrically opposed 
 to our flesh to do so, and it is trying. My flesh 
 says, T should like i,ooo good, trustworthy sold- 
 iers and not HSs promise. It is utterly wrong, but 
 a widow would prefer £15,000 in the three per 
 cent, consols to the promise that God will provide 
 
A SORROWFUL PAST 
 
 67 
 
 for her After my spirit, I prefer the 
 
 promise; after my flesh, I prefer the 1,000 sold- 
 iers ; not having them, my spirit lords it over my 
 flesh and conquers; but the flesh suffers all the 
 same, and I see the deep lines in my face getting 
 deeper and deeper day by day. Why did I go? 
 
 Well, He sent me, for I went on a toss-up. He is 
 Governor-General. I am only His agent.” 
 
 One loyal and efficient officer cooperated with 
 Gordon in the suppression of slave raiding and 
 slave trading. This was Gessi. Gordon described 
 him thus: “Romulus Gessi, Italian subject; aged 
 forty-nine ; short, compact figure ; cool, most de- 
 termined man. Born genius for practical inge- 
 nuity in mechanics.” 
 
 It was this man Gessi whom Gordon sent up the 
 Nile to suppress a revolt in the Bahr el Ghazal 
 Province, led by Suleiman, chief of the slave raid- Messrs work, 
 ers. It would fill a volume to relate the dangers 
 and struggles that this Italian officer went through. 
 
 He found Suleiman devastating the country. 
 
 “Those of the neighboring chieftains who would 
 not submit to him, Suleiman attacked in their 
 strongholds and put to the sword. The women 
 and children, he either butchered or enslaved. He 
 robbed the people of their stores of grain. In some 
 places, there was nothing left for them to eat but 
 the leaves of the trees.” 
 
 Gessi was compelled to move against Suleiman 
 with a hopelessly insufficient force. He had but 
 
68 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Defeat of 
 Suleiman. 
 
 a thousand men against the enemy’s six thousand. 
 The closing of the Nile channel by long grass 
 prevented speedy communication with Khartum. 
 Some of Gessi’s letters to Khartum took five 
 months to reach their destination. For four 
 months, Gessi was on the defensive in a place 
 which he had fortified. Again and again, the 
 enemy attacked him in overwhelming numbers, 
 but each time was driven back. Ammunition ran 
 so short that Gessi’s men had to pick up the ene- 
 my’s bullets which fell in camp and cast them 
 anew. Finally, receiving two barrels of p>owder 
 and three ingots of lead, Gessi decided to venture 
 upon a sortie. The attack was successful and the 
 besieged now became the pursuers. 
 
 In a few months, Gessi restored more than ten 
 thousand liberated slaves to their homes. One 
 day eight slave dealers were brought into his 
 camp, and with them twenty-eight children whom 
 they had chained together. He had the guilty 
 wretches shot in sight of all the troops. “The 
 people were wild with delight. The news of the 
 punishment of the oppressors had spread like wild 
 fire. To village after village the poor captives had 
 been restored — rescued from what had seemed an 
 endless and hopeless slavery.” 
 
 In the end, Gessi overtook the slave dealer’s 
 army. “On the night of July 15th, he was abreast 
 of the enemy, and at a distance from them of only 
 a few miles. With the break of day, he surprised 
 
A SORROWFUL PAST 
 
 69 
 
 them in their sleep in the village of Gara. How 
 many peaceful villages in days gone by had these 
 j>acks of wolves burst upon in the dead of night ! 
 
 How many homes had they sacked, what rivers of 
 blood had they caused to flow ! What thousands 
 and tens of thousands of lives had they wasted in 
 slow misery whose dumb cry had reached no ear 
 but Heaven’s ! Their day had come at last and 
 had come none too soon !” With the bland re- 
 mark, “Thus it is that God makes gaps in the 
 ranks of His enemies,” Gessi shot Suleiman, the 
 chief of the slave-raiders. 
 
 Such is the briefest survey of Gordon’s work 
 and that of Gessi. At last, however, Gordon’s Gordon Re- 
 term of service as Governor-General of the Sudan 
 came to an end. A new Khedive came to the 
 throne of Egypt. Adapting the story of Joseph 
 we may say, “Now there arose a new king over 
 Egypt who knew not Gordon.” Failing to receive 
 cordial support from Cairo, and finding his health 
 in a very serious condition owing to the expos- 
 ures and hardships of his work in the Sudan, 
 
 Gordon felt obliged to resign the Governorship of 
 the Sudan. 
 
 Would the country relapse into the horrors of 
 slavery ? Would Gordon’s work be lost ? Gordon 
 could not give a clear answer even to himself. But, 
 having done what he could, he left results with 
 God. He rested in that faith which led him once 
 
70 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 to write : “Were it not for the very great comfort 
 I have in communion with God, and the knowl- 
 edge that He is Governor-General, I could not get 
 on at all.” 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 Fire and Sword 
 
A favorite verse of General Gordon; a copy was 
 hung by him in his bedroom at Rockstone Place, South- 
 ampton : 
 
 “Oh ! ask not thou, How shall I bear 
 The burden of to-morrow? 
 
 Sufficient for the day its care. 
 
 Its evil, and its sorrow; 
 
 God imparteth by the way 
 Strength sufficient for the day.” 
 
 “Not by the blind hazard of chance was this great 
 tragedy consummated; not by the discord of men or 
 from the vague opposition of physical obstacle, by- 
 fault of route or length of delay, was help denied to 
 him. The picture of a wonderful life had to be made 
 perfect by heroic death.” 
 
 — Sir William F. Butler. 
 
Ill 
 
 FIRE AND SWORD 
 
 A fter Gordon’s departure, the govern- 
 ment of the Sudan fell back into ways 
 of tyranny and oppression. The cup of 
 iniquity, which had been almost full be- 
 fore Gordon’s righteous rule brought a tempor- 
 ary respite, now overflowed. The country, smart- 
 ing under oppression, was ripe for a rebellion. 
 The man of the hour for such a rebellion was 
 Mohammed Ahmed. Slatin Pasha gives the fol- 
 lowing description of him : “He was a tall, broad 
 shouldered man of light-brown color, and power- 
 fully built; he had a large head and sparkling 
 black eyes ; he wore a black beard, and had the 
 usual three slits on each cheek ; his nose and 
 mouth were well shaped, and he had the habit of 
 always smiling, showing his white teeth and ex- 
 posing the V-shaped aperture between the two 
 front ones, which is always considered a sign of 
 good luck in the Sudan. He wore a short quilted 
 jibba, beautifully washed, perfumed with sandal- 
 wood, musk and attar of roses.” 
 
 Mohammed Ahmed originally came from 
 
 73 
 
74 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Doiigola in Northern Sudan, and was of 
 a religious turn of mind. He attached him- 
 self to the leader of a religious sect, 
 near the Island of Abba on the White 
 Nile. Later he broke with this religious leader 
 because he permitted singing and dancing in con- 
 nection with a feast. This action gave the young 
 religious devotee a wonderful reputation for holi- 
 ness. Attaching himself to another Mohamme- 
 dan sect, he soon became its leader. He traveled 
 about the country, gaining converts and announc- 
 ing himself to those whom he felt he could trust 
 as “El Mahdi el Muntazir,” the Expected Guide. 
 It is necessary to remember that the Sudan, es- 
 pecially Northern Sudan, is colored by the Mos- 
 lem faith. Mohammedanism, like Christianity 
 from which it sprang, looks forward to a millen- 
 nial age to be ushered in by some one sent by 
 God, who will bear the title of “Mahdi.” This 
 prophecy, and the expectation which it has cre- 
 ated in Moslem minds, has been the opportunity 
 of fanatic after fanatic to declare himself the 
 long-looked-for leader. 
 
 With sorrow and suffering, slavery and op- 
 pression hanging like a pall over the Sudan, it 
 did indeed seem as if the time had come for a 
 day of deliverance to dawn in the Sudan. To the 
 naturally religious nature of the Negro of South- 
 ern Sudan, as well as to the Moslem Arabs of 
 Northern Sudan, the religious claim of Moham- 
 
FIRE AND SWORD 
 
 75 
 
 med Ahmed made a powerful appeal. Men ral- 
 lied to the standards of this false prophet. It was 
 no wonder. They had little to lose, they had 
 much to gain. Heaven was assured them if they 
 died in this holy war. If they lived, earth might 
 also be theirs with its enjoyment of plunder and 
 booty. 
 
 The Government shortly learned that trouble 
 was brewing and sent a special messenger to bring 
 Mohammed Ahmed to Khartum, but the latter 
 overawed the Governor’s representative with an 
 assertion of his claims to the title of Mahdi, and Rebellion, 
 the man returned to Khartum empty-handed. 
 
 Then the Governor sent, in August, i88i, two 
 companies of soldiers to bring the Pretender for- 
 cibly to Khartum. The Mahdi and his followers 
 fell upon these and only a few escaped to tell of 
 their mis-managed attack upon the Mahdi’s vil- 
 lage. Again another force was organized, this 
 time from Fashoda, to attack the Mahdi and his 
 increased following in Kordofan to which point 
 they had moved from the Island of Abba. But 
 this force was also ambushed and some fourteen 
 hundred men were annihilated. Another expedi- 
 tion was organized and left Khartum in March, 
 
 1882, four thousand strong; it was reenforced by 
 two thousand troops from El Obeid. Utterly 
 careless and reckless, this expedition incurred de- 
 feat by a night attack, and the Mahdi’s great vic- 
 tory was ascribed to his supernatural power and 
 
76 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Mahdist 
 
 cesses. 
 
 became the sure proof of his prophetic claims. 
 Meanwhile the Mahdi sent his emissaries far and 
 wide inciting the whole population to rebellion 
 and summoning their warriors to rally around 
 his standards. Stronghold after stronghold fell, 
 enhancing his reputation and adding to his store 
 of ammunition and to his stock of arms. Through- 
 out Western Sudan his leadership was universally 
 accepted. The Egyptian Government made a su- 
 preme effort to check the rising tide of Mahdism 
 and sent forth Hicks Pasha with a mob of ten 
 thousand men, mostly undrilled Egyptians, to at- 
 tack an enemy that by this time could rally one 
 hundred thousand fanatical warriors. What oc- 
 curred on November 4th, 1883, was scarcely a 
 battle ; rather was it a massacre from which only 
 a few individuals escaped. 
 
 The Egyptian Government, realizing the grav- 
 ity of the situation and embarrassed financially 
 and politically by events connected with the Arabi 
 Rebellion in Egypt and the British Occupation, 
 resolved upon the withdrawal of her troops and 
 garrisons in the Sudan, and the temporary aban- 
 donment of the country. It was quite an impos- 
 sible task, however, to withdraw the Egyptian 
 troops, for there were no ready means of trans- 
 portation, and the country was aflame with re- 
 bellion. To accomplish this impossible task, the 
 Egyptian Government turned to Gordon, who 
 had governed the Sudan so successfully a short 
 
FIRE AND SWORD 
 
 77 
 
 time before. January i8th, 1884, found Gordon 
 leaving London for Khartum, and on February 
 19th he entered that city. 
 
 The story of Gordon at Khartum is a long one 
 and a sad one. It is difficult to compress into the 
 limits of a few paragraphs the events of eleven 
 months and eight days, or to set forth in a brief 
 sketch the noble traits of character which these 
 experiences revealed in General Gordon. Those 
 who read his journals will appreciate better the 
 significance of his life at Khartum. Here we 
 come nearest to the heart of the man and the cir- 
 cumstances of his life. 
 
 We see how he was hampered by shiftless men ; 
 “If these Arabs (one’s servants) are not eating, 
 they are saying their prayers ; if not saying their 
 prayers, they are sleeping; if not sleeping, they 
 are sick. Now figure to yourself the position ; 
 you cannot do anything with them while in these 
 fortresses — eating, saying prayers, sleeping, or 
 sick, — and they know it It is a beau- 
 
 tiful country for trying experiments with your 
 patience.” 
 
 Again, he speaks of the unreliability of his 
 troops: “I have ever felt the greatest insecurity 
 respecting the lines, for I believe one hundred 
 determined men would carry them with ease, if 
 they made their attack on the Shaggia or Bashi 
 Bazouk part. These creatures used to shut them- 
 
78 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Treachery i 
 Camp. 
 
 selves into the houses at about 7 P. M. and never 
 go out till it was broad daylight.” 
 
 Then, too, Gordon had to deal with dishonesty. 
 When the life of the city was so dependent on the 
 stock of provisions, dishonesty here was disheart- 
 ening. Two months before the city fell, he 
 wrote; “Some one has stolen 93,000 okes of bis- 
 cuit ; this robbery took place nearly a year ago 
 
 and was only found out two days ago 
 
 Rectified list of biscuits is 266,430 okes. Durra 
 (corn) is 2,110 ardebs in magazine to-day — six 
 weeks’ consumption ! and then the sponge must 
 ■be thrown up. I could write volumes of pent-up 
 wrath on this subject if I did not believe things 
 are ordained and all work for the best.” 
 
 Although so sorely tried, yet his love and 
 pity for the people did not fail; “I declare sol- 
 emnly, that if it were not for the honor’s sake of 
 our nation, I would let these people slide ; they are 
 of the very feeblest nature ; but because they are 
 weak, there is so much more the reason to try and 
 help them ; for I think it was because we were 
 such worthless creatures, that our Lord came to 
 deliver us.” 
 
 That Gordon fully faced the thought of death 
 long before the city was captured, is clear from 
 the following entry in his journal : “I toss up in 
 my mind, whether, if the place be taken, to blow 
 up the place and all in it, or else to be taken, and, 
 with God’s help, to maintain the faith, and if nec- 
 
FIRE AND SWORD 
 
 79 
 
 essary to suffer for it (which is most probable). 
 
 The blowing up of the palace is the simplest, 
 while the other means long and weary suffering 
 and humiliation of all sorts. I think I shall elect 
 for the last, not from fear of death, but because 
 the former has more or less the taint of suicide, as 
 it can do no good to any one, and is, in a way, 
 taking things out of God’s hands.” 
 
 Soon the Mahdi forces appeared across the 
 White and Blue Niles, and the siege of Khartum 
 began. Gordon seemed to have been forgotten 
 by the land that gave him birth and by the na- 
 tion whose interests he was serving. 
 
 Several months before the city fell, Gordon 
 generously sent down the river Stewart, Power 
 and Herbin, the only other Englishmen at Khar- 
 tum. He thought thus to save their lives, but 
 the party was murdered and the dispatches they 
 carried were lost. 
 
 Then we have the inspiring, yet pathetic, pic- 
 ture of General Gordon left alone in Khartum, unselfish De- 
 the only Englishman in a city of 34,000 souls. 
 
 We see him here doing the work of a hundred 
 men, strengthening the defences of the city in 
 every conceivable way, baffled by the shiftless- 
 ness and incompetency of native officials, encour- 
 aging the pieople by promises until their faith 
 even in his word as an Englishman began to fail, 
 yet inspiring them, week after week and month 
 after month, to new resistance. We see him 
 
8o 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 often discouraged, but never showing it, 
 always leaning on the assurance of a Divine Pro- 
 vidence. Again and again he looks out of his pal- 
 ace window and scans the northern horizon to see 
 if the long -1 ooked-for Relief Expedition is in 
 sight, then turns back to the cares and anxieties, 
 the weariness and worries, of the defence of the 
 city. 
 
 The last entry in any journal that has been 
 preserved is made under date of December 14, 
 1884. At this time there remained in the city 
 provisions for only eleven more days, yet we know 
 that the city actually held out for a full month 
 longer. We can imagine therefore, to what 
 straits the population was driven. There is under 
 the same date a letter to his sister : 
 
 “14 December, 1S84. — This may be the last letter you 
 will receive from me, for we arc on our last legs, owing 
 to the delay of the expedition. However, God rules all, 
 and, as He will rule to His glory and our welfare, His 
 
 will be done 
 
 “Your affectionate brother. 
 
 
 
 
The Governor’s Palace at Khartum. 
 
 Front and Rear Views: Built on site of old palace. Gordon was 
 
 slain near where circular stairway appears in lower picture. 
 

 
 j 
 
 " 4-r 
 
 7J 
 
 ■ i 
 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 .'9 
 
 ■ '^'i 
 
 
FIRE and sword 
 
 8l 
 
 It is Sabbath morning, January 25, 1885. To 
 the anxious inhabitants of Khartum, it has been 
 far from a day of rest or peace, for the roar of 
 cannon has been heard all day. As darkness 
 falls, there is a cessation of firing, but the silence 
 seems more ominous than the noise of cannon The Attack, 
 had been. The wearied and half-fed defenders 
 drop into a tired sleep, but across the river in the 
 Mahdi’s camp, there is renewed activity, for 
 during this night a great assault is to be made 
 upon the city. Boat load after boat load of Mah- 
 dist soldiers is brought across the river. The 
 Mahdi himself comes across to harangue the 
 troops. Silence is strictly enjoined that no shouts 
 of war-cries may arouse the sleeping defenders. 
 
 Finally, all preparations are completed and the 
 Mahdi forces advance upon the city. The night 
 is far spent. Indeed dawn is breaking. Sud- 
 denly the stillness is broken by a deafening dis- 
 charge of thousands of rifles and guns. The 
 weakened defences of Khartum are scaled, the 
 enemy is within the city. Did treachery open 
 the gates and make the capture of the city easier ? 
 
 None may say definitely, though many believe it. 
 
 Then the cry is raised, “Lil Saraya !” “To the 
 Palace!” Here they expected to find rich treas- q, 
 
 ure. Gordon came forth upon the steps of the 
 palace and called out to the mob, “Where is your 
 leader?” Doubtless he hoped to parley for the 
 lives of the inhabitants. Ignoring his question. 
 
 6 
 
82 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Character 
 
 Gordon. 
 
 Dislike of 
 Display. 
 
 the irresponsible mob surged forward. A javelin 
 was thrown. It struck Gordon in the breast. He 
 fell forward. Other blows were struck and he 
 whom the Sudanese women had once called “the 
 father and savior of the Sudan,” lay dead ! 
 
 “By those for whom he lived, he died. 
 
 His land awoke too late, to crown dead brows with 
 praise.” 
 
 Two days later, just forty-eight hours too late, 
 the British Relief Expedition steamed into sight 
 and, seeing that the city was captured, steamed 
 away again, not to reappear until General Kitch- 
 ener, by a series of campaigns extending over 
 thirteen long years, had first stemmed the ad- 
 vancing tide of the rebellion and then had driven 
 it back to its final overthrow at the Battle of Om- 
 durman. 
 
 Character of Gordon. 
 
 In view of the exceedingly brief account that 
 space allows for the portrayal of Gordon’s life 
 and work, it may not be amiss to definitely point 
 out certain characteristics of the man. 
 
 His indifference to position, public honors and 
 money: The Chinese Government twice offered 
 him large sums of money as a reward for his 
 great services in suppressing the Taiping Rebel- 
 lion. Both offers were firmly declined. They 
 sent him six mandarin dresses in the correct 
 fashion for his official rank. He could not refuse 
 
FIRE AND SWORD 
 
 §3 
 
 them, but writes regretfully, “Some of the but- 
 tons on the mandarin hats are worth thirty or 
 forty pounds ($150 or $200). I am sorry for it, 
 as they cannot afford it over well.” In his honor, 
 a heavy gold medal was struck by the two Em- 
 press Regents. This he prized very highly; but 
 removed its inscription and sent it as an anony- 
 mous gift, at one time when many operatives 
 were in distress and an appeal had been made for 
 their relief. This explains a phrase he was wont 
 to use to describe the height of self-sacrifice, “You 
 must give up your medal.” When he entered 
 the Khedive’s service, the Khedive fixed his sal- 
 ary at $50,000 a year ; Gordon refused to accept 
 more than $10,000; this left him greater indepen- 
 dence and put the position he occupied beyond 
 the covetousness of money-loving Pashas. “The 
 astonished Egyptian officials looked on in amaze- 
 ment at one in high rank, who examined into 
 every detail himself and who took his turn of the 
 hard work.” On his journey up the Nile, he 
 would turn in and help his own men in pulling 
 the boat. 
 
 He had a genuine sympathy with those in dis- 
 tress whether high or low. He felt genuinely 
 sorry for the Khedive, and although he had fully 
 planned to give up the arduous service in the Su- 
 dan, he changed his mind on receipt of a letter 
 from the Khedive and stayed another year. “The 
 man had gone to all this expense,” wrote Gordon, 
 
 Sympathy. 
 
84 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Sense of Hu- 
 mor. 
 
 Godliness. 
 
 “under the belief that I would stick to him; I 
 could not therefore leave him.” 
 
 “The poor slaves,” says Boulger, “from whose 
 limbs the chains of their oppressors had only 
 just been struck, would come round Him when 
 anxious about his health, and gently touch him 
 with their fingers. The hostile chiefs, hearing as 
 Bedden did, that he restored his cattle to and 
 recompensed in other ways a friendly chief who 
 had been attacked in mistake, would lie in wait 
 for him, and lay their views and grievances be- 
 fore him.” 
 
 He had a keen sense of humor: “Last night, 
 March 26th,” he wrote, “we were going along 
 slowly in the moonlight, and I was thinking of 
 you all, and of the expeditions, and Nubar and 
 Company when all of a sudden from a large bush 
 came peals of laughter. I felt put out, but it turn- 
 ed out to be birds, who laughed at us from the 
 bushes for some time in a very rude way. They 
 are a species of stork, and seemed in capital spir- 
 its, and highly amused at anybody thinking of 
 going to Gondokoro with the hope of doing any- 
 thing.” His journals and letters abound in re- 
 marks which show a quaint but keen sense of 
 humor. 
 
 He was essentially religious: This is meant in 
 the best sense. He could not tolerate the slight- 
 est suspicion of cant or pharisaism. His relig- 
 ion was real, for he hated formalism. 
 
FIRE AND SWORD 
 
 85 
 
 He was a Bible student 
 “Boldly and humbly study the Scriptures,” he 
 writes. “God’s dwelling in us is the key to them ; 
 they are a sealed book as long as you do not re- 
 alize this truth which is sure and certain whether 
 
 you feel it or not Die now and you 
 
 will never die God’s in-dwelling is 
 
 all in all the great secret.” 
 
 He was not only a strong believer in a ruling 
 and overruling Providence, but felt constantly 
 in touch with his God, so that to Gordon, God 
 was a friend to be leaned upon in time of need. 
 Indeed he carried to its logical conclusion and 
 applied fully to his own life the doctrine of sur- 
 render to the will of God. 
 
 “Duffli, 10 July, 1876. 
 
 “Thank God I am well, and so happy now I have 
 resigned the government of the Province and put all 
 the faults on my ‘Friend.’ He is able to bear them and 
 will use me as long as He pleases as His mouthpiece, 
 and when He has done with me He will put me aside. 
 . . . . I do not know if you will see this ‘pearl’ at 
 once, but I consider it a great stride in the knowledge 
 of Him, and yet it is an old truth. I consider, now I 
 am free from any responsibility about the Province or 
 my staying or leaving, that He has taken the whole work 
 off my hands and that I am on leave as it were. What 
 a comfort it is ! He offers to do the same for all ; but 
 many appear to say, ‘No, I would rather do my own 
 work.’ ” 
 
 That Gordon was a man of prayer has often 
 
86 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Prayer Lite, been mentioned, but many will be surprised to 
 learn to what extent he made use of prayer in 
 solving the problems of his work even among 
 pagan Sudanese: — 
 
 “Foggia, 7 June, 1877. 
 
 “Praying for the people whom I am about to visit 
 gives me much strength and it is wonderful how some- 
 thing seems already to have passed between us when I 
 meet with a chief (for whom I have prayed) for the 
 first time. On this I base my hopes of a triumphal march 
 to Fasher; the chiefs cannot wish war and can 
 have little hopes of success, seeing that, as I 
 trust is the case, Fasher has been relieved. I 
 have really no troops with me, but I have the Shekinah, 
 and I do like trusting to Him and not to man.” 
 
 Should it seem strange that through his con- 
 stant study of the Scriptures, Gordon should have 
 also discovered and laid hold of the blessed hope 
 of his Lord’s return? Writing in his journal at 
 Debbe, on February 15, 1878, he says: 
 
 “I wish, I wish the King would come again and put 
 things right on earth ; but His coming is far off, for the 
 whole world must long for Him ere He comes, and I 
 really believe there are but very, very few who would 
 wish Him to appear, for to do so is to desire death and 
 how few do this! Not that we really ever die; we only 
 change our sheaths.” 
 
 The Reign of Mahdisnt. 
 
 The Mahdi movement was, in its beginnings, 
 a religious movement. Its proclamations were 
 
FIRE AND SWORD 
 
 87 
 
 made, “In the name of God, the Merciful, the 
 ■Compassionate.” The Mahdi claimed to be the 
 Vicar of God, the prophesied “Guide.” From all 
 this, it might be inferred that the movement had, 
 perhaps, a large measure of good in it. This 
 however, was not the case, as may be seen from 
 the character and acts of its leaders. 
 
 The capture of the city of Khartum was mark- 
 ed by the greatest atrocities. The men were gen- 
 erally put to death. The women and girls were 
 gathered together, and after the Mahdi had pick- 
 ed out those he wished for his harem, the rest 
 were distributed among his officers and troops in 
 the order of their precedence in rank. 
 
 Shortly after the fall of Khartum, on June 22d, 
 1885, the Mahdi died. During his life time, how- 
 ever, he had appointed four Khalifas to assist 
 •him in the government of his newly established 
 kingdom and to succeed him at his death. These 
 four were: 
 
 Abdulla Ibn el Sayid (Taaisha tribe). 
 
 Ali Wad Helu (Degheim Arab). 
 
 Sheikh el Senussi (who never accepted). 
 
 Mohammed el Sherif (son-in-law of Mahdi). 
 
 Upon the death of the Mahdi, Khalifa Abdulla 
 succeeded him and became preeminently The 
 Khalifa, never assuming the title of Mahdi. As 
 the Khalifa was the leader of the Mahdi move- 
 ment for thirteen of the seventeen years during 
 which this movement lasted, he it was who deter- 
 
 Reign of 
 Mahdism. 
 
 The Khalifa. 
 
88 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 mined the character of Mahdism and was chiefly 
 responsible for almost a decade and a half of fire 
 and sword and famine. It is to 'be noted that the 
 Khalifa, like the Mahdi, was chiefly of Arab de- 
 scent. While the Mahdi originally came from 
 Dongola along the Nile, well to the north, Ab- 
 dulla, his Khalifa, came from Darfur and be- 
 longed to the Taaisha division of the Baggara 
 (cattle owning) tribe. This was a warlike, slave 
 raiding tribe, but Arab rather than Negro; so 
 much so that Abdulla’s father had planned to 
 leave the Sudan and remove to Arabia. While 
 Mahdism swept negro and pagan sections, as a 
 fire sweeps a prairie, yet it had its origin and 
 leadership in men and tribes that were Arab and 
 Mohammedan; this is an important point to ob- 
 serve if we are deducing national and racial 
 traits out of these movements of history. 
 
 Slatin Pasha, who was a prisoner of the Mahdi 
 and of the Khalifa for eleven long years and 
 whose book “Fire and Sword in the Sudan” is 
 one of the most thrilling narratives imaginable, 
 gives this description of the Khalifa’s appearance 
 when he first saw him : 
 
 “He had a light-brown complexion, a sympa- 
 thetic Arab face, on which the marks of small-pox 
 were still traceable, an aquiline nose, a well-shap>ed 
 mouth, slight moustache, and a fringe of hair on 
 his cheeks, but rather thicker on his chin ; he was 
 about middle height, neither thin nor stout, was 
 
FIRE AND SWORD 
 
 89 
 
 wearing a jibba covered with small square 
 patches of different colors, and a Mecca takia, or 
 skull cap, round which was hound a cotton turban ; 
 he generally spoke with a smile and showed a row 
 of glistening white teeth.” 
 
 Later he described his appearance and life as 
 follows : 
 
 “He joined the Mahdi at the age of thirty-five, 
 and was then a slim and active, though power- 
 fully built man ; but latterly he has become very 
 stout, and his lightness of gait has long since dis- 
 appeared. He is now forty-nine years of age, but 
 looks considerably older, and the hair of his beard 
 is almost white. At times the expression of his 
 face is one of charming amiability, but more gen- 
 erally it is one of dark sternness, in which tyranny 
 and unscrupulous resolution are unmistakably 
 visible. He is rash and quick-tempered, acting 
 often without a moment’s consideration, and 
 when in this mood even his own brother dares 
 not approach him. His nature is suspicious to a 
 degree to every one, his nearest relatives and 
 members of his household included. Hte admits 
 that loyalty and fidelity are rare qualities, and 
 that those who have to deal with him invariably 
 conceal their real feelings in order to gain their 
 own ends. He is most susceptible to flattery, and 
 consequently receives an inordinate amount from 
 every one. No one dares to speak to him without 
 referring in the most fulsome terms, to his wis- 
 
 Traits of 
 Character. 
 
90 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 dom, power, justice, courage, generosity, and 
 truthfulness. He accepts this absurd adulation 
 with the greatest pleasure and satisfaction; but 
 woe to him who in the slightest degree offends 
 his dignity! 
 
 “In all intercourse with him he demands the 
 most complete humility and submission. Persons 
 entering his presence stand in front of him with 
 their hands crossed over their breasts and their 
 eyes lowered to the ground, awaiting his p>ermis- 
 sion to be seated. In his audience chamber he is 
 generally seated on an angareb, over which a 
 palm-mat is spread and his sheepskin stretched 
 out on it, whilst he leans against a large roll of 
 cotton cloth which forms a pillow. When those 
 brought before him are allowed to be seated, they 
 take up a position as in prayers, with their eyes 
 fixed on the ground, and in this posture they an- 
 swer the questions put to them, and dare not 
 move until permission is given them to with- 
 draw.” 
 
 “The Khalifa thought it incumbent on his po- 
 sition to maintain a large establishment; and as 
 this was also entirely in conformity with his own 
 inclinations, he gradually became possessor of a 
 harem of over four hundred wives. In accord- 
 ance with the Mohammedan law, he has four 
 legal wives, who belong to free tribes ; but, being 
 a lover of change, he never hesitates to divorce 
 them at will, and take others in their places. The 
 
FIRE AND SWORD 
 
 91 
 
 Other women of the household consist for the 
 most part of young girls, many of whom belong 
 to tribes which have been forced to accept Mah- 
 dism, and whose husbands and fathers fought 
 against him. They are, therefore, regarded as 
 booty, and have only the rights and claims of 
 concubines, or, in some cases, of slaves. This 
 large assortment of ladies varies in color from 
 light-brown to the deepest black, and comprises 
 almost every tribe in the Sudan.” 
 
 The Khalifa had a building erected over the 
 tomb of the Mahdi, as a monument to his name, Mahdi’s sacred 
 
 . . Tomb. 
 
 the Khalifa himself laying the foundation of it. 
 
 This building, standing to the east of the Great 
 Square where thousands gathered daily for 
 prayer and prayed with their faces toward it, be- 
 came one of the most venerated points in all the 
 Sudaa and it was announced that pilgrimage was 
 to be made to the tomb of the Mahdi at Omdur- 
 man rather than to the tomb of the Prophet or 
 even to Mecca. 
 
 Three words characterize the thirteen years of 
 the Khalifa’s rule: Cruelty, Famine and War. 
 
 Cruelty: Much of this was the direct outcome 
 of the Khalifa’s jealousy, exaggerated vanity and cruelty ot 
 suspicious nature. When an attack upon Eg^pt khalifa, 
 was being organized in 1889, he called upon the 
 Betahin tribesmen to enlist by coming to Om- 
 durman. They hesitated. So he ordered sixty- 
 seven of their chief men to be seized and brought, 
 
92 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Famine. 
 
 with their families, to Omdurman. Here they 
 were divided into three parties. Those of the 
 first were hanged. Those of the second were de- 
 capitated. Those of the third had their right 
 hands and left feet cut off, whilst their relatives 
 were bidden to gather up their mutilated re- 
 mains. “It was Abdulla,” says Slatin Pasha, 
 “who gave the order for no quarter at the storm- 
 ing of Khartum, and it was he who subsequently 
 authorized the wholesale massacre of the men, 
 women, and children. After the fall of that city, 
 it was he who, for the period of four days, de- 
 clared the whole Shaigia tribe to be outlaws. 
 When distributing the captured women and chil- 
 dren, he was utterly regardless of their feelings. 
 To separate children from their mothers, and to 
 make their reunion practically impossible by scat- 
 tering them amongst different tribes, was his 
 principal delight.” 
 
 Famine : The Khalifa’s army claimed so many 
 able-bodied men that at times almost all the men 
 of a given area were drafted into his army and 
 there were none left to carry on the cultivation 
 of the land. The maintenance of these thousands 
 of troops frequently required the appropriation by 
 force of the herds of sheep and cattle upon which 
 their owners depended for their subsistence. Mis- 
 government and war also closed up many of the 
 avenues of trade and commerce both within the 
 Sudan and with lands outside the Sudan, so that 
 
FIRE AND SWORD 
 
 93 
 
 in this direction also the land became impoverishr 
 ed. This resulted in a disastrous shortage of pro- 
 visions, and famine conditions existed through- 
 out the Sudan and even in Omdurman, the capi- 
 tal of the Mahdi Kingdom, In many villages, 
 men blocked up the doors of their huts with 
 stones, so that the hyenas and other wild beasts 
 might not attack them in their weakness. Then 
 they lay down to die of starvation. The White 
 Nile brought down the bodies of those whom 
 famine had overtaken in the interior. In the city 
 of Omdurman, it was with difficulty that the dead 
 were given a burial. What frightful experiences 
 attended these famine periods may be inferred 
 from the following paragraphs : 
 
 ”One night — it was full moon — I was going home at 
 about twelve o’clock, when, near the Beit el Amana (am- 
 munition and arms stores) I saw something moving on 
 the ground, and went near to see what it was. As I ap- 
 proached I saw three almost naked women, with their 
 long tangled hair hanging about their shoulders; they 
 were squatting round a quite young donkey, which was 
 lying on the ground, and had probably strayed from its 
 mother, or had been stolen by them. They had torn 
 open its body with their teeth, and were devouring its 
 intestines, whilst the poor animal was still breathing. I 
 shuddered at this terrible sight, whilst the poor women, 
 infuriated by hunger, gazed at me like maniacs. The 
 beggars by whom I was followed now fell upon them, 
 and attempted to wrest from them their prey; and I 
 fled from this uncanny spectacle. 
 
 “On another occasion I saw a poor woman who 
 
94 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Terrors 
 
 War. 
 
 must formerly have been beautiful, but on whose 
 emaciated face the death-struggle was visible, lying on 
 her back in the street, whilst her little baby, scarcely a 
 year old, was vainly trying to get some nourishment 
 from its mother’s already cold breasts. Another woman 
 passing by took compassion on the little orphan and 
 carried it off. 
 
 “Another woman was actually accused of eating her 
 own child, and was brought to the police-station for 
 trial; but of what use was this? In two days the poor 
 creature died a raving maniac!’’ 
 
 War: War also made fearful inroads upon life 
 and upon the material resources of the Sudan. 
 In the first flush of enthusiasm over the fall of 
 Khartum, plans for extended foreign invasions 
 were announced. Egypt was to be invaded; 
 Abyssinia was to be conquered; the Southland 
 was to be reduced to slavery. The Mahdi’s army 
 did not lack in brave leadership and the story is a 
 long one, which tells of their raids and rallies, 
 their assaults and forays, on the east against 
 Abyssinia, on the south against the Shilluks, on 
 the west into Darfur, and on the north against 
 Egypt. Meanwhile, Kitchener was organizing an 
 army of Egyptians and of Sudanese and of Brit- 
 ish troops for the reconquest of the Sudan. Elach 
 year thousands of Sudanese were sacrificed by 
 the Khalifa in a vain attempt to stem the pro- 
 gress of Kitchener’s army. 
 
 Was it any wonder that, during this decade and 
 a half, these three forces. War, Famine, Misrule, 
 
FIRE AND SWORD 
 
 95 
 
 brought down the population of the Egyptian 
 Sudan from ten millions to less than two millions. 
 Surely this was a literal fulfilment of the dark 
 prophecy of Isaiah: “They shall be left together 
 unto the ravenous birds of the mountains, and to 
 the beasts of the earth; and the ravenous birds 
 shall summer upon them, and all the beasts of 
 the earth shall winter upon them.” 
 
 Overthrow of Mahdism. 
 
 The reign of Mahdism in the Sudan ended on 
 September 2d, 1898, at the battle of Omdurman. 
 
 Year after year. Kitchener had been pushing 
 his railroad and his army steadily up the Nile. 
 There are those who say that the railroad, not 
 the army, conquered the Sudan. Certainly in 
 former years, lack of means of transportation 
 had proved the undoing of many an expedition 
 into the Sudan. However, we must not forget 
 the army: “The British troops, the backbone of 
 the army ; the Egyptian troops — reorganized, re- 
 officered and disciplined since the days when they 
 could only be counted on to run — now thoroughly 
 reliable, whether for a charge or for bearing the 
 brunt of an attack; and the blacks, Sudanese 
 themselves, many of them captives from former 
 battles, now only difficult to handle because of 
 their impetuous desire to charge the enemy and 
 come to a close encounter.” 
 
 September 2d, 1898, found the army but a 
 
 Kitchener’s 
 
 Advance. 
 
96 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Battle of Om- 
 durman. 
 
 few miles from Omdurman. The capital of Mah- 
 dism had been reached. The enemy had to fight 
 now and win, or be forever defeated. Khalifa 
 Abdulla rallied every fighter to meet the crisis. 
 He had marshalled a force of no less than 35,000 
 men. Some placed the figures higher. 
 
 And they fought! You can read the full ac- 
 count of that battle in Steevens’s “With Kitch- 
 ener to Khartum.” As you read of their self- 
 forgetful courage, of the devotion with which 
 they rallied around the black banners of their 
 leaders, of the fearless charges which they made 
 in the face of the pitiless fire of the British; as 
 you see how 10,000 of them did not hesitate to 
 give up their lives freely for the cause to which 
 they were committed — the exclamation will be 
 forced to your lips, “What magnificent Christians 
 these men might have made!” 
 
 Look, however, at the faces of the dead on the 
 battlefield of Omdurman and you will recognize 
 the features of those tribes who, in days gone by, 
 were foremost in slave raiding and slave trading. 
 
 “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will re- 
 pay.” And the death of these meant the opening 
 of the Sudan to civilization and evangelization. 
 
 It was on Friday, September 2d, that Kitchen- 
 er’s army marched into Omdurman. On Sab- 
 bath morning, September 4th, a unique service 
 was held across the river at Khartum. It was the 
 
The Mahdi’s Tomb in Ruins. 
 
 Destroyed by Kitchener to prevent its becoming a center of future 
 fanaticism. 
 
 The Death of the Khalifa. 
 
 (See page 99.) 
 
FIRE AND SWORD 
 
 97 
 
 funeral service of Gordon. We will let Steevens 
 describe it: 
 
 “The steamers — screws, paddles, stern-wheelers — 
 plug plugged their steady way up the full Nile. Past 
 the northern fringe of Omdurman where the sheikh 
 came out with the white flag, past the breach where we 
 went in to the Khalifa’s stronghold, past the choked em- 
 brasures and the lacerated Mahdi’s tomb, past the 
 swamp-rooted palms of Tuti Island. We looked at it all 
 with a dispassionate impersonal curiosity. It was Sun- 
 day morning, and the furious Friday seemed already 
 half a lifetime behind us. The volleys had dwindled out 
 of our ears, and the smoke out of our nostrils; and to- 
 day we were going to the funeral of Gordon. After 
 nearly fourteen years the Christian soldier was to have 
 Christian burial. 
 
 “The boats stopped plugging and there was silence. 
 We were tying up opposite a grove of tall palms. 
 
 “The troops formed up before the palace in three 
 sides of a rectangle — Egyptians to our left as we looked 
 from the river, British to the right. The Sirdar, the 
 generals of division and brigade, and the staff stood in 
 the open space facing the palace. Then on the roof — 
 almost on the very spot where Gordon fell, though the 
 steps by which the butchers mounted have long since 
 vanished — we were aware of two flagstaves. 
 
 “The Sirdar raised his hand. A pull on the hal- 
 liards: up ran, out flew, the Union Jack, tugging eagerly 
 at his reins, dazzling gloriously in the sun, rejoicing in 
 his strength and his freedom. ‘Bang !’ went the ‘Mel- 
 ik’s’ i2j^-pounder and the boat quivered to her back- 
 bone. ‘God save our Gracious Queen,’ hymned the 
 Guards’ band — ‘bang !’ from the ‘Melik’ — and Sirdar 
 and private stood stiff — ‘bang !’ — ^to attention, every hand 
 
 Gordon’s Fun- 
 eral Service. 
 
 7 
 
98 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 at the helmet peak in — ‘bang!’ — salute. The Egyptian 
 flag had gone up at the same instant ; and now, the same 
 ear-smashing, soul-uplifting bangs marking time, the 
 band of the nth Sudanese was playing the Khedivial 
 Hymn. ‘Three cheers for the Queen!’ cried the Sirdar; 
 helmets leaped in the air, and the melancholy ruins woke 
 to the first wholesome shout of all these years. Then 
 the same for the Khedive. The comrade flags stretched 
 themselves lustily, enjoying their own again; the bands 
 pealed forth the pride of country; the twenty-one guns 
 banged forth the strength of war. Thus, white men and 
 black, Christian and Moslem, Anglo-Egypt set her seal 
 once more, for ever, on Khartum. 
 
 “Before we had time to think such thoughts over to 
 ourselves, the Guards were playing the Dead March in 
 ‘Saul.’ Then the black band was playing the march 
 from Handel’s ‘Scipio,’ which in England generally goes 
 with ‘Toll for the Brave’ ; this was in memory of those 
 loyal men among the Khedive’s subjects who could have 
 saved themselves by treachery, but preferred to die with 
 Gordon. Next fell a deeper hush than ever, except for 
 the solemn minute guns that had followed the fierce sa- 
 lute. Four chaplains — ^Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, 
 and Methodist — came slowly forward and ranged them- 
 selves, with their backs to the palace, just before the 
 Sirdar. The Presbyterian read the Fifteenth Psalm. 
 The Anglican led the rustling whisper of the Lord’s 
 Prayer. Snowhaired Father Brindle, best beloved of 
 priests, laid his helmet at his feet, and read a memorial 
 prayer bareheaded in the sun. Then came forward the 
 pipers and wailed a dirge, and the Sudanese played 
 ‘Abide with me.’ Perhaps lips did twitch just a little to 
 see the ebony heathens fervently blowing out Gordon’s 
 favorite h}unn ; but the most irresistible incongruity 
 would hardly have made us laugh at that moment. And 
 there were those who said the cold Sirdar himself could 
 
FIRE AND SWORD 
 
 99 
 
 hardly speak or see, as General Hunter and the rest 
 stepped out according to their rank and shook his hand. 
 What wonder? He has trodden this road to Khartum 
 for fourteen years, and he stood at the goal at last. 
 
 “Thus with Maxim-Nordenfeldt and Bible * we 
 buried Gordon after the manner of his race.” 
 
 After the battle of Omdurman, there still re- 
 mained an extensive military task to be perform- 
 ed in pacifying other sections of the Sudan in 
 which the Mahdi power continued to assert itself. 
 
 The Khalifa, who had fled from Omdurman just 
 before Kitchener entered the city, withdrew to 
 the south. For a time he was ignored, but about 
 a year later Colonel Sir R. Wingate led a force 
 against him. After repelling a furious attack by 
 the Khalifa’s men in the dark morning hours, the 
 expedition gained a complete victory. The Kha- 
 lifa Abdulla and his leading Emirs, including the 
 second Khalifa, Ali Wad Helu, seeing that all 
 
 ® ESnd 
 
 hope was lost, calmly seated themselves on their ism. 
 sheep-skins and awaited death. Shortly before 
 this, the only other Khalifa had been shot, having 
 been found guilty of preaching Mahdism, al- 
 though he had been released on parole. 
 
 Another extremely important task which re- 
 quired to be pushed after the overthrow of the 
 Mahdi power, was the completion of the rail- 
 road. Reference has already been made to the 
 development of railways in the Sudan. 
 
 A joint government for the Sudan was agreed 
 
 Mahd- 
 
 •That Is, "with military honors and Christian ceremony." 
 
lOO 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 to by Great Britain and Egypt. The two flags 
 fly side by side upon all government buildings. 
 The supreme military and civil command in the 
 Sudan is vested in a “Governor-General of the 
 Sudan” who is appointed by Khedivial Decree on 
 
 Joint Govern- the recommendation of Great Britain. Lord 
 
 ment. 
 
 Kitchener was the first to hold this office, but 
 upon his recall to South Africa in 1899, Sir Regi- 
 nald Wingate became Sirdar and Governor-Gen- 
 eral. There are no foreign consuls or consular 
 agents and the Capitulations ^ which are such a 
 sore trial in Egypt, do not extend to the Sudan. 
 
 It would require a separate volume to narrate 
 all that has been accomplished during the decade 
 and a half that have elapsed since the Sudan was 
 opened up by Kitchener’s forces. As yet the 
 work of the Government is chiefly that of laying 
 foundations for future development. Hbw 
 greatly and how rapidly Great Britain’s policy in 
 the Sudan has developed the material resources 
 of the country may be judged by comparing the 
 annual revenues of the Sudan at intervals of five 
 years : 
 
 1898 $175,000 
 
 1903 2,315,000 
 
 1908 4,875,000 
 
 1912 6,875,000 
 
 The following extract from Kitchener’s Report 
 
 'See “Egypt and the Christian Crusade,” by Watson, page 
 87 - 88 . 
 
1 
 
 Lieut.-Gen. Sir F. R. Wingate. Field-Marshal Viscount Kitchener. 
 
FIRE AND SWORD 
 
 lOI 
 
 to Parliament in May, 1912, bears upon the pro- 
 gress made in the Sudan : 
 
 “Prior to the Dervish conquest of the country, the 
 number of inhabitants amounted approximately to nine 
 millions. The fanatical rule of the Mahdi and his suc- 
 cessor, with the wars, disease, and starvation which it Recent Ad- 
 brought in its train, reduced this number to considerably vances. 
 under two millions. To-day the population may be es- 
 timated at well over three millions, a rapid and satisfac- 
 tory increase, due to the peaceful conditions now pre- 
 vailing and the resulting increase in the prosperity of the 
 people. The children born under our rule will them- 
 selves shortly become parents. Moreover, from all the 
 surrounding parts of Africa a constant stream of immi- 
 grants, attracted by the peaceful and prosperous condi- 
 tion of the Sudan, is entering the country. It appears 
 to me, therefore, justifiable to expect that in the next 
 five years the population will have attained some six 
 millions and have thus doubled the present total. It will 
 be the duty of the Government to look after the wel- 
 fare of all who live under their rule, so that they may 
 live in peace and prosperity. 
 
 “When we conquered the Sudan there was hardly a 
 single inhabitant who possessed any money, and, with the 
 exception of the fighting men, the whole population was 
 practically starving. Nothing, I think, strikes one more 
 in revisiting the Sudan to-day than the great increase 
 which has taken place in the individual prosperity of its 
 inhabitants. This increased prosperity, which is the re- 
 sult of careful administration, has been so equally di- 
 vided throughout the entire population that it is not too 
 much to say that there is now hardly a poor man in the 
 Sudan. Unlike the Egyptian fellaheen the Sudan cul- 
 tivators are not bound down by debts, and have not 
 
102 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 therefore to struggle to meet the exorbitant interest of 
 the usurers, who prey upon this class in Egypt. In the 
 Sudan the benefits of peace have been fully reaped by the 
 cultivators, and the increased facilities of communica- 
 tion have brought markets hitherto undreamt of to their 
 doors. The development of the rich products of the 
 country has been carefully fostered, and a golden har- 
 vest has thus been brought in which remained in the 
 country. It is therefore not surprising that the people 
 are contented, happy and loyal. When expressions of 
 this happiness and contentment are heard, it is satisfac- 
 tory to fed that they are not merely word painting for 
 the benefit of the rulers of the country, but are based, 
 as the people themselves maintain, on solid facts.” 
 
 It is well to remember that these results have 
 not been achieved by chance. They are, on the 
 one hand, the result of a science of government 
 which is itself largely a product of Christianity 
 and Christian civilization. They are the result, 
 on the other hand, of the devoted and self-sacri- 
 ficing labors of officials, among whom many may 
 be found who are animated by a high sense of 
 duty and by motives of unselfishness and even of 
 loyalty to a Divine Lord. These forces are there- 
 fore to be recognized and to be correlated har- 
 moniously, wherever possible, with all other 
 forces which labor for the establishment of the 
 Kingdom of God. There are points at which out- 
 side influences and political traditions may in- 
 fluence governmental policy in directions that a 
 Christian public may not approve of. For ex- 
 
FIRE AND SWORD 
 
 103 
 
 ample, it is not likely that the British or Ameri- 
 can Christian public will ever become reconciled 
 to the teaching of the Koran in Gordon College, 
 founded in memory of that Christian hero, nor to 
 that institution being in session on the Christian 
 Sabbath though closed on Friday, the Moslem 
 day. Nevertheless where such differences of 
 opinion exist, it is important to do four things: 
 (a) Distinguish between a governmental policy 
 and the officials of a Government ; approving the 
 latter, if not agreeing to the former, (b) Recog- 
 nize generously the important service which the 
 existence of an established government renders 
 to missionary activity, (c) Appreciate the great 
 difficulties and limitations under which is car- 
 ried on the government of a country that is un- 
 developed as to its resources, non-self-supporting 
 as to its administrative expenses and subject in 
 part to a non-Christian country, (d) Finally, re- 
 member and practise the Christian doctrine of 
 “forbearance in love” remembering always the 
 spirit of the apostle’s injunction to “honor the 
 king.” 
 
 Attitudes. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 The People 
 
"Our cry is out of the depths; we belong to the 
 submerged millions of the race; our existence has been 
 shrouded in darkness for centuries. We have long 
 dwelt in ignorance and misery, the slaves of unhappy 
 destiny, banished from the world’s light, find strangers 
 to the world’s civilization.” 
 
 — James S. Dennis. 
 
 “Can you conceive of anything more fatal, more 
 monstrous, more immoral than a doctrine which de- 
 clares men lost without Christ, and then refuses to 
 make Him known to them?” 
 
 — Robert E. Speer. 
 
IV 
 
 I THE PEOPLE 
 
 I MAGINE a tourist following the Nile, as 
 he seeks to enter the Sudan. In Egypt 
 he makes his acquaintance first with the 
 Delta Egyptian. He moves southward 
 slowly and while his map tells him he still is in 
 Egypt, he is aware that new physical character- 
 istics mark the inhabitants of the land. They 
 are still Egy^ptians but the skin is darker, the 
 nose is flatter. He pushes on past the First 
 Cataract ; his ear tells him that a new language is 
 being spoken, and here again new physical fea- 
 tures appear; this is Nubia and these are Nu- 
 bians. 
 
 So far, however, he has noted but few marked 
 changes and has met only two distinct types and 
 he has traveled almost one thousand miles up the 
 Nile. But now he is on the borders of the Su- 
 dan. Let him still follow the Nile. He travels 
 now seven hundred miles by river to the Atbara 
 junction, but even in this shorter journey his 
 guide has spoken to him at intervals, eleven 
 times in all, saying: 
 
 107 
 
I08 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Diversity 
 
 Tribes. 
 
 “These are Berabra. ” 
 
 “But these are Gararish.” 
 
 “And these again are Danagla.” 
 
 “These, however, are Shaigia.” 
 
 “And these are Monasir.” 
 
 “These are Robatab.” 
 
 “But these are Angariab.” 
 
 “These however are Hagab.” 
 
 “And these are Merifab.” 
 
 “And these are Fadlab.” 
 
 “But those are Besharin.” 
 
 The tourist is impressed, but is he any wiser? 
 He turns to an official work. In it he finds 
 twelve pages bearing almost a hundred and fifty 
 different tribal names. In the Bahr el Ghazal 
 Province alone, he reads that there are Dinkas 
 and Bongos, Nyam Nyams and Golos, Ndoggos 
 and Kreich, Mandallas and Mittus, Wiras and 
 Madis. Bewildered, perplexed, he asks, “But 
 who are these people? Where do they come 
 from? Are they all of one race? Do they have 
 a common language? What is their history?” 
 To these questions, who will give an answer? 
 Shall we classify races by complexion or color of 
 skin? But note how certain racial features ap- 
 pear with different colors of skin. Or shall we 
 classify by tribal markings upon the face? But 
 here are individuals of another race adopted into 
 a given tribe through slavery or intermarriage. 
 Or shall we depend upon tribal traditions and 
 
THE PEOPLE 109 
 
 language characteristics? This may be the saf- 
 est method to follow, but who will attempt the 
 desired classification of these tribes, when their 
 languages have not yet been reduced to writing, 
 nor the grammatical structure of these languages 
 been analyzed, nor their traditions recorded? It 
 seems a hopeless task and you feel like falling 
 back upon a crude and yet generally satisfactory 
 division of the country into two main divisions : 
 (a) Northern Sudan, where dwells the Arab, 
 brown of skin, with aquiline nose, Moslem as to 
 religion, Arabic-speaking; (b) Southern Sudan, 
 where lives the Negroid, black of skin, flat nosed, 
 pagan or Animist as to religion, with Negro dia- 
 lects peculiar to each tribe. 
 
 Yet there are those who have gone into the sub- 
 ject more deeply as Crowfoot ^ in “The Anglo- 
 Egyptian Sudan,” and Diedrich Westermann ^ in 
 “The Shilluk People,” and Sir Harry Johnston 
 in “The Nile Quest.” 
 
 In Northern Sudan, then, we deal chiefly with 
 the Arab, with an Arab civilization, with the 
 Mohammedan religion and with the Arabic lan- 
 guage. In many respects this part of the Sudan 
 may be regarded as an extension of Upper Egypt. 
 For this reason a detailed description will not be 
 necessary. It was Northern Sudan that was the 
 chief scene of action for the events connected 
 with the Mahdi rebellion and it was Northern 
 
 Northern Su- 
 dan and South- 
 ern Sudan. 
 
 ’See Appendix, V. 
 
no 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Sudan therefore that was most affected by those 
 ruinous experiences. Yet it is Northern Sudan 
 that is now in closest touch with Egypt and civ- 
 ilization, and that is reaping the first benefits of 
 the Anglo-Egyptian administration. 
 
 In this part of the Sudan lies the seat of gov- 
 ernment. Khartum, the capital, is at the junc- 
 tion of the Blue Nile and the White Nile, and has 
 fuMs’^of ^or’th. ^ population of 18,235. Across the White Nile, 
 to the northwest, lies Omdurman, the capital of 
 the old Mahdi kingdom, with a population that 
 still numbers 42,799. Across the Blue Nile, to 
 the northeast, is Khartum North (sometimes 
 called Halfaiyah) the site of Government work- 
 shops and for a time the railroad terminus, with 
 a population of 34,381. Government service has 
 brought into these three cities some 1,734 Euro- 
 peans and 2,662 others who are foreigners to the 
 Sudan, for the most part young Egyptians. The 
 latter, many of them Christians, form an impor- 
 tant base for Christian missionary effort. In 
 Northern Sudan, the most important, commerci- 
 ally, as well as the most extensive occupation is 
 that of agriculture, and the Government is en- 
 couraging the people in better methods of culti- 
 vation as well as in the cultivation of crops of 
 higher value, such as cotton. Next to the cul- 
 tivation of the land is the raising of cattle, for 
 which so large a portion of Northern Sudan is 
 alone adapted. 
 
THE PEOPLE 
 
 HI 
 
 Soivthern Sudan. 
 
 It is not the purpose of this book to attempt a 
 general description of all the southern regions of 
 the Sudan, for generalizations would not be at all 
 accurate and detailed descriptions would require 
 too much space. Special interest, however, at- 
 taches to the Sobat region and some brief account 
 will be attempted of conditions along that river. 
 The Sobat River joins the White Nile at 9° 22" 
 north latitude and flows for the most part in a 
 westerly (slightly northwesterly) direction. For 
 some 300 miles of its course before it empties 
 into the White Nile, the Sobat River meanders 
 through an immense alluvial grassy plain almost 
 as flat and as level as a board. For the most 
 part the river is 150 to 300 yards wide, with water 
 of a reddish yellow color in flood time, and a 
 current of from two and a half to three miles an 
 hour in flood time (only one mile February- 
 May). From the mouth of the Sobat, for some 
 30 or 40 miles up the river, the country is inhab- 
 ited by Shilluks. Then appear Dinka villages 
 and these extend for some 40 miles, when a small 
 section of Anuaks occupy some 25 miles of the 
 river bank. Then appear the warlike and impor- 
 tant tribes of the Nuers. Beyond the Nuers, 
 there appear again representatives of the Anuak 
 tribes, but this is in territory which lies outside of 
 
 Tribes Along 
 the Sobat. 
 
112 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 "A People 
 Terrible." 
 
 the Egyptian Sudan and across the Abyssinian 
 boundary. 
 
 I The Shillu,ks.^ 
 
 In his prophecy concerning Ethiopia, Isaiah 
 speaks of “a people tall and smooth, a people ter- 
 rible from their beginning onward!” The Shil- 
 luks may be regarded as fulfilling this descrip- 
 tion with wonderful literalness. The average 
 height is 5 feet 10 inches. Many of them natur- 
 ally exceed six feet or six feet and a half. It may 
 be admitted that they are “terrible from their 
 beginning onward,” in reality because of the 
 bravery which they exhibit on the battlefield, and 
 in appearance because of a custom which makes 
 them hideous and terrifying: they frequently 
 smear the whole body with ashes or cover them- 
 selves with pulverized brick, drawing lines 
 across the face. They commonly remove the four 
 front lower teeth which makes even the young 
 look old or odd. Their tribal marks are three, 
 four or five rows of dots across the forehead. 
 
 Most striking of all, however, are the head 
 dresses of the men. The hair is woven or twisted 
 into a solid felt, kept further in shape by mix- 
 tures of gum, mud or even cow-dung, and molded 
 into the shape of a huge saucer, or of a single 
 horn bent forward, or in separate points standing 
 out like the spokes of a wheel. The hair of the 
 
 'This is the Arabic form of tile name and is the one most 
 commonly used ; another form is Shulla. 
 
THE PEOPLE 
 
 II3 
 
 face, even to the eyebrows, is ordinarily pulled 
 out, heightening the weirdness of their appear- 
 ance. When missionary work was first undertak- 
 en on the Sobat River, there was practically no 
 clothing worn save by the married women. Mrs. 
 
 GiflFen has given the following description of a 
 woman’s costume: 
 
 “First of all there is a small apron. This is a 
 piece of coarse cloth — originally white — about two feet 
 long and eighteen inches wide. It is made of two thick- costumes, 
 nesses, and it is tied by strings fastened to two corners 
 around the waist, but just below the abdomen, and falls 
 down to the knees. 
 
 “Then there are two skins, of sheep, goat, calf, ga- 
 zelle or whatever it may be, tanned with the hair on, and 
 worn with the hair side out. One of these is tied around 
 the waist, using one fore leg and one hind leg for the 
 strings to tie with. The tail and the other two legs — or 
 the skin of them — dangle and flap around the legs as or- 
 naments. Indeed these are sometimes ornamented with 
 beads, brass or iron rings. This skin is tied in front 
 so as to show the white ( ?) apron underneath. 
 
 “The other skin is worn on the upper part of the 
 body. The fore and hind legs on one side are fastened 
 together at their very tips; this is then slipped over the 
 head, the legs of the skin thus tied together resting on 
 the right shoulder, and the other side passing under the 
 left arm. This is the full dress of a woman. Of course, 
 in addition to this they may wear as many beads and 
 other ornaments as they can afford; strings of beads 
 around the waist, neck, and arms, and armlets of brass; 
 sometimes as many as ten or twelve brass or iron rings, 
 weighing several pounds, and extending from the hand 
 
 8 
 
1 14 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 half way to the elbow. These are not loose, but drawn 
 tight to the flesh and each made fast by the blacksmith.” 
 
 The Shilluks are a proud race. They count 
 themselves and all they have superior to others 
 and all they have, even though the latter be white 
 men. Their attitude toward strangers is never 
 that of subserviency, but rather of mere tol- 
 erance. In going about they usually carry a 
 spear and a club, often several. Their haughti- 
 ness and independence, perhaps more than any 
 other qualities, mark them off from the freedmen 
 of the United States. They bear a strong re- 
 semblance in these respects to the American In- 
 dian: at times one might imagine ( ?) himself liv- 
 ing in the atmosphere of Fenimore Cooper’s In- 
 dian tales, with Indians painted black. 
 
 “To give an opinion,” writes Professor West- 
 ermann, “on the mental abilities of the natives 
 A strong Race, require a long and intimate acquaintance 
 
 with them. From my personal experiences I can 
 only say that I feel an admiration for the few 
 men who have been working with me during my 
 studies. Though we were at work day after day, 
 which meant for them a considerable and quite 
 unaccustomed mental exertion, they never showed 
 any unwillingness but were really interested in 
 the work. I consider them an intelligent, quick- 
 witted people. This is confirmed by their folk- 
 lore. They have a decided sense and predilection 
 
Tukl and Enclosure. Repairing Shilluk Tukl. 
 
THE PEOPLE 
 
 1 1.5 
 
 for historical traditions, being the only black peo- 
 ple of the Eastern Sudan who are able to trace 
 back their own history for centuries. The fact 
 that they have had, up to the European occupa- 
 tion of the country, a kingdom with a well-or- 
 dered provincial government shows no doubt cer- 
 tain political capabilities.” 
 
 “The native house is a circle of wall built of 
 mud, about one foot thick and six feet high, and 
 thatched with a cone-shaped roof. The finished 
 product has very much the appearance of a well 
 built haystack. There are no windows and the 
 place of entrance is a small hole about two and 
 one-half feet high and two feet wide, and is in 
 the shape of a horse collar.” 
 
 The following paragraphs descriptive of the 
 Shilluks are gathered from Professor Wester- 
 mann’s valuable treatise, “The Shilluk People; 
 Their Language and Folklore.” 
 
 Food : “The staple food is durra. It is cooked, 
 baked into bread, roasted, brewed: and, when 
 green eaten raw. Fire is made by twirling a 
 hard stick on a soft piece of wood. Besides durra 
 they eat sesame, maize, beans, various grass 
 seeds; white ants, when in the winged state, are 
 a delicacy to them. Milk is used in the household 
 in many ways. As domestic animals are almost 
 never slain, meat forms no part of the daily food, 
 but is rather an exceptional delicacy, which is 
 however sought for with eagerness. Of game 
 
 Self-Govern' 
 
 ment. 
 
 Houses. 
 
 Food. 
 
J.Iarriage. 
 
 Il6 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 they hardly leave any piece uneaten, skin and in- 
 testines not excepted; they do not even despise 
 dead animals. The hlood of slain animals is kept 
 and cooked, but they do not tap the blood from 
 living animals, as is the custom with the Bari 
 and Masai. Two chief meals are taken daily ; one 
 from nine to ten in the morning, and the second 
 at sunset. 
 
 “A large quantity of the durra the people reap 
 is used in making merisa or beer.” 
 
 Marriage ; “When a young man wants to mar- 
 ry, he himself asks the girl he has selected. If 
 she assents, she directs her lover to her parents 
 and the old people of the village. If these also do 
 not object, they ask him to bring the dowry, 
 which consists of cattle. From four to six head 
 of oxen and one milch cow is the ordinary price 
 for a woman, besides a number of sheep and 
 goats. A man cannot reach a social position 
 without being married, and he cannot get a wife 
 without cattle, so every young Shilluk’s highest 
 ambition consists in procuring cattle in order to 
 buy a wife. A young man may not marry a girl 
 from his own division or clan, but only from 
 some other division ; the girl may live in the same 
 village or in any other village, but they prefer 
 to marry in a distant village. These marriage laws 
 are a well established tribal custom, and people 
 fear to break them, lest death follow marriage. 
 The position of woman among the Shilluks is no 
 
 a 
 
THE PEOPLE 
 
 II7 
 
 doubt a higher one than with most Mohammedan 
 peoples of the Sudan. She is generally well 
 treated and is shown remarkable respect. The 
 women sometimes take part in public assemblies 
 with the men, discuss the affairs that interest 
 them and share in dances and religious cere- 
 monies.” 
 
 Children : “Affection of parents for their chil- 
 dren is not wanting. The mother often places 
 the infant in a long basket or bed made of grass ; 
 this she carries on her head, or covers it with a 
 mat in some safe place, while the child sleeps. 
 Education is limited to teaching the children the 
 work and skill which the parents command. The 
 naming of the children is done by some member 
 of the family, in most cases by the parents or 
 grandparents. When the boys are from thirteen 
 to fifteen years old, they start the cultivation of a 
 small field of their own, with the proceeds of 
 which they try to acquire cattle. The boys and 
 young men of a village born in the same year 
 form a companionship, all members of such a 
 ‘class’ having a common name. The young men 
 of a village do not sleep in their parents’ houses, 
 but their common sleeping place is the cow-shed 
 of the village. The act of sleeping in the barn 
 is called ‘sleeping in the ashes’ from the fact that 
 they sleep during this time in the ashes of the 
 fire kept smouldering in the barn.” 
 
 Burial: “When a grown-up man dies, he is 
 
Amusements. 
 
 Il8 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 buried in or just before his hut. An ox is killed 
 at a funeral feast, and its horns are planted on 
 the grave so that they are visible from without. 
 Women and children are buried in the bush.” 
 Amusement : “Their chief amusement is danc- 
 ing. The houses of a village are built in a circle, 
 having an open place in their midst. Here the in- 
 habitants assemble in the evening, stretching 
 themselves in the warm ashes or on a skin, or 
 squatting on a piece of ambach; several small 
 fires of cow dung are kept burning and spread a 
 smoke with a pungent odor, which is the best 
 protection from mosquito-stings. The events of 
 the day are discussed here ; the tobacco pipe and 
 merisa pot going from hand to hand. In the 
 middle of this open place, the trunk of a large 
 tree is erected, in which the drums are suspended. 
 With them signals are given in times of danger, 
 but more frequently they are used to accompany 
 the dances of the young people. These public 
 dances are among the greatest events in the lives 
 of the young Shilluks ; even old men and women, 
 though not taking an active pari are highly inter- 
 ested in them ; sitting before the huts in front of 
 the dancers they constitute a chorus, accompany- 
 ing the actions of the younger generation with 
 loud acclamations or reproaches. The dances 
 generally take place during the dry season ; they 
 begin at about four o’clock in the afternoon, or 
 in case there is moonlight, later in the evening. 
 
THE PEOPLE 
 
 1 19 
 
 and last from three to five hours or longer. As a 
 rule one village invites its neighbors by a drum 
 signal given in the early morning of the day fixed 
 for a dance. On hearing this signal the young 
 people show great zeal in preparing their bodies, 
 hair-dresses and the ornaments worn on the occa- 
 sion. They go to the village in groups or singly, 
 men and girls separately. Usually the youths 
 perform some war dance in full arms at first, in ^ 
 which the girls do not take part; they form a 
 large circle in four or in two rows, and while the 
 drum is being beaten, they begin dancing and 
 singing war songs. The dance consists in jump- 
 ing on the toe and at the same time moving 
 slowly forward. These rhythmical movements 
 are from time to time interrupted by a group of 
 dancers violently rushing out of the circle, howl- 
 ing and shouting aloud, brandishing their spears 
 with fierce looks, and performing mock fights or 
 playing pantomimes in which they exhibit very 
 remarkable ability. Scenes from hunting, pas- 
 toral and agricultural life are represented with 
 such a dramatic vividness that they richly de- 
 serve the applause they earn. On a signal given, 
 clubs and shields are laid aside and put together 
 in one place, and now the second part, in which 
 the girls share, begins. The latter have, until 
 now, been waiting in a separate place, where the 
 female onlookers are gathered. Each girl se- 
 lects her own dancer. First the men form a cir- 
 
Religion. 
 
 120 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 cle again. Then the girls rush into this ring, each 
 looking out for the man she intends to favor. 
 She draws up in front of him, so that they look 
 each other in the face; again two or four rows 
 are formed, and the same dance begins anew, ac- 
 companied by drumming and singing. The 
 dances are in many cases repeated on four suc- 
 cessive afternoons or nights ; on the fourth day 
 they frequently end in quarrels or real fights. 
 The cause of this is that the young men of one 
 village eye the girls of another village, and thus 
 arouse jealousy. In such fights clubs are used; 
 in exceptional cases also spears.” 
 
 Religion : “In the religion of the Shilluks three 
 components are clearly distinguishable: i. Jwok, 
 or God; 2. Nyikang, the progenitor and national 
 hero of the Shilluks ; 3. ajmogo, the witch doctor 
 or sorcerer. These three do not exist separate 
 from each other, but have many relations with 
 one another. There are still other religious ele- 
 ments, but they are not so prominent as the three 
 mentioned. 
 
 “Jwok is a supreme being, residing above. 
 Whether he is regarded as creator is not certain. 
 According to the sayings of some natives he 
 surely is, but it seems probable that this belief, 
 if it exists, is recent, and must be traced to Mo- 
 hammedan or Christian influences. On certain 
 occasions an ox is killed as a sacrifice to Jwok, 
 but according to my information, they have only 
 
THE PEOPLE 
 
 I2I 
 
 one prayer to Jwok/ while to Nyikang there are 
 many. ‘Praying’ to Jwok is expressed by a dif- 
 ferent word from that which serves for designat- 
 ing a prayer to Nyikang; the first is ‘Lamo/ ‘to 
 pray’; its original meaning is, probably, to con- 
 jure. In praying to Nyikang ‘kwacho,’ ‘to ask for, 
 to beg,’ is used. While the prayers to Nyikang 
 are sung, and accompanied by dances, the 
 one to Jwok is only spoken, not sung, and is not 
 accompanied by dancing. Jwok has no visible 
 symbols or temples, nor are the prayers to him 
 offered by a priest or sorcerer, but by the chief 
 or village elder. 
 
 “In the heart and mind of the Shilluk, Jwok 
 does not possess a clearly defined rank. In some 
 way they do attribute good and evil to him, and 
 chiefly the latter. When a person is ill, they may 
 say, ‘Ere Jwok,’ ‘Why Jwok?’ The sudden and 
 violent death of a man is regarded as being caus- 
 ed by Jwok. 
 
 “The tradition of the origin of man or rather 
 of the Shilluks leads to the second and most im- 
 p>ortant part of the religious practice of the peo- 
 ple, viz. : the worship of Nyikang. This tradition 
 runs thus : A white or rather greyish cow. Dean 
 Aduk, came out of the river ; she brought forth a 
 gourd ; when this gourd split, a man and animals 
 came forth out of it. The name of this man was 
 Kolo; Kolo begat Omaro, who begat Wat Mol 
 
 'See Appendix VI. 
 
122 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 (‘son of Mol’) ; Wat Mol begat Okwa. Okwa 
 used to go to the riverside ; here he met repeat- 
 edly two maidens who had come from out the 
 water, they were very beautiful and bad long 
 hair, but the lower part of their .bodies was in 
 form like a crocodile. One day Okwa seized the 
 girls and carried them away. Their screams 
 brought their father, who, until now, had not 
 been seen by Okwa. His face and the left side 
 of his body were human like, but his right side 
 was of a green color and had the form of a croc- 
 odile. When asked, he declared his name to be 
 Odiljil; he protested against his daughters being 
 taken away by force, but afterwards consented. 
 Okwa married the girls. The names of the two 
 maidens were Nyakayo and Ongwat. One of 
 Nyakayo’s sons was Nyikang. 
 
 “Between Nyikang and one of his brothers, 
 there arose a quarrel after their father’s death. 
 Nyikang left the country, seeking for a new 
 abode. Several tribes whom he met on his way, 
 joined him, thus increasing the band of his fol- 
 lowers. Nyikang settled about the mouth of the 
 Sobat, and here founded the Kingdom of the 
 Shilluks. To increase the population of his new 
 kingdom, he changed animals and fabulous be- 
 ings whom he found in the place, into men, built 
 villages for them, and made them his subjects. 
 
 “While residing in the Shilluk country, Nyi- 
 
THE PEOPLE 
 
 123 
 
 kang fought many wars, among others one 
 against the Sun and bis son. 
 
 “When he felt his end approaching, he assem- 
 bled all the chiefs of his kingdom for a splendid 
 festival. While all were merry, suddenly a great 
 wind arose and scattered all those present. At 
 this moment Nyikang took a cloth, wound it 
 tightly around his neck, and thus choked him- 
 self. 
 
 “But many Shilluks firmly believe that Nyi- 
 kang is still alive. The Rev. Mr. Oyler writes to worship of 
 me: ‘When I asked how Nyikang died, they were 
 filled with amazement at my ignorance and stoutly 
 maintained that he never died.’ If he dies, all the 
 Shilluks will die. He, Dak, and five other kings 
 ascended to heaven, where Nyikang prays for 
 the Shilluks (?). They say that he disappeared 
 as the wind. 
 
 “Nyikang is the ancestor of the Shilluk nation 
 and the founder of the Shilluk dynasty. He is 
 worshipped ; sacrifices and prayers are offered 
 to him. He may be said to be lifted to the rank 
 of a demi-god, though they never forget that he 
 has been a real man. He is expressly designated 
 as ‘little’ in comparison with God. In almost 
 every village there is a little hut dedicated to 
 Nyikang. 
 
 “The third factor in the religion of the Shil- 
 luks is the Ajwogo, and what is connected with 
 him. Ajwogo is the witch doctor or sorcerer; the 
 
124 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 The Witch 
 Doctor. 
 
 Folklore. 
 
 word is probably derived from ‘Jwok/ ‘God,’ and 
 would then mean ‘one who is dependent on God’ 
 or ‘who has to do with God.’ As some of them 
 undertake to procure rain, Europeans generally 
 call them all ‘rain-makers.’ Each is a mediator 
 between the people and Nyikang; he leads the 
 dances and prayers to Nyikang, and presides at 
 the sacrificial ceremonies. He heals also sick- 
 nesses by administering charms. Sick people ap- 
 ply to him with the present of a sheep or goat, 
 or even an ox; the animal is killed, and the con- 
 tents of its stomach are laid on a sick person’s 
 body ; or the skin of the animal is cut into strips 
 and these are fastened below the knee of the pa- 
 tient. This is also applied as a protection against 
 dangers on a journey. When in the dry season 
 the cattle are brought across the river, the sor- 
 cerer has to prepare charms to protect them from 
 being seized by crocodiles. Besides this, he is 
 able to perform miracles, to kill a man by witch- 
 craft, to prevent rain, and to cause the cattle to be 
 barren.” 
 
 Folklore: Professor Westermann has rendered 
 a service of inestimable value in bringing to- 
 gether a large number of stories representing 
 what may be called the oral literature, history, 
 ritual, songs, proverbs of the Shilluks. There is 
 a superficial tendency to depreciate the intellec- 
 tual or religious life of peoples that have no writ- 
 ten language, but the material which Professor 
 
Races in the Egyptian Sudan. 
 
 Arab. Syrian and Egyptian. Shilluk. 
 
THB PEOPLE 
 
 125 
 
 Westermann has brought together makes an ar- 
 ray of interesting oral records that forbid an at- 
 titude of contempt for even the pagan Shilluk.^ 
 
 Their Country: It is important to note that the 
 Shilluks along the Sobat form a very small part 
 of the Shilluk people. They inhabit chiefly the 
 land on the west bank of the Nile from Kaka in 
 the north to Lake No in the south. They are “the 
 only people in the Sudan who acknowledge one 
 head as immediate ruler.” 
 
 The Dinkas ^ 
 
 “The Dinkas along the Sobat are shy and sus- 
 picious, but amenable to kindness and trade. They 
 have been worsted in the frequent forays of the 
 more powerful Nuers into their district. They 
 complain bitterly of the spoliation of their herds 
 by the Nuers, and state that many of their chil- 
 dren now growing into manhood as Nuers, were 
 torn from them in the constant raids of the Nuer 
 tribe. The Dinkas, in spite of this alleged op- 
 pression, own large numbers of sheep, goats, and 
 cattle. The Dinkas on the Sobat are far more in- 
 telligent and energetic than their kinsmen on the 
 White Nile, and cultivate sufficient grain and to- 
 bacco for their own needs.” 
 
 ^See Appendix VII. 
 
 “The brief descriptive sections which follow are largely 
 taken from “The Anglo-Egyptlan Sudan,” in which are de- 
 scribed the tribes along the Sobat. 
 
 The Dinkas. 
 
126 50RK0W AXD HOre OF THE SUDAN 
 
 The Anuaks. 
 
 "The Anuaks occupy some 25 to 30 miles of the 
 Tbe ABcaks. river bank as far as the village of Wegin, which is 
 tlie boundar)' between them and the Nuer tribe. 
 The different tribes hereabouts are considerabl)* 
 intermingled, as they appear to intermany to a 
 large extent, and Anuaks may be found living 
 amongst the Xuers even as far east as Nasser. 
 Their position would not, however, app>ear to be a 
 very enviable one, as the men are more or less 
 slaves of the Xuers, and are called upon to per- 
 form household and menial duties for their more 
 powerful neighbors ; at the same time the Anuaks 
 appear to have no fear of entering Xuer territoiy. 
 
 "This section of the .\nuaks is a small and un- 
 important one ; in general appearance they closely 
 resemble the Xuers. They appear to grow veiy 
 little food, barely more than sufiBcient for their 
 own requirements, but at the same time have 
 flocks of sheep and goats and a few herds of cat- 
 tle.” 
 
 The Kuers. 
 
 "The Xuers are by far the most powerful 
 and numerous tribe living along the Sobat river. 
 Originally they appear, from native accounts, to 
 have occupied tracts of country south of the So- 
 bat in the neighborhood of Bor and the Bahr el 
 
THE PEOPLE 
 
 127 
 
 Ghazal, but these sections trekked north, and 
 ousted the weaker tribes living on the Sobat, and 
 occupied their country. The Falangs and Bon- 
 jaks no longer exist, their territory being occu- 
 pied by the Nuers. There appear to be three sep- 
 arate factions of Nuers at the present day occu- 
 pying the Sobat valley, who, if native accounts 
 are to be believed, are more or less at enmity with 
 each other, owing to family disagreements. 
 
 “Although the huts and villages of the Nuers 
 hereabouts are well and substantially built, the 
 natives themselves are shy, suspicious, indolent 
 and altogether a very low type of humanity. They 
 appear to cultivate only such small plots of ground 
 in the immediate vicinity of their villages as will 
 suffice for their own requirements for perhaps six 
 months in the year, whilst during the remainder 
 of the year they live chiefly on fish, which, exist- 
 ing in great quantities, are easily speared during 
 the dry season of the year. 
 
 “Physically, the men are tall and well-built, but 
 show few signs of muscular development, being 
 generally long-limbed and wiry. They are all pearance. 
 stark naked, and cover themselves from head to 
 foot with cow dung ashes, which gives them a 
 particularly filthy appearance and renders their 
 skin extremely rough and coarse. They make no 
 attempt to adorn themselves, but are extremely 
 anxious to procure brass wire with which to make 
 for themselves bracelets extending from the wrist 
 
128 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 to near the elbow. This seems to be about their 
 only vanity. They are all armed with spears, of 
 which every man carries two or three. Their 
 weapon of defense consists of an oval-shaped buf- 
 falo hide shield. Bows and arrows they do not 
 appear to possess. 
 
 “The elder married women are as filthy as the 
 men in appearance. They all, however, wear a 
 leather apron or skin fastened round their waists. 
 The younger girls and unmarried women wear no 
 such covering, and, like the men, are quite naked. 
 
 “The right bank of the Sobat near Nasser Post 
 is densely populated as far as the junction of the 
 Sobat and Pibor rivers, there being several large 
 and important villages such as Kwoinlualtong, 
 Taufot, and Ajungmir in addition to the smaller 
 ones. The left bank of the Sobat is not inhabited, 
 as from Nasser to the Pibor a considerable por- 
 tion of the country is inundated when the rivers 
 are full.” 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 The Day Breaks 
 
“A great and strong wind .... after the 
 wind an earthquake .... after the earthquake a 
 fire .... after the fire a still small voice.” 
 
 — I Kings 19: ii, 12 
 
 ‘‘No man has done all he ought to do, until he has 
 done all he can do.” 
 
 “And when the strife is fierce, the battle long, 
 Steals on the ear the distant triumph song, 
 
 And hearts are brave again and arms are strong. 
 
 Alleluia!” 
 
 — Sir Joseph Barnby. 
 
V 
 
 THE DAY BREAKS 
 
 P RACTICALLY the only form of Christian 
 missionary effort in the Egyptian Su- 
 dan before the Mahdi was that of the 
 Roman Catholics who had work at 
 both Khartum and Kordofan. Their mission- 
 aries were caught in that awful storm of fanati- 
 cism and rebellion that swept the country in i88i 
 and the years that followed, and the story of 
 their sufferings and of the final escape of some of 
 them is dramatically told by their leader, Father 
 Ohrwalder, in his “Ten Years’ Captivity in the 
 Mahdi’s Camp.” The British and Foreign Bible 
 Society also made a beginning of missionary work 
 in 1866, but the work continued only a short time, 
 and thirty-two years passed before it was taken 
 up again. 
 
 With the re-conquest of the Sudan by Kitch- 
 ener, it became possible once more to enter the 
 Sudan with safety, and the Roman Catholics un- 
 dertook to reoccupy their abandoned field so far 
 as possible. Two missionary agencies represent- 
 ing Protestant Christian Churches also entered 
 the Sudan, — the Church Missionary Society of 
 Great Britain and the American (United Presby- 
 
 131 
 
 Pre-Mahdist 
 
 Missions. 
 
132 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Attitude of 
 Government. 
 
 terian) Mission. The British and Foreign Bible 
 Society and the American Bible Society also pro- 
 jected the leavening influences of the distribu- 
 tion of the Scriptures into the newly opened ter- 
 ritory. 
 
 In Northern Sudan, where the population is 
 chiefly Moslem, the Government forbade at first 
 all missionary work among Mohammedans, but, 
 after some extended public criticism and agitation 
 in England, changed the policy to the extent of 
 permitting educational and medical work under 
 certain conditions and restrictions.^ On the other 
 hand, the Government encouraged work among 
 the pagans of Southern Sudan and assigned, 
 broadly, certain spheres of activity to the three 
 missionary agencies named : to the Roman Cath- 
 olics, the west bank of the White Nile with Lul, 
 near Kodok, for a center ; to the Church Mission- 
 ary Society the Bahr el Ghazal district with Ma- 
 lek as a center ; and to the Americans, the Sobat 
 watershed, with Doleib Hill as the first station. 
 
 The following is a brief official statement of 
 the development of the work of the Church Mis- 
 sionary Society in the Egyptian Sudan : 
 
 “After Gordon’s death at Khartum, in 
 1885, a Gk>rdon Memorial Fund was open- 
 ed and soon after the defeat of the Kha- 
 lifa’s forces, Omdurman (1899) and Khar- 
 tum (1900) were occupied, under some re- 
 
 ’See Appendix VIII. 
 
THE DAY BREAKS 
 
 133 
 
 strictions, however, as to evangelistic efforts. 
 
 Atbara was occupied in 1908. In 1905, the So- 
 ciety was invited by Lord Cromer and the Sir- 
 dar to commence work in the southern part of the 
 Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, and Malek was occu- 
 pied in the following year.^ 
 
 “Egypt is included in the jurisdiction of the 
 Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem. An Assistant 
 Bishop, the Right Rev. LI. H. Gwynne, conse- 
 crated in 1908, resides at Khartum. 
 
 “No baptisms have yet (1912) taken place at 
 Malek, but the confidence of the Dinkas has been church mis- 
 
 , , . . , . sionary Soci- 
 
 won and the light is gradually entering their ety. 
 hearts. Accustomed as they have been for ages 
 to animal sacrifices, they can the better under- 
 stand the propitiation through the blood of Christ, 
 but while they know right from wrong, they are 
 lacking in any sense of sin. They are a kindly 
 folk; women are not despised, and a marriage 
 ceremony is observed, but immorality is common. 
 
 Classes for reading are conducted among the 
 sixty men and boys employed in gardening and 
 other forms of industrial work about the station, 
 and a dispensary is held daily with an average of 
 fourteen attendances. In February, 1912, the 
 Revs. C. A. Lea-Wilson and K. E. Hamilton went 
 to Lau (west-north-west of Malek) to open new 
 work, the Rev. A. Shaw accompanying them on 
 their journey.” 
 
 ’See Appendix I. 
 
134 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 The American 
 Mission. 
 
 The American Mission. 
 
 In the Sudan, as in Egypt, the name by which 
 the work of the United Presbyterian Church of 
 North America is known, is “The American Mis- 
 sion.” It is suggestive of the fact that such work 
 is to be thought of as a missionary effort which 
 aims to carry to a non-Christian world the full, 
 rich content of our American Protestant Christi- 
 anity. The native Church also that becomes or- 
 ganized as a result of these missionary labors is 
 known as the “Evangelical Church.” This name, 
 too, suggests that the Church which it is sought 
 to establish is to have as its chief characteristic 
 adherence to Scriptural truth. The history of the 
 founding of this Mission and Church in the 
 Egyptian Sudan is a record full of interest. 
 
 In the early days of the Mission in Egypt, the 
 ix>ssibility of developing a mission in the Sudan 
 had been talked about. It was hoped that the 
 young native Church, being developed in Egypt, 
 might some day be taught to claim the Sudan as 
 its foreign held. No action, however, was taken. 
 In 1883, the United Presbyterian Church in 
 America was offered some $25,000 through the 
 American Missionary Association, if it would 
 open up work along the upper reaches of the Nile 
 toward Central Africa. 
 
 At this time the Egyptian Sudan was wholly 
 closed to all missionary effort; furthermore cer- 
 
THE DAY BREAKS 
 
 135 
 
 tain conditions were attached to the offer which 
 led the Church to decline it. In 1899, with 
 the opening up of the Sudan by Kitchener, the 
 question presented itself anew and more insistent- 
 ly. The death of Gordon at Khartum had moved 
 hearts in America as well as in England. An ad- 
 ditional motive, if not an irresistible argument, 
 presented itself in the emigration to the Sudan 
 of a large number of young Egyptians in Gov- 
 ernment employ, who had been trained in mis- 
 sion schools or were even members of the native 
 Evangelical Church in Egypt. It seemed a 
 Christian duty to follow them up in the new 
 fields to which they had removed and to provide 
 somewhat for their spiritual needs. 
 
 Yet the Church in America hesitated. And is 
 not the establishment of a new Mission an ex- 
 tremely responsible step? Is there not such a 
 thing as attempting too much ? The Church had 
 had at one time five foreign mission fields and 
 had adopted a policy of concentration, limiting 
 itself to two, — Egypt and India. Should it now 
 reverse that policy ? Or had its strength now in- 
 creased, so that with safety a new burden could 
 be assumed? Or should a policy of faith rather 
 than of cold calculation determine the decision? 
 If so, by what sign or signs might a waiting 
 Church discover the will of its Lord? 
 
 Meanwhile four questions were addressed to 
 the Mission in Egypt concerning the proposed 
 
 A Question of 
 Church Policy. 
 
136 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 advance in the Sudan. These questions and the 
 replies which were given to them were much as 
 follows : 
 
 First, Is the way open for entrance into the 
 Sudan? Not just now, but it promises to be 
 soon. 
 
 Second, Could an experienced missionary be 
 spared from Egypt to open a mission in the Su- 
 dan? Yes, but his place would need to be filled. 
 
 Third, What would be the estimated cost for 
 the first year? Twenty-five hundred dollars. 
 
 Fourth, Does the Mission in Egypt recommend 
 any advance? This is a question for the Church 
 in America, not for the Mission in Egypt, to an- 
 swer, for, given the resources, the work may be 
 safely undertaken. 
 
 Yet the Church hesitated. A discretionary 
 Tioa \vas Es-^' power was given to the Board to act in the light 
 tabiishd. subsequent developments. Then came the 
 
 “sign” which guided the United Presbyterian 
 Church into the Sudan. The Board learned 
 through the Rev. George D. Mathews, D. D., of 
 London, that “a Society known as the Freed- 
 men’s Missions Aid Society of that city, was con- 
 templating disbanding. It had been organized 
 some thirty years before for mission work among 
 the freedmen of America and ex-slaves on the 
 West Coast of Africa. Its special object was to 
 educate men who might ultimately be employed 
 in doing mission work in Khartum or among the 
 
Bird's-Eye View of Khartum. 
 The Great Mosque at Khartum. 
 Gordon College at Khartum. 
 
THE DAY BREAKS 
 
 137 
 
 tribes south of that in Africa. Having come to 
 the conclusion that it had accomplished its object 
 so far as lay in its power, it was casting around 
 to see where it could place the funds remaining in 
 its treasury so as to most nearly meet the inten- 
 tion of the donors of the same. The result was 
 a proposition to transfer its remaining funds to 
 the Board on condition that it would expend 
 them in mission work in Khartum or that region 
 of the Sudan. The proposition seemed so clearly 
 providential that it was accepted by the Board, 
 and as soon as the transfer could be made there 
 came into the treasury the large sum of $9,605.- 
 60.” Additional amounts were received later. 
 For three years the work was carried on practic- 
 ally without burden to the Church in America. 
 
 In December, 1899, two members of the Egyp- 
 tian Mission were appointed as a Commission to 
 visit the Sudan, study conditions, and report upon 
 a policy for the opening up of missionary work. 
 The Rev. Andrew Watson, D. D., who had spent 
 thirty-eight years in Egypt, and the Rev. J. Kelly 
 Giffen, D. D., who had been in Egypt eighteen 
 years, were selected for the responsible task. 
 Their report is marked by accurate information 
 and far-reaching statesmanship. They recom- 
 mended establishing a base at Omdurman or 
 Khartum, and developing work up the Blue Nile. 
 The significance of this recommendation lies in 
 the fact that by following the Blue Nile, the Mis- 
 
 Exploring the 
 Field. 
 
First 
 
 aries. 
 
 138 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 sion would be brought most quickly into touch 
 with the Abyssinian population, and Abyssinia 
 claims allegiance to Coptic Christianity,^ so that 
 it might be hoped that the large and strategic 
 work done by the Mission in Egy'pt could be du- 
 plicated among the Abyssinians, especially 
 through the agency of enlightened Egyptian 
 workers whom the Abyssinians might count as 
 brethren. 
 
 In 1900, two missionaries were formally ap- 
 pointed to launch the new work in the Sudan: 
 the Rev. J. K. Giffen, D. D., and H. T. McLaugh- 
 lin, M. D. The native Church appointed its first 
 Mission- missionary, the Rev. Gebera Hanna. 
 
 Yunan Hanna, one of the most efficient colpor- 
 teurs of the American 'Bible Society, was also en- 
 gaged to aid in the new missionary enterprise. 
 The arrival of Dr. Giffen at Omdurman on De- 
 cember 10, 1900, marks the beginning of the Su- 
 dan Mission. At this point, the Government be- 
 came a factor radically affecting the missionary 
 plans which had been proposed, as may be easily 
 inferred from the following letter: 
 
 War Office, Egyptian Army, 
 
 28th October, 1900. 
 
 Sir: 
 
 I have the honor, by desire of the Sirdar, to ac- 
 knowledge the receipt of your letter of the 17th inst. 
 and to acquaint you in reply that he is pleased to sanc- 
 
 ’See “Egypt and the Christian Crusade,’’ p. 114. 
 
THE DAY BREAKS 
 
 139 
 
 tion Mr. Gebera Hanna and yourself proceeding to Om- 
 durman for the purpose of seeing the native Protestant 
 community there, to whom your letter refers. 
 
 The Sirdar regrets that he is unable at present to 
 entertain your application to procure land at Khartum. 
 
 The Sirdar desires me to say that it must be distinct- 
 ly understood that, for the present, permission to con- 
 duct mission work amongst the Moslem population of 
 the Sudan cannot be given. He has, however, no ob- 
 jection to your proceeding at your own risk to the non- 
 Moslem countries in the White Nile districts. 
 
 I am, dear sir. 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 W. M. May Prin, 
 
 For Civ. Sec. Cairo. 
 
 J. K. Giffen, 
 
 American Mission, Tanta. 
 
 The action of the Government determined the 
 development of missionary work along two im- 
 portant lines: (a) At Omdurman and in North- 
 ern Sudan generally only the most restricted 
 forms of missionary work were to be allowed, 
 (b) The development of further work must lie 
 far to the south along the upper reaches of the 
 White Nile. 
 
 Providence, however, had given to the Ameri- 
 can missionaries an advantage which was out- 
 side the range of governmental prohibitions. 
 There could be no objection to such work as min- 
 istered to the spiritual needs of native Christians, 
 and there were to be found at almost every Gov- 
 ernment post, but esp>ecially at Khartum and Om- 
 
 The Govern- 
 ment Acts. 
 
140 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Doleib 
 
 Chosen. 
 
 durman, a considerable number of native Chris- 
 tians, many of them among the Government’s 
 most faithful employees. If their spiritual life 
 could be maintained, what an uplifting moral and 
 spiritual force they might be in the communities 
 in which they lived. 
 
 The year 1901 was a year, first of all, of ex- 
 ploration with a view to discovering a suitable site 
 for the mission station in Southern Sudan among 
 the pagan blacks. Imagine yourself sent from 
 Philadelphia and Pennsylvania to an undevel- 
 oped, uncharted region as far distant as North 
 Dakota, and asked to survey an area almost equal 
 to that entire State ! The site now known as Do- 
 leib Hill was finally selected by the exploring 
 party, and the reasons given for selecting this 
 site are as follows : 
 
 “(i) Because it is central as to population, a 
 number of villages being within easy reach, both 
 on the north and south of the Sobat and east and 
 west of the White Nile. 
 
 “(2) As favorable to health. The hill, which is 
 several acres in extent, is about twenty-five feet 
 above the surrounding land and 150 feet from 
 the Sobat River, which is reported as excellent 
 water. The hill is also covered with about 150 
 large doleib palm trees. 
 
 “(3) The Sobat River affords a waterway out 
 from and through the territory it is hereby pro- 
 posed to make the field for mission work. 
 
THE DAY BREAKS 
 
 I4I 
 
 “(4) It is within easy reach of Taufikiah, which 
 is the Government station, steamboat landing and 
 postoffice on the White Nile. It thus brings the 
 mission station within reach of transport and 
 communication.” 
 
 Extended negotiations, however, were neces- 
 sary before the Government’s permission was se- 
 cured for the establishment of a mission station 
 at the site described, and it was March 27, 1902, 
 before the missionaries reached the place and be- 
 gan work. It is well worth noticing that adverse 
 as the Government’s attitude often seemed to be 
 toward Christian missions, unfailing personal 
 kindness was shown to the missionaries by prac- 
 tically all, from the Sirdar down. 
 
 Meanwhile, the work in Northern Sudan was 
 pressed as far as loyalty to governmental restric- 
 tions would permit. On Sabbath, March 17th, 
 1901, the first communion service was held and 
 ten men and two women partook of that sacra- 
 ment which serves as an indissoluble link be- 
 tween the two comings of our Lord; having a 
 backward look in its remembrance of Him Who 
 died, and a forward look through its continuous 
 observance “till He come.” Of course, it was a 
 day of small things, and largely of personal work. 
 The Sabbath morning meetings at Omdurman, 
 Khartum and Khartum North, averaged only an 
 attendance of 28 men and 14 women for all three, 
 while two night meetings brought 25 men and 2 
 women. 
 
 Services. 
 
142 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Opening Work 
 at Dolelb Hill. 
 
 For the decade which follows (1902-1912) a 
 clearer conception of the development of the mis- 
 sionary work will be gained if the work in South- 
 ern Sudan and that in Northern Sudan be con- 
 sidered separately, for these two fields differ so 
 radically in almost every respect — language, cli- 
 mate, dominant religion, state of civilization, and 
 methods of missionary work — that they present 
 contrasts rather than resemblances. 
 
 SOUTHERN SUDAN. 
 
 It was on March 4, 1902, that the Rev. J. K. 
 Giffen, D. D., and Mrs. Giffen, and Dr. H. T. Mc- 
 Laughlin and Mrs. McLaughlin, left Omdurman 
 for the site of the new station along the Sobat. 
 It was March 27th when they reached Doleib Hill. 
 The journey was made in sailboats. A consider- 
 able cargo had to be taken up the river to provide 
 both food and furniture for life in a section where 
 there were no stores and practically nothing pur- 
 chasable. 
 
 “As we proceed up the great river,” says Dr. 
 Giffen in his book, “The Egyptian Sudan,” “the 
 change of scenery is very gradual, but there is a 
 change. More trees come into view. The flocks 
 and herds continue to be almost everywhere in 
 evidence, but there is less of the cultivated land, 
 and the islands are covered with tall grass. 
 
 “The population becomes more sparse, tlie 
 
THE DAY BREAKS 
 
 143 
 
 game more plentiful, and great flocks of birds line 
 the banks. The crocodiles and the hippopotami 
 are a constant source of diversion. You begin to 
 realize that there is a gradual change coming over 
 the whole prospect and that you are a long way 
 from home. Long lines of naked, black savages 
 appear on the banks. Standing on one foot, the 
 other resting on the knee with leg akimbo, and 
 leaning the whole body on a spear, they curiously 
 gaze for an hour or more while our boat slowly 
 and silently pushes by. We return a curious gaze 
 and meditate and wonder. 
 
 “Even at night the heavens are not the same 
 as you have always known them to be, and the 
 stars make you feel you are among strangers 
 and give you a lonesome feeling. Generally, 
 when one is homesick, the sky at night appears 
 like the face of a friend; here it is the face of a 
 stranger. The ‘Dipper’ and the North Star are 
 away down on the horizon ; even the ‘Milky Way’ 
 has wandered from its natural place, and a lot of 
 new denizens of the sky whom you never saw be- 
 fore have moved into the south side. The grunt- 
 ing and coughing of the hippopotami, just along- 
 side your boat, does not conduce to sleep, but it 
 helps you to realize that it is not all a dream.” 
 
 Of the sort of welcome that awaited them and 
 of their feelings and experiences during the first 
 few days. Dr. Giffen drew this graphic picture in 
 his address at the Pittsburgh Convention, in 1904 ; 
 
 First Journey 
 Described. 
 
144 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Reception 
 
 Natives. 
 
 “We landed there and we were met by these 
 savage people. The sail had been the signal that 
 we were coming, and for miles around these black 
 neighbors had come out to greet us, or rather to 
 meet us, and there they sat on the bank, three to 
 five hundred of them. Each man was armed with 
 a spear, or a spear and a club, or two spears, or 
 two clubs, and they were all naked. I speak ad- 
 visedly, friends, when I say, ‘they were all naked.’ 
 There, my friends, is what I mean. That will re- 
 veal it all to you when I tell you that here is a full 
 dress suit. (Holding up to the gaze of the audi- 
 ence a bead belt, probably half an inch thick and 
 two feet long.) 
 
 “We landed and saluted them with our blandest 
 smile, but there was no response. We asked them 
 to help us remove our goods and place them back 
 under the trees, but not a man would move. We 
 placed our goods under the trees and dismissed 
 our boats, which returned towards Khartum. We 
 were there alone — four of us. And maybe that 
 night it was lonely ! As these people went off to 
 their villages, some distance away, it tuas lonely ; 
 but we had our evening devotions, and made our 
 beds under those great trees, and went to sleep 
 that night, and slept as peacefully as you will sleep 
 here in the heart of this city to-night. And for the 
 next six weeks, before we had a house or shelter 
 of any kind, these people never once disturbed us, 
 and after we had built our houses there was 
 
THE DAY BREAKS 
 
 145 
 
 neither door nor window. Furthermore, our 
 goods were at some little distance — the things we 
 had brought for barter or provision. Yet we lost 
 absolutely nothing from theft. 
 
 “Of course, our first chief thought was to find 
 some shelter and protection for ourselves. Al- 
 ready the sky was overcast, and every evening 
 and night we had thunder and lightning, and we House Buiid- 
 knew that the rain would soon be here. We 
 would have to find some shelter, so we began, 
 first of all, to gather wood for the houses we ex- 
 pected to build. We intended to build something 
 after the architecture of the country, and the 
 house of the country was simply a little circle of 
 mud about six feet high, with a small opening 
 about two feet or two feet and a half high in the 
 side, and a thatch of straw. The door is very 
 small, and you must get down on your hands and 
 knees if you want to get in, and some of us have 
 to go in edgewise. But we had expected to build 
 a larger room, with doors and windows. We 
 sent out these men — some eight pf them — for 
 poles. They came back in the evening, and each 
 man had a stick of wood about three or four or 
 five feet long, and so crooked that it was abso- 
 lutely worthless. The second day’s work was 
 very little better. We busied ourselves in mak- 
 ing our camp in those two days, and the day fol- 
 lowing was the Sabbath, and we thought, just as 
 you and every good United Presbyterian be- 
 
 10 
 
146 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 lieves, that we had a right to sleep a little longer 
 Sabbath morning than any other ; so we intended 
 to have a day of rest. But long before we were 
 out of bed they were lifting the curtains of the 
 First Sabbath. looking in, and all day long they were 
 
 about us in scores, and when evening came we 
 felt as though we had been to a circus and had 
 been the animals and had been looked at all day. 
 It was not a day of rest. 
 
 “Monday morning Dr. McLaughlin and I 
 concluded that we would build our own houses. 
 It had been a long time since we had tramped 
 mud in just that way. But we began to make the 
 walls. I think we had perhaps two feet of wall 
 when they took pity on us and came to us and 
 said, ‘Old man, we will build for you if you will 
 pay us for it.’ We said, ‘Certainly, we would be 
 glad to have you work,’ and they went away 
 and we didn’t expect to see them again. They 
 came back again, but on the Sabbath day, and we 
 explained to them, ‘This is our day of rest, a day 
 sacred to our God ; on this day we do no work.’ 
 And from that day on we were never troubled 
 with regard to work on the Sabbath. They 
 counted six days, for they had no days in the 
 week, and the seventh day was our rest day. 
 They were there for our services and devotions ; 
 they were there at all times ; but on the Sabbath 
 day they gave us no more trouble with regard to 
 the work. 
 
THE DAY BREAKS 
 
 147 
 
 “On Monday they came back and be- 
 gan work at about half past five in the morn- 
 ing, and at seven o’clock they were all gone. 
 There were perhaps twenty men and twenty wo- 
 men, but there was not one of them remained, 
 and we never supposed they would come back. 
 So through the heat of the day Dr. McLaughlin 
 and I worked away. But about an hour before 
 the sun went down they came back and did about 
 an hour’s work, and that was all we could secure 
 from those people by love or money, threat or 
 pleading, during all the time we were making 
 those houses, — about three hours a day. I don’t 
 know whether I ought to mention it or not, but 
 they certainly had some sort of labor union 
 among themselves, because they were all of one 
 mind. Before the rains came we had one house 
 finished and the roof on. 
 
 “And here I think I must tell you of our ex- 
 perience. It would certainly have been a joyful 
 day but for one fact. There was one of our num- 
 ber struck with the sun that day. Fever follow- 
 ed, typhoid in type, and for months we despaired 
 of her life. 1 
 
 “When the rainy season was over we called 
 these people together again and said to them: 
 ‘Now we are going to build our houses. We 
 want to have you help us.’ We had conceived 
 this thought, that our first work for these poor 
 simple people must be a lesson of labor, some- 
 
 Labor Troub- 
 les with Na- 
 tives. 
 
148 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Native Sim- 
 plicity. 
 
 Early Indus- 
 trial Missions. 
 
 thing of the dignity of labor. I believe there can 
 be no character without legitimate, profitable la- 
 bor — labor that produces something for yourself 
 and others. And so we must teach these people 
 that lesson. And we told them what we wished. 
 But, above all else, we explained that we wanted 
 a day’s work. ‘Yes, sir,’ they said, ‘we know.’ 
 But, you know, they didn’t. They came to me 
 and said, ‘Old man, we are going to die.’ My 
 back aches, and my fireast hurts, and my arms 
 hurt, and I am going to die.’ We knew they 
 were not going to die. We had been working 
 with them right along day after day. Dr. Mc- 
 Laughlin and I, and our lame muscles help>ed us 
 to feel what they expressed in saying, ‘We are 
 going to die,’ but we knew also that the disease 
 would heal itself. After two or three weeks it 
 was all over; they had learned their lesson, and 
 they were the better for it. 
 
 “I might go on indefinitely, telling you of these 
 poor, simple people, and of the steps we tooik, 
 one after another, to teach them; but I want to 
 emphasize this : That we got nearer to them be- 
 cause we had to deal in this way with these 'poor, 
 simple, black people from the first. Had God 
 placed in our hands men who would have done 
 the service we required, do you believe that we or 
 any missionary would have got down in the mud 
 alongside of these black people and worked there 
 for days and months ? Not at all. I believe that 
 
THE DAY BREAKS 
 
 149 
 
 during the first few weeks we drew the hearts of 
 those people to us in a confidence that we might 
 have been years in establishing had we had this 
 service performed for us. That was Christ’s 
 way. He humbled Himself that He might get 
 into touch with fallen, sinful humanity and lift 
 them up. And this is to be your method and 
 mine.” 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Message of Hope 
 
“And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, 
 teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel 
 of the kingdom, and healing all manner of disease and 
 all manner of sickness.” 
 
 — Matthew ix; 35. 
 
 “The efficient missionary is one who will try to 
 multiply himself in natives, willing to sink himself from 
 activities which might be more fascinating, so that he 
 may prepare Africans to do his work and give to them 
 something of that spirit which is in himself.” 
 
 — Donald Fraser. 
 
VI 
 
 THE MESSAGE OF HOPE 
 
 M issionary work in Southern Sudan 
 has called for the solution of innumer- 
 able difficult questions, among them 
 such as these : Hbw shall the mis- 
 sionary live? What kind of a house shall he 
 build? How can he get the natives to work? 
 What diseases are to be guarded against? What 
 will be the best food to use ? What may the soil 
 produce? What forms of missionary work should 
 •be used? How approach the study of the lan- 
 guage? In almost every case, little help could 
 be derived from missionary experience in Egypt. 
 Indeed, acquaintance with conditions in Egypt 
 was likely to suggest a wrong approach to prob- 
 lems. Space does not permit a detailed recital of 
 the development of the work at Doleib Hill from 
 year to year. We will therefore deal in a topical 
 way with the outstanding characteristics of mis- 
 sionary life and work at Doleib Hill. 
 
 Missionary Force: Of the Sudan missionaries 
 the following have been located for a longer or 
 shorter period at Doleib Hill : the Rev. J. K. Gif- 
 fen, D. D., and Mrs. Giffen, Dr. H. T. McLaugh- 
 
 Prob- 
 
 153 
 
154 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Missionaries 
 
 Named. 
 
 A Child Leads. 
 
 lit! and Mrs. McLaughlin, the Rev. Ralph Carson 
 and Mrs. Carson, Dr. Hugh R. Magill and Mrs. 
 Magill, the Rev. Elbert McCreery and Mrs. Mc- 
 Creery, Dr. Thos. A. Lambie and Mrs. Lambie, 
 Mr. R. W. Tidrick and Mrs. Tidrick, Mr. C. B. 
 Guthrie and Mrs. Guthrie, Rev. D. S. Oyler and 
 Mrs. Oyler. It is not possible to indicate the dif- 
 fering services which have been rendered to the 
 cause by the distinctive labors of these men and 
 women. Their labors are built into the life and 
 history of Doleib Hill, but there is One who can 
 give to each the comforting assurance, “I know 
 thy works.” 
 
 Nor may the forces that serve the Kingdom 
 be limited to the labors of adults. When the 
 Rev. Mr. Carson and Mrs. Carson went to the 
 Sudan their family included little Erskine, just 
 two years old. The Shilluks had seen white men 
 before, more rarely white women, but never a 
 white child. From all sides, for miles, they came 
 to the Mission compound to see the little white 
 baby. As he grew and learned to run and play, 
 they took delight in watching him. The big chief 
 came to see him. One day his mother was draw- 
 ing him in a little express cart. The wheels 
 struck some obstruction, the cart toppled over and 
 the little fellow fell out. His mother relates that a 
 big Shilluk warrior had been following, his eyes 
 riveted on the baby, with a real interest and affec- 
 tion. When the cart upset, it seemed to be just 
 
THE MESSAGE OF HOPE 
 
 155 
 
 too much for the Shilluk. He righted the express 
 cart. He put the little fellow hack in again. 
 
 And then, as if afraid to trust the mother, he him- 
 self took the handle of the cart and pulled it. Of 
 old the prophet wrote, “A little child shall lead 
 them.” 
 
 The presence of foreign missionaries at Doleib 
 Hill has carried with it innumerable problems. 
 Houses had to be built. At first the native mud 
 wall had to suffice. Then brick was burned. 
 Later on, a portable frame house sent from Amer- 
 ica formed a link in the series of experiments 
 aimed at the solution of the residence problem. 
 Now, concrete blocks are being used for building 
 purposes. 
 
 Problems of health arose. One missionary was 
 struck down with the dreaded black-water fever 
 and had to leave. A regular daily use of qui- 
 nine was adopted as in many parts of India. The lems. 
 houses were screened and even screened com- 
 munications between the houses were provided 
 in an effort to avoid the malaria-bearing mosquito, 
 whose activities begin at dusk. Such precautions 
 have availed greatly in safeguarding health. The 
 problem of a suitable and easily accessible sani- 
 tarium is still unsolved. The Abyssinian hills 
 look near on the map and are inviting, but their 
 use awaits the day of railroad communication. 
 
 To the physical hardships we must add social lim- 
 itations. With mail but twice a month and only 
 
156 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 A Divine 
 Guardian. 
 
 military stations within hundreds of miles, the 
 Doleib Hill missionaries constitute indeed an iso- 
 lated social world; especially to the noble and 
 self-sacrificing wives of missionaries, enduring 
 such trials for the Kingdom’s sake, must the 
 highest praise be given. 
 
 The past decade of missionary life and service 
 at Doleib Hill has witnessed many instances of 
 watchful divine care and of intervening provi- 
 dences. No life has been sacrificed and no prop- 
 erty losses have been recorded during these ten 
 years although dangers threatened on every 
 hand, dangers from the elements, dangers of wild 
 beasts and poisonous reptiles, dangers of unciv- 
 ilized, excitable and warlike peoples. The fol- 
 lowing incident is related in the Mission’s Re- 
 port of 1905: 
 
 “One other special providence that stands out large 
 amid many others should be mentioned, that you may 
 understand some of the reasons why we thank God and 
 take courage — it is preservation from the fearful prai- 
 rie fires that seemed at times destined to envelop us. 
 On one special occasion the fire which, we afterwards 
 learned, originated at or beyond Fashoda (now Ko- 
 dok), some sixty miles away, was driven southwards 
 by a fierce hurricane and on the morning of Decem- 
 ber 23, overleaping our insufficient fire guard, was 
 upon us before we could realize it. Providentially we 
 were all at home that morning and had about ten good, 
 strong Shilluks working on the place. All hands turned 
 out to fight the fire, and a fierce and apparently hope- 
 less battle ensued. At the moment when all seemed 
 
THE MESSAGE OF HOPE 
 
 157 
 
 lost, when the flames had come within thirty feet of the 
 grass roof of one of the Mission buildings, a sudden 
 and momentary shifting of the wind gave the slight 
 respite needed to establish a dead-line and stop the 
 further onslaught of the flames. When we think of 
 what our condition would have been had the flames 
 caught the thatch roofs, with which all our buildings 
 were at the time covered, .... left on the bank 
 of the river, amid a blackened wilderness and sav- 
 age surroundings, without houses, food or clothing, 
 the mind revolts at the picture and our hearts overflow 
 with thanksgiving to Him who has so mercifully pre- 
 served us.” 
 
 Language Problem ’. Few indeed will realize 
 how great, how serious is the language problem language Prob- 
 presented by a mission to the Shilluks. Here was 
 a language that had never been reduced to writ- 
 ing. Should Arabic characters be used to repre- 
 sent the Shilluk sounds, or would it not be better 
 to use Roman characters and thus avoid acquaint- 
 ing the pagan Shilluk with characters which 
 might lead him to an easier knowledge of Arabic 
 and thus of Islam? Furthermore, here were 
 strange sounds, nasals and aspirates, with no 
 equivalents in European languages; how should 
 these be represented? And when a system for 
 transcribing sounds has been decided upon, what 
 a task remains to gather a vocabulary! Armed 
 with the phrase, “What is this?” it may seem easy 
 to go about, pointing to material objects, and dis- 
 covering by the reply the names of these ob- 
 
158 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 jects. But how can you point to mental, moral 
 and spiritual realities and discover the equivalents 
 of “thought,” “purpose,” “love,” “hate,” “sin- 
 ful,” “holy.” And even when long vocabularies 
 have been listed, how will the grammatical struc- 
 ture of the language be analyzed ? Will analogies 
 to Aryan grammatical forms be sought for ? Or 
 will some Semitic language afford a nearer paral- 
 lel? Or is the Shilluk language like the Chi- 
 nese ? Remember that when the missionaries be- 
 gan their work along the Sobat there was no 
 grammar, no dictionary, no syntax of the Shil- 
 luk language at hand, and the only interpreters 
 were crude and indifferent and inexact instru- 
 ments for search after knowledge. 
 
 Yet here stood the language, a supreme bar- 
 rier, a supreme difficulty, in every effort to reach 
 the mind or heart of the Shilluk. In the Report 
 of 1908, the Rev. R. E. Carson wrote: 
 
 “In connection with the language work, consider- 
 able time was spent in collecting material for a Shil- 
 luk grammar. A fairly good working vocabulary of 
 between 1,700 and 2,000 Shulla words has been gath- 
 ered together, comprising the words collected by all 
 the missionaries during the past years; a much clearer 
 insight has been obtained into the Shilluk grammar 
 and some translations have been made. Much work 
 yet remains to be done, chiefly in acquiring those pe- 
 culiar idiomatic expressions which are at once the 
 distinguishing features and the genius of any lan- 
 guage, and then in translating the Scriptures.” 
 
THE MESSAGE OF HOPE 
 
 159 
 
 To the labors of those who went before, the 
 Rev. Elbert McCreery made most valuable con- 
 tributions because of his special linguistic gifts, 
 but the problem seemed to require for its solu- 
 tion some broad acquaintance with African lan- 
 guages and some specialized knowledge of Ne- 
 gro systems of speech. Here again a remarkable 
 providence ministered to the need of this Mission 
 to the Shilluks. A German missionary on the 
 west coast of Africa was compelled to return ma°nn’ 
 home for reasons of ill health. His brief mission- 
 ary experience had revealed in him linguistic 
 gifts, so unusual, so phenomenal, that his Gov- 
 ernment attached him to the Berlin University 
 and commissioned him to visit Nubia for a spe- 
 cial study of the language characteristics of its 
 peoples. Through acquaintances formed in con- 
 nection with the World Missionary Conference 
 at Edinburgh in 1910, the news reached the 
 Board in America that Professor Diedrich West- 
 ermann was contemplating this trip to Nubia. An 
 invitation was extended to him to proceed to the 
 Sobat, at the Board’s expense, to study the Shil- 
 luk language and, if possible, to prepare a gram- 
 mar that would at least outline the structure of 
 the language. The invitation was accepted and, 
 without charge for his talent or services. Profes- 
 sor Westermann brought out a brief grammar, 
 then a larger work consisting of grammar, dic- 
 tionary and folk lore, then a small primer, which 
 
 Wester- 
 s Lan- 
 Work. 
 
l6o SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Subtle Gram- 
 mar. 
 
 Evangelistic 
 
 Work. 
 
 now place the Shilluk language among the long 
 list of languages that have been put into written 
 form and analyzed by the servants of the King 
 in the interest of Kingdom conquest. As if to 
 show forth the exceeding goodness of God, an- 
 other providence brought financial aid from the 
 Arthington Fund of England which covered the 
 bulk of the expenses of these publications. From 
 this same fund there was also secured a generous 
 grant toward the support of a missionary at Do- 
 leib Hill for six years. The Gospel according to 
 John is the only portion of Scripture that has, as 
 yet, been translated and printed in the Shilluk lan- 
 guage. 
 
 How difficult and perplexing was the analysis 
 of the Shilluk language may be better appreciated 
 now that some of its problems have been solved. 
 It has been found, for example, that intonation 
 plays a large part both in the meaning of words 
 and in grammatical structure. As illustration, 
 otwon and leii, with a certain intonation mean 
 respectively cock and hot season; with another in- 
 tonation they mean hyena and small lizard. 
 
 Evangelistic Work : The earliest efforts at evan- 
 gelistic work were by means of an interpreter, a 
 Mohammedan who was a Shilluk by birth, but 
 who had lived in Northern Sudan for some time. 
 But what assurance had the missionary that his 
 thought reached the mind of the native Shilluk? 
 In the first place, the missionary had to express 
 
Missionary Work. 
 
 The “Evangel,” Used on the Upper Sobat. 
 Boys’ Home at Khartum. 
 
THE MESSAGE OF HOPE l6l 
 
 his own thought in Arabic, to most of the mission- 
 aries an unfamiliar language. Then the Moham- 
 medan interpreter had to grasp the thought thus 
 crudely expressed; to what extent would his 
 Moslem conceptions permit him to understand 
 the Christian truth ? Then, to what extent might 
 he be expected to be either willing or able to 
 translate into the Shilluk language these Christ- 
 ian terms and teachings ? And finally, if success 
 attended the effort thus far, what assurance was 
 there that the pagan mind would not read into 
 every Christian statement the crudest conceptions 
 of an Animistic and pagan religion? 
 
 The opportunity for evangelistic work lay in 
 several directions: there were the casual visitors 
 drawn to the mission compound through mere 
 curiosity; there were those who came singly or 
 in groups to trade at the store ; there were those 
 who came for medical treatment ; there were those 
 who were employed in connection with the indus- 
 trial work of the Mission, — some 1,580 through- 
 out 1911. Then there were outlying villages 
 within walking distance of Doleib Hill. Finally, 
 there were communities still farther away, to be 
 reached by boat, whether requiring absence over 
 night or not. Through the labors chiefly of 
 friends in America, a boat, “The Elliott,” was se- 
 cured. Upon the character and success of these 
 evangelistic efforts, the following paragraphs 
 throw light: 
 
 How It Is 
 Done. 
 
 II 
 
i 6 s 2 l SORROW'l&ND ®!OBD/Og’.'®HBlSlUDAN 
 
 -ni'iV’iitts ii0|vitobefiiaiP®i|d,7)df;Sibbatl>ilg^teirnpC!n«o «3rt 
 of Afiiq, -directly across the 
 
 , 5ffl 
 
 vjv^oi/v,. ..yc occH prcachea with more 
 
 tl^Si?^^an^Bt«er^ane 
 
 qdiWiialgfe fhfidfehcW i likrefd't 
 
 mfif^ihanriifjiLr'.alioiles (baxe-hidh dhiwrtaJnedittetiijSlpwij 
 
 Prav for Aoio 
 
 went so far as toTequest that a school be opened for . 
 
 tarihSd ■fdPJaiyhh^^t uhiifl WdIViila^‘Jg§flVityi''lWi^'i^ 
 w<itjTifhfejfail Korkl>{b®weith)®itlTB/jgtB [white duirayTSfi) 
 
 to contain their 
 
 Sion toward pagajireni seemed to affect them and we 
 w^fe iAyff'-flfdiltlthey^^md 
 
 ^ ^ ndPOdishvt(iEh^ri th^fGUSSp^ aiiyiiinof^h'iH'ati itflie ^S^thidi^ 
 
 Z<',iS>h-Gai Ttg$j/Md,MfbatyjptT?dij srokw^iiihadljcQwefppffihb 
 
 weeksf. absence, however.^ a delegation of older men 
 ‘:>coTll PT37/ .■jl.jaj ; 3ldl-i,9i:i 17. VlJinfOl i^woiu fll 
 came over to inquire why the preaching naq been dis- 
 
 cdfffihyed^ difiti ft'' nlsa^W' ftfe ’ drabdhdf ‘ "‘ 
 
 whtf/lt(ifey)ikitl;ihhdK#<<i7authcii-ifji ttp tafkjfasi tb6y//bady/ 
 
 In (v^HTj-pfj alf^.^e abov& faqts^iifcJi/fehlthht tfcwrlligei) 
 
 0t^JP‘fIi4ese^rffP?[5i,^ec|^j plai^y^lJh^j^i^yers 9^ , 
 
 Slop 
 
 , .vUEiiri ^.llilt (I'l-nou ra,99ni;iP:!i) ■''niair.;/, 
 breaking of pagan ties, wfll cause a terrible pang, 
 
 ciidhgd^ if^'mitPBiWotiyM dhdhHf^"d¥'<vVhniifi'^ffiM*^ 
 in7‘Affhe^lWdt)didtveft Mt)i i bqtlcfeptiphpf iThih^a'i'tvhal lH>i Will>7 
 m'ean.'/fit^EiidjfaiiipileJjlio gite hjgj!PQl5riihiy,.ai*ievih which 11 
 noiy;. h^s^^ts' ftl^e^ jf9pp(}ii^>oq, p| 
 
 ^ .7]f[r.T‘>iriEq ■^niv/oHol yrli .^j-ioTl-) oilnil-ip/invo 
 “At times, some of the people have seeUifejiifon- theit 
 
 ! 
 
HAUTH0 1 firBS9A(EB > ORi HOPEOHHOa l6y 
 
 eveilfafi a- apiritirab!iavvrakeniiiiguiJ:0|ia( jioimgl^niaaLifwhb/. 
 had worked .nranin /iridnthfel at theiMisEion/iatid^hadjreH! ? 
 celved'H idirlyithoi^ough'kiiowlcdga.df tho'jpldiiiofraatH; 
 valioh,lsaid3 <beli£!Tet!imJesu£i andiiavfe only i one' iwiih// 
 to keep God’s commandments. When thelHoiy- Sflirilo 
 comes into my heart, then I will go to preach the Gos- suaded. 
 
 heart (v^i^hrsotpnfollon® Cbrifitl buti Jhy jhead tgjifflildofc 
 m fum. . - , • , ■ 
 
 6iit ¥'* 
 
 meeting;! i‘Dty4iot th«esisltHh^i<(’ihe(|iS6felu'rr6ci^ 
 
 tion and the Judgip.ent)f,aity>Im(ir<i^ notT iweiristem!J|t'» 
 night about dead people rising up out of their graves.’ 
 AlJd''^'fetIfAjk)tber‘^feiidii^'4ee pld^''’b^ ^saWMitlhWdry 
 clearlj! jaDn^iIandU 'h(Jpe(tsbme!)day )i(phalb^bena Ghriitn 
 3ii'> ontjrl loi .IliH diofoCI j£ jiiov; IcnJeubui 
 
 have. 
 
 biloo'^^^t^’ti^^g^diW.' ^r’dacihih^'' of* 
 
 Gos^P bpfeWJyTlaiigHSd •at,''^i^ed.’kti"^‘(3rfce,A 
 
 wBoti /the ,eiaim3j«f - Jeans iiwcre, being Ipressed ihome,, 
 upfPnrtJlei9^fj^jpne4;ftutt^^V\^^ Jiay^^/ljin^ Jespsi i^yn 
 
 We do not want to , follow Jesus. Vbnereal disease, 
 th^"'J-^t!(iV^6^ 'the'^^f/ri’stless *tife,^ M^v'e'l^rven^ ' 
 
 th^ib'<fpi^a'd‘dri^ie4tty hfittd p'fertd' perhaps ‘hot' siHfee' fee ' 
 Missionj lwsi»/ fouhdad lhas there i been .girepten lieilndis,-. 
 
 Prpsi^mton.jpf blp^iS?iidp> por . 
 
 Blit 
 
 vdlagc made an ambusc^e anp fell upon their rivals, 
 while at a fe'ii^erki ^e:^ic^PkiHing^'6'f(^f^''fiffe4h i/f* tliehi. 
 AhbtlWH' diyl^ ^be*fWi‘feh* 'dbvfrii'^the ‘ hiSrtdof’ ‘ ^ 
 
 /ia^,Ip^s^s.,^\^f:roppded .th> 4 jFP^- 
 
 lings of their doomed enemies and fell ferotiously upon 
 
 I Reactions. 
 
164 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Industrial 
 
 Work. 
 
 all those who unsuspectingly left their homes, killing 
 three and wounding four. The Devil is showing his 
 power and verily there is only one Power able to cope 
 with his and to dethrone him from the hearts and lives 
 of the Shilluks.” 
 
 Evangelistic work, however, may be regarded 
 as having been either halted or hampered by in- 
 itial limitations in the knowledge of the native 
 language and by the further difficulty of convey- 
 ing to the pagan mind ideas and conceptions that 
 are wholly foreign to it, and that have no real 
 equivalent in the Shilluk language. 
 
 Industrial Work: The casual visitor will prob- 
 ably be most impressed with the development of 
 industrial work at Doleib Hill, for here are the 
 obvious proofs of this department of missionary 
 work : 200 acres of land available for cultivation, 
 a vegetable garden, a fruit orchard, selected cattle 
 and sheep and goats, even some ostriches, a wind- 
 mill for irrigation, a store, ^ and industrial build- 
 ings. In charge of this work are two industrial 
 missionaries, graduates of . State Agricultural 
 College, so that the work may enjoy the advant- 
 age of the application of scientific knowledge and 
 of specialized training in the solution of its prob- 
 lems. And its problems are many and serious: 
 To what products is the soil best adapted? Will 
 the climate permit such cultivation as might be 
 
 'This has been recently closed by the Government for rea- 
 sons not yet known. 
 
THE MESSAGE OF HOPE 165 
 
 possible elsewhere? Will these products ibe of 
 service to the native for food? If he produces 
 more than he himself needs, can he find a market 
 for the surplus? Finally, but most important, in 
 what way may the Shilluk be coaxed, persuaded, 
 taught to work? Nor must industrial work be- 
 come too complex or ambitious, for even though 
 the Shilluk learns to work efficiently on the Mis- 
 sion compound, how can he carry forward such 
 work when he neither owns nor is able to buy ex- 
 pensive implements ? No, his training must ever 
 be in keeping with his circumstances and condi- 
 tion, advancing only as he is able to advance with 
 it. In 1908, Mr. R. W. Tidrick gave this vivid 
 description of the work : 
 
 “From an agricultural standpoint there are many 
 obstacles to contend with here. While the climate is 
 favorable to some of the staple crops, it is too hot 
 for some, too wet for others, still others cannot en- 
 dure the dry season. The soil also is ill suited for 
 many plants that otherwise would find a congenial 
 home here. The climate has also drawbacks to stock 
 raising. Mosquitoes, flies and ticks prey upon live 
 stock and make it necessary to house them most care- 
 fully. Tsetse fly disease and Texas fever were both 
 prevalent this year; this is not the same trypanosome 
 of the tsetse fly that is so deadly in other parts of 
 Africa. 
 
 “There are many injurious insects but the termite 
 (white ant) is the worst of all. They devour not only 
 lumber, wherever they can reach it (this includes na- 
 tive wood in general), but they also destroy vegetables 
 
 Wow Rapidly ? 
 
 Injurious In- 
 sects. 
 
rl 66 SORROW lAND'HOBE'OP/THE) SUDAN 
 
 ?YltiifIB'a v/nH 
 
 “The African 
 Indian.” 
 
 r1 -^noiTotfil 
 ■ Ido;: 
 
 !and)(fcereals[ tcif|a p^ntiainl [ ejtfentf. thfeihative 
 
 
 tune 
 
 'i's fiffitfed, aiid^ifif61iili5nvi^‘ ^!o 
 tlW ' jpi'ofitatl^ ’ pi'o'dti'cttiiS^ tieSst fgrfcW;Si¥g 
 
 -orbpi;)Ojl;htr.5Cftro}ty!rof ; fud and! bufldmg/.'mateitiil) diw- 
 r >Ri j?tT?rr tc;^^ 
 
 leaders retard.s this part .or the wofk. But the Tiard^st 
 
 ' ^hfe mHiilP hitAgelf:"' 
 
 ta'etXfdt <^ghd4t^tioh§' Wififi'A' fdi^iltfefettidrfi^rdtrff iWhibh' he 
 •could) =appr(^riatef;ldttle I besides diseasesdqdfhejvifonns 
 
 . . To tne w... 
 
 W(i?!an MtT liiWy ttiore ‘\fays' 
 brother in the United States.^■Pt‘d(u3(Ih^dg^ff^tf^)^■^P^t:<!il- 
 tempt for foreigners in general, conceited and set in his 
 
 .'ir.-'i 'I'lfL pT . ' - Ininjir'jrinn n»; yioiV'. 
 
 ways ai|d in, customs that seem almost a part of.nis 
 
 K .not) 
 merican 
 
 '^TOlortfd 
 
 .... — seem almost a part 
 
 lig^o^n" Ignorant 'of peeds, ms^ wanes ' ard**fef^^ 
 
 than the satis'Iy'ing. bl' animal passYdn’s^ and^apbetlfts. 
 lqnfi62 ,r2'V: ql.-q.„?AviLr Jl!. iS U iiPt f^l^r^^SUh 
 
 .., _...' lYe cSAhot 
 
 yndirsfand wYy ive nyssibhane’s 'sIib*uVi ladSt* tyifH’^btjr 
 
 ''iioredVer, he^ 
 
 mso j-nm ir •’ 
 
 are"'c6?n- 
 
 1 , o>:k. ?rr; ^jr.nni'; 3 rl i .■.''■toii. Okni'iv 
 
 hands. Honesty js npt a common practice at least. 
 >,'iJ (ii'Ctr v.iin. P.'.nti t-'jr. • ir;' .M.'i'jjitiiv.'.'U 
 
 is quarrelsome; yinage feuds, ; 
 
 at? 
 
 dri 
 
 corhiiig to wbr*^' dT'^frade^^at^'thl^'stalibn' *^As ^^*dt,^fio 
 Shilluks have been wfilling to remain at work mofe'ihan 
 a'fdtti’ iridhtHs^^af n tlftie.^^ITtdk'is 'Stff 'h iit^eft’S'’t^ges to 
 
 quarrels , 
 
 ^' mTny^deatliV 'result frdm^^|:fits'; jdWnq¥^'ufl38tft- 
 foi^ oiir wdricmen to ^sud^e'tjly 'dr8^ 'tool^ kitd 
 o^fe^a,fi’ghl^ ^esp'feudl’previ^tt^W^tij- teeft' fi'om 
 
 'dfb Jfi ..‘'toiLodn ij;„ 
 
 ornoao 
 run.„.. 
 *o Piir. 
 
 W^Wcf’tlf^’Wbilcr''* .(iG-tonop fii bo 
 
i MBSSAOEl OB'. /HQffBiacv, 
 
 (ii rjA^)rtiosfcvinifH3'rt»nfJisBrfvtide>ren*dei'ed by;i1^d>dn- 
 
 2 fotrti -f^n6ft^feg 
 
 ^/ftjlli (12 .lol I) 3 bciJ no// xarf] loJlc 
 , bDti(|°onifiiKt 3 ftJ lo o^iEjftKvbji 3 >l£j oi 3 ntB 0 oicqa ot 
 
 ^pib'SWlille 
 
 We- att’ukHy''^af^b^'thifey'<^erS' Vbaif^fed 
 
 ' •'I’RyV slf^rtld’’ l:he^fiefe'*fot'''tHb %fihs 
 
 la¥g8 Wkot’diit^.'i^fees'd'yiifts'’fe'^oi‘b''^ti^ grifik'^d 
 '•’W'ddd^dtfkbfe' l%e 
 
 {6is kiid'pfttv^iiddd,'-^n"a’ll^M’ft Iffci dfifVa. 
 'it ^ %{iri^V/' tdf ' 'hdi^ffih liidh tl' ' In'’ 'the 
 
 'fTh\I'^’a’"^^ed^^WH6sfe'‘^st’a!U5'l yteltf a 
 l/fifey'*i?t^t ^iokdh^ -*111' a^^Sitidldbr- 
 
 ^ 'iiirtV ■wate4‘,'’%olit^fiV'd"iiyf '^6eilt{’'si:^d?!'Iivjly’thS'¥dS'i!ilt. 
 idb fe s^tf^piy tK'e^tla- 
 
 [ |fyes*'direi5ly liependeni on* ils, hm ottei^ '^6o'A,^t)est)tight 
 us^"'’^p ^Diinff'’ilieni ’^prfa^kiso,"'^ 'first ^ iriy^Hiall* diiatffififes, 
 b?” 'We the "'ffedpffe' to 
 
 us tp Dring tnem qurra also, 
 
 tn'j.i/ .■,liGr),r.ti jioir;, 
 
 and then m sail, boat loads. 
 
 ■‘1 . 3 i’!?j’ •!j^').ri_?i;. njBnAMf .:ii(l<L->', 
 
 supply their 
 ircfq To. Ail I 
 trade winds. 
 
 frV''‘>ffTrnKrioJ^. 
 bv exaenstve 
 
 -X 7 :U‘> 7 ll fll 
 
 •by tpe few 
 
 » 
 
 ds 'e^rfy s'o‘k's“to'’l;dke. '^kriyahtld^d 'o? '^tii 
 
 to ,bnn¥ t^le grain l^y''sali*feokt|*'rai!A^t^''lfttin 
 
 . dlk^’sHk’wn 
 
 stve steaniers. 
 Ill ixnni lc,i 
 w who reall 
 
 tilT.ifie.*^ne\y 
 
 txeWe^ih'a?' iiy. wi'nd jiowef,* but 'l*h'd.^fidyth^'^Uiritfi'‘^ldst 
 oaly/^rpi^ 'No'yerntpr ml tHe''di/dTof"Mkr(dV.^* ,olqo3q 
 
 " r lETfrno oiii o) boJioo'ji oom/noo 3i1j Io lomovoD 
 
 Vtiilnn) 
 
 Winn nnwer. nur tne norm' 
 
 d ; Dlqooq 
 
 ■<'d''b3}io7t;/i 3-,rn7o.i^ brjJ'ld" lomovoD 
 
 on nEr/AtofifM 9 X?Pf PH?- ^rf/rlPlShjo 
 
 their cash was soon exhausted. Of course, j some .had 
 but little money to begin with, and some perhaps^ Wdrely 
 •totfehffdi tiel 'mpnsyothffyri badr jhi^r^ingj-fiylflTpince 
 
 — oi^j j, we ,ac(ceptpjl anything thpy,'’naq ' 
 
 .7' 
 
 exchange that We 
 
 "coul 
 
 raCirfo. 
 
 iispo 
 
 ,d ahythjbg'theyi 
 
 I dP'-^ir^M 
 
 snicf 
 
 .to 
 
 loif'n i<‘Thefiiiiadcn'»d«velopedvipr(incipallyrnjfi ECfttU^wisheep 
 
 .«3iiBnolHalm yrf noTn^r.om 
 
 Trade with 
 Natives. 
 
1 68 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 and goats. Some six hundred animals were taken in 
 exchange. Many were resold within a few minutes 
 after they were traded for. Shilluks who had money 
 to spare came to take advantage of the famine prices, 
 so that our Mission became a center of live stock ex- 
 change. It was no uncommon sight to see a crowd of 
 Dinkas or Nuers, accompanied by Shilluk buyers, com- 
 ing with their stock to trade for durra. Often the 
 Shilluks from the same village would come together 
 as seller and buyer, the one wishing to buy the cattle 
 that his neighbor wanted to sell. When asked why 
 they did not make an exchange in the village, and the 
 seller bring his money for durra, they always replied 
 that they preferred to make an exchange through us. 
 
 “When stock arrived, we estimated the value in 
 money and durra, and announced it openly. If the 
 seller agreed (and it was a rare exception that he did 
 not), we offered the buyer the animal at the cash 
 value of the durra. The buyers were as well pleased as 
 the sellers, and all parties usually went away happy. 
 We tried to give the people the grain as near cost as 
 possible, and still not run too great a risk of going 
 into debt, and thus largely prevented the Mohammedan 
 traders from taking advantage of them in their ex- 
 tremity. They were angry at us, however, and peti- 
 tioned the Government to stop our trading with the 
 people; but their petition failed of its object. The 
 Governor of the province reported to the central Gov- 
 ernment that we had done them a favor rather than an 
 injury.” i 
 
 Efforts to give the young boys and girls some- 
 thing of a practical and literary education com- 
 bined have been attended with great difficulty. 
 
 ’Since this time the Government has forbidden such relief 
 measures by missionaries. 
 
Mr. Roosevelt at Doleib Hill. 
 His Steamer Approaching Khartum. 
 Addressing Young Men at Khartum. 
 
THE MESSAGE OF HOPE 1 69 
 
 Prizes were offered for regular attendance. Les- 
 sons in sewing were given to the girls.^ 
 
 Medical Work: In 1910, Mr. Roosevelt visited 
 the station at Doleib Hill on his way down the 
 Nile. A few days later in a public address at 
 Khartum, he said : i 
 
 “I stopped a few days ago at the little Mission 
 Station on the Sohat. One of the things that struck me 
 there was what was being done by the medical side of 
 that mission. There were about thirty patients who 
 were under the charge of the mission doctor. Patients 
 had come in to be treated by the mission doctors from 
 places 125 miles distant. I do not know a better type 
 of missionary than the doctor who comes out here and 
 gives his whole heart to the work and does his work 
 well. He is doing practical work of the most valuable 
 type for civilization and for bringing the people up to 
 the standards you are trying to set. If you make it 
 evident to a man that you are sincerely trying to bet- 
 ter his body, he will be much more ready to believe 
 that you are trying to better his soul.” 
 
 Among the diseases treated there have been, 
 first and most dreadful, those brought in by the 
 immoral foreigner, esj>ecially the Moslem trader 
 and soldier; but also eye diseases, leprosy, the 
 black fever (kala-azar), lobar pneumonia, ele- 
 phantiasis and guinea worm. The efforts to put 
 this work on a proper financial basis are well de- 
 scribed in the following quotation: 
 
 “We have, after considerable thought and prayer, 
 
 •See Annual Report of 1904, p. 214 and of 1910, p. 225-6. 
 
 Medical Work. 
 
 Roosevelt’s 
 
 Testimony. 
 
 Diseases 
 
 Treated. 
 
SORROWiTAND' HOPB -^Fi/THE SUDAN 
 
 (ij ?0 
 
 .ent$re^ r9,)Wyv-t ,tg-,eudeavpij' to 
 
 make every 
 
 make the fee very small, from two to five cents, and 
 hflthejr Hsve^tio nlon^ wfliactepiJa ^trvyyior\aVf%w^%gs. 
 oWe rrbeHfcve/’ (that ithiftr pifbjti{plf(,i '>tf>(;foyowt?4f oy|M1 
 
 came one afternoon with six sick people.. He him^f 
 had sore eyes which would need" ^f^attherit^fc^r^’Softe 
 io/T'-ioH tathex, exa.lt?d ofiinipnf.q^,^^sflf and 
 
 .vnoroii’i-tT othoRght -tljutt,! sipfi?t»hefi^v^§ ar,gK?at,,n[i^, ^(^jJ^j&d 
 
 tfinc^iJb^8ii;iad4r£;s!3e(J,'bynthe q^rth^,Efoy,ij[tfp, 
 
 otM;-We,iiw<?ul4T((?(^ ?PHX^-,^e.4 ^94^4 jtft;,tj^t ^iin. 
 
 ? Whfihl asked, r|pi(,,4eeSrfThq,[se)WiQdT ,s,ttrpf^ed, 
 rrspifev-gwpiblipg,., JtPt pxoduxjeftT tp, ,pias(ters,f,pc,r49.5 C|9p^. 
 oWp Td^plinpdw.ttiifP P.(^W, ^earsrWpre p^^jin,^^(i^- 
 
 hti©n,rbp^r(Wae.s,944,ofBfi>^S}-Abcow/rir,ir!hp^,vy;M 
 
 >lYvowldi(the»',!file.rPff-!k>, ,a pejghbo^flg; SJliwllpk gY^lag9i|o 
 Paying for 9tSdkrjib a»'d tbeja,rr,ptpKn:twith .a,:p,(»pprqip:^ise.f[^.^t 
 
 v^aiue Receiv-^}ag,^,th&y,^ldffthe;bpqtii*9y;ic?u?a(e ’ip,j?ji4f:.brpu^t ^^bat 
 
 ■ »;probablM'<««eined (to the^,t]hfl fabulpps ^tvpi, p/,^$4,-P9 ; 
 
 -Btillr,wp.r>V^B ■pbdwiate,-^^^ p*ie, oarmoti.^qrd jta,pftppge 
 oh4S!-viford \»dtb ithBeC''PeppJe,,or,,pv)en, argue., 
 they would speedily iKcoinye ,,unmanageal%;. oX^^ej^^d 
 made sure in the first place that the party was abund- 
 : i: r.o;.(n • dbief ‘td^lfliyl tlib' WB'askeB. sTheiji.thiey/'Said, 
 
 ofWe''^ill(gbIto:Fadho(la/'iwdi?llY,^,^ nMle^.di^jt^tjp.^e 
 ieajd-fl‘Yer>y^<^9ll/34»d, y 
 
 ‘ -iWbftArr^s '^tte Atf^ds thto animal i ,Tyiid ■ ibroagtrti^nRrla 
 -3b fbw ^^B aip.nd Ir.ionr.rtil loanir r, no >fio'// afrit 
 
 7^7rT,hq,r^taWislMnqn^p,f station,^ Do- 
 
 aleib fh^^So^j^t_Rjvevha^ 
 
ZAU!J<THB J MES 3 AGBI OBl-HOPE/lMOi; LI71 
 
 JfJrbmothe’/veScy afefst^'jJyaea idceygriizecliaiiionl^i ian 
 mitiaUsliep! td>war(i4lhetevaa5ge}®2dtioQi of. tfae trifoias 
 living ufpitfheitiver.hfMop.iHasi it etefrobein 
 
 {inayposeci :4ki''iestafcliHh. rhanyifstatidnls'jffT^airiia^ 
 such elaborate equipment as the various depart- 
 ments of work j:^!^ fpr^ajtiPpl^j^ Hill, but rather 
 to use the latter as a base and to establish a series 
 <'<H Btatidhs(’fiifdtetniip>the( ritifir ^bereian ordained 
 'ttiariitiwtlfa imdicaliliiti^wonaa-y wowM leonsSbittite 
 vi'wr^dcqtiafi®' fbriie IforJOiiSSMaiaTy '>afiEyrt..nj<Dlcar 
 -hnd^dfefiwitetais (weW these plans jforjthe.fejfteiision 
 'OifntMe»'JWbrki,c#iteiboj)6i(lpz&i)5i^ had I todvliait- ppo-n 
 Idiseotleif jK) oi then nec^i^py i'.rfesbwrces.i c rSev- 
 I«?Hl)5eKplbHQgi<>rips)fhavih^betett*TTiadie/iitibedarrie 
 -peiisiibkvat ddfcbho/aippolrtt tWormls^ionaridsTTblho 
 '■might? p^'(5K;ded^h6i ihe estfcbKfehnietit'oil al'secortd 
 ' ^ftttseadn I st^tionEtt&ro'MtasBeiv sonie ' ■iS 2 l mnileb' ' up 
 '^thiff Sofe!abRfi'veii»oaung:th^ Muferd;ioThe R^vi ’Ei- 
 J?berl^’MeCi«ePy aflvd'!l>f(fThonias‘iLambie}vgqttipped 
 i'iwfh '3pbdrge/;dThe>Evang0lj'laindi al launch)',siart- 
 -'ed'tfwhil Hharturii'^iiii'titei sbrilngiof'i^uiin'Oiyang 
 -to tHbal'wa)fH?b 8 tweenJth' 0 .^Mu«l-fe andrAntrahs/^the 
 i(3oyehinrhn{ v^cStrlid nbt'^e»riit:'thtfili toUiteei their 
 . 'famHa^s'iwtthl themnotbftiyi a-‘few>'inohl:hsf'6f>lwovk 
 l^wer^lfydsfeiMe.'^ Uhis.ftimdy'i. In i9i.3n!lj!i;eB6>n1fs- 
 t ^onturiesflbdat^'fthea-! )fertniHe9 at’. DoMb iHillr-aWd 
 (agfaifti platmed'®on9ucW<trbi4tfaS'tnigbt be^possiible 
 • labcNassiri an Aii^ifer I wasaboughi ondarf Na^seklmid 
 n|H0'Hewltsistiott>lmc4y’15t Tegatded as-faictyl^gtib- 
 lished. Much- of; the bKpedieatd'gbinadrat'Deileib 
 
 First- Wosl«i-pt 
 Naeser^oH nt 
 aahuB 
 
1/2 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Church Work 
 in Northern 
 Sudan. 
 
 Hill will doubtless be serviceable at Nasser, but 
 there is a new language to be mastered and re- 
 duced to writing, and to this task Mr. McCreery 
 has applied himself with characteristic thorough- 
 ness. 
 
 NORTHERN SUDAN. 
 
 The work in Northern Sudan contrasts sharply 
 in almost every way with the work in Southern 
 Sudan. Here are centuries of civilization, a fairly 
 unified language area and Islam in the ascend- 
 ancy. The limitations placed upon direct mis- 
 sionary work have led to a new emphasis being 
 laid upon the part which the native Evangelical 
 (Protestant) 'Church is to play in the evangeliza- 
 tion of Northern Sudan. Where there were a 
 sufficient number of native Evangelical Church 
 members, work has been organized either as a 
 congregation, or as a mission, or as a Men’s 
 League, and religious services have been held 
 with entire or partial regularity. At Khartum, 
 the first native Protestant congregation was or- 
 ganized on December 30th, 1907, but religious 
 work 'has also been carried on at Khartum North, 
 at Omdurman, at Atbara, at Wadi Haifa and 
 Wad Medani, at Port Sudan, and at Dueim. At 
 these last four points, however, the work is very 
 feeble for lack of workers and financial support. 
 On March 21, 1912, the Presbytery of the Sudan 
 was organized in faith and prayer. 
 
THE MESSAGE OF HOPE 
 
 173 
 
 The Northern Sudan field has been held up be- 
 fore the native Evangelical Church in Egypt as 
 its foreign Held. The first ordained man sent, the 
 Rev. Gebera Hanna, was a man whose sweet 
 spirit, judgment and devotion, made him a worthy 
 leader of what, it is hoped, will be a long line of 
 native Egyptian missionaries to the Sudan. The 
 interest of the Church in Egypt in the work in 
 the Sudan needs greatly to be cultivated, for at 
 many centers in Northern Sudan there is a real 
 spiritual destitution for lack of the means of 
 grace. 
 
 The presence of so many young men in Govern- 
 ment employment in the Sudan has made the 
 Young Men’s League and the Christian Endeavor 
 Society effective forms of Christian work. A 
 strong organization of the Protestant young men 
 exists at Khartum. There is also a somewhat sim- 
 ilar organization (although ethical rather than re- 
 ligious) among the Coptic young men, called 
 “The Coptic Library.” 
 
 Educational work in Northern Sudan has, for 
 the most part, followed the lines laid down by 
 similar work in Egypt. The fact that such liter- 
 ary education is of little value save for Govern- 
 ment positions, and the fact that its compact cur- 
 riculum affords little opportunity for religious in- 
 struction and influence, and no opportunity for 
 practical or manual training, have suggested the 
 propriety of restricting missionary work along 
 
 Educational 
 
 Work. 
 
Ip4‘ SORROW'iAND IHOPB 'OF fTHEi SUDAN 
 
 edticajaofaali lines; to.ithe">dewelopnientrbf jah jalftb- 
 ge*her/doffearenb 1 ]ype.'ofr 9 ch<« 5 lc V -Tw®i instildticmsi 
 have .uraenged fix3m!#iisceffc>rtl'to.toBeti<existiTigsv 
 needs^j— ^heloiienisithe Boys’, Honi4 atr-Khai-tum/l 
 thei Oldieriis. tihe^GarkhSxthool'afc :Khartait 0 i;NRDjrtM ^8 
 Itdsothe gimlin bdtHiof ,fheseian$titutioh« tobcreak<I 
 away fjrorhrrtheiiBigidattiarriculiiffl aHd'ipj¥>vide)ai 
 trainingA'wJikhirviJill/^ietiuip sfior-'/Hohorablci useful t 
 and iefficient;v sennunerativ^] pnctfe^sionsnahd^life} 
 ciil lings, i wketJiubin iib rthe i trades; ^Ini ibttsiTiieBSA or lim : 
 the liome:-i The Sort>bfelmaterial upoHF’*i’>hibhJitTis 
 sought to bring the influences of Christian ed«f-g 
 catrorr ^to* bear,, may be /j udged' from>t}ae ioJlpwaflg 
 paragraphs :ecfl nsbn^ ailJ rti Jnofnyolqma jnarn 
 lovcsbriH naiJ-.iiil'J aril bna arrejvjJ a'nol/I ^nnoY 
 
 use of mansa (a, ferm^ted drink m use all over the 
 Changed chil- Sudah)^ ‘untli sW^'\val^yealI^^ d^i'uHh'4Pd^‘‘lf^^'th<?*{h‘st 
 m6Hth IdV ‘ b'Ohwng^'^dsl sHe‘'Wd4'-‘i)eW?sK''a^d 
 fretfuh',iilid-n6thiiig'.'3ebmd^itoifsi>tiBfyi .htervinShe was. 
 c(!>n4l?:ntly,iC^^ving„h9t' >P»5^?. rW;(9Riop5.0'^pd:[ 
 
 the peel of limes. Gradually,- -t^^.,yjijnfit)if^l|,apRejt^tie.. 
 wore away. The, child, is completely changed; indeed 
 iijnoi 3 n-)ii hatli? chiiclren ' kte^ all *iiicii!i^ed' in ^adh'er,^ aA'tf i!ri ’ en- 
 
 ^■‘“’^cdhi'a^e'd' 'io feefitvfe'^fhit ‘-iiiHikife^''eayh'’iwi}nJ^p^iettfce5|^^ 
 change df.'heatuSalsodl sdT .tq'^'gS ni >Iiov/ isfirnia 
 
 I" 
 
 RiBiulIjllf,”'W?iy' ifchin^-’‘fo -di^bbuf thfefe^ yfeiVs 
 
 ■ y f lt bol fo^^na avsrl ,)2ntnicT} Icrmsm lo [soitoinq 
 
y.Aa'KHEnMESSAOEuoFUHOPB’oaaoa 1751 
 
 themslie'JttoEst boyi<i«eMej> bad to, 4 < 32 \vitll. nijis miml"! 
 \\«ag''t)i<ighti5e«oufel%: bot .seetned -'Slhiost; hwpeiessSy r uinedt 1 
 Burt' jEecenUy iseenjs Jto /have c6m© •'ai.:gbeat changen 
 in Rizkullah, for which our hearth »re;'ekceediffgty'glkd.'i 
 ,2n/tZiinabiw tjhd>datighte9iitofnafi'M«slefn rfafherP and 
 aA^'AbyssirtianijmothefJjITbelttiother is^Hying h»uKhar?o 
 turn; at»d fe ^^arrifed toi anothephhbshandjiithei-fatberiis ! 
 aUoi aliv«7C Sheds'a'ipr^y' obildj btoti with au-a^kbn’bado 
 disposition. She is about seven years old. .lulimcri 
 E iVAbtt'J.Mflkari' ' isfothfii chiM '^fioEgyptiano Mto^lem 
 
 pareftfs. brtFhere'tigittotbing’iremarfcable'aboueitheuehildii: , 
 
 , I - r. t'U/t ainaioiial 
 
 H^jhats^' bl^nJiwitb-fUs'ifor' t\y<> yearsjiibutj&suboth dnsil .njiuio/noii 
 patents' ■arel!slive/it >is"^r®bablt that w«i willdbse'jbilnr/ll 
 }i bnB ;vfiv/ iDfii-io-i-jj'tcrn bufi lui jica Jeom ailJ ni oont 
 
 enced^tlpe] disadvaniagei of.’oaaayiiDhangfcs'ailriliiH.-Medicai work 
 terruptions. It^Wa^‘beg^‘at<DflWttfraatt-‘aft«Ptfed!'‘“ 
 
 CttdfBh ‘MisJ^dna^y 'Sdc'iet^' ‘apWii‘;Mtly'‘Sven 
 
 -Toux ?iouiguino2 vil b >o I 
 
 up, this field on the death of iJn HsilL taler it 
 Wjag^tff?tns,f^.iii:e4/to;.KhartpTO,I^ diiSi: t 
 
 pengary; .was lbuilt>i(and v aigawi.k j^as; extendedi<tQ 
 KbarWm.^ Di<. Ma^ilI giytf9^tbe'7oll6Av*higaGCdiiwt'’ 
 oP'thefiliihdltidii^ fof 'Qir^^tiafi rridiiical 
 
 liiitaoj oJ fji'jKS lEaiii'o'I .ijvsi !u.ii yiDV j; 
 
 "^>iTr?toq zi Ji doiffv/ vd aaiol /Ino oill lo Jnt>ni /olqmo odt 
 •rit'/Nadvet medicine, is fa) :carious' mixiture ©Ifnsuperstiwl 
 tioniiand'^qtiackery. ' lOrtenis.jnot grarprised find) tlieq 
 i^iarMtiSufcfinerie: -putting implicitrcobfidancelin-augur-iii 
 iei' andibrnpletsti-andi onedeahns n»t !ta)be snirpirised iati 
 find'cvanitthaijeduca^cd fesdrtiiig to tha 'Sfefne bnltedsdiv ) 
 abl«iniefeb6d3,'fQTiiafter(all it takes '-’arir (least ttvo"gendra^‘» 
 tions for what is usually called eiiucBtioni'td)) get "beyd 
 neath) tfee'shrfacei deed ehougk)toitot!ich: the. i real' Ifhan 
 oriTvoiiiahi.E S'^fiEbui^ iito<l hiii; .rioirinioa sin noiJnsm o5 
 
 iif'MPfelemsiiaredfcniidfiof'.wdtinglpassagbs.’i fromi' the i 
 
176 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Ignorance and 
 /Immorality. 
 
 Koran upon the sick; some Christians use the Scrip- 
 tures in like manner. One boy whom I attended was 
 not only well covered with writing but had also an open 
 Bible on the bed near him. 
 
 “Counter irritation in the form of a series of cuts, 
 or actual cautery and blood-letting, are the most 
 popular remedies. While sometimes harmless and oc- 
 casionally useful, native medical practices are often 
 harmful. 
 
 “On one occasion a prescription was written for a ' 
 
 man suffering from an eruption on his face and direc- > 
 
 tions given for the use of the medicine it called for. 
 
 He took the paper and began to rub it all over his 
 face in the most careful and matter-of-fact way; and it j 
 
 was with some difficulty that he was made to under- 
 stand that the healing virtue lay not in the paper, but 
 in the medicine which the paper called for. 
 
 “The drinking of native beer is a great and preva- i 
 
 lent curse. The amounts consumed are sometimes enor- 
 mous. A woman patient in replying to a question said 
 that she could drink nearly a bucketful (two gallons) 
 at one sitting; and a man who complained of dyspeptic 
 symptoms said that he drank two bucketfuls every day. 
 
 “Life in and around Khartum is on the whole on 
 a very bad level. Political exigencies seem to forbid 
 the employment of the only force by which it is possible ' 
 
 for a people to be regenerated; and the forces em- 
 ployed, while sufficient to transform a waste of ruins ' 
 
 into a well-ordered city with many splendid buildings 
 and beautiful gardens, and to make smartly dressed, s 
 
 well-drilled soldiers out of naked savages, are not pow- 
 erful enough to change the beastly character developed 
 by generations of excess. 
 
 “Practices and diseases which it is a shame even 
 to mention are common, and both Sudanese and Egypt- 
 ians are regulating the size of their families. Practic- 
 
Missionary Agencies. 
 
 Church at Khartum. Girls’ Boarding School at Khartum North. 
 
 Dispensary in Khartum North and Outlying Community. 
 
THE MESSAGE OF HOPE 1 77 
 
 ally all of the Sudanese women pass through the dang- 
 ers of confinement without any help worthy of the 
 name. They suffer without much complaint, perhaps, 
 because they consider suffering their appointed lot. Ig- 
 norance, carelessness, and vice work havoc among the 
 children. Pitiful little skeletons are often brought to the 
 clinic for whom apart from good nursing and proper 
 food there can be no hope. 
 
 “The needs of women and children are particu- 
 larly great. It must always be so where Islam rules. 
 The women of respectable families are, for the most 
 part, rigidly secluded and must pass the greater part 
 of their lives within the narrow confines of their homes. 
 There is not sufficient data on hand from which to make 
 a forecast but it is highly probable that the needs of 
 women and children will occupy a large place in our 
 hospital of the future.” 
 
 Those who have labored in the Northern Sudan 
 mission field are the following; The Rev. J. K. 
 Giffen, D. D., and Mrs. Giflfen, Dr. H. T. Mc- 
 Laughlin and Mrs. McLaughlin, Rev. George A. 
 Sowash and Mrs. Sowash, Dr. Thomas A. Lambie 
 and Mrs. Lambie, Dr. Hugh R. Magill and Mrs. 
 Magill, Rev. Elbert McCreery, Miss Hannah C. 
 McLean,* Miss Fannie G. Bradford, Miss Anna 
 M. Barackman,* Rev. Paul J. Smith and Mrs. 
 Smith, Miss Aulora McIntyre. 
 
 Missionary Comity. 
 
 In Southern Sudan, the different Christian mis- 
 sionary agencies have been assigned by the Gov- 
 
 •Marrled in the Mission. 
 
 Workers 
 
 Named. 
 
 12 
 
178 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Missionary 
 
 Comity. 
 
 ernment to different areas. In Northern Sudan 
 an agreement exists between the two Protestant 
 Missions, — ^the American and the British, — to 
 counsel with each other in every development of 
 their work, so that there may be no overlapping 
 or friction. As a result of this agreement, in 
 many places where both Missions are laboring, 
 the one Mission will develop work along one line 
 and the other along a different line. In Khartum, 
 for example, the Church Missionary Society has 
 a Girls’ School ; the American Mission has there- 
 fore no Girls’ School, but has a Boys’ School. A 
 most happy illustration of mission comity occur- 
 red at Otmdurman. The Qiurch Missionary So- 
 ciety had a successful medical work here which 
 continued until the death of Dr. Hall. The work 
 was entirely suspended for some time, and finally 
 the American Mission located a doctor there and 
 developed a considerable medical work. It was 
 then discovered that, unknown to the Americans, 
 Mrs. Hall had been collecting funds to erect a 
 building as a memorial to her husband which 
 should also serve as an equipment for medical 
 work. The American Mission, therefore, gener- 
 ously gave up Omdurman as a field for medical 
 work and located at Khartum North the dispen- 
 sary which they had been about to erect at Om- 
 durman. Bishop Gwynne, formerly a missionary, 
 has been a great promoter of mission comity. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 Challenge and Conquest 
 
“Christ expects that every one who knows His love 
 shall tell of it. Christ claims that every one who is 
 made partaker of His redemption shall yield himself, 
 as the first object of his existence, to live for the com- 
 ing of His Kingdom.” 
 
 — Andrew Murray. 
 
 “Behold, I have set the land before you, go in.” 
 
 — Deut. 1 : 8. 
 
 “The signs of the times, the lessons of the past, 
 the indications of the future, the call of Providence, 
 and the voices which come borne to us by every breeze, 
 and from every nation under heaven, all alike bid us 
 lay our plans upon a scale worthy of men who expect 
 to conquer a world.” 
 
 — Bishop J. M. Thoburn. 
 
VII 
 
 CHALLENGE AND CONQUEST 
 
 T he year 1898 marks the military con- 
 quest of the Egyptian Sudan. We 
 may well ask, When is the Christian 
 conquest of the Egyptian Sudan to be 
 accomplished? Less than fourteen years elapsed 
 after Gordon’s death before the land for which he 
 died was won back from barbarism to civilization 
 by Kitchener and his army. Why have almost 
 nineteen centuries been allowed to elapse since 
 Christ died for the Land of the Blacks, and not 
 even yet have these people learned that there is a 
 World Savior? The early Christianity that 
 reached Egypt and Abyssinia barely touched the 
 fringes of the great Sudan, and it was as inade- 
 quate in spiritual character and doctrinal purity 
 as it was in its extensiveness and missionary 
 outreach. Yet in three distinct ways does the 
 challenge come to-day to the Church of Jesus 
 Christ to press forward to the Christian conquest 
 of this section of Africa. 
 
 I. There is the Challenge of Past Neglect and 
 of Present Need: Why has the Egyptian Sudan 
 been left so long an unoccupied field? Is it said 
 
 181 
 
 The Christian 
 Conquest : 
 When? 
 
i82 sorrow and hope of the SUDAN 
 
 Why has the 
 Church De- 
 layed? 
 
 that the country has not been open to missionary 
 effort? Strange, is it not, that this Land of the 
 Blacks has been open to the modern explorer for 
 a whole century and a quarter, since the days of 
 James Bruce, but not open to the herald of the 
 Cross ? Strange, is it not, that dangers to life and 
 cost of equipments did not daunt the geographical 
 societies, but did discourage the missionary so- 
 cieties ? One hundred years ago, the slave raider 
 and the slave trader — European, Syrian, Egyptian 
 and Arab — found it possible and profitable to 
 pierce into the undisturbed, unknown regions 
 beyond the march of civilization that they might 
 trade in human flesh, but it is only in the last 
 decade and a half that the Church has cared to 
 press forward into these regions to win souls unto 
 eternal life. Is the Church driven by weaker 
 motives than the slave trader? But were there 
 not real difficulties in the way of earlier mission- 
 ary effort? Of course there were difficulties. 
 But do difficulties afford a reason for failure to 
 fulfil the commissions of Christ? Was not Cal- 
 vary difficult? Did not redemption cost life, the 
 life of the Son of God? Shall not evangelization 
 cost life, the lives of the sons of God? 
 
 Because of past neglect there is present need. 
 Take your stand at Doleib Hill, that lonely sta- 
 tion near the mouth of the Sobat River, and 
 search for your nearest missionary neighbors. 
 To the north is Khartum, over 500 miles away. 
 
CHALLENGE AND CONQUEST 
 
 183 
 
 To the south is Malek, the Church Missionary 
 Society’s mission station, some 200 miles distant. 
 
 East you may go 100 miles to Nasser, to find 
 the second American mission station in Southern 
 Sudan, and passing that you will go 400 miles to 
 Addis Ababa in Abyssinia, where stands a lonely 
 missionary of a Swedish Mission; passing that 
 you will go 700 miles to the Indian Ocean, but 
 you will find no mission station. West, you may 
 go five hundred miles, — one thousand, — ^fifteen 
 hundred miles, and you come to Nigeria, and 
 there you are introduced to your nearest mission- 
 ary neighbors on that side. Is this not need, — 
 desperate, appalling, almost inconceivable? 
 
 There is physical need. From those living on 
 Sudanese plains as fertile as much of our West- 
 
 PliysicAl 
 
 ern prairie land, there is heard again and again 
 the famine cry, Durra, durra! (Corn, corn!) 
 
 This is a physical need that Christian teachings 
 of agriculture, thrift and foresight, may easily sat- 
 isfy and banish forever. Thin and wasted by dis- 
 ease, Shilluks, Dinkas and Nuers come to the 
 mission station for help, many of them traveling 
 over a hundred miles. But what of the physical 
 sufferings and needs of those who cannot come 
 through weakness, or because of distance, or be- 
 cause they have no knowledge of a hope other 
 than that which comes from the witch doctor. 
 
 There is also intellectual need. Christianity has 
 ministered richly to the intellectual life of the na- 
 
i84 sorrow and hope of the sudan 
 
 tions. It has reduced languages to writing, awak- 
 ened dormant faculties, stirred the imagination, 
 created literatures, inspired poets, historians, 
 philosophers. But it has not yet done these 
 things for the peoples of the Sudan. They live 
 and die with only oral traditions and a crude 
 folklore. All that civilization which rests on 
 books and writings and calculations and corres- 
 pondence, lies far out of sight still, for its foun- 
 dations have not yet been laid among the black 
 tribes of the Sudan. 
 
 Moral need in the Sudan is also a challenge to 
 'Christian missions. Missionaries have indeed 
 Moral Need. testified to the comparatively fair moral charac- 
 ter of the black tribes which live beyond easy 
 contact with the Arabs. Woman’s position is 
 better than in Moslem Egypt. Theft is severely 
 punished. Immorality is counted a grave of- 
 fence. But there is often a legalized immorality ; 
 for example, a man may have just as many wives 
 as he can buy with his herd of cows. Further- 
 more, this natural morality of the uncorrupted 
 blacks is no match for the temptations, the sins, 
 the refinements of iniquity which follow in the 
 wake of civilization. Tribal restrictions and 
 moral regulations melt away as wax before the 
 fire, when these rude pagan tribes come into touch 
 with the Arab and his insidious and degrading 
 social customs. 
 
 Finally, there is religious need. The black 
 
CHALLENGE AND CONQUEST 
 
 185 
 
 man of the Sudan is essentially religious: wit- 
 ness his devotion to a false leader in the great 
 Mahdi rebellion. Why should he not be given the 
 true “Guide,” Who will lead him not to death 
 but to life? However crude and illogical his re- 
 ligious conceptions may be, yet they are real. 
 
 He believes in a supernatural world, in a God or ^®“eious Need, 
 in gods ; he has not fallen to that lowest degrada- 
 tion, atheism ; for him, though not in the worthy 
 sense in which the poet meant it, “Earth’s cram- 
 med with Heaven, and every common bush afire 
 with God.” Even the little work already done 
 testifies to the religious nature of the Sudanese. 
 
 “On one occasion,” writes Dr. Magill, “a boy suf- 
 fering from a club wound on the head was 
 brought in by his father ; while I was working on 
 the boy, I heard his father speak, and thinking 
 he had addressed me I asked him what he had 
 said; he replied, ‘I was asking God to spare the 
 life of my son.’ ” 
 
 With assurance it may be said that if once the 
 Lord of Love is revealed to him none, — no, not 
 the fiery and passionate Arab of the desert, not 
 the gentle and meditative child of India, not the 
 honest and practical Mongol, — none will love the 
 Master with greater abandonment or loyalty 
 than the black man of Africa, Nature’s child, in 
 whose heart is no guile, but a tender, glad and 
 undivided love. 
 
l86 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 2. A second reason for the speedy evangeliza- 
 tion of the Egyptian Sudan is to be found in the 
 Challenge of Islam. If Christianity will not claim 
 the Egyptian Sudan, Islam will. The World 
 Missionary Conference, held at Edinburgh, in 
 1910, had before it the findings of a Commission 
 appointed to study the world missionary situa- 
 tion. One of the most important of these find- 
 ings reads as follows: 
 
 “The threatening advance of Islam in Equa- 
 torial Africa presents to the Church of Christ 
 the decisive question whether the Dark Continent 
 shall become Mohammedan or Christian.” 
 
 In discussing this report, the Rev. George Rob- 
 son, D. D., said: 
 
 “Pagan Africa is becoming Mohammedan more 
 rapidly than it is becoming Christian. Along all the 
 inland routes of trade, Mohammedan traders are stead- 
 ily advancing southward, and every Mohammedan trader 
 is a Mohammedan missionary. The very first thing 
 which requires to be done if Africa is to be won for 
 Christ is to throw a strong missionary force right 
 across the centre of Africa to bar the advance of the 
 Moslem.” 
 
 But the question is raised, To what extent 
 does this hold true of the Egyptian Sudan? A 
 recent visit to the Sudan presented an oppor- 
 tunity for gathering information on this point, 
 not only from missionaries, but also from con- 
 versations with government officials and others. 
 
CHALLENGE AND CONQUEST 
 
 187 
 
 Not a statement nor a suggestion was voiced to 
 contradict the universal judgment that Islam is 
 advancing with startling rapidity in its conquest 
 of pagan territory in the Egyptian Sudan. Along 
 the single waterway of the Sobat River from 20 
 to 30 boats of Moslem traders were seen in 191 1 
 as against only four or five in 1909. These trad- 
 ers stayed the whole season, from fall until 
 spring, moving about among the pagan villages. 
 In villages along the Sobat that were formerly 
 purely pagan, groups of young men are now to 
 be found who have come into contact with Islam, 
 have adopted Arab dress, speak some Arabic 
 and are referred to by their fellow villagers, 
 either with or without contempt, as “foreign- 
 ers.” Settlements of Moslem traders are now 
 found in increasing numbers in pagan territory 
 along the Zeraf River. These settlements are 
 usually to be found at such strategic points as to 
 claim for them the striking designation, “the 
 Gateway of the District.” Islam is not only ex- 
 tending its influence to new territory, but it is 
 becoming more firmly entrenched in sections 
 where before it had barely secured a foothold. 
 Even chiefs of villages, men of more advanced 
 years, have adopted the Moslem rite of circum- 
 cision. The town of Wau, the largest pagan cen- 
 ter in the Bahr el Ghazal district, over 850 miles 
 south of Khartum, has now become so predomi- 
 nantly Moslem that the Roman Catholics, who 
 
 Aggressive 
 Moslem Trad- 
 ers. 
 
l88 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 A Moslem 
 Army. 
 
 had a mission to pagans at that point, are re- 
 ported to be withdrawing. 
 
 While the Moslem trader is the chief agent in 
 the spread of Islam, the military station operates 
 in the same direction. The Egyptian officer is 
 invariably a Moslem. Even where the troops are 
 blacks they are almost universally Moslem, for 
 they have been recruited and trained at the capi- 
 tal where Moslem influences predominate. If 
 additional men are recruited from the pagan com- 
 munity, they are usually circumcised; doubtless 
 at the order of the Moslem officer in charge. To 
 this we must add the building up at each military 
 station of an extensive social community, of the 
 wives and relatives of this Moslem soldiery. Im- 
 morality widens the circle of influence. And fin- 
 ally, the trading relationships involved in the 
 maintenance of so large a community makes the 
 outreach of Moslem influence still greater. The 
 fact that the soldier represents the ruling power 
 in a military way, vests his religion — Islam — 
 with a greater authority and influence than it 
 could possess without this accompaniment of mil- 
 itary power. 
 
 What are the effects of this occupation of pa- 
 gan territory by Islam? Where Islam enters 
 there appear a cunning, a capacity for decep- 
 tion, an untruthfulness, and a dishonesty which 
 did not characterize pagan life before Islam ap- 
 peared. There is general testimony to this fact. 
 
War Dance of Shilluk Warriors. 
 
CHALLENGE AND CONQUEST 
 
 189 
 
 There are also changes in dress and a spirit of 
 self assertion and self confidence, all of which 
 may be ascribed simply to the contact of pagan 
 life with civilization and which are not bad in 
 themselves. The position of woman seems in- 
 variably to be lowered. In pagan communities, 
 a woman, especially an unmarried woman, may 
 go about and be quite safe from all molesta- 
 tion. Not so after the introduction of Islam. It 
 is true that in paganism woman is safe because 
 of a commercial value attached to her person, but 
 in any case her person is safer under paganism 
 than under Islam. 
 
 But most disturbing of all are the reports con- gp^ead 
 cerning the spread of immorality and of its at- immorality, 
 tendant diseases through the followers of Islam. 
 
 From villages near the military centers, 99 per 
 cent, of all the cases treated by the medical mis- 
 sionary are of this type. From villages distant 
 from such centers, there are scarcely any such 
 medical cases. 
 
 Such testimony as is available points to in- 
 creasing difficulty in carrying the Gospel to those 
 who formerly were pagans but have come under 
 Moslem influences. In part this is due to a 
 greater independence of spirit; in part, due 
 to an attitude of hostility to Christianity created 
 in the minds of the pagans by such Moslem ref- 
 erences to Christians as “firewood of hell.” 
 
 In the light of such facts as these, the judg- 
 
IQO SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 The Will of 
 God for the 
 Sudan. 
 
 ment of Canon E, Sell, of Madras, can be easily 
 understood, when he says, “There are times when 
 it is very difficult to balance the competing 
 claims of various parts of the Mission field. I 
 see no difficulty now. . . . Certain parts of 
 
 Africa form now, in military language, the ob- 
 jective, and are the strategical positions of the 
 
 great Mission field Parts of Africa 
 
 in which the Moslem advance is imminent have 
 for the present a preeminent claim.” This is the 
 challenge of Islam. 
 
 “O God, which shall it be? 
 
 Shall Islam’s god the pagan’s heart o’erthrow, 
 
 That heart so childlike in its helplessness? 
 
 Be first to mould such pliant clay, and so 
 Forestall the Christ and His sweet gentleness? 
 
 “O God, which shall it be? 
 
 We pray Thee, Lord of Harvest, hear our cry ! 
 
 Hold back the hosts of Islam, stay their hands. 
 
 Until the Cross of Christ be lifted high. 
 
 So high. His peace shall reign throughout all lands.” 
 
 3. There is also the Challenge of the Will of 
 God to urge us forward to the speedy evangeli- 
 zation of the Egyptian Sudan. In that great ad- 
 dress, “The Place of Missions in the Thought 
 of God,” Robert E. Speer gives four proofs that 
 the missionary enterprise holds first place in the 
 thought of God. The first is to be found in the 
 very character of God; He is a missionary God. 
 The second proof is to be found in the missionary 
 
CHALLENGE AND CONQUEST IQI 
 
 character of Christ. The third is seen in the mis- 
 sionary character and teachings of the Word of 
 God. The fourth proof is to be found in the 
 very movements of history, which are as scaffold- 
 ing for the upbuilding of the Kingdom of Christ. 
 These four reasons apply with special force to 
 the Egyptian Sudan. What means the history of 
 this land, written in sorrow and tears, with its 
 bloodshed and war, with its death of Gordon and 
 its reconquest of the country by Kitchener, what 
 is it all but a dramatic call to the Church of God 
 to enter in and occupy the land for Christ? As 
 for the missionary message of the Word of God, 
 how specific are the promises, how definite are 
 the prophecies, that relate to this part of God’s 
 great world ! The Psalmist sings : 
 
 “Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall 
 haste to stretch out her hands unto God.” 
 
 Isaiah speaks in the name of Jehovah, saying: 
 
 “The labor of Egypt, and the merchandise of Ethi- 
 opia, and the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over 
 unto thee, and they shall be thine; they shall go after 
 thee ; in chains they shall come over ; and they shall fall 
 down unto thee, they shall make supplication unto thee, 
 saying. Surely God is in thee; and there is none else, 
 there is no God.” 
 
 Most wonderful of all is that description of 
 war and bloodshed and death that seems to have 
 
 I 
 
192 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Will 
 
 His 
 
 had such literal fulfilment in the Mahdi wars and 
 in the raids of slavery, and which is followed by 
 a prophecy of redemption, clear, specific, radiant 
 with hope and contrasting sharply with the dark 
 picture that precedes it: 
 
 “They shall be left together unto the ravenous birds 
 of the mountains, and to the beasts of the earth; and 
 the ravenous birds shall summer upon them, and all the 
 beasts of the earth shall winter upon them. In that time 
 shall a present be brought unto Jehovah of hosts 
 
 . from a people tall and smooth, 
 
 Even from a people terrible from their beginning on- 
 ward, 
 
 A nation that meteth out and treadeth down. 
 
 Whose land the rivers divide. 
 
 To the place of the name of Jehovah of hosts, the 
 Mount Zion .” — Isaiah i8: 6, 7. 
 
 The conclusions which Mr. Speer draws in 
 the address referred to, apply therefore with pe- 
 culiar force to the claims of the Egyptian Sudan : 
 “If the missionary enterprise has this place in 
 the thought of God, will we not ask ourselves 
 whether it holds any corresponding place in our 
 lives? Shall that be second with us which was 
 first with God? Shall that for which God gave 
 up His Son make no appeal to us that we should 
 give up our sons, and that for which Jesus 
 Christ gave up His life strike no such chord in 
 our hearts as shall call upon us to give up our 
 lives for Him? What ought the individual life 
 
CHALLENGE AND CONQUEST I93 
 
 to think of that of which God thought so much? 
 If the missionary enterprise is first in the 
 thought of God, ought it not to be first in our 
 own thoughts and lives? Is it the first in our 
 lives? I speak to you men here this evening, Is 
 the missionary enterprise the first business in 
 your life? Does it have a place above your own 
 business by which you earn your living? Does 
 it have a place in your affections beyond any of 
 your personal cares or concerns? If this thing 
 is first with God, and we believe in God, must 
 this thing not be first with us, God’s sons ?” 
 
 The Cost of Conquest. 
 
 If the Egyptian Sudan is to be won for Christ, 
 what will be the cost of this spiritual conquest? 
 “Which of you,” says Christ, “desiring to build 
 a tower, doth not first sit down and count the 
 cost?” We do well therefore to estimate the 
 price of victory in this holy warfare. 
 
 I. As a part of the price of victory. Prayer 
 may he placed first. It is to be put first, both be- 
 cause it is the most difficult to secure and be- 
 cause it is the most vital. 
 
 It is the most difficult to secure. “We cannot 
 pointblank ask every one to pray for Missions,” 
 says Warneck. “It is much more difficult to pray 
 
 for Missions than to give to them 
 
 We can only really pray for missions if we ha- 
 
 The Cost of 
 Conquest. 
 
 Prayer First. 
 
 13 
 
194 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Intelligent 
 
 Prayer. 
 
 ibitually lead a life of prayer, and a life of prayer 
 can only be led if we have entered into a life of 
 
 communion with God Prayer for 
 
 missions is intercessory prayer, and prayer for 
 oneself is doubtless easier than that for others, 
 intercession which advocates tlie interests of 
 others before the throne of God with as much 
 sincerity and readiness as its own interests, pre- 
 supposes not only maturity in prayer, but ma- 
 turity in the whole Christian life, and in particu- 
 lar maturity in love. . . . There is a third 
 
 condition, namely that I should know something 
 about missions. Many prayers, not only prayers 
 for missions, suffer from being so general as to 
 be colorless ; they are often long prayers, but 
 they have no real content.” 
 
 Prayer is also the most vital contribution to ul- 
 timate victory. This, of course, is a great mys- 
 tery. We cannot understand how God should, 
 humanly speaking, allow His activities to be di- 
 rected or affected by prayer. Yet this is the clear 
 teaching of Scripture; this is the meaning of 
 Christ’s prayer life; this is the experience of 
 God’s servants in all mission fields. Prayer 
 makes a difference. 
 
 Furthermore”, there are some things in the 
 missionary enterprise that can be wrought only 
 by prayer and there are many things that can be 
 wrought better by prayer. Among the important 
 objects of prayer in connection with missions in 
 
CHALLENGE AND CONQUEST 
 
 195 
 
 the Egyptian Sudan, is the policy and attitude 
 of the Government toward missionary work and 
 toward the people generally. Having pointed out 
 that Paul’s injunction calls for prayer “for kings 
 and all that are in high place,” Warneck says, 
 
 “We are not to pray that they may forcibly assist 
 in the spread of Christianity by their earthly 
 power, but that under their rule their subjects, 
 their Christian subjects in particular, ‘may lead 
 a quiet and. peaceable life.’ Those in authority Rulers, 
 are so placed that they may maintain right, exer- 
 cise justice, make for order and security, punish 
 evil-doers, and protect the righteous; more the 
 Apostle does not expect nor ask of them, nor do 
 we to-day. But what a service would be ren- 
 dered to missions even if those in whose hands 
 lies the control of the mission field would carry 
 on righteous and peaceful government, permit 
 the preaching of the gospel unhindered, place its 
 messengers and hearers under the protection of 
 the rights of citizenship, and so render possible a 
 quiet and peaceable life in all piety and honesty.” 
 
 To these general remarks of Warneck may be 
 added more definite suggestions that prayer be 
 offered for Government officials, many of them 
 earnest Christian men, that their lives may bear 
 full witness to their Christian profession ; for the 
 formulating of Government piolicy, frequently in- 
 fluenced by policies and personalities hundreds 
 of miles distant from the scene of action ; for the 
 
196 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 missionaries in their relation to the Government 
 that they may give no unrighteous offence, but 
 may maintain sympathetic relations with the Gov- 
 ernment and its representatives.^ 
 
 Prayer should also be offered up in behalf of 
 the health of the workers, foreign and native. In 
 some fields, health may not be a serious problem. 
 In the Sudan it is of great importance, involving 
 anxiety, large expenditures and a far reaching 
 effect upon the work. 
 
 Prayer is needed for the guidance of the mis- 
 Pray for sionaries in important decisions of missionary 
 These Things, work in the Sudan is new ; the Mis- 
 
 sion is young ; work in Egypt affords no satisfac- 
 tory analogy. The Mission is daily formulating 
 the missionary policy of the future ; how greatly 
 do the missionaries need prayer! 
 
 Prayer should also be offered for the mission- 
 ary and his message. Such prayer is always nec- 
 essary to vitalize the preaching of the Word, but 
 it is doubly needed in the Sudan where the relig- 
 ious conceptions of the black man have not yet 
 been studied with accuracy and where the for- 
 eigner’s mastery of the Sudanese languages is 
 still very imperfect. 
 
 Prayer stands first among the conditions re- 
 quiring to be fulfilled in the Christian conquest 
 of the Sudan. The enterprise needs men and 
 
 *In this connection, the report of Lord Cromer upon mis- 
 sionary work in the Sudan Is an interesting study. See 
 Appendix VIII. 
 
CHALLENGE AND CONQUEST 
 
 197 
 
 women who will live Christ. And Christ had a 
 two-fold life ; there was His day life of service 
 and work; but there was also His night life of 
 prayer and intercession. Many are those who 
 call themselves His followers, who have never 
 followed Him in His night life of prayer. Prayer 
 in America is needed to make things different 
 in the Sudan. 
 
 2. Another price that must be paid for the con- 
 quest of the Sudan to Christ is thte Consecration 
 of Wealth in Christian Stewardship. It has been 
 stated that the Scriptures give a larger place to 
 the discussion of matters relating to wealth than 
 to any other single subject. Was it because un- 
 consecrated wealth has been at the root of the 
 greatest and the most prevailing sins ? Or was it 
 because consecrated wealth could enter so largely 
 into the service of Christ’s kingdom? 
 
 Missionary work in the Sudan has hitherto 
 proved to be expensive. This means that wealth 
 bears a peculiar relation to missionary effort in 
 the Sudan. This is not the case, to the same 
 degree, in all lands. There are heavy expenses 
 in the Sudan due to the transportation of goods 
 under difficult circumstances and therefore at 
 high rates. There are greater expenses involved 
 in missionary travel because more frequent fur- 
 loughs are made imperative by climatic condi- 
 tions. There is increased cost in having to pro- 
 
 Christian 
 
 Stewardship. 
 
 Need for 
 Money. 
 
198 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Service by 
 Money. 
 
 Tithe the 
 Minimum. 
 
 vide everything in regions to which not even the 
 advance guards of civilization have reached. 
 There are unavoidable losses of time, money, and 
 effort, in making experiments to discover what 
 will best befit Sudanese conditions whether for 
 building material or for style of residence, for 
 industrial occupations or fbr agricultural de- 
 velopment, for river navigation or for language 
 study. 
 
 All of this, however, is not an argument against 
 such missionary work. Rather is it a matter for 
 thanksgiving that the material things of life can 
 he made to thus serve a spiritual Kingdom and 
 that it is possible to relieve strain and safeguard 
 health and prolong life by means of money. A 
 more deplorable situation would be where money 
 could render no such helpful service. And is it 
 not little enough that those who cannot go to the 
 front should lessen the hardships of those who 
 do, by ministering along material lines? These, 
 then, are some of the reasons why a part of the 
 cost of conquest is the consecration of wealth 
 through Christian stewardship. 
 
 Only in a very limited way as yet have those 
 conditions of Christian stewardship been fulfilled 
 on which depends the Christian conquest of the 
 non-iChristian world and of the Egyptian Sudan. 
 In Old Testament days, the law of the tithe was 
 enacted. Its authority still abides as a minimum 
 measure of giving for the rank and file. But if 
 
CHALLENGE AND CONQUEST 
 
 199 
 
 the method be the tithe, let the motive be Cal- 
 vary. “The love of Christ constraineth,” says 
 Paul. To Avhat? To give a tithe? No, not 
 merely that; but this: “We thus judge that One 
 
 died for all that they that live 
 
 should no longer live unto themselves, but unto 
 Him.” Apply this great truth. Here are two 
 men. The one has for his distinct gift, the gift 
 of preaching, of teaching. The other has the gift 
 of business, of money-making. The one gives his 
 life to become a herald of the Cross, a mission- 
 ary. The other gives his life to a business career. 
 Both must live; both must have food and cloth- 
 ing: the missionary and the business man. If 
 each has a family, the family of each must be pro- 
 vided for : the family of the business man and the 
 family of the missionary. Doubtless each should 
 make a reasonable provision against the needs of 
 old age: the business man and the missionary 
 alike. And now should not the entire output of 
 life be, in each case, for the Kingdom of God : 
 with the business man as with the missionary, — 
 “that they that live should no longer live unto 
 themselves, but unto Him zvho for their sakes 
 died.” This is what is meant by “being in busi- 
 ness for the Lord.” Of course, the business man 
 will have to decide in the presence of his Lord at 
 the end of every successful business venture 
 whether he should minister at once to the needs 
 of the Kingdom with the full measure of his pro- 
 
 Llfe. 
 
200 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 fits, or whether he shall reinvest those earnings 
 which lie beyond the tithe and thus gain still 
 greater earnings for his Lord. But the ultimate 
 aim, the final object of all these increased earn- 
 ings is to serve the Kingdom of Christ. Are any 
 in business thus for their Lord? Thank God, 
 there are such, and these hold a place of equal 
 honor with him who goes to the front, for theirs 
 is a like consecration. 
 
 Life. 
 
 Qualifications 
 of a Mission- 
 ary. 
 
 3. The Giving of Life is necessary to com- 
 plete the price of victory and to meet the cost of 
 conquest. In the parable ^ of our Lord, “the 
 good seed” is said to represent “the sons of the 
 kingdom.” Now it is manifest that unless the 
 seed be sown in new fields, these fields can never 
 be brought under cultivation. Intensive cultiva- 
 tion in one field can never of itself extend the har- 
 vest to other fields. The seed must be sown in 
 these new areas. Therefore some must go and 
 cast their lives into the great regions beyond. 
 This should be the ambition of each life : to be 
 sown where there is no other “good seed.” 
 
 But, what particular qualifications does the 
 Sudan field seem to call for? 
 
 Personality and leadership are desirable qualifi- 
 cations for a missionary to the black peoples. 
 This race responds quickly to leadership. Their 
 tribal form of government, their methods of se- 
 lecting a chief, suggest their readiness to fol- 
 
 >Matt. 13 : 38. 
 
Sudanese Types. 
 
 Nuer Fisherman, Arab Children. Shilluk Warrior. 
 
 Patients at Doleib Hill Dispensary. 
 
CHALLENGE AND CONQUEST 
 
 201 
 
 low strong leadership. In some countries, too, 
 missionary work i? of an institutional character; 
 the school, the hospital, the ecclesiastical organi- 
 zation exert the chief influence here; the indi- 
 viduality of the missionary is not so conspicuous. 
 
 But with the black man of the Sudan, life is al- Leadership, 
 together in terms of personal relationships and, 
 other things being equal, he to whom God has 
 given a strong personality may maJke the pro- 
 founder impression. But it must be a personality 
 through which love shines radiantly. The pagan 
 races of Southern Sudan are, for the most part, 
 glad and happy, smiling and merry, as the blacks 
 so often are. A strong, hopeful and loving 
 personality will therefore appeal to them power- 
 fully. 
 
 Culture is also a requisite. Quite misleading, 
 although very prevalent, are the conceptions 
 which would assign the crudest to pagan mission 
 fields, and the more gifted to the more civilized 
 sections of the world. Two obvious reasons call 
 for culture in the missionary who goes to the Su- 
 dan : where culture is most conspicuously absent, 
 there does Christianity need most to show forth 
 the power of true culture; furthermore, condi- 
 tions of life in Southern Sudan tempt so greatly 
 to carelessness in habits and manners that only a 
 special emphasis upon culture can maintain in an 
 isolated station the standards necessary to a 
 projjer social life. 
 
202 
 
 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 Health. 
 
 Even Temper. 
 
 Adaptability. 
 
 Health requirements must also be satisfied. 
 These are usually the subject for a general medi- 
 cal examination, but nothing more than general 
 health and vigor have been required hitherto. 
 Much more important is it to have that proper 
 regard for rules which safeguard health ; for care- 
 ful habits count for much more in resisting dis- 
 ease than does natural robustness. 
 
 An unruffled temper and an even disposition 
 are among the most important requirements for 
 successful missionary service in the Sudan. The 
 “Sudan temper” is a climatic influence which is 
 supposed to be the undoing of all but the most 
 kindly disposed. Gordon once declared that no 
 white man under forty years of age should be al- 
 lowed in the Sudan. After that age, he thought 
 there might be the poise and self-control that life 
 in the Sudan seems to require. Without the 
 grace of kindliness and geniality, the missionary 
 is likely to first become disgusted with the natives, 
 then with his fellow-missionaries and lastly with 
 himself. A sense of justice is not sufficient ; there 
 must be a genial disposition, for as an Indian mis- 
 sionary once remarked, “The quarrels of mission- 
 aries are always on principle.” 
 
 Adaptability to all sorts of conditions and situ- 
 ations may seem like asking too much, but in so 
 unsettled and undeveloped a field as the Egyptian 
 Sudan, it is a most valuable qualification. Many 
 are the occasions, even during the past decade and 
 
CHALLENGE AND CONQUEST 
 
 203 
 
 a half, when the success of the work has been 
 safeguarded alone through the self-denying grace 
 of the missionaries in adapting themselves to new 
 conditions arising in this land of uncertainty, the 
 Egyptian Sudan. And still there is need of men 
 and women with infinite adaptability who in spite 
 of difficulties and hindrances will find a way to 
 success. 
 
 The need for courage has perhaps been already 
 implied, but it deserves emphasis. Before the Su- 
 dan will be evangelized, there will need to be dis- 
 plays of courage, physical and moral, that shall 
 stir the Church. There are dangers to be braved 
 in exploration and itineration. There are diffi- 
 cult situations to be solved in dealing with the na- 
 tives. Not rashness, but courage will alone solve 
 these problems. 
 
 Last but supreme, is the qualification of spir- 
 ituality. How hopeless is the condition of the un- 
 spiritual missionary ! The standards of Hinduism 
 and Islam are high in this respect, though false. 
 A prayerless life is incomprehensible to these 
 non-Christians. No less so is it with the blacks 
 of the Sudan. How also shall this missionary’s 
 own life be sustained? “The new missionary,” 
 says Robert E. Speer, “joins some little company 
 of men and women who are already under the 
 fullest strain. He dare not draw on them for spir- 
 itual life. There is none in the surrounding hope- 
 less lifeless people. If he has no springs in him. 
 
 Courage. 
 
 Spirituality. 
 
204 SORROW AND HOPE OF THE SUDAN 
 
 where the Living Water is flowing, woe to him! 
 Can he give to others, if his own supply is scant ?” 
 
 Better a spiritual man, even though :he be a phy- 
 sical wreck ! Such a man can at least go out and 
 die, and his death will be like Cox’s or Martyn’s 
 or Lull’s, a clarion call to service. Such a man 
 carries with him a sense of God’s presence. A 
 spiritual atmosphere seems to gather about his 
 life. The very pagan knows that he is “a man of 
 God.” Sir John Lawrence, the Christian and mil- 
 itary hero of the Punjab, was once asked : “What 
 are your methods by which you accomplish such 
 strange and wonderful results?” “ It is not our 
 methods,” was the quick reply, “but our men.” 
 
 Prayer, Money, Life, these three measure the 
 
 These Three, ^ ^ ^ 
 
 but the Great- cost of conquest. But the greatest of these is life, 
 for it includes the other two. Is the price too 
 great to pay for carrying the Gospel to this 
 Land of the Blacks? 
 
 A boat is floating silently down the Sobat 
 
 The Appeal of River. The high grass parts on the river bank 
 and there rises up suddenly a tall black figure. 
 See him silhouetted against the sky, — a spear in 
 one hand, a club in the other. Wonderingly, he 
 watches the boat and gazes at the white faces on 
 board. These men hold in their possession the 
 Gospel of eternal life ; they hold the message of 
 salvation. Across just a few hundred feet of 
 water is that which spells life eternal, but the man 
 
CHALLENGE AND CONQUEST 
 
 205 
 
 on the bank does not know it. He stands there 
 watching the boat for a few fleeting moments, 
 then sinks down again. The grass closes upon 
 him and waves indifferently with the soft evening 
 breeze. The man is gone; he has gone back to 
 his little tukl and to his life of paganism. It is 
 the nearest that he ever came to the Gospel mes- 
 sage. It was his only chance. Is it fair? Yet he 
 is only a type. Hundreds of thousands do not 
 get even that near to life. 
 
 Again, the train swings around a sharp curve. 
 The mountainous ranges of the Red Sea district 
 have converted the stereotyped level prairies of 
 the Sudan into a hilly country. All about is the 
 thorny mimosa and scant grazing land, fading 
 away in the distance into dreary stretches of des- 
 ert land. Life here must be hard. The sandy 
 soil is unresponsive to cultivation. The heavens 
 are as brass. The air is like the blast of a fiery 
 furnace. Just for a moment do you see any signs 
 of life. As it happens, this is what you see : an 
 Arab, bronzed by the sun, matching in color the 
 brown sand about him; his rough woven cloak 
 serves as a carpet where he kneels. His lips 
 move in the “opening” prayer which more than 
 200,000,000 Moslems know by heart : “El hamdu 
 lillahi Rab el ’alamin,” “Praise be to God the 
 Lord of all the worlds.” This is no prayer of a 
 Pharisee on the street corner, for he is here in the 
 desert alone and the train breaks in upon his 
 
2o6 sorrow and hope of the SUDAN 
 
 Livingstone, 
 Gordon, 
 CHRI8T gave 
 Life. 
 
 prayer unexpectedly. Through the car window 
 the follower of Mohammed gets a glimpse of the 
 white face of a follower of Christ. That is all. 
 There is no stopping place for the train in all this 
 region. That is the nearest this son of the desert 
 will come to the Gospel message. Is it fair? 
 
 Prayer, money, life — the greatest of these is 
 life! Would life seem wasted, if laid down for 
 Africa and the Land of the Blacks? Living- 
 stone didn’t seem to think so, when he wrote in 
 his diary on the next to his last birthday: “My 
 Jesus, my King, my Life, my all. I again dedi- 
 cate my whole self to Thee. Accept me. And 
 grant, O Gracious Father, that ere this year is 
 gone I may finish my work.” Gordon did not 
 seem to think so when he wrote, “I declare sol- 
 emnly that I would give my life willingly to save 
 the sufferings of these people.” Christ did not 
 seem to think so, when He said to His disciples, 
 “I am the good Shepherd: the good shepherd 
 
 layeth down his life for the sheep I 
 
 lay down my life No one taketh it 
 
 away from me, but I lay it down of myself.” 
 
APPENDIXES 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 209 
 
 APPENDIX I 
 
 STATISTICS OF THE “AMERICAN MISSION” (UNITED 
 PRESBYTERIAN), IN THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN. 
 
 JANUARY I, 1912. 
 
 Ordained Missionaries 5 
 
 Laymen 2 
 
 Medical Missionaries (Men) 2 
 
 Women Missionaries, Unmarried 3 
 
 Women Missionaries, Wives 6 
 
 Foreign Missionaries under regular ap- 
 pointment 18 
 
 Native Ordained Minister i 
 
 Teachers 13 
 
 Total Native Workers 14 
 
 Total Foreign and Native Workers 32 
 
 Main Stations 4 
 
 Organized Congregation i 
 
 Preaching Stations .... 
 
 Received by Profession 
 
 Total Membership 163 
 
 Primary Schools 6 
 
 Industrial School i 
 
 Total Number of Schools ^ 
 
 Pupils in Primary Schools 586 
 
 Pupils in Industrial School 14 
 
 Total Number of Pupils 600 
 
 Dispensaries or Clinics 2 
 
 14 
 
 0\ VO 
 
210 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 Number of patients treated — Khartum. . .2565 
 
 Doleib Hill. 9428 
 
 11.993 
 
 Number of village visits 27 
 
 Number of operations — Doleib Hill 24 
 
 Number of villages visited 7 
 
 Total receipts $900.28 
 
 Expended by the People for all Purposes : 
 
 Church contributions $957-36 
 
 Educational 1,623.24 
 
 Medical 900.28 
 
 Total $3,480.88 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 2II 
 
 APPENDIX II 
 
 STATISTICS OF THE “cHURCH MISSIONARY 
 SOCIETY.” 
 
 
 1911- 
 
 -1912 
 
 Atbara 
 
 Total 
 
 Northern 
 
 Sudan 
 
 Malek 
 
 3 
 
 d 
 
 Total Southern 
 Sudan 
 
 Grand 
 
 Total 
 
 Khartum 
 
 jomdurman 
 
 Foreign Missionaries : 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Total 
 
 1 
 
 4 
 
 1 
 
 6 
 
 4 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 12 
 
 Ordained Men 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 2 
 
 5 
 
 5 
 
 Medical Men 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 Other Laymen 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 Unmarried Women 
 
 1 
 
 3 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 Wives 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Female Native Chris- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 tian Lay Agents 
 
 4 
 
 3 
 
 2 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 
 9 
 
 Native Communicants 
 
 1 
 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 Baptized Native Chris- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 tian Adherents 
 
 4 
 
 3 
 
 2 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 
 9 
 
 Baptisms During Year 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Schools 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 Scholars : Total 
 
 97 
 
 50 
 
 33 
 
 180 
 
 
 
 
 180 
 
 Boys 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Girls 
 
 97 
 
 50 
 
 33 
 
 180 
 
 
 
 
 180 
 
 ♦The work is supervised by Bishop LI. H. Gwynne. 
 
 The following items of information are gleaned 
 from The Church Missionary Society Gazette, of 
 March i, 1913: 
 
 Malek : 
 
 The Rev. A. Shaw in charge. Daily classes of 
 thirty boys are learning to read the Gospel fluently. 
 Lau : 
 
 The Rev. C. A. Wilson in charge. Lau is the 
 main settlement of the Cic Jieng and is in center of 
 comparatively large population. Dispensary work 
 
212 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 is winning confidence of people. Over 4,000 people 
 were treated. Two reading classes are held. 
 
 The Azmdi People: 
 
 Call has come to start work among these peo- 
 ple, to the southwest of Malek. The Revs. A. Shaw 
 and K. E. Hlamilton are exploring in this territory. 
 
 New Recruits: 
 
 There sailed in November, 1912, the Rev. E. 
 C. Gore and Mr. G. P. Thomas. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 213 
 
 APPENDIX III 
 
 METEOROLOGICAL NOTES, I 9 IO-I 9 II (GORDON COL- 
 LEGE, KHARTUM.) 
 
 Temperature, Degrees Fahrenheit. 
 
 1910-11 
 
 Month 
 
 Highest 
 
 g 
 
 e 
 
 B 
 
 c 
 
 Lowest B 
 
 Highest g 
 
 p 
 
 B 
 
 c 
 
 Lowest B 
 
 Mean 
 
 Prevailing 
 
 Wind 
 
 Rain 
 
 Inches 
 
 July 
 
 110.1 
 
 93.2 
 
 83.2 
 
 68.0 
 
 90.0 
 
 s.s.w. 
 
 1.49 
 
 August 
 
 104.9 
 
 87.6 
 
 81.6 
 
 69.2 
 
 88.2 
 
 s.s.w. 
 
 0.57 
 
 September 
 
 106.7 
 
 91.6 
 
 81.6 
 
 68.8 
 
 88.2 
 
 s.s.w. 
 
 0.85 
 
 October 
 
 108.5 
 
 91.0 
 
 81.0 
 
 70.4 
 
 89.0 
 
 N.N.E. 
 
 0.00 
 
 November 
 
 101.3 
 
 80.0 
 
 72.4 
 
 56.6 
 
 79.8 
 
 N.N.W. 
 
 0.00 
 
 December 
 
 97.8 
 
 76.1 
 
 66.6 
 
 60.4 
 
 71.6 
 
 N.N.E. 
 
 0.00 
 
 January 
 
 102.4 
 
 68.0 
 
 67.8 
 
 46.6 
 
 74.6 
 
 N.N.E. 
 
 0.00 
 
 February 
 
 105.8 
 
 74.4 
 
 77.9 
 
 45.8 
 
 72.0 
 
 N.N.E. 
 
 0.00 
 
 March 
 
 104.6 
 
 84.2 
 
 73.8 
 
 55.2 
 
 79.2 
 
 N.N.E. 
 
 0.00 
 
 April 
 
 113.5 
 
 85.6 
 
 84.4 
 
 57.2 
 
 86.2 
 
 N.N.E. 
 
 0.00 
 
 May 
 
 113.2 
 
 100.2 
 
 85.1 
 
 68.4 
 
 90.4 
 
 N.E. 
 
 0.27 
 
 June 
 
 114.4 
 
 103.6 
 
 87.8 
 
 70.2 
 
 92.4 
 
 S.W. 
 
 0.00 
 
214 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 APPENDIX IV 
 
 CLIMATIC CONDITIONS AT DOLEIB HILL. 
 
 The following statement concerning climatic con- 
 ditions on the lower Sobat was prepared by Dr. H. R. 
 Magill, after careful observations made at Doleib Hill, 
 during the year 1905 : 
 
 “At present, the only known source of danger is 
 the malaria bearing mosquito, but with suitable build- 
 ings and the exercise of common sense, this danger can 
 in a large measure be avoided. If the experience of the 
 last fourteen months can be taken as a fair index of our 
 future health conditions, I would say that this climate 
 is delightful and much more healthful than many places 
 not a hundred miles away from my Philadelphia and 
 New England readers. With the exception of Mrs. Mc- 
 Laughlin, to whose serious illness in January, 1905, ref- 
 erence was made in the last report, each member of 
 the missionary circle enjoyed at least fair health during 
 the year ending December 31, 1905. In the really very 
 mild sicknesses brought to my attention, upon one occa- 
 sion only did I find any suggestion of malaria, although 
 signs of this important disease have always been care- 
 fully sought for. From among the natives, however, a 
 good number of malarial patients appeared. 
 
 “It is very commonly believed that a country only 
 600 or 650 miles away from the equator must necessarily 
 have an intolerably hot climate. Allow me to state most 
 emphatically that such is not the case in our district. We 
 suffered much less from heat in the whole year than the 
 people of Boston and vicinity usually do in one summer 
 month. In fact, the cold occasioned much more discom- 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 215 
 
 fort than the heat. The following table will be of in- 
 terest: 
 
 1905 
 
 Mean 
 
 Max. 
 
 Mean 
 
 Min. 
 
 Mean 
 
 Average 
 
 Mean 
 
 Daily 
 
 Variation 
 
 Rainfall 
 in Inches 
 
 Rainy 
 
 Days 
 
 January 
 
 94.T»P. 
 
 62.2'>P. 
 
 78.3»F. 
 
 32.5»F. 
 
 None 
 
 None 
 
 February 
 
 99.3 
 
 67.4 
 
 83.3 
 
 31.9 
 
 None 
 
 None 
 
 March 
 
 104.4 
 
 72.3 
 
 88.3 
 
 32.1 
 
 None 
 
 None 
 
 April 
 
 104.0 
 
 73.9 
 
 88.9 
 
 30.1 
 
 .04 
 
 1. 
 
 May 
 
 99.0 
 
 73.9 
 
 86.4 
 
 25.1 
 
 3.6 
 
 9. 
 
 June 
 
 92.0 
 
 69.9 
 
 80.9 
 
 22.1 
 
 3.24 
 
 12. 
 
 July 
 
 91.3 
 
 70.5 
 
 80.9 
 
 20.8 
 
 4.3 
 
 10. 
 
 August 
 
 90.0 
 
 69.4 
 
 79.7 
 
 20.6 
 
 5.2 
 
 14. 
 
 September 
 
 92.8 
 
 69.4 
 
 81.1 
 
 23.4 
 
 6. 
 
 11. 
 
 October 
 
 96.6 
 
 68.9 
 
 82.7 
 
 27.7 
 
 1.9 
 
 8. 
 
 November 
 
 102.1 
 
 67.6 
 
 84.9 
 
 34.5 
 
 2.7 
 
 5. 
 
 December 
 
 97.3 
 
 62.2 
 
 79.7 
 
 82.9 
 
 35.1 
 
 None 
 
 26.98 
 
 None 
 
 70. 
 
 The figures were obtained under proper conditions 
 from instruments thoroughly tested at the Government 
 Observatory, Helwan. The total rainfall of 27 inches 
 is below the average. 
 
 “But these figures would convey only half the truth 
 if I failed to speak of the beneficent effects of the cool 
 winds, which rarely fail us for more than half an hour 
 at a time. The wind follows a law from which there is 
 very little variation. About sunrise, it begins gradually 
 to increase its force until it reaches its full strength be- 
 tween 8 and 9 A. M., then it continues blowing steadily 
 until the sun has passed the zenith, after which it sinks 
 down as gradually as it rose. From 3 P. M. to 5 P. M. 
 the breeze is gentle ; but as the sun approaches the hori- 
 zon it grows stronger and cooler; and at 8 P. M. it has 
 about one half the force it had at 8 A. M. Before mid- 
 night the breeze again becomes gentle, but very cool and 
 refreshing, and continues so until the dawning of a new 
 day arouses it to renewed activity. Thank God for the 
 
2i6 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 winds ! Because of them, we have no discomfort from 
 the heat, and a temperature of lOO degrees in the shade 
 seems just right. 
 
 “As you know, our year has two seasons only, the 
 wet and the dry. The dry season begins in November 
 and ends in May. During this period the prevailing 
 winds are northerly, there is no rain, the rivers fall, the 
 swamps and khors dry up, and mosquitoes practically 
 disappear from Doleib Hill and its vicinity, although 
 they persist in great numbers along the White Nile. 
 Early in May, the south and southeasterly rain-bearing 
 winds begin to blow, and, before the month has ended, 
 the rainy season is in full blast. The rains of May and 
 June are quickly absorbed by the thirsty ground, and 
 there are few breeding places for mosquitoes; but in 
 July, pools form in the low places after the heavy 
 rains, and remain long enough to permit mosquitoes to 
 breed in great numbers, and from this time until the 
 middle of October, it is unwise to be out after sunset, 
 or to sleep without a mosquito net. 
 
 “From this brief statement, it will be seen, that dur- 
 ing five and a half months of the year (from the first 
 of December to the middle of May), there are practic- 
 ally no mosquitoes in this vicinity; that there are three 
 months (from the middle of May to the first of July, 
 and from the middle of October to the first of Decem- 
 ber) in which mosquitoes are not troublesome; and that 
 there are three and a half months (from the first of 
 July to the middle of October) during which mosquitoes 
 are a dangerous pest. 
 
 “Our water supply (the Sobat) is excellent and un- 
 failing. It is more palatable than the water of the White 
 Nile or the water of the Zeraf. It is also free from dis- 
 ease-producing micro-organisms, at least I have seen 
 no diseases which could be numbered among the water- 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 217 
 
 born. The Shilluks drink right out of the river and the 
 khors. 
 
 “My present opinion is, as you see, a decidedly fa- 
 vorable one, although I came here feeling sure that the 
 climate must be as described by so many travelers. I 
 trust that this statement may prevent the friends of Su- 
 dan missionaries from worrying about our health. The 
 climate seems good, and life and property are much safer 
 than in any town of over 30,000 inhabitants in any of 
 the so-called Christian countries.” 
 
2i8 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 APPENDIX V 
 
 ETHNOLOGY OF THE SUDAN. 
 
 Crowfoot divides the population of the Egyptian 
 Sudan into four main divisions, besides a number of 
 sub-divisions, as follows : 
 
 I. Negroes: 
 
 1. The Swamp Negroes: Shilluk, Shuli, Bari, Jur, 
 
 Nuer, Dinka, Anuak, etc. 
 
 2. The Iron-Working Negroes : Bongo, Mittu, 
 
 Golo, Sheri, Madi, Kreich, etc. 
 
 3. The A-Zande or Nyam Nyam. 
 
 4. The Latuka. 
 
 II. Nubas: 
 
 I. The Barabra: natives of Dongola, Mahas, Suk- 
 kot, Haifa. 
 
 III. Begas: 
 
 1. Abada. 
 
 2. Besharin. 
 
 3. Amarar. 
 
 4. Hadendoa. 
 
 5. Halenga. 
 
 6. Beni Amer. 
 
 7. Habab. 
 
 IV. Arabs. 
 
 Diedrich Westermann, out of his encyclopaedic lin- 
 guistic knowledge, proves the existence of a great family 
 of Sudan Languages, “which extend from the Red Sea 
 and Abyssinia through the whole Continent to the At- 
 lantic Ocean, from the northern Cameroons to Sene- 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 219 
 
 gambia.” This Sudan Language System breaks into 
 three groups : the Eastern, the Central and the Western. 
 The Nilotic Languages naturally are identified with the 
 Eastern group and divide into (i) the Niloto-Hamitic 
 languages of British and German East Africa; and (2) 
 the Niloto-Sudanic Languages, which he again divides 
 into: (a) The High Nilotic Group, comprising Mittu, 
 Madi, Madi-Kaya, Abo-Kaya, Abaka, Luba, Wira, 
 Lendu, and Moru ; (b) the Middle Nilotic Group, com- 
 prising the Shilluk cluster of languages ; and (c) the 
 Low Nilotic Group, comprising Dinka and Nuer. 
 
220 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 APPENDIX VI 
 
 SHILLUK RELIGIOUS CEREMONY. 
 
 Professor Westermann gives the following account 
 of the ceremon}- foUowed in invoking health for a sick 
 man, beginning with the onl}’ prayer to Jwok which he 
 discovered among the Shilluks : 
 
 “I implore thee, thou God, I pray to thee during 
 the night How are all people kept by thee all da3'S ! 
 And thou walkest in the midst of the (high) grass, I 
 walk with thee; when I sleep in the house, I sleep with 
 thee! To thee I pray for food, and thou givest it to 
 the people; and water to drink; and the soul is kept 
 (alive) by thee There is no one above thee, thou God. 
 Thou becamest the grandfather of Xj-ikango; it is thou 
 (Nyikango) who walkest \^-ith (^od; thou becamest the 
 grandfather (of man), and thy son Dak. If a famine 
 comes, is it not given by thee? So as this cow stands 
 here, is it not thus ; if she dies, does her blood not go to 
 thee? Thou God, to whom shall we praj-, is it not to 
 thee? Thou God, and thou who becamest N3*ikango, 
 and thy son Dak ! But the soul (of man), is it not thine 
 own? It is thou who liftest up (the sick).” 
 
 This is all; and the cow is speared; and the con- 
 tents of her stomach are taken out, and are thrown on 
 the bod3' of the man who is sick (“is with God”) ; and 
 water is poured on his body. And one ear of the cow is 
 cut off ; it is cut into strips ; these are tied together and 
 the whole is tied arotmd the leg (of the sick one). And 
 the right foreleg (of the cow) is cut off, and it is cook- 
 ed at once ; the people are not allowed to taste it They 
 make a little broth out of it; that is poured on the 
 groimd; it is the thing (propert3 ) of God. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 221 
 
 APPENDIX VII 
 
 SHILLUK FOLKLORE. 
 
 The following animal story, song and riddles are 
 quoted from Professor Westermann’s “The Shilluk Peo- 
 ple; Their Language and Folklore”: 
 
 The Camel and the Donkey. 
 
 Somebody had a camel and also a donkey ; they used 
 to carry goods every day, but they got nothing to eat, 
 so they were very thin. One day the camel said, “Dear 
 me!” Again he said, “Donkey!” The donkey replied, 
 “Eh?” The camel said, “We are going to die!” “So it 
 is,” replied the donkey, “we are going to die.” The 
 camel said, “Suppose we run away, would you consent?” 
 The donkey replied, “Yes, I would consent!” Then he 
 said, “Let us flee !” 
 
 And they went traveling. They arrived in a very 
 distant place ; there they saw an island in the middle of 
 a river. There was much grass. And they said, “How 
 shall we get there?” The donkey confessed, “I do not 
 know!” But the camel said, “We will swim.” The 
 donkey asked, “Shall we not be drowned?” “No,” said 
 the camel, “we shall not be drowned.” (Here follows 
 some camel-talk.) He said again “God is great! We 
 shall arrive safely.” They went into the river; the 
 donkey went behind the camel. And they swam. 
 
 When they came to the bank, they got out of the 
 water. They were very glad; there were no men on the 
 island. They ate and then lay down ; the next day they 
 grazed again (the whole day), and when the night came, 
 they lay down. Thus they did every day. The donkey 
 and the camel became fat: their bellies became full. 
 
222 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 They used to drink water in the river; and from there 
 returned to grazing. 
 
 One day the donkey said to the camel ; “Friend !” 
 He replied, “Eh?” The donkey said, “You have indeed 
 succeeded in bringing us into a good position; I am 
 quite surprised; if it had not been for you, we would be 
 dead now !” Such was the talk of the donkey. The 
 camel replied, “Are you not a stupid fellow? Do you 
 know anything? Are you not an ignorant one?” So 
 said the camel. One day later the donkey continued, 
 “Friend !” — So he used to call the camel. The camel re- 
 plied, “Eh?” The donkey said, “I have some thoughts 
 (‘little seeds’) in my head; how may it be with them?” 
 “Dear me,” replied the camel, “what may be your 
 thoughts?” Then the donkey was silent; and they went 
 to sleep. But the next morning he began again, 
 “Friend!” The camel said, “Eh?” The donkey said, 
 “These things (thoughts) are still working in my head.” 
 “You begin to forget;” warned the camel, “do you not 
 remember, when we were caught (every morning) and 
 were always beaten with a club?” “I will be silent,” and 
 he remained silent. On the next morning he continued, 
 “I cannot eat on account of this thing; my mind is al- 
 ways wandering.” The camel said, “Why, if you talk so 
 loud, the people who are traveling on the river will 
 hear us.” At last the donkey begged, “Let me bray! 
 just once; that is what is troubling me.” Thus the 
 talk of the donkey. The camel said, “Well, do bray! 
 I am worn out by you. Death will come to all of us, 
 not to me alone !” And the donkey ran, snorting, and 
 braying exceedingly loud, and he snorted again. Some 
 people who were traveling in a boat, heard him; they 
 said, “Where does that donkey cry?” They went 
 ashore saying, “There must be people on the island.” 
 They searched in the grass, but there were no people. 
 At last they found the donkey and the camel. They 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 223 
 
 seized them and beat them with clubs. The camel said, 
 “Did I not tell you, saying: we shall be found? but now, 
 what do you say ?” The donkey was silent. They both 
 were driven away and were bound with boat-ropes, in 
 order to pull the boat. The rope of the camel broke, 
 and he ran away. The people pursued him, but he out- 
 ran them. So the donkey was left with the strangers. 
 He was beaten with clubs ; the boat was heavy ; he died. 
 Some days later the camel came to the river bank to 
 drink; he found the donkey dead in the water; he was 
 bloated. And he said, “Get up!” (Here follows camel- 
 talk.) He said again, “Get up and bray: formerly I 
 told you, do not cry! But you said, something is 
 (‘working’) in my head. Now get up !” But the donkey 
 was dead. So the camel went to drink and then re- 
 turned into the forest. 
 
 Mourning Song. 
 
 Agwetnyanedong, the country is starved, the peo- 
 ple are dying. Agwet, son of Nyikang, they are mourn- 
 ing, stretching up their hands. 
 
 Riddles. 
 
 Brothers who never hurt each other? 
 
 The two horns of a cow. 
 
 Which sorcerer spends the whole night in swinging? 
 
 The tail of a cow. 
 
 The gray one running toward the fields? 
 
 The mist. 
 
 (Who asks) I am traveling, where are you going? 
 
 The shadow of man. 
 
224 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 APPENDIX VIII 
 
 EXTRACT FROM OFFICIAL REPORT OF LORD CROMER 
 IN 1903. 
 
 “An opportunity was afforded to me, during my re- 
 cent tour in the Sudan, of visiting the station estab- 
 lished by the American missionaries on the Sobat River. 
 The establishment consists of Mr. and Mrs. Giffen and 
 Dr. and Mrs. McLaughlin. I was greatly pleased with all 
 I saw. The Mission is manifestly conducted on those 
 sound, practical, common-sense principles which, in- 
 deed, are strongly characteristic of American Mission 
 work in Egypt. No parade is made of religion. In 
 fact the work of conversion, properly so-called, can 
 scarcely be said to have commenced. Mr. Giffen has, 
 very wisely, considered that, as a preliminary to the in- 
 troduction of Christian teaching, his best plan will be 
 to gain some insight into the ideas, manners, and cus- 
 toms of the wild Shilluks amongst whom he lives, to 
 establish in their minds thorough confidence in his in- 
 tentions, and to inculcate some rudimentary knowledge 
 of the Christian moral code. In these endeavors he 
 appears to have been eminently successful. By kindly 
 and considerate treatment he is allaying those sus- 
 picions which are so easily aroused in the minds of sav- 
 ages. I found considerable numbers of Shilluks, men 
 and women, working happily at the brick-kiln which he 
 has established in the extensive and well-cultivated gar- 
 den attached to the Mission. I may remark incident- 
 ally that cotton, apparently of good quality, has already 
 been produced. The houses in which the members of 
 the Mission live have been constructed by Shilluk labor. 
 I addressed the men present, through an interpreter, 
 and fully satisfied myself that they were happy and con- 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 225 
 
 tented. They understand that they can now no longer 
 be carried ofif into slavery, that they will be treated with 
 justice and consideration, and paid for their labor. 
 
 “Not only can there be no possible objection to 
 Mission work of this description, but I may add that, 
 fr im whatever point of view the matter is considered, 
 tht creation of establishments conducted on the prin- 
 ciples adopted by Mr. Giffen and Dr. McLaughlin can- 
 not fail to prove an unmixed benefit to the population 
 amongst whom they live. I understand that the Ameri- 
 can missionaries contemplate the creation of another 
 Mission post higher up the Sobat. It is greatly to be 
 hoped that they will carry out this intention. They may 
 rely on any reasonable encouragement and assistance 
 which it is in the power of the Sudan Government to 
 afford. It is, I venture to think, to be regretted that 
 none of the British Missionary Societies appear so far 
 to have devoted their attention to the southern portions 
 of the Sudan, which are inhabited by pagans. Not only 
 do these districts present a far more promising field for 
 missionary enterprise than those provinces whose popu- 
 lation is Mohammedan, but the manifest political objec- 
 tions which exist in allowing mission work in the latter, 
 do not in any degree exist in the former case. I en- 
 tirely agree with the opinion held by Sir Reginald Win- 
 gate, and shared, I believe, by every responsible offi- 
 cial who can speak with local knowledge and authority 
 on the subject, that the time is still distant when mis- 
 sion work can, with safety and advantage, be permitted 
 amongst the Moslem population of the Sudan. 
 
 “Subsequently to writing these remarks I visited the 
 Austrian Roman Catholic Mission, situated a short dis- 
 tance south of Fashoda. It is also very well conducted, 
 and deserved the same amount of encouragement as that 
 accorded to the American establishment. 
 
 “I should add that, although mission work, properly 
 
226 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 so-called, cannot as yet be permitted amongst the Mos- 
 lem population of the Sudan, I see no objection to the 
 establishment of Christian schools at Khartum. Parents 
 should, of course, be warned, before they send their 
 children to the schools, that instruction in the Christian 
 religion is afforded. It will be then for them to judge 
 whether they wish their children to attend or not. Prob- 
 ably the best course to pursue will be to set aside certain 
 hours for religious instruction, and leave it optional to 
 the parents whether or not their children shall attend 
 during those hours. It must be remembered that be- 
 sides the Moslem population, there is a small number of 
 Christians at Khartum. These might very probably wish 
 to take advantage of the schools.” 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 227 
 
 APPENDIX IX 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 General 
 
 Gleichen, Lieut.-Col. Count, The Anglo-Egyptian Su- 
 dan. 2 vols. Wyman & Sons, London, E. C. los. 
 
 Westermann, D., The Shilluk People: Their Langu^e 
 and Folklore. Dietrich Reimer, Berlin, or Board 
 Foreign Missions United Presbyterian Church, 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 Baker, Sir S. W., Ismalia: Expedition to Central Af- 
 rica. Macmillan Co., London. $1.40. 
 
 Speke, Capt. J. H., Journal of the Discovery of the 
 Source of the Nile. J. M. Dent & Co., Edinburgh. 
 $■ 35 - 
 
 Baker, Sir S. W., Discovery of the Albert Nyanza. 
 Macmillan Co., New York & London. $1.40. 
 
 Baker, Sir S. W., The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia. 
 Macmillan Co., New York & London. $1.40. 
 
 Historical 
 
 Johnston, Sir H., The Nile Quest: Story of Explora- 
 tions. F. A. Stokes Co., New York. $1.45. 
 
 Wingate, Major F. R., Mahdism and the Egyptian Su- 
 dan. Macmillan Co., New York. (Out of print.) 
 
 Slatin, Col. Rudolf Pasha, Fire and Sword in the Egyp- 
 tian Sudan. E. Arnold, London. ($2.00.) 
 
 Wingate, Major F. R., (Ohrwalder), Ten Years’ Cap- 
 tivity in the Mahdi’s Camp. Low, Marston & Co., 
 London. 2s. 6d. 
 
 Steevens, G. W., With Kitchener to Khartum. Dodd, 
 Mead & Co., New York. $1.50. 
 
228 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 Biographical 
 
 Boiilger, D. C., Life of General Gordon. Thomas Nel- 
 son & Sons, New York. 35 cents. 
 
 Hake, A. E., The Journal of Major-Gen. C. G. Gordon 
 at Khartum. Kegan Paul Co., London. 3s 6d. 
 
 Hill, G. B., Col. Gordon in Central Africa, 1874-79. Mac- 
 millan Co., New York. $1.75. 
 
 Butler, Col. Sir Wm. F., Charles George Gordon. Mac- 
 millan Co., New York. 75 cents. 
 
 M issiouary 
 
 Giffen, J. K., The Egyptian Sudan. F. H. Revell Co., 
 New York. $1.12, postpaid. 
 
 Annual Report of the Board of Foreign Missions of 
 the United Presbyterian Church of N. A., free. Ad- 
 dress this Board at 200 North 15th Street, Philadel- 
 phia, Pa. 
 
 Annual Report of Church Missionary Society for Africa 
 and the East, 2s. Address this Society at Salisbury 
 Square, F. C., London, England. 
 
INDEX 
 
1 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abyssinia, 138, 181. 
 
 Adaptability, 202-203. 
 
 Agriculture, see Cultivation. 
 
 American Mission, 131-178, 
 see Appendix I. 
 
 Amusement, 118-120. 
 
 Animal life, 35. 
 
 Anuak, 126. 
 
 Area, 21-24. 
 
 Baker, Sir Samuel, 51-57. 
 
 Bibliography, see Appendix 
 IX. 
 
 Bird life, 39. 
 
 Boundaries, 27. 
 
 Carson, 154, 158. 
 
 Cattle, 30. 
 
 Children, 117. 
 
 Christianity, early, 48 ; 
 modern, 110 ; see Mis- 
 sionary. 
 
 Christian Endeavor Society, 
 173. 
 
 Church, see Evangelical 
 Church. 
 
 Church Missionary Society, 
 131-133, 177-178, see Ap- 
 pendix II. 
 
 Climate. 32-33, 60, 155, 165, 
 see Appendix III, IV. 
 
 Comity, 177-178. 
 
 Country, 17, 22, 27-31. 
 
 Courage, 203. 
 
 Cruelty. 91-92. 
 
 Cultivation, 31, 34. 
 
 Culture. 201. 
 
 Dangers, see Climate, Snakes. 
 
 Desert, 17, 27, 30. 
 
 Dinka, 125. 
 
 Distances, 18, 22-24, 65, 183. 
 Doleib Hill. 140-170. 
 
 Dress, 113, 128. 
 
 Durra, Indian millet (Sor- 
 ghum vulgar e). 
 
 Edinburgh Conference, 186. 
 Educational, 168, 173, see 
 
 Industrial. 
 
 Egypt, 47-50, 57, 59, 64, 69, 
 76. 98, 100, 107, 137, 172- 
 
 173. 
 
 Egyptians, 107, 140-142, 172- 
 
 174. 
 
 “Elliott, The,” 161. 
 Ethnology, see Appendix V. 
 “Evangel, The,” 171. 
 Evangelical Church, 134, 
 172-173. 
 
 Evangelistic Work, 160-164, 
 172-173. 
 
 Expense, 197-198. 
 Exploration, 18, 19, 39-43. 
 
 Famine, 92-94, 167, 183. 
 Folklore, see Appendix VII. 
 Pood, 115-116, see Re- 
 sources. 
 
 Forests, 28, 29, 31. 
 
 Game, see Animal life. 
 Gessi, 67-69. 
 
 Giffen, 29-30, 37-39, 113, 
 
 137-153. 
 
 Good nature, 202. 
 
 Gordon, Gen. C. G., 57-86, 
 97-99, 206. 
 
 Government, 99-103, 132, 
 
 141, 195, see Appendix 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Grazing land, 30. 
 
 231 
 
232 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Hicks Pasha, 76. 
 
 History, 19 ; of Sudan, 47- 
 102 ; of Shilluks, 121-123 : 
 of missionary effort, 131- 
 149. 
 
 Health, 31, 155, 196, 201- 
 
 202 . 
 
 Herodotus, 40. 
 
 Houses, see Residences. 
 
 Isaiah, 20. 
 
 Ismail Pasha, 57. 
 
 Industrial Work, 145-148. 
 
 Islam, see Mohammedanism. 
 
 Intellectual, 114, 117, 184. 
 
 Johnston, Sir Harry, 39. 41, 
 109. 
 
 Jwok, 121. 
 
 Jibba, 89 ; a dervish robe re- 
 sembling a gown covered 
 with patches to symbolize 
 poverty. 
 
 Khalifa, see Mahdism, 87, 88, 
 89. 
 
 Khartum, Fall of, 79-82. 
 
 Kitchener, 95-100. 
 
 Livingstone, 44, 206. 
 
 Language, 109, 157-160, 161, 
 164. 
 
 Leadership, 200. 
 
 Mahdi, 73-76, 86. 
 
 Mahdi Rebellion, 73-99. 
 
 Maps, 25, 42. 
 
 Map-making, 40-43. 
 
 Missionary, 19, 20, 36, 131- 
 178. 
 
 Mountains, 31. 
 
 Mohammed Ahmed, see 
 Mahdi Rebellion. 
 
 Marriage, 116. 
 
 Mohammedanism, 109, 160, 
 
 168, 177, 186-190 : see 
 
 Mahdi Rebellion. 
 
 Mathews, Rev. G. D., 136. 
 Missionaries, Names of, 153- 
 154, 177 ; Qualifications 
 
 needed, 200-204. 
 
 McCreery, 159. 
 
 Medical, 168-170, 175-177. 
 Morality. 184. 
 
 Northern Sudan. 30. 33, 34, 
 
 35, 107-110, 172-178. 
 Napata, 47. 
 
 Negro, see People, Southern 
 Sudan. 
 
 Nyikang, 121. 
 
 , Nuer, 126-128, 171. 
 
 Nasser station, 170-172, 183. 
 Need, 181-185. 
 
 Omdurman, 110. 
 
 Omdurman, Battle of, 96. 
 
 j Ptolemy, 41. 
 
 I Provinces, 26. 
 
 ! People, 107-128. 
 
 Providences, 156-157. 
 
 Prayer, 193-197. 
 
 Railroad, 22-24. 
 
 Resources, 33-36. 100. 
 
 Races in Sudan, 107-128. 
 Religion. 109, 120-124, 184- 
 185 : see Appendix VI : 
 
 see Missionary. 
 
 Roman Catholics, 131-132. 
 Residences, 145-148, 155. 
 
 Sobat River, 43, 111, 113, 
 140-172. 
 
 Snakes, 36-39. 
 
 Southern Sudan, 30, 33, 35, 
 
 36, 111-128, 140-172, 187- 
 190. 
 
 Sudan, 24 ; see Country, Ex- 
 ploration, Area, Provinces. 
 Boundaries. 
 
 Steevens, 17, 27-28, 99. 
 Slavery. 19, 50-70, 182. 
 
INDEX 
 
 233 
 
 Steamer, 22. 
 
 Schweinfurth, 28-29. 
 
 Steppes, 30. 
 
 Stanley, 41. 
 
 Slatin Pasha, 73, 88. 
 
 Shulla, same as Shilluk, but 
 without the Arabic end- 
 ing. 
 
 Shilluk, 112-125, 144-170, 
 
 157-160. 
 
 Stewardship, 197-200. 
 Spirituality, 203. 
 
 Travel, see Railroad, Steamer, 
 65. 
 
 Urgency, 186-190. 
 
 Wingate, 21, 99. 
 
 War, 94. 
 
 Westermann, 109, 114, 124. 
 Women, 18, 112-113. 
 Watson, Rev. Andrew, 137. 
 Wealth, 197-200. 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
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 i 
 
 f 
 
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 I 
 
 I 
 
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