Sidney Cornwallis Peel

“ It is a melancholy fact that many of the towns in the Soudan are crowded with freed slaves, too lazy to do anything but steal, while the women have recourse to an even less reputable occupation. It is easier to break down the social system of centuries than to build up a sounder fabric in its place. But the thing had absolutely to be done if the Soudan was to have a real regeneration. Even when the slaves have been well treated, the demoralization caused by slavery has been great. The Arabs have all the vices of a slave-owning people. ”

“ Next day you embark at Shellal, above the Dam, for Wadi Halfa, a voyage of some 200 miles. Coming down, the steamers do it in about twenty-four hours, but upstream it is a leisurely voyage of three days. There is plenty of time to see the interesting antiquities of Nubia, and, above all, the famous rock-hewn temple of Abu Simbel, the colossal statues of which are, perhaps, the most impressive of all the monuments of Egypt. It is, besides, a most beautiful reach of the river; the hills come down to the water in bold and rugged outlines, showing to perfection in the pure, dry, desert air. ”

“ A hundred times a day he will have borne in upon him the fact that all he sees, from the kid upon the dykes to those obelisks of modern Egypt, the tall chimneys of the sugar factories, owes its existence absolutely to the water. Close behind the teeming villages and the luxuriant crops, the palm-trees and the acacias, the sugar-canes and the maize-fields, rise the gaunt limestone rocks and the sandy desert, fit emblems of the famine that is ever ready to swoop down should the water fail. ”

“ THE UNITY OF NILELAND It is no longer possible to think of our occupation of Egypt as merely a stepping-stone on the road to India—‘the Englishman reaching far over to his loved India.’ Still less can it be looked upon solely as a means for the regeneration of Egypt and the education of her people till they are able to pass from a state of tutelage and stand securely by themselves. ”

“ Inevitably, sooner or later, the whole thing would come to ruin, and the greater the height of prosperity to which the country has attained under the system of perennial irrigation, the greater would be its fall. Egypt has been called the classic land of baksheesh, and it will not lose its character in a generation or two. Imagine a Government in need of money; what better thumbscrew could an Oriental despot wish for than the command of the water-supply? When a land-owner knew that he could be ruined by the shutting of a sluice-gate, he would pay anything without a struggle. ”

“ THE NEW KHARTOUM No one whose lot it has been to travel through the night on the plains of a tropical country can forget the amazing effect produced when the sun, with one great leap, as it seems, springs clear above the horizon. All in a moment the world’s face is altered. Its features are the same, yet utterly changed. The traveller, however hardened, can scarcely fail to wonder at the transformation. A journey to the Soudan to-day produces a very similar impression on one whose mind is full of the memories of the dark past. ”

“ To take and store the precious water, which now during the flood and winter rushes down in untold volume, to be lost and squandered in the sea, and use it to feed the lean summer months, is almost absurdly obvious. No wonder that since Mehemet Ali gave so great a stimulus to the cultivation of cotton and sugar the idea of the Reservoir has been constantly in the minds of the rulers of Egypt. The strange thing is that so many hundreds, even thousands, of years should have elapsed without any attempt of the kind being made. ”

“ The boundary between Egypt and the Soudan, settled by the Convention of 1899, runs along the twenty-second parallel; not far beyond this is the frontier town of Halfa. There is no mistaking the signs of British rule. The whole place is rigidly clean, an extraordinary contrast to the filth of the Egyptian villages. The streets are well laid out and scrupulously swept, and shady avenues of trees are springing up. But at present Halfa is not particularly interesting, except as the railway terminus of the Soudan. It is twenty-eight hours to Khartoum. ”

“ On the coast lands of the Mediterranean a sparse population might still eke out a miserable existence by storing the scanty rainfall, but nowhere else. The very oases of the desert would be dried up, and in a short time the shifting sands of the Sahara would have overlaid the deposits in the river-valley, and buried out of sight even the ruins of the past. The waters of the Nile are, and ever have been, the sole giver of all life in Egypt. ”

“ Pharaoh, to whom time and life were nothing, out of the misery of the forced labour of his subjects, raised a perfectly useless monument of his own folly; yet he achieved his object, and made his tomb one of the wonders of the world. We, with the free labour of voluntary workers—paid, fed, and cared for, instead of being driven by the whip—have dared to harness Nile himself. It is a work vital to the interests of millions of dwellers by the river. ”

“ Late in the history of the river-valley, but very early in the history of humanity, this favoured strip of country became the home of men, who doubtless cast their seed upon the slime left by the retreating waters, and reaped their crops long before the dawn of history. It is remarkable and characteristic of the conditions of the country that tradition ascribes to the earliest King of Egypt, Menes, the first King of the First Dynasty, the first attempts to regulate the flow of the river—in other words, the first scheme of irrigation proper. ”

“ When the British taxpayer is looking at a map of the world in order to get some satisfaction for his Imperial expenditure, and casts his eyes over Africa, he doubtless comforts himself with the reflection that in the Soudan England governs, but Egypt pays, and wishes that other portions of the Empire were managed on similar principles. England governs, and Egypt pays, but the division of labour is not unfair. If the Egyptian finds it hard to realize the meaning of a veiled Protectorate, the more unsophisticated Soudanese would find it totally impossible. ”

“ All are working heartily for the good of the Soudan and its people, and the honour of their own country. Many of the Governors and Inspectors of Provinces have fought in command of the black battalions against the Arabs. They learned to like the one and to respect the other. The liking and the respect are repaid tenfold. There could be no better foundation for sound government, and from Suakin to El Obeid, and from Halfa to Gondokoro the Englishman is obeyed and trusted as no ruler of the Soudan has ever been before. ”

“ Fortunately for Egypt, these men, trained in the best school of irrigation in the world, possessed not only the highest scientific skill and knowledge, but were also animated by the best spirit of the empire-building Englishman. Deep in them lay the earnest wish and determination, far stronger even than their enthusiasm and love for their profession, to alleviate the lot of the unhappy peasantry of Egypt. ”

“ It is the great market-place for gum from Kordofan, feathers from Darfur, ivory from the Bahr el Ghazal, dhurra from the Blue Nile country, and everything else that comes in by boat or camel. All day long the porters go to and fro, carrying their loads and chanting their monotonous songs, chiefly tall, broad-chested, but spindle-shanked negroes from the Nile Valley, Dinkas, Shilluks, Bongos, or Bari, with here and there a short, thick-set, sturdy hillman from Southern Kordofan or Dar Nuba. Women equally diverse in type sit sorting the different qualities of gum. ”

“ But where will he have learnt to make bricks, to measure land, to make roads, to pronounce on methods of gathering rubber or gum, or the diseases of cattle or dhurra? Yet all these things he will have to do, and many others in the course of his busy days. One of the great attractions of the Soudan is the splendid keenness of all these men, soldiers and civilians alike. From Wadi Halfa onwards the same spirit is observable in everyone you meet. Grumbling you will hear, but it is the grumbling of keen men. The Governor of one province is convinced that too much is being spent on the capital. ”

“ If the slave-trade does still exist, it does so only precariously in a few remote holes and corners. The markets of Khartoum and Omdurman and other centres are greater and more various than they have ever been before, but this one traffic, once their principal feature, is absent and gone for ever. No change could be greater or eventually more beneficial in its effects on the whole life and character alike of the slave-owners, the slave-dealers, and those unhappy tribes who involuntarily furnished their material. ”

“ There is all the excitement of starting for a new country, and at the same time an opportunity to gather into a focus all the old impressions. Easily and smoothly you swing through the fertile cotton-fields of the Delta, and its populous cities and villages, prosperous but dirty, and at Cairo you settle down into a most comfortable sleeping-car for the night journey to Luxor.
Early next morning you are in the cane-fields of Upper Egypt, with the river close on one side and the desert on the other. ”

“ Well might Lord Cromer and the irrigation engineers review their work with satisfaction. To them the Reservoir means the successful culmination of a great policy long and steadily pursued, nothing less than the establishment of the prosperity of Egypt upon a sure and certain basis: for that is what the regulation of the Nile involves. In Egypt, at any rate, they require no formal monument. Their praise stands clearly writ on the face of every cultivated field throughout the country. ”

“ Berber is springing up again from its ruins; it even boasts two stations, but it has not an attractive look as a place to live in; there is as yet nothing more than the mud huts of the country, and it is the hottest place in the world. Next comes the Atbara River, though not the scene of the battle, for that was thirty miles upstream; then Shendi, of fiery memory, but now the Crewe of the Soudan, and finally, late at night, you step out of the train at Halfaya, the railway terminus. One glance at the sky will show you that you are really in the tropics. Canopus is shining fiercely in the east. ”

“ And whatever else of good or evil the future may have in store, the Soudan has one treasure which makes it certain that it will never again be allowed to lapse from the pale of civilization, and that is not the gold which attracted the attention of its former invaders, with such disastrous consequences both to conquerors and conquered, but the inestimable possession of the Nile. ”

“ Some of them, no doubt, stayed on right through the Khalifa’s time.
As a vulture scents carrion from afar, so the Greek scents any possible opening for trade with the natives. The gum trade, the feather trade, the corn trade, all are in his hands. There is nothing that a native wants, however humble, from beads and kerosene-tins to silver, that he will not sell, exactly in the form required. Naturally a gambler, there is no speculation that he will not undertake, no risk he will not run. He can stand any climate, he can live in native huts, and eat native food. ”

“ For the ordinary mass of the population nothing is to be gained by an imperfect knowledge of English. The authorities are unquestionably right in discouraging such teaching; the supposed political advantages of it are small, if not entirely imaginary. The Soudan can never be a real white man’s country; its rulers must always be speakers of Arabic, and its people will do far better to employ their time in more useful ways than struggling with a foreign language.
The Gordon College is the centre of education, but even now its activities are not confined to mere teaching. ”

“ SCHEMES FOR THE FUTURE The completion of one programme by the construction of the Reservoir and the works dependent upon it does not mean stagnation. Irrigation is an ever-growing and ever-living science. There can be no standing still. Even in the ordinary routine there are thousands of details always pressing forward for fresh consideration. It takes but a few years for a daring innovation to become old-fashioned. The system of perennial irrigation in Egypt is so young that there is still much to be learnt. ”

“ In a country depending for its existence upon the proper maintenance of its dykes, it was only natural that the whole population should turn out to perform the necessary work. But a useful custom very easily degenerated into a galling slavery under Oriental despotism. Rulers with absolute power of life and death over their subjects, who regarded the land they ruled as their own personal property, could not be expected to make much distinction between works carried out for the general good and those designed merely for their own convenience and aggrandisement. ”

“ Lastly, the good name of Egypt has been restored; one of the evil pages in her history has been finally turned. The country which she once ruined by her misgovernment and oppression and by her greedy haste to share in the profits of the slave-trade, and then abandoned to barbarism, has been rescued, and set moving once more on the paths of civilization and good government. It is right that in the days of her prosperity she should do something to assist her less fortunate neighbour.
It has been said that for the present Egypt will continue her annual grant to the Soudan of £E390,000 a year. ”