The Soudan Blacks.

Manawatu Herald, 2 July 1898, Page 2

The Soudan Blacks.

OUR FIGHTING ALLIES.

Mr G. W. Stevens, in the London Daily Hail, thus describes the Btart of the back regiment.J from Berber far the fight at the Atbara : — ' M 'Donald's fighting brigade of blacks cleared the town yesterday evening; April 12, and marched for Ktnur, the point of concentration, at monori3e. I saw the start of the 9th the first black battalion raised; and, fine as are many of our British regimpnfc*. these made them look very am ail. The Soudanese battalion* are enlisted for life. I have seen a man who was with 'Maximilian in Mrxico, in the RußsoTurkiah war, across Africa with Stanley, and in all the latter Egyptian campaigns, and who marches with his regiment yet. However old the black may be he hi 8 the curious faculty of alway* looking about 18 ; only when yoa'; thrust your eyes right in hfe faci '3o * you notice that he is a wrinkled great grandfather of 80. But always he stands as straight as a lance. Not that the 9th average thai age, I lake it; or if they do, it 4o£B not matter. Their height tniiat aterage ei-ily over 6ft*- They ; ai» billowy in figure, and their legs ran to spindle shanks, almost, ridiculously \ yit as they formed up on parade t.bi-y moved not only with the scope that comes from length of limb, but the tnap of self controlled strength a3 well.

They love their soldiering, and take it very seriously. When they stood at attention they might have been rows of black marble statues, all alike as in the ancient temples, fill* ing op the little square of crumbling mud walls with a hole in the corner, so typical of the Berber landscape. Then tha English colonel snapped out something Turkish in an inetanfc the double lines of each company had become fours -all turned with a click. The band crashed oat a march — barbaric Ethiopian, darky American, or English music-hall, it is all the same to the blacks — and out swung the regiment. They moved off by a narrow alley, and there lay four newly killed goats, the, sand lapping their blood. Every; officer roijp, pypry man stepped, over the luck tnk'-n ; they wrml£ never, go out to fuht without it. Then out into the nviin street, every man step, ping likj a conqueror, the band bear, ing war ai their held. ... With each company a litfcfe flag— blue, black, white, amber, orgrean, or vermillion on n. pp^ar. and halfway down the o!umn the colours the Cmnerons gave th^ni when they, shared the gory of Ginni3. Boys trailed J be» hind thrm, and their women running to k^pp up, shot after them the Jhin stream* that kindled Soudanese to victory. A black has been known to kill himself because his wife called him a coward. •Luuu, lv u*u.' pip?d the women; the raea held th.»ir beads up and made no sdifnd, but you could see the answer to that a ppeal quivering all down the column. For 'we,' they say, 'are like the English, we are not afraid.