ENGLISH WOMEN CAPTIVES IN THE SOUDAN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 21 September 1907, Page 3

ENGLISH WOMEN CAPTIVES IN THE SOUDAN.

A doep mystery surrounds the subject of the life of the Englishwomen who are captives in Soudan harems. It is known that they arc there, but it is utterly impossible to trace them. They are dead—officially I When the great tide of Mahdism broke upon Khartoum and overwhelmed Gordon, it was supposed that the English women and children in that city, and half a dozen smaller towns, were slaughtered in the horrible days that followed. But ask those who were with Kitchener when he avenged Gordon; ask those who came alive from the terrible "Saier" at Oindurman, and you shall hear a different talc.

These, and those folk who move up and down the mysterious Soudan today, hear tales of white women who are the treasured inmates of the harem ot some sheikh or other, poor prisoners who arc never seen without the mud walls of some miserable hut, or old womenlong ago stricken with a merciful madness—who are the slaves of the slaves. We have it on the authority of an old officer, at one time of considerable repute in the Soudan, that there must be more rhau a few wh.te womn in the t;nu and IwwU if the des-ivt, tut that the difficulty of tracing them has absolutely prevented the intervention of diplomatists to secure their release. One of the cases with which rumor has been most busy is that of a girl who was captured by a sheikh of the Berber district. He was an honorable man according to his lights, but, having a less number of wives than the Mahdi allowed, decided to marry her. Before this was possible, however, it was necessary that the girl should accept Jlahdieh, the form of the Mohammedan religion of which the Jlahdi had declared himself the head and exponent. Who shall blame her if, faced with the horrible alternative, she declared herself a convert?

The young shiekh was pleased with her ready acquiescence to his desires; and, Seeing that his prospective bride had no portion, he gave her a thousand dollars.

Now, there were other chiefs of that district who were jealous of the sheikh's capture; anil, exercising that guile and craft which is the birthright of the dwellers in the desert, they promptly hurried to the Khaleefa at Omdurman with the talc that Alimcd-cl-Hamad was a rich man who had not given his all to the Mahdi. Meanwhile preparations for the marriage ceremonies and fcastings were made on a large and lavish scale, for the girl was the most beautiful that had ever been seen in the Soudan. When the wedding dances were all but finished a message arrived from the Khaleefa that Hamad and his bride were to repair at once to Omdurman. When they got there all his money was confiscated, his bride was put into the harem of the Khaleefa, and he himself was cast into the "Saier," the terrible prison that was a kind of perpetual Black Hole. On the fall of Omdurmnn it is supposed that one of the sheiks who gave information against Hamad took the woman from the Khaleefa's harem, and escaped with her into the South. At any rate, thre was, until recently, if

report is to be believed, a white woman of more than ordinary beauty among the women of a chief of the Equatoria. It is well known that, after the death of Gordon and the triumph of the Mahdi, there were living in Omdurman many white women who, whilst nominally .Mohammedans, were really adherents to the faith of their upbringing. Charles Xeufeld mentions them repeatedly in his book. The reason that these women were not stolen during the first few days of the Arab triumph is difficult to understand. It is possible that the Mahdi set a guard over all the white women, of whose existence he was aware. At any rate, the Khaleefa, who was the head official in Omdurman, protected them when law and order, such as it was, was restored. He did this from no humane motives, but that he might give them as a reward to such of the Mahdi's followers who deserved recompense.

Though it is known that there must lie still many white women—3ome of them, alas! of British descent—captive in the harems of the Soudan, the subject is one full of mystery. The desert has swallowed them up, and will never disgorge them. In many cases all their relatives were killed at the fall of Khartoum, so that there is no one interested in them. In any case, they have been reported dead; and that is the reason that the almost impossible task of rescuing them was never undlertaken.

The life of a Soudanese wife is one that must be full of horror to a white woman, particularly if she be English.

For the first two years after marriage the bride does not work at all—that is, if she is one of the four legal wives allowed by the Prophet. It is to be supposed, however, that the white women who fell to the lot of the llalidi were in the uature of extra ornaments or extra servants in their harems. Arabs are lovers of beauty; and many of their women are almost as white as Europeans, so it is possible that, for a short while at least, the Arabs treated their captives in a not altogether cruel manner, as they understood it. These poor women would spend dreary, monotonous days in the big tents decorated with carpets, and lined with stud's of as many colors as those in a stained glass window.

Stupified by perfumes and dulled by a chronic ennui, they would gradually sink into a stupor of brain and body, until some fresh favorite was installed, and they were turned out to work in the fields.

While she was still a beauty in her husband's eyes, she would be so closely guarded as to have no possible intercourse with the outside world. If her lord and master lived by any chance in one of the miserable mud hovels of the desert she would be locked in with heavy bolts when he went out. If he lived, as is most likely, in a tent, the door-flap would be made fast with many precautions. Then her lord would strew colored sand without the door, so that no trespassing footsteps might come without leaving a print as witness of the intrusion.

When he returned from one of his long journeys, laden with gums and silks and stud's from overseas, he would bring her, for her delectation, brocades, spangled tulles, tissues of gold and silver, and any other gift that might serve to make her more attractive in his eves. ;"v

But to the Arab a woman means eternal youth; and in the harems of the Soudan one favorites succeeds another, even as one wave succeeds another wave in the ocean. At the first sign of a wrinkle or grey hair the wife or favorite is sent to act a scrvant'3 part—her reign is over.