OUR ENEMY IN THE SOUDAN.

Waikato Argus, Volume IV, Issue 288, 14 May 1898, Page 1 (Supplement)

OUR ENEMY IN THE SOUDAN.

A REIGN OF CRUELTY AND TERRORISM. Sayed Abdullah lisnSayedMoiiamueo, Khalifa of the Soudan, is at present one of the principal stars in Britain's foreign political firmament. Here are some entertaining facts about him and the city in which he lives, Omdurman, which the British forces will probably visit ere Ion.?. The Khalifa is fat, fifty, white-haired, quick-tempered, avaricious, suspicious, revengeful, and has a harem ot 400 wives. He does all he can to prevent social progress, encourages immorality among his people, is a patron of the slave trade, goes in mortal fear of h's life, keeps a prison, the dreaded " Saier " —thau which there has been no worse dungeon since the Black Hole of Calcutta—can neither road nor write, occasionally preaches in the Mosque, and regularly says hia prayers publicly five times a day. This is the man who, more than his predecessor the Mahdi, resolved on the death of poor Gordon ; in fact, he it was and not the Mahdi who ordered that no quarter should be granted to the beleaguered garrison of Khartoum. The Khalifa's fighting force at the time when Slatin Pa3ha was a prisoner in the Soudan consiated of 104,950 soldiers, 6,600 of which were cavalry, and 64,000 swordsmen and spearsmen. He had 75 field guns and 40,350 rifles, many of them Remingtons. Several of the latter have been spoiled through being cut down in order to make them lighter. Slavery is practised to a great extent under the Khulifa's fostering care, and large numbers of slaves have been marched from Abyssinia, including thousands of Christians. At one time there was a largo importation of the latter. They arrived it Omdurman in a collapsed condition, haviugleft hundreds of their companions to die on the road, but a? the condition of the survivors did not enable the dealers to sell rapidly they were allowed to drag their weary way to the banks of the Nile, where they died by the score, and their corpses were ultimately kicked into the river. A not unusual sight at Omdurman is the arrival of a slave driver who has had to bring up a drove of slaves for his royal master, say from Darfur, just like a cattle-driver might be engaged in England. With him he will frequently bring a large and curious collection of ears. The reason of this is that on the road dozens of the slaves Have fallen exhausted. "Without halting, the ears of the poor suffering wretches have been struck off in order that the driver have tangible proof to present to his master that the slaves have d.ied en route. Occisionally some of these poor wretches recover, but more often than rot it is to fall into the hands of other robbers, and eventually find their way to the Suk er Rokik, the great slave market of Omdurman.

The prices of slaves vary. An old slave will fetch from 50dol. to 80dol—such dollars as they aro in the Soudan, lumps of cooper silvered over—a middle-aged woman will fetch from 80dol to 120dol; young girls between eight and eleven, according to looks from HOdol to 190dol, and " Suryas," or women from the harem, 180dolto 700dol.

Marriage is oasy, and divoroe is cheap. Eaoh man is entitled to four legal wives, but they are so easily divorced that many m«n in the courso of ten years have been married 40 or 50 times at least, and it is common for women during that time to have from 15 to 20 husbands. Thero is, however, one group of women—and they hail the advent of tho British with delight—who have not had an opportunity of transferring ths affection from one lord and master to another. The group eoinieta of the religious MahcYs wives, for when their common husband died, his successor, the Khalifa, in order to preserve their sacred character, locked them up, and there they have been all these j r ears, seeing no man and no woman except once a year, when female relatives are allowed to visit them. The streets of Omdurman—if streets the narrow foetid lanes can be so termed—aro in a most wretched condition. If a horse or a camel or a donkey dies, tho carcase is pitched out into the street, and there it stays until the Khalifa thinks the streets want to be cleaned, aud he gives an order accordingly, which simply means that the offal and filth are swept into the corners and still allowed to remain. When the wet season arrives, an epidemic invariably'breaks out. The Saier, or chief prison, is simply a centre of horrors. At a word from the Khalifa the poor wretched victim is marched off to this degrading place, where during the day he is permitted to grovel about in the dirt and sand of a small barricaded court-yard, and in the night is driven with t.io other prisoners like sheep iuto one of the huts. This is the terror of the whole incarceration, for the hut« are so crowded that it is impossible for anyone to lie down, and every night there is the scene of the " Black Hole of Calcutta" enacted. Men and women fight and scramble iu older to obtain comfortable standing room and to get as near as possible to tho narrow barred window, panting for a breath of air. In the morning it is quite a common thing for the warder to have several dead bodies to haul out, and it is painful to see the living stagger forth into the courtyard bathed in perspiration and completely exhausted by the turmoil of the night. A man who fell under the Khalifa's displeasure was the woll-knowu Emir Zcki Summal, and he was immured in a cell shapoJ like a ooffin. Thero was a hole in tho side of tbe coffin for water to bo pushed in, aud thero ho lingered, uttering no complaint, bravely meeting tho awful and agonising death which sealed his fate 2-i hours after his imprisonment. The Khalifa's emissaries watched his dying agonies through the ho'o, and laughed at what they considered a very interesting entertainment. There is ono Furopean, a man named Charls Neufeld, in the clutches even now. He suffered the horrible incarceration in the huts of tho Saier for some time, till one night ho resolutely refused to enter. The result was that he was flogged mercilessly, until one of the warders ask him why he did not cry for mercy. The brave fellow replied that others might do so, but not he. In the end he was removed to Khartoum, where he has now a better time, being engaged is refining saltpetre for the Government arsenal. As all tho world knows, two men have escaped from this dreadful city, tho renowned Rudolf C. Slatan, who found his way into the Soudan and obtained an appointment under General Gordon, only to be made a prisoner at tho fnll of Khartoun, and lather Ohrwalder, who was also dotained in Omdurman after Gordon's death. Neither of them suffered the Siier but they underwent terrible viciastitudes until they fortunatoy escaped.