The population of the half-conquered provinces was robbed in every conceivable manner by tax-collectors, who were seldom or never paid their salaries of from twenty-five to thirty shillings a month, and they were assisted in the duties of tax collecting by companies of irregular soldiers whose salaries also were never paid. Where money was not forthcoming, the taxes were collected in kind, and it may be imagined what the result of tax collecting was. The people were driven farther and farther away from the cultivated lands and watercourses. The “Sudd,” that rank growth of weeds which obstruct the navigation of the Nile and its tributaries, was left to accumulate year after year, the little clearances which the inhabitants themselves made formerly, |351| being abandoned as they but aided the passage of boats conveying soldiers on tax collecting or conquest of territory expeditions. Admitting, for the sake of argument, that some of the Soudan tribes may have risen to the dignity of independent kingdoms, their history may be written with one word—“anarchy,” and when the “Turk” government was established, general rebellion was rife from the beginning until it culminated in the rising of Mohammad Ahmed. The population of the Soudan was, and still is, divided into three great classes, (1) the pure Arab to whom manual labour has been unknown since the day his ancestor Ishmael mixed the mortar with which to cement the stones of the Kaaba or House of God, which Abraham built at Mecca; (2) the Negroid, who will perform a few light duties, but who has absorbed all the worst to the exclusion of the few better qualities of his progenitors,—and, (3) the Black—naturally indolent and too lazy to work,—without ambition, and whose presumed avarice only extends to the possession of a little more than he can eat. For centuries the Black has been the slave of the Arab, and performed all the manual labour, such as the collection of gum and senna leaves, indiarubber, ivory, the cultivation of cereals, and the navigation of the rivers; but taking it all in all, the lot of the black slave might be envied by millions of workers in other parts of the world. With the introduction of the “Turk” government, all three classes were considered as “prey”; the slave proper had to work harder so that his master might be able to satisfy the rapacity of _his_ master—the official, and the slave knew this; the negroid, who believed in cultivating only so much dourra as was requisite for his needs, found that he had to cultivate enough to feed the soldiers quartered in his province, and to pay taxes not only on what he grew for himself, but on what he grew for nothing for the soldiers. It is no wonder, then, that the three waited the coming of some strong man to rid them of the common enemy.