The Sirdar, Sir Reginald Wingate (the post of Governor-General of the Soudan is still combined with the command of the Egyptian Army) might well have despaired of the task which confronted him of administering those vast regions, 1,000,000 square miles in extent, when he succeeded to his post. The difficulties to be faced were enormous. It seemed as if every germ of civilization had been extinguished by the dervish rule. Everywhere villages were deserted; lands, once fertile, had gone out of cultivation; actual famine was seriously threatened. The decrease of population was extraordinary. Whole tribes enumerated in Colonel Stewart’s list had totally disappeared. When the British troops reached Metemmeh in the final march to Khartoum, they found the place a shambles. The once powerful tribe of the Jaalin had been massacred almost to a man by the Baggara dervishes. That was but one instance out of many of the Khalifa’s methods of government. From a country so wasted and desolate it seemed hopeless to expect a revenue for many years. The fabric of administration had to be built up again from the very bottom, and there was no money to do it with, far less to provide for that capital expenditure always necessary in a new country. Only Suakin, Halfa, and Dongola, from their longer military occupation, possessed even the rudiments of the machinery of government. No money was to be expected from England. More than that, every British officer in the Soudan was turning longing eyes to the war in South Africa. It was difficult to get new men with such an attraction elsewhere. Yet in spite of this it may be fairly said that the Soudan government has come safely through the troublous period of infancy. Sheer hard work on wise and statesman-like lines has had its due effect, and the British officials, most of them soldiers whose abilities would have brought them to distinction elsewhere could they have been spared, can so far congratulate themselves on the result of their patient labours.