If it were necessary to justify British interference in the Soudan, the fact of the repression of slavery would alone be sufficient. If the slave-trade does still exist, it does so only precariously in a few remote holes and corners. The markets of Khartoum and Omdurman and other centres are greater and more various than they have ever been before, but this one traffic, once their principal feature, is absent and gone for ever. No change could be greater or eventually more beneficial in its effects on the whole life and character alike of the slave-owners, the slave-dealers, and those unhappy tribes who involuntarily furnished their material. The establishment of personal liberty and of security for life and property, elsewhere the commonplaces of government, is not always the result of civilization in Africa. They are new, at any rate, in the Soudan. But it would ill become the English rulers of the Soudan to take any credit to themselves if their five years’ record had no more to show than this. They must not be content to be judged by comparison with any former rulers. After the Khalifa’s tyranny, almost any government would seem mild and beneficent. It is not enough merely to have stanched the wounds by which the patient was bleeding to death; the foundations must be laid for his complete restoration to health and vigour. Judged by this test, however, they need not fear the verdict. The chief difficulty is the universal ignorance and superstition that prevail. But these ancient fortresses are being directly assaulted every day by the extension of a sound system of education. The strong administration of equal justice, and the increasing growth of trade and commerce, work powerfully in the same direction. All three agents are stimulated by the improvement of communications by river, road, and railway. There is hope in the fact that, though the people start from a very low level, their past has not been one of complete barbarism. Although Egyptian and dervish rule repressed all habits of industry and culture, the people of the country which was once the kingdom of Sennar had considerable repute as weavers, goldsmiths, curriers, and potters. They still practise a native form of inoculation for small-pox. And, to take their traditions still further back, it is said that in some places, in the elaborate dressing of their hair and the use of ornamental sandals on great occasions, they reproduce the fashions of ancient Egypt. Ed Damer, near the junction of the Atbara and the Nile, now a paltry village, had once a university of its own no less than Sennar.