“That will come by irrigation and better transportation. Until the Upper Nile irrigation projects can be put through the people must rely, as they do now, upon the rainfall, which is uncertain. When those plans have been carried out the country can be irrigated by the two Niles without diminishing the supply of water required for Egypt. Then the land will have water all the year round. Improved methods of cultivation will enormously increase the crops. At present the native merely walks over the ground after a rain and stirs it up with a stick while his wife or children follow behind dropping the seeds and covering them with their feet. Nothing more is done until two months later, when the crop is ready for reaping.”
“How about cotton?”
“I see no reason why the Sudan should not eventually be one of the big cotton countries of the globe. We are experimenting with it in all the provinces and are meeting with success. The land between the White and Blue Niles might be made one great cotton plantation, and the quality of the crop would be excellent. We are now raising fine cotton on the Red Sea near Suakim, and the crop is a profitable one. Plantations are also being set out by foreigners near Khartum. The cotton raised is fully equal to the best Egyptian.”
“But how about your labour, your Excellency; have you the workmen necessary to cultivate such crops?”
“That is a problem which only the future can solve,” replied the Sirdar. “We have all kinds of natives here, representing the different stages of savagery and semi-civilization. While there are a great many tribes whose people can be taught to work, others will need many years of training before they can be made into such farmers as we have in Egypt and India. We have some who will work only long enough to get food and supplies for their immediate needs and who, when a little ahead, will spend their time in dancing and drinking the native beer until they become poor again. We have also a large admixture of Arabs and other races who are of a far higher character and of whom we expect much.”
There is at least one white Negro in Africa. The man in the centre, who said both his parents were as black as the women beside him, is pure Sudanese, yet he has a fair skin, rosy cheeks, and flaxen hair.
Services at the Coptic Church at Khartum sometimes last five hours, while the worshippers stand barefooted on the cold floors. The Copts, direct descendants of the ancient Egyptians, have been Christians since St. Mark preached at Alexandria.
“Do you see many changes in the condition of the natives since the British occupation?”