CHAPTER XXIV.
EL OBEID—ANNIHILATION OF HICKS PASHA'S ARMY—1883.
Soudan is an Arabic word abbreviated from Biled-es-Soudan, "The Country of the Blacks." On the map of Africa it stretches nearly across the continent between the sixth and sixteenth degrees of north latitude, and includes a vast area. The Egyptian Soudan, which is the Soudan of this chapter, includes the region drained by the White Nile and its immediate tributaries, the Blue Nile, the Atbara and Sobat rivers, together with the country between the Nile and the Red Sea, north of the boundary of Abyssinia. It may be roughly said to have an area of 2,500,000 square miles, with a population of about 12,000,000. One fourth of the inhabitants are Arabs and kindred tribes, and the remaining 9,000,000 are negroes. All the Arabs and many of the negroes are Moslems, but it is probable that fully half of the inhabitants of the Soudan do not belong to the religion of Mohammed, though it has made rapid strides among them during the last twenty years.
From the days of Moses to the present time the rulers of Egypt have been the reverse of mild in their treatment of their subjects. In all ages the Egyptian peasantry have been regarded as the property of the sovereign; the many changes of dynasty have made little difference in the lot of the laboring classes in the most fertile land of the globe. From the heights of the pyramids "Forty centuries
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