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(The White Nile)

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CHAPTER I: THE REBELLION OF THE MAHDI

The north-eastern quarter of the continent of Africa is drained and
watered by the Nile. Among and about the headstreams and tributaries
of this mighty river lie the wide and fertile provinces of the Egyptian
Soudan. Situated in the very centre of the land, these remote regions
are on every side divided from the seas by five hundred miles of
mountain, swamp, or desert. The great river is their only means of
growth, their only channel of progress. It is by the Nile alone that
their commerce can reach the outer markets, or European civilisation can
penetrate the inner darkness. The Soudan is joined to Egypt by the Nile,
as a diver is connected with the surface by his air-pipe. Without it
there is only suffocation. Aut Nilus, aut nihil!

The town of Khartoum, at the confluence of the Blue and White Niles, is
the point on which the trade of the south must inevitably converge. It
is the great spout through which the merchandise collected from a wide
area streams northwards to the Mediterranean shore. It marks the extreme
northern limit of the fertile Soudan. Between Khartoum and Assuan the
river flows for twelve hundred miles through deserts of surpassing
desolation. At last the wilderness recedes and the living world broadens
out again into Egypt and the Delta. It is with events that have occurred
in the intervening waste that these pages are concerned.

The real Soudan, known to the statesman and the explorer, lies far
to the south--moist, undulating, and exuberant. But there is another
Soudan, which some mistake for the true, whose solitudes oppress the
Nile from the Egyptian frontier to Omdurman. This is the Soudan of the
soldier. Destitute of wealth or future, it is rich in history. The names
of its squalid villages are familiar to distant and enlightened peoples.
The barrenness of its scenery has been drawn by skilful pen and pencil.
Its ample deserts have tasted the blood of brave men. Its hot, black
rocks have witnessed famous tragedies. It is the scene of the war.

This great tract, which may conveniently be called 'The Military
Soudan,' stretches with apparent indefiniteness over the face of the
continent. Level plains of smooth sand--a little rosier than buff, a
little paler than salmon--are interrupted only by occ