752. Native rulers.—In this part of the Sudan there have been many small kingdoms, each ruled by a native king. Parts of the Sudan often have been conquered by nomads from the desert. The conquerors would then protect a certain territory from other nomads, and take a part of the grain and flocks as a tax.
75.3. Foreign rulers.—Most of the Sudan is a part of the great African possessions of England and France. The people of the European countries are becoming more and more interested in their African colonies, and we may expect many changes to take place in the future. (Sec. 723.) 754. A great future trade. — European rule will insure more peace for this region and an increase of population. The Arabs have carried slaves out of the Sudan for so many centuries that one can almost find the way to the Mediterranean coast by following the trail of human bones, where the poor negroes have died by the wayside. One of the chief objects of tribal wars was to take prisoners to sell as slaves. Now that the slave trade has been stopped and Europe sends rulers, there are but few instances of tribal wars.
Will foreign rule increase the population? In 1881, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan had eight and one-half million people. By 1903, wars, famines, and diseases had killed over six millions of them, and the total population was less than two millions. In 1903, the English took charge. They have kept peace and have done what they could to teach the natives better methods of living. In eighteen years the population has about doubled. Northern Nigeria has nine millions of people. The whole Sudan has twenty millions and may soon have fifty or seventy-five millions.
This region of hot African grasslands, more than half as large as the United States, may some day produce quantities of peanuts and beans, much cotton and corn, and many cattle. Its millions of big, strong black people are not very fond of work. Who would be ambitious in a country as hot as theirs? But they would like to have some thing to sell, so that they could buy some of our things.
755. Cotton.—For a long, long time even the most isolated tribes in that region have grown a little cotton, spun it by hand and woven it into cloth. (Fig. 537.) Now comes the European, trying to teach better ways of growing cotton. Much land can be irri gated along the Niger, the Shari, and the Nile. The English are planning large reser voirs for irrigating hundreds of thousands of acres on the plains south of Khartum. Passenger and freight steamboats are regu larly running on 2500 miles of the upper Nile River and its branches, between Aswan, 24° N., and Rejaf, 5° N. Some cotton is being shipped each year from the trade center at Kano, Nigeria, to Manchester, England. There seems to be no reason to suppose that the black men in the Sudan may not grow almost as much cotton as their cousins in the cottonfields of our own south.
756. Cattle.—The Sudanese have been cattle-herders for many generations. This being the case, it may be easy to start the export of meat. The government of Anglo Egyptian, Sudan is fighting cattle diseases there, just as our Department of Agriculture is fighting them in the United States (Sec. 44). The native corn, or durra, of this region is much like our own Kafir corn, which is, in fact, an African plant. Such corn is good for cattle-feed in Oklahoma and Kansas, so why not in Africa? Nor is there any reason why canned meat should not go to the Lon don market from big packing plants at Kano or Khartum, as well as from Omaha, Nebraska, or Forth Worth, Texas. Costs have much to do with such matters. At present, in the interior grasslands of Africa, the tin can costs more than the meat.
Now that this wide belt of grassy lowlands has entered upon the age of engineering, of railroads, of irrigation, of tractors, and of reapers; of scientific agriculture, of dry farming, of new crops, and of the new methods of teaching farming, it will be interesting to see what the white man as teacher and policeman, and the black man as pupil and worker, can succeed in doing there.