THE RACIAL RESOURCES OF THE SOUDAN.

Evening Post, Volume LVII, Issue 32, 8 February 1899, Page 2

THE RACIAL RESOURCES OF THE SOUDAN.

AN INTERESTING TRIBE. In the course of an article entitled "New Light on the Bahr-el-Ghazal Frontier," Mr. J. T. Wills introduces readers of the Fortnightly Review to an interesting race of savages occupying part of the Soudanese province oi Dar Fertit, which abuts on the frontier of the French Sahara to the west, and of the Congo State to the South. The race in question are the Zandehs, who were officially recognised in 1873, when their ruler Zebehr began to pay £15,000 a year to the Khedive for the Governorship of Dar Fertit and Shakka. By marriage with a Zandeh princess, by negotiation and war, Zebehr had gained the mastery of that district. In spite of accusations of slave-raiding made against him, Zebehr appears to have been on the contrary a model ruler. Mr. Wills says that persecuted tribes immigrated to enjoy hia protection, and then fought to a man for hia son, that in 1863 his trade post was known as that of Zebehr the Just, and that the natives round it were protected and worked for wages, contrary to all iisage elsewhere. Gordon, it appears from official documents, wished to co-operate with Zebehr in 1884, and, if he could have obtained leave, intended to make south for Dar Fertit from Khartoum. It is worthy of note also that it was one of Zebehr's native officers who "swept every Mahdist and slave-dealer out of the Bahr-Ghazal in 1886." " While the rest of the Soudan has been a welter of rebellion and bloodshed, Dar Fertit," according to Mr. Wills, " survives in good order. The foundations of governs ment are solid. The Zandeh chiefs are a hereditary, feudal aristocracy, and they rule generally with an iron hand, and with much judgment and good sense. They were ignorant of all civilisation, and all but naked till 1858; but they know how to rule. They are of pure blood, and all are cousins in the fourth or nearer degrees. Their pedigrees go back to the time of James I. There were six generations of chiefs ruling the united nation — a time evidently of war and conquest — after which the chiefs' pedigrees split. They are a ruling race of high caste, something unique in Central Africa for caste, self-respect, trustworthiness, and ruling qualities. They ar& not negroes, though copper-coloured, and the undoubted existence of individuals •with blue eyes, red hair, and an extraordinary fair complexion, still awaits an explanation. In time and presumable locality, the first name in this Zandeh pedigree comes bo close to the issue of that Elizabethan sailor, Andrew Battel, of Essex, who lived for years far up country in the Upper Ogawai, that one wonders if he helped to make this race." In 1883 the population of the district was estimated at a million and a half, comprising half a million Zandehs, half a million negro subjects of the Zandehs, and half a million of others. The French Colonial Party desires to create a French negro army in Africa, and Zandeh land would make an excellent recruiting ground. Mr. Wills regards the country as important for commercial and strategical reasons, and the people as the best fitted to reorganise the Soudan..