through the undergrowth.  Among the reeds of melancholy swamps huge hippopotami, crocodiles, and buffaloes prosper and increase.  Antelope of every known and many unclassified species; serpents of peculiar venom; countless millions of birds, butterflies, and beetles are among the offspring of prolific Nature.  And the daring sportsman who should survive his expedition would not fail to add to the achievements of science and the extent of natural history as well as to his own reputation.

The human inhabitants of the Soudan would not, but for their vices and misfortunes, be disproportioned in numbers to the fauna or less happy.  War, slavery, and oppression have, however, afflicted them until the total population of the whole country does not exceed at the most liberal estimate three million souls.  The huge area contains many differences of climate and conditions, and these have produced peculiar and diverse breeds of men.  The Soudanese are of many tribes, but two main races can be clearly distinguished:  the aboriginal natives, and the Arab settlers.  The indigenous inhabitants of the country were negroes as black as coal.  Strong, virile, and simple-minded savages, they lived as we may imagine prehistoric men—­hunting, fighting, marrying, and dying, with no ideas beyond the gratification of their physical desires, and no fears save those engendered by ghosts, witchcraft, the worship of ancestors, and other forms of superstition common among peoples of low development.  They displayed the virtues of barbarism.  They were brave and honest.  The smallness of their intelligence excused the degradation of their habits.  Their ignorance secured their innocence.  Yet their eulogy must be short, for though their customs, language, and appearance vary with the districts they inhabit and the subdivisions to which they belong, the history of all is a confused legend of strife and misery, their natures are uniformly cruel and thriftless, and their condition is one of equal squalor and want.

Although the negroes are the more numerous, the Arabs exceed in power.  The bravery of the aboriginals is outweighed by the intelligence of the invaders and their superior force of character.  During the second century of the Mohammedan era, when the inhabitants of Arabia went forth to conquer the world, one adventurous army struck south.  The first pioneers were followed at intervals by continual immigrations of Arabs not only from Arabia but also across the deserts from Egypt and Marocco.  The element thus introduced has spread and is spreading throughout the Soudan, as water soaks into a dry sponge.  The aboriginals absorbed the invaders they could not repel.  The stronger race imposed its customs and language on the negroes.  The vigour of their blood sensibly altered the facial appearance of the Soudanese.  For more than a thousand years the influence of Mohammedanism, which appears to possess a strange fascination for negroid races, has been permeating the Soudan, and,