that its internal independence should be maintained. Fortunately, Ali Dinar is a wise and sagacious man, who is clearly alive to his own interests, and he has cooperated with the British authorities to restore tranquillity to the border.
Although no distinct line can be drawn, for the two divisions shade off into each other, the Sudan falls into two parts, the Arab and Mohammedan, and the Negro and Pagan. Each presents very different problems of administration. The negro tribes of the Upper Nile and of the remote Bahr-el-Ghazal have always been looked upon by their northern neighbours much as the Greeks in classical times looked upon the Barbarians—namely, as belonging to another category of the human race and by nature destined to slavery. Only that wonderful democratic leveller, the creed of Islam, can obliterate these distinctions. Some of the lower tribes, like the Dinkas and the more remote Niam-Niams, were powerful enough to maintain a sort of independence against the dervishes, but they were always ready to second the efforts of the Arab slave-dealers by raiding their weaker brethren and selling them into captivity. It takes time for them to learn the lesson that under British rule their old habits have to be put aside, and it takes time, too, for the smaller tribes to gain confidence in the new masters, and to realize that the British occupation does not mean merely a transfer from one set of slave-drivers to another. But wonderful progress has been made. British officers have visited and patrolled nearly the whole of the vast countries which border the Sobat, the Upper Nile, and the Bahr-el-Ghazal, and even the shyest and wildest tribes are rapidly settling down. Sometimes a sharper lesson has been found necessary. The most recently occupied province was the Bahr-el-Ghazal, which lies south of Kordofan, and stretches away from the western bank of the Nile to the Congo watershed. In the north of it the Dinkas, and in the south the Niam-Niams, were predominant. Both were fierce and warlike and averse
