Fire and Sword in the Sudan

Prompted by the earnest entreaties of my friends rather than by any wish of my own to relate my experiences, I have written these chapters.

The few months which have elapsed since my escape have been so much occupied in resuming my official duties, compiling reports, and satisfying the kindly interest displayed by a large number of people in my strange fate, that any attempt at quiet and steady literary work has been almost impossible.

During my captivity I was unable to make any notes or keep any diaries; in writing, therefore, the following pages, I have been dependent entirely on my memory, whilst the whirl of the busy European world and the constant interruptions to which I have alluded, have given me little time to collect my scattered thoughts.

When, therefore, after having been debarred for so many years from intercourse with outside affairs, and entirely out of practice in writing down my ideas, I find myself urged to lose no time in publishing an account of my adventures, I must beg my readers to excuse the many defects they may notice.

My experiences have no pretence to being of any literary or scientific value, and the personal episodes I have described can lay claim to little importance; I have merely attempted to give to those interested in Sudan affairs a true and faithful account of my life whilst fighting and serving the Mahdists.

RUDOLF SLATIN. LONDON, October, 1895.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY FATHER DON JOSEPH OHRWALDER,

LATE PRIEST OF THE AUSTRIAN MISSION STATION AT DELEN, IN KORDOFAN, AND FOR TEN YEARS A CAPTIVE IN THE MAHDI'S CAMP.

The joy at meeting my dear friend and former comrade in captivity, Slatin Pasha, in Cairo, after his miraculous escape, was indeed great; and it is with extreme gratification that I comply with the wishes of those friends who are interested in his experiences, to preface them with a few remarks.

To have been a fellow-sufferer with him for many years, during which the closest friendship existed between us,--a friendship which, owing to the circumstances of our captivity, was necessarily of a surreptitious nature, but which, interrupted as it was, mutually helped to alleviate our sad lot,--is I think a sufficiently good reason for my friends to urge that I should comply with their wishes.

Apart, however, from these purely personal motives, I need only refer to the fact that the small scraps of information which from time to time reached the outside world regarding Slatin Pasha, excited the deepest sympathy for his sad fate; what wonder, then, that there should have been a genuine outburst of rejoicing when he at length escaped from the clutches of the tyrannical Khalifa, and emerged safely from the dark Sudan?

It is most natural that all those interested in the weal and woe of Africa should await with deep interest all that Slatin Pasha can tell them of affairs in the former Egyptian Sudan, which only a few short years ago was considered the starting point for the civilisation of the Dark Continent, and which now, fallen, alas! under the despotic rule of a barbarous tyrant, forms the chief impediment to the civilising influences so vigorously at work in all other parts of Africa.

Slatin Pasha pleads with perfect justice that, deprived all these years of intellectual intercourse, he cannot do justice to the subject; nevertheless, I consider that it is his bounden duty to describe without delay his strange experiences, and I do not doubt that--whatever literary defects there may be in his work--the story of his life cannot fail to be both of interest and of value in helping those concerned in the future of this vast country to realise accurately its present situation.