Identifier: fireswordinsuda00slat (find matches)
Title: Fire and sword in the Sudan : a personal narrative of fighting and serving the Dervishes, 1879-1895
Year: 1896 (1890s)
Authors: Slatin, Rudolf Carl
Artist: Robert Talbot Kelly
Subjects:
Publisher: London : Arnold
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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ed. Their wretched condition, and thesmells which emanate from these pestilential by-paths arebeyond description. Dead horses, camels, donkeys, andgoats block the way; and the foulest refuse lies scatteredabout. Before certain feast-days, the Khalifa issues ordersthat the city is to be cleaned; but, beyond sweeping allthese carcases and refuse into corners, nothing further isdone; and when the rainy season begins the fetid air exhal-ing from these decaying rubbish heaps generally producessome fatal epidemic, which sweeps off the inhabitants byhundreds. Formerly, there were cemeteries within the city; butnow all the dead must be buried in the desert north ofthe parade ground. Fever and dysentery are the prevailing maladies inOmdurman, and between the months of November andMarch an almost continuous epidemic of typhus feverrages. Of late years numbers of new wells have been made.Those north of the mosque give good water; but those inthe southern quarters of the city are mostly brackish.
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C SoO MISCELLANEOUS REMARKS. 571 They vary in depth from thirty to ninety feet, and aregenerally dug by the prisoners under the direction of thesaier. He has been taken to the Saier, is an expression onefrequently hears; and it means that some wretched creaturehas been carried off to the prison. The mere mention ofthis word awakens feelings of horror and dread in theminds of all who hear it. The prison is situated in thesoutheastern quarter of the city, near the river, and issurrounded by a high wall. A gate, strongly guarded dayand night by armed Blacks, gives access to an inner court,in which several small mud and stone huts have beenerected. During the day-time, the unhappy prisoners,most of them heavily chained and manacled, lie about inthe shade of the buildings. Complete silence prevails,broken only by the clanking of the chains, the hoarseorders of the hard-hearted warders, or the cries of somepoor wretch who is being mercilessly flogged. Some ofthe prisoners who may have speci

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