Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1891-03-09
name of liberated slaves, were put into
training for the orroy n1bo .-rx1- :.

name of liberated slaves, were put into
training for the army. The supply of
these soldiers is not, as some authorities
seem to think, inexhaustible. Mr.. Stanley
took away with him goodly contingent:
another contingent has perished at Sua-
kim and on the Nile; but of those that re-
main it may safely be said that for war in
so hot region, and especially against the
slave dealers, (whom we dignity ss der
wishes above all other dervishes), they are
most useful, and may eventually be of
further use as showing an example to the
fellah soldier.
ment is their inherent savagery They are
reckless of the lives they have with such
difficulty preserved, and when they come
hand to hand with their former masters
the unhappy jellab has but poor chance.
When, at Suakim last autumn, they were
ordered to charge trench full of dervish-
es, they went forward with reckless fury.
outstripping their European officers, and,
occupying simultaneously both ends of the
trench, literally raked it from end to end
with their fire, leaving not a single man
alive. How far they are to be depended
on before other troops We have no means
of knowing. The few Egyptian regiments
who were led to dire defeat by the ex-Khe-
dives son in the Turkish and Russian war
were largely composed of those black
slaves, then newly imported by the jel-
labs, hastily drilled, led by Turkish or
Egyptian officers, and exposed to the one
elemental condition of which they had
previously known nothing-intense cold.
They had been parboiled under the eaua-
tor and roasted in the desert, but snow
and frost were too much for them. They
had; moreover, no special gludge against
the Russian-on the contrary, if they had
been long enough in Egypt, they cannot
but have learned to hate the Turk
Their Moslem fanaticism, if it has ever
existed, had not had time to grow; and, d,
unlike the jellabs, the soldiers of the czar
had never injured them With the SOL
diers of Sir Francis Grenfen it is differ
ent. Their own recollections of early life
what they have heard from their com
rades-what has been told to them BY the
unhappy refugees on Nubian territory of
the vengeance wreaked by the 'dervishes'
on the unresisting villagers of the Upper
Nile after the fall of Khartoum-these and
many other considerations which it is not
very easy for the English traveller to faith
ON make the black soldier an implacable
foe to the white-faced jellab who murdered
his mother and burned his village and sub
Jected himself to every indignity and bod
lily torment that the most refined system
of cruelty could invent. There is some
thing more than the mere irony of fate in
the fact that the same tender-hearted
members of parliament who are obliged by
circumstances to condone cattle -houghing
and to ignore the boycotting of the widow
and the fatherless are also constrained to
cheer the slave-dealer and to decry his now
for time triumphant victim.
The triumph of the negro soldier may
not last long. How far the conscript fell
lab will be able to take his place is ques-
tion which the experience of the future
can alone solve. AT present all the bet
ting is against him. True, he is very obe-
dent to English officers, regular and pune
tual in his regimental duties, scrupulously
sober-a point in which he far excels his
sable comrade-orderly, clean, and, con-
sidering the miseries of his lot, torn from
his family and his farm and condemned
for no fault of his own to what he looks
upon as penal servitude for an indefinite
period, wonderfully cheerful Soldier like
he is not and never Will be. He and his
ancestors have stopped over the black soil
for too many generations to make it possi-
BILE for him to stand upright as the drill
sergeant would have him. AS to fighting,
he might do wonders behind walls and es-
pecially in the protection of his native vii
lage. On the hated "Jebel," the stony
land where no water is, unlike the negro.
he is out of his element