power was in need of re-adjustment. The Jaalin
and Barabra were fast becoming dangerous. Nejumi's army was recruited
almost entirely from these sources. The reinforcements sent from
Omdurman consisted of men selected from the flag of the Khalifa Sherif,
who was growing too powerful, and of the Batahin tribe, who had shown a
mutinous spirit [Ohrwalder, TEN YEARS' CAPTIVITY.] The success of such
an army in Egypt would be glorious. Its destruction anywhere would be
convenient. Whatever Abdullah's motives may have been, his advantage was
certain. But the life of the empire thus compelled to prey upon itself
must necessarily be short.

Other forces were soon added to the work of exhaustion. The year
following the end of the Abyssinian war was marked by a fearful famine.
Slatin and Ohrwalder vie with each other in relating its horrors--men
eating the raw entrails of donkeys; mothers devouring their babies;
scores dying in the streets, all the more ghastly in the bright
sunlight; hundreds of corpses floating down the Nile--these are among
the hideous features, The depopulation caused by the scarcity was even
greater than that produced by the fighting. The famine area extended
over the whole Soudan and ran along the banks of the river as far as
Lower Egypt. The effects of the famine were everywhere appalling. Entire
districts between Omdurman and Berber became wholly depopulated. In the
salt regions near Shendi almost all the inhabitants died of hunger.
The camel-breeding tribes ate their she-camels. The riverain peoples
devoured their seed-corn. The population of Gallabat, Gedaref, and
Kassala was reduced by nine-tenths, and these once considerable towns
shrank to the size of hamlets. Everywhere the deserted mud houses
crumbled back into the plain. The frightful mortality, general
throughout the whole country, may be gauged by the fact that Zeki
Tummal's army, which before the famine numbered not fewer than 87,000,
could scarcely muster 10,000 men in the spring of 1890.

The new harvest came only in time to save the inhabitants of the
Soudan from becoming extinct. The remnant were preserved for further
misfortunes. War, scarcity, and oppression there had always been. But
strange and mysterious troubles began to afflict the tortured tribes.
The face of heaven was pitiless or averted. In 1890 innumerable swarms
of locusts descended on the impoverished soil. The multitude of their
red or yellow bodies veiled the sun and darkene