e at once told to behave themselves, and were
allowed to go where they liked. The townsfolk and others who wished to
be let alone, turned their jibbehs inside out, at once a renunciation
of the Khalifa and his works as well as a sanitary gain. Some there
were who, averse to over-cleanliness, simply tore the dervish patches
off their dress, thus also resuming their fealty to the Khedive. The
roll of prisoners, however, in spite of convenient blindness in
letting all the lesser men who wished to escape do so, swelled to
about 11,000. In a house to house visitation the more important rebel
sheikhs and Baggara in hiding were caught and kept under arrest with
their followers. All the Greeks and the local chiefs whom Slatin Pasha
knew to be secretly inimical to the dervish rule, were from the first
secured safe permits and absolute liberty. Among them were many of the
Mahdi's relatives, former rulers of tribes, and Emirs once high in
power. Of wounded dervishes over 9000 were treated by the British and
Egyptian Army Medical Staffs, although the doctors' hands were busy
enough for two days with our own sick and wounded.

[Illustration: FRESH BATCH WOUNDED AND UNWOUNDED DERVISH PRISONERS,
OMDURMAN, 4TH SEPT. 1898.]

Within twenty-four hours after the Sirdar's entry Omdurman began to
assume the signs of orderly government. Thousands of the prisoners as
well as the natives were set to work to clean up the place. The
wounded were all carried into temporary hospitals and the dead were
decently interred in Moslem burial-places out upon the desert. Then
the thoroughfares were scrupulously scavengered by gangs of
yesterday's furious foemen, blacks and Baggara. The dead things were
put under ground, and the stagnant pools were drained or filled in.
Within a week it became actually possible to walk without an attack of
violent nausea in Omdurman. Visits were constantly paid to the
battle-field for the double purpose of rescuing any wounded
dervishes there might be and counting the dead. The large number of
the enemy who for days survived shocking wounds, to which a European
would have instantly or speedily succumbed, was appalling. These
wretched creatures had been seen crawling or dragging themselves for
miles to get to the Nile for water or into villages for succour. Food
and water were sent out to them by the Sirdar's orders on the day
after the battle, when it was seen that the natives gave neither heed
nor help to other than thei