dissolute mode of life which caused his early death. He died in the
mortar hut, which I previously described; and his adherents gave out
that he was about to travel through the heavens for a space of three
years. People were not allowed to say "The Mahdi is dead," but "El Mahdi
intakal" (_i.e._ "The Mahdi has been removed").

The shock of his death was terrible. The wild fanatics were, so to
speak, struck dumb; their eyes were suddenly opened; and their very
confusion showed that they had realized, the Mahdi was a liar. Omdurman
was full of suppressed murmuring; and the people were collected in
groups, talking of this awful catastrophe.

Those who were oppressed believed that the sudden collapse of Mahdieh
must result in a revolution. No one believed that the Mahdi's party
could continue ruling in his name. Would that some good man could have
been found to rapidly seize this opportunity of putting himself at the
head of the anti-Mahdiists; he must have been successful!

The confusion in the Mahdi's household was beyond description; his women
wept and wailed in the wildest grief. Ahmed Wad Suleiman and the Mahdi's
nearest relatives prepared a grave immediately beneath the bed on which
he had died; the body was washed, wrapped in a shroud, according to the
Moslem custom, and, in the presence of the Khalifas and all the members
of the Mahdi's family, it was lowered into the grave, amidst the
lamentations and wailing of the enormous crowd collected outside the
building. Before the grave was filled in, the body was sprinkled with
perfumes; then each person present took a handful of earth and threw it
into the grave, amidst murmurs of "Ya Rahman, Ya Rahim!" (_i.e._ O
merciful, O gracious God!) A simple monument was erected over the tomb.

Thus ended the Mahdi--a man who left behind him a hundred thousand
murdered men, women, and children, hundreds of devastated towns and
villages, poverty, and famine. Upon his devoted head lies the curse of
his people whom he had forced into a wild and fanatical war, which
brought indescribable ruin upon the country, and which exposed his
countrymen to the rule of a cruel tyrant, from whom it was impossible
to free themselves.

Before his death, the Mahdi had nominated the Khalifa Abdullah as his
successor; he saw that this was the only man capable of holding in check
the rapacious Sudanese tribes, and of governing the strange empire which
he had raised; but the selection of this "foreign