and gendarmery were to be placed in the
hands of Englishmen; the Diara estates were to be economically managed;
foreigners were to be placed upon the same footing as natives in regard
to taxation. The other Powers, including Turkey but excluding France,
accepted the agreement. The office of financial adviser was given to Sir
Edgar Vincent.

The important work of the reconstruction of Egypt now began in earnest.
Sir Benson Maxwell set about establishing an effective means for the
impartial administration of justice, and Colonel Moncrieff undertook the
responsibility for the work of irrigation. Mr. Clifford Lloyd created a
police system, reorganised the prisons and hospitals, and set free the
untried prisoners. Baker Pasha formed a provincial gendarmery, and Sir
Evelyn Wood organised an army of six thousand men.

In the year 1883, while this work of reconstruction was proceeding, a
religious insurrection, which had originated two years previously, was
forced upon the notice of the government. It has already been related
that the Ismailian sect of the Muhammedans had introduced the doctrine
of a coming Messiah, or Mahdi, who was to be the last of the imans, and
the incarnation of the universal soul.

Not a few impostors had exploited this doctrine to their own advantage,
and some of the Arabian tribes were firmly convinced that the Mahdi had
come, and that the Mahdis who had appeared to their kinsmen elsewhere
were merely clever charlatans. In the year 1881 Muhammed Ahmet, a
religious leader among the Moslem Arabs in the Central African provinces
of Kordofan and Darfur, proclaimed himself as the Mahdi, and called upon
the Muhammedans to initiate a holy war.

The Mahdi's continued advances were rendered possible by the precarious
state of affairs in Egypt. After a settlement was effected in 1883,
Hicks Pasha, an officer of courage and ability, who had retired from
the Indian army, gathered 11,000 men at Omdurman to quell the Mahdist
insurrection. With this force he started up the Nile and struck across
the desert to El-Obeid, where his troops were decoyed into a ravine, and
after three days' fighting his whole army was annihilated by the Mahdist
army numbering about 300,000 men. The entire Sudan then revolted against
Egypt. The redoubtable Osman Digna appeared with the Hadendowa Arabs
off the coast of the Red Sea, and harassed the Egyptian garrison. Osman
defeated Captain Moncrieff and an army of 3,000 Bashi-Bazouks led