198 Dervishes Retire from Bahr el Ghazal.

his expedition, and was joined by Emin and Jephson in the beginning of February. Selim Bey, now commander of a portion of Emin's rebel troops at Wadelai, on being summoned by Emin, left Wadelai with 14 Egyptian officers for Tnnguru, and on arrival expressed his contrition for the mutiny. A council held on the 18th determined that the evacuation should take place on the Emin 10th April, and although Selim Bey, who had returned the coast, to Wadelai, where Fadl el Maula Bey was in command, wrote to say all would return with Emin to Egypt, they did not arrive in time, and, although every opportunity was given them of overtaking the expedition, no one appeared. The expedition, numbering about 600 men in all and 900 women and children, eventually arrived in .Zanzibar at the end of the year 1889.

The Emir Karamalla, after retiring from before Lado and Emin in 1885 to quash disaffections amongst his own Emirs against the Khalifa's succession, appears to have become disaffected himself. So the Khalifa, seeing the danger of trying to hold a huge province with insufficient forces, and fearing that Karamalla, being a Dongolawi, Bahr el might revolt altogether, ordered the latter to evacuate the evacuated by province and retire to Shakka and eventually to Omdur-Dervisnes. man. Thus the land returned to the semi-barbarous state it was in before the Egyptian occupation, and had peace from the Dervishes for some years, for the Mahdist operations were chiefly confined to the neighbourhood of the Nile, and had little effect in the direction of the Bahr el Arab and interior of the Bahr el Ghazal country. 1890. jn 1890 a rebellion against the Mahdists sprang up ShiMk war. among the Shilluks, in the neighbourhood of Fashoda,* and the Emir of Gallabat, Zeki Tumal, was sent thither to quell it, with a force chiefly consisting of the Gallabat men who had fought so well against the Abyssinians in 1891. the spring of 1889.f During the whole of 1891 the war continued with varying fortunes, the Dervishes on more than one occasion being heavily defeated, and the communications between Omdurman and Bahr el Jebel being completely interrupted, much to the anxiety of the Khalifa. Alarmist reports continued to arrive in Omdurman during 1891 to the effect that Emin Pasha was at Dufile, advancing northwards with a large body of * V. p. 181. f J 7 ", p. 191.