WARS OF THE NINETIES. 142 miles of wall would be to weaken rather than to strengthen the defence. Instead of this he enclosed the central portion of the city by a strongly-built stone wall. Inside this rampart werethe mosque and theMahdi's tomb,his own palace and the barracks of his bodyguard, a pickedforce somethousands strong. Thiswalled enclosure was to be the citadel of the defence. It was about a milebroadfrom east to west, and rather more than a mile and a half long from north to south. On the south-west side the wall wasnot completed,but this gap was flanked by the walls of the mosqueand partly closed by somelarge buildings.

" On the north side of the city rmd close to theriver," continues Slatin," is the Beit-el-Mal (treasury), which is an enormous walled-in enclosure, subdivided into a variety of courts in whichare stored goods coming from all partsof the Soudan and from Egypt, as well as grainstores and slave-courts. A little to the south of the Beit-el-Mal lies the public slave market. The town ofOmdurman is built,for the most part, on fairly level ground, but here and there are a few small hills. The soil consists mostly of hardred clay, and is very stony. For his own convenience the Khalifa has driven large straight roads through variousparts of the town, and to make way for these numbers of houses were levelled, but no compensation was given to the owners. . . . Outside the large unfinished wall built alongthe road leading to the Beit-el-Mal are a number of shops belonging to various trades, all of which are kept quite distinct— such as carpenters, barbers, tailors, butchers, etc. The mehekemet es suk (market police) are charged with maintaining order in the town; and the gallows erected in various parts of the city are avery evident indication of the system of government of the country.

As an additional protection another space, a mile wide and about half a mile across from north to south, abutting on the stone-walled enclosure,was surrounded with a lowerrampart of sun-dried bricks. This space was crowded withhouses, and the approach to it was through the northern streets of the city. Thus the storming of Omdurman would have meant a street fight among strongly-built mud-walled houses and the forcing of two walled enclosures and several largebuildings.

On the riverside, batteries had been erected and armed with cannon. The mass of these formed an almost continuous line between the east wall of Omdurman and the edge of the river. There were otherbatteries to north and south of this main line, and others again on Tuti Island and in front of the ruins of Khartoum. TheKhalifa had attempted to strengthen the river defences by means of torpedoes, but this effort at modern methods of warfare was a failure. It is said, however, that during his experiments he succeeded in blowing up one of his steamers. The only two others that were serviceable had been sent up the White Nile towards Fashoda.

" With the exception of the few broad roads which the Khalifa has made, the only communicationsbetween thevarious quartersconsist of narrow winding lanes, and in these all the filth of the city is collected. Their wretched condition and the smells which emanate from these pestilential by-paths are beyond description. Dead horses, camels, donkeys, and goats block the way, and the foulest refuse lies scattered about. Before certain feast-days the Khalifa issues orders that the city is to be cleaned, butbeyondsweeping all these carcases and refuse into corners, nothing further is done, and when the rainy season begins, the foetid air exhaling from these decaying rubbish heaps gradually produces some fatal epidemic which sweeps off the inhabitantsby hundreds."

The army that was to defend Omdurman was concentrated on the north side of the city. Only smallparties of mounted troops had been pushed out in advance to watch the approach of the Anglo-Egyptian army. A detached force had been sent to the east bank to operate against Stuart-Wortley's "friendlies."

Such was the Khalifa's capital when Slatin escaped from it in 1895. The conquest of the Dongolaprovince by the Egyptian army in the following year alarmed Abdullahi as to the safety of his city, andhe began to fortify it. He madeno attempt to enclosethe whole inhabited area,realising that to have to garrison so many Such was the situation in the Dervish capital in the last days of August, and on the eve of the decisive struggle.