THE RECONQUEST OF THE SOUDAN. 3

tohis followers to be aproof of the genuineness of his claims. They believed themselves irre- sistible. When he died in 1885 his tomb at Omdurman became a sanctuary,the centre of a new city, which was to be the capital of the Mahdist empire.

a little at night from the Nile, but it did not suffice for the crowds of fighting men and camp followers, camels and horses. At Argin they fought desperately through a long summer day to get possession of the straggling riverside village, but the gunboats and the Egyptian infantry drove them back with heavy loss into

the thirsty desert. A few days later General Grenfell headed them off at Toski with a strong Egyptian force, and in the battle which followed Nejumi was killed and his army cut to pieces

and captured. Many of the prisoners gladly took service in the new Soudanese regiments which were being raised for the defence of the frontier.

His successor,the Khalifa Abdullahi,had been one of the best of his fighting Emirs. But whenhe became the ruler of Mahdism he com- pletely altered the character of the movement. It was no longer a fanatical religious rising. His tyranny made many of the tribes regret

even the rule of the Egyptian pashas. He sought to place the men of his own tribe, the Taaisha Baggaras, a warlike race of the central Soudan,in all posts of power and profit. The chiefs of the other tribes were either sent on hopeless expeditions, where they met with defeat

anddeath,or they were accused of treason and executed or imprisoned at Omdurman;hence in later years a gradual waning of the old

fanatical spirit that had united all the tribes under the bannerof theMahdi. Races that had foughttothe deathagainst theBritish in the first years of the revolt were themselves ready torise

against the Khalifa when it became evident that his one object was to enrich his tribe, live a life

ofcareless luxury at Omdurman, andpass on the kingshipof the Soudan to oneof his sons.

Toski was thehigh water-markof the Dervish movement. There were no more attempts to invade Egypt in force. The camp at Sarras was broken up after a sharp action. A fort wasbuilt

there and kept in communication by railway with Haifa. Another advanced post was estab- lished at Murat on the old caravan route from Korosko to Abu Hammed. The possession of

these two points made raids on the Nile villages more difficult, but did not completely put an end to them.

Thus, by thebeginning of the 'Nineties,Mah- dism had enteredupon the period of its decline. The first wildimpulse that had launched it upon its career ofconquest wasexhausted. Manyof its

best leaders were dead; dissensionhad begunin itsranks, andit hadlost much of the prestige of its earlier victories in its later defeats. On the- north it had met and been forced to retire before the once-despised Egyptians, who had

now become formidableadversaries,thankstothe

training given to them by British officers. But these were not its only enemies. The outposts of the Congo Free State were gradually pushed

into the Nile valley from the south-westward. On the other flank theItalians from their new colony on the Red Sea,pu-hed their outposts

towards Kassala and captuie-d that important position in1894. Events ware ripening for the reconquest of the Soudan It was impossible for any civilised power in Egypt to tolerateper- manently the existence ofanaggressive barbarism

on the Upper Nile. The only question was—

When would the movement begin?

But this decline of Mahdism was the work of nearly ten years. At first there was little sign

of it. In1889 a Dervish army even attempted the invasion of Egypt. Thousands of desert warriors,under the Emir Abd-er-Rahman Wad- en-Nejumi, came marching down the western

bank of the Nile. Haifa stands on the east bank, and they hoped by making a detour by the desert to avoid the frontier fortress, and raise the country towardsAssouan in insurrection in

the rearof the garrison, thus cutting it off from Egypt. Wad-en-Nejumi has been called the Bavard of Mahdism. He was the most daring soldier the movement had produced. He had been foremost in the terrible fight at Kashgil,

whichended in the massacre of General Hicks's army, and he had led the assault on Khartoum.

But his venturesome desert march for the in- vasion of Egypt was destined to endin hopeless disaster. As he movednorthwards by the desert track parallel with the river,Colonel (afterwards General) Wodehouse, the governor of the fron-

tier, kept abreast of him with a gunboat flotilla and a force of Egyptian regulars under British officers, towed on bargesby the steamers. The Dervishes were soon short of water. They got

Suakin had been made safe from attack by Colonel Kitchener's recapture of Tokar in1892. On the Nile no serious forward movement was attempted till i8q6. Up to that date there had only been occasional raids by the Dervishes,and occasional reconnaissances into the desert by the

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