DEATH OF THE MAHDI. 26 1 end would be no less than those that confronted us at the time that he wrote.

But the policy of withdrawal had been decided upon, and was continued when Lord Salisbury's government came into power. Sir Henry Drummond Woolf being appointed to proceed on a special mission to Egypt, Sir E. Baring and other high officials at Cairo returning to London. The results of Sir H. D. Woolf 's mission and of his communications with the government of the sultan at Constantinople have yet to be made known ; and the government of Lord Salisbury, considering the condition of the country, and especially of Dongola, where there were no supplies and to hold which would have necessitated a fresh expedition, were not prepared to check the evacuation of the provinces, though desultory hostilities continued to be carried on at intervals in the territory beyond Suakim.

At the end of July reports that the Mahdi had died from smallpox on the 29th of June were confirmed. He was taken ill on the 5th and died on the 8th day of Ramadan, but it was believed from the description of the disorder that his death was the result of spotted typhus caused by the pestiferous atmosphere of Khartum, where the dead were allowed to remain unburied after the fall of the town.

He had appointed four khalifs, Abdullah, Osman Digma, a Soudanese sheikh, and the Sheikh El Senoussi, who declined the honour. The followers of Abdullah proclaimed him the successor to the Mahdiship. He was an able and unscrupulous leader, but being only the sheikh of an insignificant tribe the chiefs of the great tribes refused to follow him as ruler, and fresh complications ensued.

Late in August the report of Lord Wolseley on the Soudan campaign was published, and a large number of decorations, promotions, and rewards to officers and men specially mentioned were granted.

General Sir F. Stephenson and General Grenfell were actively employed on the frontier of Egyptian territory, but at Sennir and elsewhere the opposition of the sheikhs to Abdullah and Mahdiism had succeeded in diminishing the power of the rebel leaders. Interest became chiefly directed to Suakim, where Colonel Chermside was in communication with Ras Aloula, who with a large Abyssinian force marched to the relief of Kassala, and meeting Osman Digma's army at Sufeit, where the Arabs were strongly fortified, fought a great battle, in which 3000 of the Arabs and Osman Digma himself were reported to have been slain.

In the early days of December, however, reports from Wady Haifa again directed notice to the forces occupying posts on the Nile. On the right or east bank of the Nile, about ninety miles south of Wady Haifa, is a place called Ginnis. The intervening territory is barren and desolate, and only a few poor and wretched Arabs were to be found there ; but the Nile Valley Railway, which at the close of the Khartdm campaign had