64 THE WAR IN THE SOUDAN.

undertook to move some troops in the direction of Kassala. Then came a catastrophe—the fall of Berber and the massacre of its garrison and popula¬ tion—3,500 souls—another victory for the rebels.* The plight of the poor fellah became weekly worse and worse, the price of grain fell, taxes remained as before except that now they were allowed to be paid in kind. Anarchy surged over the land like a flood, panic was chronic, and the people cared not who ruled over them. “ We possess nothing but our shirts to defend our bodies,” they said, “ we are friends of the first who brings the stick.”f All was a medley : no news could be relied on, no official could be relied on, even the pious Mudir of Dongola began to be suspected; whether Berber had fallen no one knew ; what was the fate of Khartoum no one knew.

In England a similar medley existed : amidst a host of internal topics Egypt actually began to be forgotten. The Egyptian conference, with the interminable researches of the “finaucial experts,” for a long while dragged out a sorry existence, then ended in nothing; the Franchise bill and the famous Reform demonstration gave the people something else to think about beside the oppressed fellah, the unsettled finances, and the beleaguered garri¬ sons. Worse than all, the fate of Gordon himself seemed for a time to have slipped the public memory, for we find a correspondent writing on the advance of the Mahdi and the situation in Upper Egypt actually apologizing for his temerity and saying that “even Gordon’s isolation at Khartoum and the question as to whether an attempt is or is not to be made to relieve him is one about which the public has apparently ceased greatly to care.”J It seemed as if by some curious influence the public senses were dulled to all external impressions though the mind still wandered excitedly within—as a man in delirium perceives no outward object yet furiously raves on ideas of his own making. The drug, in the form of the vote of censure, had acted differently from the manner expected, and instead of inducing activity it brought on stupor—a stupor only made more profound by the lulling influence of the conference.

At length this last is brought to an end. France and England cannot agree, and the meeting is adjourned sine die. England is once more free to act ; she has thrown off the fettering friendship of her quondam ally in Egyp¬ tian affairs and henceforth will act alone. The fever is gone ; the senses * This massacre, by the way, the Nord Deutsche Zeitung calmly remarks was due solely to England’s Soudan policy.

f See despatch from Alexandria to the Times, dated June 23, 1884. t Mr. Claude Vincent in the Times, July 17th, 1884.