as well as they knew how. That is the root of the matter.

As for the leading happy the country which possessed a Hunter, a Macdonald, a Broadwood, and had hardly heard of any one of them. It has heard of them now, and it will be strange if it does not presently hear further.

XXXIV.

OMDURMAN.

IT was eleven o'clock. slowly to right and left of Gebel Surgham: the Second British and Second Egyptian were far ahead, filmy shadows on the eye-searing sand. The dervish dead and dying were strewn already over some thirty square miles-killed by bullets, killed by shrapnel, killed by shell from the gunboats, dying of wounds by the water, dying of thirst in the desert. But most lay dead in the fighting line. Mahdism had died well. If it had earned its death by its iniquities, it had condoned its iniquities by its death.

Four brigades were passing

Now on to overtake the Sirdar, to see the city of the Khalifa. Even now, after our triple fight, none was quite assured of final victory. We had killed a prodigious number of men, but where there were so many there might yet be more. Probably the same thought ran through many minds. If only they fought as well inside Omdurman! That would have spelt days of fighting and thousands of dead.

One thing, indeed, we knew by now: the defences of Omdurman on the river side existed no longer. On the 1st, from Gebel Feried, we had seen the gun-boats begin the bombardment, backed by the 37th Battery, with its howitzers, on the opposite bank. We had heard since of the effects. "It was the funniest thing you ever saw," said a captain of marines. "The boats went up one after another; when we got opposite the first fort, 'pop' went their guns. 'Bang, bang, bang,' went three boats and stopped up the embrasure. Came to the next fort: 'pop'; 'bang, bang, bang': stopped up that embrasure. So on all the way up. A little fort on Tuti Island had the cheek to loose off its pop-gun; stopped that up. Then we went on to Khartum, Forts there thought perhaps the boats couldn't shoot from behind, so they lay doggo till we had gone past. They found we could shoot from behind."

So far so good. But what should we find on the land side? Above all, should we find the Khalifa ? The only answer was to go and see. Four miles or so south of Agaiga the yellow streak of Khor Shamba marks roughly the northern limit of Omdurman ; thence to the Mahdi's tomb, the great mosque, and the Khalifa's house is a short three miles. The Second British Brigade was watering at the Khor-men and horses lapping up the half solid stuff till they must have been as thick with mud inside as they were out. Beyond it a sprinkling of tumble-down huts refracted

and heated sevenfold the furnace of the sunlight; from among them beckoned the Sirdar's flag.

It was about two o'clock when the red flag moved onward towards the Mahdi's tomb, heaving its torn dome above the sea of mud walls. The red and white looked light and gay beside the huge, cumbrous ravenbanner of the Khalifa, which flew sullenly at its side Before the twin emblems of victory and defeat rode the straight-backed Sirdar, General Hunter a head behind him, behind them the staff. Behind came the trampling 2nd Egyptian Brigade and the deadly smooth-gliding guns of the 32nd Battery. Through the sparse hovels they moved on; presently they began to densen into streets. We were on the threshold of

the capital of Mahdism.

And on the threshold came out an old man on a

donkey with a white flag. The Khalifa

SO we

believed had fled to Omdurman, and was at this very moment within his wall in the centre of the town; but the inhabitants had come out to surrender. Only one point the old gentleman wished to be assured of were we likely to massacre everybody if we let them in without resistance? The Sirdar thought not. The old man beamed at the answer, and conveyed it to his fellow-townsmen; on the top of which ceremony we marched into Omdurman.

It began just like any other town or village of the mean Sudan. Half the huts seemed left unfinished, the other half to have been deserted and fallen to

pieces. There were no streets, no doors or windows except holes, usually no roofs. As for a garden, a tree, a steading for a beast-any evidence of thrift or intelligence, any attempt at comfort or amenity or common cleanliness,-not a single trace of any of it. Omdurman was just planless confusion of blind walls and gaping holes, shiftless stupidity, contented filth

and beastliness.

But that, we said, was only the outskirts: when we come farther in we shall surely find this mass of population manifesting some small symbols of a great dominion. And presently we came indeed into a broader way than the rest-something with the rude semblance of a street. Only it was paved with dead donkeys, and here and there it disappeared in a cullender of deep holes where green water festered. Beside it stood a few houses, such as you see in Metemmeh or Berber-two large, naked rooms standing in a naked walled courtyard. Even these were rare for the rest, in this main street, Omdurman was a rabbit-warren—a threadless labyrinth of tiny huts or shelters, too flimsy for the name of sheds. Oppression, stagnation, degradation, were stamped deep on every yard of miserable Omdurman.

:

But the people! We could hardly see the place for the people. We could hardly hear our own voices for their shrieks of welcome. We could hardly move for their importunate greetings. They tumbled over each other like ants from every mud heap, from behind every