iro cannot stay as
they are. The Khedive will be curbed in, and will no longer be
absolute Sovereign. Then will come the question of these countries....
There is no doubt that if the Governments of France and England do not
pay more attention to the Soudan--if they do not establish at Khartoum
a branch of the mixed tribunals, and see that justice is done--the
disruption of the Soudan from Cairo is only a question of time. This
disruption, moreover, will not end the troubles, for the Soudanese
through their allies in Lower Egypt--the black soldiers I mean--will
carry on their efforts in Cairo itself. Now these black soldiers are
the only troops in the Egyptian service that are worth anything." The
gift of prophecy could scarcely have been demonstrated in a more
remarkable degree, yet the Egyptian Government and everybody else went
on acting as if there was no danger in the Soudan, and treated it like
a thoroughly conquered province inhabited by a satisfied, or at least
a thoroughly subjected population. From this dream there was to be a
rude and startling awakening.

It is impossible to say whether there was any connection direct or
indirect between the revolt of Arabi Pasha and the military leaders at
Cairo and the rebellion in the Soudan, which began under the auspices
of the so-called Mahdi. At the very least it may be asserted that the
spectacle of successful insubordination in the Delta--for it was
completely successful, and would have continued so but for the
intervention of British arms--was calculated to encourage those who
entertained a desire to upset the Khedive's authority in the upper
regions of the Nile. That Gordon held that the authors of the Arabi
rising and of the Mahdist movement were the same in sympathy, if not
in person, cannot be doubted, and in February 1882, when the Mahdi had
scarcely begun his career, he wrote: "If they send the Black regiment
to the Soudan to quell the revolt, they will inoculate all the troops
up there, and the Soudan will revolt against Cairo, whom they all
hate." It will be noted that that letter was written more than twenty
months before the destruction of the Hicks Expedition made the Mahdi
master of the Soudan.

It was in the year 1880 that the movements of a Mahommedan dervish,
named Mahomed Ahmed, first began to attract the attention of the
Egyptian officials. He had quarrelled with and repudiated the
authority of the head of his religious order, because he tolerated