nobling patriotism may partly repair economic
follies. The miseries of the people are often concealed by the
magnificence of the army. The laxity of morals is in some degree excused
by the elegance of manners. But the Dervish Empire developed no virtue
except courage, a quality more admirable than rare. The poverty of the
land prevented magnificence. The ignorance of its inhabitants excluded
refinement. The Dervish dominion was born of war, existed by war, and
fell by war. It began on the night of the sack of Khartoum. It ended
abruptly thirteen years later in the battle of Omdurman. Like a
subsidiary volcano, it was flung up by one convulsion, blazed during the
period of disturbance, and was destroyed by the still more violent shock
that ended the eruption.

After the fall of Khartoum and the retreat of the British armies the
Mahdi became the absolute master of the Soudan. Whatever pleasures he
desired he could command, and, following the example of the founder of
the Mohammedan faith, he indulged in what would seem to Western minds
gross excesses. He established an extensive harem for his own peculiar
use, and immured therein the fairest captives of the war. The conduct of
the ruler was imitated by his subjects. The presence of women increased
the vanity of the warriors: and it was not very long before the patched
smock which had vaunted the holy poverty of the rebels developed into
the gaudy jibba of the conquerors. Since the unhealthy situation of
Khartoum amid swamps and marshes did not commend itself to the now
luxurious Arabs, the Mahdi began to build on the western bank of the
White Nile a new capital, which, from the detached fort which had stood
there in Egyptian days, was called Omdurman. Among the first buildings
which he set his subjects to construct were a mosque for the services of
religion, an arsenal for the storage of military material, and a house
for himself. But while he was thus entering at once upon the enjoyments
of supreme power and unbridled lust, the God whom he had served, not
unfaithfully, and who had given him whatever he had asked, required of
Mohammed Ahmed his soul; and so all that he had won by his brains and
bravery became of no more account to him.

In the middle of the month of June, scarcely five months after the
completion of his victorious campaigns, the Mahdi fell sick. For a few
days he did not appear at the mosque. The people were filled with alarm.
They were reassured by reme