yed. All the
yellow lettered panels, with texts from the Koran and the Mahdi's
prayer-book, as well as the blue and yellow scroll work, were smashed
or carried off by relic-hunters. The false prophet was so speedily
discredited that not a dervish amongst the tens of thousands but
regarded these and the subsequent proceedings with complete
indifference. To destroy utterly the legend of Mohamed Achmed's
mission, when the British troops had returned to Cairo the Mahdi's
body was disinterred. It had been roughly embalmed and the features
were said to be recognisable. The common people who saw the remains
almost doubted their senses, for it had been given out that the Mahdi
had merely gone off on a visit to heaven and would shortly return.
That his body was found surprised them, as they thought he had gone
aloft in the flesh, the object of the tomb being to mark the spot
where he took leave of the earth and would return to it. Perhaps it
may be deplored that Mohamed Achmed's remains were broken up, part
being cast into the Nile, whilst the head and other portions of the
body were retained for presentation, it is said, to medical colleges.
There were those who thought that the wisest course would have been to
expose the remains for all to see them who cared to, and then to hand
them over to the natives to bury in one of their cemeteries as if he
had been an ordinary man. But the Soudan is not Europe, nor are its
inhabitants amenable to measures eminently satisfactory to civilised
northern races. The tomb was subsequently levelled to the ground by an
explosion of gun-cotton and the debris was cleared away.

I had a good look over the Khalifa's war arsenal. There were plenty of
cannon, old and new, as well as machine guns, rifles, pistols, and
fowling pieces of all kinds. Musical instruments, war-drums,
elephants' tusks used as horns, coats of chain-mail old and new, and
steel helmets. Most of the latter are quite modern, being part of 600
supplied by a London firm of sword makers--Wilkinson & Co., Pall Mall,
to a former Khedive's body-guard. Somehow these plate and chain
crusader-like head-pieces seem all to have drifted south. There were
hundreds of dervish battle flags, including several duplicate black
silk banners such as the Khalifa carried during the action, and
thousands of native spears, swords, and shields. In short, it would be
easier to tell what was not in that extraordinary storehouse than what
was. Among other a