news. The account of this massacre, which took
place on the 7th of June, 1882, was described to us by an eye-witness.

And now the Mahdi determined to lay siege to El Obeid, a step which was
hailed with satisfaction by all his followers. Large numbers of Dar
Hamd, Ghodiat, and Bederieh Arabs collected at Birket, which in
winter-time becomes a large lake, round which are clustered numerous
villages.

In July 1882, Mohammed Said Pasha sent Major Nesim and Osman, the
brother of Abdullah who was killed at Gedir, with a force of 1,500 men,
with orders to disperse the Arabs. After a stubborn resistance the Arabs
were defeated by Nesim, but the latter suffered heavily, and Osman was
amongst the killed. Nesim afterwards returned to El Obeid.

Meanwhile the various military stations in Kordofan were falling one by
one into the Mahdi's hands. In July Fiki Rahma, at the head of the
Gowameh Arabs, assaulted and took Ashaf and razed it to the ground. Here
terrible atrocities were committed; not a woman was spared; even those
with child were ripped open and the unborn infant impaled on a lance. On
the 8th of August Shat was captured and destroyed by Wad Makashif. Fiki
Minneh stormed and took Tayara, putting all the inhabitants to the
sword. Bara and El Obeid were now the only towns left in the whole
province of Kordofan over which the Egyptian flag was still flying; and
these two places were gradually being invested, while within lurked the
spirit of treachery, and the Mahdi propaganda was being secretly
instilled into not unwilling minds. At El Obeid, Elias Pasha was the
most active agent, and it was to him that the Mahdi had consigned the
medals, watches, and other valuables captured at Gedir, with orders to
sell them in El Obeid.

The Mahdi now became a man whose very name was a terror to the
Egyptians. The way to El Obeid lay open before him, and when he saw how
rapidly he had risen to power, there is no doubt he really believed
himself to be the true Mahdi, divinely sent by God to carry out this
great revolution, and the fulsome flattery of his numerous adherents
must have confirmed him in this idea. Here a few remarks on the Mahdi's
antecedents may not be out of place.

Mohammed Ahmed belonged to the race of people known as the
Danagla--_i.e._ inhabitants of Dongola--who are notorious in the Sudan
as being the cleverest and most determined of the slave-dealers. On the
White Nile and in the Bahr el Ghazal they had built num