"To Abdulla, son of Mohamed El-Taaishi, Head of the Soudan.
"Bear in your mind that your evil deeds throughout the Soudan, particularly your murdering a great number of the Mohammedans without cause or excuse, besides oppression and tyranny, necessitated the advance of my troops for the destruction of your throne, in order to save the country from your devilish doings and iniquity. Inasmuch as there are many in your keeping for whose blood you are held responsible—innocent, old, and infirm, women and children and others—abhorring you and your government, who are guilty of nothing; and because we have no desire that they should suffer the least harm, we ask you to have them removed from the Dem (literally, enclosure) to a place where the shells of guns and bullets of rifles shall not reach them. If you do not do so, the shells and bullets cannot recognise them and will consequently kill them, and afterwards you will be responsible before God for their blood.
"Stand firm you and your helpers only in the field of battle to meet the punishment prepared for you by the praised God. But if you and your Emirs incline to surrender to prevent blood being shed, we shall receive your envoy with due welcome, and be sure that we shall treat you with justice and peace.
"(Sealed) Kitchener,
"Sirdar of the Troops in the Soudan."
Colonel Maxwell was appointed Commandant of Omdurman, and his brigade was quartered in the town, detachments occupying the principal buildings. Among the places so held were the Arsenal, the Khalifa's and his son the Sheikh Ed Din's houses, the Treasury, Tomb and Mosque enclosure. The rest of the troops were moved two miles to the north of the town, where a camp was formed along the river bank. Omdurman was too abominably dirty to risk keeping a single soldier in the place other than was absolutely necessary. Not an hour was wasted. The Sirdar's practice was—abundant work for each day and all plans prepared ahead for the next. The submission of sheikhs and their followers had to be received, the pursuit of the Khalifa pressed, wounded dervishes and prisoners provided for, as well as the thousands of poor in Omdurman helped in various ways. Then there had to be arranged-for the disposal of the spoils of war, repatriation for many of Abdullah's enforced subjects, the formal re-occupation of Khartoum, and the immediate despatch back to Lower Egypt of the British troops whose services were no longer required. All this and much more was done, nor am I aware that anything was neglected, not even the correspondents, who were evidently too seldom far removed from the General's thoughts. Hurrying into the town early on Saturday morning, 3rd September, to attend Howard's funeral, I found that within half an hour after sunrise all the dead dervishes, with the murdered women and children, had been removed to the native burial-grounds outside Omdurman. In my rambles in the capital that day I visited the only two passable dwellings in the place, Abdullah's and his son Osman's. Both houses had a pretence of tidiness and comfort, particularly the Sheikh Ed Din's. There were paved courtyards, doors, windows with shutters, plastered walls, cupboards, benches, and ottomans. In each there were several rooms furnished in a rude style with articles of European manufacture. Of glass-ware, crockery, and large mirrors there was an abundance. The Khalifa's favourite reception-room and a chamber in the harem were almost covered with big looking-glasses. Angry Jaalin and others who had forced an entrance on the previous day, or else mayhap the Lyddite bombs, had smashed the mirrors and most of the domestic ware into atoms. Spears and swords had been freely used to hack the furniture and fittings about. A wealth of printed and manuscript books and papers in Arabic characters were scattered, torn, and thrown into a shed.
The kitchens, stables and outhouses were odorously barbaric in squalor. They were in strange contrast to any of the rooms in the rabbit warren of attached dwelling-places within the Khalifa's private compound. Around the Mahdi's tomb were great splashes of human blood. On the previous evening I had seen many dead dervishes lying in that vicinity. In their credulous faith in Mohamed Achmed they had flocked there for safety, only to be killed by our fire. Of 120 who were praying around the tomb when a 50-lb. Lyddite shell burst, but eighteen escaped alive, and these were sorely wounded. The tomb, carefully stuccoed over inside and out, was built of stone and well-burned bricks. The base of the square wall from which the cone-shaped dome sprang was over six feet thick, the vaulted roof tapering to about eighteen inches at the apex. Great holes had been knocked in the north-east side, and the rubbish had tumbled in, breaking the brass and iron grille round the catafalque. Beneath, covered by two huge blocks of stone, lay Mohamed Achmed's remains. Early that day violent hands were laid on the brass rails in the outer windows and grille. The catafalque was stripped of its black and red cloth covering, and the wood-work was totally destroyed. 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 débris 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 articles I saw were: Ivory, powder, percussion caps, old lead, copper, tin, bronze, cloth, looms, pianos, sewing machines, agricultural implements, boilers, steam-engines, ostrich feathers, gum, hippopotamus hides, iron and wooden bedsteads, drums, bugles, field glasses—Lieutenant Charles Grenfell's, lost at El Teb in the Eastern Soudan in 1883, were found there—bolts, zinc, rivets, paints, india-rubber, leather, boots, knapsacks, water-bottles, flags, and clothes. There were three state coaches—one of them might at a pinch have served for the Lord Mayor—and an American buggy. They needed a little retrimming, but there was harness and material enough to have rigged out the four vehicles in style. In short, the arsenal held the jettisoned cargo of the whole aforetime Egyptian Soudan, with much besides drawn from Abyssinia and Central Africa. Truly, the Khalifa must have been a strange man, with a fine acquisitive instinct abnormally cultivated.
Neufeld, with Abyssinian Wife and Children; also Fellow Prisoner.