From Pole to Pole: A Book for Young People — Sec 16 Africa, part 1

GENERAL GORDON

Seldom has the whole civilised world been so convulsed, so overwhelmed with sorrow, at the death of one man as it was when in January, 1885, the news flashed along the telegraph wires that Khartum had fallen, and that Gordon was dead.

Gordon was of Scottish extraction, but was born in one of the suburbs of London in the year 1833, and as a young lieutenant of engineers heard the thunders of war below the walls of Sebastopol.

As a major of thirty years of age he commanded the Imperial army in China, and suppressed the furious insurrection which raged in the provinces around the Blue River.

"The Ever-Victorious Army" would have come to grief without a strong and practical leader, but in Gordon's hands it soon deserved its name.

He made his plans quickly and clearly, brought his troops with wonderful rapidity to the most vulnerable points in the enemy's position, and dealt his blows with crushing force.

In a year and a half he had cleared China of insurgents and restored peace.

After several years of service at home and other wanderings in Eastern lands, Gordon accepted in 1874 an invitation to enter into the service of the Khedive of Egypt.

The Khedive Ismail was a strong man with far-reaching projects.

He wished to extend his dominion as far as the great lakes where the Nile takes its rise, and Gordon was to rule over a province named after the equator.

[Illustration: MAP OF NORTH-EASTERN AFRICA, SHOWING EGYPT AND THE SUDAN.

] Immediately to the south of Cairo begins a plateau which stretches from north to south through almost the whole continent.

In Abyssinia it attains to a considerable height, and near the equator rises into the loftiest summits of Africa.

These mountains screen off the rain from Egypt and large areas of the Sudan.

The masses of vapour which are carried over Abyssinia in summer by the monsoon are precipitated as rain in these mountain tracts, and consequently the wind is dry when it reaches Nubia and Egypt; while the moisture which rises from the warm ocean on the east, and is borne north-westwards by the constant trade-wind, is converted into water during eight months of the year among the mountains on the equator.

The rain which falls on the mountains of Abyssinia gives rise to the Atbara and Blue Nile, which produce abundant floods in the Nile during autumn; and during the rest of the year the White Nile, which comes from the great lakes on the equator, provides for the irrigation of Egypt.

Thus the country is able to dispense with rain, and innumerable canals convey water to all parts of the Nile valley.

Many kinds of grain are cultivated--wheat, maize, barley, rice, and durra (a kind of millet);

vegetables, beans, and peas thrive, numerous date palms suck up their sap from the heavy, sodden silt on the river's banks, and sugar-cane and cotton are spreading more and more.

Seen at a height from a balloon, the fields, palms, and fruit-trees would appear as a green belt along the river, while the rest of the country would look yellow and grey, for it is nothing but a dry, sandy desert.

The Nile, then, is everything to Egypt, the condition of its existence, its father and mother, the source of the wealth by which the country has subsisted since the most remote antiquity.

Now that we are about to follow Gordon along the Nile to the equator, we must not forget that we are passing through an ancient land.

The first king of which there are records lived 3200 years before the Christian era, and the largest of the Great Pyramids at Ghizeh is 4600 years old (Plate XXVIII.

).

Its funeral crypt is cut out of the solid rock, and in it still stands the red granite sarcophagus of Cheops.

Two million three hundred thousand dressed blocks, each measuring 40 cubic feet, were used in the construction of this memorial over a perishable king, and the pyramid is reckoned to be the largest edifice ever built by human hands.

The buildings and works of the present time are nothing compared to it.

Only the Great Wall of China can vie with it, and this is ruined and to a large extent obliterated, while the pyramid of Cheops still stands, scorched by the sun, or sharply defined in the moonlight, or dimly visible as a mysterious apparition in the dark, warm night.

Twelve hundred miles south of the capital of modern Egypt the desert comes to an end, and the surface is covered by vast marshes and beds of waving reeds.

This is the Sudan, "the Land of the Blacks."

At the point where the White and Blue Niles mingle their waters lay the only town in the Sudan, Khartum, whither trade-routes converged from all directions, and where goods changed hands.

Here were brought wares which never failed to find purchasers.

The valuable feathers plucked from the swift-footed ostrich were needed to decorate the hats of European ladies; the wild elephants, larger and more powerful than their Indian congeners, were shot or caught in pitfalls in the woods for the sake of their precious ivory.

But the most esteemed of all the wares that passed through Khartum were slaves--"black ivory," as they were called by their heartless Arab torturers.

Elephants' tusks are heavy, and cannot be transported on horses or oxen from the depths of the forest, for draught animals are killed by the sting of the poisonous tsetse fly.

Therefore the tusks had to be carried by men, and when these had finished their task they were themselves sold into Egypt, Syria, and Turkey.

The forests and deserts were not inexhaustible; ivory and ostrich feathers might be worked out, but there would always be negroes.

[Illustration: PLATE XXVIII.

THE GREAT PYRAMIDS AT GHIZEH.

] When the Khedive Ismail invited Gordon to enter his service as governor of the new province not far from the sources of the Nile, Gordon accepted the post in the hope that he would be able to suppress slave-trading, or at least to check the hunting of black men and women.

He left Cairo and travelled by the Red Sea to Suakin, rode to Berber on the Nile, and was received with much pomp and ceremony by the Governor-General at Khartum.

Here he heard that the Nile was navigable for 900 miles southwards, and therefore he could continue his journey without delay.

The Nile afforded an excellent passage for Gordon's small steamboat.

But the Nile can also place an insurmountable obstacle in the traveller's way.

After the rainy season the White Nile overflows its banks, forming an inextricable labyrinth of side branches, lakes, and marshes.

The country lies under water for miles around.

The waterway between impenetrable beds of reeds and papyrus is often as narrow as a lane.

The roots of large plants are loosened from the mud at the bottom, and are compacted with stems and mud into large sheets which are driven northwards by the rushing water.

They are caught fast in small openings and sudden bends, and other islets of vegetation are piled up against them.

Thus the river course is blocked, and above these natural dams the water forms lakes.

Such banks of drifting or arrested and decaying vegetation are called _sudd_, and the more it rains the greater are the quantities that come down.

At length the _sudd_ becomes soft and yields to the pressure of the water, and then the Nile is navigable again.

Gordon's small steamer glides gently up the river.

He advances deeper and deeper into a world unknown to him, and around him seethes tropical Africa.

On the banks papyrus stems wave their plumes above the reeds.

It was from the pith of papyrus stems that the old Egyptians made a kind of paper on which they wrote their chronicles.

Here and there swarthy natives are seen between the reed beds, and sometimes noisy troops of wandering monkeys gaze at the boat.

The hippopotami look like floating islands, but show themselves only at night, wallowing in the shallow water.

A little beyond the luxuriant vegetation of the banks extends the boundless grassland with its abundant animal life and thin scattered clumps of trees.

After a journey of four days the steamer glided past an island.

There dwelt in a grotto a dervish or mendicant monk named Mohamed Ahmed, who ten years later was to be Gordon's murderer.

In the middle of April Gordon and his companions were in Gondokoro, a small place which now stands on the boundary between the Sudan and British East Africa, and here he took charge of his Equatorial Province.

He forced the Egyptian soldiers, who garrisoned this and one or two other posts on the Nile and robbed on their own account, to plough and plant; he arrested all slave-hunters within reach and freed the slaves;

he succoured the poor, protected the helpless, and sent durra to the hungry.

The heat was excessive, and Gordon and his staff were pestered by crowds of gnats.

It was still worse in September when the rain poured down and large tracts were converted into swamp, from which dangerous miasma was exhaled.

In a month seven of Gordon's eight officers had died of fever, but he himself continued his work undismayed, and wrote in his diary: "God willing, I shall do much in this country."

He soon perceived that the best districts of his province lay around the large lakes in the south.

But the Equatorial Province was too far away from Egypt.

It hung as it were on a long string, the Nile, and from the largest lake, the Victoria Nyanza, the distance to Cairo in a straight line was nearly 2200 miles.

Much shorter was the route to Mombasa on the east coast, so Gordon advised the Khedive to occupy Mombasa and open a road to the Victoria Nyanza.

Then it would be easier to contend against the slave-trade.

He described the condition of the Sudan in forcible letters, and into the Khedive's ears were dinned truths such as he never heard from his servile pashas.

He would first establish steam communication with the lakes, and a number of boats which could be taken to pieces were on the way to his province.

The boats came up at the time when the Nile began to rise after rain, and then his plan was to advance farther southwards.

The natives were opposed to this progress and feared the supremacy of Egypt, and therefore they tried to prevent the advance of the "White Pasha," who was loath to employ arms against them.

All they wanted was to be left in peace in their grasslands and forests; and when now an intruder, whose aims they did not understand, penetrated into their country, they endeavoured whenever they could to bar his way, so that he was obliged, much against his will, to resort to force.

After all kinds of troubles and difficulties he reached at last the northernmost of the Nile lakes, the Albert Nyanza, and it was a great feat to have brought a steamer even thus far.

He did not succeed in reaching the Victoria Nyanza, for the ruler of the country between the lakes had resolved to oppose with all his power any intruder, were he white man or Arab.

For three years Gordon was at work on the Upper Nile in the neighbourhood of the equator.

During the next three years we find him in the deserts of the Sudan farther north.

He was Governor-General of the whole of the Egyptian Sudan, and Khartum was his capital.

His province was 1200 miles broad, from the Red Sea to the Sahara, and as long from north to south.

The whole country was in a state of unrest.

The Khedive had carried on an unsuccessful war against the Christian King of Abyssinia, and the Mohammedan states of Kordofan and Darfur were in revolt against Egypt.

There half-savage Beduin tribes were scattered about over the deserts, and there some of the worst slave-dealers had their haunts.

In May, 1877, Gordon mounted his swift dromedary to set out on a journey of 2000 miles.

He wished to visit the villages and camps of the slave-dealers in distant Darfur.

The hot season had set in.

When the sun stood at its meridian altitude the shadow of the dromedary disappeared beneath the animal.

A dreary desert extended on all sides, greyish-yellow, dusty, and dry.

The White Pasha skims over the desert mile after mile.

He has the finest dromedary in all the land, an animal that became famous throughout the Sudan.

Some hundreds of Egyptian troopers follow him, but he leaves them all far behind and only a guide keeps up with him.

He rushes over the desert like the wind, and suddenly and unexpectedly draws rein at the gates of an oasis before the guard can shoulder their arms.

After giving his orders in the name of the Khedive, he disappears as mysteriously, no one knows whither.

At another oasis, perhaps 300 miles away, the chief has been warned of his coming and has therefore posted watchmen to look out for him.

Round about lies the desert, sandy and yellow, with a surface as level as a sea, where the approach of the White Pasha can be seen from a long distance.

The watchman announces that two black specks are visible in the distance, which, it is supposed, are the Pasha's outriders, and some hours must pass before he arrives with his troops.

The two specks grow larger and come rapidly nearer.

The dromedaries swing their long legs over the ground, seeming to fly on invisible wings.

Now the men have come to the margin of the oasis.

The watchers can hardly believe their eyes.

One of the riders wears the gold-embroidered uniform of an Egyptian pasha.

Never had the Sudan seen a Governor-General travelling in this way--without flags and noisy music, and stripped of all the display appropriate to his rank.

And as he came so he flew away again, mysteriously and incomprehensibly.

Again and again he lost his armed force.

In some districts he closed the paths leading to wells in order to bring the refractory tribes to submission.

With inflexible severity he broke the power of the chiefs who still carried on trade in slaves.

He freed numbers of black captives and drilled them as soldiers, for his own fighting men were the scum of Egypt and Syria.

With a handful of men he dealt his blows at the weakest points of the enemy's defence and thus always gained the victory.

In four months he suppressed the revolt and checked the power of the slave-dealers.

Gordon had now cleared all the west of the Sudan, and only Dara in southern Darfur remained to be dealt with.

There the most powerful slave-dealers had collected to offer resistance.

He came down one day like lightning into their camp.

They might easily have killed him--it was he who had ruined their trade in black ivory.

He went unconcernedly among the tents, and they did not dare to touch him.

And when his own troops arrived, he summoned all the chiefs to his tent and laid his conditions before them.

They were to lay down their arms and be off each to his own home; and one by one they obeyed and went away without a word.

But the slave-trade was a weed too deeply rooted in the soil to be eradicated in a single day, and the revolt and troubles which constantly arose out of this horrible traffic gave Gordon no peace.

He left the Sudan at the end of 1879, and the next two years were occupied with work in India, China, Mauritius, and South Africa.

Meanwhile remarkable events had occurred in Egypt.

Great Britain had sent vessels and troops to the land of the Khedive, and had taken over the command and the responsibility.

The chief of the dervishes, Mohamed Ahmed, whom we remember on the small island in the Nile, proclaimed that he was chosen by God to relieve the oppressed, that he was the Mahdi or Messiah of Islam.

Discontent prevailed among the Mohammedans throughout the Sudan, for Egypt had at length prohibited the slave-trade, and the Mahdi collected all the discontented people and tribes under his banner.

His aim was to throw off the yoke of Egypt.

Proud and arrogant, he sent despatches through the whole of the Sudan, and his summons to a holy war flew like a prairie fire over North Africa.

The British Government, which was now responsible for Egypt, was in a difficulty.

The Sudan must either be conquered or evacuated, for the Egyptian garrisons were still at Khartum and at several places even down to the equator.

The Government decided on evacuation, and Gordon was sent to perform the task of withdrawing all the garrisons.

He accepted the mission and set out immediately for Cairo.

Thus Gordon began his last journey up the Nile.

At Korosko, just at the northern end of the great S-shaped bend of the Nile, he mounted his dromedary and followed the narrow winding path which has been worn out during thousands of years through the dry hollows of the Nubian desert, over scorched and weathered volcanic knolls and through dunes of suffocating sand.

On February 18, 1884, Gordon, for the second time Governor-General of the Sudan, made his entry into Khartum, where he took up his quarters in his old palace.

Cruelty and injustice had again sprung up during the years he had been absent.

He opened the gates of the overcrowded gaols, and the prisoners were released and their fetters removed.

All accounts of unpaid taxes were burned in front of the palace.

All implements of punishment and torture were broken to pieces and thrown into the Nile.

Then began the evacuation of the town.

As many as 3000 women and children were sent to Abu Hamed and through the desert to Korosko.

They got through without danger and were saved.

Where women and children could travel, it would have been easy to lead troops from Egypt.

Instead of this, however, England despatched an expedition to Suakin to secure an outlet on the Red Sea, whereupon the rebellious tribes of the Sudan were roused to fury, believing that the white men intended to come and take their country.

Consequently they rallied all the more resolutely round the Mahdi, and their hatred extended to the dreaded Gordon and the few Europeans with him in Khartum.

As long as the telegraph line was still available to Cairo, Gordon kept the authorities informed of the state of affairs and pointed out what should be done to ensure success.

He asked especially that the road from Berber to Suakin should be held, for from this line also the Sudan could be controlled, but his advice was not attended to and Berber was eventually surrounded by the Mahdi's troops and captured.

Several chiefs north and north-east of Khartum, who had previously been friendly disposed, now joined the Mahdi.

News of fresh desertions came constantly to Khartum, and even in the town itself Gordon was surrounded by traitors.

On March 10 the telegraph line was cut and then followed six months of silence, during which the world learned little or nothing of the brave soldier in the heart of Africa.

On March 11 Arab war parties appeared on the bank of the Blue Nile, for the Mahdi was drawing his net ever closer round the unfortunate town.

During the preceding years the Egyptian Government had caused Khartum to be fortified after a fashion, and during the earlier months of the siege Gordon worked day and night to strengthen the defences.

His soldiers threw up earthern ramparts round the town, a network of wire entanglements was set up, and mines were laid at places where an assault might be expected.

At the end of April the town was entirely blockaded, and only the river route to the north was still open.

At the beginning of May the Arabs crossed the Blue Nile, suffering great losses from exploding mines and the guns of the town.

In the early part of September there were still provisions for three months, and the Arabs, perceiving that they could not take the town by storm from the White Pasha, resolved to starve it out.

The Nile was now at its highest, and huge grey turbid volumes of water hurried northwards.

Now was the only chance for a small steamer to try to get to Dongola, where it would be in safety.

On the night of September 9 a small steamer was made ready for starting, and Gordon's only English comrades, Colonel Stewart and Mr. Power, went on board, together with the French Consul, a number of Greeks, and fifty soldiers.

They took with them accounts of the siege, correspondence, lists and details about provisions, ammunition, arms, men, and plans of defence, and everything else of particular value.

Silently the steamer moved off from the bank, and when day dawned Gordon was alone.

Alas, the little steamer never reached Dongola, for it was wrecked immediately below Abu Hamed.

Every soul on board was murdered, and all papers of value fell into the hands of the Mahdi.

On the other hand, Gordon's diary from September 10 to December 14, 1884, is still extant, and is wonderful reading.

By this time the British Government had at last decided to send an expedition to relieve Khartum.

River boats were built in great numbers, troops were equipped for the field, the famous general, Lord Wolseley, was in command, and by the middle of September the first infantry battalion was up at Dongola on the northern half of the great S of the Nile.

But then the steamers had only just arrived at Alexandria, and had to be taken up the Nile and tediously dragged through the cataracts, while the desert column which was to make the final advance on Khartum had not yet left England.

A long time would be required to get everything ready.

In Khartum comparative quiet as yet prevailed.

The dervishes bided their time patiently, encamping barely six miles from the outworks.

Shots were exchanged only at a distance.

On September 21 Gordon learned by a messenger that the relief expedition was on the way, and ten days later he sent his steamboats northwards to meet it and to hasten the forwarding of troops.

But thereby he lost half of his own power of resistance.

On October 21 the Mahdi himself arrived in the camp outside Khartum, and on the following day sent Gordon convincing proofs that Stewart's steamboat had sunk and that all on board had been slain.

He added a list of all the journals and documents found on board.

From these the Mahdi had learned almost to a day how long Khartum could hold out, the strength of the garrison, the scheme of defence, where the batteries stood and how long the ammunition would last.

This was a terrible blow to the lonely soldier, but it did not break down his courage.

The death of Stewart and his companions grieved him inexpressibly, but he sent an answer to the Mahdi that if 20,000 boats had been taken it would be all the same to him--"I am here like iron."

In the relief expedition was a major named Kitchener, who was afterwards to become very famous.

He tried to get into Khartum in disguise to carry information to Gordon, and he did succeed in sending him a letter with the news that the relieving force would set out from Dongola on November 1. When the letter reached Gordon the corps had been two days on the march, but the distance from Dongola to Khartum is 280 miles in a straight line.

By November 22 Gordon had lost nearly 1900 of his fighting men, but his diary shows that he was still hopeful.

On December 10 there were still provisions for fifteen days.

The entries in the diary now become shorter, and repeatedly speak of fugitives and deserters, and of the diminishing store of provisions.

On December 14 Gordon had a last opportunity of sending news from Khartum, and the diary which the messenger took with him closes with these words: "I have done the best for the honour of our country.

Good-bye."

After the sending-off of the diary impenetrable darkness hides the occurrences of the last weeks in Khartum.

One or two circumstances, however, were made known by deserters.

During the forty days during which the town held out after December 14, 15,000 townspeople were sent over to the Mahdi's camp, and only 14,000 civilians and soldiers were left in the doomed city.

Omdurman fell, and the Mahdi's troops pressed every day more closely on all sides.

Actual starvation began, and rats and mice, hides and leather were eaten, and palms stripped to obtain the soft fibres inside.

But the White Pasha rejected all proposals to surrender.

Meanwhile the relief columns struggled southwards and on January 20, 1885, reached Metemma, only a hundred miles from Khartum.

There they fell in with Gordon's boats, which had lain waiting in vain for four months, and four days later two of the boats started for Khartum.

Halfway they had to pass up the sixth cataract, there losing two days more, and not till the 28th had they left the rapids behind them.

The noonday sun was shining brightly when the English soldiers and their officers saw Khartum straight in front of them on the point between the White and Blue Niles.

All glasses were turned on the tall palace; every one was in the greatest excitement and dared hardly breathe, much less speak.

There stood Gordon's palace, but no flag waved from the roof.

The boats go on, but no shouts of gladness greet their crews as long-looked-for rescuers.

When they are within range the dervishes open fire, and wild troops intoxicated with victory gather on the bank.

Khartum is in the hands of the Mahdi, and help has come 48 hours too late.

Two days before, January 26, the dervishes, furious at their continual losses and the obstinate resistance of the town, had flocked together for a final assault.

The attack was made during the darkest hour of the night, after the moon had set.

The defenders were worn out and rendered indifferent by the pangs of hunger.

The dervishes rushed into the town, filling the streets and lanes with their savage howling.

It was then that Gordon gathered together his twenty remaining faithful soldiers and servants, and dashed sword in hand out of the palace.

It was growing light in the east, and the outlines of bushes and thickets on the Blue Nile were becoming clear.

The small party took their way across an open square to the Austrian Mission church, which had previously been put in order for a last refuge.

On the way they were met by a crowd of dervishes and were killed to the last man.

Foremost among the slain was Gordon.

THE CONQUEST OF THE SUDAN

The Mahdi did not long enjoy the fruits of his victory, for he died five months to the day after the fall of Khartum.

His successor, Abdullah, bore the title of Khalifa, and for thirteen years was a scourge to the unfortunate land.

The tribes of the Sudan, tired of the oppression of Egypt, had welcomed the Mahdi as a deliverer, but they had only exchanged Turkish pashas for a tyrant unmatched in cruelty and shamelessness.

Abdullah plundered and exhausted the country, but with the money and agricultural produce he extorted from the people he was able to maintain a splendid army always ready for the field.

His capital was Omdurman, where the Mahdi was buried under a dome; but he did not fortify the town, for long before any Christian dogs could advance so far their bones would whiten in the sands of Nubia.

Yet after many years the hour of vengeance was at hand.

The British Government had taken the pacification of the Sudan in hand, and in 1898 an army composed of British and Egyptian troops was advancing quietly and surely up the Nile.

There was no need to hurry, and every step was made with prudence and consideration.

The leader, General Kitchener, the last man to send a letter to Gordon, made his plans with such foresight and skill that he could calculate two years in advance almost the very day when Khartum and Omdurman would be in his hands.

At the Atbara, the great tributary of the Nile which flows down from the mountains of Abyssinia, Kitchener inflicted his first great defeat on the Khalifa's army in a bloody battle.

From Atbara the troops pushed on to Metemma without further fighting, and on August 28 they were only four days' march from Khartum.

The green of acacia and mimosa is now conspicuous on the banks of the river, which is very high.

The grey gunboats pass slowly up the Nile in the blazing sun, and the troops push on as steadily and as surely as they have from the start of the expedition.

Small parties of mounted dervishes are seen in the far distance.

The country becomes more diversified, and the route runs through clumps of bushes and between hillocks.

A short distance in front are seen white tents, flags, and horsemen, and the roll of drums is heard.

It is the Khalifa calling his men to the fight; but at the last moment the position is abandoned, the dervishes retire, and Kitchener's army continues its march.

At length the vaulted dome over the Mahdi's grave beside the Nile bank rises above the southern horizon, and round about it are perceived the mud houses and walls of Omdurman.

Between the town and the attacking army stretches a level sandy plain scantily clothed with yellow grass;

and here took place a battle which will not be forgotten for centuries throughout the Sudan.

On the morning of September 2, Kitchener's forces are drawn up in order of battle.

Single horsemen emerge from the dust on the hillocks, increase in number, and then come in clouds like locusts--an army of 50,000 dervishes.

Their fanatical war-cry rises up to heaven, gathers strength, grows louder, and rolls along like a storm wind coming in from the sea.

They charge at a furious pace in an unbroken line, and it looks as though they would ride like a crushing avalanche right over the enemy.

But the moment they come within range fire issues from thousands of rifles, and the dervishes find themselves in a perfect hail of bullets.

Their ranks are thinned, but they check their course only for a moment, and ride on in blind fury and with a bravery which only religious conviction can inspire.

The English machine guns scatter their death-bolts so rapidly that a continuous roll of thunder is heard, and the dervishes fall in heaps like ripe corn before the scythe.

The fallen ranks are constantly replaced by fresh reinforcements, but at last the dervishes have had enough and beat a retreat.

At once Kitchener pressed on to Omdurman, but the bloody day is not yet at an end.

The dervish horsemen rally yet once more.

The Khalifa's standard is planted in the ground on a mound, and beside it the Prophet's green banner calls the faithful together for a last desperate struggle.

The English and their Egyptian allies fight with admirable courage, and the dervishes strike with a bravery and contempt of death to which no words can do justice.

Under the holy banner a detachment advances into the fire, wavers, is mown down, and falls, and almost before the smoke of the powder has cleared away, another presses forward on the track of the slain, only to meet the same fate and join their comrades in the happy hunting-grounds of eternity.

At length the day was ended and the Khalifa's army annihilated--11,000 killed, 16,000 wounded, and 4000 prisoners!

The Khalifa himself escaped.

His harem and servants deserted him, and he who in the morning had been absolute ruler over an immense kingdom, wandered about in the woods like an outlaw.

He fled to the south-west and succeeded in collecting another army, which was completely cut to pieces the following year in a battle in which he himself also perished.

When all was quiet in Omdurman, the victors had a solemn duty to fulfil.

Thirteen and a half years had passed since the death of Gordon, and at last the obsequies of the hero were to be celebrated in a fitting manner.

In the court in front of Gordon's palace the troops are drawn up on three sides of a square, and on the fourth stands the victor, surrounded by generals of divisions and brigades and by his staff.

Kitchener raises his hand, and in a moment the Union Jack rises to the top of the flagstaff on the palace, while a thundering salute from the gunboats greets the new colours and the Guards' band plays the National Anthem.

Another sign, and the flag of Egypt goes up beside the Union Jack and the Khedive's hymn is played.

Then the belated funeral service is impressively conducted by four clergymen of different Christian denominations, the Sudanese band plays a hymn which Gordon loved, and lastly Kitchener is saluted with the greatest enthusiasm by the officers and men under his command.

OSTRICHES

Now all is changed in the Sudan.

A railway runs from the Nile delta up to Khartum, and another connects Berber with the Red Sea.

In Khartum there are schools, hospitals, churches, and other public buildings, and one can travel safely by steamboat up to the great lakes.

Gordon's scheme to connect the Victoria Nyanza with Mombasa on the coast has been carried out, and a railway has been constructed through British East Africa.

White men have advanced from all sides deeper and deeper into the Black Continent, and have made themselves masters of almost all Africa.

Wild animals have suffered by this intrusion into their formerly peaceful domain, and their numbers have been diminished by the chase.

In some districts game has quite disappeared, the animals having sought remoter regions where they can live undisturbed.

In the Sahara, in the Libyan desert, on the open grasslands along the Upper Nile, on the veldt of South Africa, wherever the country is open and free, lives the ostrich; but it does not occur in the worst desert tracts, which it crosses only in case of necessity, for it likes to have water always near at hand.

The appearance of the ostrich is no doubt familiar.

It is powerfully built; its long bare neck supports a small flattened head with large bright eyes; the long legs rest on two toes; and the wings are so small that the animal is always restricted to the surface of the ground, where, however, it can move with remarkable swiftness.

The valuable feathers grow on the wings.

The ostrich attains a height of eight feet, and when full grown may weigh as much as 165 pounds.

Ostriches live in small flocks of only five or six birds.

They feed in the morning, chiefly on plants, but they also devour small animals and reptiles.

By midday their stomachs are full, and they rest or play, leaping in circles over the sand, regardless of the blazing sun or the heated ground.

Then they drink and wander about eating in the afternoon.

In the evening they seek their roosting-places.

Sight is the ostrich's acutest sense, but its scent and hearing are also sharp.

When it is pursued, it darts off with fluttering wings, taking steps ten or twelve feet long.

It is always on the look-out for danger, and the zebra likes to keep near it to avail itself of the bird's watchfulness.

In North Africa the Arabs hunt the ostrich on swift horses or running dromedaries.

Two or three horsemen follow a male, which after an hour's course is tired out, and gradually relaxes its pace.

The horses also are tired after such a chase, but one of the riders urges on his steed to a last spurt, rushes past the ostrich, and hits it on the head so that it falls to the ground.

The bird is then skinned, the skin being turned inside out so as to form a bag for the feathers.

The feathers of the wild ostrich are much finer and more valuable than those of the tame.

A full-grown ostrich has only fourteen of the largest white feathers.

The hens lay their eggs in a shallow hollow in loamy or sandy soil, and it is the male bird which sits on the eggs.

In the daytime the nest may be left for hours, but then the ostriches cover the eggs with sand.

The young ones leave their shells after six weeks and go out into the desert.

They are already as large as fowls, but then an ostrich egg weighs as much as twenty-four hen's eggs, and measures six inches along its greatest diameter.

The ostrich is remarkably greedy, and turns away from nothing.

The great zoologist, Brehm, who had tame ostriches under his care, reports that they ate rats and chickens and swallowed small stones and potsherds, and once or twice his bunch of keys disappeared down the stomach of an ostrich.

In one ostrich's stomach was found nine pounds of "ballast"--stones, rags, buttons, bits of metal, coins, keys, etc. Some say that the ostrich is inconceivably stupid, but others will not accept such a severe condemnation.

The traveller Schillings, who is noted for his photographs of big game in Africa taken at night by flashlight, once followed the spoor of some lions for several hours.

Suddenly he came upon an ostrich's nest with newly hatched chickens, and he wondered where the parents were.

To his astonishment, he found that the lion had not touched the defenceless creatures, and he soon discovered the reason.

In the moonlight night the ostriches had perceived the danger in time and sprang up to lure the lion away from the nest.

Their stratagem succeeded, for it was evident from the spoor that the lion had pursued the flying ostriches farther and farther from the nest.

And when the pair of ostriches thought that they had enticed the king of animals far enough off, they returned home.

BABOONS

Baboons are monkeys which resemble dogs rather than human beings, and almost always remain on the ground, seldom climbing trees.

They are cruel, malicious, and cunning, their expression is fierce and savage, and their eyes wicked.

Among their allies they are surpassed in strength only by the gorilla; and they are bold and spirited, and do not shun a deadly struggle with the leopard.

They have sharp and powerful teeth with which to defend themselves, and their tusks are very formidable.

The old Egyptians paid deep homage to the sacred apes, which belong to the baboon tribe, and had them represented on their monuments as judges in the kingdom of death.

They live in large companies among the cliffs of the Red Sea coast of Nubia and Abyssinia, but they also occur in the interior on high mountains.

Roots, fruits, worms, and snails are their chief food.