Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1885-06-20
Gales mud Sketfhfs.
II nahai.

This great heather and fun blown proph-
ct was once a poor boy without . dollar
in his pocket Years ago, when httie
Mahdi used to snare suckers along the
White Nile, no one thought that today. he
would be the champion heavy weight
prophet of the known world. 1t shows
what can be done BY brave. courageous
little boy, even in foreign land.
In appearance he is brunette OF about
the style of the successful meerschaum
! pipe. He does not dress as we do, tut
wears a white turban that looks some like
an Etruscan hens nest. On chilly days
he adds other articles OF apparel to this
turban through during the summer months
| that is sufficient for evening dress. Ia the
morning he puts on his turban, buckles a
six shooter around his waist, and he is
dressed. 1t doesn't take Mahdi long to
make his toilet.
Years ago he decided that he would re-
tire to lonely island in the Nile, and put
himself in training for prophet, SO he
crawled into cave and lived there on
whatever he could get hold of While
others were down at Khartoum having a
good time at the skating rink, Mahdi re-
NAMED in his gloomy cave, setting up the
pins to go into the prophet business and
murder the kings English.
Soon people began to hear of Ell Mahdi,
and as be put card in all the morning
papers of the Soudan, be at once had all
the prophesying he could do and had to
hire an amOnuensis or assistant prophet
to help him out. During the holidays,
when trade was brisk, the Mahdi had to
sit up and prophesy till 10 or II O'Clock at
night.
His real name is Mohammed Achmed,
and he was the son of petty sheik whose
name / have forgotten. This man was an
inferior person and very ordinary sneik,
am told-iust such sheik as you could
20 in and lind on the ten-cent counters of
the Soudan anywhere.
Mohammed Achmed for long time
sh, wed some OF the prevailing character
isti, O.. a tramp, and so they began to
educate him as fakir. A fakir is man
who has permission to ramble through the
country, chisselling people out of money
and groceries in the name of religion.
He is a sort of oriental gospel bum, whose
business is to 60 around over the country
weeping over the sins OF people who are
too busy to be hypocrites. The fakirs are
always devout. hungry and sad. They
yearn tor bright Immortality. but they
are in no great rush about acquiring it.
They are perfectly willing to wait till the
Egyptian puliets run out. l am glad that
we have no fakirs in America.
BY and by Mohammed Achmed got a
call to rise up William Riley and gather
the clans of the Soudan together. He
went to them and told them in confidence
that he was the only genuine, all wool
prophet on the Nile, and if the " wanted
some fun to get their double shot guns and
join the gang. They did so. None of
them ever did anything at home to obtain
a livelihood. so they could 60 away on the
war path all summer and their business
wouldn't suffer at all.
They then proceeded to murder the
kings English, who had come there to
conquer and acquire their sand pile.
The Arabian style of warfare is peculiar. |
1t consists largely in drinking alkali water
on their part and in requiring their enc
mics to do the same for 80 days. So it be-
comes simply question OF who has the |
firmest and most durable Bessemer steel
bowels.
ANO OuO ouG q DCuOuii WOulu nave
thought of such style of warfare. 1t
is not, therefore, question of courage or
everlasting justice, it is question of who
can drink concentrated I've all summer
and take his alimentary canal home with
him in the tall.
In battle the Arab charge is peculiar in
the extreme. The Arab does not stand up
in line of battle for an hour while the
officer gallops up and down
the line on heavy horse and the enemy
pours CALLING fire into his ranks. He
sails up toward the enemy, waves his
Oriental night shirt in the Egyptian air,
shoots some one and goes away. When
the battle ground is examined on the fol-
lowing day, it is discovered that 800 brave
and handsome English soldiers are killed,
and one old moth-eaten Arab has stepped
on his Gothic shirt tail and sprained his
ankle.
Ell Mahdi is not bad-looking man at
all. and the report that he has lost his
teeth, so that when he gives his orders he
has to gum Arabic, is not true.-BiI Nue..