The Appeal. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. ;) 1889-19??, 1898-10-22
.DERVISHES AND
The BRITISH
NOTABLE POINTS IN THE LATEST
y SOUDAN CAMPAIGN.


der British COmmanders-Miser
able Emblems of Panic and Mas
sacrc Seen in Every CourtyarL7
tsThe Cheapest and Best Done .
Campaign on Record. =
Though Mahdism has been smashed, and
interest, sooner even than was expected,
Is concentrated on affairs far south of
KhaItum, there still remain points In the
h1story of this last Soudan campaign that
are worthy of note. You have heard by
cable of the strange sight that was seen
In Omdurman the day after the great
battle, when thousands of Dervish pris-
oners paraded before the British doctors,
and all who were physically fit enlisted
gladly in the army against which the day
before they had fought with desperate
valor. A simple way this Of dealing with
large bodies Of prisoners of war, simpler
and less expensive than the old-time
method of exchange or the newer one
of repatriation But when one thinks of
what kind of men were Mahdi and
Khalifa, how they recruited their forces
and treated their subjects, it is not diff
cult to understand how such things can
be in the Soudan, says the New York
Sun. I will take just one typical case of
man who once fought for the Mahdi.
OUT now HSnCS the Egyptian ranks
under British commanders:
1.-THE Nam Nam are cannibals from the
south of the Bahr-el-Ghazal, and there
are many of them in the regiment. In
their country, 1t Is said, there are no
graves. Corporal Buidas Ahmed, the Or
derby Of the commandant of the Twelfth
Soudanese, Is Of this tribe. He was cap
tured as a boy by Zobehr Pasha's slave
gangs, and after many wanderings found
himself among the Mahdi's followers at
lacking the doomed Egyptian army under
Hicks-now more than fifteen years ago
where the whole force of 10000 men was
utterly annihilated at KashgiL on the road
to Ell Obetd. Buidas was black rifeman
then, and he tells how all night long he
kept creeping closer and closer toward the
square, firing from behind the trees at the
huddled mass Of disorganized soldiers. He
next appeared at the fall Of Khartum.
He was wounded in the battle of Gala
bat, where the Dervishes defeated the
Abyssinians, and then fought against the
British at Tokar and deserted and en-
listed in the Twelfth Soudanese the night
after the battle. He carried the COM
mandant's flag Of the regiment at Firkeh
and again across the zariba and trenches
of the Atbara, and will carry it at Omdur-
man, though now a corporal
Now look at the story of Metemmeh; it
$ Is an epitome of the history Of the Soudan
under the rule Of the khalifa. Metemmeh
was the capital of the Jaalin, who grew
sick of the domination of the Baggara.
These strangers in the land were plumber
ing and growing rich with the leave and
license Of the khalifa Then, as the COR
respondent Of the Times writes:
"The Jaalin were determined to strike
so soon as they could do so with any
hope Of success. The khalifa knew it
mud's army, the western army which
afterward fought us at the Atbara, was
marching along the river from Omdur-
man. The Jaalin were ordered to hand
over all their cattle and sheep, that their
f1ocks might feed the army of the faith
full. There was further q certain matter
about women, and the Jaalin are the most
moral of the Arabs of the Soudan. Alb
dullah Wad Sud, the head of the Jaalin
tribe, determined to resist. To submit
was ruin, and even If they had to fight
there were the English at Korti. In any
event, it was better to die fighting than
let Mahmud have his will.
"They fortified their town, ard with
only few rifles among them they kept
off the whole of Mahmud's army for three
days. At the end of that time their am
munition failed. The town was taken and
1000 Of the Jaalin fell. AS for the pris-
oners, they were drawn up in line-the
fret lost his head, the second his hand.
and the third his feet, and so on in ro-
tation, and when the work was finished
the sheikh was led along the line Of dead
and mutilated and asked what power his
tribe had now. He himself was taken a.
prisoner to Omdurman and walled in SO
that he might neither stand nor sit. He
died slowly Of thirst and hunger, his
groans and rawlings the while clearly audi
BILE in the great mosque, a warning to
the disobedient."
Taking this as type Of the treatment
which the Soudan suffered, the present
condition of Metemmeh, as the sirdar's
army found 1t last August, may well be
taken as an example of the result of such
treatment. I quote from the correspond
ent Of the Daily Mail: -
1.-The scrub sank and died away. W.
came onto bare level of old cultivated
land, sparsely dotted with dry twigs.
scanned with vents and holes and covered
thick with bones. Bones, skulls and hides
of camels, oxen, horses, asses. sheep,
goats-the place was carpeted with them,
into the air, a smell heavy with blood
and fat We off-saddled at a solitary
clump Of tall palms on the bank turned
. round, and across a mile Of treeless DESC
lation saw forlorn line of black mud
wall. The look of the wall alone was
enough to tell you there was nobody
inside. That was the corpse of Metem-
meh." -.t a.. ....-
AFTER ugresslng to describe Mahmud's
old camp, which was situated in the open
desert behind the ridge on which Metem-
meh stands, he goes on:
NOW turn back to Metemmeh-poor,
blind, walled, dead Metemmeh. And
first, between camp and town, stands a
couple of crutched uprights and cross
bar. You wonder what for moment,
and then wonder that you wondered.
A gallows! At the foot of it strands of
the brown paln1-fibre rope they use in
this country, and one, two, four, six, eight
human jaw bones. Just the jaw bones.
member the story that when Sheikh Ibra-
him Of the Jaalin came here week or
two ago he found eight skulls under the
gallows in a rope-netting bag. When he
took them up for burial the lower jaws
dropped of, and lie here still.
IF the jaws could wag in speech again
but we must try not to be sentimental.
II we are, we shall hardly stand the In
side OF Metemmeh. So blank and piteous
and empty Is the husk of It. These are
not mere mud novels. but town houses
as the Soudan understands houses-mud,
certainly, but large, lofty rooms with
mating roofs. Two that went into
were even double-storied; no stairs, OF
course, but sort Of mud, inclined plane
outside the walls leading to the upper
rooms. Another house had broad mud
bank forming a divan round it's CHIEF
room. Now the beams were cracked and
broken, and the divan had been rained
on through the broken roof; shreds of
what once may have been hangings were
dangling Imply In the breeze At the
gateway OF this house-once an arch, now
tumble Of dry mud-was a black hand
ful Of q woman's hair. s.
) : 54 = =