In the Bahr-el-Ghazal, the last embers of resistance were stamped
out with the capture of Lupton Bey, and through the whole of that
vast province three times the size of England--every trace of the
Egyptian Government was obliterated. Still farther south the same
fate was rapidly overtaking Equatoria, where Emir Pasha,
withdrawing into the unexplored depths of Central Africa, carried
with him the last vestiges of the old order. The Mahdi himself
still lingered in his headquarters at El Obeid; but, on the
rising of the tribes round Khartoum, he had decided that the time
for an offensive movement had come, and had dispatched an arm of
30,000 men to lay siege to the city. At the same time, in a long
and elaborate proclamation, in which he asserted, with all the
elegance of oriental rhetoric, both the sanctity of his mission
and the invincibility of his troops, he called upon the
inhabitants to surrender. Gordon read aloud the summons to the
assembled townspeople; with one voice they declared that they
were ready to resist. This was a false Mahdi, they said; God
would defend the right; they put their trust in the Governor-
General. The most learned Sheikh in the town drew up a
theological reply, pointing out that the Mahdi did not fulfil the
requirements of the ancient prophets. At his appearance, had the
Euphrates dried up and revealed a hill of gold? Had contradiction
and difference ceased upon the earth? And, moreover, did not the
faithful know that the true Mahdi was born in the year of the
Prophet 255, from which it surely followed that he must be now
1,046 years old? And was it not clear to all men that this
pretender was not a tenth of that age?
These arguments were certainly forcible; but the Mahdi's army was
more forcible still.
Pages:
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386