26 Bird Hunting on the White Nile. 



even now be hiding, there is not much of interest to see 

 in Omdurman. The houses are mostly built on the 

 same plan — four mud walls with a flat roof made of 

 rafters covered with straw or matting, a verandah in 

 front, and sand for the floor. The few which have two 

 stories were formerly occupied by the Khalifa and his 

 chiefs. The Khalifa's own house stands at the corner 

 of an immense square some 600 yards long. Outside 

 the house in the square one can see the remains of what 

 was once a brick platform, from which the Khalifa 

 used to preach to his thousands of fanatical followers 

 packed in the great square. There on the last day 

 of August, 1898, he held his last review, inciting the 

 assembled hosts in a vigorous harangue to fall upon the 

 invading army of British and Egyptians, to drive them 

 into the river and annihilate them, and there the dense 

 mass of misguided savages clad in their patched jibbehs 

 shook their spears and became mad for the blood of the 

 accursed infidels. 



In 1900 in the same square a few orderly squads of 

 Soudanese, dressed in neat khaki uniforms, might be seen 

 industriously drilling to words of command given by a 

 sergeant as black as themselves, with neither an English- 

 man nor an Egyptian present. Yet most of these 

 Soudanese were the same men who had thirsted for and 



