i888] Events in Arabia 13 



land's connection with the Nile Valley, except that Lord Salisbury, 

 feeling that he had done what honour required in fulfilment of English 

 promises of evacuation, was resolved now to leave things where they 

 were, including the garrison of occupation. 



As to the National Party, whether represented by the former Arab- 

 ists or by any other group, their condition was one of patriotic torpor ; 

 as a party they had ceased to exist, being without leaders and without 

 organization. They were disappointed in the hopes raised at the com- 

 mencement of the Wolff mission that Tewfik would be replaced as 

 Khedive by Prince Halim, or some other member of the Khedivial 

 family unconnected with the misfortunes of 1882, who should restore 

 their lost constitution of that year, and make good Lord Dufferin's 

 promises. In default of these and of Arabi's recall, impossible under 

 Tewfik, what poor hopes they had turned mostly towards the Sultan. 

 But undoubtedly the popular man among the Egyptian fellahin that 

 winter was the Mahdi, or rather his successor the Khalifa Abdallah and 

 his fighting lieutenant, Osman Digna, who carried on a perpetual guerilla 

 warfare in the neighbourhood of Suakim. The popular imagination 

 amongst the fellahin credited these with heroic qualities, and it was 

 confidently believed that the Dervish forces would before long overrun 

 Upper Egypt, and that they were already driving the Belgian Congo 

 Company out of their territory in Central Africa, that they would rid 

 Senegal of the French, and, as the issue of a holy war against all 

 infidel intruders, that they would even reconquer the northern shores 

 of the Mediterranean. News came while I was there that Emin 

 Pasha, to rescue whom Stanley had been sent by King Leopold on his 

 filibustering expedition to the Nile sources, had made his submission 

 to the Mahdists and that Stanley himself had been slain. From the 

 Eastern desert, too, news reached me through the Bedouins of an in- 

 teresting kind. It was to the effect that my former friend Mohammed 

 Ibn Rashid, taking advantage of a quarrel between the two sons of 

 Saoud Ibn Saoud with their uncle Abdallah, had marched with an army 

 to Riad and made himself master of the whole of Nejd, an event of 

 high importance in Peninsula Arabia. I listened to these stories and 

 found my interest in the East once more supreme over the petty hopes 

 and fears of Western politics, and recovered in this way and in the 

 routine of my daily life in my garden, the peace of mind I had left 

 behind me on leaving England. I find the following description in my 

 diary of my life at Sheykh Obeyd. 



" yd Jan. 1889. — I left Cairo on the 27th, escaping like a bird out 

 of the hand of the fowler and am established here at Sheykh Obeyd. 

 It has been a blessed change, and though I have been here all these days 

 alone, I have not for a moment felt otherwise than happy. I have been 

 getting the place ready for habitation by the others, and it is quite com- 



