Among the prisoners, too, were some broken-down
old men in ragged gibbeks, whose fair complexions
proclaimed them to be Egyptians, soldiers of the
defeated armies of Gordon, Hicks, and Slatin, long
slaves of the Khalifa, who had been compelled
take up arms against their own countrymen.
In one courtyard of the Mudirieh the weapons we'
had captured were gathered together, and here
saw piles of rifles of various type — Martini-Henrys,
Remingtons, old Tower muskets, flint-locks, match
locks, great elephant guns, quaint blunderbusses,
war drums, swords, broad-bladed Dervish spears,
the flags of the Emirs, shields of hippopotamus hide,
and coats of mail, some of which had possibly
belonged to Crusaders, while others were of modera
make, from Abyssinia. Here, too, were the enemy's
brass guns which they had captured from the Egyp-
tians, and one long gun of very ancient manufacture.
In another portion of the Mudirieh I saw the
Dervish public store of grain, beans, and lentils, and
an extraordinary quantity of dates. In one court-
yard was piled a veritable hill of dates, which I
roughly measured and found to be sixty yards long,
twenty yards broad, and nearly thirty feet in height
This was the accumulation of many years of raids.
The dates had dried up into a sort of hard concrete,
and were quite unfit for food. This gigantic waste
of many thousands of pounds' worth of the chief
food supply of the country had been deliberate.
