Eastern

created.

that no member of any reigning dynasty of the Great European Powers should be eligible as a candidate. South of the Balkans, the treaty created another and a different kind of State, under the name of Eastern Roumelia. That Roumelia State was to remain under the direct political and military authority of the Sultan, but it was to have, as to its interior condition, a sort of "administrative autonomy," as the favorite diplomatic phrase then was. East Roumelia was to be ruled by a Christian Governor, and there was a stipulation that the Sultan should not employ any irregular troops, such as the Circassians and the Bashi-Bazouks, in the garrisons of the frontier. The European Powers were to arrange in concert with the Porte for the organization of this new State. As regarded Greece, it was arranged that the Sultan and the King of the Hellenes were to come to some understanding for the modification of the Greek frontier, and that if they could not arrange this between themselves, the Great Powers were to have the right of offering, that is to say, in plain words, of insisting on, their mediation. Bosnia and the Herzegovina were to be occupied and administered by Austria. Roumania undertook, or, in other words, was compelled to undertake, to return to Russia that portion of Bessarabian territory which had been detached from Russia by the Treaty of Paris. Roumania was to receive in compensation some islands forming the Delta of the

Adverse criticism.

Russia's gains.

Danube, and a portion of the Dobrudscha. As regarded Asia, the Porte was to cede to Russia, Ardahan, Kars, and Batoum, with its great port on the Black Sea.

The Treaty of Berlin gave rise to keen and adverse criticism. Very bitter indeed was the controversy provoked by the surrender to Russia of the Bessarabian territory taken from her at the time of the Crimean War. Russia had regained everything which she had been compelled to sacrifice at the close of the Crimean War. The Black Sea was open to her war vessels, and its shores to her arsenals. The last slight trace of Crimean humiliation was effaced in the restoration of the territory of Bessarabia. Profound disappointment was caused among many European populations, as well as among the Greeks themselves, by the arrangements for the rectification of the Greek frontier.

Thus, speaking roughly, it may be said that the effect of the Congress of Berlin on the mind of Europe was to make the Christian populations of the southeast believe that their friend was Russia and their enemies were England and Turkey; to make the Greeks believe that France was their especial friend, and that England was their enemy; and to create an uncomfortable impression everywhere that the whole Congress was a prearranged business, a transaction with a foregone conclusion, a dramatic performance carefully rehearsed before

in all its details and merely enacted as a pageant on the Berlin stage.

forms

League.

[In 1879, Davitt forms the Irish Land Davitt League; Chili and Peru go to war over the Irish Land nitrate deposits; Peru's navy is ruined and her chief ports captured. The British go to war with the Zulus, who are successful at first, but crushed at Ulundi. Belgium sends Stanley to found the Congo Free State. The British envoy being murdered, Afghanistan is again. invaded and the capital captured. In 1880, Montenegro acquires Dulcigno. In Afghanistan, the British are defeated at Maiwand, but Roberts makes a successful march to Candahar. The Boer War breaks out. Cologne Cathedral, begun in the Thirteenth Century, is finally completed. In 1881, the Czar Alexander II. is murdered. Turkey is forced to cede most of Thessaly and the command of the Gulf of Arta to Greece. President Gar- President field is murdered. The Boers defeat the British and the Transvaal recovers self-government. The French gain control of Tunis. A Dongola enthusiast proclaims himself the Mahdi and raises the Sudan against the Khedive. The Russians take the Turcoman fastness of Geok-Tepe and a general massacre follows. The Revised Version of the New Testament is brought out. In England, the Married Woman's Property Act is passed.]

Garfield murdered.

Ahmed.

THE RISE OF MAHDISM

I

(A.D. 1881)

G. W. STEEVENS

N the year 1881, before we came to Egypt at all, there had arisen a religious teacher,

a native of Dongola, named Mohammed Ahmed. The Sudan is the home of fanaticism: it has always been called "the Land of ohammed the Dervishes," and no rising saint was more ascetic than the young Dongolawi. He was a disciple of a holy man named Mohammed Sherif, and one day the master gave a feast at which there was dancing and singing. Such frivolity, said Mohammed Ahmed, was displeasing to Allah; whereat the Sherif was angry, cursed him, and cast him out. The disciple sprinkled ashes on his head, put a yoke on his neck, and fell at his master's feet, imploring forgiveness. Again Mohammed Sherif cursed him and cast him out.

Angered now himself, Mohammed Ahmed joined a new teacher and became a straiter ascetic than ever. The fame of his sanctity spread, and adherents flocked to him. He saw that the people of the Sudan, smarting under extortion and oppression, could but too

influence.

easily be roused against the Egyptian Government: he risked all, and proclaimed himself El Mahdi el Muntazer, the Expected His Guide, the Mussulman Messiah. The Gov-increasing ernor-General at Khartum sent two companies to arrest him: the Mahdi's followers fell on them unawares and destroyed them. More troops were sent; the Mahdists destroyed them: next came a small army, and again the Mahdists destroyed it. The barbarous tribesmen flocked to the Mahdi's standard, and in September, 1882, he laid siege to El Obeid, the chief city of Kordofan. His assault was beaten back with great slaughter, but after five months' siege the town surrendered; sack and massacre taught doubters what they had to expect.

The Sudan doubted no longer: of a truth this was the Mahdi. Hicks Pasha's army came down from the North only to swell the Mahdi's triumph to immensity. Unorganized, unwieldy, afraid, the Egyptians crawled on toward El Obeid, harassed by an enemy they never saw. They saw them at last on November 4, 1883, at Shekan: the fight lasted a minute, and the massacre spared only hun- Shekan. dreds out of ten thousand. The rest you know-Gordon's mission, the loss of Berber, the siege of Khartum, the massacre of Baker's levies at El Teb, Graham's expedition to Suakim, and the hard-fought fights of the second Teb and Tamai, Wolseley's expedition up the

The mas

sacre at