The kitchens, stables and outhouses were odorously barbaric in squalor. They were in strange contrast to any of the rooms in the rabbit warren of attached dwelling-places within the Khalifa's private compound. Around the Mahdi's tomb were great splashes of human blood. On the previous evening I had seen many dead dervishes lying in that vicinity. In their credulous faith in Mohamed Achmed they had flocked there for safety, only to be killed by our fire. Of 120 who were praying around the tomb when a 50-lb. Lyddite shell burst, but eighteen escaped alive, and these were sorely wounded. The tomb, carefully stuccoed over inside and out, was built of stone and well-burned bricks. The base of the square wall from which the cone-shaped dome sprang was over six feet thick, the vaulted roof tapering to about eighteen inches at the apex. Great holes had been knocked in the north-east side, and the rubbish had tumbled in, breaking the brass and iron grille round the catafalque. Beneath, covered by two huge blocks of stone, lay Mohamed Achmed's remains. Early that day violent hands were laid on the brass rails in the outer windows and grille. The catafalque was stripped of its black and red cloth covering, and the wood-work was totally destroyed. All the yellow lettered panels, with texts from the Koran and the Mahdi's prayer-book, as well as the blue and yellow scroll work, were smashed or carried off by relic-hunters. The false prophet was so speedily discredited that not a dervish amongst the tens of thousands but regarded these and the subsequent proceedings with complete indifference. To destroy utterly the legend of Mohamed Achmed's mission, when the British troops had returned to Cairo the Mahdi's body was disinterred. It had been roughly embalmed and the features were said to be recognisable. The common people who saw the remains almost doubted their senses, for it had been given out that the Mahdi had merely gone off on a visit to heaven and would shortly return. That his body was found surprised them, as they thought he had gone aloft in the flesh, the object of the tomb being to mark the spot where he took leave of the earth and would return to it. Perhaps it may be deplored that Mohamed Achmed's remains were broken up, part being cast into the Nile, whilst the head and other portions of the body were retained for presentation, it is said, to medical colleges. There were those who thought that the wisest course would have been to expose the remains for all to see them who cared to, and then to hand them over to the natives to bury in one of their cemeteries as if he had been an ordinary man. But the Soudan is not Europe, nor are its inhabitants amenable to measures eminently satisfactory to civilised northern races. The tomb was subsequently levelled to the ground by an explosion of gun-cotton and the debris was cleared away.