The Mahdi was utterly opposed to all these evil habits, and during his life matters greatly improved; but this was due rather to the fact that the whole country was under arms, and that the towns were practically deserted. Besides, punishment for such crimes was ungrudgingly given, and the stoppage of marissa-drinking also tended to lessen the evils. Marriage ceremonies were simplified and made less expensive, and a distinct advance in public morality was apparent. But when the principal fighting was over, and the victorious emirs gave themselves over to a life of luxury and debauchery, when idle town life took the place of religious campaigns, when houses were built of mud and bricks instead of rough straw huts, and when the Mahdi died, then immorality broke forth with the redoubled violence of long compression, and the state of affairs became infinitely worse than it had ever been in the old Government days. I refer especially to Omdurman. Constant warfare had greatly diminished the male population. Omdurman was full of women who had neither husbands nor male relations; and this is the real cause of the evil state of affairs. Matters reached such a pitch in 1888 that the Khalifa issued an order that every unmarried woman must be provided with a husband within three days, or she would be handed over to a Baggara as a slave or concubine. In consequence of this order, for the space of three days the whole town was continuously occupied in marriage ceremonies. Men seized this opportunity of taking women whom they would never, under other circumstances, have been allowed to marry; and of course these forced marriages could not be of long duration--in a month or two most of the couples were separated. Another cause which tended towards immorality was the fact that numbers of men had been sent off to far-distant parts of the country on expeditions, unaccompanied by their wives, most of whom were left in Omdurman for years; and it is hardly to be wondered at if in time they began to forget their husbands and to form unlawful connections, in which the Khalifa had frequently to interfere. On one occasion upwards of eighty women, whose infidelity to their husbands was unquestionable, were put in prison, and a council held to consider what should be done to them. It was decided to make an example of one, and the victim selected was an unfortunate who had borne two illegitimate children. The poor creature was led into the women's quarter of the market, and there she was lowered into a grave with her last child tied to her bosom, and both stoned to death by a cruel and hard-hearted crowd, who seemed to take a fiendish delight in this inhuman piece of work.