The Khalifa's policy is to weaken the power of the Aulad-belad and to strengthen the Baggaras. Just as a good father watches his children, so does Abdullah watch for every opportunity to further these ends by a clever combination of leniency and severity. He frequently blames his own countrymen for their want of gratitude to their benefactor, who has heaped favours upon them at the expense of the Aulad-belad. On one occasion he cursed the day on which he had brought them to Omdurman, calling it a "black day;" but, in point of fact, he is not really serious when he upbraids them, he rather does it to satisfy the complainers, and he takes every opportunity of sending the Aulad-belad as far away from headquarters as possible, so as to strengthen his central authority by the presence of Baggaras only. I have already narrated how in the famine year he made the Baggaras pay only six dollars for an ardeb of dhurra, whilst everyone else had to pay sixty dollars for the same quantity; thus the Baggara suffered no hardships and want during that terrible time. They do not like dhurra as well as dukhn, which is more nourishing, and which they grind in wooden mortars. During that period of awful want, when hundreds of natives were dying of starvation in the streets, these great strong Baggaras were eating to their hearts' content, completely regardless of all the suffering creatures around them. The revenue of the beit el mal is expended almost entirely on the Baggaras; all the fertile islands in the neighbourhood, and the best-cultivated portions of the Nile banks as far as Berber, have been made over to them, whilst the original owners of the soil have been turned out without a piastre's compensation; they are, therefore, owners of all the best lands, and serve as a foreign garrison in occupation of a conquered country. Woe to the native who happens to have a Baggara as his neighbour! His cattle are robbed, and he must share the product of the fields with his overbearing master; wherever they go the Baggaras take their horses with them, which must be fed and cared for at the expense of the local inhabitants; complaints against Baggaras are not taken the slightest notice of, or--as it more often happens--the complainant receives a heavy punishment for having ventured to make a statement which is invariably construed as untrue and incorrect. Thus these bold tribesmen have every inducement to become more and more truculent the further removed they are from the Khalifa's supervision. I will cite an example.