Whatever Abdullah's motives may have been, his advantage was
certain.
But the life of the empire thus compelled to prey upon itself
must necessarily be short.
Other forces were soon added to the work of exhaustion. The year
following the end of the Abyssinian war was marked by a fearful famine.
Slatin and Ohrwalder vie with each other in relating its horrors - men
eating the raw entrails of donkeys; mothers devouring their babies;
scores dying in the streets, all the more ghastly in the bright sunlight;
hundreds of corpses floating down the Nile - these are among the hideous
features, The depopulation caused by the scarcity was even greater than
that produced by the fighting. The famine area extended over the whole
Soudan and ran along the banks of the river as far as Lower Egypt.
The effects of the famine were everywhere appalling. Entire districts
between Omdurman and Berber became wholly depopulated. In the salt regions
near Shendi almost all the inhabitants died of hunger. The camel-breeding
tribes ate their she-camels. The riverain peoples devoured their seed-corn.
The population of Gallabat, Gedaref, and Kassala was reduced by
nine-tenths, and these once considerable towns shrank to the size
of hamlets. Everywhere the deserted mud houses crumbled back into the
plain. The frightful mortality, general throughout the whole country,
may be gauged by the fact that Zeki Tummal's army, which before the
famine numbered not fewer than 87,000, could scarcely muster 10,000 men
in the spring of 1890.
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