Kassala had just gone through the ordeal
of a mutiny of Nubian troops. Pernicious fevers, malignant dysenteries
and cholera had decimated both rebels and loyalists; war and sickness
had marched hand in hand to make of this fair oasis of the Soudan
a wilderness painful to contemplate. The mutiny broke out in July.
The Nubian troops had not been paid for two years, and when they
claimed a portion of their arrears, they only met with a stern
refusal. Under these circumstances, it is not astonishing that they
became ready listeners to the treasonable words and extravagant
promises made to them by one of their petty chiefs, named Denda, a
descendant of the former Nubian kings. They matured their plot in
great secresy, and every one was horrified one morning to learn
that the black troops had broken out in open mutiny and murdered
their officers, and, no longer restrained, had followed their natural
inclinations to revel in carnage and plunder. A few Egyptian regulars
had, luckily, possession of the arsenal, and held it against these
infuriated savages until troops could arrive from Kedaref and
Khartoum. The Europeans and Egyptians gallantly defended their part
of the town. They erected walls and small earthworks between
themselves and the mutineers, and continually on the alert, though
few in number, they repulsed with great gallantry the assault of
the fiends thirsting for their lives and property.
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