THE FIRST NILE MISSION.
A brief description of the conquest by Mehemet Ali and his successors
of the Soudan--a name signifying nothing more than "the land of the
blacks"--and of the events which immediately preceded the appointment
of Gordon, is necessary to show the extent of the work intrusted to
him, and the special difficulties with which he had to contend.
It was in 1819 that the great Pasha or Viceroy Mehemet Ali, still in
name the lieutenant of the Sultan, ordered his sons Ismail and the
more famous Ibrahim to extend his authority up the Nile, and conquer
the Soudan. They do not seem to have experienced any difficulty in
carrying out their instructions. Nobody was interested in defending
the arid wastes of that region. The Egyptian yoke promised to be as
light as any other, and a few whiffs of grape-shot dispersed the only
adversaries who showed themselves. Ibrahim, who soon took the lead,
selected Khartoum as the capital of the new province, in preference to
Shendy, which had formerly been regarded as the principal place in the
country. In this he showed excellent judgment, for Khartoum occupies
an admirable position in the fork of the two branches of the Nile; and
whatever fate may yet befall the region in which the Mahdi and his
successor the Khalifa have set up their ephemeral authority, it is
destined by Nature to be the central point and capital of the vast
region between the Delta and the Equatorial Lakes.
Khartoum lies on the left bank of the Blue Nile--Bahr-el-Azrak--rather
more than three miles south of its confluence with the White
Nile--Bahr-el-Abiad--at the northern point of the Isle of Tuti. The
channel south of that island affords a slightly nearer approach to the
White Nile, coming out immediately opposite the fortified camp of
Omdurman, which the Mahdi made his headquarters and capital after the
famous siege of 1884. There was nothing attractive or imposing about
Khartoum. It contained 3000 mud houses, and one more pretentious
building in the Governor's official residence or palace, known as the
Hukumdariaha. It is surrounded by a wall and ditch, except where the
Blue Nile supplies the need; and its western wall is not more than
half a mile from the banks of the White Nile, so that with proper
artillery it commands both rivers. The Nilometer at this place used to
give the first and early intimation to the cultivators in Lower Egypt
of the quantity of water being brought down from the rivers of
Abyssinia. There seems no other conclusion possible than that sooner
or later this practical service will compel Egypt, whenever she feels
strong enough, to re-establish her power at Khartoum; already there is
evidence that the time has arrived.
Having conquered the Soudan easily, the rulers of Egypt experienced no
difficulty in retaining it for sixty years; and if other forces,
partly created by the moral pressure of England and civilized opinion
generally, had not come into action, there is every reason to suppose
that their authority would never have been assailed. Nor did the
Egyptians stand still. By the year 1853 they had conquered Darfur on
the one side, and pushed their outposts on the other 120 miles south
of Khartoum. In the rear of the Egyptian garrison came the European
trader, who took into his service bands of Arab mercenaries, so that
he pushed his way beyond the Egyptian stations into the region of the
Bahr Gazelle, where the writ of the Cairo ruler did not run. These
traders came to deal in ivory, but they soon found that, profitable as
it was, there was a greater profit in, and a far greater supply of,
"black ivory." Thus an iniquitous trade in human beings sprang up, and
the real originators of it were not black men and Mahommedans, but
white men, and in many instances Englishmen. From slave buying they
took to slave hunting, and in this way there is no exaggeration in
declaring that villages and districts were depopulated. Such
scandalous proceedings could not be carried on in the dark, and at
last the Europeans involved felt compelled, by the weight of adverse
opinion, or more probably from a sense of their own peril, to withdraw
from the business. This touch of conscience or alarm did not improve
the situation. They sold their stations to their Arab agents, who in
turn purchased immunity from the Egyptian officers. The slave trade,
by the pursuit and capture of any tribe rash enough to come within the
spring of the Arab raiders, flourished as much as ever. The only
change was that after 1860 Europeans were clear of the stigma that
attached to any direct participation in it.
The condition of the Soudan during this period has been graphically
described by Captain Speke, Dr Schweinfurth, and Sir Samuel Baker.
They all agree in their facts and their conclusions. The people were
miserably unhappy, because the dread and the reality of compulsory
slavery hung over their daily life. Those who were not already slaves
realised their impending fate. Villages were abandoned, districts
passed out of cultivation, and a large part of the population
literally vanished. Sir Samuel Baker, speaking of the difference
between a region he knew well in 1864 and in 1872, wrote in the latter
year: "It is impossible to describe the change that has taken place
since I last visited this country. It was then a perfect garden,
thickly populated, and producing all that man could desire. The
villages were numerous, groves of plantains fringed the steep cliffs
on the river's bank, and the natives were neatly dressed in the bark
cloth of the country. The scene has changed! All is wilderness. The
population has fled! Not a village is to be seen! This is the certain
result of the settlement of Khartoum traders. They kidnap the women
and children for slaves, and plunder and destroy wherever they set
their foot." How true all this was will be seen in the course of
Gordon's own experiences.
It has been stated that the Arab slave-dealers made terms with the
Egyptian officials, and they were even not without influence and the
means of gaining favourable consideration at Cairo itself. But as they
increased in numbers, wealth, and confidence in themselves and their
organisation, the Khedive began to see in them a possible danger to
his own authority. This feeling was strengthened when the slavers,
under the leadership of the since notorious Zebehr Rahama, the most
ambitious and capable of them all, refused to pay their usual tribute.
Dr Schweinfurth has given a vivid picture of this man in the heyday of
his power. Chained lions formed part of his escort, and it is recorded
that he had 25,000 dollars' worth of silver cast into bullets in order
to foil the magic of any enemy who was said to be proof against lead.
Strong as this truculent leader was in men and money, the Khedive
Ismail did not believe that he would dare to resist his power. He
therefore decided to have recourse to force, and in 1869 he sent a
small military expedition, under the command of Bellal Bey, to bring
the Bahr Gazelle into submission. Zebehr had made all his arrangements
for defence, and on the Egyptian army making its appearance he
promptly attacked and annihilated it. This success fully established
the power and reputation of Zebehr, who became the real dictator of
the Soudan south of Khartoum. The Khedive, having no available means
of bringing his rebellious dependent to reason, had to acquiesce in
the defeat of his army. Zebehr offered some lame excuse for his
boldness and success, and Ismail had to accept it, and bide the hour
of revenge.
Zebehr, encouraged by this military triumph, turned his arms against
the Sultans of Darfour, who had incurred his resentment by placing an
embargo on wheat during the course of his brief campaign with Bellal.
This offensive action still further alarmed the Khedive Ismail, who
was fully alive to the danger that might arise to his own position if
a powerful military confederacy, under a capable chief, were ever
organised in the Soudan. Instead of allying himself with the
Darfourians, as would probably have been the more politic course,
Ismail decided to invade their territory simultaneously with Zebehr.
Several battles were fought, and one after another the Sultans of
Darfour, whose dynasty had reigned for 400 years, were overthrown and
slain. Zebehr received in succession the Turkish titles of Bey and
Pasha, but he was not satisfied, for he said that as he had done all
the fighting, he ought to receive the Governor-Generalship of Darfour.
If he failed to win that title from the Khedive, he succeeded in
gratifying a more profitable desire, by leading off into slavery the
larger half of the population of Darfour. He was still engaged in this
pursuit at the time of Gordon's appearance on the scene, and the force
at his disposal was thus described by that officer: "Smart,
dapper-looking fellows, like antelopes, fierce, unsparing, the terror
of Central Africa, having a prestige far beyond that of the
Government--these are the slave-dealers' tools," and afterwards they
no doubt became the main phalanx of the Mahdi's military system.
The financial position of the Egyptian Government in the Soudan was as
bad as the military and political. The Khedive's Governor-General at
Khartoum, Ismail Yakoob Pasha, was nominally responsible for the
administration of Darfour, although Zebehr reaped all the gain. This
arrangement resulted in a drain on the Khedive's exchequer of L50,000
a year. The revenue failed to meet the expenditure in the other
departments, and this was mainly due to the fact that the slavers no
longer paid toll or tithe in the only trade that they had allowed to
exist in the Soudan. What share of the human traffic they parted with
was given in the way of bribes, and found no place in the official
returns. All the time that this drain continued the Khedive was in a
constant state of apprehension as to the danger which might arise to
him in the south. He was also in receipt of frequent remonstrances
from the English and other Governments as to the iniquities of the
slave-trade, for which he was primarily in no sense to blame. On the
other hand, he derived no benefit from the Soudan; and if he thought
he could have obtained a secure frontier at Abou Hamid, or even at
Wadi Halfa, he would have resigned all the rest without a sigh. But it
was his strong conviction that no such frontier was attainable, and
Ismail clung to his nominal and costly authority over the Soudan in
the hope that some improvement might be effected, or that, in the
chapter of accidents, the unexpected might come to his aid.
Alarmed as to his own position, in view of the ambition of Zebehr, and
harassed by the importunities of England, Ismail, acting on the
advice of his able and dexterous Minister, Nubar Pasha, one of the
most skilful diplomatists the East has ever produced, came to the
decision to relieve himself from at least the latter annoyance, by the
appointment of Gordon. This was the main object the Khedive and his
advisers had in view when they invited Gordon to accept the post of
Governor of the Equatorial Provinces in succession to Sir Samuel
Baker, who resigned what he found after many years' experience was a
hopeless and thankless task. The post was in one sense peculiar. It
was quite distinct from that of the Egyptian Governor-General at
Khartoum, who retained his separate and really superior position in
the administration of the Upper Nile region. Moreover, the finances of
the Equatorial districts were included in the general Soudan Budget,
which always showed an alarming deficit. These arrangements imparted a
special difficulty into the situation with which Gordon had to deal,
and his manner of coping with it will reveal how shrewd he was in
detecting the root-cause of any trouble, and how prompt were his
measures to eradicate the mischief. From the first he fully realised
why he was appointed, viz. "to catch the attention of the English
people"; but he also appreciated the Khedive's "terrible anxiety to
put down the slave-trade, which threatens his supremacy." With these
introductory remarks, the main thread of Gordon's career may be
resumed.
After the brief hesitation referred to in the last chapter, and the
reduction of his salary to what he deemed reasonable dimensions,
Gordon proceeded to Cairo, where he arrived early in the year 1874. As
in everything else he undertook, Gordon was in earnest about the work
he had to attempt, and no doubt he had already formed in his mind a
general plan of action, which would enable him to suppress the
slave-trade. Here it will suffice to say that his project was based on
the holding of the White Nile by a line of fortified posts, and with
the river steamers, which would result in cutting off the slave
hunters from their best source of supply. The expression of his plans
in his earnest manner showed up by contrast the hollowness of the
views and policy of those who had obtained his services. In his own
graphic and emphatic way he wrote: "I thought the thing real and found
it a sham, and felt like a Gordon who has been humbugged." He found
Cairo "a regular hot-bed of intrigues," and among not only the
Egyptian, but also the European officials. With a prophetic grasp of
the situation he wrote, "Things cannot last long like this." Had
Gordon been long detained at Cairo, where the etiquette and the advice
offered him by every one in an official position exasperated him
beyond endurance, there is no doubt that he would have thrown up his
task in disgust. He was animated by the desire to make the sham a
reality, and to convert the project with which he had been intrusted
into a beneficial scheme for the suffering population of the Soudan.
There, at least, he would be removed from the intrigues of the
capital, and at liberty to speak his own thoughts without giving
umbrage to one person and receiving worldly counsel from another.
One of the chief bones of contention during the few weeks he passed at
Cairo was the dispute as to how he should travel to the scene of his
government. He wished to go by ordinary steamer, with one servant. The
Minister insisted that he should travel by a special steamer, and
accompanied by a retinue. Gordon's plan would have saved the Khedive's
Government L400, but he had to give way to the proprieties. The affair
had an amusing issue. His special train to Suez met with an accident,
and he and the Egyptian officials sent to see him off were compelled,
after two hours' delay, to change into another train, and continue
their journey in an ordinary passenger carriage, much to the amusement
of Gordon, who wrote: "We began in glory and ended in shame!" On
arrival at Souakim, Gordon was put into quarantine for a night, in
order, as he said, that the Governor might have time to put on his
official clothes.
Soon his attention was drawn from such frivolities as these to more
serious matters. He left Cairo on 21st February, reached Souakim on
26th, left Souakim on 1st March, Berber on 9th March, and entered
Khartoum 13th March. He brought with him 200 fresh troops, and was
welcomed with considerable display and many hollow protestations of
friendship by the Governor-General, Ismail Yakoob.
A few weeks before his arrival at Khartoum an important event had
taken place, which greatly simplified his ulterior operations. The
"sudd," an accumulation of mould and aquatic plants which had formed
into a solid mass and obstructed all navigation, had suddenly given
way, and restored communication with Gondokoro and the lakes. The
importance of this event may be measured by the fact that whereas the
journey to Gondokoro, with the "sudd" in existence, took twenty months
and even two years to perform, it was reduced by its dispersal to
twenty-one days. General Gordon wrote the following very pretty
description of this grassy barrier and its origin:
"A curious little cabbage-like aquatic plant comes floating down,
having a little root ready to attach itself to anything; he meets
a friend, and they go together, and soon join roots and so on.
When they get to a lake, the current is too strong, and so, no
longer constrained to move on, they go off to the sides; others
do the same--idle and loitering, like everything up here. After a
time winds drive a whole fleet of them against the narrow outlet
of the lake and stop it up. Then no more passenger plants can
pass through the outlet, while plenty come in at the upper end of
the lake; these eventually fill up all the passages which may
have been made."
Gordon had the control of seven steamers, and in one of these he left
Khartoum on 22nd March for the Upper Nile. He had already issued his
first decree as Governor of the Equator, in which he declared the sale
of ivory to be a Government monopoly, and forbade the importation of
firearms and ammunition. It was while he was on this journey that he
heard some birds--a kind of stork--laughing on the banks of the river.
In his letters to his sister, which were to stand in the place of a
diary, he facetiously remarks that he supposes they were amused at the
idea of anyone being so foolish as to go up the Nile in "the hope of
doing anything." But Gordon was not to be discouraged. Already he
liked his work, amid the heat and mosquitoes day and night all the
year round, and already he was convinced that he could do a good deal
to ameliorate the lot of the unfortunate people. He reached Gondokoro
on 16th April, where not only was he not expected, but he found them
ignorant even of his appointment. He remained there only a few days,
as he perceived he could do nothing without his stores, still _en
route_ from Cairo, and returned to Khartoum, which he reached in
eleven days.
This brief trip satisfied him of several simple facts bearing on the
situation in the Equatorial Province which the Khedive had sent him
with such a flourish of trumpets to govern. He found very easily that
the Egyptian Government possessed no practical authority in that
region. Beyond the two forts at Gondokoro--garrison 300 men--and
Fatiko--garrison 200 men--the Khedive had no possessions, and there
was not even safety for his representatives half a mile from
their guns. As Gordon said: "The Khedive gave me a Firman as
Governor-General of the Equator, and left me to work out the rest." He
began the practical part of his task on the occasion of this return to
Khartoum by insisting that the accounts of the Equatorial Province
should be kept distinct from those of the Soudan, and also that Ragouf
Pasha, sent nominally to assist but really to hinder him, should be
withdrawn.
Having asserted his individuality after several rows with Ismail
Yakoob, he became impatient at the delayed arrival of his stores and
staff, and hastened off to Berber to hurry their progress. As he was
fond of saying, "Self is the best officer," and his visit to Berber
hastened the arrival of the supplies which were necessary for his
subsequent operations. His staff consisted of Colonel Long, of the
United States Army, who had accompanied him to Gondokoro and been left
there; Major Campbell, Egyptian Staff; Mr Kemp, an engineer; M.
Linant, a Frenchman; Mr Anson, Mr Russell, and the Italian Romulus
Gessi. Two Royal Engineer officers, Lieutenants Chippendall and
Charles Watson, joined him before the end of the year. He worked very
hard himself, and he expected those under him to do the same. The
astonished Egyptian officials looked on in amazement at one in high
rank, who examined into every detail himself, and who took his turn of
the hard work. One of Gordon's forms of recreation was to get out and
help to pull his _dahabeah_. Tucking up his trousers, he would wade
through the river fearlessly, having learnt from the natives that
crocodiles never attack a person moving.
At first Ismail Yakoob and his colleagues were filled with curiosity
and amusement at this phenomenal Englishman--so different, not merely
from themselves, but from other Europeans--then apprehension seized
them as to what he would do next in the way of exposing their neglect
of duty, and finally only the capacity for one sentiment was
left--relief whenever he turned his back on Khartoum.
Having collected his staff and supplies, he started up the Nile once
more, to begin the establishment of the line of fortified posts, which
he had resolved on as the best means of maintaining and extending his
own authority, and at the same time of curtailing the raids of the
slave-dealers. The first of these forts or stations he established at
the entrance of the Saubat river, and while there he made a discovery
which showed how the slave-trade flourished with such impunity. He
seized some letters from a slave-dealer to the Egyptian commander at
Fashoda, stating that he was bringing him the slaves he wanted for
himself and many others, besides 2000 cows. By several skilful
manoeuvres Gordon succeeded in rescuing all of them, restoring the
cows to their owners, and compelling the soldiers of the slavehunters
to return to their homes, generally in or near Khartoum. Nor was this
his only success during the first two months of his government, for he
detected one of his lieutenants in the act of letting a slave convoy
pass in return for a bribe of L70. On this occasion he had the
satisfaction of delivering 1600 human beings from slavery. This will
show that one of his principal difficulties was caused by his own
subordinates, who were hand-in-glove with the leading slavehunters.
Another of Gordon's troubles arose from the collapse of his staff
under the terrible heat. Of those enumerated as having gone up with or
to him in May, all were dead or invalided in September; and the duties
of sick-nurse at last became so excessive that Gordon had to order, in
his own quaint manner, that no one who was sick should be allowed to
come to headquarters. Only in this way was he able to obtain the time
necessary for the accomplishment, single handed, of his various
duties. Such was the strain on him that he gave positive injunctions
that no more Europeans, and especially young English officers, were to
be sent up to him.
As soon as it was realised that the new Governor was in earnest, that
he was bent on crushing the slave-trade, and that he would not permit
corruption or extortion in any form, he became the mark of general
hostility. The intrigues to mislead and discredit him were incessant.
Abou Saoud, who had been formerly banished by Sir Samuel Baker from
the Soudan, and then taken into high favour by Gordon, turned out a
fraud and a failure, while Raouf Bey, the nominee of the Khartoum
Governor-General, was sent back in disgrace. With regard to Abou Saoud
it may be said that Gordon never really trusted him, that is to say he
was not taken in by him, but believed he would be less able to do
injury in his service than at a distance. It was precisely the same
principle as led him to solicit the co-operation of Zebehr in 1884.
Gordon's method of dealing with those who caused him trouble was short
and simple. It consisted in a brief but unchallengeable order to go
back to the base. As the officials would have been murdered by the
people they had so long and so often injured if they attempted to seek
shelter among them, they had no alternative save to obey; and thus,
one after another, Gordon brushed the chief obstructionists from his
path. He served the old troublesome soldiers who would not work or
change their ways after the same fashion, by sending them to his
Botany Bay at Khartoum. In the midst of all these troubles he kept
well, although "a mere shadow," and he still retained the conviction
that he would be able to do much good work in this unpromising region.
In dealing with the natives, he endeavoured first to induce them to
cultivate the ground, providing them with seed and dhoora (_sorghum_),
and then to accustom them to the use of money. He bought their ivory
and paid for it in coin, so that in a little time he found that the
inhabitants, who had held aloof from all previous Egyptian officials,
freely brought him their ivory and produce for sale. At the same time,
he made it a point to pay scrupulously for any service the natives
rendered, and he even endeavoured, as far as he could, to put
employment in their way. The practice of the Egyptian officials had
been to lay hands on any natives that came across their path, and
compel them by force to perform any work they might deem necessary,
and then to dismiss them without reward or thanks. The result was a
deep-rooted execration of the whole Egyptian system, which found voice
in the most popular war-cry of the region: "We want no Turks here! Let
us drive them away!" But Gordon's mode was widely different. It was
based on justice and reason, and in the long-run constituted sound
policy. He paid for what he took, and when he used the natives to drag
his boats, or to clear tracks through the grassy zone fringing the
Nile, he always carefully handed over to them cows, dhoora, or money,
as an equivalent for their work. On the other hand, he was not less
prompt to punish hostile tribes by imposing taxes on them, and, when
unavoidable, inflicting punishment as well. But the system averted, as
far as possible, the necessity of extreme measures, and in this the
first period of his rule in the Soudan he had few hostile collisions
with the natives of the country. Indeed, with the exception of the
Bari tribe, who entrapped Linant, Gordon's best lieutenant after
Gessi, and slew him with a small detachment, Gordon's enemies in the
field proved few and insignificant. Even the Baris would not have
ventured to attack him but for the acquaintance with, and contempt of,
firearms they had obtained during an earlier success over an Egyptian
corps.
There is no doubt that this absence of any organised opposition was
fortunate, for the so-called troops at the disposal of the Governor of
the Equator were as miserably inefficient and contemptible, from a
fighting point of view, as any General Gordon ever commanded; and at a
later stage of his career he plaintively remarked that it had fallen
to his lot to lead a greater number of cowardly and unwarlike races
than anyone else. But it was not merely that they were such poor
fighters that Gordon declared that three natives would put a company
to flight, but they were so disinclined for any work, and so
encumbered by their women and children, that their ability to make any
military show might be as safely challenged as their combative spirit.
Well might Gordon write: "I never had less confidence in any troops in
my life." But even these shortcomings were not the worst. The Arab
soldiers provided by the Egyptian Government, and sent up over and
over again, in spite of Gordon's protests and entreaties, could not
stand the climate. They died like flies. Of one detachment of 250,
half were dead in three months, 100 of the others were invalided, and
only 25 remained fit for duty. From a further body of 150 men sent as
a reinforcement, half were reported on the sick list the day after
their arrival. The main buttress of the Khedive's authority in this
region was therefore hollow and erected on an insecure foundation. The
Egyptian soldiers possessed firearms, and the natives, in their
ignorance that they could not shoot straight, were afraid of them; but
the natural progress of knowledge would inevitably prove fatal to that
unreal supremacy, and eventually entail the collapse of the Cairo
administration in the Soudan and the remoter districts on the
Equator.
Realising the inefficiency of the Egyptian force, General Gordon set
himself to the task of providing a better; and mindful of the
contingent danger of creating a corps that might in the end prove a
peril to the system it was meant to protect, he resolved that, if
individually brave and efficient, it should be exceedingly limited in
numbers, and incapable of casting aside its allegiance to the Khedive.
He began in a small way by engaging the services of any stalwart
Soudanese native whom chance placed in his path, and thus he organised
in the first year of his rule a corps of about forty men as a sort of
bodyguard. An accident brought him into contact with a party of the
Niam Niam, a tribe of cannibals from the interior of Africa, but
possessing a martial spirit and athletic frames. Gordon looked at them
with the eye of a soldier, and on the spot enrolled fifty of them into
the small force he was organising. He armed them with spears as well
as guns, and as these spears were cutting ones, with a blade two feet
long, they were the more formidable weapon of the two. Gordon
describes the Niam Niam warriors as looking very fierce, and brave,
and fearless. They were also thick-set and sturdy, and, above all, so
indifferent to the tropical heat that they might be relied on not to
break down from the climate like the Egyptian soldiers. Before the end
of the year 1876 he had increased the numbers of these two contingents
to 500 men. It was with these black troops that Gordon humbled the
pride of the Baris, elated by their two successes, and provided for
the security of the long Nile route to the lakes.
There was another advantage besides the military in this practical
measure, one of those numerous administrative acts, in every clime and
under innumerable conditions, that established the fame and the sound
sense and judgment of General Gordon. It promoted economy, and
contributed to the sound finance which Gordon always set himself to
establish wherever he was responsible. One of Gordon's first
resolutions had been that his part of the Soudan should cease to be a
drain, like the rest, on the Cairo Exchequer. He determined that he at
least would pay his way, and on the threshold of his undertaking he
had insisted, and carried in the teeth of powerful opposition his
resolution, that the accounts of the Equatorial Province should be
kept distinct from those of the Soudan. The employment of black
soldiers was very economical as well as efficient, and contributed to
the satisfactory result which was shown in the balance-sheet of the
Equatorial Province as described by General Gordon for the year 1875.
In that year the Khedive received L48,000 from the Province which
Gordon ruled at a total cost of only L20,000, while he had also formed
a surplus or reserve fund of L60,000 more.
Having thus accomplished as much as possible towards the
strengthening of the administration and tranquillisation of the
people, some further particulars may be recorded of his measures and
success in dealing with that slave-trade, the existence of which was
the primary cause of his own appearance in the Soudan. Allusion has
already been made to the considerable number of slaves rescued by a
few grand _coups_ at the expense of his own subordinates, but during
the whole of these three years Gordon was in close contact with
slaves, and the rescue of individuals was of frequent occurrence.
Several touching incidents are recorded in the letters published from
Central Africa as to his kindness towards women and infants, to some
of whom he even gave the shelter of his own tent; and nothing could be
more effective in the way of illustration than his simple description
of the following passage with the child-wife of one of his own
soldiers:
"The night before I left this place a girl of twelve years, in
one of those leather strap girdles, came up to the fire where I
was sitting, and warmed herself. I sent for the interpreter, and
asked what she wanted. She said the soldier who owned her beat
her, and she would not stay with him; so I put her on board the
steamer. The soldier was very angry, so I said: 'If the girl
likes to stay with you, she may; if she does not, she is free.'
The girl would not go back, so she stays on the steamer."
Nor was this the only incident of the kind to show not merely the
tenderness of his heart, but the extraordinary reputation Gordon had
acquired by his high-minded action among these primitive and
down-trodden races. Here are some others that have been selected
almost at random out of his daily acts of gentleness and true
charity:--
"I took a poor old bag of bones into my camp a month ago, and
have been feeding her up, but yesterday she was quietly taken
off, and now knows all things. She had her tobacco up to the
last, and died quite quietly.... A wretched _sister_ of yours
[addressed to the late Miss Gordon] is struggling up the road,
but she is such a wisp of bones that the wind threatens to
overthrow her; so she has halted, preferring the rain to being
cast down. I have sent her some dhoora, which will produce a
spark of joy in her black and withered carcass. I told my man to
see her into one of the huts, and thought he had done so. The
night was stormy and rainy, and when I awoke I heard often a
crying of a child near my hut within the enclosure. When I got up
I went out to see what it was, and passing through the gateway, I
saw your and my sister lying dead in a pool of mud--her black
brothers had been passing and passing, and had taken no notice of
her--so I ordered her to be buried, and went on. In the midst of
the high grass was a baby, about a year or so old, left by
itself. It had been out all night in the rain, and had been left
by its mother. I carried it in, and seeing the corpse was not
moved, I sent again about it, and went with the men to have it
buried. To my surprise and astonishment, she was alive. After
considerable trouble I got the black brothers to lift her out of
the mud, poured some brandy down her throat, and got her into a
hut with a fire, having the mud washed out of her eyes. She was
not more than sixteen years of age. There she now lies. I cannot
help hoping she is floating down with the tide to the haven of
rest. The next day she was still alive, and the babe, not a year
old, seized a gourd of milk, and drank it off like a man, and is
apparently in for the pilgrimage of life. It does not seem the
worse for its night out, depraved little wretch!... The black
sister departed this life at 4 P.M., deeply lamented by me, not
so by her black brothers, who thought her a nuisance. When I went
to see her this morning I heard the 'lamentations' of something
on the other side of the hut. I went round, and found another of
our species, a visitor of ten or twelve months to this globe,
lying in a pool of mud. I said, 'Here is another foundling!' and
had it taken up. Its mother came up afterwards, and I mildly
expostulated with her, remarking, however good it might be for
the spawn of frogs, it was not good for our species. The creature
drank milk after this with avidity."
Such incidents explain the hold Gordon obtained over the indigenous
population of the Upper Nile. He made friends right and left, as he
said, and the trust of the poor people, who had never received
kindness, and whose ignorance of the first principles of justice was
so complete that he said it would take three generations of sound and
paternal government to accustom them to it, in General Gordon was
complete and touching. A chapter might be filled with evidence to this
effect, but it is unnecessary, as the facts are fully set forth in the
"Letters" from Central Africa. The result alone need be dwelt on here.
For only too brief a period, and as the outcome of his personal
effort, these primitive races saw and experienced the beneficial
results of a sound and well-balanced administration. The light was all
too quickly withdrawn; but while it lasted, General Gordon stood out
as a kind of redeemer for the Soudanese. The poor slaves, from whose
limbs the chains of their oppressors had only just been struck, would
come round him when anxious about his health, and gently touch him
with their fingers. The hostile chiefs, hearing, as Bedden did, that
he restored his cattle to and recompensed in other ways a friendly
chief who had been attacked in mistake, would lie in wait for him, and
lay their views and grievances before him. He could walk fearlessly
and unarmed through their midst, and along the river banks for miles,
when an Egyptian official would have required a regiment to guard
him, and detached soldiers would have been enticed into the long grass
and murdered. Even the hostile tribes like the Bari, who, from a
mistaken view of their own military power, would not come to terms,
showed their recognition of his merit by avoiding in their attacks the
posts in which he happened to be. Thus there grew up round Gordon in
the Soudan a sublime reputation for nobleness and goodness that will
linger on as a tradition, and that, when these remote regions along
the Equator fall under civilized authority, will simplify the task of
government, provided it be of the same pattern as that dispensed by
General Gordon.
As the subject has a permanent practical value, the following passage
embodying General Gordon's views is well worth repetition:--
"I feel sure that a series of bad governments have ruined the
people. Three generations of good government would scarcely
regenerate them. Their secretiveness is the result of the fear
that if they give, it may chance that they may want. Their
indolence is the result of experience that if they do well, or if
they do badly, the result will be _nil_ to them, therefore why
should they exert themselves? Their cowardice is the result of
the fear of responsibility. They are fallen on so heavily if
anything goes wrong. Their deceit is the result of fear and want
of moral courage, as they have no independence in their
characters. For a foreign power to take this country would be
most easy. The mass are far from fanatical. They would rejoice in
a good government, let its religion be what it might. A just
administration of law, and security of person against arbitrary
conduct, would do a great deal. It is the Government that needs
civilizing far more than the people. Mehemet Ali and his
descendants have always gone on the principle of enriching
themselves by monopolies of all sorts. None, not even the present
Khedive (Ismail), have brought in civilizing habits or customs
with any desire to benefit the country, or, at any rate, they
have subordinated this desire to that of obtaining an increased
revenue."
But while Gordon brought kindness and conciliation into play, the
settlement of the region entrusted to his care called for sterner
measures, and he was not the man, with all his nobility of character
and overflowing supply of the milk of human kindness, to refrain from
those vigorous and decisive measures that keep turbulent races in
subjection, and advance the cause of civilization, which in so many
quarters of the world must be synonymous with British supremacy. The
student of his voluminous writings will find many passages that
express philosophical doubts as to our right to coerce black races,
and to bind peoples who in their rude and primitive fashion are free
to the car of our wide-world Empire. But I am under no obligation to
save them the trouble of discovery by citing them, more especially
because I believe that they give a false impression of the man. I have
affirmed, and shall adduce copious and, as I think, convincing
evidence, at every turn of his varied experiences, that the true
Gordon was not the meek, colourless, milk-and-water, text-expounding,
theological disputant many would have us accept as a kind of Bunyan's
hero, but in action an uncompromising and resistless leader, who, when
he smote, at once struck his hardest. Gordon has supplied the answer
to his own misgivings as to our moral right to coerce and subject
tribes who advanced their natural claims to be left undisturbed: "We
cannot have them on our flank, and it is indispensable that they shall
be subjected."
Having organised his new forces, equipped all his steamers--one of
which was fitted out with machinery that had been left in Baker's time
to rust in the Korosko Desert--General Gordon set himself to the task
of systematically organising the line of posts which he had conceived
and begun to construct in the first stages of his administration. The
object of these posts was twofold. By them he would cut the slave
routes in two, and also open a road to the great Lakes of the Equator.
In the first few months of his residence he had transferred the
principal station from Gondokoro to Lardo, twelve miles lower down the
stream, and on the left instead of the right bank of the river. These
places lie a little on each side of the fifth degree of north
latitude, and Gordon fixed upon Lardo as his capital, because it was
far the healthier. Above Lardo he established at comparatively short
stages further posts at, in their order, Rageef, Beddem, Kerri,
Moogie, and Labore, immediately beyond the last of which occur the
Fola Falls, the only obstruction to navigation between Khartoum and
the Lakes. Above those Falls Gordon established a strong post at
Duffli, and dragged some of his steamers overland, and floated them on
the short link of the Nile between that place and Lake Albert,
establishing a final post north of that lake, at Wadelai. When his
fleet commanded that lake, he despatched his lieutenant, Gessi, across
it up the Victoria Nile, connecting the two great lakes, and continued
his chain of posts along it by Magungo, Anfina, Foweira, and Mrooli,
to the very borders of Mtesa's dominion in Uganda. By means of these
twelve posts General Gordon established the security of his
communications, and he also inspired his men with fresh confidence,
for, owing to the short distances between them, they always felt sure
of a near place of refuge in the event of any sudden attack. Thus it
came to pass that whereas formerly Egyptian troops could only move
about in bodies of 100 strong, General Gordon was able to send his
boats and despatches with only two soldiers in charge of them; and
having entirely suppressed the slave-trade within his own
jurisdiction, he was left free to accomplish the two ulterior objects
of his mission, viz. the installation of the Khedive's flag on the
Lakes, and the establishment of definite relations with Mtesa, whose
truculent vassal, Kaba Rega, of Unyoro, showed open hostility and
resentment at the threatened encroachment on his preserves.
It was neither a reprehensible nor an unintelligible vanity for the
Egyptian ruler to desire the control of the whole of the great river,
whose source had been traced south of the Equator, and 2000 miles
beyond the limits of the Pharaohs' dominions. Nor was the desire
diminished when, without sharing the gratification of the Prince in
whose name he acted, General Gordon advanced cogent reasons for
establishing a line of communication from Gondokoro, across the
territory of Mtesa, with the port of Mombasa on the Indian Ocean. As
Gordon pointed out, that place was nearly 1,100 miles from Khartoum,
and only 900 from Mombasa, while the advance to the Lakes increased
the distance from the one place by nearly 300 miles, and reduced that
to the other in the same measure. This short and advantageous line of
communication with the Equatorial Province and Upper Nile was beyond
both the power and the sphere of the Khedive; but in the task of
winning one of the most important of African zones formally recognised
as lying within the British sphere of influence, the route advocated
by General Gordon in 1875 has now become of the most undoubted value
and importance.
The aversion to all forms of notoriety except that which was
inseparable from his duty led Gordon to shrink from the publicity and
congratulations sure to follow if he were the first to navigate those
inland seas on the Equator. Having made all the arrangements, and
provided for the complete security of the task, he decided to baffle
the plans in his honour of the Royal Geographical Society, by
delegating the duty of first unfurling the Khedive's flag on their
waters to his able and much-trusted lieutenant, Gessi. Although he
sometimes took hasty resolutions, in flat opposition to his declared
intentions, he would probably have adhered to this determination but
for reading in one of Dr Schweinfurth's published lectures that "it
may be that Lake Albert belongs to the Nile basin, but it is not a
settled fact, for there are seventy miles between Foweira and Lake
Albert never explored, and one is not authorised in making the Nile
leave Lake Albert. The question is very doubtful." The accidental
perusal of this passage changed General Gordon's views. He felt that
this task devolved on him as the responsible administrator of the
whole region, and that his natural shrinking from trumpery and too
often easily-earned geographical honours, which he has bluntly
asserted should only be granted by the Sovereign, did not justify his
evading a piece of work that came within his day's duty. Therefore he
resolved to ascertain the fact by personal examination, and to set at
rest the doubts expressed by the German traveller.
Expanding Dr Schweinfurth's remarks, he explained that "it was
contended that the Nile did not flow out of Lake Victoria, and thence
through Lake Albert, and so northward, but that one river flowed out
of Lake Victoria and another out of Lake Albert, and that these two
rivers united and formed the Nile. This statement could not be
positively denied, inasmuch as no one had actually gone along the
river from Foweira to Magungo. So I went along it with much suffering,
and settled the question. I also found that from Foweira or Karuma
Falls there was a series of rapids to Murchison Falls, thus _by
degrees_ getting rid of the 1000-feet difference of level between
Foweira and Magungo." While mapping this region, Gordon one day
marched eighteen miles through jungle and in pouring rain, and on each
of the four following days he also walked fifteen miles--and the month
was August, only a few miles north of the Equator, or, in other words,
the very hottest period of the year. Having established the course of
the Nile and its navigability to the Murchison Falls close to the
Victoria Nyanza, General Gordon gave what he thought was a finishing
touch to this exploring expedition by effecting an arrangement with
King Mtesa.
But in order to explain the exact significance of this step, and the
consequent disappointment when it was found that the arrangement was
illusory and destitute of practical value, it is necessary to go back
a little, and trace the course of events in the Uganda region.
The Egyptian advance towards the south brought in its train two
questions of external policy. One was with Abyssinia, of which we
shall hear much in the next chapter; and the other was with the
kingdom of Uganda and the kinglets who regarded Mtesa as their chief.
Of these the principal was Kaba Rega, chief of Unyoro, and the
recognised ruler of the territory lying between the two Lakes. He was
a man of capacity and spirit, and had raised himself to the position
he occupied by ousting kinsmen who had superior claims to the
privileges of supreme authority. In the time of Gordon's predecessor,
Sir Samuel Baker, Kaba Rega had come to the front as a native
champion, resolved to defy the Egyptians and their white leaders to do
their worst. In a spirited attack on Baker's camp at Masindi, he
endeavoured to settle the pretensions of his invaders at a blow, but
he found that numbers were no match for the superior arms of his
opponent. But defeat did not diminish his spirit. Baker decreed his
deposition as King of Unyoro, proclaiming in his stead a cousin named
Rionga, but the order had no practical effect. Kaba Rega retired a
little from the vicinity of the Egyptian forces; he retained "the
magic stool" of authority over the lands and peoples of Unyoro, and
his cousin Rionga possessed nothing beyond the empty title contained
in an Egyptian official decree. This was the position when Gordon
appeared on the scene, and his first obligation was to give something
like force and reality to the pretensions of Rionga.
If Kaba Rega had been satisfied to retain the practical marks of
authority, it is probable that Gordon would have been well content to
leave him alone, but irritated by the slight placed upon him by Sir
Samuel Baker, he assumed the offensive on every possible occasion. He
attacked Colonel Long, one of Gordon's lieutenants, on his way back
from Mtesa, just as he had Baker; he threatened the Egyptian station
at Foweira; and above all, he welcomed the thwarted slave-dealers, who
were not averse to taking their revenge in any form at Gordon's
expense. In these circumstances an active policy was forced on General
Gordon, who promptly decided that Kaba Rega was "too treacherous" to
be allowed to retain his kingdom, and that measures must be taken to
set up Rionga in his place. It was at this moment, unfortunately, that
General Gordon discovered the worthlessness of his troops, and when,
in 1876, he had organised his new force, and was ready to carry out
the policy he had decided on in 1874, he was thinking mostly of his
departure from the Soudan, and had no time to proceed to extremities
against these southern adversaries, for behind Kaba Rega stood Mtesa.
When Gordon, in January 1876, entered the territory of Unyoro,
belonging to Kaba Rega, he found it desirable to take up the cause of
Anfina, in preference to that of Rionga, as the more influential
chief; but neither proved in popularity or expertness a match for Kaba
Rega. The possession of "the magic stool," the ancestral throne or
copper seat of the family of Unyoro, believed to be identified with
the fortunes of the little kingdom, alone compensated for the few
losses in the open field, as Kaba Rega was always careful to retreat
on the approach of his most dangerous adversary. Neither of his
kinsmen was likely to prove a formidable foe. Rionga passed his hours
in native excesses, in the joy of receiving the titular rank of Vakil
to the Khedive. Anfina alienated Gordon's friendly feeling by
suggesting the wholesale assassination of Kaba Rega's officers and
followers when they came on a mission to his camp. Kaba Rega carried
off the stool to the south, or rather the west, of Victoria Nyanza,
and bided his time, while Mtesa wrote a half-defiant and
half-entreating letter to Gordon, asking him to spare Unyoro. Mtesa
had his own views of gain, and when Gordon proposed to establish a
fortified post with a garrison of 160 men at Urundogani, the Uganda
ruler begged that it might be stationed at his own capital, Dubaga,
with the view of either winning over the troops to his service or
employing them against his own enemies. Gordon saw through this
proposal and withheld his consent, but his lieutenant, Nuehr Agha,
acted on his own responsibility, and moved with his force to Dubaga.
In a few weeks Gordon learnt that they were all, practically speaking,
prisoners, and that his already heavy enough task had been increased
by the necessity of rescuing them.
Gordon accordingly advanced in person to Mrooli, the nearest point to
Mtesa's capital without actually crossing his frontier, and as he had
with him a strong force of his newly-raised black contingent, he felt
confident of his capacity to punish Mtesa for any act of treachery,
and to annex, if necessary, his kingdom. But Gordon did not wish to
force a war on Mtesa, or to increase the burdens of the Nile dominion.
All he wanted was the restoration of the men detained at Dubaga, and
he soon received assurances that his presence, and the moral effect of
the force he had brought with him, would attain this result without
any necessity for fighting. As Gordon worded his complaint, it was a
case not of his wishing to annex Mtesa, but of Mtesa annexing his
soldiers.
Having satisfied himself that Mtesa was not willing to risk a quarrel,
General Gordon sent Nuehr Agha with ninety men to bring back the 140
men detained at Dubaga, and the task was accomplished without any
hitch or delay. This was due partly to the military demonstrations,
and partly also to a clever diplomatic move by Gordon, who wrote to
Mtesa expressing his readiness to recognise by treaty the independence
of Uganda, and to provide a safe-conduct for the King's ambassadors to
Cairo. At this time the late Dr Emin, who claimed to be an Arab and a
Mahommedan, was at Dubaga, but his influence on the course of events
was _nil_, and he and Gordon never met. After the return of the troops
Gordon commenced his retirement to the Nile, and after an arduous and
dangerous march of eighty miles through a swampy jungle beset by Kaba
Rega's tribesmen, who were able to throw their spears with accurate
aim for fifty yards, he succeeded in reaching Masindi without loss.
Then Gordon drew up a plan of campaign for the effectual subjugation
of Kaba Rega, but he did not wait to see it carried out, as the first
move could not be made until the grass was dry enough to burn. As soon
as that season arrived three columns were to march against the chief
of Unyoro in the following order--one consisting of 150 black
soldiers, and 3000 of the Lango tribe, under Rionga, moving from
Mrooli to Kisoga; another of about the same strength from Keroto to
Masindi; and the third operating from the Albert Lake with the
steamer. The plan was a good one, but Kaba Rega, by having recourse to
his old Fabian tactics, again baffled it.
Although these events happened when Gordon had reached Cairo, it will
be appropriate to give here the result of this campaign. The Unyoro
chieftain retired before the Egyptians, who carried off much cattle,
and when they in turn retired, he advanced and reoccupied his country.
After a brief period the Egyptians definitely gave up their stations
at Mrooli, Foweira, and Masindi, on the left bank of the Victoria
Nile, and confined themselves to those on its right bank, and thus
finally were Mtesa and Kaba Rega left to enjoy their own rude ideas of
independence and regal power.
So far as General Gordon was concerned, the Uganda question was then,
both for this period and for his subsequent and more important
command, definitely closed. But one personal incident remains to be
chronicled. When Gordon received Mtesa's request to garrison Dubaga,
and had actually planted a station on the Victoria Lake, he
telegraphed the facts to the Khedive, who promptly replied by
conferring on him the Medjidieh Order. At the moment that Gordon
received this intimation he had decided that it would not be politic
to comply with Mtesa's request to garrison Dubaga, and he had only
just succeeded in rescuing an Egyptian force from a position of danger
in the manner described. He felt that he had obtained this decoration
"under false pretences," but the recollection of the hard and
honourable work he had performed must have soon salved his conscience.
At an early stage of his work Gordon felt disposed to throw it up, and
during the whole three years a constant struggle went on within
himself as to whether he should stay or return to England. Many causes
produced this feeling. There was, in the first place, disillusionment
on discovering that the whole thing, from the Egyptian Government
point of view, was a sham, and that his name was being made use of to
impose on Europe. But then he thought he saw an opportunity of doing
some useful and beneficial work, and, stifling his disappointment, he
went on. Arrived on the scene, he found himself thwarted by his
Egyptian colleagues, and treated with indifference by the Cairene
Government. He also discovered that his troops were worthless, and
that not one of his officers, civil and military, cared a fig for the
task in hand. Their one thought was how to do nothing at all, and
Gordon's patience and energy were monopolised, and in the end
exhausted, by attempts to extract work from his unwilling
subordinates. Even the effort to educate them up to the simple
recognition that a certain amount of work had to be done, and that
unless it were well done, it had to be done over again, resulted in
failure. To the plain instructions he gave, they would give an
interpretation of their own; and while fully admitting on explanation
that this was not the proper way of executing any task, they would
invariably repeat it after their own fashion, until at length Gordon
could see no alternative to performing the task himself. Thus were his
labours indefinitely multiplied, and only his exceptional health and
energy enabled him to cope with them at all. How much they affected
him in his own despite may be judged from the exclamation which
escaped him, after he had obtained a considerable success that would
have elated any other leader--"But the worry and trouble have taken
all the syrup out of the affair!"
The personal glimpses obtainable of Gordon during these depressing
years, while engaged on a task he foresaw would be undone by the
weakness and indifference of the Egyptian authorities as soon as he
gave it up, are very illustrative of his energy and inherent capacity
for command. The world at large was quite indifferent to the heroism
and the self-denial, amounting to self-sacrifice, which alone enabled
him to carry on his own shoulders, like a modern Atlas, the whole
administration of a scarcely conquered region, which covered ten
degrees of latitude. But we who have to consider his career in all its
bearings, and to discover, as it were, behind his public and private
acts, the true man, cannot afford to pass over so lightly passages
that are in a very special degree indicative of the man's character
and temperament. In no other period of his career did he devote
himself more strenuously to the details, in themselves monotonous and
uninteresting, of a task that brought him neither present nor
prospective satisfaction. When the tools with which he was supplied
failed him, as they did at every turn, he threw himself into the
struggle, and supplied the shortcomings of all the rest. When it was a
matter of pulling the boats up the river, he was the first at the
ropes, and the last to leave them, wading through the water with his
trousers up. If it was his steamer that had run aground, all the
active labour, as well as the organisation, fell on him. Sooner than
add to the work of those in attendance on him, he would be seen
preparing and cooking his own food; and because he could do it better
than his native servant, he would clean his duck-gun, with the whole
camp agape, until his ways were realised, at an Excellency doing his
own work. Nor did he spare himself physically. His average day's walk,
which satisfied him that he was in good health, was fourteen miles;
but he often exceeded twenty miles, and on one occasion he even walked
thirty-five miles under a tropical sun. Of the conduct of his soldiers
against an enemy, or in coping with the difficulties of river
navigation, he was always nervous, and whether for work or for
fighting he used, he said, "to pray them up as he did his men in
China"; but without his knowledge, one of his own soldiers was
vigilantly observant of his conduct, and has recorded, through the
instrumentality of Slatin Pasha, his recollections of Gordon as a
fighter and leader of soldiers:--
"Gordon was indeed a brave man. I was one of his chiefs in the
fight against the Mima and Khawabir Arabs; it was in the plain of
Fafa, and a very hot day. The enemy had charged us, and had
forced back the first line, and their spears were falling thick
around us; one came within a hair's-breadth of Gordon, but he did
not seem to mind it at all, and the victory we won was entirely
due to him and his reserve of 100 men. When the fight was at its
worst he found time to light a cigarette. Never in my life did I
see such a thing; and then the following day, when he divided the
spoil, no one was forgotten, and he kept nothing for himself. He
was very tender-hearted about women and children, and never
allowed them to be distributed, as is our custom in war, but he
fed and clothed them at his own expense, and had them sent to
their homes as soon as the war was over."
This picture of Gordon lighting a cigarette in the press of a doubtful
battle may well be coupled with that already given during the Taeping
rebellion, of his standing unarmed in the breach of an assaulted
stockade, while around him pressed on or wavered the individuals of a
forlorn hope. It will be difficult for anyone to find in all the
annals of war another instance of human courage more nearly
approaching the sublime.
In November 1875 General Gordon had fully made up his mind to resign
and return to Cairo, in consequence of the indifference with which he
was treated by the Khedive's Government, and he had actually written
the telegrams announcing this intention, and given orders to pack up
the stores for the passage down the Nile, when the receipt of a long
letter full of praise and encouragement from the Khedive Ismail
induced him to alter his plans, to tear up the telegrams, and to
continue his work. General Gordon gives his reason for changing his
mind very briefly: "The man had gone to all this expense under the
belief that I would stick to him; I could not therefore leave him." So
he stayed on for another year. In July 1876 he formally and more
deliberately resigned, but the execution of this decision had to be
postponed by the necessity he felt under, as already explained, of
solving the geographical questions connected with the Nile and the
Lakes, and also of securing the southern frontier against Kaba Rega
and Mtesa.
These tasks accomplished, or placed in the way of accomplishment,
there remained no let or hindrance to his departure; and by the end of
October he was in Khartoum. But even then he felt uncertain as to his
ultimate plans, and merely telegraphed to the Cairo authorities that
he intended to come down for a time. With his back turned on the scene
of his labours, the old desire not to leave his work half done came
over him, and all the personal inconvenience and incessant hardship
and worry of the task were forgotten in the belief that he was called
on by God "to open the country thoroughly to both Lakes." He saw very
clearly that what he had accomplished in the three years of his stay
did not provide a permanent or complete cure of the evils arising out
of the slave-trade and the other accompaniments of misgovernment, and
he did not like to be beaten, which he admitted he was if he retired
without remedying anything. These reflections explain why, even when
leaving, his thoughts were still of returning and resuming the work,
little more than commenced, in those Mussulman countries, where he
foresaw a crisis that must come about soon.
But these thoughts and considerations did not affect his desire for a
change to Lower Egypt, or even to visit home; and leaving Khartoum on
12th November he reached Cairo on 2nd December. He then formally
placed his resignation in the Khedive's hands, but it was neither
accepted nor declined; and the Khedive, in some mysterious manner,
seems to have arrived at the sound conclusion that after a brief rest
General Gordon would sicken of inaction, and that it would be no
difficult manner to lure him back to that work in the Soudan which had
already established its spell over him. Of that work, considerable as
it was as the feat of a single man, it need only be said that it would
have remained transitory in its effect and inconclusive in its results
if General Gordon had finally turned his back on it at the close of
his tenure of the post of Governor of the Equatorial Province at the
end of the year 1876. When he left Cairo in the middle of December for
England there was really very little reason to doubt that at the right
moment he would be ready to take up the work again.
END OF VOL. I.
* * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
The transcriber made the following changes to the text to
correct obvious errors:
1. p. 34, charactistic --> characteristic
2. p. 84, while sails --> white sails
3. p. 162, lieutenaut --> lieutenant