provinces,' with a salary of £2,000 a year, instead of the £10,000
offered him by the khedive, the country, which ten years before had been
rich and prosperous, was in a wretched condition owing to the
slave-trade, carried on as long as they were able by Europeans as well
as by Arabs. At first elephant-hunting was made the pretext of their
expeditions, but soon they found negroes a more profitable article of
commerce, and whole villages had the strong men and women torn away from
them, till, at the first hint of the approach of a caravan, the people
would abandon their huts and fly off to hide themselves. At length the
trade became so well known and so scandalous that the Europeans were
forced to give it up; but the Arab dealers continued to grow powerful
and wealthy, and the wealthiest and most powerful of all was Zebehr,
whose name for ever after was closely connected with that of Gordon.
The slave-dealers soon formed themselves into a sort of league, with
Zebehr at their head, and, having created an army made up of Arabs and
of the slaves they had taken, refused to pay tribute to the khedive, or
to acknowledge the supremacy of the sultan of Constantinople, whose
viceroy he was. The Egyptian government, which had suffered the
slave-trade to proceed unchecked when human life only was at stake, grew
indignant the moment it became a question of money. An army was sent
against Zebehr, who easily defeated it, and proclaimed himself ruler of
the Soudan or 'land of the black,' south of Khartoum, then a little
group of three thousand mud-houses on the left bank of the Blue Nile,
three miles from its junction with the White Nile.
But, small though it was, Khartoum was the capital of the province, and
owned a governor's house, with the Blue Nile sheltering it on one side,
and surrounded on the other three by a deep ditch and a wall, while on
the west side the town was only half a mile distant from the White Nile
itself.
As soon as the khedive understood that he was no match for Zebehr he
determined to make a friend of him, and offered him an alliance with the
title of pasha.
For the moment it suited Zebehr to accept this proposal, and the two
armies combined and conquered the province of Darfour; but directly the
pasha wished to turn into a governor-general the khedive grew
frightened, and declared that he was now convinced that the trade in
slaves was wicked and must be put down. Perhaps he guessed that Europe
was hardly likely to be convinced by this sudden change, so, instead of
appointing an Egyptian governor of the equatorial provinces, he
conferred the post first on Sir Samuel Baker, and, later, on Gordon.
* * * * *
It did not take Gordon long to find out that the khedive's newly
discovered zeal in putting down the slave-trade was 'a sham to catch the
attention of the English people,' but the weapon had been thrust into
his hands, and he meant to use it for the help of the oppressed tribes.
Difficulties he knew there would be, and he was ready to fight them, but
one difficulty he hardly made allowance for, which was that among the
Mahometan races throughout the world it was as much a matter of course
to have slaves as it is to us to have houses.
With great care he selected the staff that was to accompany him, and a
body of two hundred troops to inspect Khartoum. He chose five
Englishmen, an American, an old Crimean Italian interpreter called
Romulus Gessi, and a slave-trader named Abou Saoud, whom Gordon had
found a prisoner in Cairo. In vain the khedive warned the new
governor-general of the danger of taking such a villain into his
service, and of the strange look his appointment would have in the eyes
of Europe. To Gordon the only thing that mattered was that the man knew
the country through which they were to travel, and as to the rest, his
own neck must take its chance.
* * * * *
It was on March 12, 1874, that Gordon came in sight of Khartoum, where
eleven years later he was to find his grave. He was received on the
banks by the Egyptian governor-general, who ordered salutes to be fired
and the brass band to play. If Gordon did not appreciate the honours
paid to him, he was delighted at the news that a growth of grass and
stones that had hitherto rendered the White Nile impassable had been at
last cut away by the soldiers. Now the river was free, and instead of
the journey to Gondokoro--his own capital, eleven hundred miles south of
Khartoum--taking fourteen months, as in the days of Sir Samuel Baker, he
would be able to perform it in four weeks.
Every moment of the ten days that Gordon stayed at Khartoum was busily
employed in discovering all he could as to the condition of the people
and the state of the government. It did not take him more than a few
hours to learn that the Egyptian government had no authority whatever
over the people, and that the money matters of the Soudan were
hopelessly mixed with those of Cairo. But at present he could only note
what was wrong, and wait to set it right. His work just now lay at
Gondokoro, and thither he must go.
On the 22nd he started up the river, and at each mile, as they drew
nearer and nearer to the equator, he found the climate more trying. It
was, as he says, nothing but 'heat and mosquitoes day and night, all the
year round.' But, exhausting though the climate was, he could not help
being deeply interested in the many things that were new to him. There
were great hippopotamuses plunging about in their clumsy way; the
crocodiles, looking more like stone beasts than living things, basking
motionless on the mud where the river had fallen; the monkeys that had
their homes with the storks among the trees that covered the banks in
places; the storks that sounded as if they were laughing, and 'seemed
highly amused at anybody thinking of going up to Gondokoro with the hope
of doing anything.' In a forest higher up they found a tribe, the
Dinkas, dressed in necklaces. Their idea of greeting a white 'chief' was
to lick his hands, and they would have kissed his feet also had not
Gordon jumped up hastily and, snatching up some strings of gay beads he
had brought with him for the purpose, hung them over their heads.
* * * * *
The people of Gondokoro were filled with astonishment when Gordon's
steamer anchored under the river banks. It was a wretched place, worse
even than Khartoum, and inhabited by wretched people, whom ill-treatment
had made at once revengeful and timid. But Gordon did not care how
miserable the place was, he felt sure he could do something to help the
people; and first he began by trying to make friends. For a time it was
uphill work; they had given up planting their little plots of
ground--what was the use when their harvest was always taken from them?
Their only possession of value was their children, and these they often
begged Gordon to buy, to save them from starvation. It seemed too good
to be true when the white man gave them maize, which they baked in
cakes, and fed them while they sowed their patches once more. 'He would
see that no one hurt them,' he said, and little by little, under his
protection, the poor people plucked up heart again and forgot their
troubles, as nobody but negroes can.
Up and down the river he went, establishing some of the forts which he
knew to be necessary if the slave-trade was to be put down. One day Abou
Saoud brought him some letters written by a party of slave-dealers to
the Egyptian governor of Fashoda, on the White Nile, half-way to
Khartoum, saying that they would shortly arrive with a gang of negroes
whom they had captured, and with two thousand cows, which they had also
kidnapped, as was their custom. Gordon was ready for them; the cattle he
kept, not being able to return them to their black owners, and the
negroes he set free. If possible they were sent home, but if that could
not be done he bought them himself, so that no one else should have a
claim to them. The gratitude shown by the blacks was boundless, and one,
a chief of the Dinkas, proved useful to him in many ways. The others,
tall, strong men, gladly served him as hewers of wood and drawers of
water.
So the weeks went on, and in the intervals of capturing more convoys of
slaves Gordon still found time to attend to an old dying woman, whom he
often visited himself, besides daily sending her food, and, what she
loved better still, tobacco. The heat grew worse and worse, and no doubt
the mosquitoes also; and Gordon's only pleasure was wading in the Nile
morning and evening--a very dangerous amusement, as the river swarmed
with crocodiles. But he had heard that crocodiles never attacked
anything that was moving, and certainly he took no harm, and his health
was good. All his white men, however, fell ill, and as there was no one
to nurse them but himself, he would not replace them.
[Illustration: Gordon found time to attend to an old dying woman.]
Meanwhile the natives had learned to trust him, and under his rule
things were looking more prosperous. He saw that his men took nothing
from them without paying for it, whereas the Egyptian governor had
forced them to work without pay; and finding the troops he had brought
from Cairo both cowardly and lazy, he engaged forty Soudanese, on whom
he could depend, and trained them to act as his body-guard.
* * * * *
It was not to be expected that Gordon could carry through all these
measures without becoming an object of hatred to the Egyptian officials,
most of whom were in league with the slave-dealers. Soon he discovered
that many of his men were taking bribes and plotting against him, and of
them all, Abou Saoud was the worst. He even incited the black troops
under him to revolt; but Gordon soon frightened the men into obedience,
and sent their leader down the Nile to Gondokoro.
Yet, in spite of fever, discontent, laziness, and open rebellion, in ten
months (1874), writes one of his subordinates, 'he had garrisoned eight
stations with the seven hundred men whom he had found at Gondokoro too
frightened to stir a hundred yards outside the town, and had sent to
Cairo enough money to pay the expenses of the expedition for this year
and the next, while that of Baker had cost the Egyptian government
£1,170,000.
* * * * *
It seemed to Gordon that if he could establish a route from the great
lake Victoria Nyanza, further south, at the head of the Nile, to
Mombasa, on the Indian Ocean, trade would increase and goods be
exchanged far more easily and quickly than if they had to be brought
down the whole length of the Nile, which is often rendered impassable by
shallows and cataracts. Therefore, towards the end of 1874 he set up
posts from Gondokoro towards lake Albert Nyanza, hoping that directly
the Nile fell the steamers he had left at Khartoum might be able to
reach him. But here again he was beset with difficulties and dangers.
The Arabs were lazy, the Egyptians useless and often treacherous, many
of the tribes hostile; and to add to it all, it was almost impossible to
get past the rapids. The boats were very strong, but liable to be upset
at any instant by the plunging of the hippopotamuses in the river. Sixty
or eighty men were often straining at the ropes which were to drag the
craft along, and Gordon took his turn with the rest. Nobody in the camp
worked so hard as the commander. He cooked his food and cleaned his gun,
while the men stood by and stared. When there was nothing else to be
done he mended watches and musical boxes, which he took with him as
presents to the natives, and he kept himself well by walking fourteen
miles daily, in spite of the heat and mosquitoes.
[Illustration: He cleaned his gun while the men stood by and stared.]
'I do not carry arms, as I ought to do,' he said one day, 'for my whole
attention is devoted to defending the nape of my neck from the
mosquitoes,' the enemies he hated most of all. Still inch by inch the
troops fought their way along the river, till at length they reached the
lake of Albert Nyanza. Gordon established forts as he went, though in
the depths of his heart he knew full well that the moment his back was
turned everything would relapse into its former state of oppression and
lawlessness. But what happened afterwards was not _his_ business. He had
done the work set him to the utmost of his power, and that was all for
which he was responsible.
Thus two years passed away, and having mapped out the country he started
northwards, to resign his post to the khedive before returning to
England.
* * * * *
As might have been expected, he was not allowed to throw off his burden
so easily. The khedive had no intention of loosening his hold of a man
who sent money into his treasury instead of taking it out, but, try as
he would, he could not wring from Gordon more than a conditional promise
of coming back. No sooner had Gordon arrived in England than telegrams
were sent after him imploring him to finish his work, and in spite of
his weariness and disgust he felt that he could not leave it half done.
In six weeks the khedive had triumphed, and Gordon was in Cairo.
At his very first meeting with the khedive, when the affairs of the
Soudan were discussed, Gordon stated clearly that he would not go back
unless he was given undivided authority and power over the Soudan as
well as over the other provinces. The khedive granted everything he
asked. The governor-general of the Soudan, Ismail Pasha, was recalled,
and Gordon took his place as ruler over the equatorial provinces,
Darfour, the whole of the Soudan, and the Red Sea coast. He owed
obedience to no one save the khedive, who again was responsible to the
sultan of Turkey. The salary offered him by the khedive was £12,000 a
year, but £6,000 was all that Gordon would accept, and later he cut it
down to £3,000.
* * * * *
With 'terrific exertion' he thought it possible that in three years he
might make a good army in his provinces, with increased trade, a fair
revenue, and, above all, slavery suppressed. It seemed a gigantic work
to undertake, especially when we consider that it had to be carried out
in a district one thousand six hundred miles long and seven hundred
broad. But nothing less would be of any use, and Gordon was not the man
to spare himself if he could make his work permanent. So after a few
days in Cairo he started for the south, going first, by the khedive's
orders, to try and bring about a peace with the kingdom of Abyssinia.
This he did to a certain extent by 'setting a thief to catch a thief,'
that is, by holding one claimant to the throne in check by means of
another. The state with which he was surrounded made him very cross, as
any kind of fuss over him always did. 'Eight or ten men to help me off
my camel, as if I were an invalid,' he writes indignantly. 'If I walk,
everyone gets off and walks; so, furious, I get on again.'
However, these pin-pricks to his temper did not last long, for soon bad
news came from Khartoum, and he had to set out for the Soudan directly.
His daily journey on his camel was never less than thirty, and more
often forty miles. On his arrival at a station he received everybody,
rich and poor, who chose to come to him, listened to all complaints, and
settled all disputes, besides writing constant reports to the khedive of
what he was doing. He had nobody to help him; it was far easier and
quicker for him to do his own work than first to tell someone else what
he wanted done, and then to make sure his instructions were properly
carried out.
* * * * *
At length Khartoum was reached, and Gordon was duly proclaimed
governor-general, the ceremony being, we may be sure, as short as he
could make it. According to the wishes of the khedive, he was treated
like a sultan in the 'Arabian Nights.' On no account was he ever to get
up, even when a great chief came to pay his respects to him, and no one
was allowed to remain seated in his presence. Worse than all, his palace
was filled with two hundred servants.
The first reform he wished to make was to disband a body of six thousand
Bashi-Bazouks, or Arab and Turkish irregular troops, who pillaged the
tribes on the frontiers that they were set to guard, and let the
slave-dealers go free. Of course this could only be done very slowly and
cautiously; but he managed gradually to discharge a few at a time and to
replace them with soldiers from the Soudan, whom he always found very
trustworthy. Then, after setting right many abuses in Khartoum itself,
and giving the outlying houses a proper water-supply, where before the
lack of it had caused disease and discomfort, he began a march of
several hundred miles westwards to Darfour.
Here the whole province had risen up against its new Egyptian masters,
and those tribes which had not already broken out were preparing to
do so. With the hopeful spirit that never deserted him, and which more
than once had created the miracle he had expected, Gordon imagined that
he would be able to turn his enemies into allies. As to his own life,
his faith in God was too real and too firm for him to take that into
consideration. Till his appointed task was finished he was perfectly
safe, and after that he would, in his own words, 'leave much weariness
for perfect peace.'
Thus he went about his work with complete unconcern, and one day arrived
at a discontented place an hour and a half before the few hundred
soldiers that formed his army. Nobody expected him, and when they saw a
man in a uniform shining with gold, flying towards them on the swiftest
camel they had ever beheld, and with only one companion, they were
filled with amazement. Nothing would have been easier than to kill
Gordon; but somehow they never even thought of it, and soon the people
of Darfour and the neighbouring tribes came in and submitted to him. On
the way he was welcomed gladly by the garrisons of the various little
towns, some of whom had received no pay for three years. These
half-starved men, being in their weak condition even more useless than
the ordinary Egyptian soldier, he sent eastwards to be disbanded, and
with an army of five hundred untrustworthy troops, who did not possess a
single cannon, and whose arms were old-fashioned flint-lock guns, he had
to prepare to face the attack of thousands of rebels against the
Egyptian government.
Luckily, for some reason, the rebel army melted away without a shot
being fired, and the danger being passed the Egyptians pushed on to
Dara.
[Illustration: They saw a man in uniform shining with gold flying
towards them.]
Now came the moment to which Gordon had long been looking forward--the
life and death struggle with the slave-dealers, headed by Suleiman, son
of Zebehr, who had armed six thousand of his own slaves, and could
besides summon the help of five thousand good soldiers. How thankfully,
then, Gordon must have greeted the arrival of a powerful tribe seven
thousand strong, who, having suffered bitterly from the slave-traders,
were thirsting for revenge. That after a hard fight the victory remained
with Gordon was owing only to the support of this and other friendly
tribes, for the Egyptians 'crowded into the stockade' and hid there,
safe, as they hoped, from stray spears or wandering bullets.
It is impossible to follow all Gordon's movements during this campaign,
when in the heat of summer, near the equator, he darted about on his
camel from one place to another, 'a dirty, red-faced man, ornamented
with flies,' and often by his unexpected appearance and promptitude
carried the day, 'because he gave his enemies no time to think' or to
plot against him. Hearing at the end of August that Suleiman was about
to attack Dara, he at once rode straight to the spot, which he reached
in the condition I have described.
'If I had no escort of men,' he writes to his sister, 'I had a large
escort of flies. I suppose the queen fly was among them. The people were
paralysed at my arrival, and could not believe their eyes. At dawn I got
up, and putting on the golden armour the khedive gave me, mounted my
horse, and with an escort of my robbers of Bashi-Bazouks rode out to the
camp of the other robbers, about three miles off. There were about three
thousand of them, men and boys: they were dumbfounded at my coming among
them.'
Alone in a tent, with the chiefs, headed by Suleiman, 'a nice-looking
lad of twenty-two,' sitting in a circle round him, Gordon informed them
'in choice Arabic' that he was quite aware that they intended to revolt
against the Egyptian government, and that he intended to disarm them and
break them up.
'They listened in silence and went off to consider what I had said.
They have just now sent in a letter stating their submission, and I
thank God for it,' he continues. 'The sort of stupefied way in which
they heard me go to the point about their doings, the pantomime of
signs, the bad Arabic, was quite absurd.' Then one by one the other
slave-dealers surrendered, and though Suleiman still gave him much
trouble, and was to give more, yet on the whole things had gone much
better than he had feared, and by the middle of October he arrived at
Khartoum, and after a week's hard work took a steamer and went down the
river to Berber and Dongola. In March he very unwillingly continued his
journey to Cairo, at the command of the khedive, who desired to create
him president of the Finance Inquiry. But this was a great mistake;
Gordon's views on the matter were different from those of other men, and
he had been too long accustomed to be absolute master in any task he
undertook to be able to work harmoniously with his equals. The khedive,
too, failed to support him, and Gordon, seeing it was hopeless to expect
to gain his point, and depressed and annoyed with what had taken place,
returned to Khartoum by way of the Suez Canal and Suakim.
* * * * *
Then came the news that Suleiman had revolted, and had overrun the
province of Bahr-el-Ghazal on the south of Darfour. Gordon's old
follower and lieutenant Gessi was sent with some troops to put down the
revolt; but it was a rainy season, and the country was partially under
water. He had only one thousand troops, while daily fresh Arabs swelled
the army of the successful leader; but he was enterprising as well as
prudent, and in the middle of November he came up with the enemy and
entrenched himself behind stockades on the river Dyoor. Here Suleiman
attacked him again and again, and again and again was beaten back. Gessi
sent repeated messages to Gordon for help and ammunition, but all that
the governor general could spare was soon exhausted. At length Gessi
obtained some from the Bahr-el-Ghazal, and now was able to leave his
camp and successfully attack bands of slave-dealers. At length he
stormed a town where Suleiman was stationed, and nearly captured 'the
Cub' himself. Finding to his disgust that the leader had escaped, Gessi
followed him westwards through deserted villages and dense forests, and
though he did not succeed in catching his prey, he was able to break up
the gang of slave-dealers.
Meanwhile Gordon had left Khartoum and had gone to the slave-dealers'
headquarters at Shaka, and then back towards Khartoum, capturing many
caravans on the way. During one week, on his way from Oomchanga to
Toashia, he thinks he must have taken about six hundred slaves, and he
puts down the number that had lost their lives in the last four years
from the cruelty of the dealers to have been at least one hundred
thousand in Darfour alone.
At Toashia Gordon had a short interview with Gessi, whom he created a
pasha and made governor of the Bahr-el-Ghazal, with a present of £2,000.
On his way back to his province news was brought to Gessi of Suleiman's
whereabouts. He at once started in pursuit with three hundred men, and
came up with Suleiman during the night at Gara. The slave dealer, taken
by surprise, surrendered, and was shot next day, and it would have been
well for the Soudan if Suleiman's father Zebehr had paid the same
penalty for his rebellion against the khedive.
* * * * *
It was in the year 1879 that the khedive Ismail was deposed at Cairo,
and Tewfik appointed in his place. The new khedive seemed fully as
anxious as his predecessors to make use of the one man who feared
neither danger nor responsibility, and bore a charmed life, and Gordon
was at once sent on a fruitless mission to Abyssinia. On his return he
carried out the intention that he had formed for some time, and placed
his resignation in the hands of the khedive. Well he knew that the
Egyptian government cared nothing for the reforms he had made, or the
slave-trade that he had broken. They never supported any of his
measures, and he felt assured that in a few months the state of things
would be as bad as ever.