It has already been mentioned that
when Colonel Gordon was at Galatz he met Nubar Pasha.
In September 1873 Nubar asked him to enter the service
of the Khedive of Egypt. While waiting to know
whether the British Government would sanction this
step he wrote home as follows:
“For some wise design God turns
events one way or another, whether man likes it
or not, as a man driving a horse turns it to right
or left without consideration as to whether the
horse likes that way or not. To be happy,
a man must be like a well-broken, willing horse,
ready for anything. Events will go as God likes.
It is hard to accept the position; the only solace
is, it is not for long. If I go to Egypt
or not is uncertain; I hope He has given me the strength
not to care one way or the other; twenty years are
soon gone, and when over it will matter little
whether I went or not.”
The proposed step was sanctioned by
the authorities, and so, at the age of forty-one,
Gordon became the governor of the immense Equatorial
Province. En route to Egypt he writes from Paris:
“I remember that God has at all times worked
by weak and small means. All history shows this
to be His mode, and so I believe if He will He may
work by me.”
Of course some little time had to
be spent in Cairo; the Khedive Ismail was anxious
to make the acquaintance of his new governor, and certain
preliminaries had to be settled. Gordon had a
suspicion that his appointment was a sham, and that
he would not have the power he needed to suppress
the slave trade. He was determined that coûte
qui coûte he would not be made a tool of to blind
the European public, so at the very outset he showed
his colours, and let the Khedive clearly understand
that he was not a mere hireling anxious to secure a
well-paid billet. As for his pay, though his predecessor
had received L10,000 per annum, he decided to cut
it down to L2000; for, as he said, the whole would
be wrung out of the unfortunate natives, who could
ill afford the high taxation to which they were subjected.
Writing home at this juncture, he said:
“My object is to show the Khedive
and his people that gold and silver idols are
not worshipped by all the world. They are very
powerful gods, but not so powerful as our God;
so if I refuse a large sum, you and
I am responsible to you alone will not be
angry at my doing so. From whom does all the
money come? From poor miserable creatures
who are ground down to produce it. Of course,
these ideas are outrageous. ‘Pillage
the Egyptians!’ is still the cry.
“I am quite prepared not to go,
and should not think it unkind of God if He prevents
it, for He must know what is best. The twisting
of men carries out some particular object of God,
and we should cheerfully agree now to what we
will agree hereafter when we know all things.”
His characteristic outspokenness a
style of thing to which Egyptian officials were not
accustomed somewhat alarmed a few of his
friends, and on one occasion he was urged not to make
an enemy of Nubar Pasha, who was a very powerful minister,
and could, it was said, do him a great deal of harm.
At this Gordon fired up, and before those present
said that he would like to see the man who was capable
of injuring him. Shakespeare has well said:
“What stronger breastplate
than a heart untainted!
Thrice is he armed that hath
his quarrel just,
And he but naked, though locked
up in steel,
Whose conscience with injustice
is corrupted.”
Though Nubar showed his powers of
appreciation in recognising merit in Colonel Gordon,
when he met him at Galatz, there can be no question
that he little understood the honest, straightforward
character of the man with whom he had to deal.
He must have often wished that he had never met Gordon,
for, whilst the new governor was not a man to seek
office for the sake of the “loaves and fishes,”
once in power he was not one of those pliant characters
who will act as mere dummies in the hands of others.
Men with great strength of character, good abilities,
and honest intentions are invaluable, when their official
superiors are capable of appreciating their merits;
but when those under whom they serve have ulterior
purposes to attain, weak, pliant natures make better
servants for their purposes. In Colonel Gordon’s
own mind his mission at this time was to combat slavery,
and in every possible way to ameliorate the sufferings
of the unfortunate people over whom he was called
to rule. Nubar Pasha held very different views
from the newly-appointed governor on many points that
were likely to arise in connection with these duties.
The Soudan and the Equatorial Province were so frightfully
mismanaged and cruelly governed that, Gordon says,
“when Said Pasha, the Viceroy before Ismail,
went up to the Soudan with Count F. Lesseps, he was
so discouraged and horrified at the misery of the
people that at Berber the Count saw him throw his guns
into the river, declaring that he would be no party
to such oppression. It was only after the urgent
solicitations of European consuls and others that
he reconsidered his decision.”
It is quite amusing to see the efforts
that were made at Cairo to break in the new governor,
and to fit him for his post, in accordance with the
traditions of the country. As soon as everything
was settled, Gordon, with his usual promptness, and
absence of all love of display, was anxious to be
off to his post of duty, and for that purpose to utilise
the ordinary passenger steamer from Suez. But
about states such as Egypt was before the British
occupation, there is a strange mixture of reckless
expenditure combined with paltry meanness. Although
the Egyptian authorities once refused to pay the travelling
expenses of an official travelling on duty from Alexandria
to Cairo in connection with Colonel Gordon, yet they
insisted on this occasion that it would be unbecoming
to the dignity of a governor to travel by an ordinary
steamer, so a special one was set apart for this purpose.
Gordon afterwards calculated that had he been allowed
his own way, he would at the outset have saved at
least L400! For the sake of peace he yielded
the point, and went from Cairo in a special train,
and from Suez in a special steamer, accompanied by
a large number of useless servants. He had his
revenge, however, for owing to an engine getting off
the line, there was a long halt, and finally he had
to proceed by the ordinary train. Gordon was
a remarkable instance of the general rule, that the
greater the ability of a man the less affection has
he for display, and for all the official trappings
of office. The only display that Gordon ever
cared for was that of intrinsic merit and hard work,
and these qualities he always looked for in his subordinates.
Colonel Gordon reached Suakim on February
25th, 1874, and writing home, he records his impressions
of Cairo and its officials. “I think the
Khedive likes me, but no one else does; and I don’t
like them, I mean the swells, whose corns I tread
on in all manner of ways. Duke of This wants
steamer, say L600. Duke of That wants house, &c.
All the time the poor people are ground down to get
money for all this. ’Who art thou to be
afraid of man?’ If He wills, I will shake all
this in some way not clear to me now. Do not
think I am an Egoist; I am like Moses who despised
the riches of Egypt. I will not bow to Haman.”
Little did he then foresee that before eight years
had passed British guns would be shaking the stronghold
of Alexandria, and that 10,000 Egyptian soldiers would
yield the citadel of Cairo to a small force of some
300 troops carrying the British flag. From Suakim
he went on a camel to Berber, and thence by steamer
to Khartoum, the first time he ever visited a place
which now can never be mentioned without awakening
in the mind associations of this noble servant of
God, who feared neither man nor devil.
At first Gordon was to a certain extent
subordinate to the Governor-General of the Soudan,
through whom he had to get supplies. But by September
8th he was enabled to write: “I have now
entirely separated my province from that of the Soudan.
When I came up I had instructions to ask for all I
wanted from the Governor-General of Khartoum, who
was ordered to supply me. Now this was from the
first a fruitful source of quarrel, and must have
been so, for I could not be continually writing to
the Khedive about the non-supply of things and money;
it would have worn me and every one out. Now I
am quite independent, raise my own revenue, and administer
it, and send the residue to Cairo, which residue is
all they care for there.”
The Equatorial Province lies considerably
to the south of Khartoum, and is bisected by the Nile.
As a matter of fact, the equator does not run through
any part of the province, though the southern part
comes very close to it, just touching the Victoria
Nyanza, through the north of which the equator runs.
The hold that Egypt had at any time on this province
was indeed very slight, and considering how little
capable she was of managing even her own affairs,
it does seem ridiculous in the extreme that she should
ever have attempted to annex an enormous country outside
her borders. When Egypt was really strong and
powerful, as in olden times, it does not appear that
she ever held territory beyond Wady Haifa, and it
is in reality only within this century, during the
whole of which Egypt has been weak, that she has extended
her territory down to the equator. Far from gaining
either money or prestige, she has lost greatly by
her annexations. Had the Nile, which is the only
highway, been easily navigable for ships of any size,
possibly the tide of civilisation might have gone south
as well as north, and the history of these provinces
might have been very different. But the Nile
is full of rapids, or cataracts, as they are called,
and at certain seasons of the year is absolutely impassable
for large boats, while the paucity of wells makes
regular travel by land impossible. From Khartoum
to Gondokoro, which was the capital of Colonel Gordon’s
new province, a distance of about 1000 miles, another
obstacle presents itself, in the form of an almost
impassable barrier, known as a “sudd,”
which forms on the river, and puts a stop to traffic.
Gordon said that the sudd is formed by an “aquatic
plant with roots extending five feet in the water.
The natives burn the top parts, when dry; the ashes
form mould, and fresh grasses grow till it becomes
like terra firma. The Nile rises, and floats
out the masses; they come down to a curve and then
stop. More of these islands float down, and at
last the river is blocked. Though under them the
water flows, no communication can take place, for
they bridge the river for several miles.”
Gordon left Khartoum on March 23,
1874, for Gondokoro, and on the 26th he writes:
“Last night we were going along slowly in the
moonlight, and I was thinking of you all, and the
expedition, and Nubar, &c., when all of a sudden from
a large bush came peals of laughter. I felt put
out; but it turned out to be birds, who laughed at
us from the bushes for some time in a rude way.
They are a species of stork, and seemed in capital
spirits, and highly amused at anybody thinking of going
up to Gondokoro with the hope of doing anything.”
Gordon was full of hope, and very sanguine of success;
but from the day when he reached Cairo, croakers all
along the route had been whispering in his ear the
hopelessness of his mission, and how utterly impossible
it was to reform anything connected with such a corrupt
administration as that of Egypt. Fortunately,
though he used at times to have terrible fits of depression,
he possessed a great deal of dogged perseverance.
It was this that in China had enabled him to overcome
all obstacles in fighting the enemy, and the same
indomitable spirit now made him persevere and hope
on, when every one else despaired. Not only were
there real foes in every direction, determined if possible
to frustrate his mission, but in addition there was
physical suffering to endure from climatic and other
causes. “No one can conceive,” says
he in a letter written on April 10th, “the utter
misery of these lands, heat and mosquitoes day and
night all the year round. But I like the work,
for I believe that I can do a great deal to ameliorate
the lot of the people.” Two days after
this he passed through a place called St. Croix, which
had been a Roman Catholic mission station, but so
unhealthy was it that it had at last been abandoned.
After thirteen years of work not a single convert
had been made, although during that period the missionaries
had plodded on in the face of discouragement, and
in spite of the appalling havoc that death and sickness
had made in their ranks. Out of twenty missionaries
thirteen had died of fever, two of dysentery, and
two had been invalided. A few banana trees were
all that remained of the settlement at which these
heroes had been sacrificed.
Gordon reached Gondokoro on April
16th, just twenty-four days after leaving Khartoum.
Everybody was much surprised to see him, for it was
not even known that he had been appointed. He
remained only six days, and then started back to Khartoum,
in order to get his baggage. Not finding it there,
he went on to Berber to hurry up the escort, but not
till he had given the corrupt Governor of Khartoum
a bit of his mind. “I have had some sharp
skirmishing with the Governor-General of Khartoum,”
said he in a letter home, “and I think I have
crushed him. Your brother wrote to him and told
him he told stories. It was undiplomatic
of me, but it did the Governor-General good.”
Having secured his baggage, he returned to Gondokoro.
En route he writes from the entrance of the
Sanbat River:
“We arrived here from Khartoum
a week ago, and I have made a nice station here,
and made great friends with the Shillock natives, who
come over in great numbers from the other side
of the river. They are poorly off, and I
have given them some grain; very little contents
them. I have employed a few of them to plant maize,
and they do it very fairly. The reason they
do not do it for themselves is, that if they plant
any quantity they would run the chance of losing
it, by its being taken by force from them; so they
plant only enough to keep body and soul together,
and even that is sown in small out-of-the-way
patches.”
He reached Gondokoro the second time
on September 4th, receiving the salaams and salutes
of the officers, men, and functionaries, together
with the submission of all the neighbouring chiefs.
In the whole of his province Egypt had only two forts,
one at Gondokoro, the capital, with 300 men, and one
at Fatiko, further south, with 200 men. “As
for paying taxes,” said he, “or any government
existing outside the forts, it is all nonsense.
You cannot go out in any safety half-a-mile, all because
they have been fighting the poor natives and taking
their cattle. I apprehend not the least difficulty
in the work; the greatest will be to gain the people’s
confidence again. They have been hardly treated.”
The chief culprit, to whom much of
this misgovernment was due, was Raouf Bey, whom Gordon
found at Gondokoro. This man had been in office
for six years, and proved a miserable failure.
“Raouf had never conciliated the tribes, never
had planted dhoora; and, in fact, only possessed the
land he camped upon.” Yet he made it a grievance
that Gordon refused to employ him, and the present
Khedive of Egypt many years afterwards made him Governor-General
of the Soudan when Gordon resigned.
What most astonished Gordon was the
apparent want of affection on the part of the natives
for their offspring, and it pained him none the less
when he reflected that this was entirely due to the
slave trade, and the sufferings the poor people had
endured. One man brought Gordon two of his children
of 12 and 9 years old, because they were starving,
and sold them for a basketful of grain, and though
the father often came to the station after this, he
never asked to see them. Gordon mentioned another
case, of a family in which there were two children.
Passing their hut one day, and seeing only one child,
he asked the mother where the other was. “Oh,”
said she, “it has been given to the man from
whom the cow was stolen” her husband
having been the culprit. This was said with a
cheerful smile. “But,” said Gordon,
“are you not sorry?” “Oh, no! we
would rather have the cow.” “But you
have eaten the cow, and the pleasure is over.”
“Oh, but all the same, we would sooner have
had the cow!” Gordon adds, “The other child
of twelve years old, like her parents did not care
a bit. A lamb taken from the flock will bleat,
while here you see not the very slightest vestige of
feeling.” Such an incident shows how the
human heart can, under certain circumstances, degenerate
to being “without natural affection.”
It is not the people who are to blame, but their cruel
conquerors. Not many miles away from this place,
in a district which the tyranny of slavery has not
yet reached, Dr. Schweinfurth says of the natives:
“Notwithstanding that certain instances may be
alleged which seem to demonstrate that the character
of the Dinka is unfeeling, these cases never refer
to such as are bound by the ties of kindred. Parents
do not desert their children, nor are brothers faithless
to brothers, but are ever prompt to render whatever
aid is possible.” The famous negro prelate,
Bishop Crowther, and the celebrated traveller, Mr.
Stanley, bear similar testimony. There can be
no question that the African, in his normal condition,
is as capable of affection as the native of any other
country.
Slavery has been, is, and as long
as it exists will be, the curse of Africa. “Not
a soul,” said Gordon, “to be seen for miles;
all driven off by the slavers in years past.
You could scarcely conceive such a waste or desert.”
Such was his comment when at the entrance of the river
Sanbat, and such would have frequently been a correct
description of the country blighted by this cursed
traffic.
Speaking generally, slavery exists
now only in Mohammedan countries (though there are
a few exceptions), yet it cannot be called a Mohammedan
institution. The Prophet sanctioned only the taking
of slaves in war. The custom of his time was
to kill and often to torture prisoners taken in war,
so that really it was a step in advance to suggest
that these captives should be utilised as servants.
To a great extent, if not entirely, slavery as an
institution is due to the low moral standard set up
by the Koran. Were it not for love of sensual
indulgence, slavery would long ago have died a natural
death. Over and over again has it been proved
that voluntary service is far cheaper than enforced
labour. An Indian coolie will work all day, and
ask for little more than enough to keep body and soul
together. This much the slave-owners are compelled
to give to keep their slaves in health. Slaves
are valuable property, and it is cheaper to feed them
well than badly. But over and above the food,
the slave-owner has to bear the cost of transit from
their bright happy homes in Central Africa, through
hundreds of miles of scorching desert, which demands
a frightful death-toll. Only the strongest ever
reach the slave-markets, and it has been calculated
that at least 500,000 lives are annually sacrificed
during transit. Indirectly the slave-owner has
to pay for these. When slaves were taken in war,
they cost nothing to transport; but when Mohammedan
conquests ceased, the supply ceased with it, for Mohammedans
are not allowed by the Koran to make slaves of men
of their own creed, though they do sometimes infringe
this rule.
It is generally supposed that the
slave trade originated in the fact that in certain
parts of Central Africa there are no horses or beasts
of burden, as owing to the existence of the tetse-fly
no animal can live. Consequently ivory and everything
else has to be carried on the heads of porters.
These porters were engaged by the Arab ivory dealers
in the interior, and marched in large gangs to the
seaports. Having reached their destination, and
given up their loads, the question of transport back
to their villages would arise. The Arab traders
found that it would suit their purpose best to sell
the porters as slaves. Who was to know whether
or not they were taken in battle? In Mohammedan
countries, so long as plenty of backsheesh is forthcoming,
those in authority ask few questions. Soon the
sale of slaves became more profitable than the ivory
trade, which possibly had originated it, and so the
one was substituted for the other, the authorities
not only winking at it, but encouraging it as a source
of large revenues to them. At one time a large
number of so-called Christians were engaged in this
unholy traffic, but the scandal became so great that
European public opinion would not tolerate it, and
so they had to sell their stations to Mohammedan Arabs,
who if possible were even more cruel and relentless
in the way they conducted the trade. Merchant
princes arose among them, and they carried on their
business with a thoroughness and a system worthy of
a better cause. Soldiers were trained, and large
armies kept for no other purpose than that of collecting
slaves. Peaceful villages were surrounded, night
attacks were made, whole tribes were marched off to
the slave markets, the road being lined by grinning
skulls to show the way in which the victims suffered
en route.
“Not
for this
Was common clay ta’en
from the common earth,
Moulded by God, and tempered
with the tears
Of angels, to the perfect
shape of man!”
The unfortunate captives were chained
together to prevent escape, and often the fastenings
were secured in a way so unnecessarily cruel, that
they had great difficulty in securing any sleep, either
at night or during the day when the periodical halts
were made. Indeed the ordinary precautions that
we take in the convoy of large herds of cattle were
generally neglected. This is all the more surprising
when we consider what great trouble these men took
to secure their victims; one would have thought that
self-interest at least would often have dictated a
more humane policy, but it does not appear to have
been so.
In hunting for these gangs of slaves,
it was a subject of deep regret to Gordon that often
his action only tended to increase their sufferings.
In the Central African deserts there are only a few
wells, at long intervals, and the poor captives suffered
terrible thirst on the march from well to well.
But the surest way of intercepting the gangs was to
hold the wells. When the slave-dealers knew that
a certain well on which they were marching was held
by Gordon, they would make a detour in order to avoid
him, and their unfortunate victims would be kept from
quenching their thirst for unusually long periods,
with the result that many would succumb to the appalling
heat. If a slave exhibited great exhaustion,
and showed little chance of being able to reach the
next halting-place, the drivers would not even trouble
to waste a round of ammunition, but, unchaining the
victim, would kill him by a blow on the back of the
neck with a mallet or a piece of wood, and leave his
body where it lay, to feed the vultures. Often
young girls, and even infants, were marched through
deserts, through which Gordon declared that he shuddered
to contemplate a journey on his fleet-footed camel.
It was with truth that Burns said
“Man’s inhumanity
to man
Makes countless thousands
mourn.”
Some of the slave traders had become
very rich, and one of them, Zebehr Rahama, now in
captivity in Gibraltar, had become so powerful that
even the Khedive dared not molest him. His field
of operations lying at a considerable distance from
Gordon’s province, these two did not come in
contact, until the latter was made Governor-General
of the whole of the Soudan, and so it is not at the
present time necessary to do more than merely allude
to him as the king of slave hunters. Many more
carried on a successful business, and some of them
conducted their operations in the Equatorial Province;
and it is hardly necessary to say that the first thing
the new governor did was to break up the organisations
of these men. He was only appointed in Cairo
during the month of February, and after that time
he had to spend many weary days and nights in travelling.
But in June we find him seizing an Arab dealer named
Nassar, at the head of a large convoy of slaves, and
casting him into prison. By this brilliant stroke
he not only got possession of a well-known culprit,
but struck terror into the hearts of smaller dealers.
But, as in the case of the Taiping rebels, whom he
at once turned into soldiers to fight for him, so
Nassar was enlisted into his service. “Do
you know,” he wrote, “I have forgiven the
head slaver Nassar, and am employing him; he is not
worse than others, and these slavers have been much
encouraged to do what they have done. He is a
first-rate man, and does a great deal of work.
He was in prison for two weeks, and was then forgiven.”
Other quotations could be made from his letters showing
that he had formed a high opinion of the abilities
of the Arabs engaged in slave dealing, with a correspondingly
low one of the Egyptian soldiers who were employed
to put them down. The Arabs were enterprising,
plucky fellows, with the spirit of a man in them,
whereas the soldiers were a cowardly and contemptible
lot. When in large numbers, they used to ill-treat
and bully the natives, who consequently took every
opportunity of retaliating. Gordon, with his
quick perception, saw that the best way to remedy this
was to scatter the soldiers about in small detachments,
just strong enough to defend their posts, but not
to take advantage of the people:
“I have the garrisons small on
purpose to make them keep awake; and it has its
effect, for they are all in a fearful fright along
the line. I cannot help feeling somewhat
of a malicious enjoyment of their sufferings.
If I personally am at any station, even if there are
thirty or forty men there, the sentries all go to sleep
in comfort. Not so in my absence; every one
is awake, I expect. Having nothing to do or
rather not doing anything, though there is plenty
to be done they sit and talk over the
terrors of their position, until they tremble
again. I never in the course of my life saw such
wretched creatures dignified by the name of soldiers.
Fortunately, though I can do the work of the province
without an interpreter, I cannot speak to the
men except by my looks, or tell them my opinion in
words, though my letters are pretty strong.”
The results of this policy were excellent.
Not only were the garrisons kept on the alert and
prevented from oppressing the people, but the country
was opened up and travelling rendered safer. Writing
home, Gordon says:
“It is such a comfort having my
roads open. One man came down from Bedden
to-day alone. Before I came it would have needed
thirty or at least twenty men to go along this
route. The blacks would have concealed themselves
in the grass, and stuck a spear into the hinder-most
man; now they are quite friendly. A Bari in my
employment stole a sheep yesterday, and down came
the natives to complain and have justice, which
they got. Is it not comfortable? All
this has effected a great change among my men.
They no longer fear the blacks as they did, and
altogether a much better feeling exists.
Going up to Kerri, where in September last the convoy
of Kemp was harassed all the route, I went on
alone with four or five soldiers behind me, and
never felt the least apprehension; for the natives
talk much amongst themselves, and the virgin tribes
had heard we were not to be feared, and that their
cattle was safe from pillage. A year ago
an escort of five or six soldiers used to accompany
each nuggar either coming up or down. Even the
steamers carried an escort of the same number.
Now not one soldier either goes with one or the
other. This has prevented all pillaging en
route, for our people dare not do it now, not
having the escort of soldiers.”
In spite of his contempt for the soldiers
under him, he treated them kindly and made great efforts
to improve them. Now and then he would give them
a magic-lantern lecture, and in other ways try to benefit
them mentally and morally. No doubt in this he
succeeded to a great extent, and at all events he
had the satisfaction of feeling that he was liked
by them. In another letter he says:
“The men and officers like my
justice, candour, and my outbursts of temper,
and see that I am not a tyrant. Over two years
we have lived intimately together, and they watch
me closely. I am glad that they do so.
My wish and desire is that all should be as happy
as it rests with me to make them, and though I
feel sure that I am unjust sometimes, it is not
the rule with me to be so. I care for their
marches, for their wants and food, and protect their
women and boys if they ill-treat them; and I do
nothing of this. I am a chisel which cuts
the wood; the Carpenter directs it. If I lose
my edge, He must sharpen me; if He puts me aside
and takes another, it is His own good will.
None are indispensable to Him; He will do His work
with a straw equally as well.”
Gordon had not been long in his province
when he saw that the only effectual way to abolish
slavery was to open up the country, and encourage
traders by making it safe for them to travel about.
Much as he did personally to punish slave-hunting,
and to break up gangs of men so engaged, he always
considered that his best efforts should be devoted
to the opening up of the country for trade. At
the time he was there, and now also, the leading men
were all more or less engaged in slave-hunting, and
no one dared to say a word against them. Gordon
wanted to introduce an independent class of traders,
who would soon be sufficiently powerful to give evidence
against the leaders of the slave-hunting system.
His desire afterwards to serve the King of the Belgians
in the Congo territory was with the object of developing
trade, and thus ultimately of preventing slave-dealing.
With regard to Egypt, he formed his ideas during the
first year he was in the country, and he steadily
adhered to them to the end. Writing from Tultcha,
on 17th November 1873, he says:
“I believe if the Soudan was settled,
the Khedive would prevent the slave trade; but
he does not see his way to do so till he can move
about the country. My ideas are to open it
out by getting the steamers on to the lakes, by
which time I should know the promoters of the
slave trade and could ask the Khedive to seize them.”
And again: “God has allowed slavery
to go on for so many years; born in the people,
it needs more than an expedition to eradicate it; open
out the country, and it will fall of itself.”
Though he was not permitted during
his life to see much permanent result from his arduous
labours, yet far from his efforts having been in vain,
he it was who revived in Europe an interest in the
subject, and conclusions arrived at by the recent
Anti-Slavery Conference, at Brussels, clearly indicate
that the more thoughtful philanthropists who are moving
in the matter recognise that the lines he laid down
are the right ones to follow. The number of years
that he was permitted to devote to this struggle with
slavery were not many, but the seeds were sown which
will bring forth a rich harvest in the future.
In that noble crusade, which he undertook single-handed
against tyranny and oppression, he supplied the best
possible answer to the cynic’s question whether
or not life is worth living:
“Is Life worth living?
Yes, so long
As there is wrong
to right,
Wail of the weak against the
strong,
Or tyranny to
fight;
Long as there lingers gloom
to chase
Or streaming tear
to dry,
One kindred woe, one sorrowing
face,
That smiles as we draw nigh."
Not only had Gordon to contend with
the slave trade, corrupt officials, an unsympathetic
government at Cairo, and incompetent troops, but to
add to his troubles his staff broke down with sickness
and even death, while he for the first time in his
life suffered from ague and liver disorders.
Here are descriptions of the climate from some of his
letters:
“This is a horrid climate.
I seldom, if ever, get a good sleep. It is
a very great comfort to feel that God will rectify
one’s defects in this life, and make right
all mistakes, also that He governs everything.
Is it my present temperament, or is it truly the case
that things go untowardly more in this land than
anywhere else? You wrap up an article in
paper, the paper is sure to tear, the string you
least want to be broken is broken; every, every
thing seems to go wrong. It may be my liver
which makes me think this, but it has been the
same with all travellers.” ... “The
mosquitoes are horrible here; the proboscis is
formed like a bayonet, with a hinge at the bend;
they turn it down for perforation and press on it with
their head, muscles, and chest. I am very
susceptible of their bite or dig; the least touch
of the ‘bayonet’ makes a lump.”
... “Variety is pleasing!
Got away from mosquitoes to find sand-flies and
harvest-bugs instead. However, they are quiet
by day, and here there are no flies with irritating
feet. There must be some wonderful mystery
about this life. Why should these countries
be so full of annoyances to man? Why should even
the alighting of a fly, his footprints,
cause such irritation to the skin. It must
be for some good object eventually to be made known
to us.”
Most of Gordon’s efforts were
directed to the abolition of slavery, and the amelioration
of the sufferings of the people he governed, but as
an explorer and a surveyor he also did good work,
and he might, had he cared for such distinctions,
have received honours from the Royal Geographical
Society. Though suffering a good deal from sickness
and from mental worries, he endeavoured to explore
the seventy miles of country between Foweira and the
Albert Nyanza. In one of his letters he says:
“It was contended that the Nile
did not flow out of Lake Victoria and thence into
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 Hagungo. So I went along
it with much suffering, and settled the question.”
As he did not personally come into
contact with M’tesa, the King of Uganda, it
is not necessary to do more than mention the fact that
this strange monarch wrote a letter to him, and even
asked him to plant a stockade for his troops within
Uganda territory. Gordon, however, did not trust
M’tesa, and at one time, on account of some misbehaviour
on the part of that monarch, even contemplated attacking
him. But Mr. Stanley, the great explorer, sent
a vigorous protest against any aggression on the part
of a Christian representative, even of a Moslem Government,
towards a newly Christianised state, if one may apply
that term to Uganda. Gordon evidently recognised
the wisdom of Stanley’s contention, for the
attack was never made, and Stanley received from Gordon
a letter giving him much information.
Gordon reached Lake Albert at the
end of July 1876, and from then till he left to return
home he was busily engaged in surveying the country,
wading through rivers, cutting his way through dense
jungles, encountering natives armed with assegais,
and in other ways risking his valuable life, all for
the sake of his fellow-creatures, and in the hope
of ultimately opening up the country. Was there
ever a man more strongly actuated by the spirit of
altruism?
His three years were drawing to a
close, and not having received the support he thought
he deserved, he decided to leave the service of the
Khedive. On October 6th he commenced his journey,
and by Christmas Eve of that year he had reached England.