Colonel Gordon’s visit to England
was a very short one, for no sooner did the Khedive
Ismail realise the fact that such an able public servant
had definitely decided to quit his service, than he
wrote imploring him to return on his own terms, which
were nothing less than that he should be invested
with the Governor-Generalship of the whole Soudan,
including the Equatorial Province, over which he had
for three years ruled. The Khedive was sufficiently
wide awake to know what an able, conscientious servant
he had in Gordon, and, cost what it might, was determined
not to lose him. The truth of the matter was that
Gordon had made himself indispensable to the Khedive,
and when a man does that he may practically demand
his own terms. His heart was thoroughly in the
work, and the only reason for his having resigned was
that he was disgusted with Ismail Yacoob, the Governor-General
of the Soudan, who, although Gordon was not under
him, was from his position in many ways able to hamper
his reforms. The Khedive wisely decided to recall
Ismail Yacoob from Khartoum, and to put Colonel Gordon
in his place. “Setting a just value,”
wrote the Khedive, “on your honourable character,
on your zeal, and on the great services that you have
already done me, I have resolved to bring the Soudan,
Darfour, and the provinces of the Equator, into one
great province, and to place it under you as Governor-General.
As the country which you are thus to govern is so
vast, you must have beneath you three vakeels (or deputy
governors): the first for the Soudan properly
so called, the second for Darfour, and the third for
the shores of the Red Sea and the Eastern Soudan.”
Thus, at the age of forty-four, Gordon had committed
to his charge the absolute control, including power
over life and death, over a province as large as France,
Germany, and Spain together! He had already served
the Khedive for three years in the unhealthy Equatorial
Province, and now he was to govern for nearly three
years more this larger and still more unwieldy province,
his reign only ceasing with the abdication of Ismail.
When Gordon left England for Cairo,
the appointment had not been conferred upon him.
He merely went out to see the Khedive, and it was
not till February 13, 1877, that the matter was finally
decided. Writing home in reference to the Khedive’s
kindness, he quotes that text, “Ask of me, and
I will give thee to the half of my kingdom,”
and then he goes on to say:
“And now for the reverse of the
medal. It is the sacrifice of a living
life. To give your life to be taken at once, is
one thing; to give a life such as is before me
is another and more trying ordeal. I have
set my face to the work, and will give my life
to it. I feel as if I had nought to do with the
Government. God must undertake the work....
I think how many would be weighed down by this
immense charge; how they would shrink from accepting
it without some other help, for fear of their reputation.
But for me, I never gave the question a thought.
I feel sure of success; for I do not lean on my
own understanding, and He directs my path.”
On March 19th he writes with regard
to his grand escort:
“Here I met two hundred cavalry
and infantry, who had come to meet us. I
am most carefully guarded at six yards’
radius round the tree where I am sitting are six
or eight sentries, and the other men are in a
circle round them. Now, just imagine this, and
put yourself in my position. However, I know
they will all go to sleep, so I do not fret myself.
I can say truly, no man has ever been so forced
into a high position as I have. How many I know
to whom the incense would be the breath of their
nostrils. To me it is irksome beyond measure.
Eight or ten men to help me off my camel! as if I
were an invalid. If I walk, every one gets
off and walks; so, furious, I get on again.”
After being appointed Governor-General
of the Soudan, the first thing Colonel Gordon did
was to attempt to bring about a definite peace between
the Khedive and the King of Abyssinia, whose territory
adjoins the Soudan. It will be remembered that
in the year 1868 an English expedition, under the
late Lord (then Sir Robert) Napier, went against Theodore,
King of Abyssinia, to punish him for imprisoning and
ill-treating British subjects. Being defeated,
that monarch committed suicide. Before his defeat,
as he was much hated, some of his chieftains had broken
into open revolt, and one of them had proclaimed himself
king of a certain province. Sir Robert Napier
presented this chieftain with four guns and a thousand
rifles, and this recognition on the part of the conquerors
enabled the chief in question to mount the Abyssinian
throne, taking for himself the name of Johannis.
In 1874 a Swiss adventurer, who was
at that time governor of Massowah, under the Khedive,
seized Bogos, a piece of territory belonging to Abyssinia,
and held it for his master, at the same time urging
him to add another province, that of Hamacen, to his
ill-gotten gains. At this time the Khedive was
rich, having just received L4,000,000 from the British
Government for the Suez Canal shares, and instead of
spending the money in developing the resources of
the territory he already possessed, he was ill advised
enough to go to war, and got defeated. Foremost
among the Abyssinians in the conflict was Walad el
Michael, the hereditary prince of Bogos and Hamacen,
who before the war was imprisoned for having sought
the aid of Napoleon III. against the Abyssinian king.
He was released at the commencement of hostilities,
and proved very successful. But, having defeated
the Egyptians, Walad got disgusted with the Abyssinian
king for depriving him of his share of the spoils
of war, and consequently, when the Egyptians in 1876
sought to avenge their defeat, Walad turned against
his own king. The Egyptians were however again
defeated, 9000 of them being killed, and an enormous
number taken prisoners. The spoils of war were
great, for all the Egyptian tents, twenty-five guns,
10,000 rifles, and a large amount of English gold,
were captured by the Abyssinians. So ignorant
were they of the value of this spoil, that they mistook
English sovereigns for brass counters, and thirty
of them were sold for four dollars! The Abyssinian
king was so incensed at the conduct of Walad, who
had 7000 men and 700 rifles, that, as one of the conditions
of peace, he demanded that the Khedive should give
him up. This of course the Khedive could not
do, and a long delay followed, during which the Abyssinian
monarch sent an envoy to Cairo. But the Khedive
treated the envoy badly, and he, rightly or wrongly,
imagined that his life was in danger. He managed
to get away, and the ill-feeling between the two monarchs
was intense when Colonel Gordon arrived on the scene.
Just at this time the great bulk of the Egyptian troops
were required for the Turkish war against the Russians,
and Gordon was left helpless, as he had not sufficient
force with him to compel Walad to cease his intermittent
attacks on Abyssinia.
Seeing the hopelessness of his position,
Gordon decided to waste no more time over the question,
more especially as he had not yet been to Khartoum,
the capital of his huge province, to take up his duties,
and all the time there was a revolt going on in Darfour,
on the extreme west of his dominion. Having once
made up his mind, he lost no time in getting to Khartoum,
leaving Walad to be dealt with at his leisure later
on. On reaching Khartoum, which he did by travelling
forty-five miles a day in the extremely hot months
of April and May, he had to submit to the ordeal of
installation. It was on this occasion, after
the firman had been read and the royal salute
had been fired, that he made the memorable speech
which so delighted the people, and which may be summed
up in one sentence that he made use of, “With
the help of God I will hold the balance level.”
By this he meant to say, that as long as he was Governor-General
there should be none of the cruel, grinding tyranny
that had existed in the time of his predecessor.
It may be well here, anticipating events, to illustrate
the desperate condition of the people under the tyranny
of the Egyptian rule. Mr. Frank Power, correspondent
of the Times, in a private letter to his mother
in the year 1884, describes the way in which the poor
people were ground down with taxation. He says:
“Every Arab must pay a tax for
himself, children, and wife or wives. This
he has to pay three times over once for
the Khedive, once for the tax collector or local
Beys, and once for the Governor-General.
The last two are illegal, but still scrupulously collected
to the piastre. To pay this he must grow some
corn, and for the privilege of growing corn he
must pay L3 per annum. To grow corn the desert
earth must have water: the means of irrigation
is a ‘Sakeh,’ a wheel like a mill-wheel
with buckets on it, which raise the water into
a trough, and then it flows in little streams over
the land. A sakeh is turned by two oxen.
Every man who uses a sakeh must pay L7: if
he does not use it, he must go into prison for life,
and have his hut burned. Every one must pay for
the right of working to earn money; every one
must pay if they are idle; in any case every one
must pay to make the officials rich. If you have
a trading boat, you are fined L4 if you do not
continually fly the Egyptian flag, and you must
pay L4 for the privilege of flying it.”
In another letter he says:
“If they wish to grow corn they
must pay for permission to do so, pay for liberty
to take water from the broad Nile, and pay for liberty
to sell the corn. If the crop is good, pay double
taxes (one for private purse of the Pasha and
one for the Government at Cairo). If they
don’t grow the corn they can’t pay the
taxes at all, and get kourbashed (flogged) and
put into prison. No matter how they make
a few piastres, the dragoman of some Bey or Pasha
will steal it for his master. They frequently
pull down huts and tear up yards and fields to
find where the coins are hidden. If the peasant
buys a few rags for his wife or child, or mends a hole
in his hut to keep out the sun, he is told he
must have got money somewhere, and he is doubly
taxed; and after all, his sole possessions are
a hut made of mud and river reeds, a rush bed, a rush
mat, and an earthen pot.”
In still another letter he says:
“Some of these merchants, who
sit all day in their little stalls in the bazaar,
are really millionaires, and would buy up many of the
London merchant-princes. They live like kings
in what, outside, looks like a mud hut. If
one shows any outward signs of wealth, the Pasha
lets him know quietly that he will at once be charged
as a rebel or something, and put in prison if
he does not make him a little present, generally
from L300 to L1000. One Pasha left here last
year, admitting, report says, that in three years he
had made L60,000. He came here three years
ago as a clerk on L2 a month. Abdul-Kereem
Pasha, the Governor, took a fancy to him, and made
him chief of the tax-gatherers; in three years
he gained the rank of Pasha and L60,000 meaning
5000 ruined homes, several million strokes of
the bastinado, rapine, robbery, and men driven to
exasperation, and shot down at their doors.”
Need we wonder that people so ground
down by tyranny were delighted to hear their Governor-General
announce that he would hold the balance level, and
that no longer should the rich and powerful trample
on the weak and poor?
The prominent characteristic of the
Egyptian rule in the Soudan was fittingly summed up
in the sentence, “Kourbash, kourbash, et toujours
kourbash,” which being interpreted means,
“Flogging, flogging, always flogging.”
As to administration of justice, there was no such
thing. He who could bribe the judges the highest
got judgment delivered in his favour, while his opponent
received the kourbash. The symbol of authority
might well have been a kourbash, which corresponds
to the English cat-o’-nine-tails. Men were
often kourbashed for no other reason than that they
would not, or could not, bribe any official who had
the power of administering this form of punishment
not to inflict it on them. Nor must it be supposed
that an ordinary flogging, such as we understand by
that term, would satisfy these tyrannical perpetrators
of cruelty. Often the use of the kourbash meant
that the victim was maimed for life, and the unfortunate
one might always consider himself lucky if he escaped
without any permanent injury. In many cases it
amounted to nothing more or less than a form of torture,
such as used to be inflicted in England in the barbarous
Middle Ages, and if the sufferer had not actually
got the money he was supposed to have, he would often
have to borrow as much as he could of the required
amount, in order to avoid further torture. We
can imagine how Gordon’s blood must have boiled
with indignation at such gross miscarriages of justice;
and during the whole time he served the Khedive, his
object was to do away with this kind of tyranny.
Often his journeys from place to place were marked
by signs of fallen greatness, as he would not tolerate
tyranny. “In one month,” he says,
“I have turned out three generals of division,
one general of brigade, and four lieutenant-colonels.
It is no use mincing matters.”
He allowed every one to approach him
and to make complaints. A box always stood at
his tent or palace, into which any one who had a grievance
could drop his written complaint, with a certainty
that it would receive immediate investigation.
Such a method gave publicity to instances of cruelty
and oppression, and often, directly Gordon heard of
cases of this kind, he would jump on his camel, pay
a personal visit to the individual concerned, and
having investigated the case on the spot, would deal
out justice upon the culprit. Of course, in such
an extensive province as his, without railways, it
was absolutely impossible to investigate all the cases,
but by taking the more prominent and the grosser ones,
he could strike terror into the hearts of evil-doers
in high places; and in this way he considerably reduced
the evil of tyrannical rule, and taught the oppressed
people that they had as much right to live as their
oppressors had.
Of course Gordon was a much-hated
man among the oppressor class, as reformers of deep-seated
abuses usually are; but he knew that the weak and
helpless at all events would appreciate him. When
Wilberforce, the great slavery abolitionist, was accused
by an opponent of interference with the rights of
man, he asked what those rights were, and received
for answer, “The right that every man has to
lick his own nigger!” To rights of this kind,
however long established, Gordon was an inveterate
enemy; his object was to show that the weak and the
helpless had rights as well as their oppressors, and
in this he succeeded to a marvellous extent.
“My great desire,” said he, “is to
be a shelter to the people, to ease their burdens,
and to soften their hard lot in these inhospitable
lands.” And again:
“I have an enormous province to
look after; but it is a great blessing to me to
know that God has undertaken the administration of
it, and it is His work, and not mine. If I fail,
it is His will; if I succeed, it is His work certainly.
He has given me the joy of not regarding the honours
of this world, and to value my union with Him
above all things. May I be humbled to the dust
and fail, so that He may glorify Himself.
The greatness of my position only depresses me,
and I cannot help wishing that the time had come when
He will lay me aside and use some other worm to
do His work.”
Besides putting an end to cruelty
and injustice, he introduced into Khartoum a system
of water supply. But important as his work at
Khartoum was, he was on May 19 compelled to leave,
a revolt having broken out at Darfour, where his immediate
presence was required. So off he went on his
camel into the very heart of the slave-hunting district.
Writing from Fogia, on the frontier of Darfour, he
says:
“I have a splendid camel none
like it; it flies along, and quite astonishes
the Arabs. I came flying into this station in
marshal’s uniform, and before the men had
time to unpile arms, I had arrived with only one
man with me. I could not help it; the escort did
not come in for an hour and a half afterwards.
The Arab chief who was with me said it was the
telegraph.... It is fearful to see the Governor-General
arrayed in gold clothes flying along like a madman,
with only a guide, as if he was pursued.... Specks
had been seen in the vast plain around the station
moving towards it (like Jehu’s advance),
but the specks were few only two or three and
were supposed to be the advanced guard, and before
the men of Fogia knew where they were, the station
was taken!”
Writing from Oomchanga near Fascher,
the capital of Darfour, he says:
“All this revolt is the fault
of the Bashi-Bazouks. I said the other day,
’If the people of this country were Ryahs or
Christians, I might understand your bad treatment
of them, but I do not when I see they are Mussulmans,
as you.’ Upon which the Darfourians were
delighted, and clapped their hands. Now the
Darfourians were so fanatical that they would
never let a Christian into their country, and
now they ask me to send Christian Governors!”
Their hatred of the Bashi-Bazouks
was well illustrated by an incident Gordon mentions,
which was told him by one of the officers. “An
officer declared to me,” he said, “that
a woman with an officer escaped with the child he
had by her, and taking the child to the chief of the
insurgents, asked him to kill it, as ‘the child
of a Turk,’ which the chief did.”
On June 29 Gordon was able to write,
“We have made peace with the tribes around here
half-way to Fascher;” but he records, “I
speak my mind, and I cannot help saying to some”
(of the Darfourians who had come in to ask for peace),
“‘You ought to pardon me.’ Really
no people could have been treated worse than these
people.”
No sooner was one trouble settled
than he was off on another expedition, and this time
his steps were directed towards Dara, the stronghold
of the great prince of slave-dealers, Zebehr Rahama.
En route he was nearly starved as well as poisoned
by putrid water. Writing from Toashia on July
3, he says, “We have been two whole days without
meat,” and he finds a garrison who for three
years have been without pay! He left Toashia
on July 11 with 500 men, of whom 150 only were any
good. On this march there was a threatened attack,
which fortunately did not come off, but that he felt
he was in great danger we may gather from the extract:
“We have, thank God, passed our dangers.
Whether they were imaginary or not, I do not know,
but we were threatened by an attack from thousands
of determined blacks, who knew I was here. Now
very few Englishmen know what it is to be with troops
they have not a bit of confidence in.... I do
not fear death, but I fear, from want of faith, the
results of my death for the whole country
would have risen.”
At Dara he came across a gang of 210
slaves, who had been rescued, but who had received
no food for thirty-six hours. His heart was filled
with pity for them, and he wrote:
“I am a fool, I dare say, but
I cannot see the sufferings of these people without
tears in my eyes.... It is a sad sight to see
the poor starved creatures looking so wistfully
at one. What can I do? Poor souls!
I cannot feed or look after them. I must leave
it to God, who will arrange all in kindness.
Some of them were so miserably thin. I have
sent them some dhoora. I declare solemnly that
I would give my life willingly to save the sufferings
of these people; and if I would do this, how much
more does He care for them than such imperfection
as I am! You would have felt sick had you seen
them. Poor creatures! thirty-six hours without
food!”
The more experience Colonel Gordon
had of his Bashi-Bazouk soldiers, the more he seems
to have disliked them:
“I am worn to a shadow by the
utter uselessness of the Bashi-Bazouks. The
very sight of them excites my ire. I never saw
such a useless, expensive set. I hate (there
is no other word for it) these Arabs; and I like
the Blacks patient, enduring, and friendly,
as much as the Arab is cowardly, cruel, and effeminate.
All the misery is due to these Arab and Circassian
Pashas and authorities. I would not stay
a day here for these wretched creatures, but I
would give my life for these Blacks.”
Writing from Dara, he mentions an
instance which occurred on the march to that place
to show the cowardly nature of his men, as well as
the bravery of the Blacks. His force of 3500
men was attacked by the Leopard tribe, numbering only
700 men. In spite of these overwhelming odds
in their favour, Gordon says that his men were nearly
beaten. “I was sickened,” he said,
“to see twenty brave men of the tribes in alliance
with me ride out to meet the Leopard tribe, unsupported
by my men, who crowded into the stockade. It
was terribly painful. The only thing which restrained
me from riding out to the attack was the sheep-like
state in which my people would have been had I been
killed. What, also, would have become of the
province?”
Notwithstanding the inferior quality
of his troops, Colonel Gordon was determined to march
on and pay a visit to Zebehr Rahama’s camp, one
of the boldest acts of his life. Zebehr, himself
the head of the cursed slave traffic, was at this
time practically a prisoner in Cairo. He had,
foolishly enough, gone there with L100,000, in the
hope that he could bribe the Khedive and his officials,
and he even had the effrontery to ask Gordon to intercede
for him. Unfortunately for Zebehr, he was too
powerful a man for the Khedive to care to have at
large. He was practically an independent chief,
his power and influence being greater in the Soudan
than that of the Khedive. He lived in regal style,
and every one trembled at his name. Dr. Schweinfurth
thus describes the surroundings of this remarkable
man. He was “surrounded with a court that
was little less than princely in its details.
Special rooms, provided with carpeted divans, were
reserved as ante-chambers, and into these all visitors
were conducted by richly-dressed slaves. The
regal aspect of these halls of state was increased
by the introduction of some lions, secured, as may
be supposed, by sufficiently strong and massive chains.”
Dr. Birkbeck Hill says, “He owned no less than
thirty stations. These fortified posts were carried
far into the heart of Africa; and all along the line
from one to another, and round each one of them far
and wide, the slave-dealer exercised despotic rule.”
The only foolish act this prince of
slave-hunters ever did was to put himself into the
power of the Khedive, by going to visit him at his
capital. Once at Cairo, the Khedive kept him there
as a prisoner. Zebehr’s son, Suleiman,
was at the head of his army of some 3000 fighting
men, as plucky as Gordon’s men were cowardly.
When the father was detained at Cairo, he telegraphed
in cipher to his son to break into open revolt, and
even to attack the Government. Gordon knew that
his men were utterly unable to meet Suleiman’s
troops in the field, so he tried another method to
intimidate the rebels. He rode on alone ahead
of his escort, covering eighty-five miles in a day
and a half, in the heat of August, and dashing into
the camp of these robbers, summoned their chief to
an interview. Suleiman and his followers were
dumbfounded by this bold act, and offered no resistance.
The Governor-General then told Suleiman that he was
aware of the meditated revolt, and that if he did
not submit to his authority, his band should be broken
up and disarmed. Suleiman and his chiefs went
off to consider their course of action. Of course
many were for making Gordon a prisoner, and he had,
humanly speaking, a narrow escape. However, Suleiman
decided to submit, and though afterwards we hear of
him again in open revolt, for the time being Gordon
carried the day. Nothing but his daring courage
preserved him on that occasion. He even accepted
an invitation to visit Suleiman at Shaka, where he
spent two days. When Suleiman asked for an appointment,
it was refused, on the ground that he had not yet
shown his loyalty to the Khedive. Gordon, however,
made him a present of his own gun, and taught him
to use it.
Gordon often used to speak of this
adventure as a most remarkable answer to prayer.
He had prayed for Suleiman before starting, and had
also asked for guidance for himself, and God heard
him. It has sometimes been represented as a mad
freak on Gordon’s part to put himself into the
lion’s den in this way, but it was nothing of
the kind. Suleiman was in revolt, supported by
a splendid army. Gordon was absolutely at his
mercy, for he could not rely on his troops. It
was only Gordon’s daring courage that intimidated
Suleiman, and made him think Gordon was stronger than
he really was.
After obtaining the submission of
Suleiman, Gordon returned to Khartoum, and again for
a time resumed his ordinary official duties.
But this was not for long; he had before him another
visit to Walad el Michael, the turbulent Abyssinian
chief, whom he had visited before taking up his duties
at Khartoum. Gordon’s object was to persuade
Walad to submit to the authority of King Johannis
of Abyssinia. But nothing would induce Walad
to do this. He was surrounded by 7000 soldiers,
and Gordon felt himself, in spite of the denials of
the rebel chief, practically a prisoner. Walad
demanded authority to go on attacking Johannis, but
to this of course the Governor-General could not assent.
He therefore compromised matters by offering Walad
L1000 per mensem, on condition that he should leave
his old king alone.
Having settled Walad, Gordon left,
intending to return to Khartoum, but was intercepted
by a telegram from the Khedive begging him to go to
Cairo to help him in his financial difficulties, and
he started for Cairo on February 3, 1878, having completed
one year’s service as Governor-General of the
Soudan.
In spite of the hard rough life of
the Soudan, he infinitely preferred it to the more
artificial civilised existence which the officials
were living at Cairo. He arrived there on March
7th, and left again on the 30th; and during the whole
of his stay he was wretched. At first the Khedive
paid great attention to him, receiving him with a splendour
which suggested the “Arabian Nights.”
He asked him to be the president of a commission of
inquiry into the finances of the country, with the
condition attached that he should use his influence
to arrange with the representatives of the different
countries that the commissioners of the debt or the
representatives of the creditors who had lent money
to Egypt should not serve on that commission of inquiry.
After a good deal of discussion, it was finally ascertained
that this condition would not be consented to by the
foreign Governments. This of course relieved
Colonel Gordon of any obligations in the matter, and
he, seeing that he could be of no further service,
decided to return to his province. Considering
how much Gordon had done to try and accomplish the
desires of the Khedive, there can be little question
that he was in this matter treated very badly.
“I left Cairo,” said he, “with no
honours, by the ordinary train, paying my own passage.
The sun which rose with such splendour set in the
deepest obscurity. I calculate my financial episode
cost me L800. His Highness was bored with me after
my failure, and could not bear the sight of me.”
Fortunately for Gordon, he cared very
little for official favour. “I now only
look,” said he in a letter written a short time
after this, “to benefiting the people.”
It was in this spirit he visited Harrar, a small province
detached from the Soudan, and lying to the south of
Abyssinia, on the eastern coast of Africa, almost opposite
to Aden. This province had once belonged to Turkey,
but had been transferred to the Khedive in exchange
for L15,000 per annum extra tribute. The governor
of the province was Raouf Pasha, whom Colonel Gordon,
it will be remembered, had refused to employ on account
of his cruel treatment of the natives in the Equatorial
Province four years before. Again he had been
playing the tyrant, and Gordon felt it to be his duty
to turn him out. As this man afterwards succeeded
Colonel Gordon as Governor-General of the Soudan,
it is to him more than any one that the present Khedive
is indebted for having lost the whole of the Soudan.
By his tyranny, following after Gordon’s kindness,
the province was stirred into revolt, and the Mahdi
enabled to usurp authority. We are, however,
anticipating events.
Having freed Harrar of this tyrant,
he went to Massowah, and thence on May 22nd to Khartoum.
Back once more at his capital, he devoted himself
first to a thorough reform of the prisons and the administration
of the law. “The prisons,” he wrote,
“were dens of injustice, and I am glad to have
had time to go into the question of each individual
prisoner.”
Although he used to tell amusing stories
against himself and his own personal expenditure of
money, yet Gordon had great aptitude for finance,
and could make money go farther than most men.
Had his views been adopted for Egypt, it is more than
likely that we should have been saved the Egyptian
war, to say nothing of the loss of the Soudan, and
all that was associated with it. In the Soudan
province there was an annual deficit amounting to
something like L259,000. By dint of cutting down
expenditure and increasing the receipts, Gordon reduced
this during the second year to L50,600! Had he
continued Governor-General for many years, there can
be no question that he would have not only made the
two ends meet, but would have obtained sufficient to
carry out his schemes of opening up the country by
railways and steamers, thus at the same time developing
trade and reducing slavery. He calculated that
with great economy, and utilising the machinery and
the rails that were already lying idle in the country,
a highway from Cairo to Khartoum might have been opened
up for L70,000, a sum of money which over and over
again has been frittered away in building great useless
palaces for the Khedive or some other Egyptian official,
which bring in no income, and are a great expense
to keep up. The traffic, especially the conveyance
of ivory and other merchandise, would soon have recouped
the Government for their original outlay. The
way in which Colonel Gordon was thwarted in every
possible manner at this time troubled him a good deal.
“As for myself,” he writes, “I am
exceedingly weary, and wish, with a degree of bitterness,
that it was all over. I am cooped up here now,
but am much occupied with finances, which are in a
very low state. My life is burthensome and weary,
but I feel that it is better to be employed here than
to be idle elsewhere.”
Writing on November 20, 1878, he says:
I will give you an instance of the miserable way the Cairo
Government treats the Soudan. I asked H.H. a long time ago to
send up a man A. H.H. replied he wanted the man
A., and could not send him. To-day I got
a request for L7, 10s., stating that I had asked
for A., who was at Port Said; that in consequence A.
went to Cairo and said that he did not want to
come; so they ask me to pay the L7, 10s. for his
passage from Port Said to Cairo and return, which
I have refused to do.”
Closely associated with this question
of finance was the still more important question of
slavery. The Khedive’s Government were at
this time at their wit’s end for money.
They wrote to Colonel Gordon asking him to send them
L12,000, and he replied that he had no funds available.
Nubar Pasha, who was Minister at the time, was casting
about to see how money could be raised, and not being
troubled with conscientious scruples on the subject
of slavery, he made overtures to the great slave-dealer
Zebehr, who, it will be remembered, was practically
a prisoner in Cairo. Zebehr jumped at the offer,
and promised to send L25,000 per annum to Cairo from
the Soudan, if he were made Governor-General in place
of Gordon. This of course meant that he would
be allowed a perfectly free hand to kidnap as many
slaves as possible, in order to make up the annual
deficit in addition to this subsidy of L25,000.
Writing from Khartoum on February 18, 1879, Gordon
says that he was ordered to return to Cairo for consultation.
This, however, he steadily refused to do, on the ground
of certain disturbances which had occurred. There
was a simultaneous rebellion of slave-dealers in the
Bahr-Gazelle, and also risings in Darfour and Kordofan,
and Gordon felt it to be his duty to go and assist
his lieutenant, Gessi, who was endeavouring to
crush Zebehr’s gang. Again all the horrors
of the slave-trade were forced upon Gordon’s
mind.
“I declare if I could stop this
traffic I would willingly be shot this night.
This shows my ardent desire; and yet, strive as I can,
I can scarcely see any hope of arresting the evil.
Now comes the question, Could I sacrifice my life
and remain in Kordofan and Darfour? To die
quickly would be to me nothing; but the long crucifixion
that a residence in these horrid countries entails
appalls me. Yet I feel that, if I could screw
up my mind to it, I could cause the trade to cease,
for its roots are in these countries....
I have written to the Khedive to say I will not remain
as Governor-General, for I feel I cannot govern the
country to satisfy myself.... Now as I will
not stay as Governor-General of the whole of the
Soudan, query, shall I stay as Governor of the West
Soudan, and crush the slave-dealers? I agree,
if the death was speedy; but oh! it is a long
and weary one, and for the moment I cannot face
it.”
Again, writing from Kalaka at the
beginning of May 1879, he says:
“All the road from here to Shaka
is marked by the camping-places of the slave-dealers,
and there are numerous skulls by the side of the road.
What thousands have passed along here! I hear
some districts are completely depopulated, all
the inhabitants having been captured or starved
to death.”
But though Gordon could not do all
he desired, he was enabled to do more perhaps than
any other man could have accomplished in the circumstances,
and by the end of June 1879, Suleiman, the son of the
great Zebehr, had been hunted down by Gessi, who
discovered papers clearly proving the guilt of both
father and son. The latter was tried by court-martial
and shot, and Gordon sent the evidence against the
father to the Khedive. No notice was taken of
it, and Gordon bitterly complains that, instead of
being punished, Zebehr was pensioned!
“What pensions,” he asks, “have the
widows and orphans whom Zebehr has made by the thousand?
What allowance have the poor worn-out bodies of men,
strong enough till he dragged them from their homes,
who are now draining the last bitter dregs of life
in cruel slavery? What recompense has been made
to those whose bleached bones mark the track of his
trade over many and many a league of ground?”
Space does not permit a detailed account
of the interesting and exciting campaign in which
Gessi delivered this crushing blow against the
great slave-dealer. No man had imbibed more of
Gordon’s detestation to the slave trade than
Gessi, and with quite a small force he captured
the redoubtable Suleiman, who had a large force at
his disposal. Gordon made him a Pasha and gave
him a reward of L2000, which he richly deserved.