Part 42

When Gordon accepted the position of 'governor of the equatorial provinces,' with a salary of L2,000 a year, instead of the L10,000 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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 L1,170,000.

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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.

'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.

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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 L12,000 a year, but L6,000 was all that Gordon would accept, and later he cut it down to L3,000.

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