deploring his loss, said—“Our readers will hear with regret of the departure of Colonel Gordon from the town, in which he has resided for six years; gaining a name for the most exquisite charity that will long be remembered. Nor will he be less missed than remembered, for in the lowest walks of life he has been so unwearied in well-doing that his departure will be felt as a terrible calamity. His charity was essential charity, having its root in deep philanthropic feeling and goodness, and always shunning the light of publicity.” Many were the friends who grieved over his departure from Gravesend, for they ne’er would look upon his like again.
CHAPTER V.
“If a man do not erect in this age his own tomb e’er he dies, he shall live no longer in monuments than the bell rings and his widow weeps.”—Shakespeare.
A new chapter now opens in our story of Gordon. Sir Samuel Baker had resigned the honoured position of Governor General of the Soudan. Gordon was selected as the man who, of all others, was most suitable for such an appointment. Our Government acquiesced in the Khedive’s offer of this post to Gordon, so he accepted the responsible position.
The Khedive offered him, it is stated, a salary £10,000 per annum; this, however, he refused to accept. He said “Your Majesty I cannot accept it, as I should look upon it as the life’s blood wrung out of those poor people over whom you wish me to rule.” “Name your own terms then,” said the Khedive. “Well,” replied Gordon, “£2,000 per annum I think will keep
body and soul together, what should I require more than this for.” About the close of the year 1873 he left his country and loved ones behind him, for that lone sad land, with its ancient history. We think Gordon played such a part that his name will be honourably associated with Egypt, and remembered from generation to generation.
I am indebted to the author of Gordon in Central Africa for the following abstract of the Khedive’s final instructions to Col. Gordon, dated Feb. 16th, 1874.
“The province which Colonel Gordon has undertaken to organise and to govern is but little known. Up to the last few years, it had been in the hands of adventurers who had thought of nothing but their own lawless gains, and who had traded in ivory and slaves. They established factories and governed them with armed men. The neighbouring tribes were forced to traffic with them whether they liked it or not. The Egyptian Government, in the hope of putting an end to this inhuman trade had taken the factories into their own hands, paying the owners an indemnification.
Some of these men, nevertheless, had been still allowed to carry on trade in the district, under a promise that they would not deal in slaves. They had been placed under the control of the Governor of the Soudan. His authority, however, had scarcely been able to make itself felt in these remote countries. The Khedive had resolved therefore to form them into a separate government, and to claim as a monopoly of the State, the whole of the trade with the outside world. There was no other way of putting an end to the slave trade which at present was carried on by force of arms in defiance of law. When once brigandage had become a thing of the past, and when once a breach had been made in the lawless customs of long ages, then trade might be made free to all. If the men who had been in the pay of adventurers were willing to enter the service of the Government, Col. Gordon was to make all the use of them he could. If on the other hand they attempted to follow their old course of life, whether openly or secretly, he was to put in force against them to the utmost severity of martial law. Such men as these must find in the Governor neither indulgence, nor mercy. The lesson must be made clear even in those remote parts that a mere difference of colour does not turn men into wares, and that life and liberty are sacred things.”
Another object of the new Governor should be to establish a line of posts through all his provinces, so that from one end to the other they might be brought into direct communication with Khartoum. Those posts should follow, as far as was possible, the line of the Nile; but for a distance of seventy miles the navigation of
that river was hindered by rapids. He was to search out the best way of overcoming this hindrance, and to make a report thereon to the Khedive.