“I have been, and still am, much interested in these parts, and as it is cheap I shall stop here. I live at Ain Karim, five miles from Jerusalem. There are few there who care for antiquities. Schink, an old German, is the only one who is not a bigot. Have you ever written on Palestine? I wondered you never followed up your visit to Harar; that is a place of great interest. My idea is that the Pison is the Blue Nile, and that the sons of Joktan were at Harar, Abyssinia, Godjam; but it is not well supported.
“The Rock of Harar was the platform Adam was moulded on out of clay from the Potter’s Field. He was then put in Seychelles (Eden), and after Fall brought back to Mount Moriah to till the ground in the place he was taken from. Noah built the Ark twelve miles from Jaffa, at Ain Judeh; the Flood began; the Ark floated up and rested on Mount Baris, afterwards Antonia; he sacrificed on the Rock (Adam was buried on the Skull Hill, hence the skull under the cross). It was only 776 A.D. that Mount Ararat of Armenia became the site of the Ark’s descent. Korán says Al Judi (Ararat) is holy land. After Flood the remnants went east to Plain of Shimar. Had they gone east from the Al Judi, near Mosul, or from Armenian Ararat, they could never have reached Shimar. Shem was Melchizedek, etc., etc.
“With kind regards to Mrs. Burton and you, and the hope you will send me the manuscript,
“Believe me,
“Yours sincerely,
“C. G. Gordon.
“P.S.—Did you ever get the £1,000 I offered you on part of ex-Khedive for the Mines of Midian?”
Some six months after the date of this letter Gordon left England for the Soudan, and later went to Kartoum, with what result all the world knows. Burton said, when the Government sent Gordon to Kartoum, they failed because they sent him alone. Had they sent him with five hundred soldiers there would have been no war. It was just possible at the time that Burton might have been sent instead of Gordon; and Isabel, dreading this, wrote privately to the Foreign Office, unknown to her husband, to let them know how ill he then was.
The Burtons were profoundly moved at the death of Gordon; they both felt it with a keen sense of personal loss. Isabel relates that in one of the illustrated papers there was a picture of Gordon lying in the desert, his Bible in one hand, his revolver in the other, and the vultures hovering around. Burton said, “Take it away! I can’t bear to look at it. I have had to feel that myself; I know what it is.” But upon reflection Burton grew to disbelieve in Gordon’s death, and he died believing that he had escaped into the desert, but disgusted at his betrayal and abandonment he would never let himself be discovered or show himself in England again. In this conviction Burton was of course mistaken; but he had formed it on his knowledge of Gordon’s character.
I am aware that this chapter dealing with Gordon and his letters is something of an interpolation, and has little to do with the main thread of the story; but Lady Burton wished it to be so, and its irrelevance may be pardoned for the sake of the light it throws upon the friendship which existed between three very remarkable personages, each curiously alike in some respects, and in others widely dissimilar.