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 Hamaçen, to his ill-gotten gains. At this time the Khedive was rich, having just received £4,000,000 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 Hamaçen, 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 £3 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 £7: 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 £4 if you do not continually fly the Egyptian flag, and you must pay £4 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 £300 to £1000. One Pasha left here last year, admitting, report says, that in three years he had made £60,000. He came here three years ago as a clerk on £2 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 £60,000—meaning 5000 ruined homes, several million strokes of the bastinado, rapine, robbery, and men driven to exasperation, and shot down at their doors."