Alarmed as to his own position, in view of the ambition of Zebehr, and harassed by the importunities of England, Ismail, acting on the advice of his able and dexterous Minister, Nubar Pasha, one of the most skilful diplomatists the East has ever produced, came to the decision to relieve himself from at least the latter annoyance, by the appointment of Gordon. This was the main object the Khedive and his advisers had in view when they invited Gordon to accept the post of Governor of the Equatorial Provinces in succession to Sir Samuel Baker, who resigned what he found after many years' experience was a hopeless and thankless task. The post was in one sense peculiar. It was quite distinct from that of the Egyptian Governor-General at Khartoum, who retained his separate and really superior position in the administration of the Upper Nile region. Moreover, the finances of the Equatorial districts were included in the general Soudan Budget, which always showed an alarming deficit. These arrangements imparted a special difficulty into the situation with which Gordon had to deal, and his manner of coping with it will reveal how shrewd he was in detecting the root-cause of any trouble, and how prompt were his measures to eradicate the mischief. From the first he fully realised why he was appointed, viz. "to catch the attention of the English people"; but he also appreciated the Khedive's "terrible anxiety to put down the slave-trade, which threatens his supremacy." With these introductory remarks, the main thread of Gordon's career may be resumed.
After the brief hesitation referred to in the last chapter, and the reduction of his salary to what he deemed reasonable dimensions, Gordon proceeded to Cairo, where he arrived early in the year 1874. As in everything else he undertook, Gordon was in earnest about the work he had to attempt, and no doubt he had already formed in his mind a general plan of action, which would enable him to suppress the slave-trade. Here it will suffice to say that his project was based on the holding of the White Nile by a line of fortified posts, and with the river steamers, which would result in cutting off the slave hunters from their best source of supply. The expression of his plans in his earnest manner showed up by contrast the hollowness of the views and policy of those who had obtained his services. In his own graphic and emphatic way he wrote: "I thought the thing real and found it a sham, and felt like a Gordon who has been humbugged." He found Cairo "a regular hot-bed of intrigues," and among not only the Egyptian, but also the European officials. With a prophetic grasp of the situation he wrote, "Things cannot last long like this." Had Gordon been long detained at Cairo, where the etiquette and the advice offered him by every one in an official position exasperated him beyond endurance, there is no doubt that he would have thrown up his task in disgust. He was animated by the desire to make the sham a reality, and to convert the project with which he had been intrusted into a beneficial scheme for the suffering population of the Soudan. There, at least, he would be removed from the intrigues of the capital, and at liberty to speak his own thoughts without giving umbrage to one person and receiving worldly counsel from another.
One of the chief bones of contention during the few weeks he passed at Cairo was the dispute as to how he should travel to the scene of his government. He wished to go by ordinary steamer, with one servant. The Minister insisted that he should travel by a special steamer, and accompanied by a retinue. Gordon's plan would have saved the Khedive's Government £400, but he had to give way to the proprieties. The affair had an amusing issue. His special train to Suez met with an accident, and he and the Egyptian officials sent to see him off were compelled, after two hours' delay, to change into another train, and continue their journey in an ordinary passenger carriage, much to the amusement of Gordon, who wrote: "We began in glory and ended in shame!" On arrival at Souakim, Gordon was put into quarantine for a night, in order, as he said, that the Governor might have time to put on his official clothes.
Soon his attention was drawn from such frivolities as these to more serious matters. He left Cairo on 21st February, reached Souakim on 26th, left Souakim on 1st March, Berber on 9th March, and entered Khartoum 13th March. He brought with him 200 fresh troops, and was welcomed with considerable display and many hollow protestations of friendship by the Governor-General, Ismail Yakoob.
A few weeks before his arrival at Khartoum an important event had taken place, which greatly simplified his ulterior operations. The "sudd," an accumulation of mould and aquatic plants which had formed into a solid mass and obstructed all navigation, had suddenly given way, and restored communication with Gondokoro and the lakes. The importance of this event may be measured by the fact that whereas the journey to Gondokoro, with the "sudd" in existence, took twenty months and even two years to perform, it was reduced by its dispersal to twenty-one days. General Gordon wrote the following very pretty description of this grassy barrier and its origin:
"A curious little cabbage-like aquatic plant comes floating down, having a little root ready to attach itself to anything; he meets a friend, and they go together, and soon join roots and so on. When they get to a lake, the current is too strong, and so, no longer constrained to move on, they go off to the sides; others do the same – idle and loitering, like everything up here. After a time winds drive a whole fleet of them against the narrow outlet of the lake and stop it up. Then no more passenger plants can pass through the outlet, while plenty come in at the upper end of the lake; these eventually fill up all the passages which may have been made."
Gordon had the control of seven steamers, and in one of these he left Khartoum on 22nd March for the Upper Nile. He had already issued his first decree as Governor of the Equator, in which he declared the sale of ivory to be a Government monopoly, and forbade the importation of firearms and ammunition. It was while he was on this journey that he heard some birds – a kind of stork – laughing on the banks of the river. In his letters to his sister, which were to stand in the place of a diary, he facetiously remarks that he supposes they were amused at the idea of anyone being so foolish as to go up the Nile in "the hope of doing anything." But Gordon was not to be discouraged. Already he liked his work, amid the heat and mosquitoes day and night all the year round, and already he was convinced that he could do a good deal to ameliorate the lot of the unfortunate people. He reached Gondokoro on 16th April, where not only was he not expected, but he found them ignorant even of his appointment. He remained there only a few days, as he perceived he could do nothing without his stores, still en route from Cairo, and returned to Khartoum, which he reached in eleven days.
This brief trip satisfied him of several simple facts bearing on the situation in the Equatorial Province which the Khedive had sent him with such a flourish of trumpets to govern. He found very easily that the Egyptian Government possessed no practical authority in that region. Beyond the two forts at Gondokoro – garrison 300 men – and Fatiko – garrison 200 men – the Khedive had no possessions, and there was not even safety for his representatives half a mile from their guns. As Gordon said: "The Khedive gave me a Firman as Governor-General of the Equator, and left me to work out the rest." He began the practical part of his task on the occasion of this return to Khartoum by insisting that the accounts of the Equatorial Province should be kept distinct from those of the Soudan, and also that Ragouf Pasha, sent nominally to assist but really to hinder him, should be withdrawn.
Having asserted his individuality after several rows with Ismail Yakoob, he became impatient at the delayed arrival of his stores and staff, and hastened off to Berber to hurry their progress. As he was fond of saying, "Self is the best officer," and his visit to Berber hastened the arrival of the supplies which were necessary for his subsequent operations. His staff consisted of Colonel Long, of the United States Army, who had accompanied him to Gondokoro and been left there; Major Campbell, Egyptian Staff; Mr Kemp, an engineer; M. Linant, a Frenchman; Mr Anson, Mr Russell, and the Italian Romulus Gessi. Two Royal Engineer officers, Lieutenants Chippendall and Charles Watson, joined him before the end of the year. He worked very hard himself, and he expected those under him to do the same. The astonished Egyptian officials looked on in amazement at one in high rank, who examined into every detail himself, and who took his turn of the hard work. One of Gordon's forms of recreation was to get out and help to pull his dahabeah. Tucking up his trousers, he would wade through the river fearlessly, having learnt from the natives that crocodiles never attack a person moving.
At first Ismail Yakoob and his colleagues were filled with curiosity and amusement at this phenomenal Englishman – so different, not merely from themselves, but from other Europeans – then apprehension seized them as to what he would do next in the way of exposing their neglect of duty, and finally only the capacity for one sentiment was left – relief whenever he turned his back on Khartoum.
Having collected his staff and supplies, he started up the Nile once more, to begin the establishment of the line of fortified posts, which he had resolved on as the best means of maintaining and extending his own authority, and at the same time of curtailing the raids of the slave-dealers. The first of these forts or stations he established at the entrance of the Saubat river, and while there he made a discovery which showed how the slave-trade flourished with such impunity. He seized some letters from a slave-dealer to the Egyptian commander at Fashoda, stating that he was bringing him the slaves he wanted for himself and many others, besides 2000 cows. By several skilful manœuvres Gordon succeeded in rescuing all of them, restoring the cows to their owners, and compelling the soldiers of the slavehunters to return to their homes, generally in or near Khartoum. Nor was this his only success during the first two months of his government, for he detected one of his lieutenants in the act of letting a slave convoy pass in return for a bribe of £70. On this occasion he had the satisfaction of delivering 1600 human beings from slavery. This will show that one of his principal difficulties was caused by his own subordinates, who were hand-in-glove with the leading slavehunters. Another of Gordon's troubles arose from the collapse of his staff under the terrible heat. Of those enumerated as having gone up with or to him in May, all were dead or invalided in September; and the duties of sick-nurse at last became so excessive that Gordon had to order, in his own quaint manner, that no one who was sick should be allowed to come to headquarters. Only in this way was he able to obtain the time necessary for the accomplishment, single handed, of his various duties. Such was the strain on him that he gave positive injunctions that no more Europeans, and especially young English officers, were to be sent up to him.
As soon as it was realised that the new Governor was in earnest, that he was bent on crushing the slave-trade, and that he would not permit corruption or extortion in any form, he became the mark of general hostility. The intrigues to mislead and discredit him were incessant. Abou Saoud, who had been formerly banished by Sir Samuel Baker from the Soudan, and then taken into high favour by Gordon, turned out a fraud and a failure, while Raouf Bey, the nominee of the Khartoum Governor-General, was sent back in disgrace. With regard to Abou Saoud it may be said that Gordon never really trusted him, that is to say he was not taken in by him, but believed he would be less able to do injury in his service than at a distance. It was precisely the same principle as led him to solicit the co-operation of Zebehr in 1884.
Gordon's method of dealing with those who caused him trouble was short and simple. It consisted in a brief but unchallengeable order to go back to the base. As the officials would have been murdered by the people they had so long and so often injured if they attempted to seek shelter among them, they had no alternative save to obey; and thus, one after another, Gordon brushed the chief obstructionists from his path. He served the old troublesome soldiers who would not work or change their ways after the same fashion, by sending them to his Botany Bay at Khartoum. In the midst of all these troubles he kept well, although "a mere shadow," and he still retained the conviction that he would be able to do much good work in this unpromising region.
In dealing with the natives, he endeavoured first to induce them to cultivate the ground, providing them with seed and dhoora (sorghum), and then to accustom them to the use of money. He bought their ivory and paid for it in coin, so that in a little time he found that the inhabitants, who had held aloof from all previous Egyptian officials, freely brought him their ivory and produce for sale. At the same time, he made it a point to pay scrupulously for any service the natives rendered, and he even endeavoured, as far as he could, to put employment in their way. The practice of the Egyptian officials had been to lay hands on any natives that came across their path, and compel them by force to perform any work they might deem necessary, and then to dismiss them without reward or thanks. The result was a deep-rooted execration of the whole Egyptian system, which found voice in the most popular war-cry of the region: "We want no Turks here! Let us drive them away!" But Gordon's mode was widely different. It was based on justice and reason, and in the long-run constituted sound policy. He paid for what he took, and when he used the natives to drag his boats, or to clear tracks through the grassy zone fringing the Nile, he always carefully handed over to them cows, dhoora, or money, as an equivalent for their work. On the other hand, he was not less prompt to punish hostile tribes by imposing taxes on them, and, when unavoidable, inflicting punishment as well. But the system averted, as far as possible, the necessity of extreme measures, and in this the first period of his rule in the Soudan he had few hostile collisions with the natives of the country. Indeed, with the exception of the Bari tribe, who entrapped Linant, Gordon's best lieutenant after Gessi, and slew him with a small detachment, Gordon's enemies in the field proved few and insignificant. Even the Baris would not have ventured to attack him but for the acquaintance with, and contempt of, firearms they had obtained during an earlier success over an Egyptian corps.
There is no doubt that this absence of any organised opposition was fortunate, for the so-called troops at the disposal of the Governor of the Equator were as miserably inefficient and contemptible, from a fighting point of view, as any General Gordon ever commanded; and at a later stage of his career he plaintively remarked that it had fallen to his lot to lead a greater number of cowardly and unwarlike races than anyone else. But it was not merely that they were such poor fighters that Gordon declared that three natives would put a company to flight, but they were so disinclined for any work, and so encumbered by their women and children, that their ability to make any military show might be as safely challenged as their combative spirit. Well might Gordon write: "I never had less confidence in any troops in my life." But even these shortcomings were not the worst. The Arab soldiers provided by the Egyptian Government, and sent up over and over again, in spite of Gordon's protests and entreaties, could not stand the climate. They died like flies. Of one detachment of 250, half were dead in three months, 100 of the others were invalided, and only 25 remained fit for duty. From a further body of 150 men sent as a reinforcement, half were reported on the sick list the day after their arrival. The main buttress of the Khedive's authority in this region was therefore hollow and erected on an insecure foundation. The Egyptian soldiers possessed firearms, and the natives, in their ignorance that they could not shoot straight, were afraid of them; but the natural progress of knowledge would inevitably prove fatal to that unreal supremacy, and eventually entail the collapse of the Cairo administration in the Soudan and the remoter districts on the Equator.
Realising the inefficiency of the Egyptian force, General Gordon set himself to the task of providing a better; and mindful of the contingent danger of creating a corps that might in the end prove a peril to the system it was meant to protect, he resolved that, if individually brave and efficient, it should be exceedingly limited in numbers, and incapable of casting aside its allegiance to the Khedive. He began in a small way by engaging the services of any stalwart Soudanese native whom chance placed in his path, and thus he organised in the first year of his rule a corps of about forty men as a sort of bodyguard. An accident brought him into contact with a party of the Niam Niam, a tribe of cannibals from the interior of Africa, but possessing a martial spirit and athletic frames. Gordon looked at them with the eye of a soldier, and on the spot enrolled fifty of them into the small force he was organising. He armed them with spears as well as guns, and as these spears were cutting ones, with a blade two feet long, they were the more formidable weapon of the two. Gordon describes the Niam Niam warriors as looking very fierce, and brave, and fearless. They were also thick-set and sturdy, and, above all, so indifferent to the tropical heat that they might be relied on not to break down from the climate like the Egyptian soldiers. Before the end of the year 1876 he had increased the numbers of these two contingents to 500 men. It was with these black troops that Gordon humbled the pride of the Baris, elated by their two successes, and provided for the security of the long Nile route to the lakes.
There was another advantage besides the military in this practical measure, one of those numerous administrative acts, in every clime and under innumerable conditions, that established the fame and the sound sense and judgment of General Gordon. It promoted economy, and contributed to the sound finance which Gordon always set himself to establish wherever he was responsible. One of Gordon's first resolutions had been that his part of the Soudan should cease to be a drain, like the rest, on the Cairo Exchequer. He determined that he at least would pay his way, and on the threshold of his undertaking he had insisted, and carried in the teeth of powerful opposition his resolution, that the accounts of the Equatorial Province should be kept distinct from those of the Soudan. The employment of black soldiers was very economical as well as efficient, and contributed to the satisfactory result which was shown in the balance-sheet of the Equatorial Province as described by General Gordon for the year 1875. In that year the Khedive received £48,000 from the Province which Gordon ruled at a total cost of only £20,000, while he had also formed a surplus or reserve fund of £60,000 more.
Having thus accomplished as much as possible towards the strengthening of the administration and tranquillisation of the people, some further particulars may be recorded of his measures and success in dealing with that slave-trade, the existence of which was the primary cause of his own appearance in the Soudan. Allusion has already been made to the considerable number of slaves rescued by a few grand coups at the expense of his own subordinates, but during the whole of these three years Gordon was in close contact with slaves, and the rescue of individuals was of frequent occurrence. Several touching incidents are recorded in the letters published from Central Africa as to his kindness towards women and infants, to some of whom he even gave the shelter of his own tent; and nothing could be more effective in the way of illustration than his simple description of the following passage with the child-wife of one of his own soldiers:
"The night before I left this place a girl of twelve years, in one of those leather strap girdles, came up to the fire where I was sitting, and warmed herself. I sent for the interpreter, and asked what she wanted. She said the soldier who owned her beat her, and she would not stay with him; so I put her on board the steamer. The soldier was very angry, so I said: 'If the girl likes to stay with you, she may; if she does not, she is free.' The girl would not go back, so she stays on the steamer."
Nor was this the only incident of the kind to show not merely the tenderness of his heart, but the extraordinary reputation Gordon had acquired by his high-minded action among these primitive and down-trodden races. Here are some others that have been selected almost at random out of his daily acts of gentleness and true charity: —
"I took a poor old bag of bones into my camp a month ago, and have been feeding her up, but yesterday she was quietly taken off, and now knows all things. She had her tobacco up to the last, and died quite quietly… A wretched sister of yours [addressed to the late Miss Gordon] is struggling up the road, but she is such a wisp of bones that the wind threatens to overthrow her; so she has halted, preferring the rain to being cast down. I have sent her some dhoora, which will produce a spark of joy in her black and withered carcass. I told my man to see her into one of the huts, and thought he had done so. The night was stormy and rainy, and when I awoke I heard often a crying of a child near my hut within the enclosure. When I got up I went out to see what it was, and passing through the gateway, I saw your and my sister lying dead in a pool of mud – her black brothers had been passing and passing, and had taken no notice of her – so I ordered her to be buried, and went on. In the midst of the high grass was a baby, about a year or so old, left by itself. It had been out all night in the rain, and had been left by its mother. I carried it in, and seeing the corpse was not moved, I sent again about it, and went with the men to have it buried. To my surprise and astonishment, she was alive. After considerable trouble I got the black brothers to lift her out of the mud, poured some brandy down her throat, and got her into a hut with a fire, having the mud washed out of her eyes. She was not more than sixteen years of age. There she now lies. I cannot help hoping she is floating down with the tide to the haven of rest. The next day she was still alive, and the babe, not a year old, seized a gourd of milk, and drank it off like a man, and is apparently in for the pilgrimage of life. It does not seem the worse for its night out, depraved little wretch!.. The black sister departed this life at 4 p. m., deeply lamented by me, not so by her black brothers, who thought her a nuisance. When I went to see her this morning I heard the 'lamentations' of something on the other side of the hut. I went round, and found another of our species, a visitor of ten or twelve months to this globe, lying in a pool of mud. I said, 'Here is another foundling!' and had it taken up. Its mother came up afterwards, and I mildly expostulated with her, remarking, however good it might be for the spawn of frogs, it was not good for our species. The creature drank milk after this with avidity."
Such incidents explain the hold Gordon obtained over the indigenous population of the Upper Nile. He made friends right and left, as he said, and the trust of the poor people, who had never received kindness, and whose ignorance of the first principles of justice was so complete that he said it would take three generations of sound and paternal government to accustom them to it, in General Gordon was complete and touching. A chapter might be filled with evidence to this effect, but it is unnecessary, as the facts are fully set forth in the "Letters" from Central Africa. The result alone need be dwelt on here. For only too brief a period, and as the outcome of his personal effort, these primitive races saw and experienced the beneficial results of a sound and well-balanced administration. The light was all too quickly withdrawn; but while it lasted, General Gordon stood out as a kind of redeemer for the Soudanese. The poor slaves, from whose limbs the chains of their oppressors had only just been struck, would come round him when anxious about his health, and gently touch him with their fingers. The hostile chiefs, hearing, as Bedden did, that he restored his cattle to and recompensed in other ways a friendly chief who had been attacked in mistake, would lie in wait for him, and lay their views and grievances before him. He could walk fearlessly and unarmed through their midst, and along the river banks for miles, when an Egyptian official would have required a regiment to guard him, and detached soldiers would have been enticed into the long grass and murdered. Even the hostile tribes like the Bari, who, from a mistaken view of their own military power, would not come to terms, showed their recognition of his merit by avoiding in their attacks the posts in which he happened to be. Thus there grew up round Gordon in the Soudan a sublime reputation for nobleness and goodness that will linger on as a tradition, and that, when these remote regions along the Equator fall under civilized authority, will simplify the task of government, provided it be of the same pattern as that dispensed by General Gordon.
As the subject has a permanent practical value, the following passage embodying General Gordon's views is well worth repetition: —
"I feel sure that a series of bad governments have ruined the people. Three generations of good government would scarcely regenerate them. Their secretiveness is the result of the fear that if they give, it may chance that they may want. Their indolence is the result of experience that if they do well, or if they do badly, the result will be nil to them, therefore why should they exert themselves? Their cowardice is the result of the fear of responsibility. They are fallen on so heavily if anything goes wrong. Their deceit is the result of fear and want of moral courage, as they have no independence in their characters. For a foreign power to take this country would be most easy. The mass are far from fanatical. They would rejoice in a good government, let its religion be what it might. A just administration of law, and security of person against arbitrary conduct, would do a great deal. It is the Government that needs civilizing far more than the people. Mehemet Ali and his descendants have always gone on the principle of enriching themselves by monopolies of all sorts. None, not even the present Khedive (Ismail), have brought in civilizing habits or customs with any desire to benefit the country, or, at any rate, they have subordinated this desire to that of obtaining an increased revenue."
But while Gordon brought kindness and conciliation into play, the settlement of the region entrusted to his care called for sterner measures, and he was not the man, with all his nobility of character and overflowing supply of the milk of human kindness, to refrain from those vigorous and decisive measures that keep turbulent races in subjection, and advance the cause of civilization, which in so many quarters of the world must be synonymous with British supremacy. The student of his voluminous writings will find many passages that express philosophical doubts as to our right to coerce black races, and to bind peoples who in their rude and primitive fashion are free to the car of our wide-world Empire. But I am under no obligation to save them the trouble of discovery by citing them, more especially because I believe that they give a false impression of the man. I have affirmed, and shall adduce copious and, as I think, convincing evidence, at every turn of his varied experiences, that the true Gordon was not the meek, colourless, milk-and-water, text-expounding, theological disputant many would have us accept as a kind of Bunyan's hero, but in action an uncompromising and resistless leader, who, when he smote, at once struck his hardest. Gordon has supplied the answer to his own misgivings as to our moral right to coerce and subject tribes who advanced their natural claims to be left undisturbed: "We cannot have them on our flank, and it is indispensable that they shall be subjected."
Having organised his new forces, equipped all his steamers – one of which was fitted out with machinery that had been left in Baker's time to rust in the Korosko Desert – General Gordon set himself to the task of systematically organising the line of posts which he had conceived and begun to construct in the first stages of his administration. The object of these posts was twofold. By them he would cut the slave routes in two, and also open a road to the great Lakes of the Equator. In the first few months of his residence he had transferred the principal station from Gondokoro to Lardo, twelve miles lower down the stream, and on the left instead of the right bank of the river. These places lie a little on each side of the fifth degree of north latitude, and Gordon fixed upon Lardo as his capital, because it was far the healthier. Above Lardo he established at comparatively short stages further posts at, in their order, Rageef, Beddem, Kerri, Moogie, and Laboré, immediately beyond the last of which occur the Fola Falls, the only obstruction to navigation between Khartoum and the Lakes. Above those Falls Gordon established a strong post at Duffli, and dragged some of his steamers overland, and floated them on the short link of the Nile between that place and Lake Albert, establishing a final post north of that lake, at Wadelai. When his fleet commanded that lake, he despatched his lieutenant, Gessi, across it up the Victoria Nile, connecting the two great lakes, and continued his chain of posts along it by Magungo, Anfina, Foweira, and Mrooli, to the very borders of Mtesa's dominion in Uganda. By means of these twelve posts General Gordon established the security of his communications, and he also inspired his men with fresh confidence, for, owing to the short distances between them, they always felt sure of a near place of refuge in the event of any sudden attack. Thus it came to pass that whereas formerly Egyptian troops could only move about in bodies of 100 strong, General Gordon was able to send his boats and despatches with only two soldiers in charge of them; and having entirely suppressed the slave-trade within his own jurisdiction, he was left free to accomplish the two ulterior objects of his mission, viz. the installation of the Khedive's flag on the Lakes, and the establishment of definite relations with Mtesa, whose truculent vassal, Kaba Rega, of Unyoro, showed open hostility and resentment at the threatened encroachment on his preserves.