2 EGYPT AND THE SOUDAN.

hope that God may guide thee to the faith of Islam, and to surrender; that you and your followers may surrender to Him and to us, that so you and they may obtain everlasting good and happiness." Then follows a precise list of the papers, &c., said to have been seized, and certainly containing much of the information sent by Gordon as to his position and strength at Khartum, and the reproaches and appeals made for aid in order to carry out his mission. The letter winds up with a declaration that reliance on expected reinforcements will be useless, and offering that if Gordon will turn Moslem and surrender with those who are with him at Khartum, that he shall have a safe-conduct and blessings in this world and the next. The Mahdi said that he was then a day's journey from Omdurman and was coming to KhartClm; and in a special postscript referring to a cipher telegram of Gordon's that the troops in the Bahr Gazelle, the Equator, and elsewhere numbered 30,000 soldiers, declared the Bahr Gazelle and the Equator were in his (the Mahdi' s) hand, and that they and their chief and all their officers were among his auxiliaries. Two letters purporting to be from the Mahdi's lieutenants in those parts were inclosed in proof of this assertion, and one of them represented that Emir Abdullah (Lupton Bey) had turned Moslem and surrendered.

It had been sufficiently proved that the Mahdi was an unscrupulous liar, and Gordon was indisposed to give more weight to his letter than properly belonged to it; but there could be no doubt that papers, letters, and telegrams had been intercepted. " As for these letters," he wrote of the inclosures referring to Lupton Bey's surrender, &c., " I cannot make head or tail of them, so I leave them to the Arabic scholars of the universities."

Gordon did not hesitate for a moment what reply to send. He at once telegraphed in Arabic to Ferratch Ullah Bey, commandant of Omdurman : " Sheikh Mahomed Achmet has sent us a letter to inform us that Lupton Bey, Mudir of Bahr-Gazelle, has surrendered to him, and that the small steamer, in which was Stewart Pasha, has been captured by him, together with what was therein. And he