2 20 EGYPT AND THE SOUDAN.

house. They met Gordon, who was armed, coming out, with Mohamed Bey Mustapha and twenty cavasses. When proceeding towards Austrian consulate they met party of rebels, who fired a volley. Gordon fell at once, and two beys were also killed.

Hanzel, Austrian consul, was killed in his own house. Nicola, Greek consul, and the doctor are prisoners. Cavass saw the two steamers carrying Sir Charles Wilson's party come up to Omdurman, and gives circumstantial account of what he saw at Khartum when it was taken by rebels." We have seen by the evidences to be found in the journals, and more distinctly in the letters sent by Gordon himself by the JSordein and received by Sir Charles Wilson, how the fatal meshes were closing round Khartum, and the farewell words that appeared in the more private of these letters sounded the note of approaching death, especially when it was remembered that Gordon had repeatedly declared that he would never be taken alive.

A despatch sent on the 12th of February by the special correspondent of the Daily Telegraph at Abu-Kru, contains what appears to be a fair summing up of the native reports.

" General Gordon's trusted messenger, George, a well-known Khartum Greek merchant, who for months past has been intrusted with all letters passing from or to the besieged, and who has been living on board one of the steamers sent here, states that nearly all the natives' stories agree that General Gordon, on learning that he was betrayed, made a rush for the magazine in the Catholic mission building. Finding that the enemy were actually in possession of that building by the treachery of Faragh, General Gordon returned to government house, and was killed while trying to re-enter it. Some say that he was shot; others that he was stabbed. The Madhi's people were admitted to Khartum at ten o'clock on the night of January 26.

George adds that the rebels massacred all the white people, men, women, and children, throwing the bodies into the Nile, many of which corpses he and others saw whilst with Sir Charles Wilson's party.

'Vol. iv. pp. 78-88.