LATEST ACCOUNTS OF GORDON AT KHARTUM. 221 The families of all the men on board General Gordon's steamers were also murdered. . . . Khasm-el-Mus, the commandant with the steamers here, who has proved so loyal throughout, states that even had the English got to Khartum a month earlier they would have been too late to save Gordon, for the two traitors had committed themselves, and would never have awaited our arrival, as they feared that General Gordon would punish them.

The people of Khartum had despaired of ever seeing English soldiers, and tried to make the best terms they could. After the battle of Abu-Klea the Mahdi no doubt promised much."

There were many differences in the accounts, but, at the same time, there was a general agreement, and there were numerous discussions and some contention as to the conditions that preceded the taking of Khartum, and the influences that precipitated the event. Lieutenant-colonel Kitchener was inclined to disbelieve the statement that the place was given up by the treachery of Faragh Pasha, but Colonel Sir Charles Wilson was of opinion that it was he who admitted the Mahdi's troops, though after the 25th, or, at any rate, after the 30th of December the town could not have resisted a determined assault. Sir Charles Wilson and Colonel Kitchener were probably in a position to obtain the most accurate information; and the former, summing up the direct and the most trustworthy of the indirect evidence, points out that, with the exception of the brief message of the 29th of December, 1884, " Khartum all right, and can hold out for years;" the last authentic news of the siege of Khartum is contained in General Gordon's journal, which closes on the 14th December, 1884. "Now mark THIS, if the expeditionary force, and I ask for no more than two hundred men, does not come in ten days, the town may fall; and I have done my best for the honour of our country. Good-bye."

Sir Charles Wilson goes on to say that the crisis would naturally arrive when the provisions were finished, and Gordon did not expect them to last much longer than the 14th December. From Christmas-day, 1884, to the 20th January, 1885, the garrison lived on coarse bread made from the pith of the palm-tree, on gum, and