_ 91 — Rgypt to see its strength as compared with the Sudan, but at the same time he had also been there sufficiently long for his shrewd and calculating brain to realise its weakness, and the difficulties with which the provisional Government was embarrassed.

Me hated Gordon for the part he had played in the mu'der of his son SuHman (i), he was rankling under what he considered was the gross injustice of the confiscation of his property and the searching of his house by the Police. He was an ambitious man, intelligent, capable, who knew his strength.

Finally he was a slavedealer who had to his credit the sacking of numberless villages, and the wreck of innocent hearths and homes. The blood of hundreds was on his hands. Was this the man that the morality of the British national could tolerate as its delegate ? Was it politic to (i) This, I believe, is the generally accepted view.

Zubeir and those of his sons with whom I have talked deny that Zubeir feels any antipathy towards Gordon. The death of Suliman they profess to attribute to the direct perfidy of Gessi and the intrigues of the Danagla. It is more than possible that the did not wish to offend my English susceptibilities, and, in any case, time must have partially healed the wound inflicted by the death of his favourite son. Still, it is at any rate worth remarking that when the Nationalist Paity in Egypt bean to attract a good rieal of attention some few years ago, Zubeir expressed himself as sceptical of the purity and disinterestedness of their aims "like the rest of mankind", he remarked, "they are playing lor their own hand ; in fact, I only once came across a man whose life was absolutely pure and unselfish, and that man was Gordon."