SHALL GORDON GO TO THE MAHDI? 87 of doing things, and directly Sir E. Baring heard of it, he wrote to prevent him from doing anything except under orders. Gordon was to be only nominally free to act. The whole circumstances were extraordinary — might soon become dangerous or even desperate; he was the man who, from experience of the country, knowledge of the people, and former successes in dealing with them, was best fitted to act with requisite promptitude, and to know how far even his own plans must be altered under changing conditions, and yet the official tape was already preparing which was to bind him hand and foot to a declared policy, the maintenance of which was entirely inconsistent with sending such a man to Khartum, or even with suffering him to go thither with any hope that the liberty of discretion, which was promised to him, would be any more than a phrase of courtesy.

Owing to Mr Clifford Lloyd's illness the message was not shown to Sir E. Baring till after Gordon had started from Korosko on his desert journey; but a telegram was sent to him to Berber from Sir E. Baring repeating the message Mr. Lloyd received, and adding, " I hope you will give me a positive assurance that you will on no account put yourself voluntarily in the power of the Madhi. The question is not a personal one. There would, in my opinion, be the strongest political objections to your risking a visit to the Mahdi."

Sir E. Baring had intended to wait before communicating on the subject with the government until he had received General Gordon's answer from Berber; but the telegraph line between Berber and Khartum had been cut by the tribes of that district, so that it might have been impossible to communicate with him by telegraph when once he left the former place, and the representative at Cairo was therefore in a terrible state of consternation, and requested Lord Granville to inform him at once whether he might give General Gordon a positive order from the government that he was on no account to visit the Mahdi. The reply was " diplomatic." While faintly encouraging the government representative at Cairo, it dodged the responsibility of definitely hindering what might possibly have been a desirable or politic determination on