128 EGYPT AND THE SOUDAN.

The troops and employes with Stewart would then be able to retire from Berber to Dongola, and thence to Wady Haifa. The sending up of Zebehr he regarded as inseparable from a British diversion at Berber, as the delay had diminished the value of Zebehr's appointment, the tribes taking up the cause of the Mahdi and involving themselves with him. The recent exodus of the sick, and the widows and orphans, had not reassured the wavering tribes between Khartum and Berber; no promise for the future could be assured to the people, and it was evident that no one would throw in his fortunes with a departing government.

This was the state of affairs on the ioth of March; and Gordon, still hoping that some aid might come, told Hussein Khalif Pasha, should the telegraph line be cut, to send scouts out and himself to meet, at Obak, the forces that might be advancing from Suakim. Gordon also detailed three steamers which could pass the cataract to remain at Berber, or if any force arrived from Suakim Hussein was to send up all the black troops at Berber to Khartum, and the white troops there would be sent down to Berber.

Sir E. Baring telegraphed to Lord Granville on the 13th of March, in answer to government inquiries, that the successor to General Gordon would certainly have jurisdiction over the province of Sennar, and the valley of the Nile from Khartum to Wady Haifa. As regarded the Eastern Soudan, that is, the country between the Nile and the Red Sea, there would be no objection to its being handed over to him, but it was impossible to say with any certainty at present whether he would find it possible to assert any real authority over the tribes of the Bishareen and Hadendowa.

Of course, no portion of the Red Sea coast would come under his rule, and Kordofan would fall either to the Mahdi or to the ruler of Khartum, whichever proved himself to be the stronger.

The ruler at Khartum would have no jurisdiction over Darfur, the Bahr Gazelle, or the Equatorial province. This was one of the conditions which General Gordon proposed to impose on Zebehr Pasha, as was shown by his message of the 18th February.

Slave-hunting could only take place in a non-Moslem country; the exclusion of the Bahr Gazelle and the Equatorial provinces