EFFECTS OF GORDON'S RESIGNATION. 23
We know that if he had found it difficult to continue in office
under Ismail and his ministry, he found it impossible under Tewfik, with the renewed opposition of Riaz, Cherif, and Nubar, who endeavoured to interfere with his government of the Soudan.
He had determined to resign before he consented to qt> to
Abyssinia as an envoy of the new khedive. The manner in which the ministers received his communications of the result of his
mission had confirmed his resolution to leave the country which had nearly cost him his life, but where he left many good
friends and grateful memories among the people over whom he
had been placed in authority. " Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin," he telegraphed to one of the corrupt and retrogressive pashas who had been appointed in the provinces which he had so lately
left, after having cut off the slave-dealers in their strongholds and secured the grateful affection of the formerly oppressed people.
In April, 1879, he had said: " If the liberation of slaves takes place in 1884, and if the present system of government goes on, there
cannot fail to be a revolt of the whole country." In April, 1880, just a year later, he wrote, " I have learned with equal pain and
indignation that the khedive and his subordinate officers have
permitted the resuscitation of the slave-trade in Darfur and the other provinces of Central and Equatorial Africa, and that fresh
parties of slave-hunters are forming at Obeid in Kordofan, and
that every order which I gave concerning the suppression of this
abomination has been cancelled." He had then left Gessi to finish the work that remained to be done in the Bahr Gazelle, and it
was completed, but the appointment of Raouf Pasha as governor- general seemed to be bringing back the old order of things. Gessi, as we have seen, left the Bahr Gazelle in the autumn of 1SS0. He
with great difficulty made his way to Khartum. In April, 188 1,
he died in Suez.1 From that time the western provinces of the Soudan may be said to have been lost to Egypt. The work that Gordon had effected was undone. In the following month (May,
1881) the "Mahdi" had began to make his pretensions; the slave-dealers and slave-owners saw that here was an opportunity
1 Vol i. p. 214.