DIFFICULTIES OF GORDONS MISSION. 55 sentences, and he may be severely reprimanded, and be thereafter spoken of as rash and self-willed for not having observed the terms of the mission with which he had been intrusted.

We have seen, however, what construction Gordon put upon the terms of his instructions, and that interpretation contained in the memorandum which he wrote immediately after he had embarked on his journey across the Mediterranean had been sent to the foreign office, when he awaited further consultations at Cairo.

The instructions he had received were sufficient as to quantity, but they contained only uncertain references to what proved to be the actual situation. Gordon himself had evidently not calculated on the rapidity with which the insurrection spread, and by the very terms of his orders it was necessary to wait for fresh directions at a time when a delay of a day or two might change the merely probable into the inevitable. In other words, at the time that Gordon undertook the mission the work that he had gone to do could only be effected by quite different methods to those which he had at first considered applicable, and it had also become necessary that anyone undertaking it should be really and not only nominally Governor-general of the Soudan provinces and with unquestioned authority. The shadow of support from England misled and confused the whole policy which Gordon might have adopted. The necessity for relinquishing each proposition that he made in deference to the policy which had been declared by the British government in relation to Egypt left him at last without resources, especially as at a critical time the despatches sent to Khartum were intercepted, and the messages sent to and from the place never reached him or the consul-general at Cairo; and Gordon's bitter complaints that he was to be abandoned were made while the government was without trustworthy information, and while the ministry, reluctant to move a finger in contradiction of their former refusal not to interfere in the Soudan, were, too late, preparing to send an expedition for his rescue.

When Gordon reached Cairo on his outward journey, though he seemed to have no great expectation of being able to fullil