GORDON S CHANGE OF OPINION. 7 I Baring afterwards came to the conclusion that Gordon was right in his opinion that Khartum and the Soudan provinces should not be abandoned, and that Zebehr was the only man who could effectually be sent to succeed Gordon for the purpose of re-establishing the local governors and establishing a settled government; but in the opinion of the English government this conclusion was never sustained by reasons which outweighed the objections previously urged, and the probable consequences of taking such a course. With regard to the proposed employment of Zebehr at Suakim General Gordon had said on the 2 2d of January in a memorandum written on his voyage to Alexandria: "My objection to Zebehr is this. He is a first-rate general and a man of great capacity, and he would in no time eat up all the petty sultans and consolidate a vast state, as his ambition is boundless. I would therefore wish him kept away, as his restoration would be not alone unjust, but might open up the Turco-Arabic question. Left independent the sultans will doubtless fight among themselves, and one will try to annex the other; but with Zebehr it would be an easy task to overcome these different states and form a large independent one."

Colonel Stewart had said on the same subject: " Zebehr's return would undoubtedly be a misfortune to the Soudanese, and also a direct encouragement to the slave-trade. As he would be by far the ablest leader in the Soudan, he could easily overturn the newly erected political edifice, and become a formidable power."

The plain facts of the main narrative of Gordon's enterprise show not only that as he advanced he rapidly changed his estimate of its scope and purpose, but that he found he had not completely estimated the situation in which he would be placed and the difficulties with which he would have to contend. The insurrection was wider and more powerful than he expected, and the tribes had been committed more completely to the cause of the Mahdi or tc the cause of emancipation from Egyptian rule than he had thought probable. He did not modify his previous opinions — he contradicted them. Zebehr, whom he had denounced, and whose restoration to power in the Soudan he had regarded as a course