THE STORY OF GORDONS HEROISM. 73 and their close bushy hair will show. They speak a corrupted form of Arabic, but also have a language of their own as the Bishareen have. Their religion is a superstitious and gross form of Islamism, and they are the most fearless and indomitable savages that were ever encountered by British troops.

It has been necessary to dwell with some distinctness on the anomalous position occupied by General Gordon in the relations between him and the British government, and to point out that the force of events and the vicissitudes of the situation rendered it impossible that he could succeed and yet consistently maintain the policy and the course of action which the ministry had declared.

These conclusions, however, do not involve a charge of inconsistency, much less a suggestion of the shadow of a shade of dishonour against Gordon himself. It is essential to the proper understanding of the true narrative of our intervention in Egypt and the Soudan that these particular points should be dwelt upon; but we may now again follow the noble story of the man who, with an earnest desire to rescue the people at Khartum, and if possible to deliver the whole country from anarchy and the subsequent return of the former power of the slave-hunting chiefs and their fell influence over the Soudan and the Equatorial provinces, had unhesitatingly given his services when he became convinced that they were asked for in good faith. Again, therefore, we turn in imagination to the heroic figure of the man to whom money and personal ease, fame, wealth, security, meant so little, and duty, beneficence, and devotion to the will of God; the realization of the spirit of Christianity and recognition of the needs and the claims of human beings, his brethren and sisters, black, brown, or white, meant so very much. He had relinquished tin: far more attractive and more lucrative appointment which had been concluded with the King of the Belgians, who not only agreed to pay him a good income, but had secured a lair annuity to be paid to his immediate relatives in case of his life U insacrificed to the enterprise of establishing the settlement on the Congo.

He was now, on the 26th of January, on his way from Cairo