122 THE WAR IN THE SOUDAN.

modesty could not stifle the general admiration felt towards him for what he had accomplished, nor prevent his receiving the name by which he will per¬ haps be best remembered among his contemporaries, of Chinese Gordon.

The Taeping rebellion crushed, he returned to England, and was appointed to a post at Gravesend. Many anecdotes have been preserved of his life here during six years to show that he devoted himself with the same thoroughness General Gordon to the question of dealing with the impoverished classes of the London out¬ skirts as he had done to the suppression of the rebellion among the Taepings.

In 1871 Colonel Gordon was appointed British Consul at Galatz, in which corner of Europe he remained buried from public view for three years, until he volunteered at the end of 1873 his services for any work in Egypt. At that moment Sir Samuel Baker had just resigned his command under the Khedive,