GORDON»S RETURN. 35S in Cairo should have been to Zobehr Pasha. Zobehr had been, years before, a trader of note, and a man of influence in the Soudan. In common with all his class, his occupation consisted in procuring slaves, chiefly for the porterage of ivory, but to a smaller extent for sale in the Arabian, Turkish, and Egyptian markets. His family were actively engaged in the raids, by which slaves were obtained. Some few years before, Gordon, while Governor of the Soudan, had taken prisoner, in one of his punitive expeditions for the suppression of the slave trade, a son of Zobehr, and had had him hung. Since that period Zobehr had resided in Cairo, where he was suspected, with or without reason, of acting as a sort of agent for the Mahdi. Probably by this time the idea of re-establishing slavery in the Soudan on his arrival at Khartoum, and thereby inducing the Dervishes to release the Egyptian garrisons, had already presented itself to Gordon's imagination, so fertile in resource, and at the same time so versatile. If this is so, his sudden change of mind about the designation he was to bear during his mission, as well as his visit to Zobehr in Cairo, are easily intelligible. The result of this visit was not encouraging, as Zobehr absolutely declined to enter into conversation with the man who, as he said, had murdered his son. The rebuff", as was shown later on, did not shake Gordon's confidence in his power to win over Zobehr to his side ; and, accompanied by Colonel Stewart, he left Cairo on the 26th of January, and arrived at Khartoum — which