This spirit of unselfishness and of a sublime charity runs through all his work.  Every man, black or white, was “neighbor” to him, and he ever fulfilled the command of his Lord, to “love his neighbor as himself.”  Against oppression he could, however, be stern and severe.  Not a few ruffians whom he caught red-handed in flagrant acts of cruelty were executed without mercy.  So that the same man who, by the down-trodden people, was called the “Good Pasha,” was to the robber and murderer a terror and avenger.

When at Khartoum he was on one occasion installed with a royal salute, and an address was presented, and in return he was expected to make a speech.  His speech was as follows:  “With the help of God, I will hold the balance level.”  The people were delighted, for a level balance was to them an unknown boon.  And he held it level all through his long and glorious reign, which lasted, with small break, from February, 1874, until August, 1879.

During those five years and a half he had traveled over every portion of the huge territory which was placed under him—­provinces extending all the way to the Equatorial Lakes.  Besides riding through the deserts on camels and mules 8,490 miles in three years, he made long journeys by river.  He conveyed a large steamer up the Nile as far as Lake Albert Nyanza, and succeeded in floating her safely on the waters of that inland sea.  He had established posts all the way from Khartoum to Gondokora, and reduced that enormous journey from fifteen months to only a few weeks.  He writes respecting these posts in January, 1879:  “I am putting in all the frontier posts European Vakeels, to see that no slave caravans come through the frontier.  I do not think that any now try to pass; but the least neglect of vigilance would bring it on again in no time.”

This is only one out of hundreds of instances of the hawk-eyed vigilance of the governor-general.  The vast provinces under his sway had never been ruled in this fashion before.

One strain runs through all his numerous letters written during the five years he remained in the Soudan, and that is the heart-rending condition of the thousands of slaves who were driven through the country, and the cruelty of the slave-hunters.  Were we to begin quoting from those letters, we should outrun the limits of this sketch.  He had broken the neck of the piratical army of man-stealers, and their forces were scattered and comparatively powerless.  So many slaves were set free that they became a serious inconvenience, as they had to be fed and provided for.

And yet there was no shout of joy at the capital, whence he had set out years before, armed with the firman of the khedive to put an end to the slave trade.  On the contrary, We find him saying:  “What I complain of in Cairo is the complete callousness with which they treat all these questions, while they worry me for money, knowing by my budgets that I can not make my revenue meet my expenses by L90,000 a year.  The destruction of Sebehr’s gang is the turning-point of the slave-trade question, and yet, never do I get one word from Cairo to support me.”