One more extract: 

“Why should I, at every mile, be stared at by the grinning skulls of those who are at rest?

“I said to Yussef Bey, who is a noted slave-dealer, ’The inmate of that ball has told Allah what you and your people have done to him and his.’

“Yussef Bey says, ‘I did not do it!’ and I say, ’Your nation did, and the curse of God will be on your land till this traffic ceases.’”

This man, Yussef Bey, was one of the most cruel of the slave-hunters, and renowned for the manner in which he tortured his victims, more especially the young boys.  He also cruelly murdered the interesting and peaceful king of the Monbuttos, so graphically described in Schweinfurth’s “Heart of Africa.”

In June, 1882, Yussef Bey met his deserts, for going out with an army of Egyptian troops to meet the Mahdi, he and all his men were cut to pieces, scarcely one surviving.

Much of Gordon’s time, during his first expedition, had been occupied in strengthening the Egyptian posts south of Gondokoro, stretching away toward the country of King M’tesa.  So badly were they organized that it took him twenty-one months to travel from Gondokoro to Foweira and Mrooli, his southernmost points.  There he found that it would be impossible to interfere with the rival kings of that region without becoming involved in a war, and he returned from the lake districts “with the sad conviction that no good could be done in those parts, and that it would have been better had no expedition ever been sent.”

We conclude our imperfect sketch with the following quotation, describing General Gordon’s resignation: 

“I am neither a Napoleon nor a Colbert,” was his reply to some one who spoke to him in praise of his beneficent rule in the Soudan; “I do not profess either to have been a great ruler or a great financier; but I can say this:  I have bearded the slave-dealers in their strongholds, and I made the people love me.”

What Gordon had done was to justify Ismail’s description of him eight months before.  “They say I do not trust Englishmen; do I mistrust Gordon Pasha?  That is an honest man; an administrator, not a diplomatist!”

Apart from the difficulties of serving the new khedive, Gordon longed for rest.  The first year of his rule, during which he had done his own and other men’s work, the long marches, the terrible climate, the perpetual anxieties, had all told upon him.  Since then he had had three years of desperate labor, and had ridden some 8,500 miles.  Who can wonder that he resented the impertinences of the pashas, whose interference was not for the good of his government or of his people, but solely for their own?

But it was not for him to stay on and complain.  To one of the worst of these pashas he sent a telegram which ran, “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.”  Then he sailed for England, bearing with him the memory of the enthusiastic crowd of friends who bade him farewell at Cairo.  It is said that his name sends a thrill of love and admiration through the Soudan even yet.  A hand so strong and so beneficent had never before been laid on the people of that unhappy land.