who with him had toiled for years in order to see this day.  The funeral service was intoned; the solemn assembly sang Gordon’s favourite hymn, “Abide with me,” and the Scottish pipes wailed their lament for the lost chieftain.  Few eyes were undimmed by tears at the close of this service, a slight but affecting reparation for the delays and blunders of fourteen years before.  Then the Union Jack and the Egyptian Crescent flag were hoisted and received a salute of 21 guns.

The recovery of the Sudan by Egypt and Great Britain was not to pass unchallenged.  All along France had viewed the reconquest of the valley of the upper Nile with ill-concealed jealousy, and some persons have maintained that the French Government was not a stranger to designs hatched in France for helping the Khalifa[418].  Now that these questions have been happily buried by the Anglo-French agreement of the year 1904, it would be foolish to recount all that was said amidst the excitements of the year 1898.  Some reference must, however, be made to the Fashoda incident, which for a short space threatened to bring Great Britain and France to an open rupture.

[Footnote 418:  See an unsigned article in the Contemporary Review for Dec. 1897.]

On September 5, a steamer, flying the white flag, reached Omdurman.  The ex-Dervish captain brought the news that at Fashoda he had been fired upon by white men bearing a strange flag.  The Sirdar divined the truth, namely, that a French expedition under Major (now Colonel) Marchand must have made its way from the Congo to the White Nile at Fashoda with the aim of annexing that district for France.

Now that the dust of controversy has cleared away, we can see facts in their true proportions, especially as the work recently published by M. de Freycinet and the revelations of Colonel Marchand have thrown more light on the affair.  Briefly stated, the French case is as follows.  Mr. Gladstone on May 11, 1885, declared officially that Egypt limited her sway to a line drawn through Wady Haifa.  The authority of the Khedive over the Sudan therefore ceased, though this did not imply the cessation of the Sultan’s suzerainty in those regions.  Further, England had acted as if the Sudan were no man’s land by appropriating the southernmost part in accordance with the Anglo-German agreement of July I, 1890; and Uganda became a British Protectorate in August 1894.  The French protested against this extension of British influence over the Upper Nile; and we must admit that, in regard to international law, they were right.  The power to will away that district lay with the Sultan, the Khedive’s claims having practically lapsed.  Germany, it is true, agreed not to contest the annexation of Uganda, but France did contest it.