Soudan. Much of that period had been passed in travelling, much
more in exhausting and uncongenial negotiation in the Egyptian
capital. All the brief space over enabled him to do was to pass the
Christmas with several members of his family, to which he was so
deeply attached, to visit his sisters in the old home at Southampton,
and to run down for a day to Gravesend, the scene of his philanthropic
labours a few years before. Yet, with his extraordinary recuperative
force, he hastened with fresh strength and spirit to take up a more
arduous and more responsible task than that he had felt compelled to
relinquish so short a period before. With almost boyish energy,
tempered by a profound belief in the workings of the Divine will, he
turned his face once more to that torrid region, where at that time
and since scenes of cruelty and human suffering have been enacted
rarely surpassed in the history of the world.

Having thus described the circumstances and conditions under which
General Gordon consented to take up the Soudan question, it is
desirable to explain clearly what were the objects he had in his own
mind, and what was the practical task he set himself to accomplish.
Fortunately, this description need not be based on surmise or
individual conjecture. General Gordon set forth his task in the
plainest language, and he held the clearest, and, as the result
showed, the most correct views as to what had to be done, and the
difficulties that stood in the way of its accomplishment. He wrote on
the very threshold of his undertaking these memorable sentences:--

"I have to contend with many vested interests, with fanaticism,
with the abolition of hundreds of Arnauts, Turks, etc., now
acting as Bashi-Bazouks, with inefficient governors, with wild
independent tribes of Bedouins, and with a large semi-independent
province lately under Zebehr Pasha at Bahr Gazelle.... With
terrific exertion, in two or three years' time I may, with God's
administration, make a good province, with a good army, and a
fair revenue and peace, and an increased trade, and also have
suppressed slave raids."

No one can dispute either the Titanic magnitude of the task to be
accomplished or the benefit its accomplishment would confer on a
miserably unhappy population. How completely the project was carried
out by one man, where powerful Governments and large armies have
failed both before and since, has now t