hat may usefully be
taken to counteract the stimulus which it is feared may possibly
be given to the Slave Trade by the present insurrectionary
movement and by the withdrawal of the Egyptian authority from the
interior.

"You will be under the instructions of Her Majesty's Agent and
Consul-General at Cairo, through whom your Reports to Her
Majesty's Government should be sent, under flying seal.

"You will consider yourself authorized and instructed to perform
such other duties as the Egyptian Government may desire to
entrust to you, and as may be communicated to you by Sir E.
Baring. You will be accompanied by Colonel Stewart, who will
assist you in the duties thus confided to you.

"On your arrival in Egypt you will at once communicate with Sir
E. Baring, who will arrange to meet you, and will settle with you
whether you should proceed direct to Suakin, or should go
yourself or despatch Colonel Stewart to Khartoum _via_ the Nile."

General Gordon had not got very far on his journey before he began to
see that there were points on which it would be better for him to know
the Government's mind and to state his own. Neither at this time nor
throughout the whole term of his stay at Khartoum did Gordon attempt
to override the main decision of the Government policy, viz. to
evacuate the Soudan, although he left plenty of documentary evidence
to show that this was not his policy or opinion. Moreover, his own
policy had been well set forth in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, and might
be summed up in the necessity to keep the Eastern Soudan, and the
impossibility of fortifying Lower Egypt against the advance of the
Mahdi. But he had none the less consented to give his services to a
Government which had decided on evacuation, and he remained loyal to
that purpose, although in a little time it was made clear that there
was a wide and impassable gulf between the views of the British
Government and its too brilliant agent.

The first doubt that flashed through his mind, strangely enough, was
about Zebehr. He knew, of course, that it had been proposed to employ
him, and that Mr Gladstone had not altogether unnaturally decided
against it. But Gordon knew the man's ability, his influence, and the
close connection he still maintained with the Soudan, where his
father-in-law Elias was the Mahdi's chief supporter, and the paymaster
of his forces. I believe tha