ot take it
yourself, and you will not permit any other country to occupy it."

As if to give emphasis to General Gordon's successive
requests--Zebehr, 200 men to Wady Halfa, opening of route from Souakim
to Berber, presence of English officers at Dongola, and of Indian
cavalry at Berber--telegraphic communication with Khartoum was
interrupted early in March, less than a fortnight after Gordon's
arrival in the town. There was consequently no possible excuse for
anyone ignoring the dangerous position in which General Gordon was
placed. He had gone to face incalculable dangers, but now the success
of Osman Digma and the rising of the riparian tribes threatened him
with that complete isolation which no one had quite expected at so
early a stage after his arrival. It ought, and one would have expected
it, to have produced an instantaneous effect, to have braced the
Government to the task of deciding what its policy should be when
challenged by its own representative to declare it. Gordon himself
soon realised his own position, for he wrote: "I shall be caught in
Khartoum; and even if I was mean enough to escape I have not the power
to do so." After a month's interruption he succeeded in getting the
following message, dated 8th April, through, which is significant as
showing that he had abandoned all hope of being supported by his own
Government:--

"I have telegraphed to Sir Samuel Baker to make an appeal to
British and American millionaires to give me L300,000 to engage
3000 Turkish troops from the Sultan and send them here. This
would settle the Soudan and Mahdi for ever. For my part, I think
you (Baring) will agree with me. I do not see the fun of being
caught here to walk about the streets for years as a dervish with
sandalled feet. Not that (_D.V._) I will ever be taken alive. It
would be the climax of meanness after I had borrowed money from
the people here, had called on them to sell their grain at a low
price, etc., to go and abandon them without using every effort to
relieve them, whether those efforts are diplomatically correct or
not; and I feel sure, whatever you may feel diplomatically, I
have your support, and that of every man professing himself a
gentleman, in private."

Eight days later he succeeded in getting another message through, to
the following effect:--

"As far as I can understand, the situation is this. You state