ature. A
clumsy servant fired off his heavy duck-gun close to his head, and
Gordon very naturally gave him a smart box on the ears which the
fellow would remember for a week. Excited by the misery of a
slave-gang, he asked the boy in charge of them to whom they belonged,
and as he hesitated, he struck him across the face with his whip.
Gordon's comment on this act is that it was "cruel and cowardly, but
he was enraged, and could not help it." One feels on reading this that
one would have done so oneself, and that, after all, Gordon was a man,
and not a spiritual abstraction.

Thus ended the first eventful year of General Gordon's tenure of the
post of Governor-General of the Soudan. Some idea of the magnitude of
the task he had performed may be gathered from the fact that during
this period he rode nearly 4000 miles on his camel through the desert.
He put before himself the solution of eight burning questions, and by
the end of 1877 he had settled five of them more or less permanently.
He had also effected many reforms in the military and civil branches
of the administration, and had formed the nucleus of a force in which
he could put some confidence. By the people he was respected and
feared, and far more liked than he imagined. "Send us another Governor
like Gordon" was the burden of the Soudanese cry to Slatin when the
shadow of the Mahdi's power had already fallen over the land. He had
respected their religion and prejudices. When their Mahommedan
co-religionists had ground them down to the dust, even desecrating
their mosques by turning them into powder magazines, General Gordon
showed them justice and merciful consideration, restored and endowed
their mosques, and exhorted them in every way to be faithful to the
observance of their religion. He was always most exact in payment for
services rendered. This became known; and when some of the Egyptian
officials--a Pasha among others--seized camels for his service without
paying for them, the owners threw themselves on the ground, kissing
Gordon's camel's feet, told their tale, and obtained prompt redress.
What more striking testimony to his thoughtfulness for others could be
given than in the following anecdote? One of his native lieutenants, a
confirmed drunkard, but of which Gordon was ignorant, became ill, and
the Governor-General went to see and sit by him in his tent. All the
man asked for was brandy, and General Gordon, somewhat shocked at the
repeated request,