ve the Soudan
up. Gordon's argument for this unhappy proceeding was that, the object of
his mission being to get out of the country and leave them to their
independence, he could have put no sharper spur into them to make them
organise their own government. But he spoke of it after as the fatal
proclamation, and so it was.(102)

What happened was that the tribes round Khartoum almost at once began to
waver. From the middle of March, says a good observer, one searches in
vain for a single circumstance hopeful for Gordon. "When the eye wanders
over the huge and hostile Soudan, notes the little pin-point garrisons,
each smothered in a cloud of Arab spears, and remembers that Gordon and
Stewart proceeded to rule this vast empire, already given away to others,
one feels that the Soudanese view was marked by common sense."(103)
Gordon's too sanguine prediction that the men who had beaten Hicks, and
the men who afterwards beat Baker, would never fight beyond their tribal
limits, did not come true. Wild forces gathered round the Mahdi as he
advanced northwards. The tribes that had wavered joined them. Berber fell
on May 26. The pacific mission had failed, and Gordon and his comrade
Stewart--a more careful and clear-sighted man than himself--were shut up in
Khartoum.

Distractions grew thicker upon the cabinet, and a just reader, now far
away from the region of votes of censure, will bear them in mind. The
Queen, like many of her subjects, grew impatient, but Mr. Gladstone was
justified in reminding her of the imperfect knowledge, and he might have
called it blank ignorance, with which the government was required on the
shortest notice to form conclusions on a remote and more than
half-barbarous region.

Gordon had told them that he wanted to take his steam vessels to Equatoria
and serve the king of the Belgians. This Sir Evelyn Baring refused to
allow, not believing Gordon to be in immediate danger (March 26). From
Gordon himself came a telegram (March 28), "I think we are now safe, and
that, as the Nile rises, we shall account for the rebels." Mr. Gladstone
was still unwell and absent. Through Lord Granville he told the cabinet
(March 15) that, with a view to speedy departure from Khartoum, he would
not even refuse absolutely to send cavalry to Berber, much as he disliked
it, provided the military authorities thought it could be done, and
provided also that it was declared necessary for Gordon's safety, and was
strictly con