fitly apply to him the
noble lines which Tennyson offered to the memory of another
steadfast soul--

He, that ever following her commands,
On with toil of heart and knees and hands,
Thro' the long gorge to the far light has won
His path upward, and prevail'd,
Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scaled
Are close upon the shining table-lands
To which our God Himself is moon and sun.

NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION

Shortly before the publication of this work, Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice
published his _Life of Earl Granville_, some of the details of which
tend somewhat to modify the account of the relations subsisting between
the Earl and General Gordon. See too the issue of the _Times_ of
December 10, 1905 (Weekly Edition), for a correction of some of the
statements, made in the _Life of Earl Granville_, by Lord Cromer (Sir
Evelyn Baring).]

CHAPTER XVII

THE CONQUEST OF THE SUDAN

"The Sudan, if once proper communication was established,
would not be difficult to govern. The only mode of improving
the access to the Sudan, seeing the impoverished state of
Egyptian finances, and the mode to do so without an outlay of
more than L10,000, is by the Nile."--_Gordon's Journals_
(Sept. 19, 1884).

It may seem that an account of the fall of Khartum is out of place in a
volume which deals only with formative events. But this is not so. The
example of Gordon's heroism was of itself a great incentive to action
for the cause of settled government in that land. For that cause he had
given his life, and few Britons were altogether deaf to the mute appeal
of that lonely struggle. Then again, the immense increase to the Mahdi's
power resulting from the capture of the arsenal of Khartum constituted
(as Gordon had prophesied) a serious danger to Egypt. The continued
presence of British troops at Wady Haifa, and that alone, saved the
valley of the Lower Nile from a desolating flood of savagery. This was a
fact recognised by every one at Cairo, even by the ultra-Gallic party.
Egypt alone has rarely been able to hold at bay any great downward
movement of the tribes of Ethiopia and Nubia; and the danger was never
so great as in and after 1885. The Mahdi's proclamations to the faithful
now swelled with inconceivable pride. To a wavering sheikh he sent the
warning: "If you live long enough you will see the troops of the Mahdi
spreading over Europe, Rome, and Constant