he was alive. After
considerable trouble I got the black brothers to lift her out of
the mud, poured some brandy down her throat, and got her into a
hut with a fire, having the mud washed out of her eyes. She was
not more than sixteen years of age. There she now lies. I cannot
help hoping she is floating down with the tide to the haven of
rest. The next day she was still alive, and the babe, not a year
old, seized a gourd of milk, and drank it off like a man, and is
apparently in for the pilgrimage of life. It does not seem the
worse for its night out, depraved little wretch!... The black
sister departed this life at 4 P.M., deeply lamented by me, not
so by her black brothers, who thought her a nuisance. When I went
to see her this morning I heard the 'lamentations' of something
on the other side of the hut. I went round, and found another of
our species, a visitor of ten or twelve months to this globe,
lying in a pool of mud. I said, 'Here is another foundling!' and
had it taken up. Its mother came up afterwards, and I mildly
expostulated with her, remarking, however good it might be for
the spawn of frogs, it was not good for our species. The creature
drank milk after this with avidity."

Such incidents explain the hold Gordon obtained over the indigenous
population of the Upper Nile. He made friends right and left, as he
said, and the trust of the poor people, who had never received
kindness, and whose ignorance of the first principles of justice was
so complete that he said it would take three generations of sound and
paternal government to accustom them to it, in General Gordon was
complete and touching. A chapter might be filled with evidence to this
effect, but it is unnecessary, as the facts are fully set forth in the
"Letters" from Central Africa. The result alone need be dwelt on here.
For only too brief a period, and as the outcome of his personal
effort, these primitive races saw and experienced the beneficial
results of a sound and well-balanced administration. The light was all
too quickly withdrawn; but while it lasted, General Gordon stood out
as a kind of redeemer for the Soudanese. The poor slaves, from whose
limbs the chains of their oppressors had only just been struck, would
come round him when anxious about his health, and gently touch him
with their fingers. The hostile chiefs, hearing, as Bedden did, th